Album of the 'Week': 'Enema of the State'

The notion of a guilty pleasure is a strange and degraded one. Obviously, there are things that you can't admit to in polite company, things that don't fit the criteria that society and you yourself set for enjoying things. But in admitting to a guilty pleasure, you are exposing these hidden passions - for this reason, people are squeamish about what they reveal. They might admit liking Eastenders or Desperate Housewives, but never Blink 182. Their bassist has a mouthful of fucking seaweed in the picture above, for crying out loud, and the album I'm writing about is called 'Enema of the State'.

Nevertheless, each of us has enjoyed music that seems repugnant in hindsight. Revisiting 'Enema of the State', the depth and breadth of sexism and puerility on display is truly shocking. Nu-metal, and the more sprightly and appealing pop-punk that developed alongside it at the beginning of this decade was in many ways the nadir of the macho posturing inherent in rock - a mixture of sweaty male bonding and inane self-pity that's truly off-putting to anyone with an ounce of decency.

However, I would argue that Blink 182's approach renders them a partially defensible pleasure. Unlike Limp Bizkit, Blink 182 have enough sense to make themselves the butt of the joke. The frat-house nonsense that infects the album is punctured by songs like 'What's My Age Again?', which demonstrates a degree of self-knowledge and self-doubt that makes the homophobia and sexism a bit more palatable. There's also a clear pop sensibility at play, which made the music an anathema to dull, mohawked punks and the traditional tween audience of pop. Their relative musical and lyrical idiocy also leads to the inclusion of a genuinely pathetic and upsetting song about teen suicide (appalling punks with the use of keyboards).

This was Blink 182's musical highpoint, and it's been downhill from there. The traditional cliché about American culture (oft-spouted by the BBC) is that the American Dream remains upstanding, despite the many disproofs that exist. The pop-punk version of the American Dream as presented by 'Enema of the State' seems closer to the fact - myriad flaws and disgusting attitudes, covered by a surface sheen that is, in my case, irresistible.

There's a good war!

The War in Afghanistan, being the new focus of the US and UK, is quickly shooting up the agenda. Much of the debate recently has focused on the lack of equipment for our boys, primarily the lack of helicopters. There should be a massive increase in helicopters, and they should be used to lift 'our boys' out of a depraved war. The focus given to Afghanistan by President Obama and the increasing severity of the situation in 'Af-Pak' has led to a rather fine upsurge of oppositional literature on the topic. Firstly, Tariq Ali's general piece from 2007, in the beautifully presented, but ever infuriating New Left Review and his more Pakistan-focused 'diary' in this fortnight's London Review of Books. Hitting a more rabble-rousing and less self-obsessed note is Jonathan Neale's wonderfully simple overview of the issues, actors and factors that make up the situation. The feat of this piece is that an 8-year-old could come out the other end of it, and know more about Afghanistan than George W. Bush.

Finally, and on a more bloggy note, the magnificently named Lenin on the crassness of the inevitability argument - a kind of Vietnam syndrome of the left, where any war in difficult territory, with an opposition, will lead to US defeat. The comments section is, as always, worth reading - proof that, however problematic the anti-Iraq war campaign was, the left remains capable of losing its bearings faced with 'the Good war'.

Album of the Week: 'What's Going On?'

A while back, I ranted, without much control, on the subject of 'New Atheism'. Listening to 'What's Going On?' this week, I realised that those words were wasted (well, more than usual) given that the stupidity of the New Atheists can be summed up by the fact that they refuse to recognise the difference between the Christianity of Pope Benedict XIV and Marvin Gaye.

'What's Going On?' is correctly considered to be one of the greatest albums ever made, and there is a narrative traditionally associated with it, usually featuring the unheard-of political radicalism of it, as a Motown release. The film Dreamgirls, about Diana Ross and the Supremes, features a subplot where a Gaye soundalike's vision rubs up against the boss of the Motown-alike record label - leading 'Gaye' down a path of heroin use, and towards death. The inanity of the music that the soundalike produces is hilarious - 90% of the lyrics being the words "peace and love" - and this is before we take into account that 'Gaye' is played by the foul Eddie Murphy - but I digress...

The real surprise of the album, after imbibing the traditional narrative, and hits used for the illustration of it, is the level of introspection, and religious content that 'What's Going On?' contains. The left-wing politics is wonderful - gloriously earnest, exalting "picket lines/and picket signs" and those whose "hair is long". These gems are sanctified and sillified by the inclusion of a recurring prayer that begins "Don't go and talk about my father/God is my friend (Jesus is my friend)", which puts one in mind of both Gaye spoiling for a pub fight with a trash-talking atheist, and Gaye's own father, who tragically shot his son, depriving the world of black music of one of its greatest stylists, and perhaps its greatest singer since Paul Robeson. The music is profoundly soft, unthreatening, with melotrons and flutes spiralling to the heavens, drums that resemble a babbling brook, and grand, simple strings.

Listening to the album, the picture that emerges (much like that of Thom Yorke's 'The Eraser') is of a troubled soul, projecting his crises onto a disturbing, broken world. But a continuity exists with his earlier work, which unlike that of Thom Yorke, is not entirely depressing. So the lush, swinging 'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)' comes on like a love song, then begins "Oh, mercy mercy me/things ain't what they used to be/Where did all the blue skies go?/Poisoned is the wind that flows/From the North and South". On 'Right On', he bemoans inequality, and his own addiction to easy living and nightlife (and perhaps cocaine - I don't have a good Gaye timeline), despite the horror of the world.

The litany of apocalyptic scenarios contrasted with appeals to God's love present us with something more complex than simple love songs, or political tracts. We're left with love songs which accept a world where love is crushed under the jackboot, songs of beauty and ecstacy in a world of squallor, songs that appeal to our highest impulses, while accepting that the easy way out is very easy indeed. It deserves its status, and deserves better than Eddie Murphy.