Album of the Week: 'Early'

One of the most off-putting aspects of serious engagement with popular music is the myth of the Holy Album. From the people who neglect the shuffle function on mp3 players, to stoners reverently listening to vinyl, worshippers at the shrine of the Holy Album put the commodity before its content, and neglect the fact that, in the bad old days, bands would churn out any old shit to fulfill a contract. Alan Partridge was right to say that his favourite Beatles album was 'The Best of the Beatles'. Aside from being sometimes far better than the albums from which they are compiled, some compilations enable listeners to hear music that was otherwise inaccessible to everyone except a core of devotees.


Green Gartside, the only constant of the 'band' Scritti Politti, is one of the oddest musicians working. Aside from being a 50-something who does a mean rap cover version live, his musical career has bewildering shifts, usually related to what seem to be mental breakdowns. In the 80s, he made disgustingly lush, lyrically obtuse pop, while looking like a shell-suited Princess Diana. After a decade's silence, he returned with the same, but with rap added. Another decade passed, and he made an album of singer-songwritery wonder, which was correctly nominated for the Mercury prize, called White Bread, Black Beer (a testament to his apparent alcoholism). But, before this, Scritti Politti were actually a band, and made some of the most broken, disturbing punk of its time. Due to either a breakdown, or a speed-induced heart attack, they folded before recording what Mojo would call an album. Luckily, in 2005, Rough Trade collected these lost songs, and made an album of them.

'Early' starts in with a jolt, with the terrifying 'Skank Bloc Bologna'. Terrifying sounds like hyperbole, but it isn't - the music is absolutely fucked, and the lyrics are all limited horizons, ruined potential and, most of all, unknowing. Slipknot would have to have ten guitarists, six drummers and five DJs, masturbating, to induce this bewilderment and dislocation in their audience. The general mood of the album is fearful. In fact, punk can be seen as a fear reaction to the social crisis of Britain in the 70s - with Sex Pistols being the fight, and Scritti Politti being the flight. Of course, the Sex Pistols are more fun, but Scritti are more interesting.

This is an album that can only be understood in its historical context. It's funky, tuneful and all that, but lyrics, like those that appear in the brilliant 'Bibbly-O-Tek' - "secondary picket, Eastern Bloc" - are wonderfully, laughably of their time. In general, the album has more to chew on than most others. Voices overlap, speaking different words, songs stutter, restart, change course. Even when their pop future can be glimpsed, there are little phrases, musical and lyrical, that raise a smile. 'The "Sweetest Girl"', the most punkless song here, has Robert Wyatt playing dissonant keyboards, and the best rationalisation for a break-up ever - the Girl left "because she understood the value of defiance". Like the music M.I.A. now makes, these songs are funny, political, funky and beautiful. And to think that they all could have been left on authentic, decaying vinyl EPs, never seeing the light as a joyous, inauthentic CD album.

Every Little Helps

A lot of political hatred is directed towards Tesco, for often wrong reasons - for all the social cohesion supposedly fostered by 'local shops', food is cheaper in Tesco than in a corner shop, and shopping in Tesco takes considerably less time than seeking out the most ethical carrots in a 20 mile radius. But, surely something must be done about their adverts.

In case you live in a cave and/or have no television, most of them go like this: blank screen, food item appears, a national treasure's voice is heard. Firstly, this isn't enough - they are the most successful retailers in Britain, and, had you or I their cash, we'd go hog wild and film Will Young being thrown into a barrel of ferrets while a 100-strong vegetable orchestra played 'Light My Fire'. Secondly, and most importantly, there is something blankly terrifying about the tone of their adverts. The texts and delivery are exceptionally patronising, explaining to you, in the laboured tones of the 'Good Cop', the reasons why you should shop in Tesco. This, combined with the half-arsed nature of the ads, leaves us with the impression that their message, though it reads 'Every Little Helps', is, in fact, 'There is Nowhere Else'.

I Knew I Was Right

The Julie Burchill lookalike and New Statesman contributor Suzanne Moore, has resigned, and come out with views similar to mine, decrying the decline of its content, which has hit a new low, getting the detestable Alastair Campbell to guest edit. Presumably, this is a marketing ploy on their part, but it's still ridiculous - not only is he hateful and wrong, he's also dull.

Album of the Week: 'Fear of Music'

Talking Heads were unique among their punk contempories in their childishness and playfulness. This fizzled out by the time of their most acclaimed album, 'Remain In Light', and lead to some of their output being unlistenable cock ('More Songs About Buildings and Food' being useless). Luckily, they had a last fun hurrah with 'Fear of Music', which also contains their most enjoyable music.

'Fear of Music' is 'a Brian Eno Production', and those who wonder where his unblemishable reputation comes from, this and David Bowie's 'Low', from the same period - staggeringly different, both wonderful - are the place to start. The man can churn out as many Coldplay and U2 albums as he inexplicably wants to, with these in the bank. Unfortunately, all the links available are live performances, but see 'Drugs', the closing track, which is like no guitar music before or since.

Aside from 'Drugs' and 'Heaven', the songs on 'Fear of Music' are funk, or at least funky - a path they followed with ever diminishing returns - but here, it sparkles with energy and invention. Eno adds another dimension, spinning synthesisers and wrapping tape around their spindly, excitable funk, highlighting the quirk of the subject matter and the oddity of David Byrne's breathless vocal.

The songs, named with idiot simplicity ('Drugs, 'Animals', 'Cities'), have lyrics that take off at right-angles from their blank titles. It's easy to imagine, say, a Motley Crew (why should I spell their name wrong, like they choose to do?) song named 'Animals', boasting of their rock and roll lifestyles, with a video featuring motorbikes somehow. Talking Heads, however, give a first person monologue from someone who anthropomorphises, then detests animals, claims that "they're making a fool of us" and that "they're setting a bad example" by "[shitting] on the ground". You could imagine into existance a song by Manic Street Preachers named 'Cities', grandiose and bestringed, with James Dean Bradfield wailing about the alienation and beauty of large conurbations. In the hands of David Byrne, 'Cities' becomes a young adult fantasy about moving to different cities, noting of Birmingham, Alabama, that it has a "dry ice factory - good place to get some thinking done!". Childish enthusiasm is the main emotion you're left with, something which, when feigned by adults, is usually grating. Here, it's just glorious, and seemingly sincere.

"Up some jungle, up some tree": Kala, Fame and Poverty, or how I learned to stop laughing and love M.I.A. part 2.

M.I.A. has described the difference between Arular, her first album, and Kala, her second, as the difference between masculine and feminine - the first being made to honour her father, the second, her mother. In fact, the difference between the two is the difference between bad music and good music. While Arular is intriguing - lyrically dense, sporadically melodic, politically bracing - Kala is an unironic joy, over-stuffed with melody, sharply shifting rhythms and laugh-out loud lyrics. The album shimmers with the unheard opinions and wasted potential of the several billion people who live in dire poverty (a guess-timate based on the billion that live in slums - call me old fashioned, but if where you live is called a slum, you're pretty poor in my book). It hits like we can imagine a gap-year does.

Which makes the choice of 'Paper Planes' as the calling-card single for this album absolutely inexplicable. The song is still wonderful, and it being a hit is perhaps the greatest thing to occur in the hundred-odd years of electronically recorded music. But nevertheless, it's atypical of the album - stable, even sedate. It is, maybe, a fitting end to the album, energetic and colourful - it serves as Monday morning to the album's weekend. Its best lyric is "Sometimes I sing sitting on trains/Every stop I get people clocking my game". Paired with the New York backdrop of the video, this conjours the image of the people that stand out, to terrifying effect, on mass transit systems - the insane, the factor of risk that must be present when millions of people co-exist and commute.

Hearing the first track (the dreadfully titled 'Bamboo Banger'), you notice significant continuity with Arular. We're back in Galang territory, the sparse arrangement, the monotone delivery, the air of threat. But the break comes at 1.57 (in the linked video), when we hear a shrill sample - from then on, the album is awash with voices, through the tropical traffic jam of 'Boyz' to the wonderful novelty of 'Mango Pickle Down River'. M.I.A.'s vocal delivery is hugely improved, with the lyrics thankfully comprehensible, and she even sings, to great effect, on 'Jimmy'.

With Kala, M.I.A. filled the nonsense position to which she was appointed by critics at the time of her first album - 'The Voice of the Developing World'. The simple listing of place names is deployed to this effect, with the album opener giving a 'shout-out' to Angola, Burma, Ghana, India, Somalia and Sri Lanka. That's one song. As tiresome as this sounds, she's clever enough to subvert this later. Jimmy - the only love song she's ever recorded - begins "When you go/Rwanda, Congo/Take me on your genocide tour/Take me on a truck to Darfur". Here, she resembles a Tamil Peter Kay - cataloguing facts for comic effect. In effect, she's going "Remember genocide, yeah? Remember genocide, when you were a kid?".

On the stunning 'Hussel', she again front-loads her best joke: "We do it cheap/Save our money in a heap/Send it home and make them study/Fixing teeth". It's worth stepping back and marvelling at this - over Hoover synths, with clattering percussion, someone is rapping about remittances. Not just here, but particularly here, a whole sequence of transactions, a whole way of living, an immigrant experience, that falls under the radar for most, is being recorded, and being funky.

M.I.A.'s career is currently at a high-point, with serendipity intervening to construct another great work of art in the same mould as her work - the justly acclaimed Slumdog Millionaire - that raised her profile even further through her soundtrack work. Kala is an album of such absurd density and vibrancy, that it's hard to imagine an improvement upon it, but if it is improved upon, it will probably destroy stereos on contact.

Stylish German Boffins Having Fun

This is very very charming. It's often forgotten how funny (in an airless, alien way) Kraftwerk can be. Also, an education in how entertaining live electronic music can be when it's not just one man behind turntables, or four men behind laptops.

Album of the Week: 'Vintage Slide Collections from Seattle, Vol. 1'

There are a few reasons to hate the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. They're 'quirky' (see above), and put one in mind of those students (female) who neglect to throw away the childish things, and prance about with Tigger pencil cases, making people watch Disney films. They're a family band, and there are few good examples of this almost-defunct genre. And, most annoying of all, the music is deliberately shoddy - the daughter, who plays drums, can barely sing. But, when you get past this, you're left with some of the best comedy music of the decade.

The album contains 5 'pop' songs, and a concept album based around slides from a McDonald's conference in 1977. This sounds like a hard-sell, but the songs are all pearls. The music is reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen and ABBA, but, as they write songs based on found slides, the lyrics necessarily veer between subjects in a jarring way. The opener, 'Mountain Trip to Japan, 1959', draws a line between the behaviour of tourists and capital punishment in post-WWII Japan. 'Eggs' looks at the American 1970s in the round, taking in the Brady Bunch and the brutal end of the Vietnam War. 'Fondue Friends in Switzerland' and 'European Boys' deal with the strained relationship between Europe and America, the latter ending with the staggering couplet "European wars, are American wars/Going to France, do you gotta wear those trousers?". Each of the songs mentions the problems of the late-20th/early-21st century's 'hyperpower' in a way that becomes in itself comic - you listen, waiting for them to return to the subject, and without fail, they do. By the time Jason Trachtenburg notes "Agent Orange, Blue, and Red" in 'Eggs', the point is well and truly made.

'The McDonald's Suite' provides a grimly comic experience - hearing the woes of one of the world's most ubiquitous corporations and their plan to dominate the market for crap food, you feel uncomfortably close to the inner workings of what was to become grand power. Most of the songs in the 'Suite' are funny because of the juxtaposition of grandiose pop with garbled CEO speak (one of the lyrics in 'What Will The Corporation Do?' is "We need more advertising to tell our story and keep hamburgers before our customers"). But the song 'Together As a System, We are Unbeatable', while a toe-tapping, good-time tune, is genuinely unnerving. It gives us, through a filter, the multi-national's private self-image, something that McDonald's keep well hidden, prefering nowdays to talk about the 'bits of real chicken breast' in their nuggets, which begs the question of what the fuck was in their nuggets before.

Oddly for this post-vinyl age, the album itself is worth owning, as it contains some of the slideshows used in their live performances, which helps make sense of the music (YouTube is a decent substitute for some). Some of the jokes are lost without these - the sadly unlinkable 'Fondue Friends in Switzerland' contains frequent references to pictures of a parade, which, without having seen the pictures, falls flat. All that, and only a penny on Amazon.