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May 11 2012
New band of the day – No 1,268: The Magic
This Canadian duo's debut album is so sleek you can see your reflection in the shiny surfaces
Hometown: Guelph, Ontario.
The lineup: Geordie Gordon (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Evan Gordon (bass, backing vocals, production).
The background: The Magic are a Canadian duo who have much in common with those 90s/00s French pop groups whose impeccably played/programmed airy disco and funk-lite evinced a love of the super-polished sound of 70s/80s US FM radio. Like Phoenix and Tahiti 80 before them, they're in hock to Lindsey Buckingham, Steely Dan and Hall & Oates, to Quincy Jones's productions for Michael Jackson, to early Prince/Madonna and late Talking Heads. They dream of sheen.
There have been a few really good attempts at this kind of "smooth-fi" yacht rock-cum-MOR disco recently, courtesy of the UK's Hot Chip and Metronomy, and Vancouver's Destroyer, music that, seemingly without irony, celebrates studio immaculacy, where you can picture the players rolling their jacket sleeves up, their faces a rictus of delight as they slap their bass or ever so gently torture their fretboard. The Magic's debut album may be called Ragged Gold but there's nothing rough or ramshackle about it: every note is in place, and you can see your reflection in the shiny surfaces. The boys' dad may be folk singer James Gordon, who wrote Mining for Gold as covered by Cowboy Junkies, but this is far – far – removed from that sort of wasted country.
You can imagine reading the album credits and seeing names such as Jeff Porcaro and Steve Gadd on there. Well, maybe not Porcaro, he's been dead for 20 years, but you know what we mean. We fantasised that Geordie and Evan Gordon were Becker and Fagen types, handing out parts to eager session musicians and overseeing proceedings with a tyrannical attention to detail. Apparently, though, it was all the work of the brothers, with the odd cameo on vocals by Sylvie Smith from the band Evening Hymns. So either they were very busy handling the instrumental chores themselves, or they know how to acquire – trigger, sample – those sounds electronically.
Whatever, Ragged Gold works terrifically on headphones. Sometimes the songwriting isn't quite as impressive as the production and the "playing", but there's no denying the thrill of hearing a great rhythm section lock together and hit a groove as sublimely as they do on the track Magic Love, even if that rhythm section comprises a drum machine and a sampled bassline. And when the brothers come up with a killer tune, as they do on the prettily propulsive Door to Door, they make it seem less like a latterday "guilty pleasure" and more like an essential contemporary purchase.
The buzz: "Equal parts Metronomy and Prince with a hint of Everything Everything's maverick approach to pop" – gigwise.com.
The truth: Their vow – "In slickness as in health" – couldn't be more evident.
Most likely to: Make muso proficiency appealing to the young.
Least likely to: Do a guitar-heavy remix of the album and call it Ragged Glory.
What to buy: Ragged Gold is released on 25 June by Half Machine, preceded two weeks by the single Mr Hollywood.
File next to: Phoenix, Destroyer, Boy Crisis, Pop Etc.
Links: halfmachinerecords.blogspot.co.uk.
Readers' panel: Richard Hawley – Standing at the Sky's Edge
Four readers on the Sheffield singer's latest album
Earlier this week we asked readers to submit their own reviews of Richard Hawley's latest album Standing at the Sky's Edge, which you can listen to in full here.
If you'd like to let us know your thoughts on the album you can comment below or leave your own review on the album page.
jaibles – "Fitting departure for Steel City hero"
Essentially being a Hawley virgin, this is a tough review. Brief fumbles behind the bike sheds have, in all honesty, left a minimal impression and everybody's honour is successfully intact thus far into the relationship, so it was pleasantly surprising to find the opening track on new album Standing At The Sky's Edge to be a Grade A foray into psychedelic drone. Either this means Mr.Hawley's been at the funny cigarettes or he's finally had his fill of writing safe Radio 2 jams and decided to reignite his passion for music. The wailing solo on the opener is a perfect splice of spaced out Zeppelin and Hawley's trademark Northern grit and the smart money says you'll not find a better psychedelic record about Sheffield this year.
There's still a hardness to Hawley that's helped by the rusty-edged distortion present on most of the tracks, oddly suitable for the man from the Steel City and a perfect match for his gravelly, dulcet vocal that seems to thrive on this darker sound, with the garage stomp of Down In The Woods particularly carrying echoes of Hawkwind and a subtle ghost of Lemmy's distinctive growl. By the time the middle of the album rolls around, the downbeat Flaming Lips–meets–Herman's Hermits charm of Seek It is a welcome respite from the swirling, intense first half, and title track Don't Stare At The Sun is probably the closest return to form on the record, washing pleasantly past in a kind of glass–of–sauvignon–blanc–and–a–canapé way.
For the most part listening to this album is like sticking your head into an electrical storm inside a tumble dryer as walls of distortion and phase pedals whizz around you and batter you senseless. Not that this is a bad thing. The freedom and musical expression in some of the longer freak-outs are nothing short of joyful, perhaps showing why Hawley has decided to let go of his usual structured approached and embrace a sound that allows him to fully express himself musically.
Standing At The Sky's Edge is an eerie, satisfying departure from Hawley's usual fare that shows a further depth and talent to back up his already glittering list of credits and awards, but definitely runs the risk of alienating some existing fans. The melancholy and weary resignation that has run through his music in the past finds a perfect partner here in an ecstatic free–spiritedness and natural energy that can't fail to excite any true music lover, creating a truly unique sounding album.
FiniteMonkey of 6 Days From Tomorrow - "From Sheffield to the Stars, or something"
From the very beginning, this is pretty big stuff. A droney intro giving way to folk strings recalling Led Zeppelin at Jimmy Page's most mystical, opens out into a huge, unhurried and stately riff with spacey vocals that just continues to build throughout. The second, title, track remains the standout for me: a slow-burning tale of life at the bottom told with the slow grace and incessant rhythm of the Soulsavers (in particular their amazing reworking of Mark Lanegan's Sunrise) giving gravity to the sad stories contained within.
There's much said elsewhere about this record - that it's in turn his 'cosmic' or 'angry' record, variously conceived and constructed whilst grieving for a lost friend and/or when out walking his dog. That Standing At The Sky's Edge manages to evoke all of this while managing to keep his feet planted firmly and gracefully on the floor is an achievement in itself, that he manages to combine all of the above into one song (Down In The Woods, five minutes of the fast bit in Zep's Heartbreaker seemingly extolling the virtues of getting out of the house for a bit of a stroll to take in the sights) is nothing short of terrific entertainment.
As with anything especially colourful and starry-eyed, it can go on a bit in places (only one track clocks in at under the 5–minute mark), but it never dips below being interesting so it's easy to forgive the occasional indulgence. And when he drops the Steel City Psych for a moment in the middle of the album for the layered and romantic Seek It and the soulful, wistful (and genuinely moving) Don't Stare At The Sun, we're treated to something with real heart. Any lingering sadness from this mid–set melancholy is cast aside with the cathartic Leave Your Body Behind You, big chords and a big chorus raising spirits before the record closes with the – mostly – gentle epilogue of Before.
It's all a bit strange, really. It's big and expansive while at the same time caring and personal. It's also great fun to listen to which, after all the goings-on about "ooh, he's got a new pedal!", is all that really matters.
musicjen – "Compelling and sinister"
There was something unsettling nagging at the back of my mind as I was listening to the album – other than the intended feeling created intentionally by Hawley – an undeniable sense that something is missing. Or that I've missed something.
The first four visceral tracks scream redemption, suffering, regret and barely controlled anger, built upon with raucous guitars that clash together like thunder over a church steeple. Then, without warning, Seek It, which, to my ears invoked sounds of a slightly slowed down 50's pop song mashed-up with The Beach Boys. For reasons I've yet to unravel, it's also my favourite song on the album.
Death, despair, anguish: the musical equivalent of John Keats. Nothing wrong with that direction, especially when it's done with such ease; but when it comes after the utterance of hope in the lyrics of Don't Stare At The Sun, it's jarring and causes the sense of unease planted earlier in the album to deepen.
I do genuinely like this album; each individual track is expertly constructed and when listened on their own or in groups of certain tracks it's amazing. Listen to it as a whole, as Hawley intended it, and it's like eating lemon sorbet, sounds great, tastes (hears) great but leaves a slightly and possibly bitter aftertaste that may not suit all ears.
aaronstevepayne – "Comes close to drowning under the weight of its own sound"
Standing At the Sky's Edge is new sonic territory as far as Richard Hawley's solo career goes, but it's certainly ground tried and tested by others – most obviously the Verve and other Britpop giants. The album therefore escapes sounding tired and unoriginal only narrowly. A past master when it comes to mastering the past, Hawley cleverly juxtaposes his crooner's voice against the powerful, distortion-soaked backing, and it's this combination that sounds new.
Few other singers could carry the faux–Indian dirge of She Brings the Sunlight, for instance, above cliche, but Hawley does, just. The cracking guitar solo certainly helps, adding a little spice at the end. It's hard to think there isn't a slight smirk going on behind the song's gritty mysticism. There's not a lot of ground covered in this song, or indeed the first half of the album, that wasn't covered on Urban Hymns, but Hawley has age and gravitas on his side, and makes Richard Ashcroft's treatment of a similar landscape sound decidedly youthful.
There's a careful balance to Standing At the Sky's Edge. Noise and weight give way eventually to tenderness: Seek It is truly beautiful, and wittily romantic ('I had my fortune told and it said/ I would meet somebody with green eyes/ Yours are blue'). The smoke, threat and echo of the album's first half are then painstakingly built back in during the next two songs, and Hawley sounds well ready for another go at hammer-and-tongs rhythm and groove by the time Leave Your Body Behind You turns up, and gives him the chance. He delivers spectacularly, and it is this one and Seek It that are the album's greatest successes.
This album is not quite a masterpiece: Hawley's less convincing on the noisy ones than he is whispering love at the microphone, but that's hardly surprising, for a man whose back catalogue is built of the loveliest kind of heartache. It's a welcome change of direction, and a solid, connoisseur's take on Britpop's heavier moments, allied to classic, dramatic songwriting. Hawley brands everything he touches with a dry, tobacco-scented class, and Standing at the Sky's Edge is, in that sense, business as usual, but a bit louder.
• You can review pretty much any album ever released on the Guardian website. See here for details on how to do it.
Michael Eavis and Rob da Bank join us at 1pm
We asked you to send in your questions for Michael Eavis and Rob da Bank, the organisers of Glastonbury and Bestival. They'll be responding live online from 1pm
Stand by for Michael and Rob's answers to your questions in the comments thread below …
We'll also post your questions and their answers in this article to make the Q&A easy to follow. But first, a tweet from Rob:
The godfather of uk music festivals and some fool in a rave top lockerz.com/s/208107012
— Rob da Bank (@RobdaBank) May 11, 2012
claraclara asks
Do you still get any enjoyment from organising the events ?
Michael replies
Of course. Otherwise I'd be in a deck chair in Weymouth by now. I'd get a lot of fun from it. People are always asking why I'm so happy. It's not because we're taking a year off, it's because we're planning the next one!
ToucanMacaw asks
How do you feel about the role of major advertising sponsors in the running of events? Are they a necessary evil? Do they compromise the 'spirit' of the festival?
Michael replies
We're trying hard to reduce it. We need the beer and the phones but a general rule, we try and avoid most form of commercial advertising.
NitrousMcBread asks
Hi Michael. My question: why not drop a great swathe of the big names and have a festival for these double-dip times with lesser-known acts? You'd bring down the ticket prices which are, please admit it, utterly unaffordable for the kind of people who used to make Glastonbury special Plus you'd tone down the Hooray Henry contingent who don't really 'get it'. You'd still sell out easily. Lead the way!
Michael replies
Very good question! Actually the headliners don't cost as much as people think. We're having a fallow year … and it's very important. For the environment, for us. It's nothing to do with the headliners or anything like that.
Hooray Henrys do come. Well … city-type people who do the posh camping, in a field let my by neighbours. But it's private enterprise, working next to us. So it's nothing to do with us directly. We're fine with the common people!
New music: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy – I See a Darkness
Will Oldham's been revisiting his back catalogue, turning a depressofest into a bit of a hoedown
The sun is sort of shining, the economy is going great guns and everyone's happy, so what better way to usher in the weekend than with a reworked version of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's ode to depression, I See a Darkness? Of course, this isn't the first time Will Oldham has covered his own songs. In 2004 he released Bonnie "Prince" Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music, turning some of his back catalogue into country-tinged singalongs. For his latest attempt at reworking his own songs he's employed producer Steve Albini and a motley crew of musicians (Ben Boye, Van Campbell, Emmett Kelly, Danny Kiely and Angel Olson) to create an EP, Now Here's My Plan, which is being released to coincide with his book, Will Oldham on Bonnie "Prince" Billy. While the original I See a Darkness creeps out slowly like fog, this new version skips along jauntily by comparison, almost like a hoedown. It also means that some of the lyrics take on a new resonance: "You know I have a love for everyone I know" and "you've seen I have this drive to live I won't let go" now sound celebratory. Some of that Will Oldham humour (last shown to spectacular effect on his unofficial video for Kanye West's Can't Tell Me Nothing) is also on display in the video, which shows him skipping and dancing along the streets of Glasgow or creeping around a graveyard. Also, keep an eye out (pun intended) for some unsettling visual effects later in the video.
• Now Here's My Plan is available with the book Will Oldham on
Bonnie "Prince" Billy from 4 June, or as a separate EP on 24 July via Domino.
Jimi Hendrix estate puts legal crosstown traffic in path of biopic
Unless estate is granted 'full participation', the film-makers cannot use original Hendrix recordings
The makers of a planned Jimi Hendrix biopic, to star André 3000 as the revolutionary guitarist, have hit an obstacle in the form of the Hendrix estate.
Experience Hendrix LLC said it would not let the makers of All Is By My Side, directed by John Ridley, use any original Hendrix recordings unless the estate is granted "full participation".
The estate said: "Experience Hendrix, LLC, the family-owned company entrusted with safeguarding the legacy of Jimi Hendrix and administrator of the Jimi Hendrix music and publishing catalogue, has made it known many times in the past that no such film, were it to include original music or copyrights created by Jimi Hendrix, can be undertaken without its full participation.
"Experience Hendrix CEO Janie Hendrix, sister of Jimi Hendrix, and the EH board have not ruled out a 'biopic' in the future though producing partners would, out of necessity, have to involve the company from the inception of any such film project if it is to include original Jimi Hendrix music or compositions."
Several past biopics were called off, including a proposed film by Paul Greengrass, when the estate refused to license Hendrix's recordings. "It boggles the mind," producer Bill Gerber said at the time.
10cc – review
Royal Albert Hall, London
Even in the sprawling 1970s, 10cc were an odd fit. Too prog for glam, too pop for prog and too glam for pop, they sold themselves as an art band, but actually traded in subversive pastiche: the love song declaring they weren't in love, the airline ad jingle about a plane crash, the reggae song about being terrified of black people. It meant their legacy went little further than inspiring the parody pop of the Barron Knights, and pastiche, of course, dates 20 years faster than normal music. Hence – particularly since only bassist Graham Gouldman survives from the original lineup, and he largely takes a back seat to the cheesy redcoat vocals of singing percussionist Mick Wilson – the 10cc of 2012 actually are the corny covers band they once aped for comic effect.
Donna is no longer a wry helium mimic of a 50s croon tune, it simply is one. I'm Mandy, Fly Me isn't a prog-pop upturning of the cruise ship soul tradition any more, it's practically sponsored by Saga. Their sentiments haven't aged well, either. Funk flounce The Wall Street Shuffle doesn't bash bankers so much as prod them with a tickle-stick, far too tongue-in-cheek and playful for our bonus-blighted, double-dipping times. And Dreadlock Holiday smacks of a racially awkward era that gave us the TV shows Mind Your Language and It Ain't Half Hot Mum – and, for all its jaunty jubilance, should arguably have stayed there.
Tonight marks the 40th anniversary of 10cc's debut, however, and the guest appearance of original member Kevin Godley, to sing on rarities Old Wild Men and Sand in My Face and a brilliant a cappella barbershop rendition of Donna, adds authenticity. So do the proto-New Wave punch of Art for Art's Sake and the effortlessly affecting I'm Not in Love. As Rubber Bullets reels out its tale of jailhouse-riot rock'n'roll with Godley on drums, event status saves the day. We don't like pastiche, we kind of love it.
Rating: 3/5
Old music: Spirit – Fresh Garbage
A cut-price sampler album opened the doors of perception to those with a yearning for 'progressive' music
It cost 14s 11d (just under 75p) and changed my life. The Rock Machine Turns You On, a cut-price sampler of new tracks from the CBS label, was the must-have album in the spring of 1968 for those of us who regarded ourselves, unselfconsciously and without irony, as fans of "underground" or "progressive" music.
Alongside a few people we'd heard of – the Byrds, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel – were weird and wonderful new American artists such as Moby Grape, the Electric Flag, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy and the United States of America, and a Canadian singer-songwriter called Leonard Cohen. Believe me, these people were a lot more interesting than Herman's Hermits and Freddie & the Dreamers. Together with John Peel's new Radio 1 show (launched the previous year), the CBS samplers – Rock Machine I Love You and the lavish double albums Fill Your Head with Rock and Rockbuster followed – opened up an impossibly exciting new world typified by Spirit's exotic Fresh Garbage.
Spirit comprised a brilliant guitarist, former Hendrix sideman Randy California; his 44-year-old stepfather, Ed Cassidy, who on his day hit his drums so hard that you feared for your speakers; a fine singer, Jay Ferguson; and a keyboard player (John Locke) and bassist (Mark Andes) who at times, as in the 6/8 instrumental break in Fresh-Garbage, played as if joined at the hip. The band's core psychedelic rock sound was embellished by a wide range of influences, notably jazz. If this song sounds familiar, you may have heard it sampled on Feel Good Time by Pink.
Although commercial success failed to match critical approval, Spirit made three good albums in the 60s and one superb one, Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus, in 1970 which has rightly become regarded as a classic. Thereafter their work became patchy although the sprawling, ambitious Spirit of '76 has its moments. California drowned while surfing in Hawaii in 1997. Cassidy, who also worked as an actor – appearing in the US soap General Hospital – is still going strong at the age of 89.
As for the album sampler, soon you couldn't move in record shops for them, the success of Rock Machine (it reached No 18 in the UK charts) spawning equivalents from other labels, such as Island's excellent You Can All Join In. Later came A Bunch of Stiff Records (Stiff, 1977), Pillows & Prayers (Cherry Red, 1982), and many more. They live on today: given away free by Q, Uncut and other magazines. And I still listen to them, still in pursuit of life-changing discoveries.
Sleeve notes: Farewell to Adam Yauch
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of music
MCA RIP
Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has died aged 47
Tributes pour in from Beastie Boys fans around the web
Adam Yauch and the indestructible spirit of the Beastie Boys
A classic Beastie Boys interview from the vaults
Coldplay perform tribute to Adam Yauch
In other news
Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich forms new band, Ultraísta
Village People's policeman lays down the law on his right to royalties
Robin Gibb to undergo further chemotherapy
Against Me!'s Tom Gabel is transgender and plans to live as a woman
OutKast's André 3000 to play Jimi Hendrix in new biopic
John Lydon: Olympics wanted to censor the Sex Pistols
On the blog
Sexuality and gender have always been blurred in rock'n'roll
Who to see at the Great Escape 2012
Who gave the best performance on Later … with Jools Holland?
Things to watch and listen to
Simian Mobile Disco – Unpatterns: exclusive album stream
Cate le Bon: Fold the Cloth live session in the Guardian studios
Now listening: reader playlist
Further reading
Africa Express – collaboration of African and western musicians planning a huge UK tour
Dexys: triumphant return of the soul rebels
Is pop music something you grow up and grow out of? No way, say Saint Etienne
Paul and Linda McCartney's Ram – in pictures
Follow us
Follow @guardianmusic on Twitter
Iggy Pop's label rejects his album
Singer says Virigin EMI 'would have preferred that I do an album with popular punks', rather than a collection of French classics
Iggy Pop's new album has been rejected by his record label, forcing the singer to release it himself. Virgin EMI turned down the collection of cover versions and French chanson, so Pop has put it on sale via digital retailers.
"[The label] didn't want it," Pop told a Paris press conference earlier this week. "They didn't think they would make any money, they didn't think my fans would like it … They would have preferred that I do a rock album with popular punks, sort of like 'Hi Dad!'"
Pop claims he offered the album to Virgin EMI, as he is contractually obliged to do, and the label simply passed. "What has a record company ever done for me but humiliate and torment and drag me down?" he said.
Pop's new LP, Après, is a sequel to 2009's Michel Houellebecq-inspired Préliminaires, which also included jazz, soft rock and renditions of French classics. Alongside tracks by Serge Gainsbourg, George Brassens and Édith Piaf, Pop croons versions of the Beatles' Michelle and Harry Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin'.
Instead of releasing Après in shops, the record is only available through services such as iTunes. It had its debut on the French website Vente Privée, where it sold for just €7. "I've always had a very rough time in the big-time music business," Pop said. "I got kicked off every label."
Despite Pop's comments about spurning "popular" kids, he recently recorded a song with Ke$ha. "Its a fk!ng dream come true," she tweeted on Tuesday. "Iggy + I got a song for yall on my next record … get ready."
The Queen: portraits without meaning
How can portraits of the Queen be anything other than banal when no artist knows her well? Or is the problem that she is simply a rather dull, upper-class Englishwoman?
The 15ft-high gold-effect statue of Freddie Mercury, Queen's late lamented lead singer, that for a long time adorned the portico of the Dominion Theatre in London's Tottenham Court Road and then went on tour with the tribute musical We Will Rock You, now forms the centrepiece of a brilliantly clever and subversive touring exhibition, The Queen: Art and Image, that marks the monarch's diamond jubilee. Soon to open at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the exhibition has already visited Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff – and at all these locations thousands of visitors have thrilled to the vast assemblage of Queen memorabilia, and the startling range of artistic creativity that the group has inspired during its 42-year reign over the realm of rock.
There are literally thousands of images of Brian May, Roger Taylor and of course Mercury in the exhibition – enamelled badges, stuffed toys, samplers and even Japanese quilts with their faces lovingly embroidered on every panel. But alongside the mass-produced kitsch there are also more thoughtful and aesthetically challenging representations of the group's members. Jeff Koons's Dobbo (1995), which shows a life-size Brian May cradling a tiny hyper-pneumatic naked Anita Dobson doll, says dark and penetrating things about the relationship between celebrities and their private lives, while the Chapman Brothers' Zygotic Queen No 47, which also uses plastic dolls – in this case manikins of the largely forgotten bassist John Deacon – liberally equipped with erect guitar-shaped phalluses, invites us to explore our unthinking acceptance of the 4/4 rhythm's arousing capabilities.
It would've been so easy for Sandy Nairne, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, and his fellow arts supremos throughout the UK to have put on another sort of exhibition – one, for example, sponsored by KPMG, the multinational accountancy firm that currently offers its services free to Her Majesty's government as a loss-leader for more of taxpayers' money in the future (sorry, I mean as an aspect of its corporate social responsibility programme). This alternative The Queen: Art and Image exhibition would come complete with a handsome catalogue including a well-judged but quietly reverent contextualising essay by Professor Sir David Cannadine, in which he straightforwardly explains that, while the Queen has presided over a period of historic change, including the scaling down of Britain's imperial hauteur, she remains a jolly good Queen – and obviously the best one on offer.
Oops – sorry! I got it wrong – a bit like Father Dougal, I should really have a Father Ted always to hand in order to point out the distinction between my dreams and the achingly commonplace reality – because The Queen: Art and Image is indeed an accountancy firm-bankrolled show consisting of loads of images of Elizabeth Windsor. And that ringing – and utterly fallacious – claim that they display "a startling range of artistic creativity" belongs to the NPG press release, which has nothing to do with Freddie Mercury at all. As to the images themselves, well, they're all there – the usual, if you like, suspects. Annigoni's 1954 golden girl plunked down in a cod-Umbria with just a few wistful bits of sfumato hanging off the lower reaches of her cloak; Cecil Beaton's 1955 "Principal Boy" Queen, in her knight of the garter gear, posed in front of a Windsor Castle backdrop that looks as if it has been painted using a Rich Tea biscuit dunked in tea.
Then there's Tony Armstrong-Jones's "intimate" portrait of the 1960s Windsors seeming – if you'll forgive the extended metaphor – like just another cookie-cutter middle-class English family: Liz and Phil up on the humpbacked stone bridge, Anne and Chuckie down below implausibly looking at a picture book. There are still other shots of Queenie (as I often think of her) toting the royal weans, and there are media images of her addressing crowds, shaking hands with footie players and visiting the site where a giant slagheap had, a week or so before, smudged out the lives of Welsh schoolchildren. The curators of this exhibition – and their hired art-critical yea-sayer, Paul Moorhouse – want you to believe that these images from six decades of the Queen's reign perform the astonishing feat of reconciling the hieratic with the hip; that the Queen and her image-makers have been engaged in a subtle equivocation between the regal demands of distance and the democratic ones of intimacy, and that these superb pictures enshrine that success.
The truth is that the pictures are almost insufferably dull. If you're a monarchist you'd be better off staying at home, painting a Union flag on your living room wall and watching it dry than venturing out to see this tat. And the principal reason why the images are so banal and uninteresting is because, gasp, nobody – least of all the artists and photographers who confected them – knows the sitter at all well. At least, on one analysis that would seem to be the case: the Queen is an enigma wrapped tightly inside an ermine-trimmed robe. Despite all the documentary footage of her urging her gee-gees on, or talking to her ladies-in-waiting (or indeed interviews with those ladies-in-waiting speaking "candidly" to camera), despite all the anni horribili she's had with her errant sons and their dodgy doxies, despite the poring over the minutiae of her life by posses of royal watchers, and despite – the clincher this – being actually played by Helen Mirren, she remains sublimely inscrutable.
An alternative view is rather more chilling: these snappers and daubers have difficulty with depicting the Queen's personality, because – gulp! – she's a perfectly ordinary, rather uncultured, rather sporty, elderly upper-class Englishwoman, who just happens to be a monarch. In two words: she's boring. She may not have been boring to begin with, but Richard Ford makes a very fine point about professional sportspeople in his novel The Sportswriter that seems to me to be equally applicable to the Queen – and all who sail in her. She – like sportspeople – is compelled throughout her official life to perform the same, essentially dull and repetitive tasks over and over again. A shaking of others' hands, and a waving of her own, and a receiving of bouquets unto them for decade upon decade that would render the most sparky of souls terminally sedated. In this respect the institution of the monarchy is emphatically a penal one – and the Queen should be pitied for being the sole inmate of the people's panopticon, compelled to turn the treadmill under the eyes of her millions of jailers.
But no matter how much we may pity the Queen, it doesn't make her any more interesting as an artistic subject. The correct title for this exhibition would have been The Queen: Image, because it's all about image – the Queen's shtick – image and nothing else. And images that are intended to convey very basic emotional messages: fortitude, resolution, serenity, motherliness and so on. When, by contrast, a photographer captures an extempore image of the Queen looking tired, or stressed out, or older, it is straightforwardly because she is these things; however, it remains of no more intrinsic interest than any other person being in those states of mind – the Queen, having no talents of her own to speak of, is the reality TV star sans pareil.
You've only to see what happens to genuine artists when they get their mitts on the Queen to grasp what a bromide her image is to the creative imagination. The two Gerhard Richter lithographs from the late 1960s, when the Queen made the first postwar British monarchical visit to Germany, are perfectly all right so far as they go, but actually lack the affecting pathos of many of his other hand reworkings of photographic images – let alone the sinister brilliance of his Onkel Rudi, a smiling Nazi SS man similarly treated. As for Lucian Freud's much vaunted portrait of 2001, the catalogue suggests that the Queen sat for him for the requisite soul-eviscerating hours endured by Leigh Bowery, Sue from the benefits office et al, but so far as I'm aware the sittings were necessarily circumscribed (probably lest the Grand Old Goat take a crack at her), and the results are plain: in lieu of the exquisite melding of psyche and paint you see in the best of Freud's portraits, his Queen is all sub-Graham-Sutherland brushwork, a sketch of how he might portray the Queen, were he by any chance to do so. As for Gilbert & George, well, almost the sole virtue of their large tessellations is that the panels include taboo-busting images: forced to make up one of their visual acrostics out of Queeninanities, the entire exercise acquires a vapidity that for me retroacts into their other works. I suppose the curators imagine they have been dangerously subversive by including the 1997 "not the silver jubilee" image of Her Maj that adorned the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen". But in fact there's nothing that revolutionary about this detournement; it was certainly never banned, as was Johnny Rotten snarling the truth: "God save the Queen, she ain't no human being!"
Elsewhere in the exhibition there's a camp Annie Leibovitz Twilight-style Queen, and a Justin Mortimer portrait in oils that appears to separate the Queen's head from her body, but really does nothing of the sort. Oh, and there are some Andy Warhol silk screens that are no more involving than any other set of Andy Warhol silk-screens you've yawned your way through. Is it, I wonder, simply because I'm a republican that I find this exhibition – let alone the whole jubilee jamboree – a rallying cry to inanition? I don't think so: I could look at copies of Holbein's Henry VIII or Velázquez's Philip IV for hours – and have. Cannadine, to be fair to him, does make the point that it may well have been easier for the Queen to hoof it so successfully for this long precisely because a post-imperial nation almost demands a sort of feminised concept of the monarchical – someone who ethereally reigns, rather than earthily ruling – but his analysis is still all at the level of image, and the real Queen still cannot stand up.
No, if you want to see more meaningful images of the Queen you've merely to wander the streets of London outside the National Portrait Gallery and chance on one of those stalls hawking souvenirs to tourists. Many of them flog cardboard masks blazoned with the faces of the royal family – including a particularly fetching Kate Middleton – that the buyer can snap on to her face with a strand of elastic. Peeking through the eyeholes cut in the card you'll get a real sense of what it's like to be our monarch: condemned always to wear a mask with a photograph of your own face on it. If, on the other hand, you want to see fun and entertaining images of Queen, try We Will Rock You – I believe that, just like the monarchy, it's awfully popular with American tourists.
Five highlights of day one
The Brighton festival kicks off with sunshine synth-pop from St Lucia and bone-rattling bass from Niki & the Dove
St Lucia (Fitzherberts)
"We just got in from New York," says St Lucia's Jean Philip-Grobler. "I didn't know they were from Yorkshire!" shouts a hard-of-hearing member of the crowd. Actually, St Lucia are as far from Yorkshire as they are from the grey drizzle of Brighton. Mixing exotic pop, synthy electro and the sort of music Everything Everything would have made had they been more switched on to actual tunes, this is a blast of jittery, summery fun. They perform in front of a tropical fishtank. The water wobbles with the basslines. I think the fish like it.
Jake Bugg (Komedia)
The biggest crowd of the festival I've seen so far congregates for Jake Bugg, whose Radio 1-conquering song Trouble Town suggested a Jamie T-style troubadour with a hint of the Las and the Coral. Tonight's set bears the influence of all three, but the spectre of Ed Sheeran's acoustic trustafarian blues tempers the tone and it's a strangely static and muted affair.
Deaf Club (Green Door Store)
The Great Escape is all about new bands, but few induce goosebumps in the way that Deaf Club do. There's a confidence to their dreamscape rock that belies the fact that they've only been together for a year. By the end of their set, the room is full of approving nodding heads. Among the glut of fresh acts, they're special.
Savages (Corn Exchange)
It's not often that a drummer steals the show, but with Savages that's very nearly the case. Stepping in at the last minute to replace New Build, this late addition to the bill approach their performance with a sort of grave commitment that makes them look as if they wish to fight the audience. They don't, thankfully, preferring to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to dogged, driven post-punk; it's certainly arresting, though the cavernous Corn Exchange doesn't do them any favours, if only because it isn't packed enough. Look out for them in a smaller venue. They'll be outstanding.
Niki & the Dove (Horatio's)
Sweden's Niki & the Dove celebrate the imminent release of their debut album with this evening-closing show at Horatio's, a venue that looks like a cross between an amusement arcade and a Wetherspoon's. End-of-the-pier entertainment was never quite like this: playing a set of just five tunes, with bone-rattling bass out in full force, they interpreted their biggest songs to date – DJ, Ease My Mind; The Fox; Mother Protect – afresh. This was easily the highlight of the opening day.
May 10 2012
Vusi Mahlasela: Say Africa – review
(Wrasse)
Vusi Mahlasela is a singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist with one of the most distinctive, soulful voices in South Africa, and an easygoing, melodic style that ought to ensure his global success. But it has never quite happened – despite his celebrity back home – so hopefully this album, produced by veteran bluesman Taj Mahal, will bring him a new audience. It was recorded in Virginia, but is dominated by a classy, acoustic treatment of township-influenced styles, with Mahlasela's voice and guitar matched by a male chorus, accordion and violin on cheerfully rousing songs such as Woza or Vezubuhle. Elsewhere, he switches to a melodic pop ballad (with lyrics about "UN loans and passport controls") on the title track, is helped by Taj Mahal's slide guitar on Conjecture of the Hour, and by Taj's banjo-playing and singing on In Anyway, which sounds like American folk-blues with an African edge. Best of all is Ntate Mandela, a praise song recorded with the community choir from the township where Mahlasela still lives. A charming, sophisticated set.
Rating: 4/5
Niki & the Dove: Instinct – review
(Mercury)
Though hip-hop has been on to her for years, it is perhaps one of the more surprising twists of recent electro-pop that Enya's ethereal synths have become the sound to aspire to. The debut album from Swedish duo Niki & the Dove follows Grimes in piling on the atmospheric layers, though its references to cats, witches and magic are less evocative of Grimes' eight-day speed bender than they are of a trip to Stonehenge at summer solstice. For all of its wafty strangeness, Instinct is mostly grounded in a straightforward pop sensibility, borrowing postures from Fleetwood Mac (In Our Eyes), Prince (Somebody) and Hazell Dean (Winterheart). But it's when they embrace a genuinely eccentric sound that they hit on something truly special. The Fox is mesmerising as it jerks and lolls around a sinister riff, while Mother Protect builds ominously to dancefloor-worthy breakdown, before soaring off into its chorus: "You can't keep me down, I am done, I am furious." More fury and less moderation and this would have been outstanding; as it is, it's just very good.
Rating: 3/5
Mariem Hassan: El Aaiun Egdat – review
(Nubenegra)
Next month, one of the great singers of north Africa returns to the UK for the Roundhouse's Sahara Nights concert, supporting the development of a music industry in the Saharawi refugee camps in the Algerian desert. Now based in Spain, Mariem Hassan spent much of her life in the camps, and most of her songs are concerned with the struggles of those, like her, who were forced to flee from the upheavals in their Western Sahara homeland. She has been singing for more than 30 years, and still has a remarkable voice and the ability to switch between laments and upbeat desert blues: from the pained and personal Your Desertion to the cheerful R&B of The Melfa, praising traditional women's dress (all in the Hassania language, but with translations provided). The band aren't always as impressive as Hassan herself, and she is at her best showing off her thrilling, powerful voice with minimal backing, as on the title track and Gdeim Izik, an intense and furious song of suffering and resistance.
Rating: 3/5
Debussy: Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien – review
Huppert/Radio France Choir/Gatti/Orchestre National de France
(Radio France)
Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien – a "mystery" by Gabriele d'Annunzio for which Debussy wrote the incidental music – caused ructions in its day (1911), thanks to the fact that the text drew parallels between Christianity and the classical cult of Adonis. Nowadays, we're more likely to ponder why two such publicly heterosexual men collaborated on so deeply homoerotic a work. That the title role was written to be performed in drag by d'Annunzio's then mistress, Ida Rubinstein, only adds to the piece's complex sexual implications. The "orchestral fragments" Debussy assembled after the premiere have become familiar in the concert hall. This Radio France production from 2009 gives us the complete score, together with a drastic abridgement of the play. Sébastien is played by Isabelle Huppert, sounding androgynous and admirably restrained. The closely recorded soloists are nothing special, but the choral singing is exquisite, and Daniele Gatti's conducting fuses the sensual with the spiritual so completely that they seem indistinguishable. Disquieting and very, very fine.
Rating: 4/5
John Abercrombie Quartet: Within a Song – review
(ECM)
This is an unusual ECM release – a journey back to guitarist's guitarist John Abercrombie's formative 1960s influences, in the music of Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Bill Evans. But the implications of the title, and a glance at a postbop superband lineup – saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron complete the group – are the clues to its underlying contemporary strengths. Flamenco Sketches, from the Davis/Evans collaboration on Kind of Blue, joins sparing guitar and delicious tenor-sax tentativeness from Lovano. Coleman's Blues Connotation is a snappy, postbop twister that grows rhythmically more devious, Coltrane's Wise One showcases Abercrombie and Lovano's patient narrative-building and sensuous tone, and Evans' Interplay is a cool-school weave that gets raunchier in Lovano's solo. The atmosphere is delicate (Baron, at times, seems barely to be touching his cymbals), but there's a great deal more exuberant swing than on recent Abercrombie sessions – and this all-star group constantly demonstrate how joyous that can sound without winding up the volume.
Rating: 4/5
Britten: War Requiem – review
Cvilak/Bostridge/Noseda/Keenlyside/LSO and Chorus/Choir of Eltham College
(LSO Live, 2CDs)
Released to mark the 50th anniversary of the War Requiem's premiere, this was recorded during a series of Barbican concerts last autumn. The conductor is Gianandrea Noseda, whose understanding of the relationship between ritual devotion and political anger in Britten's great pacifist statement is marvellously acute, and who also brings a strong sense of Italianate lyricism to bear on the score, reminding us of Britten's conscious debt to Verdi's Requiem. The choral singing is fervent and intense, the playing fierce and sensitive by turns. Sabina Cvilak is the thrilling, hieratic soprano, though her male counterparts aren't quite as successful. Ian Bostridge sounds less mannered on disc than he did in the hall, though you're very aware of moments of strain. The baritone solos lie awkwardly low for Simon Keenlyside, robbing him of vocal heft at points when he really needs it.
Rating: 4/5
Strauss: Friedenstag – review
Hillebrecht/Fehenberger/Metternich/Bavarian State Opera/Keilberth
(Walhall)
Joseph Keilberth (1908-1968) was one of the great Strauss conductors. He made few commercial recordings of the composer's work, however, and we owe much of our understanding of his achievements to releases of radio archive material, of which this 1960 Munich performance of Friedenstag is the latest. The work itself is no masterpiece. Premiered in 1938, it deals with the reconciliation between feuding German states at the end of the 30 years' war, and has an atypical monumental quality that some have considered suspect: opinions still differ as to whether or not it was written to pacify the Nazis, who had forced Strauss from public office two years previously. Blending drive with lyricism, Keilberth does some fine things with it, though the cast try your patience. Josef Metternich was past his best in 1960, and isn't always convincing as the fanatical Commandant. As his wife Maria, Hildegard Hillebrecht produces top notes that put your teeth on edge, and there are cuts in the score every time veteran tenor Lorenz Fehenberger (the Burgomaster) has anything remotely difficult to do. For Keilberth completists only.
Rating: 3/5
Simian Mobile Disco: Unpatterns – review
(Wichita)
Jas Shaw and James Ford have what might be called "portfolio careers". They produce, they engineer, they DJ and, as Simian Mobile Disco, they record. Their experience has earned them great technical expertise and produced a magpie-like output. Over the course of three albums SMD have shifted tack with each piece; first electro, then electropop and now minimal techno. In this last guise, the duo appear to have found a form that suits them. A lot of time has been spent on this record, and it shows: every tone has the clarity of applied refinement. This lends the album a degree of beauty, one reinforced by the delicacy of the songs' composition. It is also, however, one step removed from club music. The most danceable tracks are the simplest – Interference and Your Love Ain't Fair – but the rest is music in which to lose your thoughts, rather than your T-shirt.
Rating: 4/5
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An open letter to Tom Gabel, who is set to become Laura Jane Grace | CL Minou
When Tom Gabel, lead singer of punk band Against Me!, announced plans to live as a woman, I wrote with some advice
Hi, it's me – CL. Just another transsexual on the internet come to wish you a hearty welcome, after reading in Rolling Stone magazine that you planned to live as a woman. To transition! Like anything, it's just the beginning of the rest of your life, but that's the point, isn't it? To begin to really live your life. I'm not going to even bother talking about all the things that are happening to your body. By now you know the details, gruesome, enlightening, and even delightful; if our readers want to know them, they're a click away.
There's going to be pain, yes – physical and emotional. Joy too. Many days, you'll want to cry. Sometimes this may feel liberating, but mostly it will be a pain in the ass.
All transitions are brave alike, but public transitions are each brave in their own unique way. I won't lie, this is going to be hard – and it's even harder to do it in the spotlight of public opinion. But the opposite would have been hard too, you know. There are things I accomplished in my pre-transition life that now I find myself reticent to talk about, afraid to bring more complication into a life grown already more complicated than I ever thought possible.
People will surprise you, for good and for ill. Some you assumed would be accepting will disappoint you. And some of the people you would never think able to accept you will prove themselves greater allies than you could have ever hoped for. An uncle of mine who worked for years in the gay community is estranged from me now, while an aunt of mine who lives in the heart of the American Bible Belt showed me more love and acceptance than any of my other relatives. These things will work themselves out, but not in patterns you can easily predict. Your music is cool and your fans will be there – the ones you really want in any case.
You say your wife has been supportive, which is great. People will probably not understand your relationship. They can, as my father used to say, "go pound sand". (I never understood what that meant either, but it sure sounds negative.) You're hardly alone; I've known many couples who have survived transition, and in my own personal experience the majority of trans women I know are either attracted exclusively to women or are, like myself, bisexual. People will probably mention Jennifer Finney Boylan's books, which are excellent, but I'd personally say you should take a look at Helen Boyd's works, which are insightful and pull no punches on what it's like to be married to someone who transitions to being a woman.
It's not exactly shocking, is it? That you would want to stay with someone you're attracted to, that you love, that you've built a life with? Or that she might want to stay with you as well? Is it surprising that maybe attraction, love, and affection can be about more than just a category defined at birth, a straight-jacketed adherence to gender and sexual roles? I hope not.
A final word. People will try to read your life, to seek out the "roots" of who you are, to treat your experience as a project in literary criticism – as if everything you've suffered and undergone was a smooth trajectory to this momentous moment. They'll look at the lyrics to your song The Ocean and point them out as predictive, stereotyped, or unrealistic, or anything else they want to project:
I listened to that song today, and I don't find it to be either projection or wishful thinking. I think that you were reaching for something, for some possible future that never was; not something aspirational, but something that you could have had, might have been. You will now build a life you could never have imagined, but which will feel like coming home.
And that is worth it. Grow up strong and beautiful. And good luck.
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