Wall of China

Passion Pit

2009-05-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

Stool Pigeon February '09

Anyone who paid attention to the tastemaker lists for 2009 will know
the name Passion Pit. In a year mostly devoid of dead-cert success
predictions, one band bucked the trend on both sides of the
Atlantic, largely due to their appearances at the last CMJ festival
in New York, where their capacity for appearing everywhere at every
moment of the day, and congregating the British music industry
in one place without the promise of free alcohol, was unmatched.

Today, while still enjoying the aftershock of that week, singer and
songwriter Michael Angelakos is largely philosophical about it.
Picking up a call from the studio where they are recording their
debut, he’s more interested in making an awesome record than keeping
up with what’s new in buzz bands. However, he is aware of his own
band’s status, and the expectation that comes with it.

“I listen to a lot of groups and there’s a scepticism involved,” he
says, tired from a late night’s recording, “I totally agree with the
people who would say ‘oh it’s just another new band’, cause it takes
a long time for a band to prove themselves. I know we’re really new,
and that’s ok.”

Angelakos sounds more like a slightly disorganised professor than the
next torchbearer of the East Coast sound, and indeed, the rise of
Passion Pit has a similarly disorganised edge. The EP that caused all
the fuss was recorded on whim, as a gift to a girlfriend, and since
then the band have been in constant activity. They don’t have time to
think about most of the mantles being put on them, and the constant
comparisons to last years big indie breakthrough, MGMT, have him
laughing.

“It’s really funny,” he says, “We wear the same clothes every day,
you know, shitty sweaters, and we’re tired. We’re not aware of up and
coming things, but if people want to compare us to MGMT, then wow.”

For his part, however, he won’t be pandering to public opinion.
“We’re not the kind of band that says ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix
it’,” he says, “None of the songs on the EP will be on the record,
and we’re using a different and larger production. It’s a departure,
and we’re excited to be putting it out.” As if to illustrate the
point, he mentions that the day is set aside for horn arrangements.
It looks like those tastemakers may be able to predict success, but
they can’t predict what it will sound like.

“The whole dance mish mash thing is kind of dead,” says Angelakos.

Long live Passion Pit.

Dev on Steve Martin

2009-05-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

Extract from the Drowned in Sound Takeover

On the last day of my DiS takeover, I wanted to cover something that wasn't music. Sure music is fine in a pleasantish sort of way. Sure it fills the silences and heightens the emotions, can make a grown man cry and a girl feel like a woman or whatever, but sometimes you just got to wonder what those other sections in the iTunes store are for.

Enter Lightspeed Champion: Dev Hynes is one of those people who has given up hours of his life adding information to Wikipedia. He knows everything to know about rap feuds, and is passionately vocal about the hierarchy of comic book film adaptations. He recently dressed as the Gingerbread Man to attend an Anime conference, and he will cry real tears if you tell him you enjoyed X-men 3.

I asked him for a little wedge of his specialist knowledge, and he came back with two words: Steve Martin. Apparently he's been obsessed with him from a very young age, for the very valid reason of Steve Martin being a certified genius. You may sneer a little at recent decisions like Bringing Down the House or (sorry Dev) Cheaper by the Dozen 2, but you'd be wrong to, because Martin is one of those people who entirely re-wrote the history of comedy. His stand-up years alone will write off most of his film-choice misdemeanors, and he has not only starred in some of the greatest movies of the last three decades, too many to even list, he also wrote a whole bunch of them. There's no one else who can pull off that kind of goofy, nervous physical comedy, and his surfeit of roles in family-oriented films just goes to show how loveable he is. To paraphrase the Beatles – there's something in the way he moves.

Ask anyone what they think of Steve Martin, and chances are they will find some reason why they love him. Ask Dev, and he will give you 1500 words on why he loves him. And not just one Steve Martin, all the many faces of Steve Martin, from Mixed Nuts to The Jerk, to Little Shop of Horrors to, yes, Cheaper by the Dozen, Bowfinger, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Parenthood, Father of the Bride, LA Story, all of it. Sit back, read this interview and let all those wonderful memories wash over you. It may even intrigue you to see Pink Panther 2, which is out this month. Baby Mama, however, not really worth it, unless you want to get the DVD and fast forward to the Martin bits. Man's a genius, nothing else to say.

Which is the best Steve Martin film?

It depends really. If you are talking about the best film that Steve Martin was in? Or the best performance he gave as an actor? Or the best comedic performance he has give in a movie? Or the best movie that he wrote?

I have an answer for all of these...

The best movie that Steve Martin was in has to be the Ron Howard film 'Parenthood'. Everything was on point during that one. Direction was spot on by Howard, the casting was genius, and as always Howard knew how to get the subtleties of the human emotion across without shoving it in your face. A great movie.

The best performance Steve Martin has given as an actor would have to be 'Planes , Trains and Automobiles' or 'Roxanne'... but I shall discuss 'Planes , Trains...' as I think his talent is vastly under-looked in this movie in regards to how big it became and the comedic connotations applied to it when brought up in thought.... as usual for a John Hughes movie... you look back on it remembering a lot more comedic or classic elements than may actually be in the film. I remember thinking all kinds of shit happened to Steve Martin and John Candy's characters... but when you view it again, it's really only a few incidents. But anyway this is the best role for acting steve martin has been in. He plays the character Neal Page in such a genuine believable way. You have to remember that Steve Martin really had never played that kind of person before in a movie. I guess you could say he developed the high strung-ness somewhat for his role in Nora Ephron's 'Mixed Nuts'... but he is a delight to watch in 'Planes Trains...'.

Now, for the best comedic performance he has given in a movie I first have to mention, I think period when he wasn't actually in movies, so his appearances were cameos are golden. Great moments, he'd pop up.. have 5-10 minutes on the screen, and outshine everything and everyone else. The muppets movie cameo as the waiter.. 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts club'... a classic time..

But I guess his funniest performance would have to be ... god this is tough, Maybe 'The Jerk'. But that was his first movie, and I don't think it particularly ties in with the rest of his movies. 'The Jerk' is really like a celebration and goodbye to his stand up.. it features countless routines he would do, that he just wrote into the film. The very first line of the movie was what sparked the whole idea of making the film..(being born to a poor black family)..His best film as a writer is without a doubt 'Man with Two Brains'. It's the perfect combination of his writing, Love story, comedy, insanity, irony... it has everything. It's such a wonderful film and story, and he himself is amazing in it. Even referencing his stand up at several points. A masterpiece of a movie.

A lot of people say his quality control has nosedived in the last 20 years. What do you say to them?

Well, I assume you are talking about since 'Parenthood' in 1989. And I can definitely see your point.The main thing you need to remember is apart from movies like 'L.A. Story' (another great example of Steve Martin's writing for film) and a few others, he stopped writing the movies he was in, and solely appeared in them.

The 'Father of the Bride' films are great, 'Mixed Nuts' is awful... 'House Sitter' is great, and 'Sgt Bilko' is pretty good. They may not match up to earlier standards but that is o.k... I feel his Bibliogrophy during this period more than makes up for that.

Which era of Steve Martin is your favourite - stand up, anarchic movie star a la 'The Jerk' and 'Pennies from Heaven', 'L.A. Story'/ 'Roxanne' era, Dad in every film in the 80's or 'Cheaper by the Dozen'? How do you feel about 'Cheaper by the Dozen'?

'Cheaper by the Dozen' is incredible... I take delight in anything that unite Tom Welling with Steve Martin.

I view every era in a different light thought.. maybe if I had to say something negative, late 90's early 2000's is my least favoured period.

What do you think of Keanu Reeves in Parenthood?

Bodacious.

Do you think 'Bowfinger' was a rare return to form for Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin? Do you think they'll ever do it again?

They would never do it again because Steve Martin is on another plane than Eddie Murphy... It's something I don't think most people realise. But Steve Martin is someone that has had multiple grammy records... two for comedy, but one for best country performance in 2002, in the banjo world he as seen as a master of a five finger technique where you push down with your nails rather than plucking the strings. He has written some of the toughest banjo music to play in the last twenty years.

He as had countless best selling books, ranging from novellas, to prose, memoirs, and plays.. and his intelligence is completely out of this world. The fact that he got famous for his comedy in the late 70's is astounding considering the stuff he was doing, the techniques and ideals he was going for and the whole idea of "Anti- Comedy".

Eddie Murphy recorded a hit single with, written and performed by Rick James. I'm aware people would LIKE to think that this is a more incredible feat..but get real.

Did you see him in 'Baby Mama' and '30 Rock'?

Unfortunately I did see 'Baby Mama'... and it's episode four of new '30 Rock' right? I'm waiting for the season to end so I can watch them all in one go online. But I guess, tied into this.. somewhat, I was in the Rockerfeller center last week to see Steve Martin host his 15th SNL. That was incredible.

[note- unfortunately the Steve Martin episode of 30 rock is not the best one. Series three picks up pretty quickly though after they quit with all the celebrity cameos.]

Do you care for the 'Father of the Bride' series?

I do. A lot.

Am I right in my conviction that a movie without Diane Keaton is NO MOVIE AT ALL?

A Real Estate investment without Diana Keaton is No investment at all!!!

Are there any things that I've missed out about Steve Martin that you need to add?

Lots, do your goddamn research !!!!!!!

Have you heard his joke about the sprocket?

HAHA, of course!! It's on 'Let's Get Small'. That right there is a prime example of what I meant about I have no idea how he got huge in the 70's... telling jokes that are intentionally weird and not funny... he had this whole thing of not telling punch-lines also... that way when the laughter would come it would be more natural. A true genius.

Which is best Steve Martin live CD?

Maybe A wild and Crazy Guy. He was flying high at that point.

What current comedians are worthy enough to follow in his footsteps?

I don't really like comedians.

Will Ferrell...opinion?

End of Interview.

Will Ferrell is funny. In our opinion his website has overtaken cranking in the top ten antidotes to boredom of all time. Go here for a few of the best videos http://www.funnyordie.com/will_ferrell.

Eugene McGuinness

2009-03-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

Published in Stool Pigeon in November. I'm worried that I made Eugene sound like he was being rude. He wasn't, he was being funny, I'm just not a good enough writer.

"By the way," says Eugene Mcguinness, "Don't put any exclamation marks in the interview. They always put exclamation marks in interviews. You can just picture the guy who said it with their eyebrows raised and a massive stupid grin on his face."

Deadpan, sipping on a Tiger beer at the Social on London's Little Portland St, McGuinness is being somewhat instructive over the course of his interview. This town being the way it is, he is already familiar with both the interviewer and the photographer, and is either batting away questions with absurdist quips, or commenting on how best to write the piece when it's done. It's a little like hitting a tennis ball over a net and having your opponent throw back a fish or a shoe.

"Come on," he teases, "this is going down like the Titanic."

Sure, if the Titanic was sunk by awkwardness. McGuinness makes the kind of music that attracts the hardcore music fan, the kind who is militant about quality and encyclopaedic in obsession, but today his own view of his music is so flippant, it might serve to break the hearts of anyone who has ever tried to find meaning in it. The album, which has come out two days before the meeting, is self named, he says, because he 'couldn't think of anything else', and he stands on the cover staring intently into the camera, wearing nothing but a leotard and a fencing helmet, for no reason other than he liked the way it looked. If he wasn't surrounded by people he would consider his peers, you would think him dangerously nonchalant, but on this occasion, he's probably just being funny. Funny, however, doesn't get you answers.

"What's happened since your album came out on Monday," he is asked.

"I've had a bean salad," he replies.

"Are there high expectations from a label perspective?"

"Not in these serious times. Doesn't credit crunch sound like a cereal?"

It's a nightmare, and don't even begin to ask him about his lyrics. On the pretence that he doesn't think about them enough, but probably because he doesn't want other people telling him what his lyrics are about, McGuinness is being exceedingly literal about everything he's asked. Tell him you like how he writes about London, and he will make you list every song that mentions it, and counter with a list of the ones that don't. Ask him what God In Space, the haunting and absurdly beautiful album closer, is about, and he will claim: "I just try and make the words rhyme." Furthermore, tell him that the strings sound cinematic and he will tell you that all strings sound like that because they are 'classy' and no, he doesn't know any Brian Wilson. Hold on. Pet Sounds? Oh yeah, he's heard of that.

"It's hard doing interviews and things," he explains later, "I don't have any concepts about my music. Nobody can be Bowie, nothing shocks, there's nothing I can say in interviews to surprise anyone with. I just have to write good songs."

So does he have no agenda whatsoever with his music?

"I want it to be uplifting," he says, "I can't be dealing with too much unrequited love. I want my music to be uplifting, which makes things seem good and beautiful in its own non-glamorous way."

It's the first statement he's made all day, other than a truly inspired argument against pop snobbery which brings into question if he's ever seen the inside of an art gallery ("Music isn't supposed to be interesting, stuff in museums is interesting." "Well they put art in museums, and music is art." "Yeah well they put stuffed leprechauns in museums too." "Eugene, nobody puts stuffed leprechauns in museums."). However, his lack of statement is something of a statement in itself. If he's already made the album and written the songs, why does he need to further explain himself in interviews? "This stuff doesn't mean anything anyway, I don't read it," he says, "the only thing that means anything is lots of people liking your songs. And it's better if they draw their own conclusions." Furthermore, he says, "I can't make sweeping generalisations about my album, I can't pretend there was an umbrella aesthetic."

In an industry where music is rarely unaccompanied by a carefully composed back-story, and when most emerging artists are so good at spinning their own mythology, you wonder if they didn't start out in PR, to speak to someone who claims not to have conceptualised anything is unique. But, admirable as it is that he refuses to deal out what he considers bullshit, it does seem the boy protests too much. Does he really draw no inspiration from nursery rhymes, even though his last album quoted Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and this one contains a song called Rings Around Rosa? And does he really not detect an element of nostalgia in his work, despite songs such as Those Old Black and White Movies are True? By the time the decision is made to quit the interview and go find his record in a shop, it seems pretty clear that none of these questions are going to be answered. "Sorry I've been flakey," he says, looking sheepish, "Was it a total disaster?"

It was not a total disaster. The casually named Eugene McGuinness is still a great album, whether it was constructed carefully around a theme or puked onto an 8-track the night before mastering. Like McGuinness attempted to say himself, music means something different to everybody who hears it, and the person who makes it should be secondary to the result. But why, if he thinks so little about it, does he do it in the first place? On this, the boy is finally clear.

"Because music is the best thing in the universe," he says, "and there are people who allow me to do it. Those loons!!!"

Sorry, Eugene, it had to be done. You don't read your own press anyway.

Jenny Lewis Article

2008-09-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

for the September Stool Pigeon

It’s eleven o’clock in the morning in LA, a week after Jenny Lewis’ cancelled European promo trip, and the lady in question is answering the phone. “Hello,” she says sweetly, “how are you?”

Hold on, you might think, this is not the sound of a spoilt LA rock star given to canceling interviews on a whim, and at this point you might want to peer down the mouthpiece to make sure she’s the right person, or call her PR to angrily demand the real Jenny Lewis, and not this super nice imposter, but that would be your mistake. This super nice voice on the other end, shyly admitting that eleven o’clock is ‘pretty early, depending on who you ask,” really is the right Jenny Lewis, Rilo Kiley Frontwoman, Postal Service collaborator, and solo artist with two records under her belt. Having been forced to postpone the trip because of admin errors, Lewis is now patiently taking calls from every interview that couldn’t wait. “I’m just in that phase you know, before the album comes out and when you’re not actually playing the music, but you’re talking about it,” she says, “and I do find the playing it bit easier.”

If Lewis is finding today hard, she’s masking it well. Maybe it’s because it’s the first interview of the morning, or maybe it’s a mark of 28 years in the entertainment industry (as an actress, she filmed her first commercial at age 3), but Jenny Lewis really is the picture of professionalism. You keep waiting for her to get restless or self-righteous. She doesn’t. In fact, after about ten minutes, when she gets deep into the mechanics of making records, you forget the 24 hours or so of music she’s contributed to your iPod alone, and start sparring with her about the ins and outs of analogue recording, her latest album having been recorded with a strict ‘no Pro Tools’ policy. “I think you can use digital technology with an analogue mindset,” she says, “like you’re still doing stuff live to tape, but with this record I didn’t want the opportunity for the producer to fix things in post. I’m a fan of precision and production but I just think it’s more fun to record things in the moment, especially as a singer, to be able to emote a couple of times while feeling the energy of the band.”

Lewis has, of course, earned the right to have a bit of fun. She’s been making music for well over a decade now, in so many guises she may be the only person to actually deserve the title ‘Emmy Lou Harris of her generation’. Her first solo record, Rabbit Fur Coat, released in 2006 as an experiment, was a runaway success, but when Rilo Kiley put a record out nine months later, nobody expected her to follow it up quickly. As it was, Lewis wrapped up touring in December, finished a couple of songs over the holidays and went straight back into the studio. Three weeks later, Acid Tongue was complete.
Brushing off suggestions of a superhuman work ethic, she says, “I’ve been working since I was a little girl. I need to have something to focus on, otherwise I’ll get into trouble.”

Anyone expecting a follow on from the country-tinged confessions of Rabbit Fur Coat will be in for an initial disappointment. A lot was made of its themes of Hollywood letdowns and religious disillusionment, as well as its sweetly intimate, almost acoustic, qualities of production. This album is clearly the sound of a band in a room, and the lyrics on many of the songs seem arbitrary, almost jammed out. Even the heart-wringer, Godspeed, has a general quality to it, as though it’s not specific to Lewis’s own experience. She herself is set on the notion that, at least this time round, ‘the words are not s important as the sound of a guitar, or the tone of a voice, or even the sound that the words are making’.

“My only real intention with this album was to capture a vibe and capture a live vocal sound,” she says, “These were the songs that presented themselves of course, but also I really just wanted to make a record of a feeling, instead of taking people through the songs step by step and pushing myself on them in that sense.”

The result is, even to an untrained ear, an exceptionally warm and energetic album. Recorded live and often in one or two takes, it also benefits from having about fifteen of Lewis’ close friends and family in backing, including her father, sister, boyfriend Johnathan Rice (Lewis also features heavily on his latest release), and old hands M. Ward and Farmer Dave. Replacing the Watson Twins’ on female backing are Zooey Deshcanel (of She & Him) and Vanessa Corbala (of Whispertown2000), but with a vital difference. Whereas Lewis’ voice towered ahead of her collaborators on Rabbit Fur Coat, on Acid Tongue the guest spots feel more like an equal billing. Every time you hear Dechanel, Corbala or any of the other singers make their contribution, it’s as though Lewis has stepped aside and offered them her own microphone. On the subject of friend and label boss Connor Oberst, Lewis says, “he is incredibly supportive and an incredibly generous performer. He is constantly shining the spotlight on other people.”

Listening to Acid Tongue, she might as well be talking about herself. "There’s nothing better than a group of people singing in a room,” she adds, shunning the compliment, “it just seemed logical to involve my friends in my touring band, and they are truly my dear friends in the world, and I wanted to reflect that.”

It’s not often you find an album made with such simple intentions; capturing a feeling and doing it with the people you love. Lewis says that without their encouragement over the years, she would ‘never have the courage to make it through a 45 minute set.” With Acid Tongue she has made a perfect tribute to their support, and had fun doing it. "The goal in playing music is surely to avoid the straight life," she says, "so you might as well make sure you have a good time.”

Why? Article

2008-09-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

written for the September edition of the Stool Pigeon

Yoni Wolf, the thoughts, words and voice of Oakland’s Why? and a founding member of the Anticon collective, is pissed. Tonight’s show at Brighton Audio has been given a early curfew, and the band have less than ninety minutes between soundcheck and show in which to eat, regroup, prepare and be interviewed. “We gotta not play shows before clubnights,” he mutters, as they navigate the seafront to a restaurant recommended by the promoter. The interview will have to wait. Perhaps it could be done after the show?

No, that’s a weird time to do it.

Tomorrow morning before they leave?

Yoni will be sleeping tomorrow morning.

Next week at London’s Wireless Festival?

Let’s just see what happens later.

You get the feeling that, scenery aside, this isn’t an altogether unfamiliar situation for Yoni. Not the interview so much, but the treadmill-like routine of playing shows, filling your time before and after. Why? is a hard working band, Yoni is a lyricist who seeps you in realism until it becomes magical. Having listened to the band’s most recent album, Alopecia, with its landscapes of gas station toilets and European basketball courts, it’s not hard to imagine the songs taking root on a day like today.

“Um,” says Yoni, finally caught up with, “the lyrics are not always based on my life, the main character is based on me, but it’s not always directly from that. Sometimes it’s a, um, metaphor…” He has the look of a caged animal about to be experimented on, or someone who is being asked to hand over an internal organ. “I don’t write on tour at all,” he adds, “I do run out of things to write about.”

Yoni seems tired and defensive. He explains at the beginning of the conversation that he ‘really loses his shit on tour’. When asked about his life away from the band, he says, “I am fairly separate from most people at this point. I have some people I see in Oakland and I’ll develop friendships but they never, really, I mean, when I’m gone, I’m gone.”

This isolation is clearly something that has exacerbated from the first record to the next. Darkness has always been a component of Why? Records, but there was a buoyancy in the first that has now disappeared. Where Elephant Eyelash seemed like a celebration, Alopecia is sucked dry of optimism, bleak and self-destructive, as seen in songs about jerking off in a museum toilet to the handwriting of a distant lover, carving his new girlfriend’s age into the palm of his hand for her birthday, and sleeping on his back for ‘coffin rehearsal’. Through it all, however it has a grim humour that is nowhere to be seen in Brighton until he burps on stage two hours later. Halfway into a year of touring, who can blame the guy, but hey Yoni, the only question left to ask is – if you didn’t want to do the interview – Why? did you say yes?

Meet the Folkers

2008-06-20T16:50:00.001-07:00

A one off column for Artrocker. I come off badly.

I was so close to finishing this. This piece was written and ready to hand in five days before the deadline, a completely unprecedented feat for me meaning five glorious days of stress-free self-satisfaction. Five beautiful June days to do nothing but bask in the glory of my own self-discipline. Maybe in these five days I could have been rewarding myself with nice little alternatives to writing anxiously against a clock. Maybe I could have taken some country walks. Learned to love myself. Bought the new Weezer album. Made you each a mixtape.

But it was not to be.

Half an hour before I was due to send this piece, an insider's report on the coming and goings of young British folk artists, I got a mass email from Universal music. Without even the decency of a 'hello…', or 'sorry I stole your email and added to your already indecent quantities of uninvited spam'', it asked me to download a video of one of it's up and coming young London folkies, doing an 'impromptu' duet with another, up and coming, young London folkie. I picked up the meaning of the email pretty quickly. What it wanted to infer, was that, combined, these two young folkies made up the forefront of an uber exciting, super talented new movement which MUST NOT BE IGNORED ON PAIN OF DEATH. Together they were like a mandolin toting Captain Planet, whose music and surrounding merchandise you must consume and consume immediately, else you might as well be living in a cellar communicating in grunts.

BLEEEEEEUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…

When all the vomit had left my body. I reviewed my piece. True to my brief, I had written a pretty straightforward list of the people I considered current folk artists, and the things they did. Noah and the Whale, folky enough to be playing the Cambridge Folk Festival, are due an album. Laura Marling, described by Q as a 'folky Kate Nash', has just released one. Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit – enough folk in the name alone to people a Mayday parade and an album with a Celtic title to boot. And then there's Eugene McGuinness. He must be tired of the association by now. Poor boy is skirting rock & roll, punk, even grime more than he's ever touched on folk, yet time after time he's brought up in the blogosphere alongside the Cambridge-approved, harmonium wielding Noah. Is it cause his guitar is half acoustic? I'm only feigning innocence. I know there's a reason why the same five or six bands are destined to circle each other in infinite combinations every festival they play. Someone in charge thinks that bands are more interesting as a package deal and everybody, from the PR at my old pen-pal Universal, to the moist-eyed young up-and-comings who just 'happen' to play their duets in front of video cameras, are playing along.

Man I wish I could explain how much the term 'up and coming' makes me itch. I haven't even heard every Neil Young album yet, so I don't have time for the latest single from Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, no matter how many A&R men attended their latest show. But the hype machine in this country is obsessed with the new. Obsessed with listing who's going to be the biggest new acts of the year, the month, the week, the minute; and once they identify these hot new acts, they need to herd them into groups like cattle and give them a name. A couple of years ago they noticed that singer-songwriters were back in fashion, and dutifully, in an orderly manner, they shone the spotlight on the new Streets-inspired singer songwriters (Lily Allen, Jamie T), then the new Lily Allen-inspired singer-songwriters (Kate Nash, Jack Penate), then, briefly, the new Kate Nash-inspired singer-songwriters (every female artist available at time of press), and finally, currently, the new gang of nu-folk singer-songwriters (spearheaded by Marling, Flynn, the Whale and whatever reluctant extra has been drafted in for the sake of the article). What all the press failed to mention is that some of these singer-songwriters have appeared on every list for the last three years, and only shifted slightly from Mike Skinner to Joni Mitchell in the process. It seems that making it onto these lists is completely arbitrary. Sneeze close enough to a Myspace player and you'll probably get on one, but I digress. What I mean to say, is that the burgeoning London scene of new-folk artists is a construct, just like the fleeting, but hilarious phase of the 'Mini-Allens'. As yet, only two of these artists and their associated satellites have even released albums, let alone that path-determining second or third. When I read about people getting excited about the London folk scene, I have to wonder how exciting a collected effort of 15 singles can be? No wonder there needs to be a flow chart of who's shagging who before anyone dares dedicate us a column inch. That's why, for the rest of this article, I'm going to stop complaining and concentrate on the people who I think deserve excitement. The Professors, if you will, to the London undergraduates.

It always confuses me that the most exciting artists are the ones who are collecting the least amount of hysteria. Seriously, if you ever see a hysterical crowd, just look in the opposite direction and you'll probably find something good. The last time I saw the Mountain Goats play, I cried so hard I finally understood Beatlemania, yet I was only one in an audience of sixty. The Mountain Goats have released fifteen full-length albums, three of which I consider essential tools for a complete existence – and still i was able to stand at the front of the stage, and have John Darnielle look me in the eye from two feet away. That was a good day for me, but it's not so good for the people who will never know the power of that feeling. What misery they must be in! How horrible it must be to never hear the lyric 'how much better can my life get?/ 900 cubic centrimeters of raw whining power/ No outstanding warrants for my arrest', from the song Jenny, and never laugh at its depiction of complete joy. And what is bleaker than hanging on in a dead relationship? Surely it's never hearing that bleakness reflected in the song No Children. 'Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises/ we're pretty sure they're all wrong', sings Darnielle, and I have to wonder what it's like not to hear it. Similarly, I hate to think what my life was before I discovered Diane Cluck, and I guess Laura Marling must feel the same, given that her album is a very loving tribute to the great lady.

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If Diane Cluck knew how dangerously close to being in fashion she is now, I wonder if she would be pleased or horrified. From her scratchy home recording on the first Anti-folk compilation, to the second album she decorated and distributed entirely by hand, Cluck has always been the kind to shy away from attention. Her pure focus on the creative side of music (to her, it seems, music industry is being industrious about music) has led to a pretty low profile over the years, but in spite of having no website, no label and no distribution, she has a deeply devoted following across the world, all the more special for how hard people have worked to find her. Last year, after a serious miscarriage of judgement saw her booked to play at the venue owned by the Fly, I watched amazed as, surrounded by photographs of the Kooks and the Fratellis, she turned a beer-sozzled stable of a room into a glowing magic den. Furthermore, I've never been to a show where even the bar-staff weren't slack jawed and drooling by the end of the night. There's just something about her clear voice, her cool, easy delivery, and the way she sings as though in the throes of hypnosis, that knocks all the thoughts out of your head, and the fact that she's so elusive, so content to remain obscured in legend, makes it somehow even better.

It's weird. When I first started listening to Diane Cluck, I wasn't particularly knocked out. That was the year that Joanna Newsom's first record came out, and I was much more impressed by how clever and pretty it was. That was also the year when a lot of folky records were coming out of the West Coast, and people were starting to pinpoint Devendra Barnhart as the head of some twisted hippy movement. In amongst the immediately obvious talent of Newsom, the dark brattiness of Cocorosie and the well-established but rediscovered comforts of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Diane Cluck was just a quiet throbby blur in the horizon. Over time, however, my interest in folk has proven to be a bit of a fad. Cocorosie loses interest on repeated listens (although say that to John Darnielle and he'll hurt you), Barnhart looks like a pervy tree, and my admiration and awe for Joanna Newsom never matured into love. Diane though, is a different thing all together. Somehow over the years, the occasional listen grew into a deep obsession, creeping up on me like her voice creeps over her rambling lyrics and thick earthy rhythms. It's really, really hard for me to describe the effect she has, so I suggest you go out and get your hands on some music. Start with Oh Vanille/ Ova Nil, and make sure you at least download the song My Teacher Died from the album Countless Times. Finally, no matter what you thought of those other songs, find the EP Diane Cluck, and listen to it in full, especially the songs Monte Carlo, You are Like Elvis, & Ambulance. Find these things now, and discover Diane Cluck, before the spell is broken and she disappears into dreams.

********************************************************************************************************************************************************
Ok, so maybe earlier I overstated the arbitrariness of the yearly lists. It is a fact that last year's London accent has softened into almost American tones, and in place of what was bright and brassy is now reflective and melancholic. And while I still think that tastemakers can be pretty non-discriminate with their predictions, there's more than enough finger-picking and fiddle going on to indicate a trend. With all this in mind I'm excited to say that I know why this is happening. The answer is a band called Beirut. Three years ago, the folkiest thing we had in British indie was Patrick Wolf, who followed up the camp electro of his debut with a collection of Cornish Sea Shanties. Then Zach Condon came along with The Gulag Orkestra, inspired by his travels around the folk of Eastern Europe, and in his wake came the renewed interest in mandolins, rattles, trumpet solos and ukeleles. It would have been impossible to predict the effect the album would have – back then it was just generally liked by anyone who heard it, and being a retro record wasn't described as groudbreaking – but its steady growth and strong live follow-up meant that for the next two years record labels were happily collecting anyone who could mimic that success. I mentioned that two of the folk brat-pack (I just read that phrase on the Internet) have released albums already, and both contain at least a song on which Condon's influence is, to put it mildly, strong. Likewise, the rise of Noah and the Whale, who manage to marry being interesting and organic with very, very successful, is a testament to the doors opened by Beirut, as is Marling's slow evolution from Reading teen pop sensation to Gibson-strumming siren. Two years ago, I can hardly imagine a label being cool with her wish to tone it down a notch and get to the heart of her emotions. Thank Zach, that we never found out what the word 'Mini-Allen' meant.

Not Drowning - the Wave Pictures

2008-06-20T16:48:00.000-07:00

Published in March in the Stool Pigeon

“It’s hard to imagine a world where Tom Waits is a superstar,” sighs the Wave Pictures’ Dave Tattersall, “It’s a nice world, and I don’t know where it went.”

It’s early January, and the Wave Pictures are talking Golden Ages. Holed up in an studio beneath East London’s Duke of Uke, the band are laying down tracks for their new album, three months before the next is due for release. Apparently this is how it used to be done, and how it should be done. “Neil Young used to make two albums a year,” says Dave, “He’d write a song every two weeks then record the last ten, and it would be awesome.”

You get the feeling that Dave and his bandmates would rather live in simpler times. Moving to London over a year ago, they still carry themselves with the wide-eyed wonderment of three boys from the country, and most of the trappings of Myspace-era indie are completely alien to them. Dave listens mainly to vinyl that pre-dates the eighties and the other two wander around like a pair of 1950’s shopkeepers on loan from Brighton Beach. Don’t take them for naive though – the band have a stronger sense of identity than any band you’ve met, borne out of the isolation of their rural upbringing. “You develop a stronger sense of who you are when you don’t know anybody else,” says Dave, who started playing with bassist Franic six years ago, “For better or for worse we are a band who were completely unfamous for six years.” He adds, “that’s why we’re here recording when nobody asked us to, because it’s what we’ve always done.”

Things have changed recently for the Wave Pictures, the communal move to London made it easier to play shows, and a deal with independent label Moshi Moshi has them tipped for big things in 2008. This concept of course, means nothing to them, which is part of their appeal. Word is spreading about the group of boys so far from image-led, branded indie superstars, and their live shows are starting to attract not so much a fanbase but a community. “I guess this could be a year of life-changing success for us,” hypothesizes drummer Johnny, “but either way we’ll still be making music.”

That music, by the way, is 60's influenced surf pop with lyrical candor the Magnetic Fields couldn't touch. It's partly shocking, partly charming and it’s also fucking great. The golden age is back, riding in the wake of the Wave Pictures.

Mountain Goats Piece

2008-06-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

Published in the Stool Pigeon Jan 2008, under the title 'Summit Meeting'

“OK,” says John Darnielle, “Give me the Dictaphone and I will ask you some questions.”

It’s ten minutes into the interview, and I’ve already flaked. I didn’t want to write this article. I didn’t want to write this article because the Mountain Goats are to me what Michael Jackson is to Japanese people, and when you feel that level of hysteria for a person the last thing you want to do is humanize them. Steadily releasing albums for the best part of a decade, first on cassette then on 4AD, they’re the kind of band with a following so cult, you can’t imagine them with faces, let alone with a voice, body, knife, fork and napkin. John is the chief songwriter and only constant member, and he’s in the UK for some Christmas shows ahead of the new album release.

“I would rather you interviewed me about how much I love your band,” I joke. Ten minutes later, after I forget how to speak, he leans across the table, gently extracts the tape deck from my hand and asks, “Where did you grow up?”

I hope you derive from this that John is a nice guy. I hope you also derive from it that he’s a nice guy with a lot of charisma. Not the kind of charisma that makes you shy around Nicole Kidman, but the kind that puts a picture of King Bhumibol on every wall in Thailand. My band have been touring with him for four days, and by the second we are operating a ‘John Love’ competition – points for making him laugh, points for getting a hug. By the third day I am literally Googling fart jokes to try and get ahead, because nothing makes you feel better than when John Darnielle walks into a room, pats you on the back and says, “what’s up?”

It’s this touring business that makes me so nervous. If I’ve learned anything from traveling in a van with the Mountain Goats, it’s that I will do anything to make him like me, and also that he doesn’t like being probed. I have an email in my inbox in which he refers to himself as a cave dwelling hermit, and then ‘a troll’. As much as he joins in with the after-show dork talk (Peter from the Goats knows a lot about New Order), shows you the giant Mini-Cheddar he’s just found in his packet and shares his magazines (Metal Hammer, of course), there are times when you can tell he just wants to be alone. I bet the end of the press day after the last tour of the year is one of those times. I bet if I annoy him, I won’t get a hug at the end of the meal. I am literally speechless. I can’t think of a single thing to say.

“You don’t like doing press much do you?” I muster.

“There’s worse things to have to complain about,” he says, “But it does generally feel weird. I don’t like to talk about myself this much, I kinda hope my stuff does that for me.”

If you had asked the crowd after the Glasgow show what they wanted most of all from him, they wouldn’t have asked to know his favorite color. His stuff really does say something for him. It’s strong in its complicity, and it leaves you feeling part of a greater consciousness. You don’t need to know anything about him because, just by being there, you’re already in cahoots. Witnessing 200 people burst into song at the lyric ‘St Joseph’s Baby Aspirin’, our van driver leans across and tells me,

“I’ve never seen someone control a crowd like that before.”

Our van driver, by the way, has just been on tour with Anthrax. But this grasp of mass hypnosis isn’t something that Darnielle finds overwhelming. To him, it’s just a natural case of cause and effect. “I’m a huge music fan,” he says, “and when I go to a show I get really into it, so when I see someone moving their lips to my words, it’s a kick – in another audience with another artist, that person is me, right?”

You don’t have to be a top level obsessive to know that John’s really, really into black metal, but if you’ve read his webzine, or heard old-skool hip-hop blaring from his headphones on the motorway, you’ll have an idea of how much other stuff he’s into. Tonight, as he waxes lyrical about Cocorosie’s Akon cover, I suddenly realize that as a fangirl, I’m in the presence of my king. “I’ve been obsessed with records since I could crawl,” he explains, launching into a eulogy for Lifter Puller, “but if you’re listening mainly to vinyl these days you’re probably being a little precious…”

This is the kind of discourse you’d expect to find on his Last Plane to Jakarta, recently given a thumbs up from Pitchfork for its quality of writing, and between it and generally accepted Internet knowledge, you could probably draw a map of most of his likes and dislikes. Again I wonder why I’m asking him questions, when he could be doing the same of me – ‘Actually John, you didn’t listen to Hail to the Thief cause everyone was going on about it, but once you did you got pretty into it.” but the thing that you wouldn’t know from typing John Darnielle and any combination of words (try ‘burrito’, it’s funny) into a search engine is that he talks about the Mountain Goats like he talks about other bands. “I like Get Lonely better,” he shrugs, like a friend recommending which files to download, “but most people prefer the Sunset Tree.”

At the end of the meal, I’ve asked no questions, recorded barely any conversation, and spoken entirely in an American accent as not to be difficult. But if you meet your your heroes and still love them at the ed of the day, you’ve done pretty good. Wincing my way dow Tottenham Court Road, I remember something he told me earlier, “Sometimes I finish songs and they’re not very good, and sometimes it bothers me,” he says, “But where else in your life is everything you do perfect? If you work a five day job do you kick ass at it every day? No – but once in a while you have a day when you’re really good and you’re like – man, this place would have collapsed without me today. I am awesome.”

Today, I sucked at my job, but I still think the John Darnielle is awesome. Michael Jackson fans – nil, Mountain Goats – one million.

Darren Hayman feature

2007-12-20T03:40:00.000-08:00

published in November Stool Pigeon under headline 'Class Act - Darren Hayman keeps it comprehensively British and old school

You’ve seen it. The generic Fruit of the Loom t-shirt in block colours, with the word ‘Hefner’ printed across the chest. You see it worn occasionally at a market or a record store, and more often at festivals, where they share a status with Slipknot hoodies at Reading. Walking past one of these t-shirts, some people will think, what is this shit skate label that only sells one thing?, but to others, a quiet society of John Peel listeners and knowing indie boffins, this is the secret handshake, a seal of approval as dependable as a lion on an egg.

The man behind the t-shirts, once the main force behind Hefner, is today comfortably unaware of his cult status. Or at least, if he’s aware, he doesn’t show it. Tucking into a bacon sandwich in between home and the cinema, Darren Hayman talks me through an ordinary day as an underground pop icon. “Some days,” he tells me, “my job is just like anyone else’s job.” He isn’t being blasé, it does sound pretty normal.

“My wife’s alarm goes off at six to the Today programme, and I’m usually up by 7.” He says, “I’ll do a bit of housekeeping, then I’ll walk the dog, do me emails, update the website, this and that. When my wife gets home I usually make sure I’ve done her dinner. Might do a gig.”

You might wonder why we’ve settled so quickly on the unremarkable, but in a world where kids are making big money with songs about owning trainers, it’s rare to find someone who’s living a life as real as he sings. Of course, Darren Hayman started making music with the intention to keep it real. He first picked up a guitar in 1986 after seeing Billy Bragg play, and what follows

“I remember being about 17 when I saw Billy Bragg play,” he says, “and I remember thinking to myself, ‘I could do this.’ up until then I’d never hard anyone sing with an essex accent, just American ones, or Liverpudlian like the Beatles. It just made me think, that if he’s only got his guitar and his voice, maybe I could do it too. I guess it was quite arrogant really.”

Hefner’s songs, like Billy Bragg’s, were at their best with the smallest situations as starting points, songs like Greater London Radio, or Lee Remick, a lament to family dysfunction centred around a teenager’s film star crush. Emerging just as Britpop faded out, Darren largely ignored the fiercely marketed bolshiness of Cool Britannia, ad drew inspiration from observational lo-fi artists from America, like the Mountain Goats, Simon Joyner and the New Bad Things.

“All those bands inspired me because they had an audience but they weren’t rich or famous in any way. They had this real, genuine, troubadour quality that I couldn’t see in bands English bands at the time.” he muses, then continues, “but I was always very keen I would sing about what I saw - British things, with a British accent. That was the most important to me.”

Darren is unique in this country in that he hasn’t really strayed from those early inspirations, or filtered his style as he became more successful. He would tell you its because he hasn’t sold enough records to sell out, but one suspects that at the heart of his music lies a voice that won’t be manipulated. Today, we’re here to talk about Darren Hayman & the Secondary Modern, his first album proper since splitting up with Hefner, and it is still lyrically outstanding, and still Very British. It’s British in the same way that Jarvis Cocker, Graham Coxon and the Arctic Monkeys make British Records, but instead of a kitchen sink drama, we have a full blown episode of Channel 4’s Teachers. Well, maybe without the swearing. And the sex. But there’s definitely some smutty looks in the teachers lounge and a few too many whisky sodas after school. It’s a Britishness that’s peculiar to the high streets of suburban East London, where he grew up and still lives. Songs like Rochelle, which begins, ‘if you can’t walk in high heels, then don’t walk in high heels’, or Elizabeth Duke, about proposing to a girlfriend with a cheap ring, invoke images of a town you’ve never been to, but you’ve seen on telly. Unless of course, it reminds you of a town you do know. That’s the beauty of the album, you can either have experienced it, or not, but either way, you know what he means. The album also unique in that it may be pop’s first age-appropriate album since Kate Bush started singing about dishwashers. You wouldn’t catch Jarvis singing about marriage or mortgages in a hurry, nor any other thirty-something pop star for that matter, but that’s precisely what Darren has done on this record. Is this a nod to the write-what-you-see school of his early influences?

“I have no problems with writing adult songs for adults,” says Darren, “There’s a bit of a gap in the market for that isn’t there?”

If there was a gap in the market for Walthamstow centric, part-time teacher indie pop, then it looks like it’s just been filled. And anyone who was looking for that missing record on the moon-landing, or the new town of Harlow can also expect the wait to be over. Since breaking up with Hefner’s label, Too Pure, Darren has been afforded an unprecendnted amoung of creative freedom. So much so, the next album may well be 14 songs about town planning.

“I’m getting used to the idea that I’m not on a label anymore and I can do all the silly ideas I’ve had.” He says, “I’m sure if Chris Martin wanted to write an album about Harlow, someone would tell him it was a shit idea. I’m sure he would think it was a shit idea.” He giggles, “I’m sure it is a shit idea – but I’m just going to keep doing this until I do something so bloody awful that nobody buys it.”

On last count, Darren Hayman is yet to release a bloody awful album, Coldplay on the other hand... If his initial dream on seeing Billy Bragg was only to represent his own background as well as Bragg did, then he’s succeeded. He's also managed to rival heroes like the Mountain Goats & Simon Joyner on prolificacy, and maintain a double life of artist/ working man of which Phillip Larkin would be proud. Occasionally, however, news of his success will filter into his reality.

“I was doing a music crossword the other day, and the answer was Darren Hayman,” he says, “and I didn’t get it. I left it blank. My wife told me off for that.” He laughs, “That’s a sign isn’t it? That I can’t even get my own name in a crossword.”

I bet the kid on the next table with the Hefner tee figured it out.

DisCover - the Wave Pictures

2007-12-14T03:39:00.000-08:00

Pretty gushing piece I wrote for Drowned in Sound

Remember when a band used to play and suddenly everything would go soft focus and everything but the players would go dark? Of course not, because even I have only seen that happen in Grease when an angel visits Frenchie in the diner and basically calls her a complete reject (anybody else find that weird?), but I imagine that it used to happen all the time. I imagine there was a certain kind of crooner who could strike one chord on a stage and all the light in the room would go pink, and all the members of the band would be backlit like models in a 1950’s knitwear catalogue. I guess that’s what they call star quality. I’ve never seen it before, but they sure talked about it a lot in Fame Acadamy, and so when I saw this band the Wave Pictures in Birmingham last week, and suddenly the light in the room felt like it was coming out of a super 8 camera, I was able to figure out why it was.

I’ve now seen them play four times. Each time there was a song that I didn’t recognize, or something they’d written new that day, no mean feat when you appear to be playing a different show every single night. And then I spoke to them and I realized they have no idea how good they are. Not a clue. And they don’t know who CSS are, and they’ve never heard the Maccabees, and they live off a diet of Chuck Berry and Jonathan Richman, but occasionally sing the filthiest lyrics you’ve ever heard. Like first there’s a surfs-up guitar solo, and then there’s the line ‘And then you got cystitis, didn’t you?’

I don’t know, maybe I’m like an idiot girl in a poodle skirt swooning over a matinee idol, but I’ve never fallen in love with a band like this before. It’s like discovering the Mountain Goats at their first show, or getting hold of the first Belle and Sebastian tape and getting to tell the weirdo who sold it to you that you like his band. You know the people who get interviewed because they were the first Neutral Milk Hotel fans? Well I get the feeling this article has written me into at least a book or two about the Wave Pictures. But that’s a few years down the line yet. At the meantime they’re on tour with Darren Hayman and about to release a single on Moshi Moshi. A four week residency at the George Tavern starts on Tuesday 13th November and continues on the 20th, 4th & 11th. They also seem to be playing everywhere else, all the time, for the rest of their lives.

Here’s the transcript of the interview I did. The singer David did most of the talking, cause the other two got really shy. We had to force them even to nod their heads- how dreamy is that?

[Transcript at http://drownedinsound.com/articles/2599842]

Young Husband

2007-11-12T09:08:00.000-08:00

biography for Young Husband, single out November 26th, 2007

One look at the earnest, wide-eyed Young Husband, aka Watford-born twenteen year old Euan Hinshelwood, and you’d be forgiven in thinking him a kid navigating his first tread onto the stage. One deft strike of a chord, however, and a note from his strong, measured voice, and you will realize – ah, he’s done this before.

In fact, Young Husband has been forging his musical path for more than half a decade, playing the pub circuit before he was even allowed at the bar. At the age of 18, in scuzz-pop band the New Shapes, he had his first taste of the rock and roll dream when they were signed to a label and picked up for a Bacardi advert. Touring the country and playing sessions for nationwide radio, he started to hone his skills as a performer, but it wasn’t till it all fell apart that he found his true voice.

“I’ve always written songs, and people have always asked me to do gigs, to the point when it was getting in the way of other stuff,” he explains, “so I just got rid of the other stuff.”

Essentially an introvert who has struggled in the past with ‘thinking too much’, Euan’s initial output was pure, acoustic based self-observation, beautiful, romantic songs about being a boy with a conscience, trying his best to understand the world around him. Lyrics like I’m just a novice, remember that, cause you make me confused, and we overreact knock you dead with their simplicity, delivered with a solemn, puppy dog glance that makes you want to wrap him in a blanket and put him to sleep. As he became more engrossed in the recording process, however, different influences began to creep in.

“I used to be really into Elliot Smith,” he admits, “and almost got sucked into that singer-songwriter vein of sounding quite like him, but things have shifted now.” Talking about the need to have a band, he adds, “I listen to more noisy music these days, bands like My Bloody Valentine, Stephen Malkmus, so it would be great to get a band to demonstrate that.”

If the first thing that sets him apart from other singer-songwriters is his personality, the second thing will be his commitment to recording things his own way. Like Smith, he records onto an 8 track reel to reel (“though mine is a little better,” he confides), lovingly set up in the corner of his bedroom. “I don’t even have a proper bed anymore,” says Master Hinshelwood, “I’ve got a fold up that comes out at night, and the rest of the room is a little desk, some nice old mics. I sit there, press record, play the song, then put stuff over.” Clearly reveling in the process even as he describes it, he continues, “I usually get to record a song straight after I write it, then I just experiment with scuzzy guitars and weird drum beats.”

Certainly, there’s the air of the studio bear about Euan. He may look fresh faced now, but in his already full beard and grungy long locks, you can see his future self holed up in some analog paradise, taking tea and bread in from a hole in the door. At the mention of this he laughs, “some of my friends tell me I remind them of Robert Wyatt. I think that’s really cool, but maybe I’m not there just yet!” He also cites experimental outsiders British Sea Power as a inspiration, so not much hope for a life spent in daylight…

Before the inevitable lifetime of hibernation, comes Young Husband’s very first release – a digital single called Could They be Jealous of Us. Recorded over a year ago, it’s a song he’s proud of, but eager to move forward from.

“I’m ready for the next thing,” he declares, “I’m happy to play the song and promote it, but I’m also ready to move on.” On the subject of what moving on is, he proudly replies, “I’m gonna carry on recording in my bedroom and get an album together. I can’t be bothered to think about labels and stuff, cause I just want to keep being creative.” It’s a refreshingly non-careerist attitude and also sensible for someone who so values self-sufficiency and the evolution of ideas. So there you have it, Young Husband, a bright young talent miles away from the fleeting teen-pop revolution, happy to play the long game and perfect his craft.

“It’s exciting to be my age and already on my way,” he says, “but there are younger people doing it too.” Pragmatic and modest to the end, he finishes, “all I really do it float around with a cold.”

5 Tips for Greatness

2007-10-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

Written for Clash Magazine, September 07

Five Tips for Achieving Greatness:

1. Having a surname makes you look common. Call yourself 'the something' (eg John the Baptist) or 'of something' (eg John of
Norwich)

2. Make use of quotations. use the classics - Pope, Shakespeare, Anchorman, Mallrats.

3. Have a sidekick. Make sure you're not actually their sidekick. This is heavily dependent on what you chose to put at the end
of your name. For example john of norwich is almost certainly somebody else's sidekick.

4. Be prepared for enemies. if you go around quoting Anchorman all day long you are going to make some enemies.

5. If all the above fail, die young.

My Camden

2007-10-18T15:29:00.001-07:00

This was supposed to be for Time Out but I wrote it wrong and they sent it back.

I moved to Camden in 2002 mainly because of Pump up the Volume at the Underworld. It probably doesn’t exist anymore but I’m too lazy to move again. The Stables Market stopped making sense to me about three years ago when it turned into a cross between Blade Runner and the Super Mario movie, but I’m still rather fond of it, and pisses me off that they’re knocking it down and making it fancy. Apparently there’s going to be a Topshop there, which is cool because it does take a whole fifteen minutes on the bus to get to the WORLD’S BIGGEST TOPSHOP (fact).

This kind of stealthy developing has been happening all over Camden recently. The other week the five pound noodle shop closed down. I can’t even begin to express the void this has left in my life. I can’t imagine paying more than five pounds for a bowl of noodles and I don’t want to. Thankfully my favourite local haunt is part of a global conglomerate and in no danger of closing down soon. Most days I sit outside Fresh and Wild eating apple crisps and wait for Graham Coxon to walk by. He probably looks at me and thinks – that girl has too much spare time. In which case I would have to say – right back at you Graham.

In really good weather I’ll walk further up Parkway to the zoo. If you walk around it you can see the zebras, giraffes, emus and some barnyard animals. I’d like to find the wolf cages from the end of Withnail and I, where Richard E. Grant performs the speech from Hamlet. There’s a book store down by the lock where you can probably pick up a copy for about 50p, but hey, I’ve always thought it would look better as a changing room.

Diane Cluck & Barry Bliss

2007-10-18T12:30:00.003-07:00

I interviewed my favourite singer in the whole world, Diane Cluck, and her touring partner Barry Bliss for the Stool Pigeon this summer. The word count I got for the article was too small to contain everything I wanted to say, but here is the transcript of an amazing evening with two amazing people.

Green Man Festival campfire, 14th August

D: I never know how sensitive those things are (points to Dictaphone)

E: Not sensitive. How you feeling today?

D: Spicy (laughs)

E: So you grew up in Pennsylvania?

D: Moved to New York when 18.

E: That would be where the song Penn state vs. Louisiana Tech [from the mini album Diane Cluck]came from?

D: My dad hasn’t missed a home game in about 35 years. The year I wrote that song they had a really bad season.

E: And Barry grew up there as well?

B: I grew up in Virginia. Is Pennsylvania under New York? We met in 99/ 2000.

E: Do you make much music anymore?

B: I guess you would say I still do it, I don’t know what I’ll do when I get back. I’ve done 5 albums I believe, in new York.

E: Have you ever made albums together?

B: Not together but in the same room. While each other was out. Oh Vanille was made in the blue room, a couple of mine were made in the blue room.

D: We had opposite work schedules, which is important. We had a day off together, then I’d have a couple days on while he was off.

B: I forgot about that. (chuckles)

D: I was working in a restaurant, you were taxi driving. You had Wednesdays off I’d work Tuesday Wednesday Sunday and you’d work the other days. That way we’d have time to practice when the other wasn’t there.

E: Talks some shit about her own relationship.

D: Yeah, it worked really well for a while.

E: What are you doing in Georgia now?

D: Setting up my house so I can do all kinds of stuff I like, I’ve been mostly gardening. And I got a drum kit so I’ve been learning to play drums. The house doesn’t really have neighbours round it so I can make noise.

E: Is it yours?

D: No I’m renting.

E: What’s the community you were talking about, composting together and eating vegetables?

D: It’s not so much a community, but there’s individuals that I‘ve been interacting with. I feel like I’ve started interacting with people on a macro level, not micro, like even though I’m doing a lot of things by myself, I feel a lot more connected to people in general. But most of my individual relationships are all about that stuff, like connecting people, and composting and eating, is all about connecting people making the most of the relationships. And I do feel that actually I’ll probably want to eventually – I mean – I feel more of a pull of not having all my own stuff, it seems really boring to have ‘my house’, ‘my kitchen’, ‘my fridge’, ‘my dishes’. But I don’t feel yet ready to live communally, but I feel like that’s probably something that might interest me eventually, cause I think that’s it’s a better way to live.

E: Some bullshit about bullshit (my phone goes off) Why did you move to Georgia?

D: Cause NY was so expensive for me, to have a place to make noise. We had a really ideal setup, we kind of knew but we didn’t know how great it was until the building was sold and we had to leave. We had a carpenter upstairs, so there was good reciprocity with the noise there. He made noise, i made noise, he made noise, and the people downstairs, they just kind of ignored their neighbours anyway, and we had an absent housemate on the one side, and a stairwell on the other. But then after I moved about four times in new York, and spent about as much on rent, if not more, but never found anywhere I could sing. Now I have a whole house, with big land around it for the same price I was renting for a tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn, so it made more sense.

E: Is this the first time you’ve had land to tend?

D: Yeah, it’s actually a lot of work.

E: Do you not feel the pull to go somewhere a bit more spacious as well?

B: Yeah I used to do a lot of hopping around, I’ve lived out of garbage cans I've done stuff like that. It’s only just the last couple of years that I’ve hit my stride and been able to do work without thinking about it, find a place that’s mine, and a lot of free time, and so I guess unless the pulls strong enough I’m scared to shake all that up. I have a small room, I meditate quite a bit. I don’t hang out with anybody ever. So I have lots of time, if I want to suddenly sit up and meditate for an hour I can do that. I have nobody to answer to. I sing into a box. I hang a box on to the back of a door and put up foam. I play my guitar and sing with my face right into the box, so I am able to do that and so yeah right now ok, I think about it a lot, and we’ve talked about should we share a house, which we decided was not a good idea as of now. But still I’ve thought about moving to Georgia anyway. Um but I can’t say that’s where I’m going right now. After this I believe I’ll go home, and Wholefoods [Barry's employers] will have their busy delivery season, and I’ll probably do that for the next six months, then maybe move.

E: What are you doing creatively at the moment?

D: A lot of it is the art stuff, and people, relationship stuff, like learning to communicate openly with people, and regardless of consequences having really honest relationships with them. And I have been working on music. I just don’t feel the urge to be productive. Like when I first started, I must have had this left over work ethic from somewhere and I felt like every year I had to make an album and I did. For six years I did that. And then I felt the cycle was getting longer. Like even the last couple it kind of felt like it should have been a little longer but I pushed it, I was like ‘I have to do one this year’. And then all off a sudden I was like I don’t care. If it takes me five years to do something and I feel like it’s important to share, I’ll do it, and if I never do it I’ll never do it, and if I want to do it tonight and share it tomorrow I’ll do that. But I’ve been working on songs, I’ve always felt like music is an expression of a life well lived and I just like living in a way that I feel good about. There’s always a lot of food in my life, I like to cook a lot, so I spend like three hours a day in the kitchen, I make so many things from scratch, I just resign myself to the fact that that’s how I am. Like sometimes I think, oh man I spend so much time doing this, like I make all this stuff, maybe I should taper it down and then I was like, no I really like doing this. And that’s what people have been through for thousands of years. It’s like normal. They used to spend a whole day just heating up water. Not that it takes up my whole day, but it takes a lot of my time.

E: blah blah food is great [I agreed with everything she said, it was quite embarrassing but I couldn't stop myself]

D: Food is a really bug part of my life. I tend to make things and then even though I live alone I’ll always share it with someone, I’ll either bring it to work, or take it to the co-operative shop or to the friend around the corner or invite a friend over for dinner, there’s always a lot of food stuff going on.

E (to b): You don’t have a pull to make albums every year either?

B: I don’t you say?

E: nods

B: The only thing I have a pull to do, is to realise my full potential as a human being. As it so happens I’m drawn to make music, but music per say, I’m not interested in. you know, I’m only interested in being a successful human being, in being a servant of the lord, I guess you would say.

E: But you don’t mean that religiously?

B: No I’m not religious, I hate religion. I just use the word lord sometimes.

E: In the same sense as ‘nothing but god’ in Diane’s lyrics?

B: She has her own way of doing it, but I resonate with the vibe, or whatever, of the things that she sings about, even though she words things differently than I do sometimes.

D: I’m not religious either. Well I think it’s all the same words for deepest intuition. I don’t think that people are bad, I think our strongest voices are the thing we should listen to, and that’s what god is.

E: Shall we walk towards Robert plant?

for a review of Robert Plant (gag) scroll down.

Green Man Review

2007-10-18T12:30:00.001-07:00

Written in the Bestival Internet booth after frantic phonecalling to see if I knew anyone who had actually seen bands at Green Man, so let's face it, it's not the best piece of journalism ever written. PLUS I am a dick for dissing Robert Plant. I was drunk by then and actually the guy is pretty awesome.

At some point during the GreenMan festival, New York songstress Diane Cluck calls out, "I like how no one is complaining about the weather!" Which begs the question - who exactly has Diane Cluck been hanging out with? And in which hole?

The topic of the weekend is rain. Rain that takes an area of unspeakable beauty in the Braecon Beacons and turns it into a giant urinal for the gods to piss in. Rain that inturn pisses on all the Green Man teams' meticulous planning.That's a year someone spent working on your perfect boutique festival - organic food, family play area, great acts in small spaces - and all you can think is how did i not fall down that mudbank?

So maybe i was a little slack with watching bands. Maybe the most I saw of Joanna Newsom was her jean-clad backside as she wove through the main stage crowd on Saturday, boyfriend Bill in tow. Arriving late at the Folkey Dokey stage for Fridge, I also make the mistake of asking bassist Adem what time they're on.

"That was probably our last ever gig." he says helpfully.

But that's the kind of festival GreenMan is. Spit and you'll probably gob on a perfomer you know and love. Its this kind of intimacy that has me drawn to the GreenMan Cafe, a tiny bandstand of a stage in the courtyard of some medieval castle. It's here that I see Diane Cluck's truly astounding set, during which even she seems amazed by the amount of people crammed in to see her. It's also where I see the Fence Collective perform an unplugged guerilla gig, using nothing but voices and tambourines. Surrounded by turrets, climbing ivy and people dressed like, well, Joanna Newsom, they could almost be a band of travelling minstrels from another time.

There's an ethos here, I just know it.

If the ethos has anything to do with quality, then someone forgot to tell Robert Plant. Watching him groove to his own psychedelic, folk-rock waffle is painful business, squint and you might think a tiny Stonehenge was being lowered on to the stage. Is this really all they could pull out for a Saturday night? Actually, no. Across the way, past what is either a large crowd of comatose Zeppelin fans or some trees, Brooklyn six-piece Battles are playing the set of the festival, if not the festival season. I can't believe how much they've tightened up since i last saw them. Supporting Animal Collective at the Astoria last year they were clever but lacked memorability, but tonight they have songs you can latch on to. It's clear they've mastered the perfect balancing act between chaos and concision, pop and avant garde. Plus the single, Atlas, is cat-chy. We're still singing as we drive away from the sodden hills of Wales, missing an entire day of music in the process.

Sorry, but it was raining you know

Lightspeed You!

2007-10-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Lightspeed Champion feature, published in Stool Pigeon May 07.

“I’m gonna say it,” says Dev Hynes, former member of cult noise act Test-Icicles, and current brains behind Domino signed Lightspeed Champion, “Baby Suri is like a modern day Jesus.” He pauses like a guy who’s just delivered the defining speech of a generation, then adds, “there, I said it.”

It’s Saturday afternoon, and we’re talking heroes. Coming off a tangent that spans Lil’ Wayne, Rivers Cuomo and graphic artists Adrian Tomine and Mike Allrod, Dev is happily throwing the world’s most famous baby into his list of idols.

“What about Shiloh Nouvell Jolie Pitt?”

He snorts, “Modern day Damien.”

Talking to Dev is always just on the borderline of ironic. He lives his life like a comic book slacker with a black cloud over his head, and things do tend to go wrong around him. On the plane to Omaha to record his album (with mike Mogis of bright eyes), the plane was delayed with the explanation, ‘oops, yup we’re gonna have to turn around’, and showing up to Jimmy Eat World on his own after a bad date, he bumped into the first love of his life with her new fiancé, and ended up having to stand with them all night.

“I went to my flatmate’s toilet to borrow loo roll the other day,” he sighs, “and there’s a gold disk sitting on the sink. Just lying there. I’m like, ‘what’s the point’.”

It must be kind of weird when your two best friends are in the hottest bands of the moment. His flatmate is in the Klaxons, and Faris Rotter has designed a comic for the cover of his album. However, for all the ‘right now’ of the other two, it’s Lightspeed Champion whose message cuts across to the experience of the everyman. Or at least everynerd.

Kiss me and comfort me, my sweet, come over I just bought the new OC, and if they can sort their problems out, why can’t I get out the house, for a mango frescato or tea? he sings on Everyone is Listening to Crunk, echoing the thoughts of all the kids who grew up watching Mallrats, and don’t get why they weren’t welcomed to their twenties with a game show and a Jaws themed wedding.

“My lyrics can be kind of literal,” says Dev, “but there’s always some metaphor behind it. It’s like the way I talk, people always think I’m joking, but I’m not, I really mean what I say but there’s also something else to it.”

Like the song where you’re wanking off to the lyric Wake up Princess?

“No that’s not a metaphor, that’s about Zelda.”

As rock n’ roll lifestyles go, Dev’s is not so much an adolescent fantasy as an adolescent reality. He loves Maroon 5, queued on day of release to buy Weezer’s Make Believe, and spends Friday night at home streaming 24 and iChatting Uffie (ok, not every adolescent’s reality). He talks self-deprecatingly and sparingly about his music, but has nothing but genuine enthusiasm on the subject of Spiderman 3. With all this normal life in the way, how easy is it to keep creative?

“I don’t really think about it,” he says, “I just write loads of songs all the time, and different songs go with different projects. That’s why Lightspeed is so different from Test-Icicles, and before that I was doing mainly hip-hop stuff.”

Like on your Myspace profile Nigga Bullshit Rules?

He giggles, “that’s kind of a joke, but yeah.”

Jokes aside, Dev is appropriately superhuman in his output, writing half of his second album before the first is even released. He has been known to write three songs in a day, make guest appearances with artists like the Chemical Brothers, and last year formed a band with members of Semifinalists and Tom Vek. He’s now co-writing songs for a female singer-songwriter called Florence and the Machine, and preparing to take his band on the road. Not bad for a guy with bad luck. Still, now that everything’s going to plan, what’s keeping him awake at night?

“Will Ferrell,” he shakes his head sadly, “Not funny.”

Ironically, it’s the first serious thing he’s said all day.

Travels in Omaha

2007-10-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

Written after a few days in Nebraska, recording with Lightspeed Champion. Published in Stool Pigeon March 07.

The story is about Myspace. When you’re with Lightspeed Champion, it’s always about Myspace.

“I’m alternating between accounts right now,” he explains, not looking up to watch his debut album being edited. In the last hour he has re-configured his top 20 twice – first by aesthetic, then in order of righteousness, and by this system I have finally achieved more than the Strokes. At last look Fatty Casablancas and co are lagging behind me by two places, and I am sitting pretty on row one between Semifinalists and some dude called Train Chronicles. I guess you can sell a million records and grace the cover of Rolling Stone, but until you wait 8 hours in Chicago airport just to sing shoop shoop on Dev’s album, you’re nothing but a fourth row nobody. People have to scroll down to see you.

Look outside the window and the world is pretty awesome. Buried under two feet of snow are the kind of cars they drive in indie films about people who can’t get dates and love comics. The kind you drive to the side of a known beauty spot and make out in, or drink your keg out of, or drive home to mom and dad after the prom, bummed out cause some girl killed everyone with her telekinetic powers. On one side of the courtyard lives Mike Mogis, Bright Eyes producer and founder of Saddle Creek records, and on the other side lives Connor Oberst, or ‘Connor’ to those who feel they’re on first name basis because they can see the outside of his house. Somewhere in between is the studio we’re recording in, and a four-bedroom house for travelling bands, known as the frat house.

“We had Mates of State living here for a while,” remembers Ian, Mike’s engineer and all round big brother type, “they just showed up, but I don’t remember why…”

Ian’s quite blasé about bands that make me squeal. I guess when Connor Oberst’s garden is where you keep your sled, and Tim Kasher from Cursive is the guy who got your car out of the snow this morning, you don’t really care what Mates of State are doing in your studio. They just showed up. Meh, it’s just Mates of State. Indeed, I’ve been here two days and I’m getting kind of blasé. Hanging around at the mall we see the Faint’s drummer four times, I’m pretty sure I played Xbox with the guy from Two Gallants, and, if I wanted to, I could get a coffee from Tilly and the Wall’s Jamie Pressnell, who supplements her tap-dancing as a barista at Caffeine Dreams. It seems that every corner of Omaha is peppered with a little piece of cult history, hidden among the Normals in their Hilfiger jeans and snow boots. I wonder if any of the kids who wake up to Neely Jenkins as a substitute teacher realise that she is one of the most loved musicians in Omaha? It’s like Graham Coxon walking into maths class and scrawling his name across the board.

If you want to look at home-grown successes, Tilly and the Wall are a good place to start. Tapdancer Jamie, and singer Neely were in Connor’s high school band Park Ave, whose sweet, lo-fi sensibilities could be considered a prototype for the Saddle Creek sound. Kianna Alarid, singer and chanter, was also in a high school band, with members of the Faint, and later sang for Rilo Kiley. As for the two boys, Derek and Nick, they made their way to Omaha in the fall of 2001, lured by a friend who was playing in…Bright Eyes.

“We were really lucky to have friends who supported us from the beginning,” says Kianna, “Put it this way - our first tour was with Bright Eyes, our second tour was with Bright Eyes, and our third tour was with Rilo Kiley. We were just given the opportunity to reach people of a similar audience, and they responded.”

“We did try to send CD’s out before Connor came along,” adds Neely, “but people would just poop on it and send it back.”

It just goes to show what a little nurturing can do. Born out of a tight community, and the belief of a few friends, Tilly have gone on to make a bigger impact in this country than most of their senior counterparts. Four years after Connor created Team Love just to sign them, their presence over here has refocused the spotlight on Omaha, and Jamie is the first Nebraskan to appear on the all knowing, definitive, life changing, er, NME cool list. More importantly, when the culture board decided to honour local music with the Omaha Music Awards, Tilly and the Wall were the only band on TV that didn’t make Steps look classy.

“I guess you could call us Jesus freaks,” declare a member of Christian metal band Stigmata, “cause we love Jesus, and we’re freaks!” Covered entirely in white paint and bald as the day he was born, the man doesn’t make a great spokesman for the rest of Omaha. Actually neither does the presenter, who asks Jamie why she tapdances and thanks her before she answers. The last shot of the evening is Derek dissolving into giggles on the edge of the screen.

“It was like high school,” he laughs, before adding, “it was cool that they tried…”

Sitting around the frat house table, watching Tilly on the television, and drinking beer with Derek, Kianna, and their friends, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything outside of this perfect microcosm. Even on our epic evening out, where we take in an arcade, a bowling alley untouched from the fifties and a bowling alley untouched from the beginning of UV, everything seems like incidental scenery in an unwritten biography – ¬the story of what happens next. And does happen? The new wave of bands, who i meet while bowling, and who mainly bowl like little girls, seem ready to break into the spotlight pretty soon. There’s the Family Radio, fronted by the singer from Son, Ambulance, Flowers Forever, Derek’s solo project and Coyote Bones, whose singer David followed the Tilly boys from Atlanta. In the same way that the early Omaha bands shared a vision of sound, this new gang are united by a bright, raucous pop aesthetic, the natural evolution from the bands they follow, whose legacy they arrived to make use of.

“Saddle Creek created a foundation for us to get heard.” Says David, “People trust the scene over here, so we get a head start.”

Included in the legacy is the notion of self-sufficiency. Everybody in David’s circle are able to record and release their material off their own back, be it in his basement, on downtime in Mike’s studio, through Saddle Creek or any of the myriad labels following in its wake. There’s even an on-hand video director, Nik, whose weird, colourful films will one day form a visual reference for the scene. The week after I leave, he makes a Coyote Bones video in the famous basement. The footage of boys and girls in sombreros and giant sunglasses looks pretty low budget, and the scrappiness enhanced by Dev falling over, and David dropping his bunny ears mid-chorus, but it looks exactly how it should. It’s just a group of friends in the midst of the best party ever, and should they wake up in an alternate universe where they’re bankers and car dealers, it will exist as a record of when they lived in the best party ever. The three of us from England also have a record of when we crashed that party – a cover of Phantom Planet’s California, sung at midnight around a wind up melodica, the lyrics changed to ‘Oh Nebraska, here we come…’.

While we’re drinking around the TV, I hear the name Simon Joyner mentioned. A month later, at Tilly’s sold-out Scala show, Derek brings him up again.

“He was really big in Omaha,” he tells me, “Connor just loved him and he looked to him for inspiration, he was the best singer songwriter…”

Later that afternoon I email a friend who’s cooler than me.

Simon Joyner? I ask him.

Five minutes later the reply comes.

A necessity. It reads, and so I hit the Myspace angle again. It seems that even obscure folk artists who exist wilfully below the radar are capable of being online, and I find myself, on a spring day in Camden, reintroduced to the vast bleakness of Omaha on a pair of computer speakers.

If there was ever a soundtrack to the Omaha that I saw, this music would be it. Some of his songs are for walking through snowdrifts to the mall, surrounded by neon signs and miles and miles of road. Some songs are for when the snow subsides, and you are navigating backyards to look through someone’s window, and some songs are for the large stretches of park that I glimpsed through the glass of a 4x4. Songs that started their life on a scrap of floor at Kilgore’s, the legendary Omaha café where Joyner, Connor, and most of the early songwriters started out.

“It was sort of a songwriting competition every Thursday night,” says Joyner of the early days, “each of us trying to outdo each other. It was a pretty popular thing and I cut my teeth on that regular gig. Kilgore’s kind of became a kind of revolving door for Omaha songwriters wood-shedding and developing.”

Having met Connor at one of these events, Joyner and his friends helped to put out his first tape, a split with Bill Hoover called Kill the Monster Before it Eats Baby. However, it wasn’t just in enterprise that Joyner’s influence can be seen. If you listen to his recordings and compare them with early Bright Eyes, it’s easy to see how 14 year old Connor was affected by their association. They’re lo-fi, wordy, lightly tinged with a countrified melancholy, and narrated primarily through the eyes of one secually charged, geeky adolescent ‘I’.

“I was drunk I didn't let on/As I stood before your door at dawn/Guess I might have awakened the dogs/Cause the shadows started coughing them out/ So I put my hands into my hair/And I pulled and let it hurt/There's a light going out somewhere/ Thought I could hear it through the woods,” he sings on One for the Catholic Girls, and you can just imagine Connor listening to this through an old cassette deck and thinking, “this is how music is supposed to sound.”

If Joyner acknowledges his part in the birth of the Omaha sound, he doesn’t mention. He does however, shed some light on how he separated from the others, purposefully sticking to the shadows while they rocketed onto the world stage.

“All those guys were friends who went to the same school and lived in the same neighbourhood,” he says, “it was a tight clique, so it made sense for them to start a label devoted to championing their music. I was more of a downtown person and a product of a broken home and the public school system and all those guys are recovering Jesuits, frustrated Catholic kids from another part of town with a slightly different upbringing. Our scenes were certainly different but I loved them and their energy and I loved that they all stuck together and supported each other. It's been that way ever since. Amazing devotion. And once they started performing and recording, we've supported one another, performing and recording together. It's very midwestern, this Omaha sound, and by that I mean there is small town loyalty and support and everyone is very polite. We're all ambitious in our own ways but not at the expense of one another. It really is a lot like a family dynamic when I think about it.”

One last member of this family to include is David Dondero, who I meet a while back in Edinburgh. By some coincidence he is playing down the road from Tilly while we’re on tour, and we arrive in some stinking old man’s pub just in time to see him quietly pack his guitar away mid-song and walk out. I don’t see him in Omaha, I’m not sure that he lives there, but in my head he belongs with the others, in a mythological small town littered with fast food outlets and gas stations, where the only way out is to sing.

******

It’s two months later and the Lightspeed Champion record is mixed, mastered and packed neatly into little plastic sleeves. We go to watch Bright Eyes play Koko, standing with our arms crossed in what I hope is a ‘we know them’ pose. At one point Mike turns on the distortion pedal.

“That is so Mike.” I say.

“Totally.” Sighs Dev.

When I get home I tell my flatmate, “I think we should start a scene. Be a bit more like a family.”

“ok.” He agrees, climbing down the stairs. We sit in silence for ten minutes.

“I wish you were bright eyes.” I tell him.

“I wish you were dead.” He replies, and walks out.

Later, in bed, I resolve to take him out of my top friends, and plot my route back to Omaha. Until Graham Coxon walks in my house and asks to borrow a snow-blower, this town is dead to me.