Tricky Words

The new issue of The Word is out now in which, among other numerous delights (and a heroically grumpy cover star), I review a very good album by A.A. Bondy, a very dull book about Rick Rubin, and the reissue of Tricky's Maxinquaye, the album otherwise known as Skunk Induced Paranoia: The Musical.

"Maxinquaye is the zenith of a very Bristolian obsession with documenting psychic terror in slo-mo.... A deep, daring, difficult record, the muffled beats thudding like a bailiff’s footfall, each clear thought scrambled by blunted synapses, everyone from Radiohead to Burial has since taken readings from the strange, phantasmagorical smoke signals it sent out."

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Crash Burn Howl

Long-standing favourites of this blog, Howl Griff's ace new double AA single – "Crash Burn" / "Bluebirds" – is out today. If you know what’s good for you, you will proceed directly to here and download it.

The band are supporting the single on Friday at the Toucan Club, Cardiff and on Sunday at The Windmill, Brixton. Get along and catch some extremely fabulous pop vibes, top notch harmonies and an abundance of supremely sticky songs. Also look out for the new album, The Hum, due early in 2010. For news on that and more on the Welsh wonders, go here.

Suede Head

"The former Suede singer is clearly a very different man from the one who burst onto the indie scene in 1992, singing of chemically-fuelled sex in council houses and admitting that he wanted to “make his mark on pop history”. Ask him now what he hopes to achieve with his new solo record, Slow Attack, and he replies, “Absolutely nothing. I don’t have the same sets of goals I once had.” This much is clear from his music."

I talk to Brett Anderson here.

Buon Giorno!

The Italian printing of I Shot A Man in Reno now appears to be on sale, expertly translated – or appallingly translated, how would I know? – and published by Arcana. I know a few visitors regularly pop in to this blog from Italy; it can be bought here, and no doubt at other reputable libro-vendors.

And what do you think of the pink?

Also, ambling into the party a mere 15 months after publication, but no less welcome for that, there’s a review of Reno on the Uncommon Threads blog, which calls the book “compellingly readable and expertly handled… the greatest feat for an entire book written on a topic such as death was the fact that it never grew obsessively morbid or morose, and eventually resolves poignantly and resolutely. Though we all stand in the shadow of death, the ability of the greatest artists (and of someone such as Thomson himself) to look that reality in the eye, and live (or write or sing) even more fully because of it, is what makes living worthwhile.”

Finally, read my – admirably even-handed, I thought – review of the new Stereophonics album here. Easy to mock (the title, the earnest acceptance of every rock cliche, the lyrics, the lack of ambition), much harder to be constructive. But not nearly as much fun, admittedly.

Hallowed Spaceboy

“Aged 22 in 1969, the erstwhile David Jones had already bolted through several undistinguished incarnations - quiffed R'n'B band leader, king mod, hippie, sub-Anthony Newley vaudevillian, mime artist - before landing somewhere between Bolan and Bob Dylan, yet another London art-school boy with crazy hair, a 12-string guitar and a penchant for forming "Arts Laboratories" in the function rooms of Beckenham pubs”.

Among the many treats in this week’s New Statesman is my essay celebrating 40 years of David Bowie “as the shape-shifting, gender-hopping, zeitgeist-jumping pop star in excelsis.” You can read it here.

Anne Briggs at 65

My book editor and I were recently bandying around ideas for fantasy projects and we both agreed that, one day, it would be great to write a book about Anne Briggs. But who would buy it? Some hipster-folksters regard Briggs in much the same way that excitable pop-culturists see Madonna, but back in the real world she's hardly what you'd call a unit-shifter. No matter. For those of us who have been enchanted by her music over the years, her impact can't be measured in pounds, pence and Amazon sales ranks.

I had the great - and very rare - pleasure of interviewing her a couple of years ago. She was very nervous, and lovely, and rather confused as to what all the fuss was about. Anyway, she turned 65 a few weeks ago, so in celebration of her extraordinary voice, and for having the guts to live her life according to her own instincts, and in the vain hope that we might yet get some new music from her, I thought it might interest a few devotees to unearth the interview feature, which first appeared in Record Collector.

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Anne Briggs’s journey into the annals of folk legend began with a hitch-hike to Edinburgh at the age of 15 and ended, 14 years later, with a retreat into nowhere. In the intervening years she established herself as not only perhaps the purest folk voice of her generation, but also as an elusive figure, uncomfortable operating within the confines of stage and studio. Briggs never truly lost her inhibitions in formal situations, hence perhaps why her recorded legacy is so slim: a handful of songs scattered across EPs and compilation albums, one album for Topic and two more for CBS. She has been silent since 1973. Read More

The Week That Was

An interesting week: conversations with Sufjan Stevens (we last met in 2006, sitting on the grass in McCarren Park in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; he was sweet and pretended to remember), Charlie Watts and Alison Goldfrapp, covering topics as diverse as soul singers turned elevator attendants, sharing a tailor with Sonny Rollins, and writing non-Beatlesy music for a film about the young John Lennon. All will be revealed in good time. Meanwhile, if you can stand more Eitzel, my interview with the man himself is in today's Herald. Here's a peek:

"I feel sometimes at my most tortured – it’s a default setting and it’s a little phoney,” he says. “I have a broad range of things I could say, so I decided about four years ago that I was no longer going to be a negative person and I wasn’t going to ­surround myself with negative people. It’s a battle. I’m incredibly self-destructive – well, no, there are more self-destructive people, Lord knows – but I don’t want to be that person, or to be ­perceived as that person, any more. I’ve changed a lot.”