The Return of Duffy

There’s nothing like opening your mouth to prove you’re a liar. As soon as I suggest that, let’s say, Duffy has vanished off the face of the earth, never to be seen again, then, blow me down, there she is, large as life on ‘Later with Jools Holland’, warbling a few new songs from her forthcoming album, ‘Endlessly’. In fact in the same show was The Ting Tings, also back after a period of nothingness, with their new single, ‘Hands’. You just can’t win.


But when you start thinking about it, this business of when and how to release product onto the market, is one steeped in difficulty. It seems to me that as an artist with a long term career, you are in constant danger of falling into one of two Deep Dark Wells.

Deep Dark Well One is labelled, ‘Not you again, can’t you just leave me alone? I’ve only just got used to your last album and can’t really find the cash just now’. Normally, I like to savour an album for a bit, especially if it is particularly good, and get to know every nuance and inflection. This generally takes a bit of time and the last thing you want is to find that yet another album is on the shelves begging for your attention. Record companies are particularly bad at pushing artists into seizing the moment and releasing a load of half-baked songs onto a public that are lapping up the current stuff. I know that the Beach Boys used to release about 4 LPs a year but frankly, I couldn’t cope with this.

Deep Dark Well Two is labelled, ‘Who? Where the hell have you been for the last 5/10/15 years? Sorry but I’ve moved on and have a huge roster of new artists to devote my limited time to’. This is always a bit sad, but go away and hide for long periods and you really can’t expect your public to be waiting around like a stood-up date for very long. Life’s too short and there is always another band to come along and fill your shoes. Unless you are a mega-star you really cannot get away with not producing anything for decades, can you Kate?

So what’s the solution? With the benefit of 40-odd years of buying and following bands, my considered opinion is that an album every eighteen months to two years is about the right balance and if an artist could see their way clear to releasing a new song, say as a download or EP in the middle of the fallow period just to say, ‘I’m still here’, that would be grand. This approach has several benefits. First, it allows the artist to write and refine some decent material rather than filling up with rejects from the previous effort and second, it gives the buyer a bit of a breather.

On this basis and assuming that new albums from Duffy and The Ting Tings will not be available until late 2010 or early 2011, they might just have left it a shade too long, methinks.

Best of the Noughties

Bloody hell!  Here we are again.  Where did the year go? Looks like I blinked and missed it again. Even worse, looking at the calendar shows that it is nearly 2010 and that actually, a whole decade seems to have got behind us since those millennium celebrations, without so much as a by your leave.  Perhaps now is the time to have a look back at some of my personal favourite moments from the last 10 years?  Oh, all right then...

PJ Harvey – Stories From the City Stories From the Sea (2000). The decade got off to a cracking start with this effort from Polly Jean who suddenly discovered tunes but remembered to wrap them up in her finest edgy, raw and emotional playing.

REM – Reveal (2001). Possibly my favourite REM album to date having a symphonic ‘Pet Sounds’ ambience to it and some tunes that even Brian Wilson would’ve approved of. Consistent and accomplished if perhaps lacking a little in energy, but then ‘Accelerate’ didn’t turn out that well, did it?

Aimee Mann – Lost in Space (2002). Poor old Aimee. She just never seems to get the recognition she deserves and yet this is another fine album in a long line of fine albums packed with hummable tunes and astute lyrics. If only people would take notice.

Bangles – Doll Revolution (2003). Like the eighties had never gone away, the girls regrouped and produced what may yet be their best album ever. Time apart had given them space to grow musically and grow up emotionally. The result is this sparkling collection of songs given the classic updated psychedelic treatment overlaid with breathtaking harmonies.

Keane – Hopes and Fears (2004). Keane seem to have lost their way now but this debut is still as fresh as a daisy boasting gorgeous melodies, passionate vocals and a real sense of togetherness as a musical outfit. There was an endearing earnestness about them then that is still attractive now.

Sing-Sing – Sing-Sing and I (2005). The final curtain for Emma Anderson? Sing-Sing is no more and she has disappeared without trace leaving behind this little gem. The ex-shoegazer expands her palette to include trance-like ambients, heartbreaking ballads and jaunty sing-a-longs all wrapped up in stylised arrangements. Fab.

Nerina Pallot – Fires (2006). The Uk’s great unsung talent and answer to Tori Amos issues a bunch of superior singer-songwriter fare on her own label following being unceremoniously ditched by Polydor. Forget ‘The X Factor’, THIS is real talent.  Also, 'Real Late Starter' is on the bench as first substitute in my 'Song For Me' list.

Kim Wilde – Never Say Never (2006). The blonde-next-door returns from the garden as her 50th year beckons and produces a stunner of an album. New material rubs shoulders with reworks of old well-loved songs like they were long lost siblings. Guitars howl and drums reverberate in what could well be my favourite album of the decade. Pity the UK ignored it but the Europeans love it…and they’re right.

Lady Gaga – The Fame (2008). The new Madonna crashes the scene in the usual way: masses of outrageous sexual imagery and even more ridiculous costumes. The trouble is, she can play and she can write a great tune – ‘Just Dance’, ‘Poker Face’…the list goes on. Can she keep this up? Only time will tell.

Ting Tings – We Started Nothing (2008). The Mancunian duo has risen in meteoric style this year and although this is not an all time great album, it shows enough pep to give them the benefit of the doubt. Can’t wait to see what happens next.

Bat For Lashes – Two Suns (2009). Brighton’s Natasha Khan and her exemplary band have created a beautiful ambient world full of strange exotic instruments and shifting rhythms. Their Glastonbury appearance was quite mesmerising.

Little Boots – Hands (2009). Bolstered by a series of YouTube ‘at home’ videos, Victoria Hesketh has showed herself to be a rising star destined for the top. Blessed with a prodigious song writing talent, her down to earth personality was not best served by a slightly over-produced album. Yet the promise is there – no doubt about it.

Well, that’s it for this year. I’m off for a well earned break. I’ll see you all in the New Year. In the meantime have a look at Bloggerhythms' list - different and provocative!  Happy Christmas!

Composition of a Pop Star

Someone once said that there is 'nothing new under the sun' as it is recorded in Ecclesiastes I (1-14). Whoever it was, they were dead right. These days, whenever I listen to anything new, I am always reminded of something else be it singer, band, general song writing style, sound etc etc. After fifty-odd years of popular music this is bound to happen. So let’s have some fun with it.


I have taken three new-ish artists that I like to listen to and tried to break them down into their constituent parts – a bit like those chemical tests you used to do in practical Chemistry at school (although how anyone was supposed to keep that mystery compound on a bit of charcoal block when using a blowpipe through the Bunsen flame I’ll never know – mine usually ended up over the person next to me).

So without further ado, here are the results of my analysis. First up is Natasha Khan and her consortium, Bat For Lashes. As you can see, the main constituents are Kate Bush, Björk and Tori Amos with a bit of Supertramp rhythm thrown in around an Annie Lennox ambience. All very pastoral and ambient, perhaps traces of a bit of Pink Floyd and Chemical Brothers are missing here?

My second artist is Little Boots, whose debut ‘Hands’ is beginning to get under my skin after a bit of initial indifference. She is revealed as a sort of Kylie/Billie hybrid mixed with a strong 1980s electro-pop influence represented by Depeche Mode, OMD and the Human League. (I cheated a bit on the last band as Phil Oakey sings on one track).

My final analysis is the Ting Tings who are a strange mixture of punk/new wave and 1970s disco with the strangled vocal style incorporating the rap of Neneh Cherry and the paranoia of Poly Styrene and David Byrne (‘that’s not my name’!!). Their drums/guitar configuration ought to suggest the influence of the White Stripes but somehow it doesn’t really reveal itself in sufficient quantities to be significant. Perhaps a bit of Phil Collins drumming should’ve showed up?

I knew Chemistry lessons would be useful one day! Anyone else got any results they’d like to share?

Glastonbury Festival 2008

I’m not sure what it was this time around, but for the first time in many years, I didn’t really connect to this year’s Glastonbury Festival. Perhaps it was the fact that it didn’t rain. Well, not much anyway. Perhaps it was the bill that didn’t have any really charismatic names on it or perhaps it was just me getting old and blasé?

So I find myself struggling to nominate my usual top three awards this year. None of the headliners caught my eye. Kings of Leon were reasonable but didn’t win me over. Jay-Z didn’t convert me to rap although his set had been carefully thought out to counter criticism that he didn’t belong at a ‘rock’ event and although The Verve weren’t that bad, they didn’t really cast off the tag of ‘has-beens’ that seemed to hang over them.

So what am I left with?

Well, third prize goes to the enigmatic Alison Goldfrapp even without the horse’s tail. This year we were treated to her ‘folk’ period music accompanied by papier-mâché beasts and a dress that looked like a shredded shower curtain. Well up to standard then.

Second prize goes to Welsh chanteuse, Duffy - and this has nothing to do with the red hotpants. Rather it goes to a performer who just stood on stage and sang beautifully. No dancers, no gimmicks, just an honest performance of some great tunes.

And finally my top award goes to the Ting Tings, who despite my guarded review of their debut album earlier in this blog, produced a lively and thoroughly entertaining set that I really enjoyed watching and showed a degree of versatility that I thought might be beyond them given the fact that there’s only two of them. Comparisons with the White Stripes are usual, but the Ting Tings are entirely different in style and content. Playing on the John Peel stage, I did actually wonder whether Peely would’ve approved of their unashamedly throwaway pop but I loved them. Top Act!

As the years go by, it is great to see artists that once held a prominent place in my record collection play some of the lesser stages at distinctly non-prime times. Without fanfare or pressure to make a name for themselves, they have a relaxed outlook which conveyed a sense of calm to their audience. There were a few this year, Joan Baez, Candi Staton, Neil Diamond, Leonard Cohen and Jimmy Cliff amongst them but in particular was Joan Armatrading who played a beautifully poignant set and played some mean guitar to boot. Good on yer, Joan.

Finally – Amy Winehouse. Her live appearances are more akin to a car crash these days. To watch her slur through a load of OK songs left me both fascinated and disturbed in equal order. Can’t somebody help her, please?

Let’s hope next year perks the thing up a bit as it would be a crying shame if it were to slowly die the death of a thousand lacklustre acts.

We Started Nothing

I first saw the Ting Tings, comprising Manchester duo Katie White and Jules De Martino, on TV playing at Glastonbury last year and thought them worth a second glance. It was the reverse White Stripes set-up of a male drummer and female singer/guitarist that got my attention (perhaps they should have been the ‘Black Spots’?) So instead of Meg White on drums we have Jules De Martino and in the Jack White role of Vocals and Guitar we have Katie White – what is about the White surname, is it Musicians Union sponsored?

Apart from the gender/instrument reversal we also have a distinct difference in style. The Ting Tings replace The White Stripes’ earnest grungy blues/rock with a brand of almost superficial Indie/dance/pop that seems quite popular at the moment – witness a similar output from CSS. Now, after the fabulous single ‘Great DJ’ comes their first proper album ‘We Started Nothing’, a copy of which arrived with the post recently and a rather mixed bag it has turned out to be.

There seems to be a trend back towards shorter albums again after the excesses encouraged by the bigger capacity available on a CD and this one clocks in at around 37 minutes, which to my mind is about right. It contains 10 slices of perky dance pop, about 5 of which are quite irresistible and is the epitome of good feelgood pop. Let’s be clear here, despite the critical panning some quarters have given this album, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with disposable pop music provided it is enjoyable. The problems here are not to do with style but to do with the fact that outside of the really great 5 songs there are a few too many that become a tad tedious after repeated listens and the remainder of the album which is neither one thing nor the other.

Generally, given the self imposed limitations of a duo with only a guitar and a drum kit at their disposal, the album does manage to convey a number of styles and tempos but by blatantly cheating with the judicious introduction of bass, keyboards and some tasteful overdubs the limits of their sound have been successfully expanded. But still there remains the poor material.

The real worry about the Ting Tings is that they are being hyped mercilessly by the media and will probably drown in it. Whilst this album is for at least part of it, a fun listen, it is not the best thing since sliced bread and we should keep a bit of perspective here. It’s basically half a great album. Let’s leave them alone and see what comes next before beating the ‘next big thing’ drum.