Gig Review: Radio Luxembourg, Clwb Ifor Bach, 20/9/08

With their Welsh roots, catchy hooks and playful, psychedelic edge it would be easy to dismiss Radio Luxembourg as Super Furry Animals Juniors. There are certainly worse bands to try and emulate but the band mix in equal amounts of The Small Faces and Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd into their sound along with a clutch of riffs straight out of the Chuck Berry song book.

With their boundless energy and ever shifting tempo the Radio Luxembourg keep the crowd on their toes. Not everyone here tonight can follow the band's predominantly Welsh language lyrics but nobody seems to mind. It would be a shame if their lyrics stopped them reaching a wider audience. When they break out buzzy little pop-psych gems like Eli Haul it doesn't really matter what they're singing about, the music gets people dancing and singing along to lyrics they can barely pronounce let alone understand.

Regardless of the language barrier, Radio Luxembourg have hit upon a great sound but they could still do with a couple more killer songs in their set list. If they can come up with a few as instant and infectious as set highlight Mostyn a Diego they should have a bright future ahead of them.

Film Review: Rock'n'Rolla

Timing is everything. Movies take a long time to make and I'm sure when hapless Guy Ritchie wrote Rock'n'Rolla he had no idea a credit crunch would be upon us by the time his film hit cinema screens.

His film's assertion that London is a city on the rise, that the property market continues to grow and prices will continue to rise has invited derision from the critics, perhaps unfairly. It may be just a case of unfortunate timing but it only serves to underline the gap between Ritchie's latest lovable gangster flick and reality.

After the abject failure of Ritchie's last two films, Swept Away and Revolver, Ritchie has returned to the guns'n'gangsters safety zone of his previous successes but it seems that Ritchie is no longer capable of the things he used to make look easy. He no longer has the wit or the natural storytelling rhythm that made Lock Stock... such a treat. The cracks start to show early on. After years of rip off's and spoofs the decision to fill the film with a heavy handed Cockney voiceover is faintly embaressing in 2008.

Ritchie throws everything into the mix here. Violence, cod philosophy, a fine ensemble cast, a tasteful as you like rock and roll soundtrack and enough ripped, stripped male torsos to make me regret that last tub of cinema popcorn. Unfortunately none of this can compensate for the feeble tossed off plot, cutesy nicknames for every character or the vast amounts of clunky dialogue.

The film is by no means unwatchable. It holds your attention thanks largely to a clutch of charismatic performances, not least Toby Kebbell as the titular Rock'n'rolla, Johnny Quid, lead singer of the cringingly named fictional rock band The Quidlickers. Engaged as you may be, it's impossible to distract yourself from the knowledge that what you're watching is actually a bit, well, shit.

Before the credits roll a caption assures us "Archie, Johnny Quid and The Wild Bunch will return in The Real RocknRolla". You wonder how long Ritchie can keep making terrible movies before people stop giving him the money to make them?

Modern Life Was Rubbish...

Damon Albarn's critical stock has rarely been higher with plaudits for Gorillaz, The Good The Bad and The Queen, his Africa Express live events and his Mandarin language opera Monkey: Journey to The West. And yet, arguably his finest work, Blur album Modern Life is Rubbish, languishes in relative obscurity.

Is that right? Is that a fair and accurate statement? Can an album listed by the NME as 4th best British Album of all time really be described as 'obscure'? Well, I think so, yes. It may have benifitted from critical re-evaluation and praise from bands such as The Kaiser Cheifs but while every other person you meet could sing you Girls and Boys or Parklife few could whistle the equally catchy Star Shaped which is a shame.

After the baggy bandwagoneering of their debut lp, Modern Life is Rubbish is where Blur forged the identity that would take them to stardom, eschewing the contemporary trend towards Americana and embracing British culture. This album is one of the first steps along the path to what would come to be known as Britpop. Having said that, it's far from the mindless, gung ho celebration of Britishness that the Britpop movement would come to embody. With people who, 'feel so unecessary,' and return to the same bar every night after work, Albarn's lyrics aren't as scabrous as they would be later on The Great Escape but you could hardly describe their tone as celebratory.

Modern Life is Rubbish is a subtler, less kalaidescopic work than its hit laden follow up Parklife but from the Jaunty Sunday Sunday to the queasy Oily Water it is no less varied. Though he would a evoke a similar mood again on tracks like Sweet Song or Badhead, the dreamy, exsquisite Blue Jean may be the finest thing Albarn has ever written, in whichever company. Meanwhile, Graham Coxon takes the opportunity to give us some of his finest, most interesting guitar playing and gives the songs texture and depth that is sorely missed by so many bands who try to take Blur as a jumping off point.

If you're unfamiliar with this album, or even with Blur themselves, if you've only heard Song 2 or Girls and Boys and you don't think Blur are for you, I urge you to beg, steal or borrow this record.

Burger King Dark Whopper

Hmmmmm, junk food, yummy! Doesn't it look appealing? Just like on the commercials! To, 'celebrate,' the release of Batman film The Dark Night, Burger King have introduced a new burger 'inspired' by the movie. The 'Dark Whopper' is made using black pepper ketchup, black pepper cheese and 'dark' grill sauce.

There is so much wrong with the very concept of burger/movie cross promotion I don't know where to begin and Burger King are already in my bad books for the horribly crass product placement in the Iron Man movie. But I found myself wishing I had been a fly on the wall when somone told The Dark Night's co-writer and director Christopher Nolan about this new product:

"Wow, you were inspired to great a whole new menu item by my movie? Well jeez, I guess that's kinda flattering but let me see now...this is a movie about power and corruption, about madness and redemption, fear and hope. It's full of violence and romance and drama. What on Earth kind of crazy burger did you come up with based on all that?"
"Errrrm, well, we kinda used more black pepper than usual." It's inspiring stuff isn't it? Those Burger King chefs really are artists in their own right. Next up I wanna see, The Dark Whopper Returns, the movie inspired by the burger inspired by The Dark Night. Surely it's the next logical step?

Album Reviews: Brian Wilson and The Verve.

My job in the magazines department of a successful book, CD and DVD retailer does have its perks, amongst them the opportunity to hear new(ish) albums piped into the store via a multi-disc changer in the office. Recent albums I've been hearing a lot of lately include The Verve's Forth and Brian Wilson's That Lucky Old Sun.

Now, perhaps more dedicated and, let's be frank, better writers would make sure they take the time to hear an album properly, at least with the tracks sequenced in their intended order and not interspersed with entries for this years Mercury Prize and classics of Seventies soft rock. Mind you, perhaps more dedicated, better, writers have a bigger budget to buy CDs on spec. Me? I'm living beyond my means on a bookseller's wage and I think I've heard enough to start casting my judgements.

I was dubious about The Verve reunion the moment I heard about it. That doesn't make me especially insightful or perceptive. I'm sure I'm just one of thousands who were equally sceptical. After all, even at their best The Verve skirted dangerously close to being pompous, pretentious and plodding. Meanwhile, Richard Ashcroft's solo career has done little to reassure us he's still firing on all songwriting cylinders.

So, the whooping, rocking lead single Love Is Noise was something of a pleasant suprise. After all, even their most ardent supporters had little reason to suspect that The Verve were still capable of being so upbeat, so energised, so concise. If the whole album lived up to this one track we'd be looking at a bloody good record. But it doesn't. Sadly, Love Is Noise proves to be the exception rather than the rule. Everything else is slow, gloomy and outstays its welcome by about four minutes.

Now, with the The Verve cooly dismissed, lets get on to Brian Wilson. To many it's a suprise that Wilson's still capable of recording new music at all and we can all applaud the effort that has gone in these past few years, bringing Wilson's recording career back from the dead. However, that still leaves the rather awkward issue of whether or not the results are actually any good? Musically, That Lucky Old Sun is just what you would expect from Brian Wilson, lush, melodic and stuffed with harmonies. What's missing is the lighness, the euphoria and joy that those sixties Beach Boys records still evoke. Wilson's songs still sound like Beach Boys songs, there's even an exquisite little accapella moment that could be a long lost sibling to SMiLE's Our Prayer, but here they're mere rehashes, throwing the slightly stale ingredients together again and hoping for the best.

He doesn't do himself any favours with the lyrics. After all, Brian Wilson has lived an interesting enough life. He's endured drug abuse and family tragedy, been hailed as a genius, worshipped as a superstar and dismissed as a drug-addled husk. Surely he's got something interesting to say about it all? In fact a bit of regret tinged reminiscience would be just the job for Wilsons older, slightly craggy voice. But no, Wilson's still determined to reassure us that as long as the sun shines and there are cars and girls beneath it everythings alright with the world. We've heard it all before and in this new more cynical century we no longer quite believe it.

It's a comforting thought, the idea that our heroes might once again capture their former glories and create new, fresh music that excites us just as much as the stuff that captured our hearts in the first place. To believe it can be done reassures us, suggests that we too might might cheat time and avoid the diminishment of our powers that comes with age. Sadly however, the end product almost never meets up to our expectations and once again this has proven to be the case. Still, with loads of great new music around at the moment and people like Damon Albarn refusing to look back to former glories but instead twisting their music into new and exciting shapes it's no bad thing to ignore the Ashcrofts and Wilsons of this world and embrace the new. Or something.