It's all in the skinny-fits...

This is completely unrelated to the things we normally write about, but voyeuristically leafing through the tabloid problem pages this morning, we couldn't help laughing at the line

"The child is growing up to be stupid and shallow - just like her mother"

The child, by the way, is nine years old.

"I love my boyfriend but I wish his girl had never been born"

Awww! We can empathise with this cold, heartless cunt though; we feel like that about a lot of people's daughters.

Friend Of Mine

While we’re on the subject of MySpace…

SORT IT OUT ALLEN.

Milke: The Situation

A not-entirely-awful band added us on MySpace last week, and for that they should be saluted.

Most of the bands who try and make friends with us are, to be charitable, completely rubbish at what they do. If they were plumbers, Nick Knowles or that smug one off House Of Horrors would be all over them for their shoddy workmanship. Yet still they persist.

So it made a very pleasant surprise when a band who were actually quite good got in touch for a change. Their name is Milke. Their MySpace, including a few of their songs, is here.

They are sort-of electro and sort-of pop. Despite claims to the contrary they are not very indie.

You very much get the feeling that if they were able to lighten up a bit they would be absolutely brilliant, so we’re going to send them a crate of poppers, some not-boring clothing and a Chromeo CD and see if they can collate these things into a more joyous experience. Hurrah!

AWWBLOT?

We went rifling through our old records in the attic last week, and found some music by a band called …And What Will Be Left Of Them? (catchy name, etc.) who we first went to see while we were at university.

…And What Will Be Left Of Them? were good because they made the kind of music that made you jump around and spill drinks and sing ridiculously, and they quite clearly did not care.

Their best songs were ‘Hi-Fi Lowlife’ and ‘4 Years To Be An Artist’, the latter of which sounded like a very camp version of Travis Barker’s band Transplants, all WOOP WOO-s and lyrics about wanting “a rum and coca-cola, please”.

Chances are you haven’t heard of …Them, so here are some things that you might like to know:

• They are from Worcester.
• According to their MySpace, they are ‘Pop / Electro / Indie’.
• They have a singer called Red White who is very attractive.
• Their bassist left university to tour with them.
• Hopefully that paid off for him.

Things seem to have gone a bit quiet on the …And What Will Be Left Of Them? front just lately, which is a shame. They released a free download last September called ‘Wet Weekend In July’ and have played a few gigs since then.

They are worth seeing if you do ever get the chance, but bear in mind that you might need to be under 23 and/or pissed on snakebite to fully appreciate their sound. We couldn’t say for sure.

From the front line...

Have a look at this AMAZING photo from when we went to watch The Long Blondes. We've added labels to clear things up but you might need to sit quite close to your screen to read them.

It's fair to say we've got a great future in gig photography.

Time to blow the speakers.

Hadouken! - That Boy That Girl

We’ve been a bit slow off the mark with Hadouken! really. We only heard them for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

However!

They have a tune called ‘That Boy That Girl’, which is our tune of the week. We don’t know when it’s actually released but it is definitely the tune of this week. And most other weeks too, probably.

Sounding at times like ‘Crazy Beat’ by Blur fed through a techno blender, it is the aural equivalent of being beaten up by a gang of hoodies who use glowsticks as weapons and who are quite happy to leave you with little more than 12p in change and the word TWAT scrawled on your forehead as a memento of the experience.

If more people made records that sounded like this, they could invent a genre where all the tunes are like updated versions of the old rave records from the early nineties… but what would they call it? Our money’s on ‘Now Rave’, or ‘Current Techno’.

It’s going to be HUGE.

Heavy Rotation...

What's had us swinging the walkman phone around with glee this week?

Guillemots - Annie, Let’s Not Wait
The kind of song you’d want to run away with, if it were by any means socially acceptable to do so. CD2 features a version of Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’, which is true to the original in every sense and not one of these “ooh let’s make a pop song slow to reveal its true meaning” pieces of bollocks that you normally get off the live lounge.

Fall Out Boy - Infinity On High
We don’t like Fall Out Boy very much but we absolutely love their new album. It is full of great songs. Also contains at least one type of horn, and a song in the boyband “vein”.

The Killers - Sam’s Town
We bought this on the “three good singles” rule and we’re not disappointed. Bling (Confessions of a King) should have been painfully executed at birth, though.

The Enemy - It’s Not OK
This song has a misleading title - it is actually very OK. Nothing more though. “Biggish” chorus.

Pendulum - Hold Your Colour (LP)
Quite why we don’t know, but we’ve been hit recently by an uncontrollable urge to PUT OUR FUCKING HANDS IN THE AIR. A daily dose of completely inappropriate drum n’ bass should be made compulsory.

Robyn - The Rakamonie EP
Please. Release. The. Album. Soon.

12”/80s/POP
We could list all the great tunes on this, but the tracklisting is readily available elsewhere. Best served in small portions, like the nibbly bits at an eighties fondue party.

A Live Review

It's all gone very indie...

The Long Blondes, Manchester Academy 2, 18th Feb

Age is on Kate Jackson’s mind tonight. She stops the show before ‘Once And Never Again’ to refute newspaper rumours that she’s - shock horror - thirty years old. “I’m only 27!”, she insists, to a crowd that probably wouldn‘t care if she was 50, never mind 30, “It’s terrible!”

Doth the lady protest too much? Whatever the truth, it’s clear that she wants to get on with the whole being-a-pop-superstar thing well before it’s too late.

It’s about time then, that roughly a year after the hype around them died down, The Long Blondes should finally learn to play their instruments properly and put on a good show. Gone is the largely-tuneless cacophony of their earlier shows, replaced by a sleek, streamlined but nonetheless riotous noise helmed by Jackson’s immense stage presence and seductive tones. Her singing tonight is impeccable, another early worry for the band put firmly to bed. Couple this with the fact that she knows a thing or two about getting the crowd on side and you’ve got a megastar in the making.

The band take to the stage with a menacing version of Lust In The Movies, driven along by Screech Louder’s simple but effective drumming technique: a bit like Meg White on REALLY strong steroids. They proceed to rattle through all of their debut’s highlights, each time to a rapturous response from an audience flirted into a frenzy by Jackson’s sly winks and sashays.

If there is a downside, it’s that any of the solid gold choruses aired tonight could realistically fit into any number of the songs - The Blondes aren’t currently in possession of the type of standout anthems that bands such as Franz Ferdinand or The Kaiser Chiefs can drop at will.

Kate should relax though; if they can prepare a few of those said anthems in time for album number two, and continue to put on shows like this, then there’s absolutely no reason why she won’t be queen of the indie castle long before she enters her fourth decade on earth.

BRIT of alright

Was it just our imagination or were the BRIT awards actually - gulp - quite entertaining to watch last night? Not as entertaining as watching something that is genuinely brilliant, like television‘s The Wire (never actually seen an episode, just fond of bandwagons) but enjoyable nevertheless.

There were some good performances, from Amy Winehouse and The Killers, and at least two of the awards actually went to the right person.

Highlights included Joss Stone’s re-invention as a vaguely racist soul stereotype (or drunken drag queen, depending on your point of view); Scissor Sisters doing live what they do in their new video; Jason Orange saying something Very Moving about his Dad, and a delightful moment that saw Best International Female Nelly Furtado scream and run away the second she caught sight of Russell Brand.

On the subject of Brand, this awards show saw him live up to at least some of his obvious potential and atone for the complete mess he made of last year’s NME awards. His joke and subsequent giggle before The Killers came on provided clear evidence that he was enjoying himself, and the stuff he said about The Sun was spot on (surprisingly, this was omitted from their review of his performance).

Obviously there were downsides. Arctic Monkeys’ HILARIOUS attempts to show the world that, yes, Alex Turner does have a sense of humour backfired when it transpired that even in fancy dress, he’s a sarcastic, sullen sod. Lily Allen didn’t win anything, and she had to suffer her father standing up to make a rubbish joke (it’s not a fucking wedding Keith).

And then there was Fearne Cotton. A one-woman barrage of nonsense who kept popping up to interview the winners (sample ‘interview’: “Do you agree that you‘re brilliant? I do. I think you guys are ahMAYzing”) and who unfurled over the evening in a way rivalled only by Joss ‘Can I Get A Witness’ Stone. It ended up with her running off to watch Oasis. She’s not been seen since.

So, yes, it was quite fun to watch. In a mouth-open sort of way. And what other awards show would give you the pleasure of seeing Mark Owen seemingly channelling spirits live on stage, during a performance, and then announce to the nation, “I’ve been sat over there, in my special chair”? Or get a US funk band in to cover the cigarette intermission? Few others we’d imagine.

The BRIT awards: permanently irrelevant, occasionally irritating, but more-often-than-not, beguilingly irresistible.

Dinosaur Jr.

We found out this morning that the strange small person running about in that new programme about monsters from back in the day REALLY IS Hannah from S-Club 7!

Doubtless the entire world and his wife already knew this, but OMG!!!!11!! SHE DONE ACTING LOL! We might give the programme a glance to see if she's any good, although the trailiers tend to suggest she's not.

Someone ought to do a round-up of where the various "S-Clubbers" are now. That would probably be INCREDIBLY interesting.

Turning Oblivion Into Money

Think it’s just M.I.A. who’s prepared to go to extreme lengths (like giving bird flu to a load of turkeys) to make her new record more marketable? Think again! Here, HYG goes back into the archives to look at some of the other crazy stunts and campaigns that have accompanied your favourite chart smashes.

Busted - ’Year 3000’
Few people know this but James Bourne actually built a time machine just before this song’s release, based on something he’d seen on Blue Peter. Sadly, upon arrival in the year 3000, he failed to spot the SIGNIFICANT CHANGE in people’s living habits, brushing off the fact that everyone lives underwater in the future with little more than a lyrical shrug.

Pet Shop Boys - ‘Being Boring’
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe took up being boring for a week to promote this 1990 single. Unfortunately the stunt backfired when the public failed to buy the record because they thought the boys were boring. It got to number 20 :-(

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
To publicise the launch of their smash hit album, the Manics held a giant car boot sale in their native Blackwood. Everything did go, except some of Nicky Wire’s dresses, which met a “muted” response.

T.a.t.u. - All The Things She Said
Became lesbians.

Girls Aloud - No Good Advice
To promote their second single, each of Girls Aloud became counsellors for two weeks. The twist was, they’d signed a secret agreement to only give bad advice. Management were left red-faced when Nicola told more than 30 people they should “probably” take the easy way out.

The Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen
Famously, the Pistols got on a boat and had a party to publicise this single. They did this because it is exactly the sort of behaviour the Queen hates, making it in turn both SUBVERSIVE and REBELLIOUS. But did you know that lead singer Johnny Rotten once wrote a letter to the Queen, intoning that he “actually quite likes her” and “it’s mainly Malcolm’s idea”? Shock horror!

So while M.I.A’s elaborate stunt might pose the biggest threat to the public’s wellbeing, it is far from being the first time someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to shift records.

Personally, we’re looking forward to seeing Patrick Wolf do a few nights working in casualty to promote ‘Accident & Emergency’ because, well, can you imagine what his gold lameé scrubs will look like?

Flip, Switch, Reverse

This isn’t our idea. In fact, we stole it off someone else. It is, however, well worth repeating due to it being pretty much spot on.

Think back to the late nineties. A glorious time. A time when any old bird with a nice frock and good make-up could rocket to the top of the charts, provided they had a suitably titillating video. The quality of the music barely mattered, it was more about the tits.

Maybe it wasn’t that glorious.

Anyway, the point is that at this time, there was a form of music called “alternative” that a lot of people liked. Not as many as liked old birds in frocks, but still. Alternative music was of a very high quality. It had to be otherwise no one would buy it, so discerning were the genre’s fans.

Basically, it was very easy for record companies to sell pop music, but a bit harder for them to shift alternative records, because they actually had to be good (that’s not to say there were no good pop songs at the time - quite the opposite - there were just a lot of bad ones too).

Fast forward to the present day and we find ourselves in much the same situation, except now it is pop music that actually has to be good in order to sell, whereas any two-bit bunch of scruffs in a Topman hat n’ scarf combo can find themselves lauded as the next big thing, as long they have a black and white section in their video and say they either like or hate Oasis.

But what brought about this reversal? There are people far better equipped than we are to answer that question, but we’d wager each of the following had a hand somewhere:

Girls Aloud / Xenomania / Richard X etc.
The Strokes
The last Spice Girls album
The Libertines
Topshop playing videos by The Strokes and The Libertines
Soulwax / 2ManyDJs / “Electroclash” etc.
“UK Garage”

Chuck all that and a bit more in a blender six years ago, serve it to the record companies and you end up where we are today. Every fucker wants to be in The Long Blondes. Nobody wants to be in Westlife, apart from [litigious comment removed]. Victoria Newton thinks Rudebox was “experimental”, while Radio 1 have just renamed pop music ‘Daytime’ music.

Despite how this might seem, pop’s not dead. It’s just moved town and changed its appearance. It goes by a few different names. But it’s still there, still alive, and healthier than ever in many ways. It’s really fucking cool now actually. You just have to find it.

OMG! SPOTTED!!!!11

It seems that when they aren’t off travelling to other dimensions and/or galaxies, Klaxons have to get around just like the rest of us. And they’re just as rubbish at doing it as we are.

We saw them at Euston station in London on Saturday, wandering around in circles, not really knowing where to go and generally looking a bit lost. This continued until the one who looks like a cartoon caveman loudly announced “Platform 2... James? Platform 2? James!” and off they trooped (it was a Glasgow train, FYI).

Sadly we didn’t get any pictures, although we can tell you that James certainly knows his way around a wardrobe. If not a train station.

Carra! Lion!!

Is Kate Nash brilliant or just completely ridiculous? It is hard to say. On the one hand, she has done some very nice songs and has a nice face. On the other, she is capable of making videos like this. A lesson in acting like an idiot and pronouncing words in the most annoying way imaginable. Oh dear.

There is a third possibility, that she’s brilliant and ridiculous, but we’re not so sure. Let’s just say the jury’s still out on this one.

They tried to make us go to rehab, we were too drunk to argue

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks pissed under a table working on other projects but we’re back now better* than ever. Here’s some notes and observations about stuff that happened during our time away.

Manic Street Preachers (they were the house band on This Life) announced a 22 (TWENTY-TWO) date tour of small venues, because they can no longer sell out arenas to get closer to their fans. Ironically, this would involve getting closer to the very fans that they alienate further with every passing release. Hmm.

The Jamie T album became an 8.

‘Myths Of The Near Future’ is going on the Albums Of The Year List and, short of a miracle, is staying put thankyouverymuch.

M.I.A. has got a new song knocking about. The video is here. It’s 25% eastern, 25% ‘Firestarter’ and 50% “unknown”. It’s also 100% brilliant, and in a stroke of marketing genius, comes just before we all die of the Turkey sniffles! Hooray for elaborate PR exercises!

FAO: Mika. “Hurtful” does not rhyme with “Purple”, nor is it a colour. And what’s all that business with smugly finishing drinks at the start of songs? AAAND, while we’re at it, what the blazing fuck is ‘Lollipop’ when it’s at home? There are limits, Mika; please observe them.

Amazing New Album alert: Patrick Wolf’s ‘The Magic Position’, out later this month, in which Patrick makes the progression from interesting wearer of cardigans to POP MEGASTAR. The title track, ‘Accident & Emergency’ and another one we’ve forgotten the name of are all particularly good.

Lily Allen’s new video is amazing and will, in about twelve months, spectacularly fail to win all the awards it so clearly deserves.


*probably not