Originally written by Wendy Roby · 11 April 2011
this week’s column is written in free verse this is a horror to format requiring the use of many paragraph breaks you can’t see them but in real life behind the red velvet curtains of the internet and even though red curtains put one in mind of album titles by ladysingersongwriters who write songs with fountain pens filled with That Sort Of Red, in haitch tee em ell they look like this: < brrrrrrrrrrr > yeah i read some books
Single of the Week!
Connan Mockasin - ‘Forever Dolphin Love’ EP (Phantasy)
in case you were wondering and even if you were not i love connan mockasin he wears satin shirts made from the bedsheets of aged playboys and makes records fashioned from jazz about falling in love with women who just happen to be dolphins inconvenient. it’s probably about sex most things are.
Jamie Woon - ‘Lady Luck’ (Candent / Polydor)
if ever a name were ripe for verse it is jamie woon one could write a paragraph dripping in vowels like double humbert from that book about wrongsex with underageds. that is my favourite book and ‘lady luck’ is my favourite song ‘it ain’t something you can synthesise’ ‘and it ain’t something you can buy’ he’s right, you know. what an absolutely xxxxxxxxtraordinary song it sounds like all your christBASSes come at once doyousee dog it’s good dog he’s clever he also has the fulsome cheeks of a cherub were he my boyfriend i would trill his name wooooooooooooooooon wooooooooooooooooon how embarrassing he’s not my boyfriend. one addenda, jamie so-called woooon: it's about your mousse-tarsh. how can something that wrong look so right? Colourmusic - ‘You For Leaving Me’ (Memphis Industries)
colourmusic not to be confused with colours below made that one that went put in a little gas last year do you remember it I do Here it is ‘you for leaving me’ is not about gasoline or euphemisms for putting things in your mouth that make you jolty it does however have a video set in an industrial kitchen where colourmusic alloneword put teddies on carving blocks and lop their heads orf in slo motion blood comes out it’s a bit like masterchef but i hope it’s not really about vegetarianism ‘would you eat cows if they had faces like teddies?’ i would. Colours - ‘Playground’ from ‘Bildungsroman’ EP (Sleep All Day / Marshall Teller)
colours know the german for ‘novel in which our hero or heroine learns stuff over a period of time’ and i hope this isn’t like the time i read on a press release that a band took Kerouac on the tour bus not literally but it definitely made them literary and definitely doesn’t mean they spent five minutes ‘fore a rack in fopp or hmv pondering cut-price loss-leading palahniuk, vonnegut, salinger [shut up i don’t need an ‘and’ because this is free verse man also because it is poetry i use ‘fore’ instead of ‘before’] where was i oh yes this band ‘fore a rack in fopp’ deciding which Great Writer summed up their definitely interesting definitely unique definitely existential MAN CRISIS which was definitely unlike any crisis that happened before to any other humans 'Kerouac speaks to me man' 'Playground' on the other hand does not it skims over a person like unwashed paintbrushes made of fog i want colours if that really is their real name to hoick hoick is a great word don’t you find i want colours to hoick up their collective waistband and get a ruddy job. Emika - ‘Count Backwards’ (Ninja Tune)
Emika wrote to me once and said she had read what I had written about her songs and would I write something about her album to send to other idiot journalists stranger things have happened to me as a music writer but the sharp tang of realization which wasn't proustian i ruddy hate Proust like most fronch ponces he is too full of hisself
anyway, back to me, when I had that tang i told you about and was suddenly aware that some bands may actually read the things i write about them Terrifying. Emika thought i was a man because my reviews were blue she was all charm like her single which is about counting a metronome that scores a groove marking each beat of your love affair as well as each beat of its inevitable demise Ooooooooooooo. Joan As Police Woman - ‘Nervous’ (PIAS)
joan is not a police woman BUT A HUMAN BEING get a load of those capitalz everyone she makes pop songs all of which should get her arrested for being too bloody good at writing pop songs here is another it's called 'Nervous' it’s bloody good. Deerhunter – ‘Memory Boy’ (4AD)
once i tried to be clever and play out deerhunter in a fancy bar on white vinyl the booth such as it was was under some stairs under a wee-coloured light bulb i couldn’t see the grooves i slammed it in as if my name were tabitha or mairead “they don’t even play the records properly” sorry messrs Cox, Archuleta, Fauver, and Pundt your names are poetry but my djing was not this is a shame because your songs are heaven if a little easy to enjoy ‘bands this easy to like are easy to go off’ mean, yes and assuredly fickle but sort of true as well.
Angel Sized - ‘Angel Sized’ from ‘The Listed Building’ EP (Armellodie) angel sized has something of the stereolabs about it except that these labs are run by students unqualified pop scientists but not dis- qualified because they are still learning so are allowed to make mistakes just like me. all in all: far from perfect but fuzzy naïve skuzzy and other words that look good on a white page and essentially mean the same thing which is: promising. Slam Donahue - ‘Where Were We On The Weekend’ (Too Pure)
when you write in free verse slight things are given undue import so that even when you are saying diddly squat it doesn’t look like it so it is with slam donahue who sound like they should play b ball but who in fact play jolly pop songs small in concept but big on giddy wwwotw sounds like twee pop that has not lost a single hairslide to the perilous straightness of its hair ‘I don’t know why I keep buying them’ my mum used to say. wwwotw is twee pop voiced by him out of management or em gee em tee as they will insist on being known Historians Look Back On 2011 And Conclude: vwls r fr sqrs it’s not a headline or a haiku maybe next week. Wendy is on Twitter, here. If you think this is bad, imagine the fucking diary.