Annuals - Brother

Beginning like some sort of meeting of minds, with all of the eloquence of a book club, the music casually meanders along. The vocals dance along with the gentle guitar and the sounds of nature and strings. When summer comes round, try putting your pillow in the freezer before you go to bed, the feeling of bliss and calm when you rest your head on the pillow, is just like the beginning of this song.

The song gradually builds up to a crescendo of chaos and an orchestra onslaught. It’s the cats’ pyjamas. The lyrics poetic, the music vicious and passionate. Annuals want you to sit up and fucking listen, and you should.

It all calms down a bit, so that the conclusion of the parable can be delivered, and so their work is done, and they can go off on one again.

This song goes to show that you don’t need the formulaic verse, chorus, verse. In fact it just goes to show that you don’t even need a chorus. Good, honest, proper music, just like a good honest, proper meal, easy to digest and leaving you wanting more.

It defies logic that a 3 minute song can be an epic, but this is. Taking you from lying down, resting your eyes on your frozen pillow, to the upper echelons of elation, pinned against your ceiling, not wanting the music to stop.

The album will be out on the 18th of June, whilst this single is out the week before, on the 11th.


Here is the video…..

Oppenheimer / Mushi Mushi at Independent, Sunderland - Live Review, Published in NARC. # 15

First it was 9pm, then 9.30pm, then 10pm, I have no idea what time it was, but support act Mushi Mushi were finally forced on to the stage. Ten of us stood in the vacant space, whilst three sat in "comfy chairs". It was loud, I found myself being an old person, thinking "oooh, turn it down" in my head, but the noises got louder and more penetrable. They weren't my cup of tea. I have to admire their tenacity though, for playing to a bakers dozen of us, in a seedy room that smelt of an old person's sitting room.

A change of scenery on stage, and Belfast duo Oppenheimer are ready to go. The place has filled up a bit more. Looking around at the barely legal girls and the fresh faced boys, I start to feel old again. But then something wonderful happens, Oppenheimer start playing.

Suddenly I don't feel like a 28 year old having an early mid-life crisis, suddenly I feel as if I'm one of these 18 year olds again, I just wish I'd get ID'd at the bar instead of the girl looking at me as if I was a sick old pervert.

Oppenheimer are a big shiny plane, dropping pop parcels with parachutes to the needy. I find myself singing along, and bopping my head up and down like a Churchill dog on the back window of some scamps Renault Clio.

In the darkness and smokiness of Independent, it could almost be the summertime, as Oppenheimer's electro-pop seeps into my ears like a runny egg yolk from a bacon sandwich.

The chorus of "This Is Not A Test" makes me want to cry, "Breakfast in NYC" makes me want to dance, and if I hadn't already been converted, single "Saturday Looks Bad To Me" makes me want to force feed this band on a big giant spoon to everyone that I meet.

It's not often that I venture to Sunderland, and it's even less often that I expect to fall head over heels in love with a band. Oppenheimer are outstanding.



You can get more information about Oppenheimer at their MySpace, or at their website. Their album is available now.

More information on Mushi Mushi can be found at their MySpace, too.

Whilst NARC. is currently available in all good record shops, pubs, practice rooms etc. etc. View more information on NARC. magazine, including outlets, at their MySpace, and at their website.

When Bands Break Your Heart

It’s the realisation that the band you’ve stuck up for so vehemently, the band that you’ve believed in and pinned all your hopes and dreams on, the band that write songs about your life, you realise that they are nothing but a sell out like the rest of them.

It happens to them all, don’t trust your favourite band, don’t dare fall in love, because Burt Bacharach was right, the only thing you’ll get when you fall in love is, “A girl with a pin to burst your bubble/That's what you get for all your trouble”.

That bubble that bursts can be anything really, it can be the chance meeting of your idol, when you realise they’re actually a cunt. Even though for years, you’ve knew that they were a cunt, you just kept lying to yourself. You heard them on radio, you saw the interview on TV, but you still kept on going, you still kept believing in them, no matter how much of an arse they sounded, and no matter how much you didn’t agree with what they were saying. You stood by them through the addictions, through the relationship problems, no matter how many times they let you down, you’d still be there.

And all they ever do is build you up to let you back down again. They sing songs to you that you swear were written about your childhood, about your town, they croon about how your last relationship petered out. You defend them when your friends say they’re shit, you quote and post endlessly on Internet forums when somebody has the brass neck to say they didn’t like their new album.

You turn obsessive, bidding endlessly on cardboard cutouts that some eBay entrepreneur found, whilst rummaging through the skip at the back of HMV. You buy the German, Australian and Japanese versions of the new single, just to get the extra B-sides and live tracks. You enthuse about them wildly at parties and gigs, not being able to comprehend why nobody else is as passionate as you about them.

But Noel Gallagher was right, you know. “Please don’t put your lives in the hands of a rock and roll band, they’ll throw it all away”, he sung in “Don’t Look Back In Anger”. But even when you hear Noel saying that, he becomes just like you and you move on from your broken heart, because you’ve found an affinity with another rockstar, who is just as hurt and vulnerable as you are, and the cycle begins again.

Everything is just there to suck you in, to make you buy more records, to make you buy every version of every single, to make you buy the vinyl twice, once in black and once on limited edition pink vinyl. They’re using you, cheating on you. And then comes the ultimate, just when your clinging onto the romance by a tiny thread, they go and put their songs on an advert, they sign to a major label, they start going to celebrity parties. It’s the final nail in the coffin of your relationship.

You go to work the next day, and the band that you held so dear, the band that you thought nobody else knew about, the band that you’d discovered long before they were on the radio or in the NME, suddenly, they belong to everyone. Suddenly the fat bastard at the coffee machine is humming the tune from the advert, suddenly everybody wants to go and see them live, suddenly the person with no taste that you hate is in love with the lead singer, the twat who knows nothing about music tries to dress the same way as them. You should be happy for the band, but in a selfish and jealous way, it’s eating your insides up. You’ve lost everything; it doesn’t belong to you anymore.

Inevitably you still hold a torch for them, you try to convince yourself that they mean nothing to you, but as much as you join in with your friends in slagging them off, you still remember the good times that you had, and the memories that come back every time you hear that song on their first album.

Whether it's a band you love, whether it's your heroes, Burt was definitely on the money.

“What do you get when you fall in love?
You only get lies and pain and sorrow
So for at least until tomorrow
I'll never fall in love again”.

The White Stripes - Icky Thump

In doing a bit of research (how professional do I sound?) for this single, I found it impossible to maintain a shred of attention or concentration because of the cock in mouth cacophony of the reviewers. Jack White is “this”, Jack White is “that”, “best guitarist around”, “best voice around”, “best songwriter around”, “best frontman around”, etc. etc. etc.

Is he? Really?!?

If the aliens came down in a big saucer and told the human race that they wanted the best there was or else they’d blast us into smithereens with ray-guns, would we really offer up Jack White? In all fairness it’d probably depend upon who the extra terrestrials approached. I’m thinking it’d be George Bush or the Pope, but you never know with these dodgy peripheral pilgrims. Got to be one of those though hasn’t it?

If aliens were coming, they’d have done their research and they’d go straight to the most powerful man (when I say man, I’m not being sexist, I’m saying man as a generic term for mankind, this encompasses both men and women). I can’t see Bush or the Pope pointing towards Jack White, probably more because of their personal taste in all honesty, but that’s beside the point.

Saying that, if they did come to speak to the world’s most powerful people, we could royally fuck them over by giving them Erasure’s Andy Bell, and then they wouldn’t have a chance of putting their weird pointy three fingered palms on our planet, horrible googly eyed big headed nomad fucks. Aye, that’s right you alien bastards, go and probe the Bell, suck his brains out for all we care, let’s see you invade our planet when you’ve all got the AIDS.

Let’s get the lazy stuff out of the way, so you don’t have to read every other review in the world. It sounds like Led Zeppelin, it contains electric bagpipes/synths/electric violins (depending where you read), it doesn’t contain piano, it’s very political, it’s classic 70’s heavy rock.

In all honesty, it’s more Spinal Tap than Sabbath, and it’s more heavy going than Heavy Metal.

It reminds me of High Tide, which is by no means bad, but that’s the thing, it’s not actually any good. It’s poor, but isn’t that the trend nowadays? Bands go on sabbatical, come back with a new album with a shite lead single, but after constant radio play, you start to like it. This won’t happen though, not for me anyhow, I’ve heard it far too many times, and I’m not for the turning.

The chances of me ever liking this single are the same as the chances of anything coming from Mars, a million to one, they say.

“Icky Thump” comes from the Yorkshire slang, “Ecky Thump”, meaning an exclamation of shock or surprise, here’s another Yorkshire phrase, “fucking shite”.


Here is the video for the single, so you can have a watch and a listen...

Emily Haines - Doctor Blind

I love stumbling across this sort of thing, it’s always nice and refreshing to hear somebody else moaning on, and singing songs that you can listen to when you’re feeling sorry for yourself, and it’s even more refreshing to hear this sort of thing when it comes from a woman’s voice.

Imagine Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Wurtzel getting together to write a load of happy go lucky songs, then giving up 5 pads of A4 later, and instead, bleeding their hearts out over a piano, a box of cheap cigarettes and a bottle of red.

This is the type of thing I can put on my branded mp3 player for a long haul train journey and look out the window, with every lyric fitting in with everything going on in my life and every melody somehow describing everything that I can see. By the time the train journey finishes I’ll be covered in my own tears and determined to throw myself in front of the train on the return journey. What a fucking beautiful, morose tune.

As somebody who has always had a sick fascination with rock and roll suicides, tragedies and the darker side of life, this tune gives me a metaphorical erection, if such a thing can exist.

The stages of erection can be compartmentalised into four varieties. From the most flaccid to the most tenacious todger, we first have the “Pink Flop”. The Pink Flop is basically your standard cock, it’s colloquially referred to as “on the slack”. We often lie about how long our lovelength is whilst “on the slack” in order to avoid embarrassment, or use phrases such as, “mine’s only a couple of inches on the slack, but it’s about 7 inches when I’ve got a hard on”, in order to avert from shame in testosterone fuelled conversations.

The second stage of erection is “Purple Shine”. This is your erection which has much akin to the variety known as “Brewers Droop”, although Purple Shine is not necessarily always alcohol related. Purple Shine is the erection that is pretty much useless when you’re trying to perform intercourse, unless your partner has either a front bum or back bum (depending upon preference) like a wizard’s sleeve. It is a decent enough performer when wanting to whack a quick one out before work/breakfast, but not so much use in any other situation.

Next we have “Black Metal”. Black Metal is your standard hard on, it’s the length at which we pretend our cock is at permanently. Black Metal is the best performer for all situations and it is commonly found as your classic and well established erection. You’ll still achieve Black Metal when you’ve had a few drinks, or if you’re sober, it’s your generic everyday hard on, but still an impressive specimen nonetheless.

Finally, we have the king of all erections, “Blue Steel”. This form of stiffy only comes once every so often. Drugs such as Cialis and Viagra do enable some to artificially convert their Black Metal to a Blue Steel, but this is purely synthetic and in no way does it encapsulate the power and determination of a Blue Steel. A Blue Steel can quite easily be used as a weapon to use against a burglar, or even to aid a burglar to crowbar open a window. Many cultures see the Blue Steel as a myth. Its rarity is such, that it is thought that many men live their entire life without actually achieving this god like phallic golden calf.

This song evokes all the joy of a Blue Steel hard on, with its majestic strings and haunting vocals.

I’ve been a gigantic fan of Elliott Smith for years, now I may have finally found his female equivalent.

The single was out on the 21st of May. Here is the video…..

Maroon 5 - Makes Me Wonder

Evil, robotic mega-lo-maniac overlords, Maroon 5, have released their latest attempt at channelling evil thoughts into our minds via shite commercial discharge.

The song has been designed by a group of crackpot Nazi scientists, living in a bunker since the end of World War: The Sequel, with it’s sole intention to make us all want to kill each other in a spate of madness, desperation and middle of the road boredom, leaving Maroon 5 to come along at the end of it all to rule the world.

It’s working as well, the radio waves are turning us into corporate slaves, making me want to annihilate every fucker who tries to make conversation with me, to gouge out their eyes and tell them that I’m not in the slightest bit interested in the nonsense that is coming from their mouth.

I got stuck talking to some lad off my course the other day, before going into an exam, what a boring tosser man, we’ll call him Terrence to protect his identity. The conversation was limited and I found myself just looking through him without listening to a single word he was saying, whilst my brain was thinking “wonder what’s for my tea?” He asked me if I’d done much revision and I nearly blurted out, “Waffles!!”

The conversation moved on to what we’ll be doing in the summer, and he started going on about the army and how he’s going away with the army and how he’s gutted about the exams because he’s missing three really good “op’s”. Honest to god man, talk about losing the will to live. He went on and on about the army, talking in code and using stupid initials as if I either A) cared; or B) gave a fuck.

He told me he manages a band, which briefly held my attention, till I realised they were obviously shite. He directed me to their MySpace, where I later noticed his MySpace in their top friends, so I thought I’d have a little peak. My word, what a fucking loon. He’s in the Territorial Army, right? His address is army themed, his favourite books are listed as “one’s about war”, his favourite films as “war movies”, he’s some sort of mentalist creep who’s probably going to blow me up.

I imagine Terrence and his “mad” friends camp out round the fire when they are on “op’s”, eating cold beans and reciting lines from the drill instructor in “Full Metal Jacket”, word for word. Fucking losers.

I’d just like to say, before I go any further, people who are in the Territorial Army are complete and utter bell ends. The Territorial Army isn’t the real army. It’s like a Lego version of the army, in fact I reckon I’m more of a soldier than them fuckers because I made “Top-Gun” at Quasar Laser back in the early 90’s. That’s what the TA is, it’s like the Quasar version of the real army, they don’t even have proper guns or armour man, running round the forests with sticks of wood shouting “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ha-ah-ah” (the sound that machine gun fire makes – in my head at least) at each other. “I shot you man, you’re dead”, “Nah you didn’t, you shot the tree”. What?!?!?! You are shooting each other with sticks and making noises like “poush” (that’s my pistol noise), they are not real guns you stupid fucking wankers. It’s like the argument of “It hit the post man” when a ball flew over the jacket lying on the floor, acting as a goalpost, at head height.

The TA are the police version of “specials”. Them cunts who try to enforce the law, but can’t. Wearing second hand jumpers from the cop shop, like the spare kit that you had to wear in PE when you forgot your stuff. Jumpers too big, and trousers with shitstains on the arse. The fact of the matter is, they’re only specials because they’re too short, too cock-eyed, too nice or not black enough/handicapped enough to be real filth. Now that we’re on it, the rozzers are always on about equal opportunities, more blacks etc., but you hardly ever see a handicapped copper in a wheelchair do you?

I’d love a bit of that like, some handicapped powering his way down the street in his Olympic style wheelchair, blowing his whistle and shouting “Stop Thief!” at some shoplifting scallywag. Benefits would be two-fold, firstly, it would be good for the environment as it wouldn’t use petrol, and secondly, it’d keep the handicapper’s off our public transport system and from getting in my way in the aisles of Asda.

They could even give them special voicebox computer things like Dr Stephen Hawking and input the stuff in that they need to say, like on "Robocop", brilliant man, Actually, why not just get all of the handicappers and open up their skulls and turn them into robots, then they could walk again, they wouldn’t even need chairs. Fucking right man, circuit-board spastics, surely the future? Feed the fuckers on vegetable oil and rusty nails.

Actually, creating these robot overlords may be a bad thing, as they might create even more of this fucking absolute shower of piss and shit.

Before we know it, it’ll be just like "Terminator II" with lead singer Adam Levine doing door to doors, saying “John Connor?”.

The holocaust is coming boys and girls, and it’s led by Maroon 5, Hawking, Terrence and the handicappers. Lock up your nuts and bolts, hide your vegetable oil and beware of any fucker in a motorised wheelchair infiltrating your camp, and if they do, laser the fuckers in the eye with your Quasar gun. I for one, am going to do some training at Quasar on Saturday, I’ll call it “op’s”, you’re free to join, they may take our radio waves, but they won’t take our liberty.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.


The grotesque single was recently out on the 14th of May.

Here's the video, wear 3D glasses so that the subliminal technotronics don't melt your mind

The Cribs - Men's Needs

The Cribs have a new single named “Men’s Needs” and are from Wakefield, and they shouldn’t be confused with Californian gang The Crips.

The Cribs would be a canny shite gang actually, they’d be like the Orphans on “The Warriors”, with others gangs taking the piss out of them and not inviting them to their big uptown meetings. They also fail to get the apparel right from the outset, as you should all know, every successful gang has to include at least one black.

The black member will often be a specialist in explosives, automobiles, physical violence or manual labour. See Eric Qualen’s gang in “Cliffhanger”, see Clarence Boddicker’s gang in “Robocop”, Hans Gruber’s gang in “Die Hard”, then you’ve got the likes of “Mark” the driver in Ironside’s gang, “T.C” the helicopter pilot from Magnum’s gang, “BA” from the A-Team. Other gangs including a black member on manual labour duties are The Libertines, Ocean Colour Scene and the YOSS (Youth Of South Shields).

It’s only in recent times that bands such as Bloc Party have broken the shackles of the black stereotypes and allowed their singer to be at the front with a microphone, viewed as controversial in some cultures. Maybe The Cribs just need the recruitment of an ethnic to take them to the next level, even if it's just to play some bones or shake a coconut filled with dry peas.

This single is good anyway, in my humble opinion. Aside from the lead singers philatelist look, they manage to pull off a pop tune with gusto with their Franz Ferdinand-esque guitar riff, and the dual vocal approach akin to Gomez with one normal voice and one slightly growling and gravel vocal.

The single is available now and you can listen to it at their MySpace.

Green Day - Working Class Hero

Well hello there. I think I need a comma in that opening bit, but I can’t work out where, because my brain is frazzled.

The examination period at grown up school is nearly over. So far, I’ve done OK on one, failed two, and I haven’t even done the hardest one yet. A period of re-sits awaits me, well, at least I think that this will be the case. Just have to wait for the results.

Now I know how the promiscuous members of Freddie Mercury’s past must’ve felt when waiting to find out if they had the bum AIDS, and realising that their gaunt look wasn’t just due to snorting toot off dwarves heads.

I thought I’d take this brief respite to do a review of a forthcoming single that has left me feeling like some sort of cocktail - one part disgust, one part sore arse, one part molested, with a little bit of ice and a slice, obviously.

Green Day, voice to a million small children who don’t know any better, have became the classic epitome of the much touted phrase “sell-out”. I’m just as guilty as the next man for bandying about the word “sell-outs” as a description for everything that I don’t like, but in this case, I’m definitely right.

Starting off as younglings, with their caustic, unhinged brand of power pop on indie label Lookout, Green Day produced a first album of unrequited love songs and angst, then a second album (their best, if that says anything?!) of frenzied punk pop and dope fuelled tales of rejection and boredom. Then of course came the inevitable corporate dollar, and things have went downhill ever since.

As with most bands that sell out and start suckling at the teat of self importance, Green Day have started to get all political on us and have also decided to start using their mega-huge-profile to make money for charity, fair play to them. But anybody who bought that single they did with U2, for the grave-robbing stadium rapists in New Orleans, is a cunt. And anyone who buys this, is also a cunt, which makes me a cunt, but I did have to do it for my art, selfless cunt that I am.

Firstly, for me anyhow, Lennon’s stuff should not be fucked with. I was annoyed when the Manic’s did this song as a hidden track on their recent album, but to release this song as a single, particularly this version of it, is sacrilege. But then, this song does feature on a compilation of Lennon covers called “Instant Karma”, featuring other “greats” as Black Eyed Peas, Barenaked Ladies, Snow Patrol and Maroon 5, need I say more.

It’s for Amnesty International, so I can’t be too harsh, but fucking hell man, this song has got to be up there as one of the worst cover versions ever, completely raping and ruthlessly pissing on Lennon’s grave, wanking on Yoko’s gegs and depositing a tiny Malteser of cack on his headstone.

Fair enough, they might raise a bit of awareness and raise a bit cash, but it’s depraved. If I was a rich rockstar, I wouldn’t risk my credibility with this bollocks, fuck human rights. I’d stay in my guitar shaped mansion all day, playing pool on my black leather pool table, with half of the balls made from gold, the other half made from elephants tusks, a white ball made from transparent shatter proof glass with the foreskin of a Nicaraguan encased inside, pockets made from the armpits and pubic hair of Indonesian virgins, and the cue’s made from the femurs of third world orphans.

So that’s about it, it’s out on the 21st of May.

I’ll be back just as soon as I’ve got the school work out of the way.