Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War (Arts & Crafts), Published in NARC. #19

Stars perform the futuristic type of music you might find in some sort of spaceship based romantic drama in years to come, a time when music rules the universe and people have blue hair and silver suits. Not the type of future where two cretins called Bill and Ted heal the world with their air guitar and shite catchphrases. No, this is a good future.

The Montreal based band seem to have the incredible ability of creating music that almost transcends comparison with any of their contemporaries. Choosing to create layers upon layers of amazing intricate electronica, duelling poetical vocals and melodies to melt the last remaining icebergs, Stars create intelligent, articulate and wonderfully expressive pop.

However, Stars do lose points in places. As much as most of the album is all lovely, warm and challenging, we do still have a couple of stinkers that wander the realms of Prefab Sprout at their crappest, and dare I say it, a little bit of Maroon 5, with The Ghost Of Genova Heights. Despite my ears not having complete agreement with a couple of the songs, no fool, no matter how crap their ears, can deny the glory and loftiness of Take Me To The Riot, Window Bird, My Favourite Book and the albums title track couldn’t be any more uplifting and triumphant if it tried.

For the most part, this is an absolutely cracking album, ignore my slight negativity, it’s just my way. This is certainly something that I’ll continue to listen to in the future. Whether or not I’ll be dying my hair blue and wrapping my fat torso in tin foil is another thing.

4/5



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.

Bone Idle

Paul Westerberg of The Replacements once wrote, "a person can work up a mean mean thirst after a hard day of nothing much at all". And that more or less sums up the past 4-5 months for me. I've basically done fuck all apart from yawn and drink.

However, things will hopefully now change. My days of sitting round the house in shorts, drinking Budweiser and getting all tearful as Dog The Bounty Hunter gives his speech to some Hawaiian crack head, are numbered. As of today, I'm back at the big school, which means that sooner or later I will need to get my finger out. Which also means that I should get a bit more stuff up on here, which is the most important thing after all.

Over the past few months, I've pretty much just wrote stuff for NARC. and neglected this place a bit. So within the next few weeks, I'll hopefully be totally recharged and I'll have kicked the drink a bit, and so I'll be able to post more shite on here that all four of you readers may be interested in.

Right now, I'm off to get pissed.

The Life and Times of Christopher Aguilera

It's always been tough for Aguilera. Growing up as the only boy in a small New York family, he took to dressing as a woman at an early age. Yearning for acceptance, he'd put his cock and balls between his legs, lifting up his cheerleading outfit and shouting to the coach of the football team, "suck my fadge!", a phrase which would later haunt him.

As time went by, young Christopher would force his mother to call him Christina. Many botched self attempts at penectomies were carried out in his schools science labs, with the sharp point of a compass and rough edge of a protractor leaving vile and crude scars across his scrotum. Finally, Christopher managed to save enough money up from dressing as a girl and performing fellatio for a nickel at the local psychiatric hospital. The money raised and the blowjobs performed, allowed Christopher to purchase a flight to Thailand and consequently the penectomy he'd hoped for his whole life.

On arrival in Thailand, Christopher was met by a small doctor with a glass eye, much like Charles Dance from "The Last Action Hero". The doctor was able to perform a successful operation on Christopher, and so finally he could become Christina.

With his new found confidence, Christopher returned to New York, where he pestered record executives with indecent text messages and fax messages penned out in the blood from his penis that he kept in a leopard skin purse. And so he returned to the dark days of his past, sending a message to the boss of RCA Records saying "lick my twat". The return to those demon days was complete when he daubed the side of a Walt Disney van with the words "shoot your muck on my foul disfigured Frankenstein gash". However, by some stroke of luck, and completely unbeknownst to Christopher, one of the head bosses at Walt Disney was a paedophile, who liked the cut of Christopher's jib. He was soon signed up to appear in seasons 6-7 of The Mickey Mouse Club, where he again carried out his love of dressing as a woman.

His career soon progressed and he soon afforded the right and the acceptance within the industry to officially change his name to Christina. Many more blowjobs and trading of venereal diseases would help to catapult him to the top of the charts, and buy himself the prettiest dresses and the most outrageous of wigs.

Christopher now lives with another man and has taken to wearing a false stomach, filled with chop liver and egg whites, to make himself feel and look pregnant. His mental problems do still continue, but it hasn't stopped him from being one of the most fantastic performers of recent times. His hard work and enthusiasm is a shining example to us all.

Dissection:Singles, Published in NARC. #18

Shy Child – Summer

It’s the noise of a mental scientist in a lab coat, running around his underground lair whilst the machine he created explodes around him. Sparks fly into the air, random cogs and gears whizz from the top of the machine and stick in the ceiling, wires loosen and start attacking like vipers, smoke engulfs the hodgepodge of disaster. Summer is the sound of electro chaos and pandemonium pop. They’ll get likened to Klaxons and called “new rave”, but don’t let that put you off. This deserves to be tearing up the dancefloors of our coked up kids across the country.

The White Stripes – You Don’t Know What Love Is

Where previous single, Icky Thump, nodded its head to metal, this new single is again deeply rooted in what went before. No matter how many times I listen to this song, it starts sounding more and more like Bad Company or The Eagles, with the little bridge before the chorus sounding too much like Dylan’s Quinn The Eskimo. It’s all very familiar anyhow - pounding drums from Meg, Jack does a little riff then a big chord, then another little riff and another big chord. Most will lap this up and get their lighters out; I’ll stick to the original records.

I Was A Cub Scout – Our Smallest Adventures

“Postal Service vs. Digital Ash-esque Oberst” seems to be the tag line that this band has given themselves. Actually reading the tag line is where the comparison ends for me. Although the vocal does slightly ape Oberst, the lyric certainly doesn’t benefit from Oberst’s wit and charm. As for Postal Service, well, I suppose both bands have the same amount of vowels in their names if you put the “The” in The Postal Service. This doesn’t do anything for me. Typical crap you’d get from a support band, whilst you stand and talk at the bar, waiting for the band you actually want to see to appear.

iLiKETRAiNS – The Deception

The band who like to write about historical people and events have a new single. Going off the lyrics, I think this one is about Nelson. It’s the regular sort of thing you’d expect from iLiKETRAiNS. When I was talking to somebody at work once, they said, “Is it ‘Gloomy Rock’ like Stereophonics?” about a band I was talking about. That might well be the best way to describe this band. So, more Gloomy Rock from a Post Rock band who are referred to as Library Rock. Depressing, pretentious shite is my best take on it. iDiSLiKETRAiNS.

The Orange Lights – Click Your Heels

This single will probably find its way onto the Radio 1 playlists. It’s the type of stuff that Embrace or Richard Ashcroft come out with. People who don’t like music will love it. I can’t stand it, personally. I’d love to get behind a Newcastle based band, but it’s not my cup of tea. It’s like Del Amitri doing The Seahorses, or a post-McCabe Verve singing Crowded House songs, that’s about it really. Very unimpressed. If this doesn’t hit the mainstream radio radar immediately, it will when it’s re-released in 9 months time.

SixNationState – We Could Be Happy

I could be happy as well, as long as shite bands like this stopped making records. This sounds like a crap local band trying to sound like The Smiths. They remind me of every local band across the UK, who think they’re already massive because of how many friends they can spam on MySpace and thinking they can change the world with their bulletins and slogan based T-shirts. This song makes me feel completely uninterested in being alive. We Could Be Happy bores me to tears. They Should Be Sorry.

It Hugs Back – Carefully

This is more like it. I was contemplating death a few minutes ago, but this has got me back on track to a long life of slowly going mental and losing control of my bowels. I like this a lot. These Kent based tinkers have a lovely warm American sound about them. It’s a bit like an I’m Wide Awake Bright Eyes or a Baby I’m Bored Dando. The song belongs in a small dustbowl town, where slackers meet up with a bunch of drugs to write songs in a barn full of hay on lazy summer nights. Think Wilco, or glorious lo-fi college rock that it’s cool to like. We have a winner.


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.

Thurston - Trees Outside The Academy (Ecstatic Peace!), Published in NARC. #18

Twelve years has passed since Thurston Moore released solo album Psychic Hearts. The Sonic Youth frontman has now returned with another solo attempt.

I’m not a fan of Sonic Youth; I’ve always found the music to be inaccessible. I bought a couple of records ten years ago, thinking that I had to get Sonic Youth into my life. I ended up returning them after one listen.

However, this is very accessible. I’ve always considered Moore as a talented guitarist but never really held his writing in high regard. The first five songs of the album totally changed my opinion.

In parts it’s a glossier Roman Candle-era Elliott Smith, with the stripped down acoustic guitar and bass.

First song Frozen Gtr is a laid back affair, with J Mascis closing the song out with his instantly recognisable “shredding”, whilst next track The Shape Is In A Trance seems to borrow the riff from REM’s The One I Love, with violin creating the pathos.

The stand out track is easily Honest James, a haunting song which could’ve been taken from Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan’s Ballad Of The Broken Seas, with Moore being joined by the amazing Christina Carter of Charalambides.

The album starts to lose its way a little after the beautiful Silver>Blue and the merrier, macabre Fri/End. The remaining songs seem to be made up of impromptu jams, as well as unfinished sketches.

It is a decent enough album though, if it wasn’t for the instrumentals, it really could’ve been one of the albums of the year. I certainly wouldn’t take this back after one listen.

Released: 17th September, 2007


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.

Rihanna - Shut Up and Drive

Fresh from ruining the summer with "Umbrella", the "Bike From Barbados" has got a new single out, full of suggestive retort and innuendo based content.

The story allegedly goes, that Jay-Z locked her in a room and wouldn't let her leave until she'd signed a record deal. Personally, I reckon Rihanna may have signed a bit of a confidentiality agreement on that one. You've got a desperate slut in one corner, determined to get a record deal, and in the other corner, you've got a millionaire mogul with a cock like a role of bin liners. Aye, he locked you in until you signed, he was that desperate to sign you. Clearly he grafted the arse off her and gained penetration through the offer of the contract, again, allegedly. Carrot and stick isn't it?

The new single uses incredibly talented writing skills to offer up the use of a car as some form of sexual metaphor. I'm amazed with the skill and craft that they have done so. The song basically makes Rihanna look like even more of a slut. But teen-slut does sell, so maybe that makes it OK.

The first verse goes something like this.....

"I've been looking for a driver who's qualified
So if you think that you're the one step into my ride
I'm a fine-tuned supersonic speed machine
With a sunroof top and a gangster lean"

My interpretation of this is......

"I want someone who knows what he's doing with his cock
If you've had numerous sexual partners you can put your bits inside me
I can go like a sewing machine
(Some American jive that probably has something to do with spunk)"

And so it goes on, appalling really. I'm presuming the title refers to Rihanna wanting a good hard shag and disposing of the frivolities of foreplay. I'm disappointed that the song doesn't include some of the more obvious crap lines, such as...

"She can suck on my handbrake"
"She can waggle my gearstick"
"She can back onto this"
"I wouldn't mind pumping her petrol"
"Wouldn't mind having a look in her glove compartment"
"She can go for a ride with me"
"She can polish my rim"

Etc. Etc. Etc. All equally as crap as Rihanna's songwriters.

It's all in the same category as any suggestive shite Spears peddled and the same sort of crap as the Furtado's "Maneater". Very poor indeed, but great for paedophiles to see young kids dancing to at school discos, unbeknownst that they're dancing and gyrating away to a slag anthem.

The single is out on the 3rd of September and will no doubt go to number one. View the video here..........

Richard Hawley - Lady's Bridge (Mute), Published in NARC. #17

At last, Richard Hawley is back, man of the people, with a new album, the follow up to the critically acclaimed Coles Corner. The new album, Lady’s Bridge, takes its name from the oldest bridge to cross the river Don, continuing Hawley’s theme of Sheffield landmarks in his music. Where Coles Corner had been a place for young lovers to meet, Lady’s Bridge represents what Hawley describes as, “a gateway from the poor bit of town to the rich bit”.

Hawley is unashamed of his working class roots, wearing his influences and heart on his sleeve. Last year, I remember imagining the newspaper headlines of “Sheffield man robbed by four youths”. This wasn’t the description of a mugging in the “poor bit of town” though; this was the Arctic Monkeys victory over Hawley in the Mercury Music Prize. Dusting himself off from defeat, the former Longpigs and Pulp man has managed to create another wondrous spectacle.

Tonight The Streets Are Ours is the first single from the album, and easily the best choice. The perfect arrangement and orchestration, making me want to fall in love and run hand in hand through Sheffield without a care in the world, even if I am missing the point of the song. This is when Hawley is at his best, the melody of a northern Burt Bacharach, singing away like a South Yorkshire Sinatra, with what could be the cast of a musical backing him up, chiming away like a Christmas anthem with a dark under current. Believe it or not, the song is actually inspired by a programme that Hawley watched about ASBO’s.

We also have the familiar ballads that we’ve come to love from Hawley. Valentine and Roll River Roll could ring true and find their home in a tiny cramped working mans club, just as much as they could when echoing around a giant theatre. In parts Bobby Darin, in others it’s Scott Walker, he paints pictures and tells fairytales from a morose, northern story book.

Elsewhere, with Serious and I’m Looking For Someone To Love Me, the music is more up tempo. Trawling through his influences from the past, the songs remind me of being a kid and listening to my Dad’s Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochrane cassettes, with a little bit of Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash thrown in for good measure. It’s all about the purity and innocence of oversized guitars in the 50’s with giant brass Bigbsy’s leading the way.

I get lost in Hawley’s world with every listen, I’ve never been to Sheffield, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Everything seems to make sense and seems to fall into place. I can see men walking home from the steelworks through the puddles of the slums, women with beehives running back to meet their husbands, clutching their fish and chips under one arm and their baby under the other.

Behind the melody and beautiful production, we have gritty social realism, as the album stands up and shouts out loud from the rooftops of Sheffield about pride and a sense of belonging. It’s safe to say that we have something very special indeed with Richard Hawley. This is without doubt, my favourite album so far this year.

Released: 20th August, 2007


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.