Last night in Chesham, it was -18. That was the coldest night since December 2010, when it was -19.6 in Chesham. The pattern? Chesham is the coldest place in the UK reguarly! Twice this winter so far! Chesham is, it turns out, a frost hollow. This means we are stuck in the depression of a hilly area; the Chilterns is basically like a rucked carpet and we’re stuck in the ruck.
Last night was so cold the insides of the single-glazed windows started to freeze. This morning at 9am, it was still -10 out and both bedroom windows had a layer of ice on the inside. It managed to rise just above zero today and we’re currently barricaded in the house, too scared to go into the kitchen which is cursed with a big glass door and a stone floor.
BIRMINGHAM IS A BETTER HOLIDAY DESTINATION SPACE. And space is big, boring and full of idiots, so in effect much like Birmingham. The New York times recently declared Brum the 19th best place to visit in 2012, and it’s all about food. Not about any other redeeming feature of the city, but about where you can chomp on delicious balti’s and other stuff.
But, while Brum’s key boast of 2012 is food, Telly Savalas definitely visited* Brum and made a delightful video on how great the city is. So, here it is in all its glory!
Other good things about Brum
- China Town has some brilliant cafes, inc the amazing Cafe Soya
1 – PJ Harvey – Let England Shake and 2 – Radiohead – King of Limbs review is here
3: Wild Beasts – Smother
The first time I heard Wild Beasts was in Totnes with a good friend. A local independent store was playing the Two Dancers album and he bought it based on what he heard. Over time I listened to the band more, and realised a new act of great potential had arrived. It was with Smother that the band made the great leap from small band to medium band; and I had the great pleasure of seeing them headline the Park stage at Glastonbury this year, to a pretty big audience who had forgone Coldplay, The Chemical Brothers, Big Boi and uh…Glasvegas (really?), for a band who produce intelligent and theatrical music.
Very little in Smother raises the heartbeat, but almost every note raises the spirits, elevating Wild Beasts into not just a great band, but an important one.
Wild Beasts managed the impossible during their Glastonbury set; I’d been drinking local psychedelic cider all evening and managed to hold off running for a pee through the entire set…it was such a good show I didn’t want to miss a beat.
The album itself is a refinement of what Two Dancers achieved, and is a selection of tracks that showcase the band’s obsession with sexually charged lyrics (Lion’s Share, Bed of Nails), the vocals of Hayden and Tom, interweave their vocals from theatrical to resonant, and they even do a Coldplay on End Come too Soon. Instead of building a song up to an explosive end designed to fulfill arena goers wet dreams, they build the track up, then let it float off. It’s beautiful. Smother is an ideal album for quality headphone time, to let the worries of the world go on hold for an hour.
Wild Beasts – Thankless Thing
Wild Beasts – Bed of Nails
4: Will Young – Echoes
I have to say, it is a surprise to me as much as you (if you know me) to find Will Young on the list. However, it would be churlish to let music snobbery get in the way of praising a modern pop album that stands out as both classy and consistently strong when most reality stars produce risk-averse identikit album, rammed with filler material.
For me, Echoes is the point at which Will showed he is capable of keeping his career alive and kicking; his previous studio album was Let it Go, which was a success but didn’t really push his sound forward and so it almost passed me by. Then he collaborated with Groove Armada on the fantastic History which really seemed to suit him. The crystal-clear beats with his soaring voice worked wonders for what Will Young could be in the evolution of his career.
On Echoes, there’s nothing that’s as defiantly cold and disco as History, but through the 13 tracks, he lays out his 2011 sound, which uses his voice as a key instrument rather than being smothered by production. It’s a sparse album, and this works wonders on tracks such as Happy Now; Young’s voice follows the trajectory of the music upwards as classy sounds abound…it’s incredibly listenable. The entire album is perfect easy listening, which souds like I’m slighting it, but I’m not. It basically sounds good in any situation. A great mixture of uptempo pop (Jealousy), propulsive tunes (Come on), and George Michael-esque 80′s sounding tunes like Losing Myself makes this a suitably fine album for Young to be releasing as he heads into his second decade of pop.
2011 was a remarkable year for PJ Harvey, and her 9th album was by a long shot my album of the year. According to Last.FM I played her tracks 278 times; and played The Words that Maketh Murder 48 times. I’m willing to bet that is an understatement.
Considering her 2009 effort with John Parish was at best patchy, Let England Shake was an emormously satisfying album. In February this year I wrote “It is almost impossible to describe just how immediately brilliant this album is” and the album is one that will mature beautifully into a modern classic. Fittingly, as some want Britain to retreat into the foggy, parochial confines of the Island mentality, this album is infused with Englishness…which in terms of culture is no bad thing. We’ve a lot to celebrate and a lot to mourn and somehow Harvey manages to do both; this is an album inspired by war and yet, there’s a sense of triumph here, but that’s perhaps down to the inspired form Harvey is on.
I was lucky enough to see Harvey perform a lot of this album at I’ll Be Your Mirror – the small festival curated by Portishead. She performed before Portishead, in one stroke creating an almost unbeatable lineup, and it was a thrill to hear these beautiful fragile tracks come to live in the glorious main room of Alexandra Palace. All in all, this was PJ Harvey’s year and no talk of Adele’s sales can deny that.
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
2: Radiohead – The King of Limbs
The King of Limbs is something of a curious Radiohead release; amongst all of the crazed anticipation when they announced its release, people fell over themselves to declare that they will once more rock like in the olden days. Had Radiohead succombed to a sub-section of their audience and decided to party like it’s 1995 again, then we’d all be much worse off for losing out on TKOL.
This was the first Radiohead to ever baffle and unnerve me, and that was hard to admit at the time. This is nothing like In Rainbows which is a stunning album of light and beauty, and it shows Radiohead’s deft ability to merge electronic and organic sounding music. It sounded enormous and it frankly left behind any lingering doubts that they weren’t the world’s greatest modern rock band.
TKOL cannot emulate that, and Radiohead didn’t even attempt to do it. Instead, they crafted something that is so perfect in its own way that it is impossible to not slowly fall in love with it. Tracks like Bloom and Feral are superb examples of what the band can do with electronics; listen to how Feral opens with such gorgeous clarity and really controlled bass, massaging the centre of the headphone space. Marvel as they float other sounds on top, adding in some earth-shaking bass before they force more frenetic beats, adding layer upon layer of sound. Each layer is perfectly distinguishable from the last, and then…the bass starts to shake the house down, making me wonder if my headphones can cope. It is an absolutely superb piece of sound design, that ends with the most beautiful electronic beeps…astounding. Feral is not the best track on the album.
Radiohead sequenced the last half of TKOL to perfection; Lotus Flower acting as the lone “rock” track on the album that is just a wondrous mash of drums, swirling guitars, deep bass and hand claps. All the best songs have hand claps and all the best music videos feature Thom Yorke dancing. Codex is achingly beautiful and is a match for Pyramid Song for the best slow song they’ve ever made. That they are basically musical sisters sharing the same themes makes it even more perfect. Give up the Ghost was the last track on the album to fall into place in my affections, and now I find the simple structure and *gasp* actual guitar playing a real treat to get me ready for Separator which is sometimes my favourite track on the album, and sometimes not. It’s quite simply perfect and when it builds up the peak, I feel relaxed and really happy.
Do the Yorkey dance
Radiohead also gave ouT further goodies with The Butcher and Supercollider. The Butcher wouldn’t make sense on the album, but it’s the equal to anything they’ve ever released. Tricky beats, synths and Thom’s falsetto equals a superb extra treat.
I’ve always loved Bonfire/Fireworks/Guy Fawkes/The Colour Thief: a Winter Extravaganza Celebrating the Change of the Seasons/Winterval, whatever the authorities decide to call it to ensure that nobody alive, or dead could ever possibly be offended. To me, it’s much more exciting than Halloween which is just a dreadful exercise of consumption and overspending. To many it is seen as an American import which is incorrect; Halloween goes back to before folks sailed over the Americas and had a laugh.
It dates back something like 1000 years, and is a sort of Irish/Christian thing, moving on from the slightly dowdy Pagan Samhain which, if my memory is working, is the festival where people dressed up like tramps and pretended to be dead before eating some apples. Dead people would come out of their graves for this night but they were never able to eat apples as they were already dead. Apples would of course fall through a skellington and be wasted on the ground (this is why you see lots of Apples on the floor after Halloween!!).
Fireworks night is much more my sort of event, where cheap people like me expect the council to spend thousands on fireworks display. It is a magical time of the year where masses of people get together and actually seem happy, whizz bangs go off and we drink alcohol, fall over and go home safe in the knowledge that 90% of the photos we took will be too blurry to use. It’s brilliant, and this year I went to Southwark Park for my Fireworks fun. In these dying days of Europe, where every time a politican says something, billions are wiped off the worth of people’s pensions (so Politicians, be quiet or doom us all) it is lovely to see pennies being saved to still give the people a good time. And a good time it is, with the display being an absolute delight! I’ve attached some pics for you to peek at, and remember remember, it’s great to dismember.
I also attach an image of the Docklands looking like Gotham City!!
It was a sort of cold staff training day in October, and I needed a wee. I’d been chatting away and drinking my tea and forgot that my bladder needed help. The tragedy.
So, I decided to draw some pictures, and here they are for you! Despite my drawing, the training was good and I enjoyed it. So you know, don’t be judging!
I have to say, it is a surprise to me as much as you (if you know me) to find Will Young on the list. However, it would be churlish to let music snobbery get in the way of praising a modern pop album that stands out as both classy and consistently strong when most reality stars produce risk-averse identikit album, rammed with filler material.
