Trish Keenan

Last Friday afternoon I learned the devastating news that Trish Keenan of Broadcast had passed away earlier in the day. I haven’t felt so distraught at the death of someone I don’t know personally since John Peel died. On the bus early Saturday morning, I listened to ‘The Noise Made By People’ again. As with all of Broadcast’s albums, I played it and played it when it came out, but haven’t listened to it for a while. The drifting, gently otherworldly songs matched exactly with my view of headlights smudging the twilight and London landmarks looming out of the murky grey morning. When ‘Come On Let’s Go’ came on, something about the way Trish sings the word ‘go’- her ‘Hello children everywhere’ singing voice cut with a hint of Brummie – was really upsetting, really brought home the fact that she’s gone.

I’ve been listening to Broadcast a lot the last couple of years, their last release, in conjunction with The Focus Group, ‘Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age’ was utterly perfect, from the sleeve art to the incidental found sounds to the esoteric influences of the songs, and the accompanying hauntological videos, it seemed to chime with my current interests, and Trish seemed to embody all that was intriguing about the record. I don’t have many ‘role models’, but Trish was one, a woman with a real fascination for and love of odd and obscure musics. Interviews with her and Broadcast partner James Cargill would reveal a rich seam of interesting records, films, books and artists I could then go and investigate. Even better were the Broadcast Radio Mixes the pair put together, full of weird and wonderful Library music, Radiophonic clips, spectral folk, curious electronica etc. Earphones in, I could walk around in a world haunted by Broadcast’s charity shop, crate digging finds. It was great to see a woman fully immersed in what’s usually seen as a geeky bloke’s universe. Women can be geeky about music too. And Trish managed to be geeky and look cool at the same time, her style mutating from second-hand 60s dresses to priestess of a beat coven. Last year I couldn’t resist buying a dress that was on sale in a musty ‘vintage’ shop on Holloway road. I thought of it as my ‘Broadcast dress’ because it looked like something Trish might wear.

Lately, I had been eagerly awaiting a new Broadcast album, excited to find out what path the band might take next, wondering whether they’d explore further the experimental territory they mapped out during the improvised first half of their 2010 Ether Festival performance. I’m so glad I got to see this, their last London show, it was the kind of concert that thoroughly absorbs, takes you on a journey, so that when it ends you look about blinking, feeling like you’ve woken from a lucid dream. I’m going to keep with me the image of Trish, abandoning her table of analogue synths for one song to take centre stage, singing in her pure, soothing voice, gliding backwards and forwards whilst a monster projection of her shadow veered across the back wall, the mesmerising focus of the ritual.

Plan B

Sob! Plan B, the only music magazine I deign to pay money for, is being sent to the big magazine rack in the sky. June will see its final issue hitting the shelves of selected emporia (including, bizarrely, our corner shop) and it’ll be the last time I feel genuinely excited about a magazine being published (I always got that same wee rush of anticipation when it was time for a new Plan B as I used to get when Smash Hits day came around).

I’ll add the final copy to my collection. I’ve got every issue, they look great all lined up on the shelf, their spines all solemn looking hiding the colour explosion inside. That’s the thing about Plan B, it’s a beautiful object as well as a good read, an exceedingly good argument for producing something in print, rather than online. It feels like a lot of love and care has gone into the creation of each issue. There’s always gorgeous photography - even accompanying the live reviews there are none of those crappy, what’s the point? shots of the singer with a mic obscuring their face, unlike in some magazines. The pages teem with brilliant illustrations; oddball images that halt you in your tracks and make you inspect them for a spell – you know, like decent art should. And isn’t it great that a music magazine should commission so much brand new illustration?

Granted, the articles and reviews sometimes left me wondering what the flip the artists being discussed actually, you know, sounded like, but it was always a dang good read. Always thoughtful and intelligent, the writing was a refuge for well-constructed sentences and lovingly honed prose amongst the maelstrom of poorly conceived fuck-wittering found elsewhere. Even the adverts were interesting: how else would I have discovered the terrifying trembling brilliance of Ben Nash’s ‘The Seventh Goodbye’ if I hadn’t been intrigued by Aurora Borealis Records’ slightly sinister ad?

At least it’s good to see the magazine going out on a high, not having compromised or capitulated, not slinking out on its belly in a horrifying state of degradation (e.g. Melody Maker). Thank you for the good times Plan B.

P.S. Everyone always said Plan B even smelled amazing! I never did understand that bit.

I Don't Want To Have To Break Your Face

Mass debates on that old chestnut ‘twee’ seem to be doing the blog rounds again (thanks mainly to Tom’s grumpy old indie kid number here.) It’s a discussion that’s always good for a laugh, so I thought I’d stick my oar in.

As far as I’m concerned ‘twee’ was never a genre, it was a term of abuse. A v. brief rifle through the olde indie cuttings archive brings up a few instances of the word being used by big hairy music press types to CRUSH the kind of music that they don’t understand/ doesn’t speak to them because they are big hairy men (ug,ug). ‘Twee’ was an insult, but then no band seemed to want to own up to being ‘cutie’ or ‘shambling’ either. Surely, all those ‘scenes’ weren’t just a load of old crap made up by journalists? Picking through the cuttings now, it’s all a bit of a mess…

'Thankfully though times have changed. Where once there were wimpo twerps in anoraks ripping off all the Buzzcocks’ girliest traits, now there stand real men.'
[Review of The Soup Dragons from Sounds or somewhere, 1987 or something]

“Submarines was a silly, jokey name that tied us to the twee anoraks mob, which we aren’t…not that we’re the wild men of rock”
[The Submarines foolishly rename themselves Compass Flow, Record Mirror, 1987 ish]

“Sure we get crayon pictures through the post.” Well that’s your own stupid fault, isn’t it? Rip your name off a Buzzcocks song and what do you expect? “The name was chosen for reasons other tthan that. It was harsh image for a so-called wimpy band.”
{Razorcuts interview, Melody Maker,1987]

'Amelia launches into indie politics.
“What do you exect from a Blow Monkeys audience? The sort of people who slag us off and call us cuties are people who maybe like The June Brides, who are really close to liking Talulah Gosh but know enough about us to think they shouldn’t. They might shout at us. Blow Monkeys fans have no idea, nothing to react against…”
“I think they just thought ‘Who are those spastics up there?” decides Chris.'
[Talulah Gosh discuss supporting The Blow Monkeys (bizarrely enough) in Melody Maker 1987]

'At the mention of The Pastels, your whole conception of Stephen changes. Because this man fronts one of the few independent bands capable of extricating themselves from the tiresome and derogatory label, ‘Shambling’. '
[Interview with Stephen Pastel in Melody Maker, 1987]

'All I knew about The Pastels before their recent (and wonderfully over-ambitious) single, ‘Baby You’re Just You’, was that they were apparently a bunch of wimps in tatty v-neck jumpers…Sadly, they then relapse into twee tweaking – the title track is a sorry crock of mush if ever I heard one.'
[Review of The Pastels’ ‘Sittin’ Pretty’]

'They appeared on the abortive C86 operation and suddenly a whole group of bands claimed to have known them personally (anorak, I think, was how they were termed)...
‘Holy Moly’ was written for The Vaselines (Scottish sex god anorak group)'
[Everett True interviews The Pastels, Melody Maker, 1989]

I like what Stevie of Please Rain Fall
says, ‘A lot of people forget that the 80's was a time for taking sides.' True this. I'm sure a lot of it was down to the fact that everything is very black and white when you're young - chart music made us puke, twelve inch singles were the work of the devil - but we were growing up in a time of clear cut Left vs. Right politics, of fervent CND supporting and hardcore feminism and that made us actively despise anything that smacked of the right-wing, capitalist, patriarchal mainstream. This Us against Them mindset was empowering and was what drove the rise of our indieness - if what we did was dismissed as 'twee' then it meant we were being annoying. Good.

Everett True touches on the issue in his Vivian Girls interview in this month’s Plan B magazine:
‘Two decades ago I had to fend off accusations that the music I liked – not boorish, frailties intact, rooted in the Sixties femme pop of The Ramones and The Shaggs, often bordering on the shambolic – was somehow not ‘proper’. It was looked down upon as being amateur (like the word is an insult, like music is a competition). I was ridiculed roundly and often : the music got categorised and derogatorily referred to as twee…why?'

Excitingly, Plan B, those champions of ‘outsider music’ have a page dedicated to discussing the notion of ‘twee’. There are two points which I think are well-made and with which I whole-heartedly concur:

‘Twee’s something you accuse other people of being. If someone’s playing with the elements – delicacy, anti-macho, heightened sweetness, cult-of-naivety – and it hits you emotionally, you process them directly. If they miss, they’re twee.’
- Kieron Gillen

‘Twee can also encompass retro/kitsch; nostalgia; a very British kind of quirkiness. There’s a space on the Venn diagram where the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Oliver Postgate, Ghost Box, Trunk Records type stuff – even Broadcast, Pram etc – intersect with twee – it’s a space where things are nice, but weird ; biscuits and tea and soldering iron and ghosts. I approve of music that subverts, that celebrates the uncelebrated, and that gives credence to those with the quietest voices, celebrations of intelligence and awkwardness and confusion. What I don’t like is the un-awkward, media-friendly, attractive versions of the same.’
- Frances Morgan

So, in conclusion, to call something 'twee' is to insult it. It's not really a good thing, but it does seem to have evolved into a lazy way of describing a certain sound - although what that sound is precisely is kind of mysterious - try Googling 'new twee' (argh! I can hardly bear to type those words, bleugh!) and behold the hotch-potch of bollocks you get.

Hey Nonny Oh No!

Gah! Tapestry Goes West is cancelled! I was looking forward to spending a weekend in Wales dressed as a Biba Robin Hood, waving a plastic sword around like a goon and for it to be perfectly acceptable, nay legitimate behaviour. Best just dream of mead and admire the sleeve for this long-lost acid-folk rarity - genius.

EDIT: Hurrah! Tapestry Goes West is back on in a miniaturised form. Thank you to the concerned folk (Delia, Simon) who contacted us to make sure we knew that sword-waving oportunities are still beckoning.
Also, that Subway album is great.

Accident & Emergency

Here is the latest in pseudo-rock 'n' roll casualty 'get me to a doctor, maan'. chic: a Spiritualized hospital wrist-band! Classy and not at all tacky. No. And I didn't feel at all embarrassed when the man in Sister Ray sheepishly handed it over to me with my purchase. No.

If you are a design nerd or a Spiritualized nerd, or perhaps both (hello!), you may find this item from Creative Review interesting as it combines both subjects in one handy article.

Catwalking

This morning I went in Uniqlo's new Oxford street 'flagship store' and was disturbed to note large posters on the wall depicting a rather wizened Bobby Gillespie modelling Uniqlo's range of reasonably priced winter woolies. If, like me, your teenage pop kid years were spent scouring the music press for images of Mr Gillespie in all his bowl-cut, polka-dot shirted glory, then you will understand how perculiar this pictorial encounter was. In order to soothe my nerves, I found it necessary to go in Topshop to purchase this marvellous cat-strewn confection by Dari Meya. Now that's fashion.