RAWK, more or less

The title is a compliment. Trust me. I've started a new job and part of that job involves a fair bit of creating my own spreadsheets, editing others' spreadsheets, scouring spreadsheets for information, etc. It doesn't sound thrilling, and it isn't, but other aspects of the job really can be. So to counteract the dryness of this activity one needs the correct kind of music playing, softly and gently, in the background.  I started with Elliot Smith, made my through Stephen Steinbrink and had nearly a whole week of hammering Nation of Language who, by the way, have produced one of the album's of the year. Right up your street if you like 80s icy cool. This week, however, I ended up stumbling on what I now think is the perfect record to Excel to.  Sit Down for Dinner  by Blonde Redhead isn't a punchy, bolshy record. It's lush and opulent but not in a garish way, it takes its time and unfurls, slowly and lovingly, like a extra long scarf knitted by a doting gran...

Look, feel free to shoot me down here, but Fiddlehead feel like a generational band. I'm defining 'generational band' as a band from a certain era that have certain signifiers to their sound that, later in their careers, perhaps even after they've disbanded, become their raison d'etre. See the 70s and Steely Dan; see the 90s and Pixies. While those bands became known for slick studio noodling and loud-quiet-loud dynamics respectively, Fiddlehead may go down in the annals of musical history for their commitment to the sub 2:30 anthem. Reverential to both modern day hardcore and the hardcore which stemmed from the Dischord-led DC scene, Fiddlehead combine the two to land somewhere in the middle of that genre and classic American indie rock. You know a Fiddlehead song from Patrick Flynn's passionate sing-shout, from the fact that most of them drive you along at 90mph regardless of if the lyrical content concerns grief or depression or hope, from the fact that you...

Turns out I could be arsed the very next day! From where has this fresh bout of motivation arisen? Do they have dealers for this sort of thing? If so, has anyone got the number of a good one?  --- I was a bit worried this morning. Fuck me, I thought, as I looked through the list of newly released albums. Couldn't have picked a worse time to start a blog than the week there's absolutely fuck all of note released. Barring reissues, that is. ABC's The Lexicon of Love (aka the Greatest Album of the 80s) has received the half-speed treatment if you're into that sort of thing. Maybe one day I'll bore you with why I love that album so much, but today is not that day. Instead, I'm here to present two offerings from differing ends of the musical spectrum.  Three years ago Hey Colossus released Dances/Curses , one of my albums of that year. If I remember rightly, on a list I published over in some other corner of the internet, it ended up third. For a band that I couldn...

I don't really know what I'm doing.  I mean, that's a fair accusation to throw at myself in general but, more specifically, I don't know what I'm doing here.  What exactly do I hope to this be? A promise to myself to write more, really. To get back in the saddle so to speak. The last time I sat in front of a laptop and typed something up that wasn't for work or to apply for a job or to successfully name all of the countries of the world on Sporcle in fifteen minutes -- yeah, I'm that guy -- was during lockdown when I challenged myself to write a novel within a month. I achieved the feat but no-one will ever see the finished article. Many moons ago, when I was a fledgling student at University of [redacted], I remember hearing a talk from a writer who, upon telling us about his first 'proper novel', regaled us with the story of his first 'not-so-proper novel' which sat at the bottom of a drawer in a long forgotten writing desk gathering dust ...