Eaten by Monsters

My word, is it that time of year again already? Today the nominations for the Mercury Music Prize album shortlist have been announced (live on facebook! how refreshingly ‘now’!).  I’m writing this first paragraph in advance of the actual nominations themselves, partly to save time, but also to see if I can guess in advance which bands will be picked.  So, my predictions are that amongst the nominees there will be at least one of each of the following categories:

A Token ‘Jazzy’ Act: The Mercury’s sense of righteous self-esteem rests on the fact that the nominations are a critics’ choice, rather than an outright popularity contest like so many other prizes tend to be at the moment: “get a million of your fans to register their emails on our ad-funded website and we’ll give you a meaningless title and an afternoon in a recording studio (but of course you’ll have to pay for mixing and mastering yourself)”.  As a result the nominations usually try far too hard to seem ‘diverse’ and ‘open’; with all genres making an appearance.  Inevitably this manifests in the shortlist with the inclusion of an ‘innovative’ jazz band, often announcing their traditional jazz credibility by including ‘trio’ or ‘quartet’ in their name, but at the same time being different enough from real jazz to be ‘cool’: 2010 – Kit Downes Trio, 2009 – Led Bib, 2008 – Portico Quartet, 2007 – Basquiat Strings, 2006 – Zoe Rahman, 2005 – Polar Bear, 2004 – does Robert Wyatt count? I’m not sure. (I have also heard people describe ’04 nominee Jos Stone as ‘Jazzy’, but only by people with no ears…), 2003 – Soweto Kinch, 2002 – Guy Barker and Joanna MacGregor… and so on and so forth. (I’ll stop there because there wasn’t really a jazzy one in 2001, and being the sprightly youngster that I am, I was never really aware of the Mercurys in the nineties.)

A Token ‘Folky’ Act: I have a friend who runs a folk night in London who was recently ‘fraped’ by a mischievous soul who simply wrote ‘Mumford and Sons’ as his status.  Needless to say, the folkie was apoplectic with rage and genre-based fury.  So to say that the Mumfords were last year’s token ‘folk’ act is perhaps slightly controversial, but then such is the nature of the Mercury’s taste for what many call ‘folk’.  Myself, I like the Mumfords, but if they have anything to do with a folk tradition it’s one rooted firmly on the other side of the Atlantic.  The 2010 nominees had this pseudo-folk in spades, with Laura Marling and Villagers appearing alongside the aforementioned Mumfords, but most past shortlists have had a singer-songwriter/acoustic-style act of one degree or another: 2009 – Sweet Billy Pilgrim and Lisa Hannigan, 2008 – Rachel Unthank and the Winterset (now know as The Unthanks) and Laura Marling, 2007 – Fionn Regan, 2006 – Isobel Cambell and Mark Lanegan, 2005 – Antony and the Johnsons and Seth Lakeman and KT Tunstal, 2004 –  again, does Robert Wyatt count? 2003 – Eliza Carthy, 2002 – Gemma Hayes, and so on and so forth.  Of these, only Lakeman, Unthank and Carthy could really be called ‘proper folk’.

Will either of these categories make an appearance this year? You betcha! The shortlist has now been announced and is as follows:

Adele – 21

Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi

Elbow – Build A Rocket Boys!

Everything Everything – Man Alive

Ghostpoet – Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam

Gwilym Simcock – Good Days At Schloss Elmau

James Blake – James Blake

Katy B – On A Mission

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine

Metronomy – The English Riviera

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

Tinie Tempah – Disc-Overy

And what of our predicted categories? Quelle surprise, Gwilym Simcock is a rather normal jazz pianist, but wait! What’s this!? He’s using extended techniques being all ‘experimental’.  And for the folky slot? King Creosote sits almost exactly between the faux-folk of Lisa Hannigan et al and real-folk of Carthy and Lakeman.

The tone of this post could be taken as being a little mocking, perhaps, but it is particularly interesting to see how ‘jazz’ as a genre is given far more attention than its popularity would warrant (although with the resurgence in popularity of both faux and real folk over the past decade means that they’re pretty much assured a representative in any list of this kind that aspires to be a least a little bit relevant).  All in all, however, I’m a big fan of the Mercurys, precisely because (as I mentioned above) its shortlist is selected by a panel of critics rather than a simple popularity contest, and also for the fact that it puts albums front and centre, where they belong.

The big question now is who do I think will be the overall winner? I’d absolutely love to see King Creosote come through, JP Harvey probably ‘deserves’ to win it, Everything Everything ‘ought’ to win it, but Tinie Tempah probably will win it.  Check back on the 6th of September to see just how wrong I was, and keep your eyes peeled for reviews of all these albums on these pages in the coming weeks.

Everything Everything – Photoshop Handsome

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – John Taylor’s Month Away

It’s all over, you say? Finally I can rejoin the world again. By this, of course, what I really mean is that it’s once more safe to read a magazine, safe to venture onto Twitter and Facebook (in fact, the internet as a whole, really), and finally safe to turn the radio and television back on. Why this unilateral disengagement with all forms of broadcast media, I hear you inquire? Well you clearly went to Glastonbury festival this year, because anyone who didn’t simply wouldn’t have to ask.

Every year it’s the same; for Glastonbury weekend we’re inundated – nay, bombarded – with festival features and special reports and ‘front line’ coverage, the sum total of which can be summed up as “Look at me! I’m having such a good time! And I’m with all these famous people!”. But this kind of behaviour is limited to pundits and ‘personalities’ no more: the advancing blitzkrieg of social media means that the “see how much fun I’m having” impulse is virtually inescapable. Even a few short years ago it wasn’t too hard to ignore: all you had to do was steer clear of Radio One and turn off the telly, but now, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and mobile apps, we can all get a running minute-by-minute commentary of the ‘exciting events’ as they unfold. I’m sure a good many of my friends can’t have actually seen any of the acts last weekend for staring at their tiny screens, such was the frequency of their posting.

And I’m not being this grouchy and cantankerous purely out of jealousy. Aside from the irritation of being constantly reminded that I’m ‘missing out’, I’m not actually missing out at all. Festivals are, in a word, rubbish, but sadly my opinion is not shared by everybody. Most people, my limited anecdotal evidence suggests, absolutely love festivals, and it appears that the festival circuit is one of the few areas of the music industry that’s still in rude health. There’s hundreds of the darned things, covering every genre imaginable, and they’re springing up all over the place – I’d be very surprised if there hasn’t been one this summer within a few miles of where you live. And yet for all the fuss, all the hype, all the enthusiasm, who are we really kidding? Music festivals have as much to do with music as McDonald’s does to food. Don’t get me wrong, live music is great, but in a field? Through a completely inadequate PA? With ridiculously overpriced food and drink? In the rain? Considerably less great, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Of course, these are things you already know. Every man jack of you could tell me that festivals are all about ‘the experience’, and there’s the rub; it’s not an experience I have any interest in. I’m not a complete misanthrope – I can boogie on down with the best of them at a proper gig – but my capacity for hanging around in big crowds listening to tinny, indistinct dance music died with my teens. And there’s something about festivals that completely fails to bring out the best in bands, too. The restrictions on the band’s set list being the main culprit for sub-par performances: it’s got to be short (usually 15-20 minutes), so there’s no time to warm up or find a groove. And of course it has to be appropriate to the atmosphere. More so than in any other situation, a band’s set has to fit the mood of the whole event, which invariably means that the songs have to be the ‘up beat’ ones; this is no time for subtle introspection. And naturally you’ve got to play the hits; the eclecticism of festival line-ups means that only a small proportion of the audience are there to see a specific band, so winning over new fans is the prime priority for any performer, alongside appeasing the indifferent. I hear Mumford & Sons gallantly slotted a few new numbers into their Friday night appearance on the Other stage; they probably had trouble hearing themselves over the cries of “play Little Lion Man again!”

So is there any good news on the horizon? Every year there are more and more reports of festivals having to cancel due to “funding gaps” but alas there are, at least for now, the exception that proves the rule. With the public’s seemingly vast current appetite for festivals, and with everyone cashing in left right and centre there’s bound to be a few that miss the mark. But from tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow, so I’ll keep praying for the end of festival fever, but for now complete disengagement is the only sane option, at least until winter. If anything can be relied upon to put a stop to outdoor revelry it’s the British weather.

Mumford & Sons – Below My Feet (live at Glastonbury ’11) [audio http://www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Misc/MumfordAndSons_BelowMyFeet.mp3]

Mumford & Sons – Hopeless Wanderer (live at Glastonbury ’11) [audio http://www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Misc/MumfordAndSons_HopelessWanderer.mp3]

You can buy the Mumford’s first album here.

It’s a poor reviewer indeed who has too much to drink at a show (particularly in a venue where a simple Jameson’s will set you back the better part of a tenner: visitors to Old Street’s Favela Chic, you have been warned) but nevertheless I can’t be sure if it was overindulgence on my part, or under-rehearsal on the part of the bands involved that resulted in my impression of the track Flash Floods & Wildfire being something of a chaotic mess.  At this point I’m inclining toward the former option, as both the bands in question, The October Game, and EbM favourites Toodar were both in fine fettle individually, and the track in question – who’s release we were there to celebrate – turns out, on record, to be rather good indeed.  In fact, I’d probably go as far as to say it’s one of the best new songs I’ve heard this year thus far (an honour held by Toodar’s Ten Paces last year, in fact).

Flash Floods & Wildfire is the lead track from a split-EP by the two bands, which is available now from Scylla records, and is a co-written joint venture for the two bands.  It seems the split EP is a much maligned creature, but it’s a format I’m particularly fond of.  I guess it’s because I’m a sucker for an interesting cover, and the A/B comparison provided by most splits is always enough to pique my fascination (check out the Dropkick Murphys/Face to Face split for a fine example of the form at its best).  With the introduction of a collaborative track like this one, Toodar and The October Game are upping the ante even further.

Toodar have a new real EP out now too, so I’ll save my praise for them until I review that one properly, but I feel I ought to mention The October Game individually at least once.  Unlike their name suggests, they’re not an emo band from the states, and in fact sound very home grown indeed.  While their cover of Toodar’s Ten Paces is interesting as a re-imagining of a favourite song, there’s something about the TOG-only tracks that doesn’t quite sit well with me.  They aren’t bad songs by any means, but while they were relatively smooth when I saw them live, there’s something a little pedestrian – a little dated, even – about their music.  They’d probably have been huge five or ten years ago, but I can’t help but feel that the public appetite for their very MOR brand of alt. rock has perhaps waned somewhat of late.

Quibbles aside, this is a very assured, very well put together little split EP, with a good original from each band thrown in for good measure alongside the obligatory covers.  (Toodar’s is the excellent Jack in a Box; a song that previously made an appearance on the band’s White Elephant EP last year.  There it was eclipsed by the more instantly accessible Ten Paces and Toy, but here it’s given a little more room to shine).  I’ll certainly be talking about Toodar again in the next week or so, but I’m also going to keep an ear to the ground for The October Game, just incase.

Toodar/The October Game – Flash Floods & Wildfire [audio http://www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Toodar/ToodarTOG_FlashFloodsAndWildfire.mp3]

The October Game – Ten Paces (Toodar cover)[audio http://www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Toodar/TOG_TenPaces.mp3]

Buy this EP here.