That’s it, kids. 2010 is almost over. Was it a great one? Was it an ok one? Was it pretty average? At Webcuts it was a mix of all three with a healthy dose of ‘don’t look back’. But what is worth looking back on are the songs that made 2010. Rest assured this list [...]
Two classic, career defining Fall albums get the deluxe box set treatment.
We told you about the bounty of international acts coming Australia’s way in the next few months a couple of weeks back, now after an announcement they would play the Meredith music festival in Victoria got those in other states chomping at the bit it’s now official — Mark E Smith and his current cohorts known as The Fall are playing headline shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne on the back of this year’s Your Future, Our Clutter album. Also tour dates for San Fran’s Girls and Canadian indie supergroup The New Pornographers.
Listen up, those of you who surf the web expressly for free music, have we got a treat for you. The lovely people at Domino Records have seen fit to drop their poker face and show the world their hand, putting together Snapshot: A Domino Compilation — an 11 track selection of their latest and [...]
Ah, Barcelona, your beaches are beautiful, your women are smoking jewels (literally), and this festival by the beach (really an explosion of concrete by the seaside) is clearly the diamond in the rough for the travelling roadshow of bands that litter the skies with one thing in mind – a paid holiday. With a selection of acts that suited this weary hack like a good pair of tight jeans and a band tee, Primavera was a stage to stage delight. The current crop of new band like The Drums, Surfer Blood and Dum Dum Girls rose up to meet the challenge of the ’90s alternative old guard of Pixies, Pavement and Superchunk.
I’m a band purist at heart. You can cut off all your fingers, but you’ve still got a hand. If you cut off all your band members and keep cutting and cutting and cutting, you can’t expect your audience to comply with your decision or to even recognise the music you make. What was it John Peel said about The Fall? “always different, always the same”. Well, yes, but… no. Mark E. Smith is The Fall, but The Fall isn’t just Mark E. Smith.
Do The Fall sound like a band in their 34th year? Clearly Mark E. Smith tends to suffer from a case of the nattering jacks, but if listen back to early Fall recordings, you’ll realise they’ve never sounded so good. Sitting pretty with what has to be their finest album in recent memory with Your Future, Our Clutter, Smith and co have seen fit to mark the occasion with this fantastic clip. Premiered in the UK on the Bury Council website, the gesture was a nod to the town that inspired the song. Less obvious is is how the film directors (ThirtyTwo) managed to cope with the rampaging upstart Mark E. Smith. How do we deal with that incorrigable old bastard? He won’t sit still and he won’t stop messing about with the cameras — right, we’ll film everything in super slo-mo… that’ll fuck him! It’s one of those unique pieces of film that evoke such phrases as “visually arresting” and “remarkably unsettling”, but for me, I just love the moment where Smith holds up a scrawled page where he’s written “look this up on t’net, you useless crock of download dreck creck”. Marvellous. Currently on tour in the UK, The Fall stop in at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London on Friday where Webcuts will see you at the bar.
The Northern white crap that talks back are… back. Smith and Co. hit the 21st Century in style with album number 277 or thereabouts.
With last years re-release of seminal debut albums by Bauhaus and Gary Numan, the 2010 release sheet for the Beggars Archive series look just as compelling, if not moreso. For fans of The Fall, both “The Wonderful and Frightening World Of” and “This Nation’s Saving Grace” will be appearing, as well as the This Mortal Coil back catalogue, and Pixies‘ “Doolittle” apparently marked for blu-ray.
Viking, 2008 It begins at the end, or the supposed end, where having retired the old guard for a succession of young guns, Mark E. Smith faces up to a musician mutiny on The Fall’s 2006 tour of America, where the disgruntled boys quit en masse four dates in. Were it for the peculiar placing [...]
The Too Pure Singles Club returns in 2012 with a bang (or is that a rattle) with the sound of Icelandic mantra magicians Dead Skeletons. For the uninitiated, Dead Skeletons came into existence in 2008 when band member Jon Saamunder needed music for an art installation in the Reykjavik Art Museum. Enlisting the help of friends Henrik Bjornsson and Ryan Carlson Van Kriedt the trio penned the songs which would eventually become the Dead Magick album, a 72 minute, 12 song journey through space and time, life and death. “Om Mani Peme Hung” is the sound of Neu! on a meditation retreat engaging in a spiritual hypno-chant. Now repeat after me… Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung… (subscribe to the Too Pure Singles Club here).
