Gigwise asks the important question

"Where are the stars of Britpop now" asks Gigwise, with the answer coming back that they're mostly all over BBC TV and radio talking about Britpop.

Still, if you've ever worried about what became of Menswear, Gigwise have gone to look for them. (The phrase "does anyone know if there's anyone selling shoelaces on this market" might be useful here.)

Journeys to the past when the future was the destination

I suppose, to be fair, the C86 movement were never likely to be confused with the Futurists, but even Bobby Gillespie in his most Byrds-drenched, pre-Bourbon incarnation would have raised a surprised eyebrow at the idea that C86 would get a three CD expanded reissue in 2014.

The extra tracks include some interesting stuff, including a supposedly never-previously-released North of Cornwallis track, but it seems to have stretched the defintion of C86.

But wouldn't you rather all this effort was put into making a C2014?

Roll forward a few years, or perhaps just don't roll back as far, and we find ourselves at a week-long return of The Evening Session, a show which has been revived more often than Beau Geste. This time (probably every time) it's to celebrate Britpop.

Oh, Britpop. It's like Jeremy Bentham's corpse - now that all the life has gone, you're just left with a weird artefact that serves little purpose other than to be occasionally kidnapped and paraded up and down the street, missing the vital pulse that interested everyone in the first place.

Lamacq added: For me, this is the week 20 years ago that the musical tectonic plates shifted. On the Tuesday, Oasis played live on Radio 1 for the first time and on the Friday morning we heard the news of Kurt Cobain's death. It was as if one scene had announced it had arrived, as another began to lose its way."

Steve, you're better than that. I don't think a single person, on hearing the news of Kurt's suicide, thought "that's kind of epochal, what with Oasis having been on the wireless a few days back."

Jo is actually more honest:

Jo Whiley said: "I will always jump at the chance to work with Steve. He is my radio 'other half' and we did fight the Britpop wars together after all. It was a great time to be a DJ on UK radio but, as ever, when you're in the eye of the storm, you are blissfully unaware. It's only in hindsight that you appreciate what a privilege it was to live and work through such an exciting time for British music."

Who'd have thought it was the more excitable one of the pair who remembered that a lot of Britpop shibboleths are coloured by red, white and blue tinted hindsight?

Steve and Jo will be trotting the 'half a pint of cider before the show' anecdote for the 1,000th time as part of a big Britpop disinterment across the BBC.

Fran Healy has been busy

It's been two years since the last Travis album; seven, if you measure it since the last one that people noticed. This has created a Travis-like hole in Britain's cultural life.

Holes aren't, to be honest, all that bad. And this is a hole that you really don't mind.

Nevertheless, Fran Healy has decided to try and plug that hole with a solo record. (Yes, it seems that Travis consisted of more than one person.)

There's an excited press release:

Artists such as Coldplay, Noel Gallagher, The Doves and Gomez have cited Healy's sophisticated and atmospheric arrangements as a major influence on their own sound.

Coldplay... well, yes, Coldplay you could believe.

Recorded in Berlin, New York and Vermont, the 10 tracks that make up [the album] are as exceptionally literate as they are emotionally challenging.

Yes. I suspect they will be.

As an idea of how "exceptionally literate" they are, the album is being called Wreckorder. Which is the clumsy sort-of pun that you'd expect from a bunch of 15 year-olds hoping to get a mention in Kerrang, not a "literate" album from a man you're claiming is - oh yes - "a quintessential pop songwriter".

Can you make the album seem even more depressingly assembled-from-mail-order-parts?

features Paul McCartney on bass

That would do it.

The end result is the sound of a songwriter who embodied the spirit of Britpop and continues to artistically evolve.

If he's artistically evolved, why would you need to mention that he embodied the spirit of a music scene that was looking dated fifteen years ago. When humans developed opposable thumbs, I'm pretty certain they dropped banging on about 'now walking on two legs' from their press releases.

Not that Healy did embody Britpop anyway - even Wikipedia just lobs Travis in at the end of a "second wave", which is a polite way of saying 'turned up after closing time in the hope of getting to cop off with people who haven't realised the party is over'.

I'm just wondering, though: could this press release make Healy sound any more like a caricature of himself?

Healy is currently on a North American tour with Keane.

Yes. That would do it.

There is, though, one phrase that will bruise your heart:

The collection of songs includes the Neko Case duet "Sing Me To Sleep" which bounces over warm melodies and a syncopated drum loop.

Neko Case has no business appearing on a song which will be described as "syncopated". Can a drum loop actually be syncopated? Isn't a loop by its very nature the opposite of syncopation?

Bernard Butler: I hate you, Britpop reunions

Bernard Butler is as angry as a wasp in a sweetshop window with all these Britpop reunions:

"There's an awful lot of Britpop reunions going on at the moment and I find it embarrassing personally.

"I think it's got no relevance to what's going on at the moment."

Mmm. It;d be much better for the kids to listen to something of the moment like, erm, Duffy, right?

"I've never had an offer to do anything as Suede.

"I'm obsessively opposed to nostalgia. I hate the idea of it. It doesn't work. And it doesn't interest with me at all.

"What's important is not what I did last week, it's what I'm going to do next week. I made great records - I love them. My kids play them now. But that's for them and everyone else."

The key words, of course, are "as Suede". What with The Tears being completely different, and all.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - Luke Haines

Luke Haines is doing the promotional rounds as he publishes his sort-of memoir Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall

The Scotsman meets him:

As for the Britpop movement, Haines may have damned it at the time, but is even less happy with its legacy. "The worst thing about that whole period was that, with the exception of Pulp, it kind of quashed any kind of eccentricity in British music. Britpop really flattened it all out and left us with these homogenous guitar bands. Nowadays it would be a lot harder for people like Vivian Stanshall or Ian Dury to come along. You'll never get a pottymouth cripple back on stages again, it's not going to happen."

Stephen Jelbert reviews for The Independent:

Yet it's this obliviousness to his own obnoxiousness that makes Bad Vibes such an entertaining read. At one point Haines recalls hanging out with Donna Matthews, just as she was forming the fleetingly popular, notoriously toxic band Elastica. A decade later he invited the now cleaned-up guitarist to support him on tour, only to find out that they wouldn't be exchanging old war stories, since Matthews had no recollection of even knowing Haines at the time. But his description of Matthews arriving in the Big City with just enough skag to corrupt the fresh and fruity metropolitans sharply references all those heroin(e)s of picaresque novels where ingénues go bad.

The Sunday Times gets Robert Sandall to have a look:

He ends up in hospital after a drunken brawl on the night the Auteurs' album misses out - by one vote - on the Mercury. Naturally insubordinate, he gets thrown off a UK tour supporting The The. He's equally rude to underlings: his attempt to break America comes unstuck after he quarrels with the management of the Auteurs' support act. Even the people Haines professes to like stateside, he can't get along with. His tour manager Gene, for example, “claims to be employed by our US record company, but I just can't imagine anyone paying this guy money and having to see him every day”.

Naturally, Record Collector's Jake Kennedy is most interested in the music:

Likewise, when referring to an album of Auteurs remixes as “fuckawful, seizure inducing amateurish meanderings”, he’s grateful that he retained the publishing rights as it goes on to “sell well in the States”. Alex James’ A Bit Of A Blur this is not…

Somewhat surprisingly, Amazon.co.uk reports that Haines is doing well amongst, erm, car part enthusiasts - many of whom, you suspect, are feeling that Haynes Manuals have lost their edge a little.

Embed and breakfast man: Moose weekend

How better to spend a late autumn weekend than by looking at some of the work of Moose, a band who should have been a lot more popular than they were but somehow managed to be eclipsed by Chapterhouse. Yes, it's more shoegaze this weekend, but superior shoegaze - and we'll dip into the more jangling, countrified stuff, too. The stuff that made Hut drop them like a hot burrito.

Let's kick off with I Wanted To See You, To See If I Wanted You:



Moose loose about the cyberhoose
Wikipedia
Unofficial official site
Last FM

Buy
Moose's entire back catalogue is cussedly out of print, so your only hope is second hand
Honey Bee
...XYZ
Reprise
Live A Little, Love A Lot

More Moose video across the weekend
Suzanne live at the Marquee
This River Will Never Run Dry
Little Bird

Noel: Oasis like no Oasis you've ever heard before

With a new Oasis album lumbering into view, it's surely time for Noel Gallagher to tell us that this time round, instead of the lumpenlennonisms of the last albums, this is going to be a whole different beast.

Yes, it's time:

"It's not Britpop, let's put it that way. It's not our usual thing," he explained. "It's just really exciting, three of the tracks have got two drummers on, me and Zak [Starkey] playing drums. Some of it sounds a bit glam. There's no pop singles on it. I'd be amazed if anything else gets on the radio past the first single."

Two drummers, you say? Like Rialto, then?

We love Noel's suggestion that something "a bit glam" might make it hard for Oasis to get airplay. Ooh! Careful there.

Still, you've got to almost feel sorry for a man who makes a fuss in 2008 because he's just now made an album that might not stick to a Britpop template. But will there be any tunes you can hum? Or bellow along to down the pub? Will there be songs to bash out on the joanna down the Bull and Bush? On the old pianer... anna...

Echobelly weekend: Great Things

This, from the Albarn-fronted Britpop Now Late Show spin-off: Great Things:



[Part of Echobelly weekend]

Weakest Link goes Britpop

We suspect there's no real plan to produce a Britpop Special edition of The Weakest Link beyond a vague idea and a Daily Star gossip columnist, but let's play along.

Naturally, the big idea is to refight Blur versus Oasis - yet again - this time as quiz; beyond Albarn and one of the Gallaghers:

[o]ther stars that bosses want to have on the show include Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, Elastica's Justine Frischmann, Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield and Suede's Brett Anderson.

We suspect the best they'll manage is one of the Boo Radleys; Bonehead and/or Guigsy; Phil 'I was on Park Life' Daniels; the drummer from Echobelly and probably, stretching a point, Justin Hawkins.

It might be indistinguishable from a normal edition of the programme.

Taking the Miki

With Rhino records releasing a compilation of British indie in the US, UnderTheRader took the excuse to track down Miki Berenyi, formerly of Lush, to catch up with what she's been doing since the band split. It's a lovely, nostalgic piece, where she rules out any chance of a permanent comeback:

UTR: Are you aware of the online Bring Miki Back/We Miss Miki campaign (www.mikiberenyi.com, www.myspace.com/mikiberenyi)? How do you respond to this?

Berenyi: I guess it’s flattering that anybody gives a shit. Not sure how enthusiastic the support would be if they realised that bringing back Miki Berenyi would deliver a 40-year-old office employee with graying hair whose still struggling to shift the weight from her last pregnancy.

... and she's a little dismissive of the Box Set, too:

I’m afraid I’m going to come out with the stock answer of anyone who’s ever been in a band and throw a tantrum about being labelled as part of a ‘scene.’ Britpop? I remember Blur hated Oasis and Oasis hated Blur. And that Blur won the battle but Oasis won the war. But then later Oasis won the battle and Blur won the war. Several people embarrassed themselves by shaking hands with Tony Blair.
I think our contribution was to stand at the sidelines (being ignored) with stunned bemusement at this desperate attempt to create an advertisable brand of Britishness that seemed to represent a minuscule stereotyped sector of the U.K.

...not to mention, of course, that Lush were - if anything - shoegazers/scene that celebrates itself rather than Britpop anyway.

It feels like it's been something of a weekend for old friends and old faces. Perhaps it's the onset of Christmas.

[via Chromewaves

Cribs decry lack of 'ethics'

The Cribs are worried that the UK music scene is about to go the way of Britpop - although without the huge-selling acts and Louise Wener, obviously. It's all gone to pot, they wail:

"I think there's a couple of good bands. But I mean just that; a couple of good bands. I'm not gonna mention any names - in a good or bad way - and I'm not going to call anyone out by name. But music is rubbish right now.”

"There aren't any bands with ethics. Things have got how Britpop was a few years ago, with people identifying something that is popular, and just doing the same and jumping on the bandwagon."

We're not sure it's entirely unethical to play music that sound slike other people's music - after all, The Cribs wouldn't last long in a moot court if that was the charge against them - but we know what he means.

Round-up: Brett Anderson's solo debut

On Monday, Brett Anderson popped up on Gideon Coe's 6Music show to offer up a couple of tracks from his new solo album. Coe asked him about the wall of male voices on the record, prompting Anderson to reveal it was all him and multi-tracking, but allowing that it did sound like he had a backing band:

"A team of homosexual monks, or something."

We've always assumed that, since nuns are officially "brides of Christ" that that must imply that monks have some similar exclusive relationship to Jesus, but we're not going to start opening a theoretical can of ecclesiastical worms with that one.

So, how has the world been reacting this bunch of secular singing monks?

The Telegraph takes the opportunity to ponder how Anderson managed to have his face dropped from Britpop's metaphorical Mount Rushmore:

It seems strange then that, while Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker and the Gallagher brothers are all being bestowed with reverential status, Brett Anderson has become the lost boy of Britpop.

[Anderson says] "I don't think people like me. I've been making records for 15 years, and I still read personal, vitriolic things written about me. It's as if I accidentally created some alter-ego that isn't the real me, and people really react against it."

As if to remind people of Brett's central role in the birth of what eventually became Britpop, BBC News lobs up that cover of the then-controversial Select which told the "yanks to go home."

Elsewhere on the BBC's website - apparently the spineless Trust haven't yet closed bbc.co.uk down in a panic in case it harms sales of Reader's Digest - BBC Music considers the album, and finds it weeping:

So personal troubles may have been replaced with reflection but this signals an evolution in Brett Anderson…deliberate or natural. It may be too doleful for some, missing his former edge, and energy and some fans may be alienated by the change in direction.

Lost his edge? Pitchfork think he's lost something more upsetting:

Mayoclinic.com tells me its natural for men to experience a drastic decline in their sex drive as a consequence of aging. This is basically also what Brett Anderson tells me with the release of his first solo record. Granted, in the pantheon of Britpop-era sex gods (there's a scary visual), Anderson seemed the most impotent of the bunch; witness his now-famous quip about being a bisexual who'd never had a homosexual experience. Nonetheless, there was a time where Anderson's sexuality was his main currency, and it was powerful enough-- even in its messiness-- to provide the charge for two, maybe even three, great albums.

In The News' review suggests they're also experiencing drive difficulties:

[OracleException: ORA-00904: "nsumerNewsCodeStructure_Codes4"."Parent": invalid identifier]
Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleException.HandleErrorHelper(Int32 errCode, OracleConnection conn, IntPtr opsErrCtx, OpoSqlValCtx* pOpoSqlValCtx, Object src, String procedure) +1000
Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleException.HandleError(Int32 errCode, OracleConnection conn, String procedure, IntPtr opsErrCtx, OpoSqlValCtx* pOpoSqlValCtx, Object src) +21
Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleCommand.ExecuteReader(Boolean requery, Boolean fillRequest, CommandBehavior behavior) +3112
Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleCommand.System.Data.IDbCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior behavior) +42

It's easy to fling "IntPtr opsErrCtx, OpoSqlValCtx*" at Anderson, but how come the Gallaghers can get away with "String procedure, IntPtr opsErrCtx" after "String procedure, IntPtr opsErrCtx" and still get treated at the Brits like they're relevant?

The Manchester Evening News suggest that rather than being a new direction, this is little more than rehab-strength Suede:

The man himself won't approve of this comparison, but many of these tracks sound like off cuts from a Suede album. Imagine the band ditching the drugs and booze for a few early nights and some Horlicks-this is the general feel of Brett, the album. But this man's relaxed tunes are better than many other artists' full on hyped-up emptiness.

We're trying to imagine what something full of emptiness would look like. It's straining our heads a little, to be frank.

To help us, the Scotsman deploys former Suede fan Fiona Sheppard to suggest that empty fullness would be, well, a lot like Brett:

It would be very satisfying to see Brett Anderson find a post-Britpop niche in the way that his old nemesis, Damon Albarn, the Blur frontman, has, but it's sounding highly unlikely with this squandered opportunity to go on. Surely a first solo offering from someone with as eventful a life to draw on could have produced a more atmospheric, confessional, comedown album rather than this insipid, say-nothing affair.

The Times' John Mulvey hopes a bad review will, at least, give Brett something to mope on for his sophomore album:

Windy, sentimental ballads predominate. Dust and Rain revisits the shop-soiled glam and drug analogies of peak-period Suede, but Anderson seems too weary to carry them off with any style or conviction.[...]

Ironically, it is Damon Albarn, Anderson’s oldest rival, whose eclecticism now marks him out as this generation’s Bowie. Anderson, meanwhile, must take solace where he can — at least another bad review gives him something new to be despondent about.

The Guardian (a newspaper, of course, that we like to read) catches the prevailing reaction and summarises it perfectly:

There's a fair bit of self-indulgence here, but the former Suede leader has a way with these things, and the result is generally listenable.

In other words: he does this sort of thing all the time, but at least he does do it well.

The response, then, seems to be a little lukewarm, but certainly isn't as bad as some of the reviews Anderson has had since England took against him. Channel News Asia's Today asked him how he copes with so much negative commentary:

"What these people have to think about is: When they die, what kind of beautiful things will they have left in this world?" Anderson said. "I'm no Mother Theresa, but when I make music, I do try to make the world a better place."

Back when Suede were the best new band in Britain, apparently, the national papers used to hang around outside the old offices of the Evening Argus hoping to get hold of pictures of Brett dressed as a soldier in a school production when he was six. It's to his old local paper that has landed the best interview of the current press round so far. Now, foolishly, answering to The Argus, the paper gets a gruff admission from Anderson that the Suede-era man so many reviewers detect in the solo artist never really existed in the first place:

"He was, he now admits, "Carefully, but subconsciously, trying to construct an image.

But don't let anyone in a band fool you into thinking that they don't. Nirvana are supposed to be the anti-image band but that was their image. It's about creating the myth."

The only trouble with building your own myth, as Anderson is now discovering, is it's hard as hell to live up to. The new record is pretty damn good - certainly better than anything Oasis have done in years, arguably more interesting than Good, The Bad and The Queen - but how can Anderson ever hope to outperform the ambisexual hipgod who crashed in with the Drowners?

Decide for yourself: Buy the album

Filmstar

TMFTML suggested that it might be a bit early for a Live Forever - a retrospective movie on Britpop, but, of course, has the advantage of being American and so avoided seeing the "I Love..." franchise eat its own butt with a nostalgia show for 1999 in the year 2001. ("Do you remember..." Of course I do, do you think I'm Audrey Bloody Roberts?).

We like the way Damon now claims that his participation in the chart war with Oasis left him feeling "stupid and very confused" - yeah, Damon, that's right - you were being ironic, weren't you?

Obviously, we've not seen the film - we don't go to London unless we absolutely have to - but it sounds like a well-meaning attempt to join up completely the wrong dots. The chart battle isn't interesting for the chart battle, but the way Justine Frischmann was treated as a lump of meat by both sides; the Damien Hirst video and the extent to which cheesecake Benny Hill-esque images really can keep their ironic detachment; the bitterness that Blur was turning on former mentor Dave Balfe and... we're sure there must be something interesting about the Oasis tune, too. The... um... words or something.