Downloadable: CSS

Ooh, just when I was mentally shifting CSS into the "I guess they went and got proper jobs or something" file, who returns but CSS?

This track is Hits Me Like A Rock, and it's basically them yelling "back". With a slight hint of macarena.

It really could go on as a Spanish-holiday summer hit with no further make-up.

Decade Null: 2006 - CSS

What happened to them, then? "Wine then bed then more then again" would clearly take you over your units for the week, but presumably CSS haven't crashed into the gutter? CSS-derived Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above:



[Part of Decade Null 2006]

Free and lovely

To celebrate their involvement in Glastonbury, the Guardian's music site are making available a free album's worth of downloads, including the mighty Operator Please and Neon Neon. And CSS.

There is some White Denim on there, too, but these things happen even in the best-regulated households.

CSS splits a little

CSS bassist Ira is off, as she can't square the carbon-footprint of the band with her conscience:

“I decided to move forward and dedicate more of my time to fashion and other projects. Just a big change of priorities, as I will never stop playing music.

“I am also a bit worried about climate change. People should care more and do something about it. I decided to fly less.

“CSS will always be in my heart. They said goodbye to their bass player, but they won a new life time fan. In health and sickness, in happiness and so forth. Blah blah blah, so help us God.”

Okay, it looks like the desire to do other things than tour with CSS - and, god knows, she must have bassed her way through Lets Make Love a thousand times a thousand times by now, at every festival on the planet - but the green angle makes for a more interesting story.

Extra CSS functionality

On sale, today, online: tickets for an extra CSS Christmas date: a late show at the Coronet on December 15th.

A new Role

Bonde Do Role are lining up a new ep, featuring a smorgasbord of remixes. Marina Gasolina is out around December 4th depending on where you are, with a tracklisting kind of like this:


01. Marina Gasolina (New Version)
02. Contaminada
03. Cagago
04. Miami Beach
05. Marina Gasolina (Fake Blood Remix)
06. Marina Gasolina (Peaches Remix)
07. Office Boy (CSS Remix)
08. Office Boy (Architecture In Helsinki Remix)
09. Solta O Frango (Bitchee Bitchee Ya Ya Remix)
10. Solta O Frango (Ladytron Remix)

As good an excuse as any to lob in the Office Boy video:

CSS tour dates

CSS are throwing some December dates into the UK pot:

SUNDAY 2/12/07 LEEDS UNIVERSITY
MONDAY 3/12/07 LONDON BRIXTON ACADEMY
TUESDAY 4/12/07 MANCHESTER ACADEMY
WEDNESDAY 5/12/07 GLASGOW ACADEMY
THURSDAY 6/12/07 BRISTOL ACADEMY
FRIDAY 7/12/07 BIRMINGHAM ACADEMY
SATURDAY 8/12/07 NOTTINGHAM ROCK CITY
MONDAY 10/12/07 DUBLIN OLYMPIA
TUESDAY 11/12/07 OXFORD ACADEMY
WEDNESDAY 12/12/07 NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY
THURSDAY 13/12/07 STOKE KEELE UNIVERSITY
FRIDAY 14/12/07 BRIGHTON DOME
MONDAY 17/12/07 CAMBRIDGE CORN EXCHANGE
TUESDAY 18/12/07 LIVERPOOL ACADEMY
WEDNESDAY 19/12/07 SHEFFIELD LEADMILL
THURSDAY 20/12/07 PORTSMOUTH PYRAMIDS

Tickets are going on sale next week; MySpacers get a jump on non-friends of the band.

United ground CSS

CSS had been due to play Lollapalooza this weekend, but didn't. Their set fell foul of the airlines; habits of selling more seats than they actually have, in the hope that people won't turn up - something that in most industries would be fraudulent.

The band posted the story to MySpace, and was copied to Music Slut:

*Well, folks. Wanna read a story? This is how things happened: A couple of weeks ago we finished the first part of the crazy SUMMER FESTIVAL TOURS. So we were happy we were having some days off, yay! But we had to get our working visas for USA, so instead of going home, we went to Lisbon to get our visas issued. We statyed a couple of days in sunny Lisbon (yummy Lisbon), got the papers, rested for four days and came to US.

Yesterday we played our NYC gig, which by the way was very very very fun. The crew and a part of the band headed right after the show to Chicago with the bus (which didn't have enough room for everybody) and the rest of us went stayed one more night in NYC. We had a flight to Chicago eleven in the morning of the next day (aka today). So we woke up very early, got an expensive taxi to the LaGuardia airport, checked in almost three hours before the flight and GUESS WHAT?

United Airlines oversold the flight and... and... they're very sorry cuz there's no other way for us to go to Chicago and play our gig! And they're also VERY SORRY cuz our luggages went to Chicago. And they're very sorry they ain't paying for our hotels here in NYC today, our cab, our fucking dignity. And by the way, they were the ASSHOLEST people I ever saw in my life. They treated us like shit. FUCK UNITED AIRLINES BIG TIME. BIG TIME. ASSHOLES. ARSE-HOLES.

NOW WHERE'S MY FUCKING CASE? SHIT.
We're so sorry. And pissed.
Love. And hate.
CSS.*

We've still yet to have it convincingly explained to us how airlines are able to sell something they've already sold to someone else - we have heard vague explanations that it's in someway important to maintain their ability to keep flying, but presumably they could use the same argument if they started pickpocketing customers queuing up to check in.

You, You Tube & The Music: Glastonbury 2007

Amongst the live Glastonbury stuff turning up on YouTube at the moment:

Bloc Party: So Here We Are & Helicopter
Arcade Fire: No Cars Go
Arctic Monkeys: Diamonds Are Forever
The Chemical Brothers: Hey Boy Hey Girl
Maximo Park: Apply Some Pressure
The Coral: Dreaming Of You
The Twang: Wide Awake
Manic Street Preachers: La Tristesse Durera
CSS: Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above

BBC World News report
A pan round the site

Glastonbury 2007 in full

GlastOn TV: A glimpse of Pete Doherty

I'm not going to pretend that I'm television production material, but I'm struggling to understand the thought process which led BBC Three to show a sliver of Babyshambles - and I mean a sliver, I don't think Doherty actually sang a coherent word in the slice that made it to screen - before cutting away to The Kooks live.

Okay, it was absolutely live rather than taped, like the Babyshambles performance, but since they could join The Kooks at any point, wouldn't the fascinating experience of watching Doherty in front of a massive crowd, basking in having his words sung back to him, have been worth persevering with for a while longer? It would have been nice to see if he rose to the occasion; as if he really fitted in this sort of environment as much as the glimpse made it seem. This Glastonbury appearance could be the point where Babyshambles, where Doherty, finally loses his claim to be any sort of cultural outlaw and admits he's become a Fast Show character - well-loved, but poorly sketched. It could be a musical turning point. It might not be, too.

But you know that it's at least got to be more interesting than the bloody Kooks, live or not.

The Arctic Monkeys have just got round to doing Diamonds Are Forever on the press red service (a world where time runs differently, and last night is forever now) - it's nice to see what they can manage with a song that calls for a little bit more than their own compositions.

Bjork - besides inspiring someone to shout out "she's got scary lady trumpet players" - was notable for reprising her swan dress by wearing what appeared to be pigeon roadkill wings yesterday evening.

The most perfect experience so far - from a multiscreen point of view - has been CSS, although if we find out who stole Lovefoxx's headband, we'll kick their asses from here to Rio. It looks like security - in something of a first - have learned to not immediately treat a singer touching the audience as a code red this year. Although maybe if they had, she'd not have lost her headband.

Oh dear. Perhaps the Queens of Noize would have been better off if they hadn't scripted their links. The big question, though, from a presentation point of view is why they whipped the big sofa out from under Phil Jupitus and Lauren Laverne on BBC Two during the pre-Doctor Who portion of the evening. They threw to one of Colin Murray's "reports" (he is the one-man skateboarding duck of the festival) sitting on it; upon their return, it was gone. Perhaps it was banished because it gave the air of Jupitus having come up trumps on the mail-order bride deal.

Blog round-updatey thingy: Catsuits within catsuits

Of course, if someone was going to sell us down the river, it'd be Sharon Osbourne, telling us to vote for The Master with a clunking spot of sexual euphemising. We bet he'd not even switched on the satellite at that point. Oh... hang about, it's back to Glastonbury, isn't it?

CSS seem to have been the best thing so far today, with the Guardian blog reporting on how to get around the problems of quick-changing when you're dressed skintight:

Simply appear in a glittery catsuit, then a few songs in (at the beginning of Meeting Paris Hilton, to be exact), take it off revealing... another catsuit, this time bright yellow. Though she was almost outdone by a sudden influx of people dressed as drum majorettes in the audience.

It's also the Guardian that has had its ears switched on, overhearing this:

What? You've just woken up? You're stuck in a tent? Your own tent? Someone else's tent! And you don't know how you got there? And you've got no clothes on! And there's no clothes in the tent? Whatsoever? And you want us to come pick you up and bring you some clothes? Would love to mate, but I'm watching Lily Allen...

Ah, Keith Allen's daughter. Worth leaving a friend naked and stranded for? Christina Nott thinks so:

Some people are a bit snobby about Lily, but I thought the gig was a great afternoon festival set. Bouncing around in luminous pink with a cigarette and a really strong ska reggae band, it was a real spirit lifter. Rain? What rain?

Hmm. We've not chased any of Allen's set up on the BBC yet, but we're betting that the "strng ska reggae band" is going to turn out to be more Musical Youth than Rico. We shall see.

Although we're still not sure what the hell Jack was doing during the first hundred years or so of Torchwood's operations - oh, sure, come along after the battle of Canary Wharf and remake Torchwood in the Doctor's image, but couldn't you have done that in 1901 and saved us all a lot of trouble? And how, exactly, did he get the job?

Tinyjo has been spending time in the caberet tent - apparently, Nicola Conti is still doing that act with the toy monkey. Simple Brainwaves is virtually at Glastonbury, i.e. watching on TV, and spotted something we'd missed:

Oh and the lead singer from Hot Chip looks a bit like Buster from the late, great sitcom Arrested Development, don't you think?

You know, it might have been nice to have something more in the way of explication for the absence of the rest of Torchwood at this key moment than a throwaway line about them going to the Himalayas. Couldn't they at least have been trapped in a temporal shift or something?
The Telegraph's Iain Gray had a crack at paparazzing last night, although actually he was taking photos in front of the stage, which isn't papping, is it? He did get a lovely shot of Bjork-being-snapped, though.

His colleague Christopher Howse has, meanwhile, discovered that he isn't the sole tie-wearer on Worthy Farm:

The drummer of Mumm-Ra was wearing one last night.

The Blood Arm skirt over their Glasto experience to get to the, frankly more important, business of amusing names for ice creams in continental Europe. Although why you'd pick a Girlie over a Bum Bum, I can't imagine.

Back at the Guardian blog, they've heard a rumour that David Cameron is thinking of turning up.

Hmm.. a plausible-looking politician with a pretty young wife, risen from nowhere, taking any chance of a televisual appearance, and a strange lack of policies. Why is that chiming with us this evening?

Bonde Do Role pull teeth, US tour

Bonde Do Role's support slots with CSS in the US have been pulled, as Rodrigo Gorky needed emergency dental treatment requiring a return to Brazil. Because, of course, there aren't any dentists at all in New York.

The UK dates are expected to go ahead as planned, unless somebody needs a podiatrist in a hurry.

Rupert Murdoch's online strategy dictates our youth

Be vewy, vewy qwiet... it's a secret Gossip/CSS gig organised by MySpace.

CSS explain the frankly overblown rules for getting into the event (Friday in Manchester Roadhouse):

To be in with a chance of getting into the night, you need to sign up to the Secret Shows profile at www.myspace.com/secretshowsuk, and to our MySpace profiles at www.myspace.com/gossipband and www.myspace.com/canseidesersexy, and put all three profiles in your MySpace 'Top 8' friends.

You then need to show a print out of your MySpace profile to staff at Fopp on Brown Street, Manchester at 6pm on Thursday. The first fans to arrive in store will be able to exchange their profile for a wristband which will get you into the gig and the club night.

They don't say what happens if you don't have any wrists, or if, say, Beth Ditto decides to refuse your new friend request on a whim.

T reveals Bjork, Mary Chain for Slipperfest

The organisers of T in the Park have started to share some details of their planned more adult festival, Connect. Taking place in Inveraray Castle's grounds, the event promises "a little more luxury" than most festivals - that'll be softer mud, we presume - and will be headlined by Bjork, the Beasties and Primal Scream; Idlewild, LCD Soundsystem, CSS and The Only Ones will top up the bill.

Hit St Pes (5,6,8,8)*

Coca-Cola's very own White Stripes are going to make just one jaunt to Europe this year, and that will be to headline the roaming Wireless festival. This year's event is a confusing four-day affair in London, and three in Leeds - the difference being a day featuring Faithless, Just Jack and Badly Drawn Boy at Hyde Park not being replicated in Harewood House. All shall have the Kaiser Chiefs, CSS, Editors and The Cribs, along with Jack and Meg.

* - White Stripes Headline Wireless

Off the mic

Being asked to keep quiet for her own sake, if no-one else's: Lovefoxxx from CSS has got a bad throat, reckons the Daily Record:

An insider said: "Her doctor has told her to keep her mouth shut. It's proving difficult."

Coming store signing

This Tuesday, at Oxford's HMV, there's a CSS signing planned. 3pm, we understand, but you might want to check that.