The Music Towers 2008 Almanac: Better Late Than Never
Well, here it is - the Music Towers 2008 Almanac. It was a crazy-ass year and no mistake. We appreciate we’re late with this one, so we’re gonna keep it brief.
It’s been a terrible year for most of the Music Industry. Well, the ‘industry’ half of things at any rate. Distributors have closed down, there’s virtually nowhere on the high street to buy records from anymore, and everyone is wringing their hands and being depressed. But this is supposed to be us looking back on the GOOD stuff - the ‘Music’ half of that Music Industry equation. Let’s get to it.
By far the best discovery of 2008 has been Turbowolf. It’s to my eternal shame that I haven’t written more about them - since stumbling onto them quite by accident at Stag & Dagger, I’ve seen them a half-dozen times (each time = AMAZING) and even got them to sit still long enough for us to film a long-lost video interview with them, but for a variety of stupid reasons this has never made it into print. The Bristol four-piece make the kind of electronic punk-rock party music that makes your head swim and your balls drop.
Anyway, fuck the self-recrimination, all you need to know is that Turbowolf are the best goddamn band you never saw in 2008. They’re hitting SxSW and Canadian Music Week later in the year, so even you guys on the other side of the Atlantic will get a chance to catch these Bristol mentalists. Get involved!
There’s been plenty of other rock’n'roll highlights - anyone who came to any of the Beef Warehouse parties knows what I’m talking about. The year ended with a highlight with our Christmas shindig, but Leeds Festival, once again, was the Party Of The Year. Not only did we get to spend the day watching Cancer Bats, Rage Against The Machine and getting our heads sewn up from the time some C**T gashed our head open during Queens Of The Stone Age (check our review of the weekend here) but we then got to party all night on a giant £40K soundsystem. It didn’t matter than the rain had reduced the site to one giant mud-bath, we had ‘em dancing till dawn every bloody night/day. Check out our review here: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
There were some great albums too - I’m sure you’ve had your fill of Top 10’s by this stage, and don’t need to be told AGAIN how good certain records are. You might’ve missed them but ‘American Demo’ by The Indelicates and ‘This Gift’ by Sons And Daughters. The record that was on the stereo the most though was ‘Hail Destroyer’ by Cancer Bats, and I never even got round to reviewing that one. Ho hum.
Gig-wise, those cheeky Cancer Bats made our year with a sweatbox performance at the Kingston Peel. Close rivals were The Bronx at KCLSU, KISS at Download Festival, and, again, the mighty Turbowolf at pretty much every show we saw them at.
See? I managed to get through this without mentioning Guns ‘N Roses once. Oh. Go and listen to Turbowolf and I guaran-damn-tee you’ll start to feel better again.
ALBUM: The John Henrys - ‘Sweet As The Grain’
Country Music frightens me. You know that scene in Terminator 2 where he walks into the bar, beats that guy up, melts his face on the kitchen hob and nicks his threads? Country music was playing in the background. Not to mention every brain-scarring psycho moment in Deliverance - remember the kid with the banjo? Exactly. Country music is the twangy veneer on nasty things.
Except The John Henrys don’t play up to my self-created stereotype. At all. The Canadian five-piece have about as much darkness to them as an over-enthusiastic children’s TV presenter, locked in Dr Smile’s House of Happy Pills.
The John Henrys play ‘Thought Yourself Lucky’ live:
Their 60’s shake-shuffle and hazy blues might not be enough for me to get over my fear and prejudice of all things country, but in amongst all that twanging I hear an album that smells like the first whiff of a fresh whiskey bottle, rather than the glum final dregs. The John Henrys are Good Time Boys, not Good Ol’ Boys, and foo to you if you can’t enjoy a bit of that.
‘Sweet As The Grain’ came out today on True North Records. For more info, check out their official website and their MySpace page.
[amtap amazon:asin=B0014GKAR2]
REVIEWED: Chinese Democracy
Is there any dance move, stage gesture or physical act of defiance, more rock’n’roll, than the pelvic thrust? You can keep your devil horn throwing, your crowd surfing, your stage diving, your head banging, your mosh pit’ing – the pelvic thrust sums up everything about rock’n’roll. The ill-restrained sexual desire. The disregard for what others may think. The fact that if anyone other than a rockstar attempts it anywhere but on a stage in front of an audience, it looks totally fucking stupid.
If records were dance moves, then Chinese Democracy would be a pelvic thrust. If anyone other than Axl Rose had made this album, it would sound totally fucking stupid. Despite holding the lion’s share of ex-GnR members, there’s no way Velvet Revolver could’ve made this album. It’s over-wrought, over-the-top, over-budget and completely, unequivocally, a Guns record.
There’s no point in even trying to review this objectively. Notwithstanding that this is possibly the most mystery-shrouded record release in the last twenty years, notwithstanding the fact that this review will make fuck-all difference in altering your decision whether to buy it or not, and notwithstanding the fact that this review is a result of a single playback in a record company boardroom, it’s impossible to listen to Axl Rose’s new baby without the dull ache of regret in the pit of your guts. For all the acres of talent used in it’s creation – the liner notes for this record go into exasperating detail – and the years spent making it, the crushing realisation hits you that this is just a capable album, not an exceptional one.
You’ll have already heard the title-track by now – opening the album, it feels more portentous than it did as a stand-alone track. Those Elton John urges he squirted out indiscriminately with ‘November Rain’ – well, they’re back with ‘Street Of Dreams’, only nowhere near as grandoise. The rumoured dalliances with industrial metal chug? See ‘Shackler’s Revenge’. “Don’t ever try to tell me how much you care for me / Don’t ever try to tell me how much you’re meant for me,” Axl sneers at us. Oh, if only you knew, Axl, if only you knew.
‘Better’, which is being lined up as a potential second single, has a pumping chorus, but its refrains of “Now I know you better / You know I know better” never quite get under your skin the way you desperately, fervently hope they will. As a fan you want this record to succeed, but as a fan you can’t really deny that it fails.
‘I.R.S’, played live at Rock AM Ring, 2006:
There’s one, huge, elephant-in-the-room problem with Chinese Democracy – bangers. Or rather, the lack thereof - the title-track is the fieriest bombast the album can manage. Oh, there are acres of solos, from the Bill & Ted excess of the guitar wanking in ‘Street Of Dreams’, to the big, stabby mentalism of the one that ‘Riad N’ The Bedouins’ indulges, but none of them have the soul-fucking, spine-ripping, raw gonzo genius of classic Guns. A few tracks like ‘Scrapped’ might come close to the cocksure riff attitude of old, but they can’t hide the fact that there’s not one true anthem of the ages here. No ‘Paradise City’. No ‘You Should Be Mine’. And certainly no ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
If anything, Chinese Democracy goes to show that without Slash, Duff and Izzy to keep a stern rock’n’roll eye on him, there’s no-one to curtail Axl’s wanton musical excesses. The hired help just smile and do what they’re told, whereas the classic Guns would take their frontman’s wild ideas and give them that juiced-up wild-eye’d rock finish, and make them into the solid-gold genius that those early GnR records had in abundance.
When legends die young, they become cannonised as they’ll never tarnish their legacy with ever-decreasing returns. When Chinese Democracy was the joke of the industry – the album that would never come – then the legacy of GnR was unimpeachable. Now? Guns N’ Roses were one legend we wish had stayed dead.
‘Chinese Democracy’ is out on November 24.
[amtap amazon:asin=B001JEO9XU]
Music Towers features- What you mean, you haven't seen...The Computers
- Album: Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy
- Festivals need your help
- Interview: Scars on Broadway - part 2
- Top Ten songs about the Credit Crunch
- Never Mind ‘Team GB’, Here’s Tiger Leaping
- Interview: Scars on Broadway - part 1
- Suicide Silence: "Every night is full of violence"
- Reviewed: Metallica and the Death Magnetic experience
- Interview: Jenny Lindfors tells us what-for