Manchester is God’s gift to music. As a city, nowhere on Earth compares to it, producing legendary bands after bands, forever inspiring music lovers the world over.
Manchester is also one of the most depressing and downtrodden places in Britain, renowned for its poverty, danger and crime.
Findlay is a 21-year-old girl hailing from Manchester, and totally sums up everything that is fascinatingly complex about the city. Her bluesy voice is aggressively dirty and tender, also being both soulful and with a sense of purpose. Meshed with rhythms to get people dancing, Findlay might be the act that gets kids back into guitar music, though; unfortunately, the current pop zeitgeist still seems very much stacked against her.
At a time when rock ’n’ roll seems dead in the Britain, along comes this song to prick-up ears and promote a sense of optimism that the future of good music is perhaps in the hands of talented white girls with guitars.
If music video doesn’t convince you, download the song for free and listen repeatedly until it does.
Charles Bradley is the embodiment of the American Dream, even though most Americans probably don’t even know of him.
Born in Florida in 1948, Bradley was abandoned by his mother and raised by grandparents. His mother, who he never met until after the age of eight, eventually reclaimed him and moved to New York. His unhappy home life led to him running away and sleeping rough for years until he eventually found a job as a chef in Maine which lasted a decade; after which he hitchhiked west to spend a further twenty years working odd jobs to make ends meet.
Despite Bradley’s inauspicious formative years, he cites his big sister taking him to the Apollo Theatre in 1962 where a James Brown performance dazzled him into wanting to be like the icon. He has spent his life performing in local clubs as a James Brown impersonator, hoping that his own talents may outshine the mimicry routine he had been pigeonholed in to.
They say everything happens for a reason. Even though it is easy to dismiss Bradley’s act as outdated, camp and pastiche, his voice is something else. This is a man whose time is now, and it’s a reminder of what natural talent truly is. Whereas Bradley may have just been another ephemeral soul singer had he found success fifty years ago, in this day and age he is nothing short of timeless.
In light of an earlier post concerning the torpid state of pop music being made by youngsters and middle-aged producers that continue to pedal out vapid chart songs (think Taylor Swift et al), it has become apparent that we haven’t had a proper generational shift in over a decade.
Generational shifts are sociologically very important. Kids and the things they get up to―the clothes they wear, movies they watch, language they use and the music they listen to―should be specific to their era of adolescence and ought to be very much viewed with suspicion by elders. Nowadays it is not uncommon for kids and their parents to watch the same reality television shows, read the same books, use the same slang (bling!) and listen to the same records. This is a disappointing reality and at odds with the way things have been for the last fifty years. Who can forget James Dean accusing his elders of tearing him apart in the 1950s, or The Breakfast Club pinning all its depression on parental figures in the 1980s, yet this current generation has no snarling animosity to the very group they traditionally rebelled against: adults.
The Millennium Generation consists of people born between the late 1970s and mid-1990s, which probably encapsulates most of those reading this blog, has been bereft of generational angst the way its predecessors were. They have grown up in an era where nihilism and aimlessness have not been defining characteristics, not in the way it was for beatniks in the ‘50s, punks in the ‘70s, or slackers in the early ‘90s.
Times have changed and it’s not surprising that the occurrences of recognisable generational shifts, which materialised in post-war Europe and America when greater affluence and detached nuclear family living became standard, have now pretty much vanished. The post-war way of life put money into youth cultures and enabled them to create independent collective identities.The Millennium Generation is potentially the first group of people that are more dependent on their parents for financial/ emotional support even into early adulthood, perhaps having to engage in intergenerational living in order to make ends meet. In that sense it’s no wonder the Millennium Generation has failed make its cultural mark on history. It hasn’t had the money or space to find itself, and has been further stifled by new methods of parenting where mums and dads want to be their child’s best friends instead of authoritarian figures. Who knows, but you can’t help feeling that this generation has really missed out on not having had its moment in the spotlight.
Before we lose all hope, below are two new music videos from emerging talents that showcase this generation’s ability to counter conventions and produce material of admirable originality.
FOXYGEN’SSAN FRANCISCO
This band consists of a bunch of 22-year-olds (same age as Taylor Swift) that have taken their love of ‘60s psychedelic pop tunes and irksome Wes Anderson movies to another level. San Francisco is their new song which both satirises a love of all things retro while also honouring it in an honest way. Its tongue may be firmly in cheek but there is no doubting their passion for everything that has inspired them. It’s a lovely song.
SOAP&SKIN’SSUGARBREAD
Anja Plaschg is a 22-year-old Austrian musician (also the same age as Taylor Swift), but her output is the antithesis of most of the music her generation is celebrated for. In fact, Plaschg is an entirely different beast, where the very look of her provokes unease. Sugarbread is her new song and video, but a word of warning is needed. While the video doesn’t feature anything egregiously brutal, the way it is edited and spliced together with stock footage from various European silent films and documentaries makes the viewer believe they’re witnessing something more unpleasant than what it actually is. It’s a massively powerful artistic piece, and the experimental nature of the music further heightens discomfort levels. It’s a frighteningly good construction, but it’s not for everyone. If you’re of nervous disposition then perhaps you ought to skip it completely, but gosh, will you be missing out on something exceptional.
Now I’m no whippersnapper, but what are the realities of being a 22-year-old for you? If one recalls honestly, the bare truth of it was coming onto a depressed job market with heinous student debts, struggling to budget rent with council tax payments, not having enough money to do anything exciting, feeling absolutely apathetic towards voting in a general election because our trusted politicians had misleadingly led us into an illegal war in order to demonstrate a demented sense of loyalty to the Americans, and realising that life gets a lot less frivolous the older we get.
Now I’m no sociologist, but there is something so toxic and dangerous about the image and personality Taylor Swift exudes. This multibillionaires construction is one of the most dishonest and deceptive creations imaginable. Her new song is so immature that it could have been called 13. In fact, the worry is that Swift will in years to come put out the same record and call it 33, then 47, then 54, and at long last, hopefully, title it Time for me to get Real. Being twenty-two means that one is no longer a teenager, yet our culture exhibits a tendency of holding onto the very last morsels of juvenility.
Now I’m no young American girl, but considering the current economic pressures and employment gloom facing that country, the realities suggest dressing up as hipsters and making fun of exses would be the last thing on most minds.
Now I'll be damned if I’m going to exclusively devote a post to a Taylor Swift song, therefore please check out Chk Chk Chk’s (!!!) stupendously rago new dance track Slyd which is available to download for free from here. May it renew your faith in America’s perpetual ability to create some of the most sonically dazzling sounds on planet Earth. Watch Taylor Swift go and spoil everything by hiring them to produce her next album.
As far as typifying the mood of an entire nation, Matt Abbott and producer MiNI dOG couldn’t have picked a better name for their collaboration. Abbott is a 24-year-old guy from Wakefield, England that began doing stand-up performance poetry readings around Yorkshire. His poems were about his young experiences, often relating to his ineptitude with attracting girls at school. MiNI dOG, a local music producer and songwriter, contacted Abbott via Myspace encouraging him to try and lyricise his poetry so that it works better to music. The two soon courted the attention of A&R executives, got signed to Universal Music, got dropped by the label, returned to their indie roots, and now have a new album that’s due to be released next month.
One music journalist really kicked the credibility out of Skint & Demoralised by labelling them a Northern version of Scouting for Girls, which is the ultimate cuss. Nonetheless, there’s a dominant melodic bass line in their latest track that invokes a quintessentially classic British rock tradition. In that sense these guys are better than what some prissy London journalists give them credit for. After all, the North/South divide is an unfortunate and very ugly British trait that remains constant.
Some of the most striking and original music to emerge from the UK recently is coming from young British-Pakistani female singer/ songwriters. Natasha Khan and Rumer are very successful examples of that, and now Nadine Shah looks set to embellish the BritPak scene with her hauntingly elegiac mood music that mines darker regions of the human condition, producing songs dealing with lust, regret and retribution, but sung in a gloriously melancholic style that gives gloom a good name.
Shah was raised in a tiny coastal village in north-east England and was inspired by the mythical maritime qualities of the environment she grew up in, as well as the Islamic Sufi songs and Urdu ghazals her dad exposed her to as a kid. Shah’s mother is the daughter of a Norwegian sea captain who ran away with Shah’s exotic father after he captured her heart, further accentuating the singer’s cosmically romantic origins. With a backstory so beguiling, it’s no wonder that Shah’s music has such otherworldly characteristics which are difficult to properly assess and explain.
Dreary Town is Shah’s latest song and first proper music video. Up until now she has remained primarily a voice on the radio, emanating androgynous vocal delivery and challenging lyrical content. Therefore, it comes as a bit of a surprise to finally put a face to the voice and discover that Shah is actually a bonnie lass. She sings in a beautifully parochial voice, incorporating dialectical nouns like ‘nowt’ (nothing) and ‘muny’ (pound sterling) in her lyrics, thus establishing an identity that is gloriously distinct.
The video for Dreary Town is obviously going for a British kitchen sink realist tone, though it’s debatable how wise a choice that is. Coming across like a Mike Leigh movie meets an episode of BBC’s self-obsessed ‘90s drama serial This Life, Shah’s video seems at once over studied and unintentionally insincere, which is a shame because such an honest song doesn’t need amateur dramatics to sell itself.
You know, people are saying that we’re living the second wave of a British Invasion. For those that don’t know, the original British Invasion occurred in the mid-1960s, when bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Moody Blues took America by storm, selling a culture and attitude American youths were transfixed by. Many of the bands that were part of the British Invasion were simply artists that adored American rock ‘n’ roll culture of the 1950s and mimicked the pitch, delivery and style of classic rockabilly pop records, but they incorporated a sense of fashion and reckless poise that whacked American teenagers like a punch in the face.
Skip to 50 years later and some will argue that the British Invasion is once again knocking America sideways. BPI analysis of Nielsen SoundScan sales data reveals that British artists accounted for 13.7%, equal to one in seven, of all artist albums sold in the US in 2012, as well as four of the five best-selling artist albums last year. UK artists accounted for 11.7% of the US market, equivalent to one in every eight albums sold. British music has not seen success of this nature in America since Dire Straits were doing the Walk of life, which was a very long time ago indeed. But seriously, is the new British Invasion anything to be proud of? The Saturdays, a British girl group that failed to satisfactorily capture the attentions of UK kids, has now decided to throw in the towel as far as their non-appreciating home country is concerned and focus their efforts on the North American market, where a concerning lax in music consumer quality control means that they have better odds at making a name for themselves. Successful pop confections like One Direction and Cher Lloyd are British television talent show constructions that have scored major attention in America principally because they have the marketing muscle of Simon Cowell behind them. Even posh pricks like Mumford and Sons and Florence Welch are hitting big with American consumers because their parents were rich enough to purchase a privileged music education for them, and then subsequently using contacts to help acquire record deals with major labels that have the power get them onto record shelves. Even acts like Adele, Jessie J and Leona Lewis are BRIT School alumni, paid for and nurtured in an institute part-funded by big record labels that expect a return on their investments which often means successful artists will abide to formula in order to shift big quantities. Even bands like Muse and Coldplay have gained promotion because of endorsements by famous American Mormons that write soapy teen vampire romances (not Mitt Romney, the other one), or because they are married to celebrity Hollywood starlets. And now we’ve got an idiot like Conor Maynard eyeing the susceptible US music consumer, confident that their appetite for crappy British pop sung in generic transatlantic accents will pay major dividends. In all honesty, one has to ask themselves if any of the current acts that form part of the new British Invasion are manufacturing the kinds of music Americans are incapable of making themselves? Is there anything truly distinctive about the current British Invasion that demonstrates a degree of originality and inventiveness Americans are unaccustomed to, and therefore enraptured by? Britain is an island nation that functions best when it stays true to its character rather than conforming to expectations. This is a country marked by its eccentric personality and esoteric individuality. The most impressive music to have come out of Britain was made when it didn’t kowtow to international expectations and did its own thing. The best time for British music is when it is left to its own devices, creating songs for local audiences which then captures the attention of the world over. Below are some bands that are all-British in spirit, though totally foreign in every other way. These bands were born in lands and cultures vastly different from Blighty, but were motivated to create music in the fashion of a country that inspired it. They latched on to periods in British pop culture that may not have exported as well as what it did circa 1965 or 2013, but it travelled in more abstract and exciting ways. This is the Great British Inversion.
The Japanese Love Britain! TAFFY
Though it’s understandable why you may confuse this group as Twickenham natives, they actually hail from Tokyo, Japan. Taking the Britpop sound and female-fronted formation while some guys play guitar, drum and bass in the background, Taffy demonstrates why the best of British didn’t always mean big sales in America. Taffy’s lead singer even does the fluttering eyelids thing that middle-class British girls are so fond of because they think it makes them look cute.
To listen to them you’d swear these boys probably grew up in Ipswich, but they’re like totally Italian. They even have crazy curly Italian hair and exotic Neapolitan names like Lampredi and Stolzini, yet that sound of theirs is classic British shoegaze. The fuzz and fades are beautifully rendered, not to mention the lead singer has a voice that makes you proud to be British.
Britain may be selling sonic shit to the Americans in unprecedented ways but that doesn’t mean they should stoop to our level. The Drums come from York, though a Newer kind of York. When they first came on the scene, British audiences began having flashbacks of living under the reign of Margaret Thatcher and being forced to pay poll tax all over again, but it was a huge hoodwink because The Drums only wish they had lived in 1980s England. Those that actually did will tell you it’s nothing to aspire to.
Will wonders never cease? Had you just put on the radio and heard this song rocking out then you’d be sure to claim them as early 1990s delinquents from Kent, but these guys are from Karachi, Pakistan. Could these blokes be our allies in the War on Terrible Music?
Manchester is God’s gift to music. As a city, nowhere on Earth compares to it, producing legendary bands after bands, forever inspiring music lovers the world over.
