-Music Videos on my Mind- Taylor Swift’s “22”

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.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Skint & Demoralised’s “ Breakfast at Sylvia’s”

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.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Nadine Shah’s “Dreary Town”

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.

The British Inversion

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.

British Influences: Echobelly, Sleeper.

The Italians Love Britain!

BROTHERS IN LAW

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.



British Influences: My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The Americans Love Britain!

THE DRUMS

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.



British Influences: The Field Mice, The Smiths.

The Pakistanis Love Britain!

//ORANGENOISE

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?

British Influences: Sterolab, The Verve, Spacemen 3.

WTF happened to VFX?

Apparently the Oscars took place in Hollywood last week, which means that we Brits missed the ceremony on account of it taking place in a time zone eight hours behind ours. It seems like it was an amazing event, though, for all the wrong reasons. It turns out there was a set-piece where the host sang a song in which he began naming and shaming the esteemed actresses in presence, highlighting how titillating it was witnessing their breasts in movies; worryingly reeling off several titles that incorporate scenes of their characters being raped. Then there was a hopeless James Bond montage that irked loyal fans. There was also a sequence devoted to celebrating the entire history of musicals in cinema, but scantly showcased three titles, all of which were only made in the last decade. To top it all, some actress even managed to stumble and fall on stage or thereabouts while trying to accept her award.

 

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this year’s Oscars was the award for visual effects which went to Ang Lee’s Life of Pie. When the winners took to the stage and proclaimed their thanks, they were cunningly cut short by the threatening Jaws signature theme music before they could publically lament the current state of their visual effects industry, a sector in which outsourcing and unfair pay rates is resulting in tough times for many concerned. The situation is so bad that there was industrial protest taking place outside the Dolby Theatre, where four hundred visual effects personnel demonstrated against studios exploiting them and not properly redistributing residuals to the very creative technicians that put the magic into modern movies.

What really must have got the visual effects industry angry was when filmmaker Ang Lee, a Buddhist whose bloodline stems from egalitarian China, told reporters after winning the Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi that the hard times incurred by the visual effects industry was primarily its own doing. His comments came in light of Rhythm + Hues, the visual effects company that created the impressive digital images in Life of Pi, recently filing for bankruptcy due to the fact that their current business model is unsustainable.

Phillip Broste, a visual effects artist that didn’t work on Life of Pi, took it upon himself to admonish Ang Lee and Hollywood at large, producing an open letter that admiringly argues why his profession is progressively undermined by inequitable practices and scrupulous financial chicanery.

Rhythm + Hues joins Digital Domain as two powerhouse VFX companies that helped define the template of contemporary American cinema, both now filing Chapter 11 bankruptcies and offloading countless jobs. This situation will be more comprehensible if the VFX industry was surplus to requirement, but it’s actually become a cornerstone of American cinema. For the last thirty-five years Hollywood has retained its global hegemony principally because it is the only film industry that has the capital and artistry to develop elements that other countries cannot. The emergence of computer generated visual effects in the late 1970s, for better or worse, finally enabled Hollywood to escape the threat that television posed, realising that audiences will mindlessly flock to watch spectacular digital illusions.

According to Deadline, over 250 employees at Rhythm + Hues have been axed without pay, and those that remain in employment have, allegedly, not received payment in weeks despite them continually working on tentpole features. The employment culture in America is startlingly different to our own, where the attitude seems to suggest that no one is owed a job and that free capitalism unfairly justifies asking its already productive workers what value they are creating. In the case of this particular situation it seems alarmingly apparent exactly what worth the Rhythm + Hues employees contributed, ultimately resulting in them creating a blockbusting movie that pushed the boundaries of visual interpretation and generated colossal amounts of revenue for the studio that hired them. It was their work that piqued the interests of international audiences wanting to watch something that was deemed un-filmable. These artists deserve respect, not pink slips.

 

American cinema is totally reliant on visual effects in a way that other countries aren’t. Their movies sell themselves on the basis of spectacle and awe, where the digital composites take centre stage and compelling characters come a long way after. Last year saw European films like Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone (depiction of an amputee victim) and Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible (realisation of the most convincing tsunami ever realised), both virtuoso movies that incorporate state-of-the-art visual effects, yet one would never label them as effects-driven pictures because the visuals are there to serve a story, not the other way around. American commercial cinema is almost artistically bankrupt, however, the only creatively advancing element of their movies is the scope of visual effects that grow ever more complex and demanding. Visual effects is the last bastion of Hollywood’s grandeur, but economic forces and labour exploitation may result in them asphyxiating the remaining element of distinction left its arsenal of cinematic power. If you don’t respect the very people that you’re depending on then the end result will materialise in an industry lacking creative energy and monetary value to make the impossible seem possible.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Johnny Marr’s “Upstart”

Johnny Marr will be 50-years-old this Halloween. The great thing about white guys with guitars of this age is that they get admirably stuck in their ways. They refuse to accept that the kind of music they were making as lads ever went out of fashion, or needed upgrading in any way. They also refuse to accept that there is a new way to make music videos, belligerently insisting that their output still be shot on tape and presented in the 4:3 standard television ratio, ignoring the fact that every household in the modern world now has very thin and horizontally elongated plasma screens that hang on walls. The best thing about white men of this age is that due to the fact they are so obstinate, and perhaps not even realising it, they actually get to release songs that suddenly sound deliberately vintage, fooling us into thinking that this must be a new kind of sound and image intentionally at odds with the homogenised pop scene of now. They suddenly become pioneers and, for a spell, make everything else out there sound incredibly not as good as what they’re putting out.

Inasmuch, comparable women of Marr’s age insist on aping current pop trends and trying to pass themselves off as still relevant (Madonna and J-Lo come to mind), old British white men can’t be bothered with any of that, insisting that you take them as they are.

Marr still looks fabulous for a middle-aged bloke from Manchester, but he will tell you that his mulishness and strict vegan diet ensures he remains perennially brilliant in every way possible. And look, he doesn’t even need to get any tattoos to be cool. What a solid role model for all aspiring middle-aged white guys everywhere.

-Music Videos on my Mind- Toro y Moi’s “Say That”

There are songs that work best on radio, where the medium of music videos ultimately doesn’t do justice to what the listener had in their head when bobbing to the beat. Toro y Moi is an artist for whom the emphasis leans greater to ‘geek’ rather than ‘chic’, meaning his stupendous production skills are let down by his insistence to pare down the visuals while accentuating the sonics. It’s an odd combination that seems enervating, only because the music video playing in my mind had more to it than this.

Nonetheless, it’s humbling to know a guy that looks like Toro y Moi can get a record deal in today’s age and have his music playing in places that matter. This chillwave/ glo-fi sound is said to the stuff dreams are made of, though, dreams usually have better production values than this clip.