7th November, 2010
On down the toy motorway
Chocolate box Amsterdam terraces lean over their canals like kindly big brothers. Saturday mornings are easy here; none of that London mania or Glasgow hungover fermenting madness, just serene bicycling adults sailing by like swans, watchful and aloof. You can spot the stag-weekenders crowding into tiny corner cafes looking miserable and wondering why they came abroad with this shower of dicks. You know and they know that copious amounts of beer will be their only salvation. It is before midday and some are already nervously eyeing their watches. There is good time for a stroll and a few coffees. A girl is bumped from her perch on the back of her boyfriend’s bike by a passing van. She dusts herself off and remounts without complaint. How far can you push these folk before they become, well, intolerant?
Everything in Holland looks like a toy. It’s as if…—More Tales
4th November, 2010
Sail Away
I straddle the fat white tire-tracks of our wake as we put to sea. Desultory fireworks fizzle in the low winter sky like a damp valediction and Tyneside’s orange lights diminish as the ship is swallowed by the black sea. Over to my left a thin man peers back to land with a thin silver tin of beer, reeking of reflection or regret. A waft of fetid cooking fat puffs out from the ship’s kitchen. As the last two lighthouses pass like sentry-posts a couple ask me to take their photograph, with the dim sight of Blighty as their backdrop. There is a large height difference between them, making composition difficult. I am unhappy with the result but a message in German says the memory card is full. The tall young man seems satisfied with my effort. Below me, on deck 7, a clutch of cider-buzzing lads pose for…—More Tales
14th April, 2010
You can hear them breathing before the delicacy lifts onto the air. Twinned and entwined, the two guitars dance around one another as human voices drone and intone biblical motifs, cuss words and longing – longing is the word. The opening number dies like bathwater draining down and segues into swamp banjo blues. This is all very live. We are stretched somewhere between The Stones and 1768. Thick swathes of forest and peeling wooden church-houses, a keening call from the past, a brilliant deception: dressed in civil war clothes, singing an acidic parody of sepia sentiment, weird modern wolves breathe vodka fury under the sacrificial lambswool.
The ballads break hearts and are filled with devastated mystery. They operate on the mind like photographs from an unreachable dream. Scenes from the small town rock and roll circuit speak of unfathomable sadness. Ruination and emptiness call from the souls of regular folks; immigrants,…—More Rants/Slates
12th April, 2010
Epigrams of April
A blister is a balloon to a bee, a place to frolic and reflect.
All adverts are designed to mind-fuck children.
The universe is bigger than Jesus but you’re better than that.
Belt up, we’re going for a ride. Second thoughts, get out – we don’t need you.
No matter how high they build the walls, how strong the fences, I’ll stay where I am reading the paper.
Mercy is a virtue found only in the bastards whose power makes it a possibility.
A mouse is to a cat what whiskey is to a folk singer.
If you do that three more times I’m going to kill you.
I’d be a world leader if they let me. I’d live on a plane and attempt to have barbecues banned. I’d fire a rocket at Bono. I’d dig a trench around Luton.
I can forgive anything but wanton acts of Christianity.
When all the lights go green I’m gonna be…—More Untruths
11th March, 2010
A cartwheel is the closest you ever get to snowfall.
Feelings are the things you talk about when you have nothing left to say.
A diamond in the rough is vastly inferior to a single shoe sitting in the snow.
If human beings could mind-read they’d never let an animal into their house.
It is in the imagining of such atrocities that we might avoid them.
Don’t hate Phil Collins because his voice sounds like the air being let out of a whale carcass. Hate him because he’s a tax-exile, Tory cunt.
It is time to go to somewhere else where it will be time to go.
By all means seek perfection but don’t ask me to admire it.
Next summer is always better than this one.
I’d rather hear the din of a tap-dancer in an empty skip than a poorly played saxophone.
They say the drums must never stop. True. But should the bagpipes ever start? I like…—More Untruths
10th March, 2010
Chime, chime, chime. A swirl of harmonies, maximum compression – I am stoned in this slow whirlpool of crunching gravel. Electric guitar cream. Wah, Aah, Ba-pa-pah…
Non-stop pop. Chugging: dum dum dum – drang drang drang. Lovers’ songs, leavers’ longing, pain and needing – she’s back again, your heart is bleeding.
Strumming and picking, the ocean’s lapping and the stars’ blinking. Electric guitars built in a bank of colour. Words sewn into streaming tunes flutter like ribbons. This truck is tuned and humming, growling, gunning.
Riffs write themselves on the air like titanium ticker-tape, chords plunge and swoop. The rhythm section lays a lazy line under all this sunshine. I stagger from song to song sticky with nectar. I am happy.
Can I hear a doubt in these sweet intimations of love, or feel a discouraging breeze? In all this pretty chiming can I hear a sour bell call from the darkness?
Is your love…—More Rants/Slates
5th March, 2010
A single snare beat in its spring reverb halo hits and the whole world comes tumbling in. A waterfall of wires, a mass of roots seeking something in the soil. He is callous, weary and unforgiving, a bitter agent sent here to do somebody’s dirty work. He is here to give the folk some news: You’re nothing, so rot in hell.
He sings across the sky like a heretic in a minaret. The band can barely contain the anarchy, they talk over one another like a table of drunks. They fight like cats to break through the jungle of sirens in the sound. The voice weaves between them like a rope of disgust in a barrel of snakes. Whistles blow, absurd postcards are thrown in your face. You are hustled down hallways and dragged into doors to be presented with the grotesque like specimens in a gallery of the damned. Laughter…—More Rants/Slates
2nd March, 2010
2010 saw Justin Currie, erstwhile singer and songwriter from collapsed Scottish pop-rock group, Del Amitri release his second solo album, The Great War. This relatively airy and accessible record followed 2008’s What Is Love For, an album noted for its grindingly indulgent conflation of unreconstructed self-pity and wearying disgust.
These two competing strands within Currie’s output have led many to compare him to Haribo’s Super Sour Monsters – garishly packaged sugar coated jelly that remains, nonetheless, bitter and very hard to swallow. However, he maintains a (dwindling) devoted following despite having written nary a hit since 1998, partly due to his music’s enduring appeal to losers, misfits and obsessively bitter divorcées.
Currie lives in Scotland with his cat, Abdul, remains unmarried and quite possibly infertile.
—More Untruths
2nd February, 2010
I love Ingrid Bergman. I like Feargal Sharkey.
I think Paula Rego sings from a soul as yet undiscovered.
I have not read The Bible.
I know Salvador Dali is shit.
I have piles.
The more somebody is hated the more I hate their enemies.
I am happy to cry at Field of Dreams, The Dead, Aubade, Ride With The Devil and Lassie Come Home but I resent the manipulation of Cormac McCarthy –
fascism lies within the attempt to control human emotions.
I shrink from confrontation.
Belief in God is a sure sign of a profound lack of imagination.
Don Paterson rocks.
Tom Waits is a charlatan. Nick Cave’s relevance is still an open debate.
I have a place on my back, when somebody kisses it: I breathe fire.
The Fall constantly call me through the fog.
I am yet to read Ulysses.
It is impossible to second guess Bob Dylan.
I am pretty sure, although I hate it, if I re-read Darkmans I will…—More Untruths
18th January, 2010
It is sunny – very sunny. An acoustic guitar gallops like an eager horse. You hear everything clearly – the air is white, the ground is cream. The world is clean and it sparkles in a beautiful cool morning. Perhaps you have been awake all night. Everything is good.
You quickly slow down. The rhythm section clocks the singer like a mechanical doll. The voice is strung on the beat like a diaphanous summer dress. The air of melancholy is so sweet as to make you stoned. So much pleasure in such easy pain.
Folk-picking circles around a pretty motif. A new voice undermines its whimsicality with hints of unhappiness. You are pushed into a show-tune. There could be a chorus line, a can-can and glitter covered top-hats. These are up people for an up time. The overarching flavour is smooth. You begin to feel a little nauseous.
The clinical positivity continues but…—More Rants/Slates
