Harry Styles: This is probably a better review than they realise

"How is Harry Style's acting?"
"Well, his haircut is fabulous."

Glastonbury 2015: How did Suede go down?

Suede were astonishing last night - headlining the John Peel Stage. Obviously, having neither Lee Nelson or Kanye West on stage with them gave them something of an advantage, and obviously my waistline and hairline makes me a bit biased. So don't take my word for it. Here's a quick round-up of Suede reviews.

It's fair to say that the Western Gazette's reviewer hasn't exactly kept up with the band over the years:

Starting with two lesser known songs, Brett Anderson, Bernard Butler and co entered the stage as though they owned the place, with a studied nonchalance that they had more than earned as a band that at one point nearly did.

There was a lot of smoke and those flags blocking the camera views on the BBC coverage, but even so, I suspect the return of Bernard Butler would have been a bit more noticeable.

And, not wanting to carp, but... Mercury Prize. Three number one albums. Fastest selling debut album in a decade. That's a bit more than "nearly did", surely?

Anyway, the paper warms up:

And then, as the first few notes of megahit Trash were heard something suddenly snapped.

Lead singer Brett Anderson's standoffish manner was thrown aside and his utter delight to hear thousands of fans still remember the words became plain for all to see.
[...]
Comperes say a lot of things: but when the guy closing the tent after Suede exited told the crowds they had just watched the best performance of Glastonbury, I couldn't help but agree.

While the Telegraph's liveblog tried gamely to enjoy Kanye, they were getting reports the highlights were elsewhere:

Hard to believe, but people are watching other bands at Glastonbury now. Rupert is at Suede, maybe with all those people that signed the petition saying Kanye shouldn't play.

Rupert Hawksley: God knows what Kanye West is up to on the Pyramid Stage but it would be a miracle if he gets a response to any tune quite as raucous as the one just experienced at the John Peel stage as Suede rattled through Brit Pop classic, Trash.

The NME news desk tried to keep a sense of journalistic detachment, but couldn't quite:

1996 single 'Trash' was played early on in the set, followed by more Britpop favourites including 'Animal Nitrate' and 'We Are The Pigs'. The former track saw the first big singalong of the night. Anderson kept stage chat to a minimum, but did encourage the crowd to "fucking have it" during 'Trash', while he spent a large portion of 'Killing Of A Flashboy' writhing around the floor. An acoustic 'Living Dead' saw the frontman put his mic down to allow the audience to sing, and early single 'The Drowners' also drew a frenzied crowd response after Anderson performed much of it while hanging onto the safety barrier and greeting fans.

Disappointingly, The Guardian's liveblog was so obsessed with Kanye that it didn't manage to mention Suede at all. They should have listened to the Mid Devon Gazette, which recommended Suede as a fine alternative to a man who needed a helicopter to get on stage:

If however, you are staying in and are determined not to watch Kim Kardashian's other half, the BBC is devoting much of its schedule to all things Glastonbury tonight, so do a spot of channel surfing and you should be able to find some music more to your personal taste.

Cue a video of 90's favourites Suede who are on the John Peel stage at roughly the same time as Kanye.

Panic Manual reviewed the set from Toronto, where - apart from when those sodding flags got in the way - there was a great view:

wasn’t actually at Glastonbury, but rather, I was at home, in Toronto. Now before you question the authenticity of my review, I have assured you I have taken the appropriate measures to simulate Glastonbury as best as I can at home, including:

- Rain, it was pouring rain outside. I opened the windows so the sound of water coming down on the earth would resonate in the background as I watched the show. A sound many Glastonbury fans would be familiar with.

- I watched it on my 40 inch TV in high def, which frankly, makes me feel a lot closer to the stage then 95% of the people at the Peel stage

So, what are the advantages of this superior view?

Having access to cameras on stage, I could tell Bret and co were ecstatic about being at Glastonbury even Richard Oakes tried to muster a smile, maybe he saw a hot dog in the crowd or something.

That's just mean.

But is that really the best way to watch the gig? Is it?

The rest of the set read like a greatest hit’s list, including everyone’s favorite b-side about a heroin addict, The Living Dead. The crowd absolutely lost it when the group ended with Beautiful Ones, which had the crowd LALALALALAing so hard I could hear it through my speakers.

It was at this point I wished I was there and not my living room. Sometimes you just can’t replicate a live experience, no matter how you set it up. An encore set of She’s in Fashion and New Generation sent the crowd back to their mud filled, dirty tents happy. I would have cried if they brought an orchestra or something for Still Life, luckily that was not the case.

But if you're crying, you'd at least be crying in the privacy of your own home. I'm presuming you'd have shut the curtains first, anyway.

Getty let you embed images on blogs now, you know. Here's what people were either seeing on their home screens, or squinting at to spot in the melee of the crowd:
 

View image | gettyimages.com

 Gaaboard were watching:

Suede aren't great but they're singling without autotune and singing their hits which puts them about 10 places ahead of that twat on the Pyramid stage!!

It wasn't all faint praise, though:

Jaysus I think Suede are hitting the mark. Have seen them at Glasto twice. It just didn't work the year I seen them outdoors but I think they might have been hitting the needle a bit too much back then. Indoors they are immense.

The Singletrackworld board was also experiencing mixed feels:

Northernmat: Suede - meh, never really got them. Lead singer bloke looks old now.
Scamper: Lead singer of suede looking old? I take it you are about 20, Matt?

Let's give the last word to DigitalSpy commenter Barbeler:

Suede have saved Glastonbury as far as I'm concerned. It was a magnificent performance that made every other band I've seen so far look like dreary amateurs.

TL;DR/FI Friday

So, that reunion of TFI Friday last night was a reminder of why I never watched it first time round: it's a programme that looks like everyone involved is having tremendous fun, rather than a programme which is tremendous fun.

Also: the Gallagher/Who 'supergroup' felt more like the deputy head joining the school band for the last song of the evening.

First night: Kate Bush

I suppose those of us with tickets for subsequent nights of the return of Kate Bush have one thought as we turn to the reviews this morning - 'dude, don't fuck it up for us'. Ridiculous, of course, to worry that she might be scared away by the harsh glare of the critics.

Ridiculous because she's a grown-up woman and not a kitten.

Ridiculous because, having built the event up over the last few days, how could the reaction be anything other than a warm embrace?

(It's understandable how the media have hugged Kate's return so close; her, and the new Doctor, have been the two pieces of light in what feels like a never ending month of despair and gloom. Who wouldn't seek out some comfort?)

So... what did people think? Did they like her?

Kate Bush comeback greeted with huge cheers

Okay, Tim Masters on the BBC News website, that tells us all we need to know. Let's move on.

Oh, alright. What else?

There were no songs from Bush's first four albums, which meant fans did not get to hear early classics such as Wuthering Heights, The Man with the Child in his Eyes or Babooshka.

But fans did not seem to mind missing out.

Tim then speaks to two fans who seem keen to insist that they didn't mind missing out:

Julie Beynon, from Glasgow, told the BBC: "That was really surprising. I noticed she played a lot from Aerial which I didn't have a problem with. I think it might reference the fact she was much happier in that period of her life. It felt quite joyous and celebratory."

She added: "I'm not disappointed - I thought it was stunning comeback. To me it was like musical theatre but with Kate Bush songs. It was a a weird hybrid of different styles, and completely innovative."

Elizabeth Hobson, from Enfield, said: "She does what she wants to do. We might have liked to hear some of the songs we love from a while back - but hopefully everybody's going to be really nice about it and we might see some more of her at a later date."

Okay, Elizabeth from Enfield doesn't explicitly say "well, it's fine that she's done all this tonight, providing she comes back at Christmas and does some of the Top Of The Pops ones." But she kinda does.

The Telegraph's Bernadette McNulty enjoyed herself, although possibly not quite as completely as she might have hoped:

Throughout, the pace was resolutely mid-tempo,the narratives sometimes obscure and the skits often hammy - in one artists' scene from the Aerial segment, literally as exciting as watching paint dry.

But apparently it was still thrilling.

The Daily Mail sent Jan Moir. Presumably had she not been invited, there'd have been a chance she'd have cursed the entire Apollo to sleep for a hundred years. Her copy is, as you'd expect, poorly banged together:

Bush had asked that no one would film her performance on their mobile phones and iPads. There was one request to do this before the show started – an announcement that was cheered by many in the stalls.

It's not clear whether Jan is telling us that there was a request not to do this, or if they were asking that any photography be done before the show.

For The Guardian, Alexis Petridis got the tickets:

Her voice too is in remarkable condition: she's note-perfect throughout.

Backed by a band of musicians capable of navigating the endless twists and turns of her songwriting – from funk to folk to pastoral prog rock - the performances of Running Up That Hill and King of the Mountain sound almost identical to their recorded versions - but letting rip during a version of Top of the City, she sounds flatly incredible.

And Hannah Ellis-Petersen didn't, so was stuck outside getting fan reactions. But this was an evening when even the fans milling about on the streets of Hammersmith were kinda starry:

Daren Taylor, drummer for band The Airborne Toxic Event, had taken a similar journey to make it to the opening night.

"I've flown in from Los Angeles today just to see Kate Bush," he said.

"It's not easy to express what Kate Bush means to me. Her music touches me, and I'm sure everybody here, in very unique ways. I don't think any two people will tell you the same thing that her music means to them."

The New York Times' Ben Ratliff gets off to a clunky start:

Kate Bush Returns to the Stage, and Her Fans Are There to Welcome Her

'Ticketholders turn up to gig'. Okay, Ben, I'm holding the front page.

He has taken the trouble to find out the name of some of the other participants:

The songs use repetition, much more than her earlier work, and slow, hypnotizing grooves; the drummer Omar Hakim found the center of them, and Ms. Bush finally began to move to them like a dancer.

Meanwhile, Claire Rutter in the Mirror was, erm, reading Twitter. Now, you might laugh, but how else would we know what Boy George thought?

Poor Culture Club star Boy George couldn’t make the show tonight, as he sadly tweeted: "Had to miss Kate Bush tonight but hopefully I will catch one of the shows."

The Mirror, there, sharing the view from someone who doesn't even have any solid plans to go to one of the shows later.

Billboard chips in with a setlist:

"Lily"
"Hounds of Love"
"Joanni"
"Running Up That Hill"
"Top of the City"
"King of the Mountain"
"And Dream of Sheep"
"Under Ice"
"Waking the Witch"
"Watching You Without Me"
"Jig of Life"
"Hello Earth"
"The Morning Fog"
"A Sky of Honey (prelude)"
"Prologue"
"An Architect’s Dream"
"The Painter’s Link"
"Sunset"
"Aerial Tal"
"Somewhere in Between"
"Nocturn"
"Aerial"
"Among Angels"
"Cloudbursting"

And although there were no fan photos, DigitalSpy gathers some of the official shots.
Louder Than War's Dave Jennings, like many reviewers, consciously echoes Imperial Smash Hits' parody of old school rock writing:

The whole show was like a religious revival, a west end blockbuster opera and a rock show as one. She carried on from here with Top of the City which was followed swiftly by Joannie and a simply brilliant, nay, breathtaking even, version of Hounds of Love.

I hope that "nay" was a conscious echoing, anyway.


The Daily Express sent Simon Gage:

The second half sits halfway between the early set and the conceptual with Kate's hippy side coming to the fore on tracks from Aerial with giant projections of birds in flight, characters playing painters, an artist's dummy the size of a child...

It would be easy to laugh just like it's always been easy to laugh: some of it is daft, some of it wilfully daft but that's what makes English eccentricity so cherished.

What Gage nearly captures - and what hangs over most of the reviews this morning - is a slight sense of unspoken awareness that if this had been a theatre, rather than a rock venue, and the name on the tickets an arts ensemble rather than Kate Bush, there might have been a temptation to shout 'get on with it' at some points of the show.

But, generally, the reviews are positive, and warm, and it's more than a 'dog walking on hind legs' approval for something you'd never expect to see.

Are there no dissenting voices? Not many; they keep pretty quiet. Only one brave head put above the parapet on that hotbed of counterthought, Mumsnet:

Shrieking, arm flapping and mincing.

What am I missing? I'm sure she's a lovely woman but good lawd I cannot see the appeal.

A bit of a kicking later, the poster returns, bruised, to the keyboard:

Blimey this thread might be the most contentious one I've ever started on MN

In short, then, the world is (mostly) chiming with that classic Smash Hits letter:

Oh Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate
It's love I feel for you, not hate, hate, hate

The helpful reviewers of Amazon: Slap them, they're talking French

Perhaps persuaded by their Glastonbury performance, you might be thinking of buying Reflektor. Thank god Fleece Fire can stop you before you waste your £4:

The lead 'singer' can't hold a note to save his life. And they keep chucking in French just to, y'know, be arty (aka pretentious). Nothing is catchy and the lyrics are too serious. Lighten up guys! Oh, and they just had to have an album cover based on a famous sculpture because they couldn't think of any original ideas on how to express themselves.

Canada isn't too great at giving us great bands. Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, Justin Bieber, Nickleback. It's all terrible.

Avoid like the absolute plague unless you're partial to having the musical equivalent of icepicks stabbing you in the ears for 75 long, LONG minutes.

- Hey, Regine, what shall we put on the sleeve?
- Hmm. Fresh out of ideas, Win. Let's just go and get a postcard from the gallery and lob that on

What I think is most acute about Fleece's insight is that they know the band are Canadian, but don't seem to know that 'speaking French' is a thing that many Canadians do habitually, not pretentiously.

Shirley Collins: I think you safely can call this a comeback

Shirley Collins hasn't played live for 35 years - she's suffered from dysphonia, which effectively scuppered her folk career.

Hadn't played live, that should read. On Saturday night, she returned as an unbilled support at Current 93's date at Union Chapel. Attn Magazine was there:

“I don’t think I would have done this for anyone else but David Tibet,” she announces to a stunned applause, before quietly slipping into a rich, earthly rendition of “All The Pretty Little Horses”. Her voice swoops at the commencement of each line, channelling the sound of age into a sort of momentum; gorgeous vocal curvatures both smoothed and textured like pebble edges, wearing her years of existence like a cloak that trails and dances behind every lyric.
[...]
It later transpires that David Tibet has been trying to encourage her to perform again since he met her back in 1994, and as he stumbles over words in an attempt to express his gratitude for her appearance, the magnitude of the occasion becomes clear.

There's something magnificent about a gig review which can make you well up, isn't there?

First night: David Bowie - Five Years

On Saturday, BBC Two did what feels like the sixteenth or seventeenth Bowie night. You can still watch the cornerstone documentary, Five Years, on iPlayer, unless you're reading this in the future, or overseas, or on a print-out.

But what did people think?

Tim Footman at Cultural Snow liked it:

Although the basic narrative will be familiar to many, some of the freshly unearthed archive footage is a real shock to the senses, looping as it does in and out of the stuff that gets trotted out for every 70s nostalgia fest (Starman on TOTP, bits of Cracked Actor and so on). Moreover, the fresh interviews prove that there’s nothing inherently wrong with that much-derided format, the talking heads doc, provided the heads are judiciously chosen and given sensible questions to answer. Indeed, so rich were the pickings from people who worked with Bowie in some of his most productive periods (with Visconti *and* Eno *and* Fripp you’re spoiling us) that – completely irrationally and unfairly – I felt cheated by the very few omissions; why, for example, did we hear the recollections of guitarist Carlos Alomar and drummer Dennis Davis but not bassist George Murray? Were Angie Bowie or Iggy Pop washing their hair?

Actually, given Angie Bowie's track-record as an unreliable witness - claiming, variously, to have invented Bowie, bisexuality and possibly the concept of music - keeping her out the way was probably a wise move.

In The Guardian, Sam Woolaston concedes the programme was "better than most music documentaries", which he puts down to the subject, rather than the approach. But not before he has some fun at the programme's expense:

No, don't stop, more! Of Queen Bitch, Suffragette City, Fame, Golden Years, Young Americans, Ashes to Ashes, even Let's Dance. They're all rudely interrupted though. By Rick Wakeman, saying: "I got a call from Dave, he called me directly." A direct call, eh Rick?

Ha ha. Yes, that does sound stupid, except... it was worth noting, surely? Wakeman wasn't opening his eyes wide at the concept of a person-to-person call, more at the idea that Bowie spoke to him, rather than the more traditional 'have-your-people-call-his-people' route; that Bowie knew who we wanted, and went directly to him. Worth mentioning, surely?

Which Sam actually, sort-of acknowledges:

And Rick Wakeman's unpicking of Life on Mars is fascinating, because it's Life on Mars and it's Rick Wakeman (plus I'd show off a bit if Dave had phoned me, directly or otherwise).

Well, sort of.

For Michael Deacon in The Telegraph, it all comes down to class:

There was a bonus pleasure in being reminded that not only did Bowie have an incongruous speaking voice, but so did his early Seventies bandmates. Wafting around on stage: gold-bloused glamourpusses. Open their mouths: bricklayers from Hull.

The Scotsman's Aidan Smith spotted a brighter star than Bowie in amongst the contributors:

Five Years’ funniest contributor? Actually, that was Robert Fripp. If you know me as a prog-rock fan, you probably think it tediously predictable that I’d nominate someone from King Crimson, but, really, Fripp was hilarious. Did he think he was on Jackanory? Slightly alarmingly, did he think Jackanory was a forum for rude anecdotes (too rude to repeat here)?

Incidentally, after saving his readers from a fit of the vapours by repeating Fripp's anecdotes, Smith then details the upsetting plot of a crime programme where a kid was traumatised by seeing his mother, a sex-worker, murdered.

It makes you think, doesn't it, Helen Nianias over in Fabulous magazine's Tellyboxing column. What was it that made Bowie such a legend?:

Is he a the biggest genius of our time, or just a shrewd businessman? It’s a tricky line to tread. However, the opening shot of Bowie himself is breathtaking. But not because of what he’s wearing or saying or doing. As he descends a flight of hotel steps...

Yes?

...you see just how strikingly tall and thin he really was in his ’70s heyday.

David Bowie. He was tall.

Maybe someone should be pitching a show in which people measure pop stars and plot them on some sort of a graph?

Gordon in the morning: In which Mr Smart attends an album playback

Beady Eye have, thrillingly, unveiled their new album to a crowd in a dingy room beneath a Soho flophouse (sorry, a "cinema beneath the posh Soho Hotel"; I forgot they only pretend to be a rock band these days.)

Gordon's written a review so gushing that when he says "Austin Powers would love this track", he's saying that like it's a good thing.

But he also appends Liam's own evaluation of the songs. Which really tells you all you need to know:

Fookin’ tune, man
You’re welcome!
Have that! Tune!
F****n’ tune!
Come on! What a tune.
Have a go on that!
Have it! Tune!
F***ing tune!

The most important thing to note is that two tracks there's no Gallagher, um, insight into because he went to the toilet. Twice. Either he's already bored to tears with the record, or his bladder's giving out and he would have said some combination of fuck, tune, and have.

Anyone surprised that he's even incoherent and lazy when talking about his own work? Anyone?

First night: My Bloody Valentine - MBV

So last night, then, Kevin Shields hit 'send', or possibly 'return', or issued an instruction to release the babies, and all of sudden, we had a new My Bloody Valentine album.



Squee, as I believe they say.

What is the world making of it?

Caspar Llewellyn Smith doesn't want to rush to judgement:

We should honour Shields and co by not rushing this, and publish the real review of the album in 2035.

Just kidding! Of course he wants first dibs on a review:

so, yes, very, very early impressions: it's not a great leap forwards – it sounds not so much as a continuation of Loveless but a record completely akin to it ... although you can hear the vocals and instruments in the mix more clearly; and the closing track, Wonder 2, is that hallucinatory drum and bass tune Shields once suggested he'd gone and recorded. If that had come out in the mid-90s, the Britpop boys would have all taken their Beatles songbooks and gone home crying.

Must be exciting for the NME, though? A new record by a legendary band, and them with a shiny website ready for a first impression review. Right?

Er, no. They scrape together a tracklisting, but their blogs - presumably the best place to stick a quick response - is leading on something about Elton John wearing funny hats. (That might make it sound like NME haven't updated the blogs since about 1976.)

The LA Times seemed willing to have a go at a review, but struggled with technology and fact:

[Updated Feb. 2 at 7:27 p.m.: An earlier version of this post misidentified My Bloody Valentine as British. The band was actually formed in Dublin, Ireland. Also, as of late Saturday, the new My Bloody Valentine album reportedly is available at the above website. However, the site remains crashed as of this writing, possibly due to a crush of visitors. We'll update as we hear more -- good luck, everyone.]

The Mirror threw the ball to its readers:

Are you excited about m b v? Leave your comments below

This 'write your own review' approach hasn't yet got a single taker.

Peter Paphides' review is acute on the process of release:

Slowly but surely, something about this “sudden release” business is becoming clear. It won’t be for every artist. Young bands seeking to establish themselves have little to gain from springing new works onto an unsuspecting world. Neither will it work for your journeyman rocker who puts out a similar record to the last one every two years, seemingly untroubled by its sonic proximity to the last one. For artists who have had trouble dealing with the expectations of their audience, however, this might be the best way. Screw the build-up. What is the “build-up” anyway? Isn’t that the bit between the announcement of the release date and the release itself? The bit where we all talk about how much we loved the earlier records and, by doing so, place impossibly high expectations on music we simply haven’t had a chance to get nostalgic about?

Gideon Coe is excited:

That's a record worth listening to again and again. Several times today to start with.Beautiful. Any chance of another? No hurry. #MBV

— Gideon Coe (@gidcoe) February 3, 2013

But perhaps Beach House have it right, though:

Don't read what anyone is writing/going to write, just listen to the new #mbv record without some idiot clouding your thoughts

— Beach House (@BeaccchHoussse) February 3, 2013

First night... erm, morning: Where Are We Now?

So, yes: that new Bowie single.

Absolutely astonishing piece of work to get it released with hardly anybody knowing it was going to happen; and extraordinary for almost the entire world* to listen to a song for the first time, more-or-less simultaneously, and more-or-less without coming to it with a set of recommendations or disrecommendations ringing in their ears.

* - I'm using "the entire world" in the sense of "people who care about Western musicians of a certain age who were up at that time in the morning", of course.

It's possible to both admire the way the song has been put together - craftsmanlike, as you'd expect - and not really warm to it. But you don't care what I think, so let's take a quick look at some of the instant reaction.

The Guardian is surprised:

The glam-rock singer shot to fame in the late 60s with Space Oddity but has been largely silent in recent years, not performing live since 2006 and rarely appearing in public since then.

So surprised, they describe Bowie as "the glam-rock singer".

There's a difference of opinion between Ben Perreau and Jon Mundy:

@perreau well i’ll give it a better chance once i’ve dispatched the children. Seemed a bit dirgey (is that a word?)

— Jon Mundy (@jonmundy) January 8, 2013

@jonmundy Depends in what you like, Bowie doesn't really do the bright poppy stuff so much so I prefer his rootsier sounds.

— Ben Perreau (@perreau) January 8, 2013

Ah, you say "dirgey", I say "rootsy".

Still, a new single and a birthday. Joy to the world, eh?

I just listened to #Bowie. Feel a bit depressed now :(

— karenstrunks (@karenstrunks) January 8, 2013

But people who like it, like it very much indeed:

"I'm David Bowie. Here's a wistful ballad. Eat me, young people." #hero

— Adam Wilson (@theleanover) January 8, 2013

Ah lovely Bowie. AllRobery Wyatty and I did show ya the coolest mugshot ever...spooky huh?

— suzanne moore (@suzanne_moore) January 8, 2013

Only David Bowie could make a song about using public transport in Germany sound so wracked and lovely.

— Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) January 8, 2013

Perhaps the oddest report this morning comes from The Next Web:

Returning after 10 years away, David Bowie embraces digital with iTunes-exclusive single

Josh Ong, David Bowie won a lifetime achievement award from the Webbys in 2007, nearly a decade after he launched BowieNet. I think it's fairly safe to say he'd already embraced digital.

And good reviews cost double

In a move which couldn't be more designed to look like a declining industry grabbing at straws, the Newspaper Licensing Agency is demanding cash from musicians who use review quotes in their publicity. Techdirt has a lot of detail:

The most outrageous example... concerns a small PR company called ElevenTenths, which is effectively one woman, Claire Willis, working form a spare bedroom.... Poor Ms. Willis was collared by the NLA a few months ago, required to fill in forms about her clients and activities, and then received a bill for £23,500.
Willis complained and apparently the NLA "backed down" and offered a deal for "only" £1,588.45.

What happens if a reviewer quotes a line from a song in their review?

Most reviewers, you'll recall, get their records free and swan into gigs without paying, often accompanied by their plus one. That has always seemed a fair deal.

But if the NRA is going to seek retrospective payments for having used lines from reviews, maybe a few musicians should start sending out retrospective demands for all those gig tickets and promo CDs...

Gordon in the morning: One Direction want some attention

One thing we know about Gordon is that the sort of band he likes is Kasabian. And yet, the sales and page views are with bands like One Direction. Today, offered the chance of an exclusive first listen to the One Direction album, he slaps on a fake grin and dad-dances his little tush off:

NOW here’s the thing. I’m a 32-year-old man who likes good old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll.

But, sadly, hardly any of the bands I like can sell two million albums to teenagers any more.

So ONE DIRECTION have earned almost the entire day in Bizarre page about their new album — and this is why...

This is the equivalent of a locked-in blinking. "I'm only writing about them because they're popular."

Obviously, there is a question hanging here: if Smart really wants his sort of band to sell more, why doesn't he give them the coverage rather than One Direction? (The answer, you'd guess, would be that he needs the bands more than they need him.)

So, with the grin on, what's Gordon's verdict on the record?

The headline is the sort of thing that could go in an advert:

Take Me Home is 1Dful

Wundyful? Full of wund?

Gordon bottles the challenge in the end, passing over to a younger member of his team, Tom Thorogood, to trot out a couple of sentences about each song:

Fast-paced and McFly-alike. Could be a future single.

... but not before Gordon does rather a deft dance of seeing how far he can push damning with faint praise before the One Direction fans would notice:

The album sounds almost identical to the last one but kids will love it — and some of the writers are talented folk.

I'm not Gordon's biggest fan, but that is a great bit of writing: like a man examining a steaming turd he's found on his doorstep saying 'well, whoever did this is at least enjoying a healthy diet'.

Bookmarks: Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis reviews the Hunter Davis collection of John Lennon's letters for Guardian Review. In the course of it, he explains why Britpop trying to be The Beatles was a bad idea, and worries about the way everything any Beatle touches becomes an artefact:

To be fair to Davies, he does admit in his introduction that he has "rather expanded the definition of the word 'letter'". This still does not quite prepare the reader for gems such as "Degs, No Fucking George, Yer Cunt, Jack" (letter 238: Memo to Derek) or "Fred, Lights in kitchen (bulbs), Honey Candy, Kitchen Air Con is 'On Heat' (Something Wrong), Cabbage, Grape-oil (ask where), Onions, Peas (NB the Korean Shop Shells Them!), Sesame Oil, Tomatoes, Berries, Yoghurt, Hamburger Meat (for the cat!)" (letter 255: Domestic list for Fred). The Post-It Notes of John Lennon, anyone? I like mundane reality – you could say it's my specialist subject – but there's no getting away from the fact that the second of those two examples is a shopping list. Are we really so bereft of new ideas that we now wish to study the equivalent of someone's Ocado profile?

[Buy: The John Lennon letters]

Gordon in the morning: Gordon in the MDNA

This morning, Gordon has a listen to the new Madonna album, MDNA. He describes the album as a "return to form" and the last one as a "let-down".

Which is kind of strange, as when Hard Candy came out, although his review was a bit muted, it hardly suggested he believed she was off-form:

The Chameleon Of Pop has chosen an edgy, urban feel for her latest reinvention.

To be fair to Gordon, he wasn't entirely convinced by some aspects of Hard Candy:

Despite a few tasty treats, I?m not sure rap was the right direction for a singer approaching her fifth decade.

And yet, for MDNA, the supposed "return to form", what does he especially like?

Having rappers M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj on board was a shrewd move and they bring quality as well as credibility to their guest appearances.

So, having rap on Hard Candy was a mistake and a deviation from the brand, whereas the album shrewdly returns to what Madonna does best by, erm, having some rap on it.

To be fair, Gordon isn't really reviewing the album so much as playing a game of aural Catchphrase, listing what he can hear. Trying to capture a sense of a record is something Gordon does terribly badly - as well as MIA and Minaj being "on board", he also tells us that "William Orbit is back on board".

There's also this line:

Opener Gang Bang also follows the dubstep trend.

That might be the clumsiest thing The Sun has done since sliding fifty quid notes into policemen's tunic pockets.

First night: Madonna at the Superbowl

Last night, while America recharged its glasses and flushed its toilets, Madonna popped up to do something from the new album at the Superbowl.

How did it go down?

The LA Times' Randall Roberts was left breathless with the audacity:

Think about it. In less than 10 minutes, America watched marching warriors pulling a massive chariot; faux trumpeters announcing the arrival of Madonna; a man name Redfoo with a ridiculously large afro fronting a duo called LMFAO; a polyglot British-Sri Lankan rapper slyly flipping the bird at the camera; a cartoonish multiple-personality Nicki Minaj; and a charismatic Buddha of a singer with a golden voice in one of the best bandleader outfits ever created, to say nothing of his stunning black choir robe.

Audacious, but...

But despite its success AND extravagance, this whole halftime package most of all was little more than an ingeniously well planned — and shockingly transparent — advertisement for "MDNA," and not much more.

It's a little hard to get outraged at the idea of the Superbowl being used to flog stuff. Not least because if you do get outraged, you're then legally obliged to add "this outrage is brought to you by Bud Light - the official beer of mild outrage at Superbowl XLVI."

MTV's John Mitchell also saw MIA's finger:

The pom-poms Madonna promised surfaced when she lit into her new single, "Give Me All Your Luvin," along with a blonde Nicki Minaj and a, ahem, bird-flipping M.I.A.. That's right, the lone bit of controversy around the often provocative Madonna's Super Bowl show will most likely have to do with the Sri Lankan singer briefly flipping off the camera. The otherwise slickly produced show went off without a hitch.

There's a lot of that in the reviews - how slick, how well-oiled it was, how well-choreographed. So that finger has taken on massive significance as it turns out to be the only interesting thing that happened. The Press Association tries to ramp it up as NBC struggles to play it down:

The Super Bowl, shown on NBC this year, is routinely viewed by more than 100 million people, the biggest TV event of the year. "We apologise for the inappropriate gesture that aired during half-time," NBC spokesman Christopher McCloskey said. "It was a spontaneous gesture that our delay system caught late."
The screen briefly went blurred after MIA's gesture in what was a late attempt - by less than a second - to cut out the camera shot. The National Football League (NFL), which produces the show, had no immediate comment.

The fnal verdict, though? As Reuter's Tim Molloy at the end of the performance, the ball would not have moved one yard in either direction:

Twitter responses were fiercely split, but it's hard to imagine what she could have done differently to win over the non-fans. If you like Madonna, chances are you liked her wild, genre-twisting performance. If you don't, you probably didn't.

Gordon in the morning: Gordon at night

Gordon went to see Kasabian playing in Brighton.

THERE'S an old rock 'n' roll saying along the lines of: "You never go home from a gig humming the lights."

There is?

And yet Gordon seems to have done:

Well, if it were possible, I would have been humming all the way home after seeing Kasabian's new lighting rig in action on Monday.

It was like watching the best telly you've ever seen — a massive concave screen with spectacular graphics reacting to the thumping bass and guitar riffs.

Hats off to the team behind it. They've come up with something truly original.

Yes, his first four paragraphs are all about the lights. It's only an eight paragraph piece.

But that could be because it's Kasabian - after all, wouldn't all of us fix our stare into the lighting rig and try to ignore what was happening on the stage.

Hold on, though: doesn't Gordon love this band?

It seems unfair to mention the music second.

Well, probably not. But do tell us about it. If you must.

However, Tom Meighan, Serge Pizzorno, Chris Edwards and Ian Matthews, plus session musicians Ben Kealey and Jay Mehler, raised the roof. As always.

Their latest album, Velociraptor, is epic live. Hits like Days Are Forgotten and Re-Wired have enhanced an already brilliant set list featuring tunes that are almost ten years old.

Am I being unfair, or is this the weakest gig review ever to appear in a newspaper?

A list of the band members. A list of the session musiciains. An empty cliché. A panicked reassurance that the cliché wasn't implying this was a surprise.

The name of the album, with an empty one-word description of how it sounds live. The name of some of the songs that got played, and a confirmation that the older songs were still on the list.

Serge has never looked so confident, which might explain his feather coat, and Tom, with a slick new barnet, is on the form of his life.

The first half of that sentence doesn't actually make sense - 'because Serge looks confident, he is wearing a feather coat'. Presumably Gordon means "Serge has never looked so confident, which might explain how he thought he could get away with his feather coat" or "might explain why he felt comfortable wearing a feather coat" or something of that nature.

The whole piece reads like the sort of review that you'd file if you'd missed the gig entirely and only saw the band in the bar afterwards; given this is meant to be one of Smart's favourite bands, you'd have thought you'd get a review which was a bit more involved.

Perhaps he should have taken the night off to enjoy the gig and forgotten about being a writer.

Actually, it looks like he has.

Glastonbury 2011: View from the sofa - Morrissey

Who would have thought that the first act to really cope well with the demands of Glastonbury would be grumpy old Morrissey, eh? He managed to get through his set without accidentally upsetting Koreans or Belgians, somehow worked in a costume change and was, if not exactly triumphant, at least managing a worthy away win.

And it felt great to watch on TV, despite his curmudgeonly, knowing change of line in the Satellite Of Love cover to "I cannot stand TV". On a good day, Morrissey is three-parts showmanship to one-part canker, and this felt like a good day for him.

Highlight? Well, his backing band weren't The Smiths but even so, the reading of Meat Is Murder was wonderful. Introduced by a mild jibe at Cameron's desire to keep animals in circuses ("what a silly twit"), and dripping in blood-red lights and a genuine, growly, jowly anger that the Smiths-era Mozzer's range couldn't have included.

This Charming Man wasn't quite such a triumph. But then, his backing band aren't The Smiths.

[Part of Glastonbury 2011 full coverage]

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Henry Rollins

Dirtfarm goes to see the now FIFTY YEAR OLD Henry Rollins kick off his spoken word tour and reports back in comic form:

Gordon in the morning: Gordon casts his beady eye

Given the extent to which Gordon fawns over every doing of the Gallagher ("oh, you said that man was a twat - why, you exhibit so much wit, sire"; "why, sire, these trousers you have in some way overseen the design of are so much more than mere trousers - I shall wear nothing else") his lukewarm reaction to the Beady Eye single must be setting off all kinds of alarms:

The track is all right. I was more than happy to hear it roaring out the radio a few times. But that spark that separates the good from the spectacular is missing.

For Gordon talking about a Gallagher, that's the equivalent of the sort of words which made Glen Medeiros cry.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Louise Wener

Hopefully, the next edition of Louise Wener's Different For Girls can drop the off-putting thumbs-up on the cover from Fearne Cotton now that Jude Rogers has reviewed it for the New Statesman:

Wener also dismantles the myth that the likes of Blur were intelligent pop revolutionaries. She describes their rudeness, their ruthless ambition and their "easy, bohemian, moneyed odour". And then there are the groupies. Wener leaves nothing out. The bassist Alex James tells a young woman, "You're ugly, but I'm going to fuck you anyway," while their tour manager is despatched to select attractive girls from the audience and give them after-show tickets, known as "Blur-job passes".