Le freak, c'est chic

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE / VOICE OF THE SEVEN WOODS, 8TH NOVEMBER 2006, CARDIFF POINT

Another evening down at the Point, another game of Cardiff Indie Scene I-spy. It's much less busy than last night, so much so that they've got tables and chairs out at the back of the room, but look! There's Lesson No 1's Noel again! And over there D C Gates, Gindrinker's unstable raconteur / frontman! And Carl of Forecast too (after all, this is another of his nights).

Easing us gently into the evening's entertainment are Voice Of The Seven Woods. Or should that be "First up IS Voice Of The Seven Woods"? After all, VOTSW is one man, Rick Tomlinson. Not that you'd guess if you had your back to the stage, though. You see, Tomlinson adroitly and repeatedly samples himself, then replaying back the recordings whilst playing something new over the top. The songs are literally constructed on stage. When you can do this, who needs anyone else? Tomlinson is a one-man-band for the twenty-first century.

His songs are a bit special too, demanding a silence the audience is quick to grant them. Tomlinson, who records for Andy Votel's Twisted Nerve label, deals in a kind of apocalyptic comedown folk - very tricksy instrumentals (aside from one with a lyric about the coming dawn) which are both seductive and vaguely sinister.

All of which sets the scene nicely for Acid Mothers Temple. Or Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., to give them their full title. The prolific Japanese foursome, part of the Acid Mothers collective, are touring in support of their latest LP, Have You Seen The Other Side Of The Sky?. I'm guessing you've already got some sense of what they sound like.

Acid Mothers Temple suggest that Western culture travels very, very slowly to Japan. It seems our 1980s and 1990s certainly haven't arrived there just yet. They are The Beatles of Sgt Pepper's or The White Album gone heavy metal, or Black Sabbath if they were utterly mushroom-fucked rather than just a bit snowblind.

Founder member and guitarist Kawabata Makoto has an even more insanely bouffant barnet than Russell Brand, looking something like former Soundgarden stringsman Kim Thayil after a scrap with a pair of hair crimpers. With his floating pyjama-esque trousers and long grey hair, Higashi Hiroshi (synthesizer / guitar), resembles a wizard who's temporarily misplaced his cape and hat. Drummer Uki Eiji has a tufty grey Mr Miyagi beard. Beanie-hatted bassist Tsuyama Atsushi might ostensibly cut a more sober figure, but then he's the one who performs the water-gargling "vocals" to one song. Put it this way: if they walked into the pub, you wouldn't mistake them for tax inspectors on a night out.

In the technicolour universe that Acid Mothers Temple inhabit, each and every song presents the opportunity for a freakout - and every opportunity passed up is very definitely an opportunity wasted. They are definitely firm believers in wringing the most out of a riff, the opening song (like Yo La Tengo's last night) stretching for a good ten minutes.

This isn't simply about headfuck noise, though. There's plenty of weirdness and randomness during the intervals between passages of aural punishment - monk-style chanting, for instance - and it's at these moments that I feel most disorientingly removed from their plane.

The final song of the set has been going at full tilt for fifteen minutes, when it suddenly scales back down to the opening guitar motif. Surely that must be it? Surely they can't ratchet it up again, louder and more intense? Oh yes they can. Another ten minutes later - during which Makoto presumably gives the venue manager kittens, swinging his guitar round his head and then rubbing it against the back of the amps suspended from the converted church's ceiling - it's finally over. Whither my brain?

When they reappear for the encore, Atsushi is wearing a pair of butterfly wings. It's that kind of night.

R'n'B: guilty?

I should have made more of an effort to promote the current In The Dock feature we've got goin' on over at The Art Of Noise. The trial of useless crusties The Levellers has been and gone, but if you want to get involved in the deliberations over the guilt or innocence of R'n'B, then here's where you need to go.

And then everything turned itself inside-out

YO LA TENGO / MINOTAUR SHOCK, 7TH NOVEMBER 2006, CARDIFF POINT

"37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster" screamed a newspaper headline back in April 2002. As you might have guessed, the newspaper in question was The Onion, the publication which singlehandedly and repeatedly proves that, contrary to popular myth, Americans can and do have a firm grasp of irony, satire and other subtle forms of wit.

Anyway, it's funny because it's true. It's a safe bet that if fire raged through the Point tonight on the same sort of scale as it did at Brum's last remaining rock club Edwards No 8 at the weekend, Spillers would be a few men and women down. Indeed, the whole Cardiff indie scene would collapse, as a quick game of I-spy confirms: Gary of Twisted By Design near at hand, Gindrinker guitarist Graf just in front of me, Noel of Lesson No 1 and Neil of Los Campesinos! flitting around like ten-year-olds on the Red Bull...

But enough of the assembled throng - what of the bands?

Support comes from Bristolians Minotaur Shock, signed to the legendary 4AD label. A spot of post-gig research reveals that they really only consist of one person, David Edwards, and that the other two only appear live. Research also proves that I'm not mad in imagining he was a purveyor of glitchy Boards Of Canada electronica in the past. If that's a past Edwards is keen to leave behind, then on tonight's showing he's making a very convincing fist of it.

The songs seem to possess some kind of weird groove almost in spite of themselves, a rhythmic funk that approximates Talking Heads, albeit with the addition of flute, oboe and programming. Particularly entertaining are the two tracks on which Edwards is shown drumming along to on a projection screen (a la Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips a few years back), the on-screen figure pausing to drink a cup of tea when the drums cut out and the real-life on-stage incarnation finishes up. It's not easy to get your head around first time (and the crowd's response is pretty muted), though definitely worthy of further investigation.

Confession time. It may come as something of a surprise given my tastes that I've never quite got into Yo La Tengo. 2003's Today Is The Day EP is brilliant, but somehow I've never got round to following that purchase up with more. It's perhaps most surprising because of their similarities to my favourite band. Like Sonic Youth, not only is Hoboken, New Jersey the place the trio call home; they can also boast a long career marked by numerous peaks (they formed in 1984), and share an interest in incorporating experimentation with feedback, dissonance and drones into a relatively accessible indie rock sound.

There are also striking similarities with another American threesome beloved of critics and fans alike: Low. Like the Duluth trio, Yo La Tengo are founded upon a husband and wife duo on guitar and drums respectively - in this case Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley - though the contribution of the bassist, James McNew, shouldn't be underestimated.

McNew it is who is vital to the ten minutes of sheer bliss that make up the opening song, locking down the groove with an insistent bassline to allow Kaplan to venture off into the fantasy world of the unfettered lead guitarist. If that isn't enough to win the crowd over, then the nods to local heroes certainly are - Megan of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci appears to accompany them on the violin, and Kaplan tells us that the acoustic guitar he's using belongs to Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals and has been lent to them for the occasion because "it has a nicer pick guard" than their own.

You want song titles? 'Fraid I can't help you there, really, though they definitely play 'The Weaker Part' from their splendidly titled new LP I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, and I'm pretty certain 'I Heard You Looking' is in there somewhere too. There's a bit of a lull mid-set, I feel, when they overdose slightly on the avant-jazz and lightweight pop-rock stuff - though it has to be said they have a more catholic aesthetic than Sonic Youth, and that these songs do provide welcome textural variation. But the medley which brings the main set to an end is intense, thunderous and thrilling. Don't just take my word for it - how's about asking the hairy young man in the Eagles T-shirt moshing away at the front like his life depends on it?

They return for a low-key four song encore and, although (sadly) 'Today Is The Day' never puts in an appearance, at last there's a song I know and even own, 'Let's Save Tony Orlando's House' from 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. Two of the others are covers: the first 'The Readymades' by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, whom they are delighted to have seen at St David's Hall the previous night; and the second (the last song of the night) an unnamed Welsh folk song performed with a sublime gentleness of touch.

One of those nights when everything suddenly becomes crystal clear, then. Not quite gig of the year - but certainly well up there.

(Turns out I wasn't the only member of the audience uninitiated in the Church of Yo La Tengo: check out this review from the MusicOMH site.

Oh, and the "Welsh folk song" was John Cale's 'Andalucia', according to Drowned In Sound gig reviewer Will Dean. I'll take your word for it, Will.)

Blogwatch

Welcome...

Cultural Snow - named after a Haruki Murakami quote, this is the blog of Tim Footman, a Brit exiled in Bangkok and regular contributor to the Guardian's Comment Is Free.

Meanwhile...

Pete sets about giving Birmingham what it's been missing, and a great idea it is too. There's always been a strong sense of place about his site, but now he's going to go further and attempt a Diamond Geezer for the second city. Bravo!

Elsewhere...

RussL's Going Deaf For A Fortnight endurance test ends with a Motorhead gig.

Tim goes weak at the knees over Steven Drozd and Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips.

Mike posts his third "Trodicast" (it's the future, you know!).

Jonathan introduces us to the concept of "Cheap Week".

Alan dissects the lyrics to Rainbow's tight-trousered soft rock classic 'Since You've Been Gone' and finds them wanting.

Betty gets a new passport photo taken.

And finally...

The series that's had us all hooked: Bathmatwatch on Salvatore Vincent's Smaller Than Life...

Birmingham: effing great!

Hoorah! The Guardian's Benji Lanyado has offered Jon Bounds of the cracking Birmingham: It's Not Shit site the opportunity to suggest his own Reasons To Be Cheerful. Included in his list - and rightly so - are the Electric Cinema, the Sunflower Lounge and Mr Egg.

(Thanks to Pete for the link.)

Feel good hits of the 16th November

It's been a while...

1. 'Today Is The Day' - Yo La Tengo
2. 'One Armed Scissor' - At The Drive-In
3. 'Sing Me Spanish Techno' - The New Pornographers
4. 'Love Is Happiness' - The Icarus Line
5. 'Cotton Crown' - Sonic Youth
6. 'Hip Priest' - The Fall
7. 'Bombtrack' - Rage Against The Machine
8. 'Mystic Energy' - The Young Knives
9. 'Ramblin Man' - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
10. 'Country Mile' - Clinic

Right To Reply #7

It’s been nearly a year since the last Right To Reply discussion / get-together (when the subject of discussion was the change to the British licensing laws). High time for another one, then.

This time the topic is more abstract, much more personal and only vaguely topical, though it was inspired in part by the recent experiences of one of the contributors. And it gives us bloggers a chance to write about our favourite subject: ourselves…

Read on, then – it’s a long one so you might want to grab a cuppa and make yourself comfortable first, but you never know, you might just find out a bit more about the people behind the blogs, this one included…

The subject: identity

The participants:
Abby of Girl With A One-Track Mind
Ben, your host
Jonathan of Crinklybee
JonnyB of JonnyB’s Private Secret Diary
Martin of That Difficult Second Blog
Paul of 1000 Shades Of Grey
Pete of The Whole Wide World Of Fat Buddha! and Bluesblog
Swiss Toni of Swiss Toni’s Place

How do you define yourself? In terms of your job? Your social class? Where you're from? Your gender? Your sexuality? Your interests? What you wear? Or something else?

JonnyB: I honestly am not aware that I define myself. But I probably do, unconsciously. You've got me all worried now. Do I?

Swiss Toni: Do you know what? I really, genuinely don’t think I know the answer to this question. Clearly I must define myself somehow, but I’m buggered if I can put my finger on it. I’m sure that I am defined by all kinds of things: my background, my job, where I live, the music I listen to, the TV I watch, the clothes I wear etc etc. But I don’t think I define myself by any of these things.

Jonathan: I don't find it easy at all identifying myself for the benefit of others, as you may note from the long, rambling and possibly incoherent answers I give to these questions! For instance, I am constantly dissatisfied with the obligatory “About Me” section on my blog, and am constantly tinkering with it to little avail – I keep taking out the bit about being thrilled at meeting people from ‘Coronation Street’ in Tescos, not being able to think of anything better, and putting it back in again.

Paul: I think I define myself by most (if not all) of the things I say and do – be it my job, my place of birth, my faith, my gender and express that identity through the things I say, do, wear and listen to / watch.

Pete: Increasingly, I am coming to define myself as a nondescript middle aged man – Mr bleeding Jones! I don't try and hide the fact that I social work for a living, but I wouldn't, couldn't define myself by that role – apart from anything else, I am a fairly atypical social worker, but every social worker I know would say the same of themselves, so maybe I am typical.

Ben: I’ve never really understood people who introduce themselves by announcing what they do for a living. To someone who’s never had a “proper” job, it always seemed curious – and more than a little sad – that people should feel their identity is determined primarily by their profession. And yet recently, whilst both jobless and directionless, I came to understand and even crave that sense of security and – yes – identity that comes with having a particular job. In many ways it’s understandable – after all, a job occupies a hugely significant proportion of life, and to a large extent determines your daily routine and those with whom you come into regular contact. But then this is probably not the way that many (most?) people would LIKE to define themselves, given the choice. It’s more an identity that is foisted upon them.

Martin: I used to define myself in terms of my job (once I got a decent one, anyway) but over the last few months I've moved away from that so I suppose I'm defining myself in terms of not defining myself from my job! Unless you're doing something worthy, I think that defining yourself by what you do for a living is likely to be misguided. I suppose I define myself more in terms of my interests; what I choose to appreciate and do with my time, as opposed to an accident of birth. Where I'm from only applies to my sporting interests, but even then I can't relate to the idea of painting my face red and white and singing 'Ten German Bombers' every time England play football. In fact I think I tend to define myself as not being like certain people, which might come across as snobbish.

Ben: Self-definition is achieved as much (if not more) through the expression of identification as it is through the expression of difference – and in no instance more obvious than regional identity.

Jonathan: Like many North Easterners, I identify myself quite strongly in terms of regional provenance – and like most people who grew up in Newcastle, I take pride in being able to proclaim myself a native of the regional capital itself (I was going to say “a true Geordie”, but as this debate is being hosted by a Northumbrian I am taking a diplomatic line- and also of course Ben knows I was born in Alnwick, so am strictly speaking less Geordie than he is). And of course I walk around a lot of the time with a Newcastle Utd badge attached to my lapel, which more or less goes hand in hand with coming from any part of the far North East.

Pete: I have lived in South Wales for twenty years and still consider myself a Brummie. I have not set foot in Mayfield Road in Tysley for about 30 years probably, but I bet I would feel instantly at home there in a way I never do anywhere in Wales. The nearest I get to feeling at home now is at St. Andrews. Interesting that, because I feel it more now that I have lived away than I ever did when I lived in Brum and the same is true for others; the football ground becomes a place where they once again feel they belong, not an outsider, or incomer.

Ben: Regional ties seem to assume greater significance when living in exile. For us Geordies it somehow feels more important to assert our regional identity (and, related to that, our affiliations to Newcastle Utd), to the extent that upon spotting a black and white shirt I often have to stop myself from going up to the wearer and greeting him / her like some long-lost comrade. The shirt is worn as a marker of regional pride, at least in part, and when talking about football my (admittedly) very muted accent gradually and unconsciously develops a more recognisably Geordie inflection.

Jonathan: I do define myself in terms other than the predictable ones of regional and footballing affiliation though – or at least I try to. I suppose if I had to sum up my identity in one of those Would Like To Meet adverts it would be something like “working-class Geordie European intellectual one-time floppy-fringed indie-popster, exiled in Manchester, subsisting as lowly clerk but cultivating rich inner life”. And, of course, blogging figures quite prominently in that last bit...

Pete: I no longer know what my class is and I no longer understand WHAT class is. When I was young, I was clearly, unequivocally working class. In my mid twenties I went to university and then completed a postgrad course and then became a social worker. I work hard and I get very little financial reward for it, so, in that sense, I suppose I am working class. But I'm not. The problem is, while I am no longer working class, neither am I middle class. I feel distinctly uncomfortable around the middle classes – the confident, accent-less, affluent middle classes. I don't like them and I don't trust them. I am neither fish nor fowl. Since I was young, though, the working class that I grew up with seems to have disappeared, and been replaced by a chavish underclass, with no values and no interest in finding work, or getting on in life (I know this is simplistic, but there you go) or a more affluent aspirational set of white collar types. I don't think the working class exists anymore; that bottom end of the social ladder has become too disparate. We are all graduates now!

Ben: I think social stratification still exists, although the dividing lines between different strata are perhaps more blurred. Class is still very much with us, but it no longer seems to be a primary or “default” means by which people define themselves.

Abby: Right now, I probably define myself in terms of my gender, my politics and my writing (which I'm hoping is / will be my job): it's the combination of all three that encapsulates exactly where and who I am, at this point in my life – probably more so than at any other point I have lived through.

Martin: Gender wise I've always been resistant to being a “bloke”; I used to think of myself as a “new man” but don't think much of that stereotype either. It's depressing how many people seem to define themselves in terms of their gender. I don't think that either gender has specific character traits but that there are just different types of people. I once walked out of a university seminar on female writers after being told that a friend and I were subverting oppressive partiarchy by him being gay and me having long hair(and therefore being in touch with my feminine side). Simplistic judgements on lifestyle choices that had nothing to do with our gender or sexuality.

Pete: Gender is an interesting and vexing area for me. I am a male, from a particular culture and have grown up according to certain aggressive mores. In the circles I have moved in for about the last 20 years, most people have found the attitudes that I possessed then unacceptable, and, intellectually, so do I. Emotionally, though, it's hard to lose that male working-class shoulder-chip. The instinct is always there, not only to bite back, fight back, viciously if necessary, but at times to get the old retaliation in first. It's not big, it's not funny and it most certainly isn't clever, but there are times when I find it really difficult to suppress that instinct.

Swiss Toni: It might sound idealistic, but I try to define myself on a basic set of core values. I try to be honest and decent in all things. I only really feel like I have let myself down when I violate one of these unwritten principles – when I broke up with a girlfriend of long standing suddenly and without much explanation; when I backed into someone’s car and then didn’t leave them an envelope with my number in it when I saw that their tax disc was out of date… Stuff like that. In each case, I didn’t act according to my own moral code and I felt awful as a direct result.

Do you think your identity has developed and is now stable? Or is who you are always changing?

JonnyB: Reasonably stable. With the addition of a recent child, which is bound to change things.

Martin: I think my identity's always been fairly stable, on the outside, anyway. Change is good just to keep life interesting if nothing else. It doesn't have to be drastic unless circumstances dictate otherwise.

Jonathan: We never really think our close friends and family really change that much over the years, do we? So I imagine that whatever great leaps of personal development and chameleon-like qualities I ascribe to myself, those who have known me well for a long time probably think I'm just the same old Jonathan as ever. And I suppose I don't really mind that too much.

Abby: I think identity is a fluid thing; it ebbs and flows, maybe taking on a stable appearance for an indeterminate length of time, but overall always adapting to one's personal circumstances. Right now my own identity feels strong – I know who I am and I am attempting to assert that within my life – but in actuality I'm in a total state of flux: I don't know what will happen tomorrow – in any sense – and my identity is having to adapt constantly to help me cope with that. I'm finding it scary, but I'm trying to see it as a positive challenge, rather than see it as “oh fuck, who am I, now that so much has changed in my life?” – which I don't think is a constructive viewpoint.

Martin: The way I define myself changes but I would hope it would for most people. Over the last year being single for the first time in nine years has had a huge effect, but it's been positive. I haven't redefined myself but it's been a good opportunity to look at myself more honestly; to reconsider negative traits and decide what I enjoy doing that I stopped as part of the inevitable compromise of being half of a couple.

Swiss Toni: I’ve just done a Myers-Briggs test at work actually. I did it before about nine years ago, and I was curious to see if I had changed at all (or at least if the test thought I had changed). To some extent I have defined myself by the result that came out last time – go and look at my blogger profile and you’ll see that I proudly list myself as an INTP [Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiver]. After I had sat the test and was waiting for my results, I was reflecting that I probably have changed in that time, that my personality now was different in many ways to the person that I was when I was 23. I have changed apparently – now I have to come to terms with what it means to be an INTJ [Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judger]. That’s a whole new box to put myself in, and it might take some time to adjust.

Martin: I suppose a feeling of greater stability comes with age, but I think it's important that age shouldn't fully dictate my identity. When I was a child I used to think that you had to act in certain ways at certain ages, but in hindsight I think some people were just born 50 years old.

Pete: I have changed identity over the years in the sense that people who knew me at 16 would not recognise the man I am now, which is probably the same for everyone. My political views have stayed fairly constant although nowadays I would never dream of involving myself in any kind of party politics; I'm not sure any party would have me anyway; my views are a bit eclectic. I think my defining characteristics are pretty stable these days, after years and years of changing. Some people find me overly assertive. But I really think that has more to do with my accent, and the last vestiges of my class, than any character trait on my part – I might be wrong though.

Paul: I think my identity inevitably changes as I progress through life. I no longer fall into the category “student” and am now technically a “young professional” so that part of my identity has shifted. Where once I was single, now I am not. Looking ahead, I'm currently without children, but it's highly possible that will change in the future, and in doing so my identity will change as I become “a father”.

Pete: As soon as I involved myself with further education, the old certainties crumbled away. People regarded me differently, thought I was some sort of upstart. People I had known and argued politics with for years seemed to take umbrage all of a sudden when I started gobbing my vaguely Marxist vaguely anarchist rhetoric, seemed to think I now thought of myself as better than them. Of course I changed too, I had always read books by foreign authors, always read the Guardian, always watched subtitled films, but now I became less tolerant, less indulgent of lowest common denominator nonsense, became a snob, if you like. Remain a snob, actually, in that regard. I can't watch soaps, I can't watch reality TV shows, I can't watch many Hollywood movies – I find them offensive; so that's me out of the loop.

Jonathan: I suppose that when I was younger I would be much more ready to identify myself along the lines of where I was from, what music I was into, and so on. As you get older you possibly worry less about such superficial categorisations, because you are more comfortable with yourself and happy for people to take you as they find you. I've gotten past the stage, for example, of feeling I've got to have an opinion about whatever new band has just burst onto the scene (although sometimes I can't help myself, and feel obliged to tell you I think The Magic Numbers are an awful pile of shite, whether you want to know or not).

Pete: In the end, the older I get, the more I see, the more I realise that none of it really matters. We come, we go, we amuse ourselves the best we can and no one will really remember us; few of us will have achieved any kind of greatness that will cause us to be remembered, so the identities we build for ourselves, the egos we wrap ourselves in are, ultimately meaningless. We may as well just live the best life we can, try and do as much with it as we can, without harming others.

Martin: If I had the chance to talk to my teenage self I'd tell him not to worry about things so much, that everything tends to work out and to stop trying to please everyone all the time. And to get rid of the mullet.

How do other people view / define you? Does this tally or clash with your own self-definition / self-image?

Paul: I suspect you'd have to ask them – although the fact that they don't hear my internal monologue probably means that the way I think and the way I act are possibly slightly out of kilter and affect the way in which I am perceived by others in contrast to the way I might be if they could hear my thoughts.

Martin: As dull as it sounds, most people think I'm a nice bloke. Not very exciting, but it could be worse. I've calmed down in my attitude to life in the last year or so, but I think I'm more irritable than most people think. I tend to come across as intelligent which I think comes from being fairly well-spoken and literate rather than actually knowing what I'm talking about. It's a silly thing but I find that embarrassing at times. I think I come across as more confident than I am. I'm definitely more frustrated and less confident than most people think, but I suppose it's better than their judgement being the other way around. Their judgement has defined me, in a sense; if people think I'm more confident then maybe I should be.

Abby: People probably see me as being more confident than I am; I'm good at channelling fear so possibly appear to be very self-assured, even when I'm shitting it inside. Given this, I suppose many would be surprised at how insecure I actually am; at least, that is how I see myself, most of the time. But I do try to have a positive outlook as often as possible, so maybe that's where the outer me and the inner me tally.

Ben: A while back I was with a group of friends and talk turned to the utterances which everyone most associated the person in question. I was surprised that, when it came to me, there was unanimous agreement on the exclamation: “For fuck’s sake!” I’m well aware I can often get wound up at trivial, petty little things, but this very fleeting glimpse of what others thought of me left in tatters my fairly long-held belief that I generally kept those frustrations inside and came across as a relaxed, easy-going person in public. Perhaps the relatively confident front I think I present to others isn’t as opaque as I imagine either.

JonnyB: I live in a world where the things that perhaps I have “achieved” in a previous life mean absolutely sod all. So I suspect that the inflated sense I have of my own importance and achievements is not reflected in how other people view or define me.

Swiss Toni: I don’t know. I worry that people see me as cold, unemotional and humourless. Perhaps they’re right.

Jonathan: Well none of us can really claim to know the answer to this one, can we? But I think people who know me well – or those who read my blog – would have an image of me that tallies quite closely with my self-image.

To what extent do you think you can define yourself for the benefit of others?

Martin: Quite easily, which I think might not be a good thing. My family and friends know who I am, but I'm definitely a different person with different acquaintances, particularly at work. My job's made a lot easier for the different ways I've presented myself to people. It sounds duplicitous, but I reassure myself that it's a means to an end and that if I spoke to them honestly I'd be unemployed. Outside of work, I'd say I was pretty honest with people about who I am.

Abby: I think the core of me is pretty much unchanged throughout the years; my beliefs and outlook on life is very consistent. So I don't think I have changed or would change for the benefit of others. I'm very much a “take me as I am” type of person, believing in being open and honest about who I am and what I feel and think; if people don't like that, fine. Saying that, one has to be flexible to be sociable, and I will bite my tongue (for example) if I think that it might hurt someone's feelings or be completely inappropriate if I were to speak my mind, so I guess that is adapting my identity for others' benefit to some extent.

Swiss Toni: I like to think I’m fairly constant, but I’m also pretty sure that I’m as much of a social chameleon as anybody else. I have little or no interest in cars, but I can take part in a pub conversation on the subject if necessary. In my quieter moments, I wonder if I am really as interested in things like football and music as I convey to other people. Is it all an act? Do I pretend to be more interested in these things because that is increasingly how other people see me and how they expect me to be? Perhaps.

Ben: Sometimes I get the nagging feeling I do try to be all things to all men (and women), showing different people different facets of my personality with the consequence that hardly anyone really sees the “real me” (whoever that is). Is it duplicitous to suppress certain aspects of your personality with one person and exaggerate them with another? Or is it simply a matter of being sociable and making an effort to meet each person on their own terms? Or, at least, what you perceive to be their own terms – it always comes as something of a surprise when I suddenly discover that someone with whom I’ve only ever talked about football is actually a serious music lover, for instance. In other words, when you suddenly catch a glimpse of someone else’s “other side(s)”, sides which you never knew existed.

Jonathan: I do suppose more and more my blog is an inextricable part of my identity – to the extent that I feel people who don't know about the blog (which usually means people I know through work) don't really have a full picture of who I am at all... I sometimes worry that I must seem like a rather grey and insubstantial character to these people... but then of course I remember that first of all, I don't really care what image Jeff from accounts has of me – and also that everyone who reads the blog knows what a swashbuckling, intrepid and fascinating character I really am, and that cheers me up no end.

Do you ever consider yourself to have changed identity?

JonnyB: I probably “developed” my identity when I started working in a particular area and found myself at nobby social events being asked, in all seriousness, which school I had attended. At that point in my life I thought it more sensible to go with that particular flow. I felt terribly beneath everybody.

Ben: As someone who was quiet, studious and not particularly popular at school, I remember seeing university as a golden opportunity to consciously redefine and re-invent myself for people who would have no knowledge of the “old” me. To a certain extent, I think I managed it too – I certainly feel very different from that gawky 19-year-old now – which was why, for a while, encountering old friends from home and school felt like dredging up a past I had somehow left behind.

How closely does your blog identity / persona match your actual identity / persona? Is it natural and honest or do you exaggerate / suppress aspects of your character when blogging?

Pete: My blog persona is a fairly accurate reflection of me – certainly on Bluesblog I try to be honest, as much about myself as others. It's difficult though, because you don't want to hurt others. The Fat Buddha blog would give someone a reasonable idea of my personality and character too, but I never say much on that. It's different on football message boards, which is where my alter ego lets rip, and I am as stupid and abusive as the next social working politics graduate, but very few people have any idea of who I actually am on those boards, so I can get away with it.

JonnyB: Ah – erm – errrr... well it's all completely honest. Completely. Jonny is what I'd become if there weren't people around me to help me maintain normality. There but for the grace of – etc. Clearly – clearly – I am not the idiot that perhaps comes across. I think. But if you tend to write vignettes about odd things that happen, then the non-odd side of you will be omitted by – er – omission. Jonny's cooler than I am. And nicer. But I am even more sexy.

Paul: I think I'm largely the same, although I suspect I censor areas of my life. I try and avoid saying anything which is likely to cause upset / offence to people I care about (in much the same way as I do in life) and generally avoid subjects which require me to talk about the impact they have had on other people's lives. I'm certainly not about start blogging about work or my love life.

Martin: It's too soon to tell with my new blog, but the last one was fairly accurate. I tend not to talk about things in my personal and professional life as much as I'd like because blogging can be cathartic but with an unfortunate audit trail. On the whole I think I was honest in my previous blog which is why I ended up deleting it which was probably a mistake that I try not to think about. I think my blogging reflects my conversational style, more so with friends than family members.

Ben: I learned very early on the perils of being too liberal with what you are prepared to commit to your blog – it’s a very public place, after all. Silent Words Speak Loudest is predominantly a cultural / arts blog because I don’t think I have a particularly interesting personal life, and if I don’t think that then why should anyone else? If I could write as brilliantly about the minutiae of daily life and human interaction as some of my fellow contributors here, then that might be different – but I can’t, so it isn’t. This piece is probably about as personal as I’m ever likely to get – though of course aspects of my personality inevitably come through in what I write about and how I write about it.

Abby: My blog persona is me, but an extended, exaggerated version of me. She is more confident than I am, and more brash too. Offline, I worry far too often about what people think of me, or if I have said something to offend; online, I have the freedom to express myself how I want and not worry or care so much about the consequences, which is why I have loved blogging so much. However, my online writing is honest – I don't make stuff up – so the veracity of it is in tune with how I live my offline life: true to myself, and others.

Martin: I have exaggerated in the past for the sake of a better read, but never to the extent of distorting the truth to a great degree. Mostly it's just to include the humour that comes with the benefit of hindsight. Nothing's grossly exaggerated. I'd prefer to read about why someone's life is interesting / funny / tragic rather than just the fact that it is, and that's where story-telling comes in. I think the fact that you can't see the person behind the blog in many cases is why the medium encourages criticism.

Jonathan: I think of my blog persona as a kind of cartoon version of my real-life identity. Nothing substantial is absolutely made up (in fact, whenever I do invent little details, I generally feel immediately guilty and have to take them out again) but some grey areas are removed, and aspects of reality are certainly heightened for dramatic effect. For instance, I recently managed to get two separate 1000 word posts out of a pair of slightly awkward but essentially inconsequential encounters with a local shopkeeper – and these were possibly my favourite posts ever. And I suppose you would get a better picture of who I am by reading either of those posts than you would by wading through that awkwardly-phrased “About Me” page I was talking about just before. You would certainly get a clearer idea of my various neuroses.

Swiss Toni: I don’t blog under my real name, but my real name is not terribly well concealed. It’s a figleaf of anonymity at best. If you are determined, it would take all of about ten minutes to work out my real name (in fact, if you asked me, I’d probably just tell you). The two personas are very closely matched, and in many ways I am more open on my blog than I am face to face. Beware though, my blog persona is not me. There are several subjects that I just won’t touch that form an important part of who I really am. Their exclusion on my blog means that you cannot truly know me. I don’t think you can ever truly know anyone purely from their blog. Hell, I’m a historian by training – a blog is by definition an entirely subjective source and thus slanted and probably unreliable. If you think you know someone from their blog, think again.

If you're not quite the same as your blogging persona, how do the two differ? And was that persona a conscious creation? To what extent is your blogging persona a protective / defensive mask?

JonnyB: Yes, it is a conscious creation. I'm not sure about the mask thing. I have no interest whatsoever in telling people about my personal life, and even less interest in people who know me reading about what a gormless idiot I am.

Paul: I suspect that the advantage of blogging anonymously is that you are free to talk more openly about [personal] matters – although I suspect Abby would have plenty of anecdotal evidence of how losing your anonymity is a deeply unpleasant and awkward experience.

Abby: Due to the subject matter I write about, I created an anonymous online identity because I was trying to protect my and others' privacy: I didn't want people to be able to identify me or others from reading the blog. Whilst my blog persona was based on me, I had tried to change certain details to uphold my anonymity, so it was there as a shield to protect me, I guess. Now that my real identity has been revealed, I have felt very exposed – quite literally – and have had to accept the reality that the protection I once had, no longer exists. It's weird to lose one's defences – especially when it happens without choice: very scary actually. I'm slowly learning how to cope with it, and have begun the task of embracing my online persona, in the offline sphere: an odd task, after two and a half years of keeping them separate, but I'm getting there – I think.

Jonathan: One obvious way in which my blogging persona differs from my real identity is that the blogging Jonathan doesn't talk a lot about his work – at least not in a way that would allow the person behind the blogging “mask” to be readily identified. This is a conscious and necessary decision, and one, of course, that a lot of bloggers make. One result in my case is that the “blog” Jonathan possibly has a much more colourful and less drudge-filled life than the “real” one… which may be quite marvellous for all of you who read the blog, but I'm sometimes not sure how healthy it is for the real-life me!

Swiss Toni: My blog persona is my outlet. It’s how I externalise a lot of the things that are going on in my head that I would otherwise never say. If I may generalise for a moment, I think that blogging is an activity that enables introverted people appear extrovert. Is my blogging persona a mask? Partially, but it’s probably nearer to the truth to say that my real life persona is a mask that my blog partially pulls away.

Jonathan: The creation of the comic-book version of myself that inhabits the pages of Crinklybee has been, I would say, a semi-conscious decision. That is, I didn't exactly set out to reinvent myself in any way, but I can quite see how that has happened to an extent... and I am very glad to have made the acquaintance of myself. I can't imagine life without me in fact... and we both hope both versions of ourselves will be around for a good few years yet.

Martin: I'm more cavalier, taller and physically attractive in real life. Something like that, anyway. It seems that I might meet some other local bloggers in the near future, and I'm not concerned that I'll come across as a completely different person. I'm just hoping that they're not 50-year-old truck drivers from Bolton who've been grooming me for the last couple of years.

* * * * *

Thanks to Abby, Jonathan, JonnyB, Martin, Paul, Pete and Swiss Toni for their thoughts. The comments box is open and ready for yours…

20/20 vision

Out now: issue #20 of Vanity Project. And what does this milestone issue of the fanzine contain? Well, amongst other things...

Interview: Robots In Disguise

Album reviews: Mercury Rev, Howling Bells, Milburn, James Yorkston, Plaid & Bob Jaroc, Tapes 'N' Tapes, Envy, Wolf Eyes, His Name Is Alive, Anathallo, Spotlight Kid

Single reviews: Dirty Pretty Things, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, DJ Shadow, The Pipettes, The Long Blondes, The Broken Family Band, The Horrors, Tuung, Klaxons, Albert Hammond Jr, Juliette Lewis and the Licks, Psapp, Piskie Sits, Blackbud

Live reviews: Creamfields, The Young Knives, The Gossip

For details of how to get your mitts on a copy for the cost of postage alone, click here.

Quote of the day

"Who benefits when 'No.5, 1948' changes hands and is shunted from Malibu to Martinez's fortified Manhattan eyrie? I'm not sure that we should all own the means of production, but I do think that art belongs to us all, not just to the rich men who consider it, like their planes or their wives, as a bauble".

Peter Conrad in the Observer on David Martinez's record-breaking $140m purchase of Jackson Pollock's 'No.5, 1948' from David Geffen.

A day in the life of

On Saturday I woke up in Cardiff, took part in an environmental protest march and rally in central London, caught the last 25 minutes of a televised defeat that was spectacularly ignominious even by my football team's usual low standards and wound up at a party in Nottingham at which the concept of "housewarming" was taken too literally when a misdirected firework ignited a large hedge and the fire brigade had to be called, and which concluded at 5.30am with two guests convincing the hostess to drink vodka that had been warmed in a kettle.

How was your Saturday?

"I'll be there for you..."

My contribution to Simon's Songs To Learn And Sing feature - on the sublime gothic pantomime of The Black Heart Procession's 'A Truth Quietly Told' - is up now on Sweeping The Nation.

Also possibly of interest on the music front: the most recent two In The Dock features from The Art Of Noise, on The Eurovision Song Contest (for which voting has ended) and songs with associated dance moves (for which voting has only just begun).

Fright night

LILY GREEN & BELA EMERSON / DREI / GINDRINKER, 31ST OCTOBER 2006, CARDIFF MODEL INN

Upstairs in the Model Inn tonight it's Hallowe'en F.A.G.-style - and that means superb costumes (making me feel woefully underdressed and unimaginative), apple bobbing, neck sucking and some fine musical entertainment.

First up are local cult duo Gindrinker, and it takes them less than a song to reveal quite why they're thought of in those terms. They are, to all intents and purposes, a stripped-down Fall plus drum machine fronted by a misanthrope on a gin bender.

Certain songs are - as the band's Vic Reeves-esque raconteur recognises - suited to Hallowe'en (particularly the one about being chopped up and left in bin bags in the woods), while others are less so (the anti-greengrocer rant and 'God Of Darts', a wonky shouty hymn in praise of Jim Bowen and 'Bullseye'). There's no finesse or polish, just scabrous wit in spades. Let's just say I like the cut of their jib.

There follows a brief piece of barely-rehearsed performance art featuring members of Drunk Granny and Gender Fascist which takes the form of a theatrical song about suicidal female authors. You can't help but appreciate lines like "My name is Sylvia Plath, so please don't let me near the gas" and the rousing climax of "O what a thrill to be mentally ill!"...

After the charming chaos of the evening's first two performances, Drei are very different. The Brighton trio, for whom Cardiff is a stop-off on a short UK tour, are evidently very accomplished musicians who share an intuitive understanding with each other.

They specialise in a sinister form of post-rocky jazz with the occasional fluttering of electronics, though the final song - a rousing footstomping Cossack-style jig - marks a significant departure from that blueprint. By the end of their set, I'm left cursing myself for having allowed my attention to be swayed barwards for the early part of their set.

Drei's cellist Bela Emerson isn't finished there, though. The night ends with an improvised collaboration between her and Lily Green, fresh from making her Clwb debut two days earlier. With Lily locked in the zone, pounding away maniacally at her keyboard with stunning verve and aggression, Bela's contribution is often overpowered and overshadowed. Nevertheless, the fruit of their efforts is gripping in its intensity, and conjures up dark images appropriate to the occasion.

Meet the parents (and the brother and sister-in-law)

Before Sunday, the last film I'd seen Alessandro Nivola in was 'Goal!'. Let's just say that 'Junebug' is rather different...

It's one of those films in which nothing much happens, but which nevertheless captivates from first minute to last. It depicts a visit paid by George Johnsten (Nivola) to his family in North Carolina in the company of his new wife Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz), an art dealer. Over the course of their stay domestic dramas play themselves out and husband and wife learn more about each other. What sets out as a warm and brilliantly subtle comedy actually becomes something more poignant towards the end.

If the actual events are unremarkable, then the characters certainly aren't - particularly George's sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued mother Peg (Celia Weston) and irrepressibly effervescent sister-in-law Ashley (Amy Adams, who deservedly received an Oscar nomination for her performance).

It's a very simple, uncluttered film. Rather than cramming every minute with dialogue and action, director Phil Morrison and writer Angus MacLachlan let things unfold slowly of their own accord. And that would be my only real criticism - at times it was perhaps too slow, even for this viewer who had a raging hangover at the time and was thus in the mood to appreciate a sedate narrative pace. Sometimes events and exchanges were burdened with an excessively weighty significance in a manner that was a bit too heavy-handed.

Other things to recommend it, though: the occasional music from Yo La Tengo (of whom more next week) and the early cameo from Will Oldham.

Blogwatch

Congratulations...

Mike, whose consistently excellent blog Troubled Diva - a continual source of inspiration for Silent Words Speak Loudest - celebrated its fifth birthday on Monday. If you're unfamiliar with Troubled Diva (and let's face it, you really shouldn't be), then Mike's produced a very handy condensed overview of the blog's history - just look for posts referring to The Five In Five Days Project.

Welcome...

The Policeman's Blog - self-explanatory, really. The discovery of this site (via a national newspaper) has led to the realisation that there's actually a whole host of cop blogs - just take a look at the sidebar...

Meanwhile...

Two fantastic music features to have kicked off in the past few days:

On Oh! RussL is in the process of undertaking the Going Deaf For A Fortnight endurance test pioneered by Pete - fourteen gigs in fourteen nights...

And on Sweeping The Nation, for the whole of November, Simon is inviting one blogger or musician a day to write about a song they feel is criminally underrated and deserves to be more widely known. He's kicked it off himself with David Ackles' 'Waiting For The Moving Van'.

Elsewhere...

As if pre-emptively partaking in Simon's Songs To Learn And Sing feature, Del enthuses about Spiritualized's splendid 'Stop Your Crying'.

The Overnight Editor goes undercover.

And finally...

Betty offers her readers a glimpse into the future - "HRH Elizabeth II dies unexpectedly at the age of 94 after a gin binge. A disgraced Prince Charles lives in exile on the Isle Of Man with his long term girlfriend, Beyonce Knowles, so Prince William ascends to the throne".

Get lost

My favourite term of the past week: the "Buckfast Triangle". Apparently it's "an area east of Glasgow between Airdrie, Coatbridge and Cumbernauld" where Buckie - the under-fire tonic wine made by monks in Devon and beloved of Mogwai, amongst others - is quaffed as if it was water.

Rather like the Bermuda Triangle, I imagine people are frequently lost in the Buckfast Triangle. A bit like a K-hole, but cheaper?

(Incidentally, the Buckfast-inspired Chemikal Underground theme party mooted here a couple of years ago hasn't happened - yet...)

Quote of the day

"We all live on the other side of our appearances. Our faces belong more to others than they do to ourselves".

Antony Gormley, talking to Giles Hattersley in the Sunday Times.

Credit where credit's due

Thanks to Kenny for alerting me to the fact that Summer Sundae was named Best Small Event at the UK Festival Awards. To anyone like me who went this year, the news will come as no great surprise. Good to see the organisers getting the credit they deserve.

Quote of the day

"We in Britain have been with the United States every step of the way in many of the appalling things it's done over the last few years. Ours is a 'special relationship', we're constantly being told, albeit the kind of 'special relationship' that exists between a businessman and a prostitute."

British comic and regular writer / performer on US news satire 'The Daily Show' John Oliver, writing in Sunday's Independent.

I really must start watching 'The Daily Show'.

And, while I'm on the subject of comedy, some bitesize thoughts on recent series:

'Extras': patchy.

'That Mitchell & Webb Look': frequently inspired.

'Man To Man With Dean Lerner': it had its moments but serious room for improvement with the second installment on Friday.

Jukebox jury

If you're a fan of the music content of SWSL, may I gently coax you in the direction of The Art Of Noise, the collaborative music blog I co-write and co-administer?

In particular, you may recall the weekly A-Z Of Music feature we ran a while back (it all kicked off here). Well, that ran its natural course, and its (belated) successor is called In The Dock. The brainchild of Jonathan of Crinklybee, each week it takes a subject and pits two music fans against each other, one presenting the case for the prosecution and the other the case for the defence.

Always good to start off with a bang, so for the inaugural feature it's loveable Scouse scamps / outrageously overhyped foursome The Beatles, with Lord Bargain and Del the bloggers slugging it out. To take a look at the feature and give your verdict, click here.

Melting moments

Cardiff's a smallish place and it doesn't take long for word to get around. In the wake of debut gig on UK soil the Thursday before last, Lily Green has managed to secure herself a slot on the Meltdown bill at Clwb Ifor Bach this coming Sunday.

Unfortunately it's looking unlikely that I'll be able to make it - but thankfully she's also playing the Halloween bash being thrown at The Model Inn by F.A.G. two days later. Hallelujah...

Blogwatch

Welcome...

That Difficult Second Blog - a kindred spirit (well, kindred Jesus & Mary Chain fan) finds it impossible to stay away from the blogging fray, for which we should all be thankful

A Journal Of The Men In My Life - My Boyfriend Is A Twat meets Girl With A One-Track Mind (via Smaller Than Life)

... and a couple more, both of whom triumphed at this week's Manchester Blog Awards, courtesy of another newbie to the SWSL blogroll Manchizzle:

Yer Mam! - named as Best Arts And Culture Blog, a site whose author James has a bit of a thing for The Long Blondes (understandably, I might add)

The 43 - named Blog Of The Year and consisting of brilliant travel writing with a difference

Meanwhile...

Girl enjoys / endures her first book signing session.

Elsewhere...

Jonathan has been busy, taking in gigs by The Lemonheads, The Young Knives and British Sea Power.

Simon offers us the inaugural Sweeping The Nation Covermount CD entitled Be My Babies, featuring 21 songs which all incorporate the distinctive drumbeat from The Ronettes 'Be My Baby' in some form or other.

And finally...

RussL gears up for this year's Going Deaf For A Fortnight challenge / endurance test, as pioneered by Pete last year. Will it become an annual West Midlands tradition? Only time will tell...

"I'm stuck, I say I'm stuck!"

Reasons Why 'Coronation Street' Is The Best Thing On Television #517: Fat Fred Elliott's coffin getting stuck on the "runway" into the cremator (if that's what it's called?).

It's at times like these that I really rue the demise of Musings From Middle England, which did 'Corrie' commentary better than anyone else...

Green is the colour

LILY GREEN / GENDER FASCIST, 12TH OCTOBER 2006, CARDIFF HAWAIIAN

It's John Peel Day, and the bill for tonight's gig (put on by F.A.G.) is suitably eclectic ie bizarrely but somehow workably diverse.

After a solo performer kicks the night off armed with nothing but her voice and an acoustic guitar, Gender Fascist take to the stage - or, at least, they would have done, if the upstairs room at the Hawaiian had a stage. As it is, they're on the floor, very much in amongst us. "Provocative performance punk terrorists" is probably be the description the twopiece would wish for - the sort of band that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs of yore would have invited to play one of their loft parties.

Certainly, with one member attacking a heavily distorted bass and later a metal bin, and the other screaming vocals whilst beating on a saucepan with a spoon, tunes and talent don't really come into it. But when it clicks - and it does at least a couple of times during the ten minute six-or-seven song set, with the songs about Aberystwyth gay clubs and bicuriosity - it's both potent and fun.

Lily Green is radically different again. Having moved from New Zealand in the summer, Lily is playing her first gig in the UK - and it's immediately obvious this environment is too small for her considerable talents.

A virtuoso piano player with a rich and sensuous voice, she charges the intimate atmosphere with electricity, holding the rapt attention of all those present from the off. Lily's classical training is evident, but her songs are not merely show-off-ish workouts - there is an astonishing force and anger channelled into her performance, and she often seems abandoned in the moment, drawing us into that same abandonment.

The closest reference points I could give would be to Tori Amos and perhaps (when the laptop is brought into play) Bjork, but those comparisons are clumsy and should only really be read as an indication that Lily is (a) female and (b) a musical maverick. Cardiff should just be thankful that this is where she washed ashore.

Know Your Enemy

"Naively, I suppose, I was rather startled by the amount of extra-literary white noise there was, getting in between us and our books. First there's the apparatus on the proof-copies, which I know is now a necessary part of the publishing process. But I did begin to develop an allergy to phrases like 'unputdownable' or 'must-read of the year' or 'fast-page-turner'; for the adverb 'deeply' (as in compassionate, sympathetic, moving - but never as in 'putdownable'); and for the 'X meets Y' formula, as in 'Ian McEwan meets John le Carre, or (my favourite) 'Roddy Doyle meets Angela Carter'.

I began to ask myself why the promise of '£100,000 marketing campaign including Central London bus sides' or 'samplers to be handed out on the streets' or 'plasma screens at key commuter stations' should convince me this was a novel worth reading. I treated with suspicion the novel which came with a red strap-line on the cover reading 'Man Booker 2006 Submitted!', or which told me 'The Ultimate Experience Is About To Begin', or that it had taken 30 years to write, or which announced itself as 'unforgivably nasty' or 'appallingly intelligent'.

I began to fantasise about manuscripts arriving in brown paper wrappers, with no name, no author photograph, no praise, and no biography. Well, why not? an anonymous Man Booker prize!

Another form of pressure I'd not really thought about before, since I've usually been on the other side of the fence, comes from reviewers who want to tell the judges their business. 'Booker judges, take note!', coming from a reviewer whose views you particularly dislike, makes it hard to do justice to that particular novel. 'This author's superiority to the average put him well beyond the competence of Booker judges' struck me as an encomium that could backfire."

Writing in the Guardian, Hermione Lee, chair of the Booker judges this year, is unsurprisingly sick of "extra-literary white noise" ie publishers' guff. "Appallingly intelligent"? I know what she means...

Quote of the day

"History is written when the consequences of men's actions are known, so that everything seems determined by what went before; but it is made by men who cannot foresee the results of what they do and can only guess at what they may be".

Goronwy Rees, from 'A Winter In Berlin' in 'Sketches In Autobiography'.

Might I suggest that this sentiment would go down well with Messrs Blair and Bush? Though perhaps they could have hazarded a better guess at what would be the consequences of their actions...

Feel good hits of the 17th October

We've not had one for a while, so here's a bumper edition of my recent earworms / listening fixations...

1. 'Exhuming McCarthy' - REM
2. 'Kevin Is Gay' - Giant Drag
3. 'The Decision' - The Young Knives
4. 'Milano' - Sigur Ros
5. 'If Only The Moon Were Up' - Field Music
6. 'Patience' - Lily Green
7. 'I Saw You In The Hall' - Semifinalists
8. 'Pissing' - Low
9. 'The Farmer's Hotel' - Silver Jews
10. 'Bad Dreams' - The Keys
11. 'My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion' - The Flaming Lips
12. 'If You Could Read Your Mind' - Clinic
13. 'Settle For Nothing' - Rage Against The Machine
14. 'Velvet Girl' - Howling Bells
15. 'Hate To Say I Told You So' - The Hives

I think it's safe to say that I'm only now discovering what a good record the Silver Jews' Tanglewood Numbers is. Ditto REM's Document...

A Field of their own

FIELD MUSIC / THE KEYS, 5TH OCTOBER 2006, CLWB IFOR BACH

"We'll be playing for about half an hour. You're missing 'Extras' for this. "We" being The Keys - not the American swamp-blues-revivalist duo (that'd be The Black Keys) but the psychedelic-garage-revivalist fourpiece from the Valleys. One of them used to be in Murry The Hump and they've put out a single on Too Pure, you know.

On occasions it's difficult to see quite what Too Pure heard in them - those occasions, such as the song I presume from its mantra-like chorus is called 'Eyes Of The World' - because they come across as a lethargic Oasis covers band. But at their best, they're like Spiritualized or The Brian Jonestown Massacre covering The Kinks - in other words, quite a prospect. 'Bad Dreams' (which you can download here) brings the set to a particularly satisfying conclusion.

Like 'Extras', then - a bit inconsistent. But, unlike 'Extras', more good than bad.

Field Music were responsible for one of my favourite albums of last year, but they and their self-titled debut remain criminally underappreciated. One suspects that they're sick of reading about their "connections" - for the record, Peter Brewis used to drum for The Futureheads, whose Barry Hyde was once a member, while Maximo Park's Tom English has also filled in on drumming duties on occasion - because they're very much their own band.

Rather than limiting themselves to the jerky, juddery post-punk palette, as their North-Eastern associates tend to, Field Music use those same colours in a more creative way, painting prettier, poppier pictures.

Tonight the core trio of Peter Brewis and his brother David, who switch between guitars and drums, plus keyboard player Andrew Moore begin with four unfamiliar songs on the bounce, all presumably taken from new album Tones On The Town which is due for release in January. While recognisably Field Music tracks, they don't seem to have the same lushness and sparkle in the eye - but then that's quite possibly owing to their unfamiliarity.

(Incidentally, is it just me who feels a little guilty at that rush of relief that comes when a band plays something you know? After all, a good live set isn't necessarily one which is stuffed full of crowd-pleasers - why shouldn't bands try out new or different things?)

When the old material does come, the likes of 'If Only The Moon Were Up', 'Shorter Shorter' and set-closer 'You're So Pretty' are welcomed enthusiastically by those of us who've heard it - but there remains a nagging feeling that live the songs don't quite match up to their recorded counterparts, a sense that - as good as it is - they can't quite do justice to the melodic, clever and artful pop of their debut.

It doesn't help that new single 'In Context' has to be aborted when the bass decides not to work, but no matter, the band seem to be enjoying themselves anyway, all smiles when performing an impromptu rendition of 'Happy Birthday' Brian May style on request, and claiming Clwb is the best venue of the tour so far because "we've got towels".

It's a travesty that a band of their originality should be grateful for the supply of such mundane things as towels, but unfortunately that's the situation in which they currently find themselves. This live performance may not have been wholly convincing, but hopefully the new album will help to get them the popular acclaim they deserve.

Public service announcement

If you've arrived here while looking for the MySpace page of a girl called Sarah from Glasgow, then you've come to the wrong place - that page, which is also called Silent Words Speak Loudest but which is nothing to do with this site, can be found here.

I don't know - you carelessly fling together a pretentious-sounding blog name and four years later it gets picked up by someone else. A weird kind of tribute, perhaps, but it's always good to know one still has the power to connect with The Kidz.

Update: Sarah's renamed her site It Was Meant To Mean More Than This. Cheers Sarah.

(There's not much there, but for what it's worth the SWSL MySpace site is here.)

Blogwatch: in brief

Girl is venturing out to meet her public, with a book signing at the Islington branch of Borders next Thursday (19th) at 6pm. Great to see she's keeping the blog going, despite all the turmoil and upheaval of the last couple of months.

On a bookish theme, my favourite post of the past few days is undoubtedly Pete's considered, well-written and thought-provoking piece about the bookselling industry in general and Waterstones in particular.

Simon is looking for potential contributors for a new feature he'll be running on Sweeping The Nation next month: "What will happen is every day throughout November we'll be featuring a different contributor writing about a single track that may have been overlooked from the top pantheon of pop craft but should be lauded all the same. So, picking a song that isn't 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and telling our readers in just enough detail why it's so great, and we'll chuck in an mp3 to back your words up". If you fancy it, drop him an email (addresses available by following the link above).

Fighting the good fight

The Guardian's Laura Barton profiles twenty of the best independent record shops in Britain. No surprise to see Rough Trade heading the list and Monorail and Avalanche also featuring, but from a personal perspective it's good to see three of my favourites merit a mention: Sister Ray in Soho, Selectadisc in Nottingham and Spillers in Cardiff.

Know Your Enemy

"I've always liked people who mess up. I don't like career people - it doesn't seem very appropriate when it comes to music which is about something emotional. Reading an interview with Razorlight is just like reading The Economist, saying 'Yeah, well we're going to be really big in America and we think this album's going to follow up the next one' - that's what the record company should be saying, not the people in the band".

Jarvis Cocker, talking to NME, with a sharp word for "career bands". Strange how he plucked the name of Razorlight out of the air, isn't it? And unfortunate that NME seems to exist solely to pander to such bands these days...

Even more forthright are the opinions expressed in his new single about those who run the world - take a look here. (Thanks to Swiss Toni for the link.)

One other bit of Jarvis-related news: he's going to be editing the forthcoming issue of Observer Music Monthly, and he's been asking for suggestions for "unintentionally scary songs" (not all of those who've left comments have quite grasped the "unintentionally" bit... The magazine will contain Jon Savage's review of Jarvis' new album - apparently it "may very well be the greatest ever made". Nothing like buttering up the guest editor, is there?

This week on Stylus

Mike of Troubled Diva reviews the Queer Noises 1961-1978: From The Closet To The Charts compilation, as put together by Jon Savage, author of 'England's Dreaming': "The album concludes, almost inevitably, with Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” the first major hit single by an openly gay act, here re-contextualised as a moment of triumph for gay culture, ushering in a new era of visibility and acceptance—but you can probably collate your own history from here, as the signposts are clearly marked. It is to the lasting credit of Savage’s wildly uneven but fascinating compilation that this hitherto shadowy first chapter can now be filled in".

Also:

Mike Powell suggests that, with I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, Yo La Tengo are standing still.

Derek Miller scours Beck's The Information for evidence of his reputed fascination with Scientology and decides that "for better or worse ... [the album] is both exactly what you feared it might be and also a document of some of Beck’s best groove-based material since Midnite Vultures".

Blogwatch: in brief

Welcome...

Non-Working Monkey - a great blog which I, like many others, discovered thanks to JonnyB's comments box. Its author may not thank me for mentioning this again, but you've got to love any blog that features a post with the line: "So how come I've just found chewing gum embedded in my ladygarden FOR THE SECOND TIME?".

Meanwhile...

Girl With A One-Track Mind is interviewed by a woman whose husband once bit the head off a live bat (thanks to Betty for the link).

Elsewhere...

Mike successfully navigates his way to the end of his post-a-day September challenge, concluding by considering the ways in which he is and is not "a clapped out has been". For my money he's definitely not - a man with that much stamina...

Salvadore Vincent gives us an insight into the rigorous research that goes into his writing.

Jonathan has a dilemma regarding his new local Polish grocery store (not to mention some doubts over whether it is even truly Polish).

And finally...

After a brief hiatus JonnyB is back with a vengeance beard and tales of staircase-related disasters.

Know Your Enemy

"The thing that disappointed me most about Updike is that he did not say in that review that he had just completed a novel about terrorism. He had to sweep me out of the way in order to make room for himself. I don't subscribe to the very predominantly English admiration of Updike. If you take away 'Rabbit Is Rich' and 'Rabbit At Rest', and some of the short stories, there's a lot of ... slightly ... garbage. Think of 'The Coup'! The new one ['Terrorist'] is beyond awful. He should stay in his parochial neighbourhood and write about wife-swapping, because it's what he can do."

Judging by this comment (taken from the interview in Saturday's Guardian), Salman Rushdie is still seething about the reception John Updike afforded his last novel 'Shalimar The Clown' in the New Yorker last year.

Interviewer James Campbell's throwaway comment that "After Cambridge, [Rushdie] worked in London at a firm of advertising copywriters" reminds me of a coincidental conversation I had on Saturday night. Did you know that Rushdie was behind the 1980s "Naughty but nice" slogan for cream cakes?

Quote of the day

"He looks great and I would jump at the chance to work with him."

Tom Cruise on his new bezzie mate David Beckham. Acting ability clearly means nothing to the diminutive Hollywood star egotistical shortarse. As if we didn't already know that...

Know Your Enemy

About time I resurrected this semi-regular feature, I think...

"Typically fussy, too-clever-by-half noodle by arguably the single most over-rated human being alive. In wiring together a thudding electronic beat, a bit of scratching, a vaguely South American rhythm, a rapidly mumbled lyric and a coda which sounds like another song entirely, Beck repeats his characteristic error of assuming that if he stuffs enough ideas into one track, nobody will notice that none of them are any good".

Andrew Mueller on Mr Hansen and 'Cell Phone's Dead', the lead single from his new album The Information.

The last Beck album I own is Mutations, and I haven't heard much of Guero at all. One of those artists I loved (and do very much still like), but whom I seem to have lost touch with over the past few years. Not a conscious decision, just a gradual parting of the ways.

The perfect location

'Dogtown', a new BBC3 comedy series, has been drawing comparisons to 'The League Of Gentlemen' in that it features a northern town inhabited by a cast of grotesques. The real-life setting for Horton-le-Hole? Wearside, of course...

"Annoying and incomprehensible"

That was Stewart Lee's first impression of The Fall, as revealed on Friday's BBC2 documentary 'The Wonderful And Frightening World Of Mark E Smith', originally screened on BBC4 in January 2005. Of course, Lee nevertheless found himself strangely compelled by the racket he heard, and now counts himself among their fiercest devotees.

I say "they" and "their", but, as the programme title suggests, The Fall are Mark E Smith. Certainly he's the only surviving original member and has orchestrated more line-up changes than Rafa Benitez - though "orchestrated" may be the wrong word, suggesting as it does a modicum of planning, organisation and forward-thinking... Lest viewers of 'DiG' might think spectacular onstage fall-outs and fisticuffs are the sole preserve of Anton Newcombe and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, the documentary featured footage of The Fall's infamous 1998 gig at Brownies in New York when the band imploded in acrimonious and very public fashion.

Paul Morley was very honest in saying that, during Smith's lowest ebb in the 1990s (when he was REALLY fucked up on booze and speed), Morley came to question whether the man he'd been hailing as a genius was actually a drunken tramp, and he'd merely been investing far too much meaning in his shouted rantings. Thankfully, though, Smith pulled out of that particular nosedive and managed to carry on (even though his status as a cantankerous old curmudgeon is now set in stone).

I've said it before, and I'll no doubt say it again: what possessed the BBC to invite him to read out the football results in 'Final Score'? A very risky business indeed...

Home cinema

The second installment of a post I started many moons ago (note to self: don't make promises you can't keep...)

'Capote' is rather misleadingly titled - it's not a biopic of the legendary American writer (in fact, in the DVD extras, star Philip Seymour Hoffman reveals that that's exactly what attracted him to do the film), but instead tells the story of Truman Capote's most famous book 'In Cold Blood', written about the Clutter murders in Kansas.

Capote himself is naturally centre-stage and, though I'm in no position to say whether or not Hoffman manages to recreate or inhabit the character, I gather that many viewers have said the likeness is uncanny. At least that can be his excuse when people complain about THAT voice - a bit like Ben Stiller's in 'Zoolander', it does really grate after a while (and I bet that's the first time 'Capote' and 'Zoolander' have been mentioned in the same breath...)

But, beyond Capote himself, the subject of the film is, essentially, authorial ethics. Capote is shown trying to win the trust of the murderers (particularly Perry Smith), but this comes to seem not as compassion but as a ruthless attempt to inveigle his way into their confidence so he can use them for his own ends. Ultimately he is depicted as wracked with guilt because he wants their stays of execution to expire so he can finally finish the book. 'In Cold Blood' indeed. Unsurprising, then, that it was the masterpiece that both made and broke him, and that he never finished another book.

Feel good hits of the 28th September

1. 'Soft Sugar' - Noxagt
2. 'Smallpox Champion' - Fugazi
3. 'Death To Los Campesinos!' - Los Campesinos!
4. 'Ohio Riverboat Song' - Palace Brothers
5. 'Kicker Conspiracy' - The Fall
6. 'Glasgow Mega-Snake' - Mogwai
7. 'All Roads To Fault' - Yourcodenameis:milo
8. 'Fun Fun Fun' - The Beach Boys
9. 'Show The Way' - Semifinalists
10. 'Drain Cosmetics' - Serena-Maneesh

Heathen chemistry

NOXAGT / TRUCKERS OF HUSK / CIRCA REGNA TONAT / ZUMBAR, 25TH SEPTEMBER 2006, CARDIFF CLWB IFOR BACH

I love intimate gigs like this - trying to spot who will emerge from the crowd at some point and take to the stage when nearly everyone looks like they could be in a band.

Zumbar are four unassuming enough chaps, and their set is equally unassuming, displaying a predictable penchant for Black Sabbath and doom rock and a rather less predictable interest in Spanish guitar licks. Unfortunately, then, that they labour under a truly dreadful name (yes, Zumbar really does exist, in Manchester) and that there are difficulties with the monitors, meaning the discipline, tightness and perfect timing demanded by the changes of pace are often conspicuous by their absence.

Speaking of absence, Thread have had to pull out, and in their place we get Caerphilly foursome Circa Regna Tonat. As their name ("Around The Throne Thunder Roars") and their friendship with Swansea bruisers Taint suggests, Circa Regna Tonat make one hell of a racket. Propelled by some awesome drumming, their schizophrenic aural assault is at times overpowering, especially the song featuring two basses and the repeated scream of "You're gonna die!". The only disappointment is the new slower song, which just goes to prove they're best when on the attack.

Truckers Of Husk are an excellent example of why it's so dangerous to judge a book by its cover. We watch them set up, anticipating a jarring set of emo froth, only to be astounded by a series of compellingly odd and incredibly complicated instrumentals (think the weirder and more experimental end of the Dischord roster, perhaps - Q And Not U?). Bassist Hywel Evans has played with local heroes Jarcrew and former Mclusky man Andy Falkous in Future Of The Left, but it's not entirely clear whether he's actually on stage. For tonight's gig they're a threepiece, you see, and this means audacious mid-song instrument swapping to make use of the additional drumkit, but even more impressive is the fretwork of the salmon pink-jumpered guitarist - virtuoso, but without the arrogant ignorance of all else around it.

How will headliners Noxagt (it's pronounced "Nox-att", apparently) follow that? Quite simple: by blowing them - and us - away with sheer force.

The Norwegians may just be the heaviest band I've ever seen live - a band who don't bat an eyelid when, barely halfway through the first song, a huge shard of drumstick shears off and narrowly avoids spearing the diminutive guitarist. Listening to them isn't like being hit by a 10 tonne truck. Neither is it like being run over by a steamroller. No, it's more like being hit and run over by a 10 tonne truck carrying a load of steamrollers. And behind the wheel of the truck is Rik Waller, with Meat Loaf and Bella Emberg (oh, look her up...) as co-drivers. And all three have just eaten a four course meal, each course consisting of an anvil.

All the more remarkable, then, that the third (self-titled) album they're currently touring is their first with a guitarist - before a viola was integral to their unholy din.

The unearthly rumble is virtually continuous, only the odd infrequent gap allowing pause for breath. It's not hard to see why they call it "sludge". If you boil metal down (assuming it's in a liquid state to start with - Science Ed), then this is what you're left with - primal, pummelling, dissonant, brutal. There's a motorik groove to the songs - admittedly the sort of motorik groove that makes you feel like you're Rik Waller, stuffed on a four-course anvil meal and driving a 10 tonne truck loaded with steamrollers and an equally stuffed Meat Loaf and Bella Emberg squeezed into the passenger seats, but a motorik groove nonetheless.

It's to Noxagt's credit that they know the value of keeping the onslaught brief - it's all about maximum impact rather than vicious mercilessness (take note Winnebago Deal). I left the house with the words "Don't go burning any churches" ringing in my ears - but, by the end, I'm thinking that if they go on much longer, I'll have ringing ears and an unquenchable desire to buy some petrol and a box of matches on the way home. It doesn't come to that, quite.

So, a marvellous joint venture from Forecast and Lesson No. 1 - and all for a measly £6, too. With this headfuck psychosludge you are really spoiling us...

2006: fast becoming the year I rediscovered metal.

Three's a crowd (of excellent new additions to the SWSL blogroll)

The Overnight Editor: a nicely acerbic blog (think the male Betty of Betty's Utility Room), as spotted by Mike

Kilroy's Chinos: the new MP3 blog from Ben of Cardiff indie types Shake My Hand, as recommended by Simon

Swing Batter Batter!: the place where Greg Smyth - a freelance music writer, Howling Bells fan and honorary Geordie - has been "being snidey about popular culture since 2004" (in other words, if not a sister site to SWSL, then certainly a favourite cousin)

Quote of the day

"I'm more interested in the future of the Arctic Circle than the future of the Arctic Monkeys".

Yeah, good one, Gordon. Be sure to thank your speechwriters for that.

'Extras': special?

Not really.

I managed to catch the second episode of the second series of Ricky Gervais's show on Thursday night. Although it was better than the first (in which the comedy, such as it was, essentially revolved around "deconstructing" (Gervais's word) Orlando Bloom by playing on his vanity and putting racist sentiments in the mouth of Keith Chegwin), it was still far from brilliant.

While it was good to see Gervais and co not relying solely on the crutch of a celebrity to prop up a script devoid of many good ideas (David Bowie's appearance lasted less than five minutes, and featured him composing a song about Gervais's character Andy Millman), the regular characters still don't feel well-developed or broad-shouldered enough to bear the burden.

For me, the particular problem with Thursday's episode was that, in tracing Millman's first experiences of fame, it was autobiographical - I couldn't help but feel that Gervais's own arrogance came out in it, not least in making a comedy which is essentially about himself.

Of course, all might have been forgiven if it was funny - some of the scenes with Shaun Williamson were, as was the exchange with the homeless beggar (one of those classically awkward social interactions Gervais does so well), but consistent quality was again conspicious by its absence.

Quote of the day

"The other day I ate so much toast I had to lie down"

Jonathan Ross might be more than a bit smarmy, but he does at least have a knack of drawing embarrassing confessions out of his guests - and himself (see above). Last night he got Ian Wright to admit the reason he likes the "larger lady" is because of an attraction to one of his aunts as an eight-year-old. An apparently drunk and giggly Brenda Blethyn needed rather less cajoling to reveal that she pissed on the collar of her Oscar outfit shortly before taking to the stage to collect her award and embrace Nicholas Cage...

Musical guests were Sparks, who played new single 'Dick Around' and (inevitably) 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us' - both suggesting that the brothers Mael think 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is the finest song in the history of recorded music and thus should be the blueprint for everything they do. I think Ron Mael might have the most curious and distinctive moustache I've ever seen - it hugs his upper lip so tightly that it looks as though it's scared of falling off.

Update: Olav has taken great pleasure in pointing out that 'This Town...' was released in 1974, a year before 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. OK, OK, Mr Smartypants. The similarities are still striking, though.

Camping it up

Four days since my last post, so that must mean it's time for more frothing over Los Campesinos!. Today's links are to a pair of interviews, one from the MP3 blog Keep Hope Inside and the other from the icWales site.

But lest you suspect that they're in danger of being overhyped (here and elsewhere), you're not alone - judging by his comment on this recent live review on Drowned In Sound, guitarist Tom Bromley (the sole interviewee for the icWales piece) agrees. So yes, they are a work-in-progress who have found themselves thrust into the limelight rather earlier than they might have hoped - but it's that promise that's so exciting. There are rough edges, sure - but I just hope they don't get blunted because that's a very large part of their charm.

It just doesn't add up

"£561bn: What the world spent on arms this year.

£32bn: The annual amount given in aid.

£275bn: Total debt of developing countries."

(Figures from Oxfam via the Metro.)

International Action Network on Small Arms