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Some of you may be aware of Dogbox Records as the home of marvellous pop noir boys Luxembourg, but today they're branching out with download singles from The Sweethearts and Swimmer One. The former are, as their name suggests, a bit on the twee side - too much so for my taste, but I know some of you like that sort of thing. But Swimmer One...well, some of you seemed very impressed with their cover of Kate Bush's 'Cloudbusting', which I played at Love Your Enemies, and rightly so. In the wake of that Futureheads monstrosity, it shows that you can cover Kate Bush and make it worthwhile, if you're good enough. And in the wake of a thousand mediocre mash-ups, it shows that you can mix songs together and make it mean something, if you do it right. What's the other song? Well, that'd spoil the surprise if I told you. Their own composition, 'Largs Hum', takes its place alongside 'This Is A Low' on the short list of 'brilliant, epic pop inspired by the Shipping Forecast' - though it sounds nothing like it. The closest comparison which comes to mind is Telstarr, which I imagine will mean nothing to any of you. It's...big.
Both bands are playing Metro on Saturday, with Luxembourg and The Boyfriends. I can't go myself, because it clashes with Sparks, but I really wish it didn't.
(In other Dogbox news - how come it took me so long to notice that Darren Allison produced 'Luxembourg Versus Great Britain'?)
This weekend I went to places I'd been before, saw bands I'd seen before, and did various other things I've done before. Some were worth the reprises, others less so, but none really merit much comment, at least not of the sort this journal has lately been able to offer. At home, unable to summon any enthusiasm for waiting expensively for miracles to happen, I found a poem which did a much better job of explaining that than I can manage at present - ( We Too Had Known Golden Hours - WH Auden )
Some of you will have seen Anjem Choudary being an utter ass on Newsnight; he represents al-Ghurabaa, a successor entity to the banned al-Muhajiroun. He thinks that banning the new guise "may push a lot of people underground"; speaking for myself, I think that's a perfect result, so long as we're not talking figuratively.
In another, very sensible Guardian piece, Martin Kettle correctly applies the lessons of the Cold War to the current situation: "But the cold-war syllogism lives on today in a new guise. Too many haters of capitalism and the United States still cram everything into the frame of untruth and self-deception that says my enemy's enemy is still my friend." I've been saying this for ages, but it's nice to see it in the mainstream media because "weblogs... are seen as the rantings and ravings either of the unbalanced or the tedious". And not without reason.
Both bands are playing Metro on Saturday, with Luxembourg and The Boyfriends. I can't go myself, because it clashes with Sparks, but I really wish it didn't.
(In other Dogbox news - how come it took me so long to notice that Darren Allison produced 'Luxembourg Versus Great Britain'?)
This weekend I went to places I'd been before, saw bands I'd seen before, and did various other things I've done before. Some were worth the reprises, others less so, but none really merit much comment, at least not of the sort this journal has lately been able to offer. At home, unable to summon any enthusiasm for waiting expensively for miracles to happen, I found a poem which did a much better job of explaining that than I can manage at present - ( We Too Had Known Golden Hours - WH Auden )
Some of you will have seen Anjem Choudary being an utter ass on Newsnight; he represents al-Ghurabaa, a successor entity to the banned al-Muhajiroun. He thinks that banning the new guise "may push a lot of people underground"; speaking for myself, I think that's a perfect result, so long as we're not talking figuratively.
In another, very sensible Guardian piece, Martin Kettle correctly applies the lessons of the Cold War to the current situation: "But the cold-war syllogism lives on today in a new guise. Too many haters of capitalism and the United States still cram everything into the frame of untruth and self-deception that says my enemy's enemy is still my friend." I've been saying this for ages, but it's nice to see it in the mainstream media because "weblogs... are seen as the rantings and ravings either of the unbalanced or the tedious". And not without reason.
