GHUITAW

Readers with nothing better to do may recall that it took me a while to be convinced by Los Campesinos!; initially they seemed somehow to be trying too hard, but eventually I was convinced that they were one of the most important new bands in Britain - a little behind The Indelicates, perhaps, but the ranks were already thin and thinner as of today's sad news from The Long Blondes. At the Shred Yr Face tour, I went through that whole dilemma once again in fast forward. It probably didn't help that it was the first gig I'd attended solo in a while. For sure I turn up to a lot of shows solo, but normally I know my people will be there - Hell, normally I know the band. But here I was back to peoplewatching, looking at all the indie kids and wondering if we looked that fvcking wet* and the girls looked so hard and cold and we just didn't realise it, or whether something has changed. I missed Times New Viking entirely, which I can't say I regret given 'German Bold Italic', but was there for the whole of the set by No Age which, ironically, lasted An Age. Not that they were bad, I just didn't need so much of them, as is so often the way with support bands; I find a deserted room far more ballroomesque than the main Electric Ballroom and read my book in the half-light. Anyway, LC! - it didn't help that they did one of those soundcheck-right-before-main-set things, always a good way to squander your mystique, but for the first few songs I was thinking back to last December and how much I love Patrick Wolf on CD and how thoroughly punchable he came across when I saw him live. But then 'You'll Need Those Fingers For Crossing' opens with Gareth singing 'Millionaire Sweeper', and he gets another Kenickie namecheck in elsewhere, and I realise he's one of the few who realises how sad last week's anniversary was. And I've moved back a little and I can see them all, and it makes more sense that way, and 'You! Me! Dancing!' and 'Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks' make all the sense they do on record, and I am won over all over again and yes, that's because they are a good idea.

"I guess the real trouble is that we - us humans - are just not nice enough to support something as benign as the Culture. The point is that as a species, as a civilisation, you can choose to behave with consistent decency at any stage in your technological development, not just in a post-scarcity environment, and any species which could instigate or become a founding part of the Culture would, I'm afraid, almost certainly have been behaving a lot better in the lead up to that event and throughout their history than we have throughout ours. I would like to be wrong, but I suspect we are too selfish, stupid, xenophobic and cruel to be Culture-compatible." - Iain M Banks