You had 12,000 years and now it's all over

[alexsarll]

British Sea Power's debut was the album of its year, though it took a while to reveal the full extent of its majesty to me. As such, two listens is far too soon to say how its successor, Open Season, compares. Two things I can say with confidence: first, where some tracks on The Decline of British Sea Power worked only as settings and scenery for their more fully-realised brethren, every track on Open Season is (perhaps because the iPod age has dawned) a song in its own right. Second, so far it is also the best album of its year.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on here, but I always find being alone in a Tube carriage slightly unnerving; I suspect that the Cthonic entities beneath London occasionally pluck such travellers as their toll for the Underground's intrusion on their realm. Headed to Walthamstow on Sunday, I found myself the only passenger in my carriage, and with a totally empty carriage adjoining me. You have almost certainly never seen as many attempts at improvised wardings as I made on that stretch of the journey. As such, I think it likely that I will never watch the film Creep, which is trailered on the Sideways DVD.

Sideways is neither as good as the critics claimed, nor as rub as atommickbrane found it. It's a droll minor comedy about the escapades of two thoroughly contemptible men in the grip of two different mid-life crises. It's worth watching once, but if you find yourself identifying with it, seek help. Great drinking and dialling scene, though. Which reminds me - the characters seem to spend a lot of time driving drunk, yet this is only even mentioned in one deleted scene. Are Americans more casual about that?

It was perhaps a mistake to listen to the violentbec-recommended American gothic of Blanche while reading two of Will Self's most thoroughly English stories. At least, I can't think why else I'd have dreamt about doing a Latin A-level with one of my old French teachers (and not the one who actually taught Latin). Dislocation there, marvellous.

Dr Colin Feltham is this week's winner of the coveted Joyless Dolt Award for his assertion that "Novels are the opium of the people, sleepwalking to Armageddon."

The NME claims the Tears' debut is the finest record Anderson or Butler has ever made. Will they ever learn?

Comments

[ksta.livejournal.com]

from what i've seen og the american driving, they are lax about seatbelts, drinking, and everything that we havelaws about in general.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Except the speed limit, where in spite of having a bloody massive country, they consider 55mph to be the fastest humans can travel without the skin falling from their bones.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Man, I'm the explainomatic today aren't I - that's not a safety limit, that's because above 55mph you start getting much less fuel efficiency, I know it seems unlikely that the Americans are into reducing their oil consumption, but there we are.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I think their advanced driving test is making roadkill out of 3 primary school children and being able to fire 10 rounds out of the nearside window whilst drinking Jack Daniels in a brown paper bag.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

That's because in so much of the US there is no alternative way of getting anywhere. Combine that with an area where booze is a major industry, and... well, not for nothing is the first google hit for mendocino transport a limousine hire company...

http://www.gomendo.com/stories/3_WineTouring.html

Twenty seven tasting rooms lie along 4 diverse driving routes. As a bonus, each route has its own local brewpub featuring outstanding microbrews and local pub fare.

Uh-huh... bendy roads, presumably...

[rentaghost31.livejournal.com]

one would assume that Feltham doesn't watch tv much

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh, I bet he does, but only the news, and documentaries. Especially anything by such radical exposers of The Truth, Man as Morgan Sodding Spurlock, Michael Fvcking Moore and Richard Cvnting Dawkins.

[rentaghost31.livejournal.com]

don't hold back there, baz

[stu-n.livejournal.com]

"What we really need is articulate and rational destroyers of dangerous myths, writers who expose and analyse politicians' lies and religionists' delusions, for example."

It's completely impossible to do this in a novel, of course. George Orwell was wasting his time and isn't worth reading, obviously. Nineteen Eighty-Four is science fiction, therefore worthless (and, according to one of the other letter writers, only for boys).

People Am Stupid and Make Me Angry.

By the way, I haven't heard The Dears' album, but the single sounds exactly like 'Yes' (as in McAlmont & Butler, not Rick Wakeman) with different lyrics.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I love being alone on a tube carriage! I have been known to stand up and yell tidings along I own you! All bow to me! All control has passed to me! I control your communication, your food supplies and your homes, I am SUPREME! and then realise, oh, there's people in the next carriage and they are looking at me strangely, oh well, I'm getting off at Elephant and Castle next anyway. Oh, so are they. Good good. I like to think of empty tube carriages as training for the next meglomaniac-in-waiting.

Re: para 3 - I think you'll find that it is.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I chuckled a couple of times.

If you'd been at the right end of my carriage, you needn't have worried about puny humans. And at the end of that carriage was the cabins-in-the-middle bit!

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

That sounds even better! Really, you're going to have to get used to using empty tube networks, or am I the only one who plans to take the network over for my personal use in my new world order?

OK I might have laughed a couple of times but that doesn't excuse the movie. Even the drinking and dialing scene felt horribly inevitable. I laughed whilst the phrase "must we?" hovered somewhere in the back of mind.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Balls. I've been so busy this week I haven't had time to listen to my gacked copy of Open Season.

But yeah...what you really don't want is to be in a tube carriage on your own with a man who is making odd choking noises and looking at you like he wants to keep you in a hole in his basement and wear your skin and then put a moth in your mouth.

I haven't seen Sideways, but Matt came back one Sunday afternoon and froze me out for an hour and then broke down crying about how awful life is. And people keep telling me off for drinkig Pinot Noir as a result of seeing it. I already don't approve.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The worst was when I was in a carriage alone and a London Underground employee agent of the Cthonic entities got in. Aieeee!

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Aieeee!?

Has Thermals taken over your exclamation function?

The first time I rode a tube without adult or friend supervision at the tender age of 14, a man in cycling shorts rubbed himself against me. It's uphill all the way from there, really.

[davebushe.livejournal.com]

Having the new Garbage album this morning reduces the rage rising over your first paragraph. I'm looking forward to that album even more now.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Is it any good? Their last one is one of those albums I vaguely regret buying because I only really love 'Androgyny', and might as well just have taped the rest.

[davebushe.livejournal.com]

On first listen it's their weakest album to date. It's carried on moving towards pop but with a little more guitar than the last time. No majorly standout tracks.

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

'Carrion' is awesome but, one or two other tracks aside, too much of TDOBSP is either inconsequentiual or unlistenable. Or both.

When did it come out - 2003? If we restrict your parameters to "Best debut album of the year released on Rough Trade", I think The Hidden Cameras edge it.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

B0ll0cks they do. Great single in 'Ban Marriage', but the album is pleasant background music enhanced by rude lyrics.

TDOBSP reverses the normal trend for albums by beginning with the filler and mood pieces before progressing to the great stuff, but after enough listens I came to understand that they work as establishing shots for what comes later. And what comes later is simply *epic*.

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

I've just checked my 2003 highlights from my LJ circa Xmas 2003 and it would appear that 2003 had some very good albums, but few amazing ones. But it did have Mew, Goldfrapp and Tatu, amongst others. I think Mew do epic better, but then they are Scandinavian so it comes with the territory.

Inconsequentiual or unlistenable. Or both.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Pardon?
There are probably only 2 songs that I yawn during...
Waaaaaaaaaaaah.
Although the problem I have with 2003 is that Hail to the Thief still blows me away. And I preferred Stellastarr*'s debut.

Re: Inconsequentiual or unlistenable. Or both.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'd say that though the first three tracks work in the album context, none of them actually hangs together as a song.

[capitalflash.livejournal.com]

The NME claims the Tears' debut is the finest record Anderson or Butler has ever made. Will they ever learn?

*chokes*

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's like when they deemed the Vines to have made 'the best debut of your lifetime', or something. It's just stupid. Tell people an album is really rather good, and it might not grab their attention so easily, but nor will it leave them so horribly disappointed when they actually hear it.

The article also includes Bernard's slag-off of the released version of Dog Man Star, which genuinely is one of the ten best albums ever made. Stupid little twonk.