'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

I love living in a city where nobody even thinks to mention that there's a twenty foot tall statue of a jackal-headed death god stood in Trafalgar Square. Through which I was just passing en route to the Project Adorno show at Westminster Reference Library - one Westminster library I've not been to before, but one I love; it's how libraries used to be before they started chasing the will o'wisp of 'accessibility'.

You wouldn't know it from the picture where I appear to be teasing a horse, but last weekend's Metroland Tubewalk saw me come over all Fotherington-Thomas, chasing excitedly after unusual birds and cooing over flowers. I've seen horses while Tubewalking before, but never happy-looking ones, and certainly no bunnies, and if the uneven trails through the woods sometimes had a questing air about them, it was a considerably more jovial quest than the bleak and bloody slog to North Greenwich. Plus, in Metroland they even still have Routemasters! And restaurants where one can be the only diners and hog all the staff attention! It is a happy land, to which I am still half-convinced I would like to move and open a pub in a forest.

[Poll #1066074]

In spite of having initially decided that Gallows were just a bloody racket, I nonetheless decided to give them one more chance and give the album a spin. Why do I persist in doing this, believing that there must be some substance to the hype? I can still see exactly why Kerrang! likes them; I still have no idea why NME cares. And I would definitely still characterise them as a right bloody racket. Yes, Frank Carter is clearly very angry, and fair enough, if I looked like that and lived in Watford, I'd be very angry too. A lot of my favourite music is angry, from Noel Coward through the punk classics to Luke Haines and Trent Reznor - but at least there one has some idea what they're angry *about*. Here? Not a clue. I only know from interviews that 'Will Someone Shoot That Fvcking Snake' (the closest they come to a tune) is about how date rape is bad, mmmkay? - taken in isolation, I'd just be wondering why anyone would try to shoot a snake when a spade is so much more suited to the job, because the title aside, the lyrics are just a man screaming incoherently about SOMETHING WHICH IS REALLY GETTING HIS GOAT AAAAARGH.