Old Ken's Music Reviews

One of the interesting things that differentiates ye olde merrie England from its cousins across the water is that, in the Old Country, one can go to almost any supermarket and purchase a broad selection of new musical releases. And no, I don't just mean the sort of holiday-themed novelty items or charity releases but (to use a British-ism) "proper" albums. So, as I might make it a special treat to add a musical selection to my shopping basket every month or two, I thought I'd pass along my reviews on a couple of albums which both seem to yours truly to be very British - - albeit in their own discrete ways.

First up is the debut release from the Arctic Monkeys. This album has been getting a lot of press over here; from what I can gather, the band is comprised of a gaggle of teenagers from Sheffield. To the ear of this experimental philosopher, the band sounds a lot like a cross between the coarse vocal delivery and guitar emphasis of American bands like Modest Mouse or The White Stripes. But, then, their rhythm section suggests another British popular fave, Franz Ferdinand. And it is this latter influence that finds the band mixing crude production, snarling vocals and distorted guitars with tight, dance-floor-friendly beats: a bit of a strange combination to the ears of one raised on Twisted Sister or, more pertinently, the Scorpions (perhaps the world's least funky band).

Now, I should add that this orientation to the dancefloor—and, through it, to British youth culture more generally—registers in the lyrical content of the songs as well. Two tracks speak to dancing explicitly ("Dancing Shoes" and their hit song, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor"), while one of the most compelling songs on the record ("From the Ritz to the Rubble") narrates the protagonist's confrontation with bouncers as he tries to get into a club.

I will admit that, dance club neophyte that I am, all this leaves Old Ken a bit mystified, as do descriptions of those who "wear classic Reeboks / Or knackered Converse/ Or tracky bottoms tucked in socks" as we get in "A Certain Romance." Yet, on the album's best songs, the band works beyond these superficial categorizations of the alienated urban youth, which the Labour government has recently sought to make a big show of combatting with their liberal dispersal of Anti-Social Behavior Orders (or ASBOs). As if to reiterate the album's title ("Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not"), songs like "Red Light Indicates Doors are Secure" and, above all, "Riot Van" go some way to produce compelling or at least amusing narratives out of the labels and categories of thuggish (or "yobbish" as it's called here) behavior.




Needless to say, very different musical and thematic terrain is explored on the new Belle and Sebastian album. Old Ken is certainly not a big Belle and Sebastian fan, although I will confess that some of their music provides some very naughty guilty pleasures. For the completely uninitiate, my understanding is that there are about eight people in this band and they generally play lush, folky music behind mumbled, slightly self-indulgent lyrics. In any event, some traces of this formula are clearly in evidence on this new album. In songs like the slightly woozy "Mornington Crescent," for example, the narrator makes the following claim: "I’ve got a job on / For a Senegalese rich arbitrator / In African law / To paint his apartment, strip down the walls." This all set to a kind of "Astral Weeks"-era Van Morrison accompaniment, complete with steel guitar. Far more successful are the up-tempo songs like "Another Sunny Day," where Byrds-style 12-string electric guitars chime and interweave with one another, or the catchy but slightly annoying "Sukie in the Graveyard." My favorite song on the album—a track which has gone directly into my guilty pleasures playlist—is the T-Rex inspired "The Blues are Still Blue," which contains the fabulous line: "I left my homework in the launderette / I got a letter from my mamma which my stoopid dog has ate" (fabulous because the singer makes "ate" rhyme with launderette).

But again, so much of these vignettes—they are less the narratives we get with the Arctic Monkeys—are told through a highly British idiom. While it's a really gorgeous song, "Another Sunny Day" evokes an "attic window looking out on the cathedral / And on a Sunday evening bells ring out in the dusk." I mean, are you going to find such a landscape in Arizona or Seattle? And, as if that weren't enough, there's a song called "For the Price of a Cup of Tea"! Why not go all the way and have a song called "Awright Guv-nah?"? So, perhaps these selections truly are for Anglophiles only, but "Riot Van" and "The Blues are Still Blue" are worth a download no matter where you hang your hat.