Lacking jaffas; G.W.Bush

The most inept US administration in history has managed another masterpiece: by taking Saddam Hussein to the gallows they handed him the dignity he'd never had in his lifetime. Sparing him the death penalty would have required some real jaffas, but I suppose that's telling. The Bush government doesn't miss a blip when it comes down to taking decisions that aim at inflaming tension. I guess it'll be all "mission accomplished" in the White House tonight. Hurry up quick, November 2008...

The Scrooge appreciation society

Christmas gets on a lot of people's nerves. I'm one of them.

That bloody word, Crimbo. Oh doesn't it get on my tits.

The mental queues that could piss over the maze in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Think HMV Oxford Street on 22 Dec without doubt the biggest queue ever seen in my life. Along with any underwear section as you get elbowed left, right and centre by the hordes who are checking out y-fronts, socks and trunks for the second cousin's boyfriend that they briefly met in 1999.

The only time of the year in which no shame is there towards the most amazing waste of money ever - especially on paper, cards, useless decoration and clutter.

The unprecedented smothering of feelgood ads and crap TV programmes, expectations of how great and merry Christmas time should be, how it's all perfect with our wonderful families and friends and you're fucked if your having a hard time in life. Step in the growing army of those 'non-privileged' poor sods who have to work round Xmas time i.e. puke cleaners in pubs, shop assistants or NHS staff.

The saccharine music, the jingles, the overpriced reissues of trite Xmas compilations. As naff as anything humans could ever come up with since the olden days of Jurassica. And the bells are never enough to fill the air, and the cliched kids choirs are never high-pitched enough as you irately scramble for the remote control or towards the nearest department store exit. I suppose it simply brings my social ineptitude to the fore...And yet...

The artificial, rammed-down-your-throat, association with people you have nothing in common with -at best- or you despise -at worst. Which cunting masochist decided that extended family gathering have to take place at Christmas? There's got to be some bleedin' reason if you never otherwise spend time with those folks at any other time of the year ever??!!

All that solemn gift-unwrapping bollocks as your body get on painted-smile-mode cos chances are it's something crass, inappropriate or utterly useless you're unwrapping in front of embarrassing, scrutinising eyebulbs. And viceversa, hoping that your customary gift to the unknown characters you've seen about twice in your adult life is not gonna be deemed worthless. But can you blame them?? You've got to do it for Xmas.

And the moment the door shuts one bit of the family bitches on the other bit of the family...and the rows...and the wasted money...the showing off...the guilt-trips...the social ineptitude...and the whining grannie with the achey joints and the tension-spawn cooking that could -incidentally- feed the entire population of Ethiopia, forget Live 8 and Live Aid and Band Aid put together. And they all talk about pressure, stress and unwinding...

Oh aren't I bitter...Well, don't say it too loud, I know I'm not alone here...

The Jarvis Cocker Album

How we've missed him

A review of Jarvis' solo debut

If you're a Pulp fan no doubt you've sometimes endured the sad 'high fidelity'-like game of how-you-rate-Different Class against His'n'Hers, This is Hardcore and the sorry We Love Life. Few would be ready to dispute that the sensuous Different Class remains unrivalled and always will, put out -as it was- amidst the galvanising swirl of 1995. Yet Pulp fans need not despair. There's no actual need for the band to reunite and hark back to the glory days. The new entry The Jarvis Cocker Album would easily have a fair crack at a Champions League berth. Jarvis solo may be short of a killer-single (though the portrayal of today's UK "Fat Children" comes close, eye-winking as it is at Cockney Rebel's vintage brand of glam rock), but the tunes, the arrangements and the lyrics are absolutely spot-on, an indication of a massive return to form for the finest vignettist of his generation.

"Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" is Jarvis' way of starting with a bang. It could be T-Rex all over again until that pleasantly familiar voice kicks in, last heard as inspired circa 1997. True, a hand and a half is gracefully lent out by guest star guitarist and fellow Sheffielder Richard Hawley. Funny how the British press spent the best part of the last 20 years navel-gazing for Johnny Marr's heir apparent. Well, he's sitting right in front of them now. With a subtle guitar work that sounds nothing short of sublime, tasteful and discreet at once, Hawley's contribution to The Jarvis Cocker Album is just "the dog's". Or, for want of a better word, vital.

Jarvis' solo debut is music for grown-ups, testament to the fact that turning 40plus, a hubby and a dad is not always to the detriment of edge and inspiration. Lyrically as engaging, cynical and scathing as ever, the Jarvis Cocker of 2006 sounds all but content. For one, he takes on today's make-believe pampered world of telly and reality pap; "how come they're called Adult movies when the only thing they show is people making babies filmed up close", he protests on "Disney Time", the subject so depressing a platform that the dark sense of drama of the song wouldn't go amiss on Pink Floyd's The Final Cut. Except that Jarvis' tongue-in-cheek doesn't let him down, placing the track on a league of its own.

The aptly titled "From Auschwitz to Ipswich" beautifully sums up the post-9/11 sense of fatality and us-and-them paranoia: "They want our way of life/well they can take mine any time they like", he shrugs off, "like the Roman Empire fell away/let me tell you we are going the same way". "Big Julie" is possibly the most beautiful track on Jarvis. If you're insensitive to its vocal performance and its poignant arrangement, strings and piano then you may as well top yourself. A dark tale of a misfit, a solitary schoolkid who's well ahead of her peers, she knows "sex is just for when you've run out of things to say" and will have her own back one day, against a bleak backdrop of "stupid kids", "sweaty lads who get her down " and pervy "Sunday school teachers". Track 10 "Tonite" is a perfect exercise in genius musical arrangement, with Richard Hawley's swooping slide and pedal-steel guitar licks standing out beautifully.

As he puts out his darkest yet most accomplished album to date, Jarvis seems to invite us all to a mind-broadening exercise and finger-wagging at the nostalgicomics of "Common People". Not the one for you if you're looking for a student-union-anthem in the style of 94-95. Otherwise, great to have you back, finest bespectacled Yorkshireman of all.

Scissor Sisters, "Ta-Dah"

The New York glamsters' second album

A review

World stardom can't be easy to juggle. For over two years, you'd look up the word ubiquity in the dictionary and read Scissor Sisters, as they shifted three million units with one of the unlikeliest debut albums of all times. Forget camp, Scissor Sisters wore their sexuality on both sleeves, turning out catchy tunes and kitsch galore. After years of greyness, Scissor Sisters brought a welcome change, miles more colourful than any bored-looking popstar who'd make you scramble for the nearest sicknote in search of life.

That was 2004-2005. How they'd handle that 'difficult second album' was anybody's guess. And what a sturdy piece did they manage. Ta-Dah arguably contains the catchiest pop songs ever known to man. Ooh, in particular, with its wah pedals and funky beats is absolutely infectious at a glance, a hymn to putting back 'guilty feelings' and 'them blues' when you 'got magic in those dancing shoes'. Not to mention the bizarrely titled Paul McCartney, it'd go down a treat on any dancefloor anywhere in the country. And no doubt you've heard first single I Don’t Feel Like Dancin' about a million times already.

But here's where the praises end. I suppose many a band would bank on what are possibly the most annoyingly catchy tunes. They won't mind getting on people's nerves as long as that happens two minutes after they've bought your record. That's exactly the marketing ploy. And the Sisters are positively gifted at that. But I swear, a week after you buy Ta-Dah there's no better way of defining it than to say it's just TOO MUCH. How many Bee Gees-like falsettos and Elton John-esque honky-tonkying can you get away with before you objectively do people's head in?

You're bound to hear them non-stop as you zip your trolley round at your local Tesco, and they're destined to sell bucket-loads again. But something tells me within five years they'll be guilty-pleasure-material, as passé and dated as Level 42, Simple Minds or Bucks Fizz. And your kids will look at their folks' CD collection, spot Ta-Dah and take the piss.

Music in your 30s. Richard Hawley

A review of Coles Corner

I don't know about yous, but to say that I've started to feel a tad out of touch with today's music is not to overstate my case. You hit 30, you watch -say- the highlights of Reading Festival or V, or X, Y, Z sponsored by some huge lager-pumping corporation, presented by some giddy-acting trollop and you don't recognise a single tune. You may have heard the bands' names, but they don't push the right buttons. Most likely, a generational thing.

And yet somebody did it for me, out of the blue. A guy of unassuming appearance, a denim-clad semi-geek with a clear penchant for vintage rock'n'roll, quite cool-looking actually. But veneer aside, it's songwriting that does the trick here.

Think of Morrissey at his most heartfelt, that wavering, impassionate cover of 50s classic Moonriver lost amidst the indifference of his rockabilly days. Think of Nick Cave's The Boatman's Call, eerie and spectral. Think of that excruciatingly psychotic plea for help (the-party's-over-and-you're-as-alone-as-ever) that was Pulp's This is Hardcore.

That's my way of describing what Richard Hawley does to you. His latest -magnificent- Coles Corner is a rubber ring chucked at a generation often too inhibited, too cool, to sing about emotions in unassuming fashion. An 'old' romantic, dareisay.

Coles Corner is a tale of lonely despair, it's a post-being-dumped walk around the park. Sparse piano, shy, shimmering, beautiful guitars, stunning arrangements. It's also the most stunning tribute to Sheffield's most anonymous yet popular corner. The place where a million souls may decide to meet up on their first date and get stood up. Hotel Room, Tonight, Born Under A Bad Sign, they should all be classics and to me they already are.

And if you'd been out on the pull and luck was on your side and they'd said yes to a date, which would your Coles Corner be in Birmingham? The Odeon in New Street? Paradise Forum? Or maybe that newly defaced bull statue outside the Bull Ring? Nominate Brum's own Coles Corner. And get hold of that CD!

"A million are socially excluded"

Oh the beauty of the Internet. You're miles away but you're still drawn to the place. And so the absurdity of it all reaches a new high with the news that newly appointed Social Exclusion Minister Hilary Armstrong reveals the astonishing truth of "a million people in the UK [being] socially excluded [while] 5% of the population are at risk of becoming so". I'm quite worried she may not fare too well at the Acute Observers' Olympics. Did any commentator dare to ask her where the Blair Government have been in the last 9 years? A report or two shows that the social gap under progressive St. Tony the evangelist has widened like never before...Still, Ms Armstrongs continues :"It's my job to pull people together across government, so that we are intervening early". Never has the concept of velocity seemed such a subjective one.

So in my bedroom from those ugly new houses

Those samey city-living apartments are sprawling everywhere.

During my time in London I remember asking the clichè question: how can people afford it?

Have a walk around. It makes you wonder who's ever gonna be able to repay those mortgages in full before they snuff it. Which explains why adults past 35 still rent and share as if perma-studentdom was to last forever. Or how about those city-living apartments that are sprawling everywhere, in each single town centre, from Cardiff to Birmingham, from Sheffield to Brighton. Monstrosities closer to hives than they are to human dwellings.

Until recently the consensus was that never again the fiasco of post-war social housing was to be repeated. Those high-rise blocks -the script reads out- had been the hard way of learning how you don’t do urban planning. Ugly, alienating, anonymous. But at least the post-war social housing drive was a positive one. It was the government taking on board the task of allowing everybody modern and affordable living in some shape or form. The UK had taken on the noble task of mammoth slum-clearance. And modernist post-war housing was seen as the quickest, most affordable and most effective solution.

But now? What’s all this? At the turn of the 21st century you cannot believe the rate at which humongous apartment blocks are mushrooming throughout the UK. Housing it may be, but this time it’s no social we’re talking about. No cheap, affordable, “homes for heroes”. They are all invariably high-rent, glossy, “city-living”, “south-side”, “west-side”, “urban- splash” dens. Not even that glossy, to tell you the truth. But certainly re-mortageable, if you don't fancy repossession.

I’m sitting outside a bar in Hurst Street, on a rare April sunny afternoon, sipping rose wine, what else. The building opposite us must have been assembled in less than five minutes. Lego for giants. For a second I express bewilderment. I didn’t know the new A&E department was being built in Hurst Street. Not quite.

A pink banner sheds some light “City Living- Show Room- Southside”. “Enjoy life at the heart of the business district”. You really should take a look at the building. Had it been a guessing game, chances are the A&E speculation would have been followed by a) school, b) prison, c) police HQ. Scratch beneath the surface of extortionate prices and…but that's another story.

Blighted in Blighty

It’s been three weeks since I first trotted around the streets of this town in Portugal. Afternoons are a notoriously quiet affair here. The place is industrious but unhurried. The region was described as one of the richest of the EU and “typical Calvinist spirit, a far cry from the stereotype of lazy Poland” by a Yale University research. None of that frenzied English clone-town centre vestige. Since legging it, a few weeks ago, it didn’t take long to register that the perception of Britain abroad is a far cry from reality, a testing concoction of misconceptions and distorted myths of a green and pleasant land stuck in aspic.

People here come up with all sorts of ideas suggesting that Britain may find itself a mere step short from being a heavenly kingdom, were it not for inclement weather and stodgy food.

How many times do I have to repost that, no, drive-by shooting does exist in the UK. That their lovely new cultural phenomenon called “happy-slapping” isn’t quite in the league of mini-skirts, Britpop and all those slightly more constructive old British exports. That no, music people do get a hard time too, outside London you’d easily get a beating for sporting a Mohawk or looking like an ‘indie-kid’, a poofter, or a goth. That schools are blighted by bullying.

That men don’t all prance about speaking like Hugh Grant and rarely spend more than a minute in front of the mirror. That a look at a beer bellies and football-geezers wouldn’t go amiss to have an idea. That timber-frame homes ended their reign quite a while back and haven’t they heard of clone-towns, that whether you hurry with your shopping down Dudley high street or Southampton town centre, chances are the plastic bags you’re carrying sport the same logos.

That pubs have long ceased to be cosy pretty social hideaways and bring your earplugs along as you try the Actress &Bishop on a weekend. That vomit on pavements on a Friday night is run of the mill. That, no, I don’t live in London and I haven’t met the queen. And that, yes, corruption is endemic in the UK, too.

And when they look at its “model of democracy” they’d better take notice of that kick in the eye that answers the moniker of the House of Lords, the peer- selection backhander scandal, or at the one-man band that has been Tony Blair’s government in the past few years.

And when the Latvians whinge about their manic political system, they may want to take a peek at the United Kingdom of Apathy and the lowest electoral turnout in Europe, perhaps explained by the non-existent choice between two incredibly similar and unrepresentative political parties.

And that –for goodness’ sake- the next time you give me that look when I tell you that trains in Greece are actually cheaper and NOT more inefficient that those in Britain, I’ll take you for a ride on that packed overpriced Birmingham-Brighton Virgin Trains service and the bill is on you. But here, in Slovakia, on a sunny, sultry afternoon, with a heat that you don’t get in Brum were it not for the first two weeks of July when you’re working your arse out and wait for that evening drink in the pub, something finally hits home.

The bank guy –Mehmet, his name is- isn’t taking the piss nor having me on. A tinge of embarrassment twists his face for a split second. You’d want to cuddle him if it wasn’t for my now endemic suspicion that he may be after something. A **********, maybe. The request for a signature that would tie me for life to an insurance scheme, arguably. Oh haven’t years of Blighty turned me into a conspiratorial watchdog type.

No, all he utters timidly, as he squeezes an English preposition or two within his lovely Serbo Croat, is: “This one I’d really love to know. It’s been bugging me for a while. Erm...do...do people in England really walk around carrying a suitcase and wear a bowler hat?”. Oh dear, where do I begin. This time I could write a book about it.