My brother is presently trying to help me write this Pop post. The absence of recent posting has been due to a week of 'self-improvement', for lack of a better, cohesive term: internship interviews, radio shows, tearing my CV apart and building it up again. Today I'm attending a 'CV Clinic', if you can believe it. Quite whether my CV is so ill it needs to see a doctor is debatable to my mind, but we'll see. And the lack of posting is set to continue into next week, as I'm off to Portugal for 6 days (OBRIGADO!), so apologies for that too.
It was my brother's idea to write about my CV. "Write about," he says, "how we're in an academic sweatshop; we're having to be sold as a commodity. Working for 'The Man'? Who's the bloody man?!" Indeed.
The fact that everyone is so manufactured these days is a bit of a worry. 22, university degree, desire to succeed, GSOH... I feel like I'm playing the dating game, rather than at the start of a career. If this is the case, my CV is, without question, a slag. Do you realise how many times it has been whored out to prospective partners (i.e. 'The Man') in the past? To set it apart in the future, I will print it on good quality cream paper, send it out in A4 envelopes (so that it's not folded up and creased), and attach a super-smiley picture of myself, to add a more 'personal' touch. Yes, this slag is getting desperate.
And it's hard to not feel deterred at this stage of the game, which becomes even more frustrating when 'this stage of the game' is actually prior to the whole process of your career even beginning. And that word, 'career'. It's toxic. This moniker brings to mind etheral imaginings of sowing the educational bean, climbing that bewitched career ladder, and entering into the magical kingdom of Job.
Luckily, youthful optimism shines through. In my mind, and the minds of countless others, that magical kingdom still awaits. Except this fairytale is not made up of Prince Charming and the Princess, but the Tyrannical Corporate Capitalist and the Slag. But I think we all know which story will sell more copies. And they all lived happily ever after...?
Monday 29 March 2010
Monday 22 March 2010
Head first in love
Purchasing a CD has become, and I'm sure I speak for many, a bit of a rarity these days. The reason why was perfectly illustrated today, when I snatched myself a copy of Goldfrapp's new album Head First (Goldfrapp are of course an exception to the rule, being one of those bands where I have to own every one of their LPs). When I got home, I burnt the CD into my iTunes, so that I had the songs on my laptop. Then I connected my iPod up, so that I had the tracks on this all-important device too. And then I stored it on my family's central music system, so that all the many people who inhabit this house - a grand total of three - can listen to the album wherever they jolly well want to as well. Satisfied, I finally placed the CD on a shelf. Thank you decomposition, please take place quickly now.
And it's such a shame, don't you think? Everything is so crisp and untouched, and if Apple has anything to say it will continue to remain crisp and untouched. Everything about a CD in its physical form is a work of art. From the carefully conceived design of the packaging, to the liner notes full of lyrics and little thank you's and production credits, and then the perfectly circular disc that's held in place by those tiny plastic diamonds. Even the process of the CD spinning, and the stereo reading the music as it turns...? Spins my head right round like a record, baby.
A duo such as Goldfrapp, for all their progressive pop moves, make me pull back to listening to a CD as it was intended. This is an organic record through and through. No matter what sonic landscape they decide to create, it's still structured around soaring pop melodies and joyful harmonies - the simple things that are essential if a pop song is to be sincere. And if a pop song needs anything in abundance, it is sincerity. Head First embraces a gorgeously realised state of euphoria; 80s synths that shimmer and soft beats that fizzle with warmth. Alison Goldfrapp, if rumours are to be believed, is in love, and it shows. 'Believer' is drenched in optimism, a spritely feel-good anthem to the joys of keeping the faith; 'Alive' could be Olivia Newton-John having the best time of her life; and for those of you who enjoyed Supernature, 'Shiny And Warm' is the sloshed sister of 'Satin Chic', a splendidly dizzy romp with Allison basically getting off on the drive home to her lover. The album melts in hues of pink and blue, with a consistency in sound that I have not heard over the length of an album for a long time. And by clocking in at 39 minutes, its duration is sweetly on point.
Alison has commented that "'Head first' means to go into something without fear - head first in love. It's not trivial. I think it's more celebratory." And with this wave of deliriously dreamy sounds, what's not to celebrate?
And it's such a shame, don't you think? Everything is so crisp and untouched, and if Apple has anything to say it will continue to remain crisp and untouched. Everything about a CD in its physical form is a work of art. From the carefully conceived design of the packaging, to the liner notes full of lyrics and little thank you's and production credits, and then the perfectly circular disc that's held in place by those tiny plastic diamonds. Even the process of the CD spinning, and the stereo reading the music as it turns...? Spins my head right round like a record, baby.
A duo such as Goldfrapp, for all their progressive pop moves, make me pull back to listening to a CD as it was intended. This is an organic record through and through. No matter what sonic landscape they decide to create, it's still structured around soaring pop melodies and joyful harmonies - the simple things that are essential if a pop song is to be sincere. And if a pop song needs anything in abundance, it is sincerity. Head First embraces a gorgeously realised state of euphoria; 80s synths that shimmer and soft beats that fizzle with warmth. Alison Goldfrapp, if rumours are to be believed, is in love, and it shows. 'Believer' is drenched in optimism, a spritely feel-good anthem to the joys of keeping the faith; 'Alive' could be Olivia Newton-John having the best time of her life; and for those of you who enjoyed Supernature, 'Shiny And Warm' is the sloshed sister of 'Satin Chic', a splendidly dizzy romp with Allison basically getting off on the drive home to her lover. The album melts in hues of pink and blue, with a consistency in sound that I have not heard over the length of an album for a long time. And by clocking in at 39 minutes, its duration is sweetly on point.
Alison has commented that "'Head first' means to go into something without fear - head first in love. It's not trivial. I think it's more celebratory." And with this wave of deliriously dreamy sounds, what's not to celebrate?
Sunday 21 March 2010
A touch too mlutch?
It's not all that 'out there', if you think about it. Men have briefcases, satchels, man-bags in all shapes and sizes... The man clutch, or 'mlutch' if we wish to make it a bit snappier, was always in the pipeline. Nowadays, it's not simply a case of stuffing your wallet in your right-hand trouser pocket. You've got your mobile phone too (OK, OK, so that could go in the left-hand pocket...) But then what about your car keys? iPod? Epi-pen?! That last one is doomed to be just little pinhead me, but the concept of the mlutch isn't such a farcical notion if you consider it. The Father, with his stoic and unwaveringly traditional sensibilities, would no doubt tell me to "grow a pair".
3.1 Phillip Lim S/S 2010
Dolce & Gabbana S/S 2010
Salvatore Ferrangamo A/W 2010-11
All pictures are courtesy of GQ.
I think the trick is to keep it simple, sharp, straight-edged. A little like The Father. He'd be honoured. If you get it spot on, you might be lucky enough to look nearly as ice cool as Francesco Cominelli...
Slick bastard.
3.1 Phillip Lim S/S 2010
Dolce & Gabbana S/S 2010
Salvatore Ferrangamo A/W 2010-11
All pictures are courtesy of GQ.
I think the trick is to keep it simple, sharp, straight-edged. A little like The Father. He'd be honoured. If you get it spot on, you might be lucky enough to look nearly as ice cool as Francesco Cominelli...
Slick bastard.
Friday 19 March 2010
The forward-flying quiff
Absolutely flippin' typical. No sooner have I returned from the hairdresser's with my thick bush of a bog-brush (ahem) tamed, now sat resembling what can only be described as the "pin-head" look, than I stumble across the models from the Bottega Veneta AW10-11 show.
They are sporting gravity-defying, forward-flying quiffs! I feel like I've been stabbed in the eye! I. WANT.
All pictures are courtesy of GQ.
They are sporting gravity-defying, forward-flying quiffs! I feel like I've been stabbed in the eye! I. WANT.
All pictures are courtesy of GQ.
The clouds would catch the colours
I seem to like colours at the moment. And I very much like 'Little Fluffy Clouds' by The Orb. Yet another reason to be grateful for 6Music, Steve Lamacq played this yesterday and it's etched itself a little corner in my brain; I can't stop listening to it. It always amazes me that a song can exist for such a long time, garner its own history, and then you discover it and BAM... you're suddenly a part of it.
They were beautiful
The most beautiful skies as a matter of fact
The sunsets were purple and red
And yellow and on fire
And the clouds would catch the colours everywhere
That -- it's neat
They were beautiful
The most beautiful skies as a matter of fact
The sunsets were purple and red
And yellow and on fire
And the clouds would catch the colours everywhere
That -- it's neat
Monday 15 March 2010
Red
Yesterday afternoon I finally laid to rest my copy of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. It's a beautiful book about the state of the mind, the ways in which it pulls and pushes, and the fluidity with which this can rush. The fact that it's semi-autobiographical is simply the marrow inside the bone.
Late last night I picked up the Ted Hughes poem collection Birthday Letters, and sat poised in bed flicking backwards through the anthology and sporadically stopping on one of the 88 poems. On my part, Birthday Letters was a complete whim of a purchase from Waterstones a couple of years back. Poetry isn't like a novel or play, where there's a resolution of some kind towards the end, it's a chunk of language that can be entered from any angle and can pass straight through you. So to that end, I've always found poetry less gratifying than other strands of literature. But I think some of Hughes' pieces are really wonderful, and you get a real grasp of the weight that his relationship with Plath had upon him.
'Red' is one of my favourites. It comes last in the collection, and so there's a part of me that believes it is last for a reason and out of all the verses this should seemingly present a conclusion of some sort. It doesn't any more than any of his other poems, but, as Seamus Heaney quotes of the text, "To read Birthday Letters is to experience the psychic equivalent of 'the bends'. It takes you down to levels of pressure where the under-truths of sadness and endurance leave you gasping."
Red
Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.
When you had your way finally
Our room was red. A judgement chamber.
Shut casket for gems. The carpet of blood
Patterned with darkenings, congealments.
The curtains - ruby corduroy blood,
Sheer blood-falls from ceiling to floor.
The cushions the same. The same
Raw carmine along the window-seat.
A throbbing cell. Aztec altar - temple.
Only the bookshelves escaped into whiteness.
And outside the window
Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail
As the skin on blood,
Salvias, that your father named you after,
Like blood lobbing from a gash,
And roses, the heart's last gouts,
Catastrophic, arterial, doomed.
Your velvet long full skirt, a swathe of blood,
A lavish burgundy.
Your lips a dipped, deep crimson.
You revelled in red.
I felt it raw - like the crisp gauze edges
Of a stiffening wound. I could touch
The open vein in it, the crusted gleam.
Everything you painted you painted white
Then splashed it with roses, defeated it,
Leaned over it, dripping roses,
Weeping roses, and more roses,
Then sometimes, among them, a little bluebird.
Blue was better for you. Blue was wings.
Kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco
Folded your pregnancy
In crucible caresses.
Blue was your kindly spirit - not a ghoul
But electrified, a guardian, thoughtful.
In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness.
But the jewel you lost was blue.
Late last night I picked up the Ted Hughes poem collection Birthday Letters, and sat poised in bed flicking backwards through the anthology and sporadically stopping on one of the 88 poems. On my part, Birthday Letters was a complete whim of a purchase from Waterstones a couple of years back. Poetry isn't like a novel or play, where there's a resolution of some kind towards the end, it's a chunk of language that can be entered from any angle and can pass straight through you. So to that end, I've always found poetry less gratifying than other strands of literature. But I think some of Hughes' pieces are really wonderful, and you get a real grasp of the weight that his relationship with Plath had upon him.
'Red' is one of my favourites. It comes last in the collection, and so there's a part of me that believes it is last for a reason and out of all the verses this should seemingly present a conclusion of some sort. It doesn't any more than any of his other poems, but, as Seamus Heaney quotes of the text, "To read Birthday Letters is to experience the psychic equivalent of 'the bends'. It takes you down to levels of pressure where the under-truths of sadness and endurance leave you gasping."
Red
Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.
When you had your way finally
Our room was red. A judgement chamber.
Shut casket for gems. The carpet of blood
Patterned with darkenings, congealments.
The curtains - ruby corduroy blood,
Sheer blood-falls from ceiling to floor.
The cushions the same. The same
Raw carmine along the window-seat.
A throbbing cell. Aztec altar - temple.
Only the bookshelves escaped into whiteness.
And outside the window
Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail
As the skin on blood,
Salvias, that your father named you after,
Like blood lobbing from a gash,
And roses, the heart's last gouts,
Catastrophic, arterial, doomed.
Your velvet long full skirt, a swathe of blood,
A lavish burgundy.
Your lips a dipped, deep crimson.
You revelled in red.
I felt it raw - like the crisp gauze edges
Of a stiffening wound. I could touch
The open vein in it, the crusted gleam.
Everything you painted you painted white
Then splashed it with roses, defeated it,
Leaned over it, dripping roses,
Weeping roses, and more roses,
Then sometimes, among them, a little bluebird.
Blue was better for you. Blue was wings.
Kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco
Folded your pregnancy
In crucible caresses.
Blue was your kindly spirit - not a ghoul
But electrified, a guardian, thoughtful.
In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness.
But the jewel you lost was blue.
Sunday 14 March 2010
Please dial again
Something pretty exciting happens when you watch the music video for Lady Gaga's 'Telephone'. In fact, that entire sentence is so understated as to render it absolutely redundant. It's less a run-of-the-mill 'music video', and rather a 9 and a half minutes tour de force spectacular, a post-modern pastiche of what a promo clip should be. This clip is not observed; you become fully immersed in its idea of 'celebrity' - executed in such a way that its satire is anything but satirical - and the present landfill of product placement is acknowledged, trashed, spat back out, and recycled. 'Something pretty exciting happens' when you make a sandwich, doesn't it?
And that's not all. Its length hints back to a time when the release of a new video by a popstar was a big event; iconic promos such as Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', which displays artistry and ambition that is still lauded today. With our continuous crop of 'here-to...-oh-you've-already-gone' music acts, a video such as 'Telephone' stands out, with its synergy of pop artist and pop culture which can only truly occur when a thing is actually 'popular'.
Do I sound gaga? Maybe, but 'Telephone' proves that we want literal popstars, astronomically exaggerated human beings that have been shot out of the centre of the universe. I want someone wrapped in nothing but police tape whilst wearing a telephone on her head, thankyouverymuch!
And that's not all. Its length hints back to a time when the release of a new video by a popstar was a big event; iconic promos such as Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', which displays artistry and ambition that is still lauded today. With our continuous crop of 'here-to...-oh-you've-already-gone' music acts, a video such as 'Telephone' stands out, with its synergy of pop artist and pop culture which can only truly occur when a thing is actually 'popular'.
Do I sound gaga? Maybe, but 'Telephone' proves that we want literal popstars, astronomically exaggerated human beings that have been shot out of the centre of the universe. I want someone wrapped in nothing but police tape whilst wearing a telephone on her head, thankyouverymuch!
Tuesday 2 March 2010
Book off
I had the oddest thought today, and it simply came from the act of carrying a couple of books around. That's right: books, in my arms, being carried. It gets no more complicated than that. This seemingly redundant process of movement (WITH BOOKS!) reminded me of my BA days. Oh, I was an English student, put on this earth for one reason, and one reason only... to learn in the ways of the Literai! The crumpled pages of a beaten-up second-hand volume of Gaskell's North & South, the hard-bound spine of a text by some wonderfully arbitary author ruminating on the structures of power in a Pinter play, the piles of books discussing Wilde, and Faulkner, and Joyce, and Eliot... This excess that I lumbered around was an armour that swelled up in my chest and the layered pleats of the pages were my protection, voicing the sentiment that 'I was learning!' I was learning, and even as I moved the pressure points of my fingertips were drinking all that inky knowledge up, where it would lie dormant in my mind as tiny fractured splinters of wisdom until I needed to call on them to support an exclamation of swaggering and moving importance...
Then I realised I was walking, carrying some books.
Then I realised I was walking, carrying some books.
Monday 1 March 2010
Not who, but how
FPTP. AV. PR. EH?
It was a month ago that Gordon Brown broadcast his plans to reform the current voting system, from first past the post (FPTP) to an alternative vote (AV). The tension between the talk of reform and the impending elections has meant that I can't help but ponder, with my limited political understanding, the more simplistic facts of our voting system, rather than all its many intricacies. And what has bewildered me is why it is put in the hands of the government to decide how we vote.
In the proposed referendum, we would have the option of either FPTP or an AV. If common sense prevails, surely proportional representation (PR) is the nearest means of creating a clear democratic process in Britain? This is my opinion, and others may feel differently. What seems ridiculous is that the public don't even command the right to address what election process we vote under. Why is it not put to us as to what voting system we favour? FPTP is heavily criticised... so why do we still have it? Why should I choose between FPTP and AV if I believe proportional representation is the fairer system? Because a government who was elected into power through FPTP says so? An open choice of how we vote may even inspire more people to get involved in politics if they felt their voice counted for something. Currently, I feel it's less about who we vote for, and more to do with how.
It was a month ago that Gordon Brown broadcast his plans to reform the current voting system, from first past the post (FPTP) to an alternative vote (AV). The tension between the talk of reform and the impending elections has meant that I can't help but ponder, with my limited political understanding, the more simplistic facts of our voting system, rather than all its many intricacies. And what has bewildered me is why it is put in the hands of the government to decide how we vote.
In the proposed referendum, we would have the option of either FPTP or an AV. If common sense prevails, surely proportional representation (PR) is the nearest means of creating a clear democratic process in Britain? This is my opinion, and others may feel differently. What seems ridiculous is that the public don't even command the right to address what election process we vote under. Why is it not put to us as to what voting system we favour? FPTP is heavily criticised... so why do we still have it? Why should I choose between FPTP and AV if I believe proportional representation is the fairer system? Because a government who was elected into power through FPTP says so? An open choice of how we vote may even inspire more people to get involved in politics if they felt their voice counted for something. Currently, I feel it's less about who we vote for, and more to do with how.
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