Thursday 28 March 2013

Don't call it a comeback

"Here I am, not quite dying. My body left to rot in a hollow tree. Its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me. And the next day and the next day and another day."

It's early days I'll grant you but culturally 2013 already appears to be defined by the comeback. The question is what does the resurgence of our past favourites really mean for the future of popular music?

There have always been comebacks. From Lazarus to Elvis Presley history is littered with them but 2013 has already seen David Bowie, Suede and My Bloody Valentine release their first music in a decade.

Of course with Bowie, as ever, the music is only half the story, and its no coincidence that the release of 'The Next Day' coincides with the V&A's retrospective exhibition 'David Bowie Is'.

When married to the self defacing 'anti' artwork of the album's sleeve and its reference to past glories therein you realise that, in PR terms, the guy's played a blinder.

I don't particularly care for the music of My Bloody Valentine but certainly the return of Suede has set my pulse racing. Their new album, Bloodsports, is a string of glamorous hooks and blood curdling ballads pulling on every last heart string.

Bowie, rumoured to be ill and widely regarded as in retirement, and Suede, who's last album defined a nadir for the band, both appear to be of the realisation that this is their last opportunity to define their legacy.

You might argue that with Bowie's glittering career there is hardly any need, yet it's to the credit of both performers that their artistic integrity forces them to redefine themselves in an age that could have quite easily rejected them.

On the contrary, as it turns out, they've been embraced! The Bowie exhibition is claimed to be the cultural event of the year by the Guardian newspaper - in March!

Unexpectedly, it's taken a 66 year old man and his 40 year old prodigies to shake us from our slumber. Surely this isn't the way it's supposed to be!?

Yet even the 'manufactured pop' clique, defined by their obsession for fashion and fad, has been in reflective mood of late. ITV2's The Big Reunion has been a gem of a show. Despite following many of the now tired reality TV tropes, the coming together of a clutch of 90's popstars has, against the odds, been a wonder to behold!

The genuine drama of the group members maturely and profoundly addressing the issues that once ripped them asunder is utterly compelling and the stark illumination of record label tyranny with relation to the well being of their young adult employees is refreshingly confronted.

When the groups nervously jump back in the saddle, the camaraderie between them is touching and genuine, with the self awareness to realise the transient nature of the fleeting moment they are in.

Atomic Kitten, 911, B'witched: all are seen for what essential they are - mildly talented individuals who took the chance of a lifetime and ran with it. You can hardly blame them for that and, in fact, when you see the price many of them paid you feel a genuine empathy.

Yet it's the joyful exuberance of boy band 5ive that steals the show, their likely lad banter and no nonsense approach an antidote to the incredibly intense members of B'witched in particular, struggling to control emotion and ego.

Even when perennial naysayer Sean appears close to the brink, band mate Abs comforts and cajoles him in a tender and quite touching manner.

So there we have it, pop and the avant garde stunned into an endearing, self knowing retrospect. I find myself looking in vain for some significance.

Is my love for Bowie, Suede and 5ive merely evidence of reaching an age of post modernist affection for the past twisted into a disappointment in the contemporary or simply that young artists are somehow no longer enabled or willing to commit to cultural revolution?

Political, social and economic circumstance wills that they should be surely? Or perhaps this current reality is in fact the norm? We've passed through so many iterations of popular music that the lines between the past and the future have been forever blurred?

The children of the revolution are now adults, yet are delightfully still hard wired to break for the corners of the envelope.

At thirty myself, I'm not sure whether I find this a comfort or a concern but then does it matter the age of those teetering on the edge of now? Why not grasp for another day in the sun if there happens to be one breaking around you?

After all, Suede's Brett Anderson sings, "When we touch we are young."

Friday 1 March 2013

The album is dead. Long live the album

Has the rise of digital really killed off the 'album' or do we need to separate our sadness at the loss of a medium from our frustration at a lack of innovation?

There's been a tumult of recent commentary revolving around (no doubt at 33⅓ rpm) the potential decline of what was once the 'LP' and now is the 'album'. The BBC has been the main culprit with admittedly excellent documentaries such as "The Golden Age of the Album" and "The Great Album Showdown" all indulging in a warm and fuzzy nostalgia for a time when vinyl ruled the world.

The love of vinyl is no bad thing, all that's associated with the physical means of 'putting on a record' makes sense to me despite my growing up in a predominantly post-LP era. The tangible nature of the format, the opportunities to indulge in extensive artwork and the obvious emotional investment required in taking time to care for the object itself are all facets of the black disc's appeal I can readily recognise.

Unfortunately, the underlining implication in all this retrospective affection is an erroneous assumption that the artistic validity of the album format itself (i.e. a collection of songs over approximately 45 mins) died along with the drop in vinyl production at the turn of the 1980's.

This patently isn't true; the subtext exemplar of an albeit understandable, rose-tinted fondness for the past, a rejection of the musical validity of the new, easily afforded by the distinguishable 'line in the sand' that is the 'death' of a format. It's too convenient to associate this with the perceived end of an art form, a perception which is, no doubt, subjugation for a notional tide mark representing the moment a glorious youth was lost forever.

Ironically, those who never experienced the proliferation of the 12 inch such as I - more familiar with the compact disc than anything - are now, themselves, superseded by a generation who may never experience a physical format of any kind.

It's tempting for those with vast CD collections to take a similar approach to the contemporary rise of digital music.

When we remember the unfettered excitement of a midnight album release (and the associated queues around the block they created) and then see the 'pilfering' of individual tracks from across the iTunes store filling out 'On-the-go' playlists with greatest hits, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine ourselves, at fifty something, plastered, pot-bellied and pie-eyed, across our own BBC Four programme, falling into the self-same traps as our fore-bearers.

Surely, one glance at any greatest album list published in the past 30 years would be enough to assuage any doubts about the album's continuing cultural significance.

Radiohead's paranoic distillation of millennial meltdown in 'OK Computer', The Strokes cathartic destruction of bloated, arse-end Britpop in 'Is This It?' and the romantic never world of hedonistic possibility The Libertines brought to 'Up The Bracket'; just three albums that, in their own, very different ways, successfully encapsulated the impact, appeal and artistic achievement of the best 'LP's of yore.

Radiohead, of course, were responsible for a defining moment in the digital music age, releasing the elegiac 'In Rainbows' as a download at the apparent drop of a hat.

This year, too, has already seen David Bowie unexpectedly release his first single in 10 years without anyone realising he was going to do so and My Bloody Valentine causing a twitter storm with the follow up to 'Loveless' released via their website.

The ease with which established artists can now make their work available is something to be cherished (even if it is questionable whether up and coming acts benefit from such a phenomenon - see Arctic Monkeys for a potential exception to the rule).

However, all examples appear to nod towards an as yet unseen potential for artistic expression and innovation afforded by the digital format. Without the restrictions of having to print artwork, surely the possibilities and scope are endless?

Rather than just an album cover and sleeve notes, why not a separate image for each track? Digital booklets are already a done thing but it feels like the tip of the iceberg and it doesn't just stop with artwork.

Perhaps - just as when LP's were first used solely for movie soundtracks, before artists like Dylan realised their full potential to be something much more - we too are in the fledgling era of today's digital format, waiting for somebody to utilise its possibilities, to create something that will in itself generate another paradigm shift in the development of the album, one as radical as that the LP catalysed some 60 years prior.

The only question is when and who?

We're waiting...