Album review: Coldplay, Mylo Xyloto

I used to think Chris Martin was a soft student spokesperson for a new wave of indie music at the end of the nineties. Full of smiles, jokes and flawless interviews, he seemed to be the antithesis of everything Liam Gallagher stood for. I thought he had removed the rebellious heart and soul of rock and roll and stuck a giant Habitat display cushion in its place and I hated him for it.

I was, of course, jealous. I grew up in the same city as Chris Martin and watched the rise and rise of Coldplay through breakthrough album Parachutes, a collection of songs I initially dismissed as break up songs for middle class girls and bed wetting boys. A year later, I realised what a landmark album Parachutes was and every Coldplay album since has needed intense listening to decipher the euphoric layers of piano, strings and guitars that sit on top of simple, confessional lyrics that you can instantly get behind. X&Y may have been a Coldplay album which playfully sampled Kraftwerk and flirted with pop but Mylo Xyloto starts dancing on the way to the stage and waves a banner which reads ‘TUNE!’ before the music starts.

Mylo Xyloto arrives in blur of synth, beats and trippy tunes which are so pop, it’s like walking into G.A.Y when you meant to pop into Starbucks. It’s the biggest change for Coldplay in a decade and debut single Every Teardrop is A Waterfall is so catchy, it finally gives Chris Martin a valid reason to pogo around the stage and pause to shag his piano in time to the strobe lighting. Every Teardrop is a Waterfall is a sparkling European rave with squealing riffs and widescreen lyrics about cathedrals and waterfalls. It is to pop what Grammy-winning Clocks was to rock, twisting the epic dial to 11. The new Coldplay uniform of day glo basketball boots and paint splattered jeans reminds us of Jeremy Clarkson shopping in Shoreditch with Gok Wan but we can get over this because Coldplay have never been fashion icons to anyone.

New uniform aside, adding modern pop flourishes to the Coldplay template sounds terrifying. On paper, Coldplay going pop prompts fears of a Chris Martin fronting a Genesis style tribute band, waving glow sticks above a Yankee baseball cap propelled by a giant bottle of fair trade poppers while Jay Z moonwalks in time to Yellow. Thankfully the reality is different. We’ve been given pop that isn’t fronted by Biebers, Chipmunks or Playboy models at a foam party and pop that’s so easy to love, it will enter your iPod as easily as your dad’s Christmas stocking.

The Mylo Xyloto style of pop is fresh and original and hasn’t been overshadowed by the presence of Rihanna who guests on Princess of China and, free of auto tuned tweaks, sounds like a natural siren against a wall of synths. There’s snatches of samples you might expect Kanye West to offer Jay Z on a plate but for every hip hop sample, there’s a Coldplay chorus or cascading orchestra of pop which always takes centre stage, creating a strand of pop DNA undiscovered by Swedish dance producers, Lady Gaga or Calvin Harris.

At times, even the riffs on Mylo Xyloto go a bit pop: Major Minus begins as an aggressive acoustic strum before the whoop and thrust dance-rock fusion of Primal Scream arrives, evolving into shimmering U2 guitars. It’s the song that stunned Glastonbury 2011 and pissed on the fire that fellow headliner Bono tried to create for U2.

For all the epic and wholesale gobbling of the pop pill, it’s not all stadium bands that are influences on Mylo Xyloto. There’s short nods towards The Gossip’s brand of electrostatic lesbo stomp rock, Charlie Brown contains traces of The Gaslight Anthem and Up With The Birds sounds like a prayer which could have been made by any unsigned indie band. Hurts like Heaven starts with the frantic skip and finger clicks of Vampire Weekend or Jack Penate before hollow lyrics and a confusion of oriental riffs and familiar Coldplay chord structures turn sour. It’s a combo that falls flat next to the headline pop anthems which make up most of the album. Paradise is custom built for stadiums and festivals and sits on the face of traditional Coldplay acoustic songs, smothering the fragile, Parachutes-era Us Against The World.

Coldplay are always going to have an equal mix of lovers and haters but Mylo Xyloto is a great album. Surprisingly, Mylo Xyloto manages to bring back pop to everyone and isn’t fronted by auto tuned, factory farmed jailbait on an endlessly repeating X Factor conveyor belt. Coldplay have elbowed their way into the pop party and shared the love, producing original pop classics which, whatever your view of the band, deserves applause and, maybe, just maybe, a token wave of a glow stick.

Tags: coldplay, mylo xyloto, review

Album review: The Kooks, Junk of The Heart

I used to like The Kooks. I tolerated their Brit School heritage, whiny vocals and instant elevation to reality TV background music. I managed to ignore the fact that frontman Luke Pritchard dated women far more attractive than I could ever achieve, even though he resembled a beatnik Hobbit. They might have looked like a trampy Toploader but The Kooks could produce great pop.

The Kooks’ debut album Inside in/Inside Out was full of catchy melodies and dominated radio playlists and middle class picnics during the summer of 2006. Your mum listened to it while doing housework and your sister played it on Saturday night. Junk of The Heart, by contrast, is the soundtrack of your bed wet regret and your family want nothing to do with it. Just five years from their arrival and The Kooks have produced a soppy comedown album. Pritchard has admitted that parts of the album are inspired by his cocaine abuse and becoming self obsessed in the years following his success. The problem isn’t cocaine, however. Junk of The Heart sounds like it was written by a man smoking an oboe size bong, rambling about the fact that Mischa Barton dumped him before second base.

There’s electronic bits, orchestral strings to beef up skinny acoustic tracks and waves of melodic sadness and cryptic confessions. You imagine Pritchard considered sampling the sound of his own tears until his record label stepped in and slipped something more fun in his bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Bizarrely, the gritty Junk of The Heart album title is accompanied by ‘happy’ appearing in brackets on the track listing. The hapless record label probably did that too.

The album cover suggests a return to the  joyous pop of She Moves in Her Own Way. There’s a girl, arms aloft in aviators, blowing feel good vibes in your face. She hints at the joy of Glastonbury sunshine, tent sex and strawberry cider inhaled through novelty straws. So it comes as a surprise to discover there’s songs on the album called Fuck The World Off, Killing Me and Runaway. Even the new John Lewis advert has opted for 2008 single Shine On instead of this awkward mix of misery and experimental pop. Pritchard channels Chris Martin on a few songs but never manages to connect to our emotional mainframe or plant memorable tunes in our brains. Perhaps as a concession to the acoustic whine, we’re given Eskimo Kiss which talks about girls as roses, sunflowers and diamonds in Hey Jude style but by then it’s too late, we’ve heard enough self pity wrapped in drab B side songs about failed relationships.

Tags: junk of the heart, kooks, luke pritchard, review

Soundtracks Festival: Dalston to New Cross, Barbarella and House Party Massacare

Tags: barbarella, house party massacre, soundtracks festival

Why Amy changed music

I live In Camden and think that Amy was the greatest thing to come out of my borough. I moved to Camden when Back to Black hit the charts and lived round the corner from her house. I saw her falling through Camden High Street with rich kid hipsters, failed indie bands and anyone who wanted in for the ride. I saw loads of bands like that, some sold some records and some didn’t but on the scale of making a world changing album, only Amy managed that.

I saw Amy live a few times. Sometimes she was terrible, sometimes she was great. I could say the same about so many bands or acts that have turned up drunk, wasted or disinterested and been booed off stage while I waited to be entertained: Oasis at Wembley, Diana Ross in Vegas and, last month, Carl Barat at a corporate gig for journalists. But I know those people are great, I’ve seen them prove it before and I forgive their fuck ups because my record collection wouldn’t be the same without them and what little Amy put on record was incredible.

The loss of Amy is massive to music because she inspired everyone as well as writing her own incredible songs. The dark mix of failed bands that trailed her, desperate to appear in the papers or on a support slot, were just as bad as the rich hipsters and label marketeers who wanted to inject some glamour into their dull lives by living the life of a weekend rockstar and snorting coke with the tourists in the toilets of the Hawley Arms.

My commute often took me past Amy’s record label and I caught snippets of loud conversations from marketing types at the label, excited about new tracks from Amy that never came. As the months passed, their excitement turned to frustration and then to jokes. Recently, I often spend some time in a members club where I hear the same type of people talk about the excitement of Adele, then reference Amy as the blueprint for commercial success as a female artist. The pressure seems immense and while I’m sure Adele can handle the pressure from her label, there’s a line that needs to be drawn. Is it a good idea to play festivals in foreign countries if you’re tired, recovering from addiction and emotional? Isn’t that like checking out of the Priory and getting on the helicopter to Glastonbury?

When Babyshambles were on the bill at Reading festival, I sat backstage watching a group of thirty people carry someone into the enclosure. I assumed that they had passed out or been injured. But the person was conscious, drunk and being positioned for photos with strangers like a confused puppet. Then I saw the hat and realised. It was Pete Doherty. The similarities with Amy are obvious. Same bars, same fans, same hangers on.

Amy’s battle with drink and drugs isn’t unique but while she’s been paraded as part of a group of musicians who also died at the same age, it’s not the same age we live in. Keith Richards’ drug use wasn’t chronicled on a daily basis, he didn’t have 18 megapixel photos taken of his feet and discussed on mainstream news channels and no one said he was a fool for his personal relationships in the Sunday papers.

I’d like to think Amy didn’t give a toss about that, but she did and this isn’t an attack on the press or the public demand for instant celebrity gossip, it’s a question of how to protect someone vulnerable from the parts of society that can follow you, hound you and destroy you in an age of instant information and phone hacking. While most celebrities embrace security and bodyguards, Amy didn’t seem to have many, and walked around as freely as she liked, globe trotting superstar as a Camden wannabe. I don’t think she saw the difference between her and the musicians that followed her and turned to the wrong people for protection and love. I once met Pete Doherty in a Camden basement doing a sound check for a MySpace gig. I watched the sound check, had a drink with the band and then watched as the people on the guest list arrived. They didn’t know the songs, they had blagged their way in to see Kate Moss but Pete was oblivious in the same way as Amy and welcomed everyone.

Whenever artists talk about beating drugs, it’s with the help of the rest of a band, family or perhaps sobering up after witnessing the death of a friend. While Amy had her family, she had a legion of people who were along for the ride and wanted a bit of the tabloid action, a bit of the fame and a bit of her, hoping that the talent would rub off by association. But it didn’t. There’s members of those same bands that work in bars in Camden, famous for a festival season and their fashions but now back at the bottom of the pile. So many great bands have come to Camden to make it since the nineties but there’s a stack of failures who produce an image and sound for the label execs rather than music fans.

Amy made the music she wanted to hear. It just happened that the whole world wanted to hear it too. At the weekend, I took some flowers to her house and saw the biggest mix of music fans – crying teenagers, glum mothers and young children leaving their own crayon sketches behind. The signs of fans too cool for the media jamboree were left overnight, with booze trailing the gutters. I hope they make music for themselves and for Amy.

Tags: Amy winehouse

Jack White, John Paul Jones, Alison Mosshart join Seasick Steve at iTunes Live 2011

It happened last night at the Roudnhouse in Camden.  We were there. Thanks Apple. Amazing. More = iTunes Festival.

Tags: alison mosshart, itunes live 2011, jack white, john paul jones, roundhouse, seasick steve

How to make a music magazine cover without having an interest in music

Oasis have been on cover of Q 21 times. That’s almost two years of covers based on Photoshop feather cuts, Mancunian gurning, lots of exclamation marks and a fuckload of anoraks and leather jackets.

But if you think that’s impressive, what about the NME? Since 1993, they’ve managed a staggering 58 Oasis covers. Oasis released 7 albums. That’s almost a cover for every song. It’s not just Oasis, of course, there’s a selection of bands and acts which are as familiar to the cover of NME as Lady Gaga is to a BBC Radio 1 play list.

Caroline Sullivan from The Guardian said this in 2008…

“NME bands fall within very narrow parameters. In the 80s, the paper prided itself on its coverage of hip hop, R&B and the emerging dance scene which it took seriously and featured prominently – alongside the usual Peel-endorsed indie fare. Now, though, its range of approved bands has dramatically shrunk to a strand embodied by the Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles and Muse – bands who you don’t need specialist knowledge to write about and who are just ‘indie’ enough to make readers feel they’re part of a club.”

It’s not a problem unique to the NME, of course – there are plenty of music magazines looking for a safe route for sales in order to compete with established and growing classic rock magazines like Mojo and Classic Rock. It’s inevitable that people use the internet as a source for new music advice but isn’t there something great, alternative and satisfying about seeing a new band in print, given a cover and written about as a story rather than a press release? Once you sell magazines on the basis of your cover band alone, you lose what the magazine represents to the readers in terms of voice, style and message. And if you’ve lost that, you’re just helping sell a band alongside a record label….

How do you make a music magazine cover?

1. Create the cover shoot

Look at who sold the most covers last year and call their label. Check that they’re spending money on advertising with the woman in the advertising department. Double check with the Publisher before calling the label. Call the label. Suggest the angle, demand a shoot outside the recording studio in Santa Monica and get label to pay for a vinyl single on the cover and a week in LA. Double check that they’re still advertising – if you can’t reach advertising, try Claridges reception and ask for the advertising woman by name. Confirm the cover feature with Coldplay management. Fly to LA with PR. Do not shag PR or disgrace The Company. Dress Chris Martin in teddy outfit and tie the band up in a chair in line with the shooting brief on the Art Editors napkin. Ask Coldplay to stand by the Hollywood sign. Stick (joke shop) dynamite in mouth of the quiet one. Make sure the good looking one is at the front and the drummer is fading in the shadows. Ask the photographer to take a picture. Show picture to PR. Send picture to Art Editor for approval. Agree to delay/pull/forget review of the album in the magazine if the score is below 8 or includes the phrases ‘disappointing’, ‘average’ or ‘not as good as the last album’.

2. Choose the colour

Ask the Art Editor what the colour of the week is. Read Filter magazine from Los Angeles and check that they’re doing the same thing. Sniff fingers, look at cover from a distance, look at cover close up. Change colour, change colour again and then go for lunch. Show cover to the Editor of a golf magazine at your company, watch him nod sagely, suggest another colour and then loudly discuss your LA trip in front of the people waiting for their Meatball Marinara in Subway. Change colour based upon the words of the golf magazine Editor.

3. Pick the headline for the cover based (loosely) on the interview

Read the Coldplay interview. Find the bit where Chris Martin talks about his fondness for vinyl, Pot Noodles and Carling when on tour. Turn this into an appealing and tabloid sell – ie: “Coldplay go retro, eat junk and get wasted in LA”.

4. Look for the new, reprint the old

See what’s in the issue, then ignore it. Check NME.com for the most popular stories that week, check Twitter for trends and then speak to the writers about who’s hot and who’s not. Ignore writers. Have a look at trends on Spotify. Listen to the charts. See if any big albums are celebrating their tenth, fifteenth or twenty fifth anniversary and make a cover line around that, dragging some copy from the archives or enlisting an alcoholic hack from back in the day that needs to pay his council tax. Make it look new by asking Matt Bellamy to pass comment on the historic album, his new album and sharing a toothbrush with Kate Hudson.

5. Create a campaign

See what’s going on in the world of your readers and exploit it. Student riots? Excellent. Recession? Shit, yeah. Politics? Amazeballs! Engineer your magazine to be the champion of the cause. What cause? That doesn’t matter! What about music? Fuck music, it doesn’t have to be about music. Ken Livingstone (NME), Lara Croft (Melody Maker) and Cheryl Cole (Q) have made music covers, man.

6. Call Bono

Why? It’s in your contract. His company Elevation Partners funds your salary, you shit. His label buys more advertising than anyone else too. Ask him about a new band at which point he’ll talk about his band. Do not mention tax, platform boots or the chart position of the last U2 single.

7. Use the words ‘win’, ‘free’ or ‘sex’

Use all three of these words on the cover if you can, as it will help sales at Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

8. Include a Top 20 listing

Stick a chart of some kind on the cover. Count the number of interviews in the issue. If you have 16, claim the four quotes in the news section are interviews and round it up to ’20 Exclusive Interviews’. Boom!

9. Call yourself the ‘biggest’, ‘best’ or ‘greatest’

If you sell more than your rival, call yourself the ‘best-selling music magazine in the world’. If you don’t, claim you’re the ‘biggest’ which is vague but could actually refer to the amount of pages you have if lawyers get involved. If you don’t sell anything, just say you’re the ‘best’ or name the year your magazine started for some heritage props.

10. Call Bono again

Tell him you need him to guest edit the magazine and turn it into a collector’s issue.

Tags: Glastonbury festival 2011, NME, U2

Rock & Folk magazine unearthed in Paris

Rockhack visited Paris last week and discovered vintage rock magazines, the likes of which you have never seen before. Ladies and gents, we give you Rock & Folk from 1979…

Keith Richards as Al- Qaeda Liam Gallagher?

Yes, that's Freddie Mercury signing a bum

Bose ads didn't always look great...

Music magazines used to carry ads for instruments rather than hair gel in 1979

Tape porn for audio enthusiasts

Look at that effect on the poster. Crazy colours, non?

Keith was never great at passport photos

This is how you dance to get the sex

This is what speakers used to look like, before iPod docks

Hi-Fi was a serious (and big) business

A 1979 Hi-Fi resembled a recording studio...

Tags: french rock, keith richards, rock & folk

Gig of the month: The Leisure Society – Union Chapel

So our friends at SeeGigFilmGigPost produce some great videos. They’ve helped Mumford & Sons gather around half a million views on YouTube alone and have millions of total views over the last couple of years. It’s the type of thing major music websites should be doing alongside the BBC but we digress…

Tags: The Leisure Society, Union Chapel

UK music festivals explained in a sentence

Glastonbury Festival: 180,000 Guardian readers visit a 24 hour agricultural playground full of organic cider, scousers, sniffer dogs, Oxfam volunteers on pills and the best and worst music in the world.

Reading Festival & Leeds Festival: 90,000 emo infused fratboys, classic rockers and chunky trainered metal rapists stalk a debauched clusterfuck of freshers and rock and roll wannabes sharing a giant bottle of poppers.

V Festival (Chelmsford): 90,000 festival virgins go wild in a sponsored wonderland of Essex slags queueing to see Pixie Lott or buy a Bounty  while Dave Grohl does a secret acoustic set.

Isle of Wight Festival: 90,000 semi-naked cock-swinging locals, antipodean jester hats and sunburned mid-life crisisers go all hedonistic disco and start the world’s biggest stag/hen party to help the council combat inbreeding via mainland sperm/egg donors.

Guilfest: 25,000 people join an awkward beer festival where failed bands go to die and dead bands come to life among comedy tents and middle class children getting face-painted.

Bestival: 30,000 muddy Match.comers and gays enter the last chance saloon for 6Music types who like to dress up as dolphins and dance to Flaming Lips songs, aged 42.

Beach Break Live: 18,000 students plus 2000 thirtysomething cradle-snatchers get together for a Fisher Price festival where you fuck in fancy dress in time to Calvin Harris and get rippped to the tits on Red Bull and Maltesers.

Download: 100,000 Subway sandwich producers ditch the Xbox and go to a field to seek daylight, tattoos, pale breasted virgins and a Fred Durst autograph.

Glade: 5000 drug dealers from Clapham attempt to cover their ticket costs by selling fake E to each other in the dark.

T in the Park: 80,000 Scotsmen cook crack and drink whisky in tents made out of Morrissons bags while Kasabian play to tourists in the rain.

End of The Road Festival: 5000 Ryan Adams fans gather to hear country music, bitch about their jobs, discuss the books they studied at university and ask people to attend their pub gig next week.

Beautiful Days: 12, 000 crusties attend a job seekers jamboree curated by The Levellers, designed to shift the annual crop of weed grown in neighbouring garden centres in Devon.

The Big Chill: 30,000 public relations lice consume carrot batons, Elderflower Presse mixed with vodka and bad cocaine in a bid to network and expense booze provided to music bloggers looking to penetrate them backwards.

All Tomorrow’s Parties: 5000 creatives head to Butlins for a festival with walls rather than tents and chin-stroking rather than sex while hungover Britpoppers weep to the sounds of Belle and Sebastian.

Jersey Live: 10,000 islanders attend the imaginatively named festival in a bid to rob slack-jawed bakers doing air guitar to Paul Weller.

Latitude: 25,000 introverted indie kids attend a budget Glastonbury so their girlfriends can listen to Paolo Nutini and get drunk enough to administer a titwank before bed – may contain thieves.

Buy tickets

Tags: ATP 2011, Beach Break Live 2011, Beautiful Days 2011, Bestival 2011, Download 2011, End of The Road Festival 2011, Glade 2011, Glastonbury festival 2011, Guilfest 2011, Isle of Wight Festival 2011, Jersey Live 2011, Latitude 2011, Reading Festival 2011, T in The Park 2011, The Big Chill 2011

Nice shoes, ladies…

While Zadig & Voltaire have Mosshart and Hince as poster boy and girl for their clothing range and Burberry use emaciated pirate tramps Razorlight 2.0 for Christmas e-cards, AllSaints have done something a bit different in a bid to link their fashions with music.

They’ve set up AllSaints Basement Sessions, which is basically a series of unplugged gigs with the likes of Warpaint and The Futureheads. The tracks, videos and interviews are all free to view as you peruse dark desert boots and skinny jeans. It’s like a little bit of Jools Holland without the fluff or rubbish suits. Obviously everything is a little bit darker – there’s no Lenny Henry passing comment on Muse, for example. It’s the kind of stuff BBC 6Music would do if the BBC were allowed to spend money on covering new music, not lunches at the Ivy for Chris Moyles.

Tags: allsaints basement sessions, warpaint