neil_r_

"perhaps in protest Billie should not use any electricity as it make come from the oil from Alaska. And it would shut him up..."

Yeah, that's a good response. Real good:

1) Billie Joe wasn't using any electricity made from Alaskan oil when he said those things. Not that I was there, I just, like, know what's going on in the world..

2) Oil from Alaska wouldn't be going to Australia. So he's not a hypocrite at all, really.

3) I don't know if you... errm, what's the right way of saying this... follow the news... but you should read things about Alaska and ANWR. By the way, do you know what ANWR is? That's all.

But yeah, carry on with the 'high and mighty' stuff. It looks good on you..

i think if anyone heard his last album, they'd be able to agree that the guy's suffering from exhaustion. he sounds so disengaged and bored of life on that record, i'm surprised he hasn't shot himself yet.

"If Eminem was English and came from Staines, he'd be called a chav. Just cos he's American he's held up as some sort of quasi-religious God. Overrated twat."

He's also the most important figure in pop-culture since Kurt Cobain, but then he was a bit of an overrated twat as well.

this post displays a strange preoccupation with faecal matter...

to be fair, this article was written when Conor was shit.

now, however, he's really good.

strange how that happened...

hi adam,

yeah that's cool. glad to hear it's coming along well.

neil

mmm, not sure. but then the libertines have done shitty rip-offs of many things

well, yeah. okay.

best pop song of the year, just ahead of 'Love Machine' by Girls Aloud. my brother's girlfriend says she's lost respect for me for liking that song.

she's not getting a christmas card.

hmmm. cambridge has christmas lights up now (including a pretty shoddy looking tree). i'm sure it's bad luck or something...

records: magnetic fields, sufjan stevens, annie, go! team, stereolab, wilco, julie doiron, the go betweens reissues, the low box set, devendra banhart, cocorosie and some others...

gig: the shins at somerset house, mercury rev at the cambridge junction, magnetic fields at the cambridge corn exchange

band: the shins, predictably enough

new band: bloc party/the research

label: domino/sub pop

radio: john peel. not listening to rob da bank on account of him having a stupid name. next year this category will be left blank

places: the king street run in cambridge. good jukebox

website: popmatters.com, pitchforkmedia.com, onion.com... the usual

resolution for 2005: to quit uni and therefore actually have some time to write for DiS

Brian,

Glad you liked the review. In terms of similar-sounding artists, there's a page on Splendid E-Zine compiling a list of people who share a similar muse.

http://www.splendidezine.com/departments/tdlt/tdlt111703.html

But my advice would be not to look too hard for Smith soundalikes (methinks there'll be plenty of those in the years to come). Artists such as Bonnie Prince Billy, Smog, James Yorkston, Adem, Cat Power, Magnetic Fields etc aren't really that similar in sound, but they are all distinctive because they're able to find their own takes on quite traditional genres. Which is something that Elliott did incredibly well.

Hope that helps.

Neil

i know what you mean, and i really did try to point out that this is not Elliott Smith's last will and testament, but I just can't see how i could've separated the review from the context of his death. i would've loved to do that, but then he'd have to be alive...

Well, at least this beats being slagged off for my Libertines review...

Jared, please... I DO understand that the grassroots of a party is different from those controlling it. Studying politics isn't always about having your head lodged up Plato's ass y'know.. However, I'm sure you understand that (as this government has proved so effectively ), those controlling the party are not necessarily beholden to those grass roots.

I have to say that I'm not too keen on this sniping about theory, or the insinuation that i'd much rather stroke my chin than do anything worthwhile. To use your own words, often 'prettle' leads to 'practice.' A guy called Antony Giddens writes a few books advocating a new form of politics called the "Third Way," and in a few years a young leader of the opposition changes the name of his party and uses this theory as the basis on which he wants to govern. A guy called Francis Fukuyama writes a book advocating the spread of "American values" across the globe. A few years later it gets siezed upon by some neo-con intellectuals as the basis to bomb the fuck out of the Middle East.

I know that decisions are made by those that show up, but sometimes those asking the most important questions *are* the ones watching from the sidelines. The Labour left doesn't really know where it's going (if it did, Blair would be in the dumper by now), and doesn't know exactly how to achieve its lofty ideals. So in the absence of that, I'd much rather learn my way around politics and theory so that when I do feel ready to 'show up,' i know i'll be making the right decisions.

I do really admire your commitment though - it can't be easy being a Labour activist at the moment.

i don't know...

since their election defeat in 1997, the liberal wing of the tory party has fought and failed to get their voices heard because the leadership believed it wasn't something that could get them to beat labour. they were right because labour IS the liberal wing of the tory party.

ever since the demise of tony benn from frontline politics and the rise of the SDP, the pervading thought amongst labour strategists has been that being left-wing won't win you power. and to be painfully honest, they're kinda right. the forces of the Daily Mail, Sun & Express are not to be messed with and combined, they can cripple any political party they choose to. and this puts the left in an impossible position.

believe me, i HATE sniping from the sidelines. i hate seeing successive governments fail to implement the radical social change that is needed to get people off the benefit lists, out of crime and into the kind of comfortable lives they deserve. but you're asking me to fall back in love with the past ideology of a party that has abandoned it in favour of cheap political points. and that puts me in an impossible position..

as you pointed out, i'm a cambridge student. the problem with this is that i'm exposed to too many political points of view. i can understand how the democrats can win the us election just as much as i can understand how the tories can win power. unfortunately, i'm being hit with so many points of view, that despite being a socialist at heart, what makes you think i wouldn't choose the same third way as Blair just to win power?

it's an impossible situation for me to be in..

some good points of course, but you're forgetting that over 1,000,000 people in London tried to do something about the Iraq war. people have signed petitions. written to their MP's. i've had friends arrested outside American airbases, trying to do something about it.

look what good all of that did.

you're right the only change that can occur is at the ballot box. but i for one (and it breaks my heart to say so) can't bring myself to vote labour in the next election.

the current labour government is morally bankrupt, and not just over the iraq war, but over tuition fees, blunket's authoritarian home office policy, immigration, its failure to make much progress on the environment, its failure to do enough in the way of helping the poor (and yeah, i know all the stuff about lowering child poverty/minimum wage), and for allowing the private sector to get its grubby hands on our schools & hospitals.

to make matters worse, almost everyone in a position of power is now a committed blairite, (Milburn, Milliband, Falconer etc) which ensures his centre-right, third-way bollocks could well continue long after he's gone.

i don't want labour to lose the election, but i do want them to take a battering. i want them to take such a battering that blair's forced out, the party realigns with its core support and gears up for a real fight for social injustice, not one based on the fudged compromise of socialism and free-market economics.

once that happens, we may see a party worth fighting for.

"How many terrorists that have killed Americans have been sheltered by Zimbabwae???
How many terrorists that have made attacks on mainland America have been protected by Zimbabwae??
How many suicide bombers have Zimbabwae sponsored or supported who have killed Americans???
NONE!"

*** Correct. Top marks. You spelt the country wrong, like, but we'll skim over that.

- How many terrorists that have killed Americans were sheltered by Iraq before the war?
- How many terrorists that have made attacks on mainland America were protected by Iraq before the war?
- How many suicide bombers have Iraq sponsored or supported who have killed Americans?
.... none! see, facts are fun!

"at any point in the last 12 years Saddam Hussein could have prevented what happened last year but refused."

how'd you figure that? he was told that if he didn't get rid of his WMD's, he'd be attacked. he didn't have WMD's. he couldn't destroy weapons he didn't have, now could he?

oh, and good luck with iran my friend. especially since as if you end up invading there as well, methinks you and all your friends will all be drafted into the military. then you can actually fight for what you believe in. i hear the food's excellent...

(sorry if this is at all condescending - i'm just a "lefty music journo who's really into this anti-establishment bollocks in a vague (i think you meant 'vain') attempt to make me look more intelligent than i am)

king adora doesn't "piss all over" thea gilmore. thea gilmore tears off her guitar strings and hangs each member of king adora individually...

or was that just a dream i had?

hurrah! rock snobs of the world unite!

ah, come on, the "Simply Red: Proper Indie And If You Like Franz Ferdinand And Don't Like Mick Hucknall Then We're Gonna Come Over There And Fart In Your Bedroom" article was months ago. Can't we just move on?

am i right in assuming you've never run a website for years whilst crippled with debt and the prospect of never making money?

how about... goldie lookin' chain are crap, the darkness are crap and jet are crap? add to that list the hives, keane, lost prophets, biffy clyro and the cooper temple clause and i've just about made 1,000,000 people hate me.

la-de-da

"Adam, I bet you weren't saying that last year before they hit bigtime"

So under that watertight logic, no-one disliked The Darkness, Coldplay, Keane, The Hives, The Strokes, The Libertines etc until after they became famous. No new bands are criticised. Ever.

Believing someone dislikes a band simply because they've been in The Sun one or two times is as 'primary school' as shoddy music journalism. Which, by the way, this review isn't.

couldn't be arsed to read all the posts on here. but every single band on the main stage that day should've been bottled off. not just the strange, pointless neo-metal band or bullet-ridden black guy.

the day was simply a pitiful parody of every Reading/Leeds since 2000. 50 Cent was displaying the worst in US hip-hop; Green Day were displaying the worst in US pop-punk. They're as bad as each other.

yeah sorry, that would be my fault. come back from florida exceedingly hungry & jet-lagged, go to shops, leave computer on, add one computer-illiterate mother who's trying to access her emails and poof! article deleted by the time you come back...

i was better off dodging hurricanes...

the problem with Kerry bringing that up is that it'd probably lose him a couple of thousand votes, 'cos then the republicans say "americans should be proud to defend this country from attack in its time of need" and that "kerry isn't willing to do everything to protect the country." he's in the position where playing himself as anything other than slightly more moderate than bush will see him losing the election. which is a shame, because kerry's supposed to be one of the most liberal politicians in the US.

whole world's gone mad. i'm moving to new zealand...

"What sacrifices have any of us non-military people made for this war?"

off the top of my head, the Patriot Act is a pretty big one, but I get your point.

there's a great website at http://costofwar.com that compares the amount that the Government have spent on the Iraq war against other things (both domestic and global) that desperately need attention. for example, the government could have provided health insurance for over 53,000,000 kids with the money that was spent on the war. of course, that's not fiscally responsible. but the war is.

great article by the way

there's a cover of the T-Rex song "Baby Boomerang" and a live version of "New Slang" featuring Iron & Wine. wouldn't know what they sound like though.

are you allowed to be one of the greatest hip hop groups if you've only made one great album?

plus, it's scientifically proven that a Wu Tang member makes a bad solo album every 2.4 months. not even the spice girls had that kind of success rate...

yep. "golden era" is the phrase that springs to mind. there've been some fucking great records this year...

whenever i heard the matthew sweet record, i kept thinking "teenage fanclub." that kinda put me off a bit. maybe i need to hear it again..

the AC Newman is utterly fantastic. it's literate and energetic and beautiful all at once. still, it's unfair to compare it to the excellent wilco, modest mouse records as they're completely different. and the shins album is a far, far more sophisticated beast...

just the fact that they were like pearl jam but not as good should make everyone smile lots...

good new bands are being formed everyday. bad ones are breaking up everyday. this makes me happy...

we can conclude from this sorry episode that whoever deals doherty his drugs hates music and loves racism. we should find this guy, put his head on a spike and parade it around london..

everyone should leave Sam from Sam & Mark alone. he's from barnsley. diss him and his parents'll come round and nut ye.

no, really...

glad this is finally up. it's honest, passionate & sincere. and i'm too much of an evil bastard...

vive la difference. or something..

neil

once almost got run over by a car with jean marie le pen in it. my own stupid fault for standing in front of it, really...

i think Billy Bragg once said that the problem with Morrissey was that he never really never got his politics sorted out; he has plenty of Oscar Wildean wit, but when it comes to the more difficult, hand-wringing aspects of social life, he does kinda struggle somewhat. sure, he hated thatcherism, but then he also distanced himself from the people he grew up with that were left broken & disposessed by thatcher.

that old NME article was dumb in the extreme. morrissey's most probably not a racist, and his comments about reggae being vile and hating stevie wonder are more to do with musical ignorance than anything else. the problem is, on songs like Asian Rut and Bengali Platforms ("oh shelve your western plans and understand it's hard enough when you belong here"), the lyrics *aren't good enough*. it's hard enough to write about politics as it is, and the fact that morrissey tackled it in such an oblique, overly-subtle, muddled and awkward way left him wide-open for such attacks. when you release art in public, you no longer control the meaning of it; people are going to interpret it how they see it.

but yeah... reclaim the flag, burn Nick Griffin in his home, vote on June 10th and never read the Daily Mail..

oh, and there's a new record coming out by AC Newman, which you should all buy..

to be fair, if you read my other articles, you'll find that i spend lots of time writing about stuff i love. it's just that this band makes me angry. that's all.

neil

the schoo's out thing has a really, shockingly good line-up. nice to see the trash cans given a stage where they'll be seen by more than three people.

marvellous review. this album is fucking outstanding. still seem to melt each time i hear "it's only time."

fuck that morrissey shit. stephin merrit eats the boy alive.

metaphorically of course...

i bought the greatest hits because i felt sad and nostalgic. i listen to the greatest hits when i feel sad and nostalgic. they hold absolutely no musical value whatsoever. but sometimes that's not what's important.

liking dizzee rascal gives adam the right to slag off any record released last year. and most of the records released this year. adam's music taste shows that he's willing to listen to any kind of music providing it's good. he doesn't think think the ordinary boys record is good. deal with it.

yeah, i also thought the references to Mansun, Sleeper and House of Love were a little out of date... ;)

mmm... i'd just say that Creation were the only British record label that typified the nineties (and a few years before). True, they signed some god-awful acts, and true, Poptones has largely gone into obscurity because of bad taste, but that doesn't detract from the fact that they were the last culturally-important label in Britain...

which is kinda sad when you think about it...

thanks for your kind words. but i do think it's only fair that someone on the site should get the chance to write about why they like the band. after all, this site's all about different opinions & stuff. but yeah, glad you liked it

but... i hate all the other stuff that's come out to capitalise on & emulate the strokes, just as i hate all the other stuff that's come out to capitalise on & emulate radiohead (ie keane). so you can kinda reconcile those comments...

the article's called "why i hate keane." it's one bloke's opinion. you can either agree or disagree. plus, i'm not saying because you like keane, you can't like the great stuff that's out there. i'm just saying that this shit is obscuring all the great stuff that's out there at the moment. i ain't judging anyone's taste. just saying i think it's fucking awful

yes. yes. there are thousands of bands in the world. hundreds of thousands even.

there are millions of people trying to make honest, passionate, sincere music. and who is it that's getting a huge, major-label budget to spread their pathetically formulaic indie-tripe? keane.

see... under your argument, no-one would write anything about any band apart from impartial reviews, and no-one would get excited or angry about music to the extent that they're moved to write about it. DiS is willing to do that. which makes it a decent alternative to the NME.

besides, the point is not "rising to the bait." the point is about having a debate. congratulations anyway. i'll go back to my ribena now..

the recent starsailor album wasn't actually that miserable.

it was just shit..

yeah, i think it's well known that "somewhere only we know" is actually a scathing critique of Trotsky's plans for world-wide revolution....

think the band tend to allign themselves more with the Stalinist left, to be honest...

next target is blatantly the kaisers. they're cool. people don't get awarded NME single of the week's for being devoid of talent/potential...

...unless you're the vines. or jet. or....

still, horray for DiS! I will drink wine tonight to celebrate (of course, i was gonna do that anyway. but now i have a reason)....

am i the only one who finds it rather odd that people are still responding to this news item *three years* after it was posted?

DiS news articles stand the test of time, clearly.

Interestingly, in his new record, Cee-Lo claims he can make a "blind man believe in the boogie." i wondered what your thoughts were on this.. do you agree, or is said "boogie" the sole privalege of those with fully-working retinas?

this review is outstanding. i'll even overlook the fact that i wanted to review this album! ;)