Sunday 25 October 2009

Englanding #7 : No Good Music

Oh, this is horrible man. I live in Japan for two years with a massively diminished connection to Western pop, rock and indie music and when I finally come back and watch a few shows on MTV2 that are about kinda popular new music I'm just... really, really disappointed.

I mean, I thought I had softened! I thought that I could just watch stuff now and it would kinda wash over me if I didn't like it. I check stuff out online and if it doesn't seem like it's up my street I kinda leave it in its box and go about my business. But I found myself getting more and more annoyed by the cavalcade of mediocrity, probably because I wanted to catch up and be turned on to things I've missed. But it turns out that Biffy Clyro, having briefly contemplated becoming half decent have gone back to sucking and have made a farcical pirate video.

There's this girl/band called Florence and the Machine who have just made an entirely unecessary cover of You Got The Love that sounds... well, like the original, but worse. I'm not writing them/her off coz I haven't checked out any of her self-penned stuff yet and that might rule mightily. I was more than bemused by the cover though.

After that there's loads and loads of bands mining the 80s for anything they can get their hands on, which is absolutely fine by me... but can't they make something interesting with their loot? It's like they're building this enormous stockpile of gems and gold and carved, jade pangolins with rubies for eyes and someone asks: "What are you going to make with all this stuff?" and they go - "Um, I dunno, maybe a coffee table?" A classy coffee table, of course. Christ everyone's trying to sound so fucking detached and "classy" all the time. The best thing I've seen on MTV2 has been Dizzee Rascal and he couldn't give three wise monkeys about being classy when it comes to nailing a track that you can actually pay attention to.

Of course as far from "classy" as you can possibly get, there's some new single from Cobra Starship who... oh man, I just want to grow as many arms as there are people involved in the making of that song so that I can punch all of them in the face at the same time. Even the girls.

EDIT : Oh, holy balls. I was just sitting here thinking - "Well, that's one of my weaker, whinier blog posts of recent times" when I realised that actually this is also my commemorative 500th blog post here. What a pathetic way to celebrate your anniversary. Well, at least this is motivation enough for me not to stop just yet, because this would be a sucky way to bow out.

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