The reason is quite simple. I have quite a simple view on this, which is that I fall squarely into the pro-choice camp. What that also means is that in the end I have no say in the matter. I am pro-choice, and I believe that this choice is one for the woman to make. End of story. A man can have his say, and I believe that where possible should be part of the discussion, but the final decision rests with the woman. But perhaps I should expand on that a bit, lest this become the shortest Cross Blog yet.

The first thing to say is that obviously my lack of religious faith does affect my judgement on this, because I do not believe that ‘life’ is some mystical miracle bestowed by God, and as such I have no moralistic argument against the act of abortion. At the end of the day during the period in which abortion is freely available I see the foetus as exactly that. There is potential there, but this is not a life yet, not a sentient being. In many ways this is an extension of the mother still, and as such the decision on how to proceed is down to the mother. This is my opinion. I am man enough to admit that this is a highly complex issue with no one right answer. And this is where I believe the argument becomes bogged down. Because amongst the Pro Life camp, the argument always seems to be that pro-choice means pro abortion. Which is quite frankly a ridiculous position to take.

Of course I am not pro abortion. I think that every single time an abortion happens it is a tragedy, and I do see it as a potential life ended. I don’t think you will find many people in the Pro Choice camp who think that abortion is an easy thing for a woman, or a family, to undertake. But what I do think is that it is a personal choice. If you are pro life and do not think that you should have an abortion under any circumstances then I am fully behind you making that choice for yourself. As someone expecting their second child I don’t think I could ever came to a decision to do it either. My problem comes when you try and force that decision onto someone else.

Pro choice, the clue is in the title. It means that everyone is free to make their own mind up, and in a free and secular society I have problem with anyone making the choice that works for them. I would hope that anyone who makes that decision would think through all the possibilities before they make that decision, but at the end of the day that is still their choice, and once they make that choice they should be free to follow through on that decision without fear of harassment or judgement.

Of course we on the decidedly more left wing pro-choice aisle have a tendency to demonise the often extremely religious Pro Life camp, and as with anything else there are of course a range of opinions on this issue that are quite moderate and understanding, but as is so often the case on the right they are drowned out by the craptastically insane fringe who think that they are messengers of a vengeful god sent to kill doctors, with no sense of irony at the prospect of being a pro-life person who kills people. The fact that doctors can find themselves having their lives taken away by people purporting to be defending the sanctity of life itself goes so far beyond irony as to be beyond sense.

If there’s one thing that’s left to be said on this issue, is that it is no laughing matter, unless you happen to be a lot smarter than me. So for my final word I will leave you with the thoughts of one of my heroes, who says it all so much better than me.

Now let’s all go over to Gray’s house and see what he thinks. If you want to get involved contact us in the usual places with some thoughts on what you want to see us mouth off about.

It is telling that when we received the suggestion for this weeks topic the question that was actually asked of us was: ‘Is global warming fact or fiction?’ The very fact that is even remains a legitimate question to ask in this day and age, when every credible scientific investigation into the subject has come back with the same answer, and all you have on the other side is politically minded rhetoric and flat earth Neanderthal journalism is quite frankly enough to make me want to go on some kind of rampage through the streets. I could strip naked and paint myself in woad, and wield some kind of axe. That would be good.

I’ll try and resist the urge to just type the word ‘FACT’ in big bold letters again and again until my website looks like something written by Jack Nicholson in the Shining. But I do find it remarkable that this debate even exists in modern society, and I think it represents final evidence that science is no longer held to be the bastion of perceived wisdom that it was for me when I grew up. Last week BBC showed an episode of Panorama about this very topic called ‘Science under Attack’ (which you can watch here if you actually want some of that there ‘evidence’ that scientists like to use and you are based in the UK or are clever enough to get around such geographical rules) which made the point that in today’s information age the idea of truth has lost its value. Everything is debatable, nothing is fact and all voices are equal out here in Internet land, meaning that you can search for global warming on Google and find equal representation given to both the scientific evidence, and the kind of people who believe that they require tin foil on their heads in order to keep the government thought control out.

While this is certainly true, I think that a lot of the reason that the global warming argument has failed to convince is that some of the people who deny it are not the internet crazies, but rather the kinds of people you would expect to be well researched and not cuckoo for caca , like politicians and journalists. Of course we all know the Mail and the Telegraph, the Tea Party and UKIP are collectively as balanced and sane as a convention of people who like to smear themselves in excrement while listening to Phil Collins and drinking month old milk, but that’s because you dear readers of this blog are intelligent, not to mention attractive and pleasant smelling. But this message doesn’t seem to have gotten through to everyone for some reason.

So the truth remains under attack on a constant basis, despite the very best evidence they can call on is the fact that a researcher failed to label ONE graph correctly. So they just keep quoting each other over and over, their delusions becoming like a self fulfilling prophecy.

So where does that leave us? Well for my generation it doesn’t really matter a shit, I suspect, unless the finite resources of this planet we call home start to fail over the course of our lifetimes. This is why it is so easy for our generation to ignore it all, mumbling excuses about recessions and deficits and if the economy was better, all the while the situation seems to be becoming ever less reversible with time. As individuals we’re all very good at putting stuff off until the last minute, and this doesn’t feel like the last minute yet, and it probably won’t be until the waters are lapping at our ankles that we will start to think about seriously acting.

But I digress. The question which started all this off was ‘Global Warming, fact or fiction?’ Well to be honest I doubt very much that if you are reading this you have yet to make up your mind. If you agree with me then excellent, and if you disagree with me in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence then it’s not really very likely that my hastily constructed thoughts on this are going to to sway you. But as much as I believe that the answer to that is firmly the former, I have to ask, what does it matter? If there is even the remotest possibility that the actions we take now impact on the environment around us and potentially damage the world we hand down to the next generation and the generations after them, don’t we owe it to them to at least try and stop that from happening?

In an age of austerity and financial uncertainty the environmental agenda gets lost in the mist somewhere, but that is a huge opportunity missed. Changing to a green world will cost a lot of money, yes, but that money will go to jobs and industry that will fuel this change, and provide the next generation with the infrastructure of renewable energy and sustainable long term growth, as well as technological advances. It will make the air cleaner, reduce our reliance on foreign oil (which will also help to deal with certain of the tensions in the area that the oil itself comes from) and even if global warming turns out to be a massive fabrication will ensure this generation leaves the planet in better shape than we found it.

Successive generations have had things they can be proud of, from the industrial revolution, the birth of democracy, the defeat of fascism, the invention of popular culture. We are seriously in danger of missing the opportunity that is at our feet at the moment, and with every stalled world conference, blown treaty or even right wing attack we make it that much harder for the generation that comes after us (which incidentally, doesn’t seem to want to go to bed tonight, perhaps she senses the huge burden that will fall on her shoulders. Maybe not, it could just be that I shouldn’t have given her any chocolate this evening) to pick up our mess.

Put it this way. If science is wrong, we get massive benefits if we follow their advice. If the Daily Mail and all the nutters out there in crazyland are wrong, they could well spell the and of civilization itself. Perhaps just this once we should err on the side of caution?

Anyway, that’s my thoughts. Now let’s all pile on over to see what Gray makes of it all.

Where to start? The big society is supposed to be about empowering the people of Britain to rise up and help solve the problems they feel are important. People power. Taking our country back from that ‘orrible lot wot have ruined it. The wet dream of cabbies and Daily Mail readers up and down the country. What it is in actuality is a cloak, a justification for the most radical cuts program this country has seen in modern times, and an ideological attack on the state system. Which if you think about it is proably the wet dream of cabbies and Daily Mail readers up and down the country.

The savagery of the cuts agenda being pressed by the new Coalition Government has been shocking and completely unprecedented. That most of the cuts and top down reforms were nowhere to be seen in the manifestos of either party in the election means that it is also without any mandate. For supporters of the Liberal Democrats the U-turns so far on education and other policy areas have led to uproar amongst the ranks of their supporters. But it should not just be Lib Dem voters who should be upset by the actions of their elected party, I think Conservative voters have also been lied to on an unprecedented scale. In the run up to the elections David Cameron pledged to keep the EMA, winter fuel payments, and the pension credit, all of which are now being axed. The depth of housing benefit cuts and cuts to disability and other services were likewise never mentioned in the run up to the election, and threaten the lives of huge swathes of the most vulnerable in our society.

Then we get to the NHS, which Cameron pledged to defend and ringfence payments to (indeed it was his championing of the NHS that finally won over some of the marginal seats he so desperately craved and marked him out as different from the Thatcher era Conservatives) before this week announcing reforms to the whole of the NHS that have healthcare professionals “seriously concerned” about “unnecessary risks” which are “damaging” and “potentially disastrous”. Not my words Lynn, but the words of top healthcare professionals in an open letter to The Times.

None of which is news any longer. The continual rolling wave of cut after cut has led the news media and the general public both to start acting like a bewildered and punch drunk boxer, stumbling around looking at the newest punch to land and never getting the chance to stand off and get a breather and look at what this all means to the country as a whole.

All the while Cameron and the Tories (and indeed some Lib Dems who have really signed off on the whole thing) get to stand around and do two things. Firstly they talk about the mess they inherited from the old government. This is utter fallacy, and why Labour do not call them on it I have no idea. The massive deficit is down to the bank bailout, full stop. The bank bailout fully supported by all of the then opposition. But they keep using the line any time they are questioned on the effects that any of these cuts will have, talking in grave tones about why they have no choice after the mess they inherited.

The other day I saw puffy faced George Osbourne on the news talking about how he knew how difficult the cost of living increases would be on ordinary people in the face of such drastic cuts. In between my howls and bellows of incandescent rage which led me to turn my living room table into kindling I did have time to wonder exactly George would know anything about tough times, given the fact he has probably never wanted anything in his life that wasn’t then immediately handed to him by an eager and willing nanny/butler/civil servant.

The other trick they have up their sleeve is to talk about their marvellous new toy, the ‘Big Society.’ What this boils down to in essence is that if the Government moves away from providing certain services then a mix of rich philanthropists and entrepreneurs will step in and fill the void, along with more community minded folks willing to lend a little bit of time. This is based in part on the more American approach (which we all know works perfectly and without a hitch, social equality being what it is over there) and also a nice dream David Cameron once had while gorging at the Bullingdon Club function about how it would be lovely if all the poor people who occasionally brought him his dinner just looked after themselves instead of complaining about things, while one of the very same poor person polished his knees with their tongue.*

So will this work? Well of course not. There are several problems with this theory. For one thing, even if there is a wealth of the wealthy and the concerned to step up (and we’ll come to that in a moment) the sheer scale of the cuts inevitably means that areas will get neglected in the pick up by the big society. Say you want to get into the Big Society, what are you going to do? Start one of Michael Gove’s free schools perhaps. Or perhaps you’ll take over the library that just got closed down the road. Or maybe you might want to fund the rape crisis centre that just lost its funding. But then again you might just want to put some money into one of the local art schemes that can no longer rely on the Government. Or any of the hundreds of other schemes we are told we just cannot afford. Oh, and while you are at it, perhaps you might want to try and hire some new staff to ‘take up the slack’ of all those young people out of work, or those ex public service workers that have just been let go. There is just too much to expect people to do.

So even in a culture where the really concerned are suddenly going to give up their time and money to help those less fortunate, certain things are going to find themselves like the kid who doesn’t have a chair when the music stops. Maybe the library in the leafy suburb gets help, and the arts funding for the local kids is ok. These are nice, happy things for people to get involved in. But what happens to those areas where it’s not quite so nice and happy for people to boast about their involvement around the dinner party table. What about areas like domestic abuse, drug abuse, care for the severely disabled? It doesn’t seem quite so likely that with so many good causes needing help that these slightly grubbier ones will get the focus they deserve.

But again, for the sake of argument, lets say that a philanthropic type decides to get involved in their local drug rehabilitation centre. Is this really who we want dealing with some of the most vulnerable people in society? I would personally be a lot happier in the knowledge that these services are being run and coordinated on a large, national scale by professionals who have the expertise to do so and are being paid accordingly. People who work with the most vulnerable parts of society, the addicts, the battered, the orphans, the disabled, the mentally ill and the homeless do jobs that are more difficult than you or I will ever really know, and for the most part they are paid relatively little for the pleasure. Now Cameron and Co think that huge amounts of them should find other work and their roles should be filled by those who are doing it on a whim, because they want to feel better about themselves. How exactly is that meant to make things better?

The other thing to note about the Conservatives ideas here is that in some ways they are not anything new. There have long been volunteer groups, charities and philanthropic types in our society, and they have an important part to play. It is interesting to note that the Conservatives think they have somehow invented this notion, when it has long been going on already. Of course a lot of established ‘big society’ type ideas are already in existence, but are being threatened by the very same cuts agenda that is stripping government services. Remember the Bonfire of the Quangos What do you think most of these outside groups were there to do, if not to help put the right help in the right places.

The question is not that these people exist, of course they do, but the question is whether there are enough people who are willing or able to contribute to such an extent as to pick up all the slack from all these cut services, which is of course a nonsense. One need only look at the levels of tax avoidance from those in the highest earnings brackets to see that by and large the wealthy do not want to play in making the country a better place. These ideas are nothing more than a shield to hide behind when wielding the axe.

If you believe as I do that these cuts the country are going through are motivated more by an ideology than by necessity, then the Big Society is the ideology that they are trying to install, a total reduction in the power and scale of the state that goes well beyond anything that Thatcher ever tried, with a badly thought out replacement that smacks of the public schoolboy naiveté that just does not stand up in the real world. It seems to me to be an utterly failed prospect, and is an experiment that plays with not just huge swathes of the public sector but the lives of hundreds of thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society.

It is condescending in the extreme to suggest that all the poor really need is a bit more community spirit, The history of this country is one where we look after those who need the help, by giving help where we can, and trusting that when we cannot that the state will pick up the slack. If Cameron and Clegg get their way, that may very well be a tradition that is about to come to an end.

*Possibly not actual events

So that’s my take on this, rambling and bile filled as it might be. Maybe I’m wrong and David Cameron really is the harbinger of a new Utopian dawn. And maybe Melanie Phillips isn’t a hate filled crazy person who thinks that children are being taught gay maths. Anything is possible. Now, let’s head over to see what Gray thinks of it all eh?

Some of you may remember the Cross Blogination series that I did with the now famous-on-the-internet Twitterthon hero Gray, also known as @diaryofaledger. If you don’t you can look back on some of the old posts I did for it here. Well, after taking 2010 off completely, we have decided to bring it back, but rather than doing music we figured that being such erudite and well versed chaps as we are, and our opinions so respected across this globe of ours we should knuckle down and really put the world to rights, and tackle some of the burning issues of the day. Unfortunately this means I don’t get to work on making Gray a full on metalhead, fight dancing to Pig Destroyer, but it also means I don’t have to listen to any more whingey Australian folk pop, so everyone’s a winner. For the first in the new series I suggested that we maybe tackle something low key, non-controversial, easy to manage. Gray agreed, and so we have decided to tackle religion. Because that never gets anyone in trouble.

What makes religion so interesting to me is that no matter how many people you talk to you will never find two entirely identical opinions on it. I myself have changed my mind on the subject on a number of occasions, which I think is probably the healthy thing to do, but because religion and faith are such personal subjects, albeit ones that shape so much of the world around us, I thought it might be interesting to share my own take on it, such as it is, and before I change my mind again.

When I was a small and insolent child I went to a boarding school in the middle of nowhere. I was seven years old and while not overly religious I think I did believe in God, although my parents probably never really pushed the notion on me, neither of them being hugely taken by the arguments pushed onto them as children. The school I went to was very religious though, like most of the public school system, and I think at first I was swept up in the majesty of the tales, the righteousness of the arguments, the gothic splendour of it all. For the first few years I pored over the ‘good book’ and attended prayer meetings and all the rest of it. The school pastor must have been very pleased with me and the handful of other interested children who trailed behind him on a Sunday morning. I may have been very young, less then ten, but I was devout.

Then all of a sudden I just stopped believing any of it. It all just stopped making sense to me, no more than a few years after I saw through the myth of Santa. Looking back on it now I don’t think there was any great moment of conversion, but somehow I found myself sitting in assembly and the thought struck me, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ It was liberating, even then. When I confronted the pastor about my concerns he switched from calling the book ‘the word of God’ to being ‘a guide’ and I stopped believing in any of it, especially the crazy old testament stuff about not killing people, you know, unless they did something even remotely out of line, like eating a pig. Pigs are fucking tasty.

For many years I skated around the realms of agnosticism, and had many encounters with those who tried to lure me back to the church. When I went to my next school, in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral and as hardcore as the CofE gets, I remember a Priest discussing theology withe me and assuring me he would never try and convert me, and then spend the next three years trying to do exactly that.

Over the past few years my agnosticism has hardened into a certainty that can only be called Atheism. Before I was uncertain about faith no matter how much I distrusted the institutions of religion, but now it all seems so obvious that faith is just the brain trying to make sense of that which does not neccesarily make sense. If I have faith it is in scientific exploration, which takes nothing on faith and considers nothing truth unless it has been peer reviewed. I like that, but I am not ashamed to admit there is a part of me that perhaps misses my uncertainty. Five years ago there was still a chance I may have gone back to the dark side, but that seems a dim possibility now.

The problem with the so-called new atheism, of which I am a big fan, is that to the outside it looks every bit as fundamentalist as the extremist religion it wants to tear down. This is because certainty is an entrenched position, and while we are more well stocked than the religious extremes when it comes to logic, I do understand to a small extent that part of people that clings onto uncertainty. I miss the part of me that used to decry religion with one breath and the next was cursing the sky in a strong wind, imploring a deity I had no belief in to give me a fucking break. But for me the ability to converse with people who (dis)believe as I do was a liberation, and allowed me to drop the last vestiges of agnosticism that I think may have kept out of a reluctance to appear too militant. Back before people used to talk openly about it I really thought I was a bit weird for having these views, and it’s lovely to know I’m not. Well, not for this, anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, if you choose to believe in a benevolent magic zombie with crap superpowers (no x ray vision, no flying, limited regenerative powers) then I don’t think you are stupid, and you are perfectly entitled to think that. I’m not asking you to agree with me. Just don’t ask me to agree with you.

Now, let’s all go and see what Gray has to say on the matter. Hopefully we’ll be bringing this back full time, so I’m sure we’ll be working out all the details over the next week or so over at ‘the Twitter.’ And for any newbies who are here from Gray’s place, welcome, put your feet up, have a brew, and feel free to drop by the comments.

Josh Homme. You probably know him as the guy from Queens of the Stone Age. Or maybe you know him as that fella who is not as famous as the other two guys from Them Crooked Vultures. But to me, he will always be that Ginger Elvis guitar player from the greatest Stoner band to ever have lived, Kyuss.

I got this album on the recommendation of Kerrang! Magazine, back in the day when you actually used to do things like recommend old albums that are awesome, rather than touting the new emo boyband. I was on holiday and bored, so I went to HMV and purchased this, then went home to sit in the back garden with a book, and stuck my headphones in.

What was to assault my ears was to change my music tastes forever. Right from the start, when the riff from ‘Gardenia’ kicks in, nothing I had ever heard before could have prepared me for ‘that’ guitar sound, which was roughly akin to having treacle poured into my ears. Rich, warm, heavy as a motherfucker, I don’t think I’ve reacted so primally to album before or since. And that was even before the dulcet tones of John ‘The Voice’ Garcia swept over, with his stream of consciousness meandering lyrics.

But if the first song on this album is staggering in its excellence, it is nothing compared to the next two tracks. ‘Asteroid’ is a crushingly heavy instrumental that sees Josh Homme showing exactly why Kyuss fans will never be entirely satisfied with his subsequent output. Marrying Mogwai like subtlety to the biggest riff ever written, it’s like being battered around the head by a balloon filled with custard in a sensory deprivation tank. And track three, the excellently titled ‘Supa Scoopa And The Mighty Scoop’ brings back Garcia to what can only be described as the perfect distillation of Black Sabbath and the Doors, with false endings stretching out the joy to the point where you can’t help but giggle.

The album itself is structured as three separate acts, with these three tracks serving as the first. I could wax lyrical all day about the other seven tracks on offer here, but then I will be here all day. Safe to say that the quality never lets up here, from the punk fuzz of 100%, to the seven minute epic sprawl of ‘Space Cadet’ (seriously Josh, when was the last time you wrote something that good? Please do so again) where Josh and bassist Scott Reeder jam out something as close to perfection as makes no odds, to ‘Demon Cleaner’ which is a gloriously laid back fuzzed out pop song. Or the crushing weight of ‘Odyssey’s riff, or, well, pretty much the whole album.

If you’ve never heard Kyuss, but you like Queens of the Stone Age, or really any rock music, I beseech you to search this out, as well as the other Kyuss albums (well, maybe except Wretch, which is a bit shit in truth) and enter the collosally heavy world of Californian Stoner rock.  You wont regret it, and don’t worry, you need take no substances to enjoy it properly (although if you are of that persuasion, this album gets ten times better still when you are high.)

Now, don’t forget to go and see what Gray thinks of this!

Once again Cross Blogination rolls around and provides me with another album that initially makes my heart sink.  The name of the band, ‘Death Cab For Cutie’ is unassailably emo, right? And aren’t they one of those bands who continually show up on the soundtrack to The OC and Dawson’s and The Hills?

Well thankfully I slip Narrow Stairs into my headphones and find instead a tremendous album, one that melds together the very best parts of American and British indie sensibilities to create a timeless, off kilter album. Opener ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’ starts things off with a bright breezy feel, like early Fountains of Wayne mixed with the off kilter rhythms of Deus, with the song referencing the works of Jack Kerouac.

Second track (and brave lead single) ‘I will possess your heart’ opens with a jam reminiscent of Kid A-era Radiohead (also check out the front cover for more Radiohead influence), before sneaking up to a sizable chorus that packs heft that one wouldn’t expect from such fey indie types.

Vocalist and songwriter Ben Gibbard holds together all the dissonant parts of the album with his excellent vocals, clean and bright and emotive without ever straying into the hackneyed bleating of his peers.

‘No Sunlight’ is a lovely piece of American pop, again recalling the sensibilities of Fountains of Wayne, with a hint of Ben Folds songwriting. ‘Cath’ is wistful and melancholy without being downbeat, ‘Talking Bird’ is a lovely Elliot Smith by way of Jeff Buckley number, while ‘You Can Do Better Than Me’ recalls the stomp of the Beatles.

‘Grapevine Fires’ is a real highlight of the album, a soaring and epic song, again melancholy without being depressing. ‘Your New Twin Sized Bed’ retains this feel, like a less brittle Elliot Smith, with Remy Zero experimentation (without sucking tremendous balls like Remy do.)  Despite all these reference points, however, the sound is one entirely of their own, beautiful and epic.

If there is a weak point on this album it comes in the form of ninth track ‘Long Division’, which comes across as a very bland radio-friendly hit, and it sits uncomfortably alongside the rest of the album.  This dip in quality is only temporary though, as track ten, ‘Pity And Fear’ is a barnstorming high octane track that calls to mind Weezer and Quicksand, and is for me one of the best tracks on offer here.  Starting off with a throbbing drum track and slowly building guitars, it erupts towards the end before ending suddenly, a result of a snapped tape during recording, which apparently they liked.

After this sudden end, ‘The Ice is Getting Thinner’ rounds things off with a slow and hunting vibe, quite out of keeping with the rest of the album, the guitars sounding much warmer than the sharp sound of the rest of the album. As with the rest of the album the lyrics are excellent and very eloquently sung, the vocals never straying into cliche.

One of the main reasons for doing this blogging experiment was to expose myself to albums that I wouldn’t ordinarily have chosen to listen to, and in Narrow Stairs I have found an album that is sure to survive not just the reviewing process, but which I imagine will become a vital part of my music collection.  In turns odd, accessible, surprising and moving, this is a great introduction to band I would imagine I will be becoming more familiar with over the coming months.

4/5

Now head over to Gray’s place, and see what he made of it.  This being more his cup of tea at first glance, I imagine he likes it.

The first thing that happened when Gray told me this week’s album for review was that the song ‘Always Take The Weather With You’ popped into my head in the same way that a mad uncle may leap out at you at a wedding, nose all red, his eyes never taking their eyes off your girlfriend’s cleavage.

When it came time to get the album, the first thing I did was to scan through the track listing to make sure that ‘Weather’ wasn’t there.  Thankfully it wasn’t so I decided to call off the fatwa.  So I start to listen. And it’s not bad. As in, it doesn’t make me want to permanently perforate my eardrums, which was to be honest the response I was expecting.

Scanning through the album it’s quite easy to see the influence it has had, one of those albums where you think, ooh, Pearl Jam nicked that bit, or U2 based an entire album around that one guitar lick.  The brothers Finn took their excellent songwriting skills and let them flourish with a sound that is quite organic, almost half jammed.  It’s nice, in a way which is not bothersome.

But that for me is the whole problem with this album. With the exception of ‘Locked Out’ which I knew from the soundtrack to Reality Bites, I cannot hum the melody to any of the songs on this album, despite the fact that I have listened to it three times today alone, and have been listening to it for three days previous.  It’s a thoroughly pleasant but utterly unmemorable album.

If I had to equate this album to any sensation, it’s like taking a bogus valium. For the first thirty minutes you think to yourself that you are getting calmer and calmer, relaxing your troubles away. But then after 40 minutes or so it’s gone, and you realise that you feel exactly the same as before, and that your troubles are still there waiting for you.

I’m sorry Gray, I know this is an important album to you otherwise you wouldn’t have recommend it, but I just fail to see the appeal. It’s not that it’s boring, it zips by perfectly nicely while you are listening to it, but I just cannot find anything that draws me back. No hook to keep my interest.  Nothing at all.

2/5

Now go over to Gray’s place and let him tell you why I am wrong. Send my apologies while you are there!

The bastard offspring of the original grit of NuMetal and the burgeoning post-hardcore scene (that one you now know as Emo) Glassjaw’s debut album had a huge and profound effect on me when it hit just before the turn of the century. 

I had just come out of  a relationship, and while it hadn’t ended particularly badly, it had left a bitter taste in the mouth.  I needed something to cleanse the palette, and in this album I found just the thing, an album of pure undiluted bile and teenage angst.

Musically, this album is not so much reintenting the wheel as giving it a new tyre, refining the work laid out by the likes of Far, Quicksand and the Deftones. Quiet/loud dynamics, beefy riffs moulded to big epic choruses. Very well done but nonetheless not exactly groundbreaking.

What makes this album stand out though, is the lyrical content and vocal delivery of Daryl Palumbo.  The album’s producer, Ross Robinson, always had a reputation for getting great angsty performances from his vocalists, but in Daryl he found someone whose pain shone through as being so authentic and believable, yet so melodious, that it works as a sucker-punch to the gut.

Lyrically, there’s not a lot to separate Daryl’s lyrics from the bad poetry of a thousand teenage boys in subject matter. These are dark and sometimes verging on the misogynistic rants against the woman who stole his heart (and by the sounds of it put it through a paper shredder before feeding it to her cat) but Daryl balances the sheer rage with flashes of a dark humour which balances out the sheer venom.

But the delivery, in which Daryl goes from sweet and epic to gutteral howls of pain in the time it takes most vocalists to take a deep intake of breath. At times you can hear him trying to fight back tears, most notably on the album’s shining moment, the title track, where Daryl pours out his heart about his struggles with Crohn’s disease and times in and out of hospital as a child.

In case the listener is left with any doubt as to the point of the album, the closing track ‘Hotel Of the White Locust’ is the most venemous yet, as Daryl takes final aim at the woman who I imagine found this rather a difficult album to listen to. “Wipe off your mouth. Get up off your knees and make me your god.” And then, the storm is over.

Or seems to be, as the calming repetition of Daryl saying “Pack your shit and leave, and take my memories of her with you.” gives way to a simple and understated piano line.  Daryl’s voice comes back, clearly close to tears, and, sounding more like Elliott Smith than anything else.  The lyrics that follow are simple and haunting, but convey a very sweet sense of remorse at having been so brutal.

“And now you leave me in defeat
Leave me a battered, broken man.
The amount of love you wish to give is more than I can stand.

Now I have you where I want you
I know that you are listening
This is my chance to tell you everything

My chance to tell you I love you
But I’ve waited too long
Now the record’s over
Now the record’s over”

Brutal and elegant, this album takes me to a raw and emotional place. What more can you ask for?

4/5

Now go see what Gray thought of it!

When Jennie suggested this album to me, she explained that it was her favourite Eels album because while it is the hardest of their albums to get into, it’s also the most rewarding to those who manage to do so.  I think that’s about a concise and accurate a review of this album as you can get, but I will try to elaborate.

Given that the album was largely a response from E to the suicide of his sister and the lung cancer of his mother, it’s hardly surprising that the lyrics of this album are dark, but what makes this album so special is the way that E conveys these emotions not through his vocal delivery, which is as laconic as ever, but through the tone of the music, and how the story unfolds throughout the album to show how one can come through these kinds of experiences.

There is something ever so slightly unsettling about the music on this album, especially in the first half, where childlike piano sounds wrestle for your attention with lazy guitars, discordant noise and thick treacly bass sounds.  It reminds me in places of a circus, albeit staffed by the clowns of Stephen King’s imagination.

Opener ‘Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor’ sees lyrics taken directly from his sister’s journal, and the gentle strumming is overtaken by haunting strings, and is moving to the extreme, the density of the sounds becoming claustrophobic. ‘Going to Your Funeral Part I’ sees a dirty bass riff giving way to a childlike piano sound and gentle ‘Shadows’ style guitar. It’s brilliant, and manages to evoke emotion better than a thousand Nick Cave songs.

Then comes the noise clash opening of ‘Cancer For The Cure’, which gives way to a darkly pop sensibility and lyrics that play with the notions of death raised in the earlier songs.  As the album moves on, however, the tone moves slowly away from the oppressive start and becomes lighter in tone, both lyrically and musically. ‘My Descent Into Madness’ is the first indication that this could be the same band who recorded ‘Novocaine for the Soul.’  ’3 Speed’ is almost Buddy Holly-esque, with a Brian Wilson influenced string section that is still slightly unsettling.

‘Hospital Food’ sees the album take an odd turn into Jazz horns and discordant rhythms wrapped around darkly comic lyrics and falsetto vocals.  The title track then wanders into Tricky style musical invention, as a simple piano sample underpins the drawling lyric. ‘Efil’s God’ then takes this further, the bass rumbling under simple hip-hop style drums and swirling backwards strings. ‘Going to Your Funeral Part II’ follows, a soft and lush instrumental which splits the album in two.

‘Last Stop: This Town’ returns to the anthemic sounds of the first album, although the lyrics are as sarcastically dark as before. ‘Baby Genius’ then crashes in, removing any semblance of ‘easy’ listening as the soft lullaby is interrupted by bursts or radio noise and crashing plates.  It’s a surreal tribute to his troubled genius father.

But it is the wonderful ‘Climbing To The Moon’ and ‘Dead of Winter’ that are the emotional and musical highlights of the album. Dealing in turn with his Sister’s and Mother’s deaths they drop the earlier sonic experimentation and are thundering in their emotional weight.  You get a real sense that by this stage of the album he is able to look at these two deaths logically, with the noise in his head clearing enough for him to start dealing with the loss, rather than the anger. The lyrics are breathtaking, and the music is simple and haunting.

The last two tracks, ‘The Medication Is Wearing Off’ and ‘P.S. You Rock My World’ start to show a more positive view, the former especially seeming like a breath of morning air.  The journey is complete as E sings on the final song that “maybe it’s time to live.”

Normally I wouldn’t go into such depths in reviewing an album, but every song here is a chapter in a story, each more integral than the last. It’s a brilliant, haunting and ultimately uplifting album that really shows what a great and talented artist E is.  I initially brushed this album off as one of my least favourite albums by them, but Jennie was right, the more you give this album the more it gives you back.

Don’t forget to go visit Gray and see what he thought.

5/5

I approached this week’s challenge with a certain amount of trepidation. I’ve never been familiar with the work of Dashboard Confessional, except to know one thing: They are properly emo.  And not in an old-school Far/Quicksand kind of way. No, these guys are the sort of band that leads tweenie girls in bad mascara to leave videos of themselves crying on YouTube, the sort of band whose boyishly good-looking lead singer will instantly break the hearts and melt the panties of any girl who sees their photo.

In other words, I hated them on sight and never looked any further.  So I cringed a little when Gray suggested this, and immediately started plotting a revenge scenario which would involve strapping him into a chair and blasting him with non stop Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed to the point where he’d be begging for another 48 hours on twitter.  But the point of this is to remain objective, and so I gritted my teeth and added it to my collection of proper music.

I started listening to this on the bus on the way to work a few days back.  It was morning and I hadn’t woken up yet, so I expected to be knocked about by a lot of bleating lyrics and discordant guitars.  But opener ‘Brilliant Dance’ starts with a perfectly pleasant acoustic little ditty. The vocals are a little overwrought and nasal, but nowhere near as bad as I had feared. Pressing play I had had images of me wresting the steering wheel away from the bus driver and forcing the bus into a building just to avoid listening any more.

Come the next track and the tirrade of screeching emo still fails to appear, as the acoustic vibe continues, ‘Good Fight’ being another emo pop acoustic ballad, replete with a nice backing from quiet drums and underlying piano.  The album continues in this way, and when I look it up later it seems that Dashboard started off as a side project for singer Chris Carrabba.

It’s this acoustic approach that saves this album from becoming yet another emo-pop stereotype.  The songs are all well crafted, the lyrics a little hackneyed but nowehere near as bad as the likes of Gerard Way.  The simple production allows the songwriting to shine, and Carrabba clearly has a way with a chorus.  His voice does grate after a few tracks, but that’s as much to do with the over-exposure of his vocal style by bands that followed as it is to do with his performance.

‘Screaming Infidelities’ with its rather hideous line ‘But as for me, I wish that I was anywhere with anyone making out.’ is a bit awful, but ‘Again I Go Unnoticed’ is a cracking little tune. And so the pattern goes for the rest of the album. Some songs are excellent little pop songs (the title track, ‘Saints and Sailors’),  some are bland and boring (‘This Ruined Puzzle’).

Despite how much I was fearing listening to this though, it’s nowhere near as bad as all that. It’s a perfectly pleasant little album that leaves you feeling a little bit like a character in the OC.  Sun washed and well crafted, the best thing I can say about it is that it is utterly unlikely to drive you to a murderous rage and force your carriage of transport to become a flaming box of death. Which is more than I can say for Fall Out Boy.

3/5

Now, if you are offended by this review, head over to Gray’s place and hear him talk about it in a more positive light.  Unless you are Gray, in which case, sorry mate!