Blog On The Motorway

Cross Blogination is a project I’m doing with twitterthon hero Diary Of A Ledger, the idea being every week one of us will recommend to the other one of our all time favourite albums, which we will then both write a review for. Then every third week we review a suggestion from you lovely people. This weeks installment comes courtesy of Joe Lee, who is himself a recent addition to the blogosphere, so go check him out.

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.

A manic week this week, so things have been a bit erratic around here. Monday’s post got shunted because I normally write these when I am on my lunch break, but about two hours before lunch I got asked to take my first driving lesson, as Ellen couldn’t make it.  And so with no mental preparation I took my first driving lesson in 13 years, when my parents bought me ten lessons for my 17th birthday.

I was a little bit rusty, and couldn’t really remember where everything was or how to work it, but I got the hang of it again pretty quickly, doing left and right turns, junctions and even second gear, all on my first attempt. I only stalled twice as well, so all things considered I was pretty chuffed.

It was all a million miles away from my last lesson, when I nearly turned myself and my utterly incompetent driving instructor into a giant moving fireball. Coming up to a junction I slowed, only to be told I could make it, so I gunned it and went from second to third gear, only to miss and stick it in fifth. Due the steep hill we were on it caught, and suddenly we were hurtling at 70mph towards a stream of slow moving traffic.

My instructor’s response to this was to scream loudly at me, like Steve Martin in Planes Trains and Automobiles, so perhaps you will understand why it’s taken me thirteen years to get back into a car. But I digress.

I decided to make up for this with a double post yesterday, although the more observant of you will have noticed that only one surfaced.  Cross Blogination was written yesterday (hopefully it will surface tonight) but rather than having a nice night in last night, I spent the evening at York District Hospital, as my daughter hobbled around and me and her Mum sat waiting.

Anyway, everything is all right, there’s nothing wrong with Rosie, but it got me thinking that surely the hospital visit is a rite of passage for any parent. Chances are that we will all end up there with our children for something or another, and I couldn’t help but feel thankful that we have been so lucky with her. 

She is two and half now, and there’s been (touch wood) nothing major so far, while we have seen other parents go through nightmares.  I know for any readers across the pond that today is Thanksgiving, so while I utterly abhor the way you celebrate the genocide of your indigenous peoples with mashed potatoes with little marshmallows in, I can join in today in at least giving thanks.

I love Gaming. Everything about it appeals. The immersive nature, the potential for huge epic storytelling. The culture surrounding it, it all appeals to me. Everything except playing the bloody things.  Unfortunately the ability to play computer games is something that ‘purists’ consider to be quite an integral part of the culture.

It’s always been the same. When I was a kid my friends and I would got to hang out for hours at the Trocadero in London, and they would endlessly pump money into the machines for hours on end, while I inevitably got bored and hankered for a few hours browsing Tower Records while they totted up kill after kill on Mortal Kombat 2.

When everyone started getting consoles I always seemed to have the wrong one. Everyone else got a Game Boy. I got a Lynx. You couldn’t even get games for it after about six months.  Eventually I got a SNES, and there were a few games I actually enjoyed for a while.  But then I grew up a bit, and computer games never managed to hold my attention in the way film and music did.

A few years ago I moved in with one of my best friends, a pretty hardcore gamer who would disappear for days at a time whenever a new Resident Evil or Final Fantasy game came out, and I started to hanker again for the ability to do what he did. It always had a sheen of glamour to me, like a secret club I didn’t know the password for.

I got an Xbox, but I ended up using it more as a DVD player, the only game I ever completed was Halo, on Easy setting.  I sold it, and used the money to buy a DVD player, on the logic that it wouldn’t make so much noise when I was watching a Buffy DVD marathon.  And so I retired from the world of gaming, and whenever my friends started talking about their latest immersive world I would simply glaze over, or try to change the conversation.  Besides, I was approaching 30, surely the time to abandon such childish pursuits.

Then my girlfriend bought me a shiny Xbox 360 for Christmas last year, and over the last 11 months the guilt has been building up in me again. It looks at me with its unblinking green eye as if to say; ‘Why don’t you ever use me properly? Yes I may make your DVD’s look a bit nicer, but that’s not what I’m here for and you damn well know it.’  And every time I turned it on up would come my gamerscore, pitifully low.

The came Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe, and I realised that I must be among the world’s best informed non-gamers. He made the world of gaming look like everything I knew deep down that it was.  The recent release of Modern Warfare 2 only compounded my outsider feel, with seemingly all my friends, my work colleagues and my twitter feed speaking of nothing else.

And so it’s time to make a change. This next year is going to be all about self improvement for me, and in every way that is going to to take me on a road that makes me more adult, more healthy, a more productive member of society.  But if I am going to do everything in one year, I’m also going to try to do this. Become a gamer. A casual gamer perhaps, but I want in.

To that end I have already made my first tentative steps.  I asked my friends to lend me some games that might suit my novice level, and ease me in slowly.  I have started with The Bourne Conspiracy, based on the films (obviously) and over the past week have found myself getting more and more drawn into its world, and more and more capable of negotiating it.  I am still playing on trainee level for now, but I’m getting there.

The old hang ups are still there, of course. I get ridulously impatient when I can’t pass an obstacle, or solve a simple puzzle. Last night I got killed repeatedly by the same end of level baddie (curse his knife wielding skills) but eventually I threw him out of an aeroplane, as you do.  I still feel that the Xbox is mocking me from time to time, but now it’s for being shit at playing a game, rather than ignoring its tremendous potential. I may fall at the next hurdle again, and it may become nothing more than a noisy DVD player again, cracked open only for occasional games of Scene It, but for now I can count myself as being that one step closer to the ultimate in geek. The Gamer.

After some deliberation the decision has been made that now is the time to unleash onto the world our new project, so get down on your knees, and make Demon Pigeon your new God.

That is not to say that we’ve gone live with it just yet, but more that we’re getting quite bored of not telling anyone about it.  Besides, it might be a good idea to build expectations, so that we can roundly let those same expectations down when we launch in January.

To wit, expect nothing short of the greatest website that your eyes have ever witnessed, and prepare those same eyes to weep with unbridled joy at the marvellous spectacle. Oceans will shift, cities will be levelled. Women and children will tremble in fear.  Governments will fall.  It’s all gonna be a bit epic, to be honest.

So what is Demon Pigeon, you may well ask yourselves.  Well at the moment it’s a holding page, but come January the somethingth (we’re not altogether decided on that) it will be a metal site, chocked full of news, reviews, interviews and more.  Unlike other sites out there, we will also be covering areas that are of general interest to metalheads, from books to comics to film to art.

But who these magnificent bastards who will be helping me with this endeavour?  You may well ask.  My Co-Editor and all round fancy gent is Daniel Cairns, and he will also be running the new @demon_pigeon Twitter feed.  If you are on Twitter, go follow us now, since Dan is a lot funnier than I am. 

As well as this we also have Games Junkie extraordinaire Andi Hamilton. And no, it’s not the little writer of Drop The Dead Donkey, and yes, I’m as disappointed as you are.  Also joining us is Noel Oxford, writer extraordinaire, and fellow escapee with Dan from another metal site.  Rounding out the team is Dom Sohor, who will be making the whole place look awesome with his lovely shiny visuals, and occasionally words too.  Go check out his gallery, it’s full of awesome.

So that’s the big news that I couldn’t tell you, so consider yourselves duly told. If any of you are massively disappointed by this, you know what to do.

So again I have to say that my brain is currently totally tapped out, due to having to think about too many things, all the time.  My normally docile brain has been suddenly expected to leap into action on a number of different fronts, and so as I sit down to write this blog I can think of absolutely no topic to ramble on about. So instead I shall ramble on about nothing.

Yesterday something happened which made me a little nervous about the series of tasks which I have chosen to undertake. I was writing some stuff for BOTM, trying to get a good amount of stuff down in advance of launching, when I found that nothing good was coming to me. I had written 500 words of badly written Dan Brown nonsense, all short sentences with no joy in them whatsoever.

Normally once I have sat down to write I am fine. My version of writer’s block is closer to writer’s avoidance. Once I actually sit down, it all comes tumbling out of me faster than I can type, but yesterday what wrote was so utterly terrible that I deleted the whole lot without thinking.  I hope that my brain has not atrophied from neglect. That would be awful.  No need to panic just yet though.

Yesterday was the finale of Generation Kill, and I’ve written about it often enough that I don’t feel I can let its end go unmentioned. It was predictably brilliant. Subtle and complex, with no easy resolutions, but with excellent insight into our recent misadventures in that region.  Highly recommended. I am definitely going to search the book out.

I spent a small section of my day yesterday waiting in a waiting room, surrounded by sick people. It’s as though the medical establishment thought to themselves that the best way to get people out of waiting rooms would be to make them dens of interminable despair, where you are cocooned in with lots of people who are ill of a variety of different ailments while unadorned walls of grey seem to close in on you. Since the Swine Flu panic started they have become even worse, with no leaflets or magazines available to pass them time, so you spend the whole time glowering at those people who have the temerity to cough or sneeze in your presence.  I coughed at one point, and nearly found myself reassuring everyone that it was simply a smoker’s cough.

So that’s about it really. I shall continue to trundle through the day with zero enthusiasm, and hope that tomorrow I feel like skipping through fields of daisies. Metaphorically speaking of course, since Daisies are thin on the ground in winter, and it’s cold out, and besides I’m not really the skipping kind of person.

Not gonna be much in the way of blogging today, as I am busy writing the first few issues of Blood On The Motorway.  I think once it is up and running I want to post new entries at least twice a week, so I am aiming to get a good 12 or so in the bank before the site goes live, so I can focus on the other two sites I have rather idiotically decided to launch at the same time.

If you are looking for something to read, you should really go and look at the NME’s list of the top 50 albums of the last decade, especially if you are looking for something to fill your belly with incandescent rage and bile.  It worked for me.

This weekend I finally finished the seven season odyssey that is The Shield, with its emotionally destroying finale meaning that once again I am talking TV.  I started watching the Shield when I first moved to York and found the first season on special offer in HMV.  Often unfairly this show has been compared to the genius of The Wire, but while this shares a gritty and uncompromising feel with David Simon’s epic, it is more of an unhinged and deranged cousin, utterly insane in its premise and execution.

If you are not familiar with The Shield, it centres around one Police district in run down Los Angeles, and in particular the exploits of Detective Vic Mackey and his Strike Team, a gang of ruthless police officers hell bent on their own destruction.  Mackey, played with earnest violence throughout by Michael Chiklis, is a one man armageddon, capable of just about anything, from murder to facilitating drug deals, to sacrificing anyone close to him. 

But the true beauty of this show is that within the first episode you realise that this is not the cop show cliche of ‘one man who will bend the rules to get things done.’ No, this is a stone cold psychopath who is utterly devoid of morals who is willing to do anything to fulfil his agenda. And that agenda is to make as much dirty money as he can, and to make sure he doesn’t get caught doing it.  And we the viewer are forced to watch, to identify with this monster and by the end of the first season, pray he doesn’t get caught.

Over the course of seven seasons we have slowly seen every member of the cast infected by Vic and his dirty morals. Nobody gets off lightly, and the supporting cast (particularly Jay Karnes as talented but socially inept Homicide detective Dutch Wagenbach and CCH Pounder as his hard nosed partner Claudette) each excel in portraying their own personal demons, reflecting the cold hell of the streets and what it means to deal with them on a day to day basis.

Whereas the Wire is relentlessly real, with all the flawed personalities that entails, The Shield is reality turned up to a thousand.  Whenever there is a perp who will not break, VIc is there to beat the life out of them while everyone turns their backs on their morals in order to get a win. Nobody gets off clean.

The finale itself was possibly the tensest hour and a half of television I have ever seen, as seven years of twists and turns finally come to a head and it becomes clear that there is no way to finish the story with a happy ending. When it had finished I sat dumbfounded for a good five minutes, utterly unable to move, so emotionally draining it was that I couldn’t bring myself to change to another channel.  And I am not ashamed to admit that there were times when there were tears, big fat man tears.  Anyone who has seen it will probably know to what I am refering, an event so shocking that I’m not sure how it was allowed to be broadcast.

Unflinching, brilliant, disturbed.  One of the most original shows on TV, and unlike so many shows that have a long overreaching story arc, it concluded so intensely, so maddeningly that it has reached the pantheon of those TV shows that can genuinely be called brilliant.

Apologies if this is becoming TV central these days, but this is in large part due to being the parent of a small child who can’t get out very often, and of course being a big geek,as was pointed out to me on Twitter yesterday when I started talking randomly and enthusiastically about Babylon 5 before I realised nobody was paying any attention.

Last night saw the debut of E4’s new sci-fi/horror/comedy/drama Misfits.  Centred around a bunch of asbo-collecting teens doing community service who become endowed with a collection of rather naff superhero powers, this was a very strong start, full of dark Dead Set horror and Skins-esque humour.

The episode kicks off with the aforementioned idiot children tormenting their affable probation worker as they studiously avoid work at all costs, until giant car-sized hailstones start to slam down all around them.  The group are hit by lightning and hey presto – wackiness ensues.

What makes this stand out from the other X-men lite superhero shows (I’m looking at you here Heroes) is the sense of darkness that is present throughout. For instance, one of the kids is imbued with a power that sees her become instantly and violently attractive to any man who touches her, which as superpowers go is pretty rubbish unless you want to become raped on a continual basis.

The cast, largely unknowns (I recognised one from an excellent drama earlier this year about the foster case system but I can’t remember the name of it) are tremendous, and the writing is razor sharp and witty, and offensive enough to propel the average Daily Mail reader to headbutt the television in despair.

Taking its cues from low budget horror (almost the whole pilot is set in one abandoned looking warehouse) this knows how to utilise its strengths and play down its weaknesses.  When the violence comes, it’s in short brutal and kinetic scenes which are genuinely shocking. 

But what really makes the whole thing work is the fact that this is a group of very real teenagers, rather than, for instance, the hyper-attractive cast of Skins. You would walk past them on the street without ever paying attention (you might grab your bag a little tighter at the sight of Nikki, pictured above) to them, and it is this grounding in reality that sells the admittedly silly premise.

The only problem with this show is that it now means one more night of the week where I can’t make any plans, at least not until its run ends in 5 weeks time. Cheers E4.

So it appears that Joss Whedon’s ‘Dollhouse’ has been cancelled. Colour me utterly unsurprised.  I was shocked when Fox gave it a second series, and since then the ratings have been as tepid as month old bathwater.  It’s a shame as what has been aired of the second series so far, coupled with the season finale from last year pointed to a genuinely interesting story arc. And besides, it’s Whedon.

But thinking on this since I found out this morning, I’ve decided that it’s all too easy to blame those baby killing psychopathsnetwork executives at Fox.  I blame Summer Glau.* She is like Whedon’s kryptonite.

First time we saw the delectable Summer it was in an episode from the third series of Angel, where she played a ballet dancer. Her all-pervasive cancellation powers had obviously not kicked into full gear yet because Angel limped on for a further two series, finally axed after the fifth.

After that she teamed up with Joss again for the wonderful Firefly. Which was almost instantly cancelled.  She starred in the film Serenity, which made sure it would never get a sequel.  So she moved on to the Terminator series, which battled to a second series before the inevitable cancellation.

Dollhouse was doing ok really. Apparently they agreed to shoot for a lot less money, to make sure it turned a profit despite the poor ratings.  but then, her assignment to destroy the Terminator show achieved Joss decided that what Dollhouse really needed was to be cancelled, so he brought Summer aboard.

The effect was almost instantaneous.  She was scheduled to start her Dollhouse stint in the fifth episode, which Fox suddenly pushed back to December to make way for November Sweeps.  And before that episode has even been shown comes the announcement that Dollhouse is no more. They have agreed to show the final episodes, which means we will finally get to see Summer in the role that closed the door on the Dollhouse.

So, Whedon-heads, instead of picketing the Fox execs that pulled the trigger, try and remember the curse of Glau. She has powers, terrible powers.  For now though, let’s just hope that her guest spot on The Big Bang Theory doesn’t bring that to a sudden and inevitable end.

*In case you hadn’t realised, I don’t really blame the lovely Ms Glau. I just wanted an excuse to put a picture of her on my blog to cheer me up after hearing the news about Dollhouse.  I’m going to go and cry now.

Cross Blogination is a project I’m doing with twitterthon hero Diary Of A Ledger, the idea being every week one of us will recommend to the other one of our all time favourite albums, which we will then both write a review for. This week it’s Gray’s turn, and he seems to be punishing me for some perceived slight I must have made against him or his Ledger brethren.

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!