The California supreme court is getting ready to make a decision concerning the ban on gay marriage in the state and the martial fate of 18,000 recently espoused couples.  The hearing will take place on March 5th, and a decision will be made within 90 days of the hearing.  You all know what to do, let’s e-mail the hell out of some bitches:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/divorce

Yep, it’s that time of year again, Firstly a disclaimer- although this list is in the same style of those published by magazines such as the NME, I am one person and do not have the time to check out absolutely everything is release. I’ve done this two years previously and missed such fantastic albums as Justice’s †,  Hot Chip’s The Warning and the Dresden Doll’s Yes, Virginia so I’m pretty sure there are ones which slipped through the net this year. In any case this list is highly subjective. Think of it as a friendly pointer towards gems which might otherwise have escaped your attention.

	1. Amanda Palmer – Who Killed Amanda Palmer? The Dresden Doll’s front woman Amanda ‘fucking’ Palmer has succeeded in producing an album so fine that it stands tall next to the two studio albums recorded with drumming partner Brian Viglione. For this solo effort Palmer has recruited help from multi-instrumentalist Ben Folds, as well as securing guest spots from musicians such as the Dead Kennedys’ East Bay Ray, avant garde cellist Zoe Keating and singer songwriter Annie Clark. What this album misses is the rock that heavy metal influenced Brian Viglione brings to the rock cabaret, but ballads such as romantic epic Ampersand and painfully bittersweet The Point of it All more than make up for the reduction in energy. Hopefully the sonic textures and instrumental arrangements explored here will feed back into the Dresden Dolls and inspire them to reach even greater heights.
	2. Neon Neon – Stainless Style This album really shouldn’t work. Gruff Rhys, front man of psychedelic Welsh stoner pop group the Super Furry Animals, is the last person you’d expect to pull off an eighties ‘yacht rock’ concept album about John DeLorean, the playboy car designer and manufacturer most notably responsible for the stainless steel DMC-12. And yet it works fantastically, largely due to the sheer conviction with which Rhys describes the rags-to-riches tale- a story with parallels to that of Howard Marks, another SFA idol. Layer this over a retro yet contemporary electropop production courtesy of LA hip hop producer Boom Bip and you have an instant pop classic. Sadly a follow-up is said to be unlikely, although given the hours that Rhys puts in to his various musical projects there’s a good chance he’ll come up with another gem in one of his many guises.
	3. Guns n’ Roses – Chinese Democracy First off, this isn’t a Guns n’ Roses album- it’s an Axl Rose album. Not unlike uber-producer Dr Dre, Rose has created this album by using a multitude of session musicians to give him the performances he needs, paying little attention to the traditional concept of a ‘band’ of musicians. Sadly, this destroys much of the mystique of GNR. For example, Slash may not have been the best guitarist in the world, but when you hear a riff on Appetite For Destruction you can instantly picture a half English, half African American monster of a guy in a top hat with black frizzy hair, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a cigarette between his lips, tearing into his black Gibson Les Paul. When you hear an awesome riff on Chinese Democracy, you have to check the liner notes to find out which guitarist it is. But leaving all that aside, it is a fantastic album, if a little patchy in places. There are so many different musical influences on here- industrial, piano ballads, doom metal, even sample-based music- you cant help but respect Rose’s desire to push creative boundaries. Great stuff, just don’t by mislead by the name on the cover.
	4. Immortal Technique – The 3rd World Making political music is fraught with danger; it usually involves putting yourself on a self-righteous moral pedestal and asking the general public to knock you down. Immortal Technique sidesteps this issue by not hiding the fact that he’s a barely reformed gangster from the streets of Harlem rather than a ‘beautiful soul’ narcissist. His music is all the better for having a dose of reality and he unashamedly stands in the ‘Revolutionary but Gangsta’ tradition of Ice T, Ice Cube and Dead Prez. This is supposed to be a stop-gap album between Revolutionary Vol.2 and Vol.3 but it’s still easily the best thing he’s done and in the absence of Dr Dre’s Detox the best hip-hop album of the year. DJ Green Lantern mixes the tracks together with old-school turntable skills and provides the flow and continuity which previous albums were lacking. Tech’s lyrics remain on top form and by the end the album ends it’s impossible not to have been sucked into his universe.
	5. The Subways – All Or Nothing The Subway’s debut album was one of the hardest rocking things to come out of the UK since Britpop, an album rejecting the arty pretentiousness of contemporary British indie and embracing the excitement of youth and the power of three chords. Since then they’ve toured America, where they were adored, and returned with and album of slicker riffs, better lyrics and a more professional production. It’s still old-school rock though, and still infused with the spirit of a broke teenager who’s moved to the city for the first time, and is trying to make ends meet amidst the chaos and excitement of humanity.
	6. Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip – Angles This is one album that lived up to the preceding singles, filled as it is with a determination to best it can possibly be. Scroobius Pip embodies all the best aspects of the legendary New York MCs of the mid-eighties, and Dan Le Sac lays down mind-bending beats which put the unimaginative production of mainstream hip hop to shame. Social commentary and storytelling feature heavily on one of the most inventive UK hip hop records ever released.
	7. Vampire Weekend If there’s a class war in indie, Vampire Weekend are definitely on the side of the ruling class. They went to Columbia University, shamelessly appropriate afro-pop for a white audience, and write songs about Oxford commas. Single M79 even sounds like the theme to University Challenge, fer fuck’s sake. But… forget all that, and listen to the album without prejudice, and what you’ll hear is one of the most perfect pop records released in years. Rich kids make good album- strange, but true.
	8. Glasvegas Glasvegas pretty much define the word ‘epic’. Sonically they recall late eighties shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain, while lyrically James Allen sings about the trials of ordinary people’s lives in a strong Glaswegian accent, like a Bruce Springsteen raised on Tennants and deep fried Mars bars. Or, imagine the Killers jamming with Mogwai, with Morrissey writing the lyrics and Phil Spector on production. Fantastic stuff.
	9. Portishead – Third Portishead began their career reinventing hip-hop for the Britpop generation. Now they’ve returned after a ten year hiatus with a record that reinvents trip-hop for the Radiohead generation. As dark and remorseless as anything Nine Inch Nails have produced, Portishead’s Third is the Dummy’s evil twin, twisting the soul and blues grooves into industrial, mechanical rhythms, all wrapped up in Beth Gibbons’ haunting voice.
	10 Bloc Party – Intimacy Actually a bit disappointing this one, but an average Bloc Party album still beats most other things released this year. I was expecting an album full of full-on rave ups a la Flux, but what we have is a schizophrenic album which jumps from the hard riffing arena rock of Halo, to the bizarre cut-and-paste sound collage of Mercury, to the epic lullaby of Signs, and everywhere in between. Overall the electronic effects and heavy compression remind of the Klaxons more than anything else. Unexpected, but rewarding.

Need more stuff to listen to? Here’s some more decent albums released last year, in no particular order:

The Offspring – Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace
Scars on Broadway – Scars on Broadway
The Streets – Everything is Borrowed
The Dresden Dolls – No, Virginia
The Ting Tings – We Started Nothing
Hot Chip – Made in the Dark
British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?
The Whip – X Marks Destination
Spiritualised – Songs in A & E
Primal Scream – Beautiful Future
Kings of Leon – Only By The Night

2008 in music was a bit of a disappointment as much of the promise of new rave/indiedisco failed to materialise. The Whip and Foals both released fantastic singles in 2007 but their debut albums failed to deliver quite as well. Hot Chip’s second album didn’t match up to their first, and CSS’ follow up was just awful. The Ting Tings released some great singles but the album was lacking, and even Bloc Party’s effort did not live up to the standard set by Flux. To top it off, it looks like the post-punk revival has finally bit the dust with poor efforts from Razorlight, Dirty Pretty Things and Kaiser Chiefs. On the plus side last year was the year New York began to re-established itself as the capital of cool, with MGMT and TV On The Radio topping the NME’s 2008 album list. As we haven’t seen a great NYC band since the Strokes, maybe it’s time for the city to make a comeback.

My two favourite albums of the year were side projects by musicians who had already established themselves in other bands, while number three was released by a rock band who have been around for a zillion years and gone through more members than Spinal Tap. There are two debut guitar pop albums in my top ten, which along with the Ting Tings were heavily hyped to make up for the fact that there were few other decent debut albums. There’s also a few decent hip-hop albums made with the old-skool philosophy, and a slight resurgence in American hard rock.

Biggest disappointment of the year was the Killer’s third album, Day and Age. This is meant to be better than Sam’s Town? Meh.

So what next? My hopes are on the basic, youthful and exuberant rock of the Subways and the neo-grunge of Biffy Clyro to point us forward. I think we need something angry that really rocks out and blasts away the dross- an Appetite For Destruction for the new decade. Who’s gonna come up with the goods?

Just a quickie. First of all, go vote insatiable cultural critic and performance artist Madam Miaow for best culture blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards. If you don’t know why you should, just read the goddamn thing.

Secondly, it’s a little known fact that I am both Welsh and a fan of games played with odd-shaped balls. The article in today’s Guardian on Nigel Owens, the only openly gay referee in professional rugby, is well worth a read for anyone that way inclined. Chwarae teg, Nigel.

I was talking a while ago about the failure of the Billboard/UK Top 40 Charts to accurately reflect the music being listened to by people today. I used last.fm as a comparison to show how far out they were. Well, last.fm has done the logical thing and compiled charts for the most popular newcommers, albums and tracks of 2008 based on plays on their sites and using their software. The newcommers and album charts work very well, but the tracks chart doesn’t- 9 out of the 10 tracks are from the two most popular albums, with Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl the only bona fide single in there. Still, I guess this shows that despite claims that MP3s would destroy the album format most people still treat albums as a whole body of work to be listened to at once. And a good thing too- it would be a shame to see the death of the album format.

This will be the first in a series of posts about anachronism in pop, each focusing on one particular band. In this post we start off by looking at the Dresden Dolls. (We like the Dresden Dolls. You may have gathered that already.)

When you put on the first Dresden Doll’s album, you might press play on a CD player, or double click the first file in an MP3 playlist. Either way, what you’ll hear is the sound of a gramophone needle falling into the groove on a record. The record crackles for a few seconds, and a then simple melody is played on an old piano. The melody is loosely doubled by another instrument, you can’t quite place it but it conjures up images of old-time fairground rides and broken mechanical toys. Just before the bar is complete the needle skips back a groove and the melody starts over. This happens again, and again, before the needle stops skipping and we hear the piano intro to the album’s first song.

You flip the CD case over and look at the cover, or click on the jpeg to display the artwork. The two band members are dressed cabaret style, kneeling with arms outstretched, hands together like obsessed lovers. On an oak table in front of them is a candle, a rose and a bottle of red wine. Where is the anachronism in this picture? It’s the jet flying overhead- modernity intruding into an archaic fantasy. But for that, the picture could have been taken eighty years ago.

Whatever method we might be using to listen to this album, we are within a few seconds transported back to an age when such technology did not exist, through the sounds we hear and the images we see. This is the magic of the Dresden Dolls, and it’s worth exploring the reasons why the use of anachronisms makes for such emotionally powerful music.

The Dresden Dolls are part of an underground cabaret revival movement, which has hubs of activity in the US cities of New Orleans, Portland and Boston and is best exemplified on the compilation A Dark Cabaret. Much of this stems directly from the continued popularity of the 1972 film Cabaret, based on the musical of the same name. Now if you’ve never seen this film you need to go rent or download it as soon as you can, but the clip above will do for starters. Cabaret tells the story of Sally Bowles, an American cabaret artist performing at the Kit Kat Klub, and Brian Roberts, an English academic of uncertain sexuality. Both are living in Berlin in 1931, and their story is one of decadence and romance against the backdrop of the rise of Fascism.

The film Cabaret represents the defining characteristics of cabaret as an art form, namely a subtle political critique through satire matched with an exuberantly honest approach to personal issues and sexual relations. Naturally, in a socially conservative climate the latter becomes a political critique of society in its own right. Thus, the personal and political are closely linked in cabaret, a style of performance theatre when the singers are also actors, conveying emotion though costume, gesture and movement as well as through lyrics and melody. This is the approach to music and art adopted by the Dresden Dolls, and the personal/political crossover helps explain their association with punk rock feminism and queer movements.

To understand why the Dresden Dolls and others have chosen to revive a form of music which was established long before current pop music reference points such as Elvis Presley or the Beatles, we just need to look at what parallels there are between the cultural climate of the early years of the 21st century and that of the early 1930s. A resurgence in social conservatism and mainstream racism, albeit with a different monotheistic religion as its target? An increase in social unrest and a corresponding reaction from the authorities? Invasion, terrorism and occupations? All present and correct.

A friend once said to me to me that he liked Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief because its schizophrenic nature was a reflection of the times we were living through when that album was recorded. I recall listening to R.E.M.’s Green on the evening of September 11th 2001 for similar reasons- although from a different time, the fears expressed on that album felt very relevant. My partner once told me that she watched the film Cabaret on the day of the invasion of Iraq, and that the creeping authoritarianism and inevitable march towards war shown in the film felt all to familiar.

Life cannot help but affect the art that we create. We have resurrected cabaret because we think we need it.

The song Girl Anachronism is Amanda Palmer’s raison d’être, a song as fundamental to the Dresden Dolls as was White Riot to the Clash or Motown Junk to the Manic Street Preachers. In three frantic minutes Palmer trawls through her psyche and pins her perilous state of mind down to a chronological displacement, a desire to exist in past decades rather than the 21st century. When exactly is not clear; the costumes she wears during the music video for the song include a WW2 era housewife, a WW1 era nurse, an Elizabethan lady of court and (of course) a Weimar era cabaret artist. Significantly, all of these eras are before the 1950s, before the dawn of popular culture as we know it. She is not nostalgically referencing the popular culture she grew up with, as so many contemporary musicians do. She is striving for something altogether different.

Amanda Palmer’s songs often deal with personal issues, often autobiographically. Personal relationships are a reoccurring theme, as are sex, gender issues, and the loss of childhood innocence. Certainly these issues are not confined to modernity, but this is no costume drama- Palmer throws in references to computers and condoms and cars because they exists in her life and the lives of the people she is writing about. So why the obsession with pre-1950s culture?

Part of the answer comes from a thirst for romance, a desire to escape the alienation of modern life. There is, as Karen O sang, no modern romance. Capitalism reduces individuals to units of labour, and assigns the value of what we do an hourly rate. How can anything creative, impulsive or romantic exist in such a system? As capitalism becomes more advanced this alienation becomes more pronounced. It’s why people who work 9 to 5 as civil servants and office workers dress up at the weekends and go to clubs such as Stay Beautiful and Rockabaret.

We are no longer a society put a collection of atomised individuals, simultaneously connected to and isolated from each other by modern forms of communication. We no longer live and love with the same vigour that we used to. In 1953 the first edition of the Situationist International magazine claimed that “Presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit.” Nowadays you could say the laptop, the ipod, the mobile phone…

Which brings us to another piece of the answer. There’s an anti-technology tinge to many of the Dresden Doll’s lyrics, as though they pinpoint technology as responsible for the watering down of modern life. Modern Moonlight is one of the most schizophrenic songs the duo have recorded, lurching between drunken bluesy romance and high-speed classical piano riffing, before ending with an epic call to arms. The inspiration for the song came when Amanda Palmer contemplated how long it would be before some company put an advert on the moon’s surface. Would Coke or Pepsi get there first? Perhaps they would take turns, changing the advert every month.

What follows is an almost stream of consciousness rant against against modern technology and consumer capitalism. She argues for and against her own Luddite tendencies, and rants against the lack of privacy in the modern age. The original Luddites, as E.P. Thompson notes, were not simply anti-technology, but voiced opposition to the introduction of the free market and the loss of their livelihoods.

And she proposes a solution- an anarchist or even situationist scheme to destroy the communications networks and plunge the world into chaos. “Stripped of your equipment you’ll be forced to face yourself…” The implication is clear- modern technology is dehumanising the human race and our reliance on it must be broken if we are to, as the situationists put it, leave the twentieth century. We come full circle- using the past to escape the present into the future.

Next time- the Dropkick Murphys, and not just because they’re next on my ipod.

Via xkcd. Proper content should be returning soon-ish.

Apparently so. Unless you’ve been on a different planet for the past week you’ll be aware that America has elected Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. This isn’t an explicitly political blog (been there, done that) but I thought it would be remiss of me not to comment on such an important event.

At Culture Sluts we are pleased with Obama’s victory, and not just the victory itself but the epic scale of it. (We’re less pleased with the passing of proposition 8 in California, though proposition 1 is a small consolation.) Last week we saw states which had been in Republican hands since long before we were born turn blue. The Democrats now dominate both houses, and this combined with Bush’s legislation strengthening the president’s powers means that Obama can enact as much change as he damn well wants to. The question now is whether he does so.

I travelled across the American continent during this past summer and was amazed by the commitment and devotion I saw to the Obama campaign. In Harlem I saw t-shirts being sold with his image next to that of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. In California swimmers braved the cold Pacific to raise funds for his campaign. Obama signs could be seen in the windows of the poorest shacks as well as on the white picket fences of those idyllic suburban houses which represent the American Dream. In cities throughout the country I was approached by Obama campaigners of all colours and social classes hoping to secure my vote; they were universally enthusiastic, genuine in their commitment and happy to talk with me even though I had no vote to give them. One wonders why the left in the UK fail to inspire such dedication in their activists.

Even more striking than that was the utter lack of support for McCain. I saw nothing- no campaigners, no fundraising and literally two window signs, both in Texas. It was therefore never in any doubt in my mind that Obama would win, although I feared to say this before the election. His message resounds with the swathes of America who want to be a liberal country, a country which practises what it preaches in terms of human rights, civil rights and international relations. This liberal majority encompasses the African American and other minority communities, artists and bohemians, LGBT people, greens, social libertarians, college students and most importantly the young. Everyone I know in the US seems to fall into one or more of those categories so I may be a little biased here, but I can’t help but be moved by the passion which this election has stirred in such people. When you see Jesse Jackson at the victory rally with tears streaming down his face it feels a little churlish to go poking holes in Obama’s policies.

Right now we are in a state of flux, and it is uncertain in which direction America will go. This could be a false dawn, similar to the 1997 victory of Tony Blair which promised so much and delivered so little. Or it could a genuine watershed, the point at which America begins to shake off its obsession with God and guns and becomes a true liberal democracy. Not a social democracy (that was never on Obama’s agenda) but at least a place where the ideal of an equal and just society is the point at which political discussions start from, however flawed the implementation of those ideals may be. Once the ideal of social liberalism is firmly established in the USA, space will open up for the left to push the redistributive economic policies which would make society truly equal.

If Obama disappoints, as to an extent he inevitably must do, I hope that the energy and commitment I saw behind his campaign does not trail off into despair and apathy, but instead is focused on holding Obama to account. And if Obama continues to fail to delivery on his election promises, we may see something far more interesting emerge from his disillusioned network of supporters. If the president wont take action, then the people must.

Rumours that Obama is making a guest appearence on the next Q-Tip album are greatly exaggerated.

(Edit: Gary Younge’s article in today’s Guardian is well worth a read.)

It’s that time of the year again. First up, here’s some contemporary hard rock courtesy of System of a Down side project Scars On Broadway:

Now some from the past. Iron Maiden perform a song written back when they were a bunch of East London punks to a stadium full of Swedes. You might wanna skip the two minutes of talking, but stick around for the triple guitar breakdown in the middle, one of the finest moments in musical history.

Next, Slayer with the riff that spawned rap-rock after Public Enemy sampled it on She Watch Channel Zero. Don’t blame either of them for that, though. Slayer is basically Iron Maiden played twice as fast, which is good.

Finally, Judas Priest. Not many people know that spikes and black leather were popularised in metal by Judas Priest singer Rob Halford, who is gay and kitted out his band with bondage gear from Soho sex shops.

Happy Hallowe’en!