A Riot of our Own Rosey R*E*P*E*A*T hears some tunes floating acoss the sun dappled
garden. Perhaps...
Lily Allen : 22(Regal)
Another summer and another alluring Lily Allen tune floating across
the sun dappled garden. Well this maybe a bit optimistic and I may have
preferred her stance when she was delivering a musical Fuck You to the
BNP (see below), the lyrics here are still intelligent and well crafted,
dealing the pressure on women as they approach 30 to settle down with
'proper' jobs and 'proper' relationships:
It's sad but it's true how society says
Her life is already over
There's nothing to do and there's nothing to say
Til the man of her dreams comes along picks her up
And the instrumental version on the B side, while its selection may
perhaps demonstrate a lack of imagination, also proves that the tune
more than stands up for itself too. Just like Ms Allen.
Little Alice :Oh! CD! www.myspace.com/littlealicemusic
“OMG it's Little Alice” begins the press release, before telling
us that said band “are a four piece female-fronted band from the
small Cheshire town, Congleton... Their influences range from The Subways
to Be Your Own Pet to Bikini Kill... their interests include interior
design, Johnny Depp, the beautiful Hungarian folk music of Bela Bartok,
MC Escher, Ultimate Frisbee, Visual Kei, The Legend of Nosferatu, Racquetball
and Timeshare package holidays”
How can such a CV fail to please?
Little Alice produce taut, snotty new waves ditties. Their performance
is strong and the singer is particularly confident and striking in her
delivery, somehow personable and confrontational at the same time. And
despite the wackiness of the press release, the songs themselves are
too confrontational to be cute – for instance in 'Sex Cells' they
instruct us to “do what you want and fuck the rest!”
Lots of potential here for an exciting kick up the arse of complacent
indie rock by numbers.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs : Heads Will Roll (Polydor)
Yeah yeah yeah, I know this came out months ago, but it sits so well
with Little Alice who might easily grow into becoming what the Yeah
Yeah Yeahs were a year or so back. Of course this single, part of the
'It's Blitz' reinvention of the band, relies as much on looped keyboard
patterns and spooky sonic spaces as on pure guitar attack, but it's
still very definitely the same band producing what sounds like a sinister
soundtrack to a scary b-movie. Watch out it doesn't dupe, seduce then
execute you.
Override Fanzine #2 (“Punk, rock, tattoos, life”)
£1 from overridefanzine@googlemail.com or myspace.com/overridefanzine
Oh what a pleasure it it to read a new, punky, spunky printed paper
zine packed with attitude, no nonsense reviews and loads of enthusiasm.
The writers brim with honesty and there's some great agit-prop art courtesy
of Kieran Plunkett of the Restarts. Along with some honest and informative
reviews (no Lily Allen slobber here) there' pieces on Black President,
The Rabble, the 241ers and our very own Anti-Social Burn-Outs (amongst
others), as well as a thoughtful retrospective on Towers of London and
a rather overwhelming tattoo obsession. We need more of zines like Override
making a riot of their own.
Now I'm gonna ask if we can reprint their Towers of London and ASBO
pieces on this website.
Dumb/sulk Trigg-er issues 1-4 http://sharkbatter.ning.com
What to do with some of the older back issues of R*E*P*E*A*T is a question
I often ask myself, usually just before receiving a massive order from
Finland or a request to stock the Brighton zine Fest almost single-handedly
which persuades me to keep them all just a bit longer. Dumb/sulk Trigg-er
got over this dilemma by ripping up their early issues and recompiling
them as a 'best of' which is now available for 'adults only'. For in
its time (1995-97), as well as 'talking shit' with the likes of Prolapse,.
Mogwai, Arab Strap, The Space Kittens, Sonic Youth and The Yummy Fur,
Dumb/sulk Trigg-er also did a lot of talking dirty with the likes of
Traci Lords and Lisa Carver, whose masturbation methods and fantasies
are revealed. One of the most interesting bits of the zine for me is
the letters page where editor Roger defends his decision to run a 'Sex
Issue' and seeks to illuminate where he sees the boundary between cheap
top shelf porn (which his reader was concerned the zine was becoming)
and genuine explorations of human sexuality, a subject so often suppressed
by society but which the zine wanted to explore.
The letter from Andy of Agebaby also made me laugh.
So yes this is a serious zine, full of things to make you think and
reminisce and maybe explore some long forgotten gem of the 90s (who
were Prolapse again?). And did you know that editor Roger went on to
be in Dawn of the Replicants?
The Pains Of Being Pure at Heart : 'Come Saturday'
Talk about nostalgia?! Not that I want to name drop, but this lot were
in Seattle the same time as me, and their interviews in which they talked
about their veneration of various obscure C86 bands in various local
magazines kept me amused in my several journeys around the area. But
none of which prepared me for how retro they'd sound – how the
vocals would have the melancholy tug of Strawberry Wine era My Bloody
Valentine, how the guitars would have the irresistible energy of the
Soup Dragons and the drums the punch of the Rosehips, all drizzled in
Razorcuts dreamy organeering. So on first playing this track I was instantly
smitten with its energy, its bitter sweet lyrics and its guileless hook.
Two weeks back in this country and I still feel the same, though I
do have to wonder if people will still be discussing it in Seattle mags
in 23 years time? And with the world in the mess that it's in, do we
really have time for all this fucking tweeness all over again?
