1st May 2000


Edwin Starr ate my hamster.

Single of the Week

"Funky Music" by Utah Saints

Summer's just around the corner, Britney's number one, all's well with the world. What better way to celebrate the fact than with a big funking slab of electronic mess spewing out your hifi? Utah Saints tie Edwin Starr to a chair, douse him in petrol then threaten to slice his ear off with a huge jagged techno riff that's sharper than a lemon-flavoured razor blade. Hardly essential (Utah Saints never were, are or will be) it still provides a rather energetic and dumbly violent antitode to the rest of this week's decidely wishy-washy fare.

Drowing in remixes on the b-side, the best - and most different - being the Dope Smugglaz effort which sands down the jagged bits with some well-placed female vox and a spacier beat.

Seeing as how this week's single releases don't exactly warrant huge essays, I shall instead take the opportunity for one of my occasional diatribes (I know how much you cherish them).

Is not the state of music here in the UK a bit on the godawful side at the moment? In a sonic world inhabited by yesterday's cigarette and alcohol guzzling heroes regurgitating past morning glories; a world where cheeky chappy mothers' favourites with limpid songs about the weather pick up every award being flung their way; a place where Tom Jones - Tom m'fucking Jones - can be seen as credible; where our only real "star" bands step their way through choreographed Abba tribute numbers: this is not the world I was promised when I fought for my country in the great indie wars of '86.

What movement have we got to pin our hopes to today? Britpop was so ghastly all it has left is a bad taste (see The Bluetones below). Grunge is but a forgotten rumble in Kurt Cobain's crypt. Baggy was great, but is very much yesterday's trousers. So what are we left with? Pop? Not exactly a movement you would use as a way you would drive your parents to despair, is it? R&B? Gah...There's nothing. Nothing, I tell you. And it makes me sad.

Come on, someone - move...

Rating: 8/10

The Rest

"Up With People!" by Lambchop

Lambchop are serious singer songwriter types with NHS specs and dodgy hair. Or at least they sound as though they are, with "Up With People!", a fairly pleasant doodle around with Blur, Edwyn Collins and Lou Reed's box of crayons. The sort of song that Belle And Sebastian fans would mess their corduroys over, it washes over you like a warm breeze on the beach, leaving behind only a few grains of sand in places you'd rather there were none to remind you it was ever there.

The "Zero7 Remix" follows, being far more interesting in its welding of the original to a massive trip-hoppy attack that gives a much needed layer of menace to the kitten-petting frolics of the a-side. Then "Miss Prissy" turns up in her hairband and flowery mini-skirt, dancing like a pixie around the smouldering country-tinged guitar and Velvet Underground vocals in a manner that makes you never ever want to meet her again.

Rating: 5/10

"Autophilia" by The Bluetones

In which four tedious little men sing about cars, cleverly using the metaphor of driving ("I'm on a double yellow line" - oh how Wildean) as a comment on life. Good grief, I thought this crew had given up their sniffle-nosed nonsense years ago, having crawled under the same britpop boulder which they emerged from. But no, they're back, and an expectant world can yawn disinterestedly.

"Soup Du Jour" is hilariously sung in French, and Sacha Distels along in a smugly contrived kind of way. And whilst whimsy and feyness can sometimes be endearing and charming (see Ooberman or Air), "Vostok Of Love" is so ineffectually weak it couldn't get out a paper bag if you gave it a blowtorch.

The video to "Autophilia" is included, which portrays the lads as car mechanics, an occupation I suggest they start preparing for even harder.

Rating: 2/10

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