Interpol recently released their third album, Our Love to Admire to a mid-sized tsunami of critical attention. The brouhaha is around whether Interpol is crap and derivative of a variety of New Wave and other influences or whether they are the latest in a long line of saviors of cataclysmic post-punk pop[1].
In this tussle the band are being compared variously to *deep breath* Joy Division, Editors, REM(!), Duran Duran(!!) and even Samuel Beckett. Of these I think that the comparison to Editors is most apt (chronologically closest). The cleverest comment that I’ve heard is that Interpol is like Editors, but about blow jobs. I agree with this assessment but would add that the new album is like Editors, but about disillusionment about blow jobs.
To give them their due Our Love to Admire is a good album by the standards of the 2007 crop of commercial rock/pop, but it’s certainly not revolutionary[2]. I don’t care who you are, you simply won’t find more than 3 or 4 songs on the album that rock you[3]. For my money Kasabian’s acid burnt, fuzz bass-tronic rock blows all of this post-punkiness out of the water.

Our Love to Admire

More interesting than these comparisons is the relative unanimity that both the supporters and deriders of Interpol have around the lyrics of Paul Banks(the singer).

As the dark, tinkling piano slowly builds layers to the mood, the song [...] quickly becomes ruined by lead singer/lothario Paul Banks’ mostly brain-dead lyrics. The singer’s unfortunate stream-of-consciousness ramblings and silly rhymes seem lifted directly from the diary of a middle-school-aged emo kid. It’s as though the lyrics are an afterthought.

PopMatters

Banks has always been a between-the-lines lyricist– his default is somewhere between opaque and lazy free association. With each new song, though, it becomes less certain that there was ever anything worth searching for between the lines in the first place. [...] “No I in Threesome”, ostensibly about convincing a girlfriend to invite her friend into bed, is either a hilarious parody of an embarrassingly self-serious Paul Banks song– or just an embarrassingly self-serious ménage a blah. (It’s not both.)

Pitchfork

And for those of us who savor the convolutions of Banks’ lyrical drivel, there’s “No I in Threesome,” which turns out to be not a Fall Out Boy outtake but a stomach-challengingly sincere love song

Rolling Stone

A shame that Our Love to Admire won’t do much beside inspire more fan blogs devoted to Banksian poesy.
[...]
The tune you’ll probably find on the most CD-R’s is the awesomely titled “No I in Threesome,” which shows Banks’ command of the poetics of illiteracy at its most fulsome.

Stylus Magazine

Finally, the point of my post – Banks’ poesy of destruction. Of all the elements of the album the lyrical content and delivery is probably the closest to truly progressive[4].
I’ve never really been able to make a strong case for or against the poetic value of any contemporary music lyrics[5] but I find Interpol’s lyrics to be skillfully chosen and fitting to the ambivalence and tone of Banks’ psyche. It is about disillusionment about blow jobs and the liteweight horror of being wound up in the lint in your own superstar navel. For exactly the reasons that many critics trash the lyrics I rate them – they’re ambiguous, seemingly random and often incoherent.
My life (modern life) is ambiguous, seemingly random and often incoherent.

Here are a portion of the lyrics of The Scale

I have a sequin for an eye
Pick a rose and hide my face
This is a bandit’s life
It comes and goes and mends the breaks
Under a molten sky, beyond the road, we lie in wait
You think they know us now?
Wait ’til the stars come out

Reading these they loose just about all of their value. The only way for them to make sense is to hear them sung – get the song.
The only way for them to make sense is to hear them sung. You need to hear them sung because of the only powerful item on the album – not his voice[6], but the phrasing, the phrasing, the phrasing.

There is nothing that I rate more highly in a vocal performance than the phrasing – the way and shape in which the words are delivered.
The phrasing is what makes Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on Fire[7] so radically superior to Taylor Hicks’ atrocity of a cover of the same song.
It’s the phrasing that makes Axl Rose and Billy Corgan work as vocalists and it is the phrasing that makes Beyonce better than anyone else on the planet.

And in this Banks succeeds. His lyrics may be a jumble and the music of his band relatively standard and tame, but he has a turn of phrase, a way to sing the same line differently in different parts of the song that makes Interpol valuable.
Get The Scale, listen to the variations in delivery of ‘I have a sequin for an eye, pick a rose’ – that’s where the value in this album is to be found.

[1] Taking the lead from Editors and The Killers(?)
[2] Oh, how I long for the days of Gomez’s first and second albums.
[3] I have very much the same opinion of both The Killers and Editors – 3 or 4 massive songs and the rest is patchy.
[4] The music, certainly, does not break new ground.
[5] Except maybe for some of Anthony Kiedis’ stellar work.
[6] Which is good and strong and more than reminiscent of Ian Curtis’s
[7] ‘Hey little girl is your daddy home, did he go and leave you all alone uh-huh, I got a bad desire, oh I’m on fire.

Darkness, darkness, darkness
Work is swallowing me whole.

Torrential rain causes flooding in the UK while the moles float drowned in puddles near my home.

Remember 80′s South African television on SABC? Back in the day television days on the ‘white’ channels[1] used to alternate between Afrikaans and English; Mondays would start with Afrikaans in the day time and then switch over to English at 6pm, Tuesdays would start English and switch over to Afrikaans at 6pm etc – fucking ridiculous[2].
In that time the funniest thing by far on the boob was a short animated show about a nameless little white line guy on a solid blue background who would walk up and down alternately shouting at or chatting to the bizarre things he encountered. I’m pretty sure that if you grew up in 80′s South Africa you know what I’m talking about; that little line-man with the big nose strutting up and down the line – hillarious.

Up until about a week ago I never knew what its name was (it didn’t really have a title sequence), but I can, to this day, sing the wordless song that introduced mr. line-man[3]. And then someone mentioned in passing that it was available on Youtube, and holy shit was it funny.
It turns out that the name of the show is La Linea and the character is named Mr. Linea. And it is hillarious.

Mr. Linea

The show was created by Italian animator Osvaldo Cavandoli in 1969 and the short (2-3 minutes) episodes he produced throughout the 70′s were broadcast all over the world. Part of the beauty of the show is that the main character speaks a gibberish language which translates to just about anything worldwide.

Mr. Cavandoli

Here are two of my favourite episodes from Youtube.

In which Mr. Linea meets a horse who takes him for a ride.

In which Mr. Linea encounters the boob tube and in it himself.

More than anything the genius in the execution is not about the bizarre plot lines[5], nor was it the insane vocal performances – it’s how elegantly the animator conveys the meaning of Mr. Linea’s day just with gestures – arm waving, pointing, shouting, laughing, pensive moments of silence. Regardless of your age or the language that you speak, you know exactly what Mr. Linea thinks.
There was no better television than this surreal show and it hasn’t aged in the least. Now if only someone would upload some episodes of Wielie Walie to Youtube.

[1] yes, even television channels had Apartheid
[2] though not more so than any of the other ludicrous nation-building enterprises of the 80′s
[3] all together now! Badoo-badoo, badoo-badoo, badoo-badoo
[4] an even better place to get episodes from is the archives of Italian TV5.
[5] which twist and turn and loop back on themselves at will, and invariably end abruptly with the demise of Mr. Linea.

Prince(the artists currently known as) has upped the ante as far as high volume music distribution is concerned. He managed to distribute 3 million copies of his latest album entitled Planet Earth all before 12:00 on a Sunday – yesterday. The album was given away as a freebie in the UK with yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. Yes, a full length album – free.
The newspaper printed an additional 600 000 copies to meet the expected demand. By all accounts it was an overwhelming success with many larger outlets reporting being sold out by 10:00 and the majority sold by 12:00.

This move on the purple one’s part has, predictably, brought out the old-skool executive and retail types in howl’s of outrage. The following is from The Guardian

One music store executive described the plan as “madness” while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores. Prince’s label has cut its ties with the album in the UK to try to appease music stores.

The Entertainment Retailers Association said the giveaway “beggars belief”. “It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career,” ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference. “It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.”

You can smell the fear in those quotes. I especially like [...] the damaging covermount culture [...] is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. If my business model were built on a perception of value I would be shitting my pants regardless of what the scale of the threat was.

Prince o’ Darkness

More interesting was HMVs response. Initially HMV were as outraged, shocked and concerned as the rest of the old-skool musik krew about Prince and the Mail’s move, but they woke up to the reality and for the first time ever offered newspapers for sale in their stores. They sold 50 000 copies of the newspaper yesterday.

Less interesting is what this says about Prince as a recording artist. Obviously most reports are casting him as some ground breaking luminary of the new music revolution, but I think that there is less to it than that. The fact is that Prince doesn’t need the money, what he wants is to generate as much media around the release of his album and for his music to be heard. If he had released it through traditional channels[1] his album would have drowned in a sea of younger, more marketable airhead pop punk bands.
Given his position in the global music market this made perfect sense as a way to generate maximum press for an non-event album.

[1] via his record company, into music stores with posters and radio giveaways

David Beckham has just arrived, to tumultuous applause, in Los Angeles. I have just seen a 5 minute CNN segment[1] on this, including an interview with an expert[2] on their arrival and what Americans can expect of them. If the new president of France, that Sarkozy dude, visited GW in Washitown DC it would get all of 2 minutes coverage on the same show.

Pay my bills

He and his mega spice girl wife, Victoria[3] are have moved to LA from Madrid to pursue his new career with LA Galaxy and her new career at the Ivy. This is being played like it is the biggest media/news event since forever and by all accounts they are positively HUGE. Their management must be pooping themselves.

Some facts:
- If this comes off(the business of the move) we are about to see a massive amount of money generated.
- Tom Cruise is getting ready to establish himself as the new power broker of AAA-list hookups. His triumph over George Clooney is assured[4].
- Brad Pitt is no longer the finest specimen of manhood in Hollywood.
- No one cares about Posh, this will not change.
- Paris Hilton has just been blown out of the water. She’ll have to start going out without her undies again.
- Scientology won’t be going after the Beckham’s; that would be just too obvious, even for them.

This is news. This is what people want to know. This is business, it’s the most valuable commodity today – public interest.
What a bizarre state of affairs; I can’t wait to see what happens next.

[1] I wouldn’t call it a story
[2] The features editor of W magazine, for who they did a cover shoot.
[3] Vicky to her friends, Katie and Tommy
[4] He assures himself each morning during his daily 5 minutes of quality time; just him, his mirror and his smile.