Pro Life or Pro Choice?

The fourth of @formulaic666 and I's relaunch of Crossblogination, and we're confronting 'Abortion'.  You can go see what Paul thinks here.

Such a difficult topic.  Emotive, highly volatile and one that often brings out the very worst in people from all walks of life and on both sides.

Rather than critique either side of the argument it probably makes sense to say where I sit with it, how abortion makes me feel and where I see the rights and wrongs.

I absolutely believe in choice.  I'm also very liberal in my views on most topics.  So I believe in a woman having a choice to abort a pregnancy.  In most instances.  In a nut shell, if it wasn't legal then it would still be happening, driven underground, a fistful of notes handed over for a back street abortion.  Is that really the sort of society we want?  

I also get the sanctity of life thing.  Not in a religious fervor sort of way, but in a, 'The whole idea of abortion makes me feel uneasy,' sort of way.  And that, to be honest, isn't so much based around the actual act but more around the way I've seen and heard about it being used repeatedly as a form of contraception.  One accident is understandable but to keep letting that happen, to keep going to the clinic until any thoughts of guilt have long since dissipated, just feels wrong.

But that's the price of choice.  And you can't legislate for some people's selfishness.

I am absolutely certain that most women find the process an incredibly harrowing one.  An unbelievable weight that they must carry after they've completed the process.  It must be an incredibly difficult decision and I've seen the after effects of that choice too.  The way that potential birthdays are remembered and that nagging doubt about whether the right thing was done.  Those women I have the up most respect for.

Abortion polarises opinion and it polarises me.  On the one hand I support choice.  On the other I struggle with how easy it can be for a minority to abuse that choice and not feel the weight of their actions.

Tricky, ultimately I'm pro choice but I put that picture there deliberately.  Just to make you think for a second.

Climate Change

The third of @formulaic666 and I's relaunch of Crossblogination then and we're confronting 'Climate Change'.  You can go see what Paul thinks here. 

Where I sit on Climate Change is pretty much defined by who I am as a person I suppose.  The geek in me looks at the facts, the evidence right before our eyes and says, 'Yep, something is going wrong.  Badly wrong.'  And I do like facts, although the waters are muddied here, dirtied by Governments and Environmentalists with their own agendas.  Me, I look at the polar caps retreating at a rate of knots and wonder how high the sea levels will have to rise before anyone gives a shit.

The trouble is our weather seems as unpredictable as ever, we've had as much snow in the last few years as we seemed to get back in the 1970's, but that's here in the UK.  It's so easy to get blinded to what our emissions (and those from other countries) are actually doing to our climate.

And for me it's about legacy.  Like anything we do in life, our behaviour, the example we set to the next generation influences firstly the world we leave them and secondly how they'll treat it.  I look around and feel that because everything is driven by the market the biggest way capitalism has failed is in how we view the planet.  That no matter how many times we're able to see pictures showing how fragile we are from space we still see it as something to consume and abuse.

Just like we do everything.

That might seem cynical but what government is strong enough to put the planets well being in front of votes.  Before employment figures and a growing national debt.  What actually has to happen before a country stands up and starts leading the way forward?  London flooding?  The Thames poring over the flood barrier and the underground rivers beneath the capital rising up and destroying so many centuries of history?  Thousands dead and homeless in a first world country?  Or will the world shrug collectively?

We've all sat and watched Australia's recent floods and who hasn't thought, 'Fuck, that's the climate....'?  But then you read and hear that they've had terrible floods in that part of the world before and that helps to dissipate the concern.  Hundreds die in mudslides in Brazil, but that happens every year right?  We're so desensitised to disasters of any description that it truly seems to take something of a ridiculous magnitude to shock us.  The Boxing Day Tsunami did it.  The Twin Towers did it.  Made the world stop and think and question itself or show a genuine out pouring of emotion and altruism.

And that's the trouble.  Climate Change is happening but it's like watching a Plasma TV picture slowly fade over years of use.  It's imperceptible for the most part, we can't look up in the sky and see a hole in the ozone layer.  I wish we could.  I wish we would all wake up to what we're doing.

At some point something huge will happen.  And the world will watch, jaws slack as somewhere gets lost because of the years of abuse we've heaped on The Earth.  It'll take that to wake us all up.  Me included.

The Big Society?

The second of @formulaic666 and I's relaunch of Crossblogination then and we're confronting the 'Big Society', the Conservatives vision for Britain.  You can go see what Paul thinks here.  Thanks to @dumbwittness for the suggested topic.

The Big Society is something that I can't help but come at from a bit of an odd angle.  As some of you probably know I work in a co-owned business and I see some of the benefits of that.  I'm also a socialist and have been for many many years although I'm no where near as politically aware as I was when I was a student.

One of the strangest things is just hearing the Conservatives talk in terms of a 'society' at all.  Thatcher didn't believe it existed and there is something refreshing about the whole idea coming from them, the trouble is when you dig into the 'whole idea' it just doesn't add up within the context of the country that most of us wake up to each morning.  It feels like spin.

Co-ownership then.  What value does it add?  At it's best people feel like they have a real voice within the business they work in, at its worst (and I feel quite strongly that this is how the government see it) it's a tick box exercise.  Give the illusion of listening to people but then make them do what THE MAN thinks is best anyway.  I've seen both sides of that, genuine empowerment of employees and real, tangible differences but sadly also the cynicism generated by doing the opposite.

The real vision of The Big Society though is giving more over to local communities on a volunteer basis, giving real people real opportunities to make a difference locally.  That's all well and good within a society where people trust each other, that doesn't have a media that runs daily scare stories about the latest thing that we all need to be terrified of and you know, where people really give a fuck about each other.  But Britain 2011 is a pretty fraught place.  Get on a tube train, say hello to a stranger and all you'll do is freak the crap out of someone.  Because there is no trust.  No real sense of society. And volunteers?  Oh... is that the queue?  No, that's everyone leaving town.

Basically it's a nice little vision to sell to middle England, but that's not where most of us reside.  Most of us live on the periphery, in a world where yes, the state and the market have got too big, but one where we've been taught that our possessions define us not what value we can bring as individuals.  Got a flat screen TV?  Tick.  Got a decent PC?  Tick.  Got an iPhone?  Tick.  Got a job to pay for this shit?  Tick.  Got acceptance?  Tick.  Wanna play an active role in the local bus service?  Fuck off.  How does that make me look cool?!

Is this is a bit odd coming from someone who did a 60 Hour Tweetathon for charity?  It feels pretty odd.  I've seen communities online do stuff for good, I've been at the centre of it for fucks sake, how can I possibly be so cynical?  That's my default position when it comes to politicians these days.  Because is it about really listening to the public?  To society?  Or is it just another piece of wallpaper to place over the schism?

The whole, 'Is Society something that's moved/moving online?' question is something to look at here another day.  But I get that I've opened the door to that debate.

The Big Society is a nice little sound bite for our delightful government to bring out when they want to feel warm and cosy, stabbing us in the back while they give us a nice cuddle.

You look so tired/unhappy,

Bring down the government,

They don't,

They don't speak for us.

Me and God

Remember Crossblogination with @formulaic666?  Well it's back, with a new twist.  Instead of trading albums we're trading big themes and I thought we'd start with one of the biggest of the lot, belief systems, religion and our individual takes.  You can go and read Paul's when you're done here.

Where to even start... I suppose it's important to say that I was brought up in a household that was religious on a Sunday.  We went to Church, my sister and I got shipped off to Sunday School and for the first 12 or so years of my life I pretty much accepted that there was a God although he didn't seem to have much impact on the rest of my week.  When we lost Dad in '86 something changed.  Nothing really definable, I wasn't angry at God for taking Dad away, but there was a sense that the loss wasn't going to get filled by praying to anyone or anything.  That the grief was ours to carry and there was no comfort in a man in white collar saying that it was all part of God's 'plan'.

So yes, that sewed the seeds of doubt.  A death in the family has a way of doing that.  Then I went to high school (we still had a middle school system on the Isle of Wight) and things started to get cemented.  I remember our first Religious Education lesson, the class must have had about twenty five kids in it and the teacher, who looked a bit like Noddy, asked who believed in God.  I, being a bit on the shy side, hedged my bets and waited to see what everyone else did and only three put their hands up.  I remember it being three because I can remember their names.  I kept mine down but was shocked that so few people believed in God.  I think at that point I'd have been best described as agnostic, but by the time I left high school I was almost certainly atheist as I'd found friends who could hold a reasonable conversation about such stuff and I'd started to form a pretty solid opinion.

And now?

One thing I will say, and I think this is important, is that not believing in God, doesn't mean you lose your sense of wonder.  I can still be left in awe by the Universe, by someone's altruism, by something that seems unexplainable.  I absolutely love that there are questions that we don't have answers to, I just think it's wrong to fill the holes those questions leave with God.  I respect your right to do that, totally, as long as you respect my opinion too.

I struggle a bit with the blindness of the really devout sometimes.  That inability to see past where their beliefs have failed so miserably in the past and will fail again.  'The Earth is at the centre of the Universe... oh....' etc etc.

I struggle with religion being used as an excuse to wage war too.  It sickens me to be honest.  I just don't get it.

So what do I believe in?  Well I think there's an absurd need to make atheists seem like they see everything as a machine.  That the Universe is made up of nothing more than elements that combine and collide creating a cosmos that's dry and devoid of imagination.  I do believe that we are the product of billions of coincidences and natures need to evolve to survive, but the moment we clicked into sentience changed everything and we are truly fortunate to be able to view our world with eyes that not only see but also question.  It's not really surprising that we've needed to answer some of those questions by applying something bigger than nature to explain them, but that's just our imaginations running away with us.  I believe that our sentience is an amazing but not unexplainable thing and I have no doubt that there are other life forms out there, wondering, just as we do, how the hell to get off this rock and go find each other.

I believe that there are answers to all of the questions we ponder and although I don't believe that our souls carry on into an afterlife I do believe that our 'souls' (for want of a better word) do exist within the confines of our own brains.  That the chemical reactions in our heads combine to make us more than we are.  I also believe that as a species we'll always have questions and there will always be some who choose to find answers in religion rather than science.

Losing a sense of wonder would be damaging I think.  Being able to retain that, to be able to look at a stunning view and still have your jaw draw drop at what nature has made, is so important.

Drilling down something like love to a chemical reaction in the brain doesn't diminish how that feels to a person.  And that's the error I see getting made all the time, that discovering something like that closes the door on more questions, because for me it just opens up more.

In a nut shell then... I think religion stunts us as a species, because it means accepting that this is all some grand design.  Accepting that it's not is far braver, because trying to imagine the scope and scale of an infinite space where we sit on a tiny rock, in maybe just one of an infinite amount of other Universes, is far more mind blowing than any creationist story I've ever heard.

Cross Blogination #10 Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley

It's been a while since @formulaic666 and I did any Crossblogging but today we are back with a cracking album from the mid 1990's by Josh Homme's former band Kyuss.

Cross Blogination #9 Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

How had I never got around to buying a 'Death Cab for Cutie' album? This is so up my street it may as well be living next door.

I think if anything the band name put me off more than anything. It kind of made me think they were a death metal band or something. I was very very wrong. This is a special album, the bands sixth, released in 2008 and I will be getting hold of all the previous recordings.

It's indie, kind of a cross between 'Jimmy Eat World' and 'Explosions in the Sky', with shades of 'Teenage Fan Club' thrown in for good measure. Generally though this is get inside your head music.

Ben Gibbard's voice is unspectacular but perfect for this kind of slightly off kilter indie. 'I Will Posses Your Heart' may now be my favourite song discovery through Cross Blogination, sad, slightly disturbing, and a truly beautiful four and a half minute introduction before there's any sign of the singing. It builds and builds slowly and elegantly over a gentle yet hypnotic guitar refrain and then develops into a song about unrequited love. Great emotional stuff with a slightly unnerving stalker theme to it that plays on your mind a bit after listening.

There are days when outside your window

I see my reflection as I slowly pass

And I long for this mirrored perspective

When we'll be lovers, lovers at last

You got to spend some time, love

You got to spend some time with me

And I know that you'll find love

I will possess your heart

The whole album is like that really, there's an underlying darkness behind the songs that I really loved. A sort of soft mournfulness that a band like the Editors would do well to listen to.

Most of the tracks fold seamlessly into each other and the music is consistently intoxicating throughout. It's an album to listen to with headphones on and on my bus journeys it's felt like I've been in a different world.

Songs like 'Your New Twin Sized Bed' whilst beautifully melodic also contain some of the saddest lines I've heard this year. Pretty yet sad. Good stuff.

'No Sunshine' hits that note too, although it's here I'm reminded of 'Jimmy Eat World' the most, with chiming guitars and up beat tone, but dig a little beneath the surface and the words are about growing up and long forgotten summers when the sun shone every day.

It's been a while since I've listened to an album by anyone that I've felt so personally connected to. There's a lovely maturity to the words and a dark heart to the songs that I love. And it's all delivered with some great tunes. But there is hope here too, it's not a depressing album, just an honesty to the song writing. 'You Can do Better Than Me' is a great example of that.

I have to face the truth

That no one could ever look at me like you do

Like I'm something worth holding on to

These times I think of leaving

But it's something I'll never do

'Cause you can do better than me

But I can't do better than you

The song that follows is almost the best song here, only outdone by the aforementioned 'I Will Posses Your Heart'. 'Grapevine Fires' is a short story of a guy and his girlfriend picking up her daughter from school and watching a forest fire (my assumption) from a graveyard. Weird, strangely uplifting and a great song.

This is an album to cherish, listen to alone and play repeatedly. For me, 'Death Cab for Cutie' are a potentially huge new discovery. Which to the Death Cab fans probably sounds pretty lame but hey, I still love getting into new stuff and this was new for me.

Album closer 'The Ice is Getting Thinner' is a wonderful ending. A gorgeously crafted tale of relationship ending. Sad, affecting and with beautiful words.


Get this album at all costs. Best Cross Blogination album to date. No question.

*****
Now go see what Paul (@formulaic666) thought at Blog on the Motorway.

The album was suggested to us by Joe Lee who is also a fellow blogger. You can find his blog here. Strangely enough it's called Grapevine Fires after the song. I guess he's a pretty big fan, I think I may have joined him.

Cross Blogination #8 Crowded House - Together Alone

It struck me that apart from our 'jazz interlude' Paul and I hadn't really strayed from rock. So I thought I'd throw something different into the mix and I'm pretty sure we're gonna get two very different reviews.

Crowded House were a bit of a band for me after I was introduced to them by Miss F about twenty years ago. This album came out in 1993, a couple of years after we split, but I think it says much for the band that they still evoke memories of visiting Australia when 'Woodface' was actually the album that soundtracked that trip.

What separates 'Together Alone' from the three earlier Crowded House albums is the production. It just sounds more solid and like every song, apart from one (more on that later), was a labour of love for the band.

There's so much care and attention to detail here and the use of Maori instruments throughout gives the whole album a dense quality and an exotic other worldly beauty. It is also by far the best lyrically, as much as you may love their earlier singles, this is a better written, more complete piece. Neil Finn's voice is at its best on 'Together Alone' too, he really appears to be feeling every song, partly surely do to his growing maturity as a song writer at the time and finally leaving his elder brother behind him in the talent stakes.

It's an album about being in love, falling in love and how intoxicating and overwhelming that can be. Not highly original in subject matter and it would be hard to argue that Crowded House tackled they're music in an original way but when they were at their peak, as they are here, they were the best at what they did by some margin.

Lets get the miss steps out of the way and the reasons that this album isn't a five star classic. 'Black and White Boy' is so dreadful I only listened to it for about the third time this week. I had 'Together Alone' in the car, taped onto an old C90 cassette, and I left this song off when I transferred it. Woeful. Second to last song 'Skin Feeling' is something of an attempt at a rockier track from 'Crowded House' (as is Black and White Boy) and it just doesn't gell amongst the other work here.

So bin those two songs and what are you left with? Velvet. Honestly it's like having your ears rubbed gently with the stuff. 'Kare Kare', the first track, was also where the album was recorded. There's a chilled, almost drugged out vibe to the song that makes you feel like your on a beach somewhere at a party, smoking something you shouldn't.

'In Your Command' strives to be one of those troublesome 'Crowded House rock songs' but is saved by one of the most beautiful, loved up, choruses they ever produced. What Neil Finn was always good at (probably still is) was telling a story in songs and 'Nails In My Feet' is a great example of this. Clearly this was a man who'd discovered someone pretty special and that joy of being in love shines through this record.

'Fingers of Love' has a ghostly erotic quality to it and 'Pineapple Head' which follows it is one of my favourite Crowded House songs. It's just so damn uplifting.

I will play you like a shark

and I'll clutch at your heart

I'll come flying like a spark

to enflame you

'Locked Out' is the one rockier track that works in the context of the album but what follows is for me, Crowded House's masterpiece. 'Private Universe'. Lord knows what it's about, just seek it out, it's beautiful and mystifying.

I could go on about every track, but I won't. I love this album, it takes me back to happy times from when I bought it and from my earlier trip to Oz. It is not in anyway a break up album. It's an album to listen to with the Mrs's over a bottle of red. She'll probably like it more than you will to start with but you'll get there too. I promise. Just skip 'Black and White Boy'. Of course you may be the 'Mrs', in which case buy the album skip 'Black and White Boy' and wait for the pair of you to start harmonising along with the choruses. If you're single I'd probably leave it until your not.

****
Rip: Private Universe, Kare Kare, Together Alone.


Now go see what Paul (@formulaic666) thought of it. Blog on the Motorway. I'm betting it doesn't get four stars.

Cross Blogination #7 Glassjaw - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence

The opening squall of a vocal nearly made me cough up my tea. It was my first Cross Blogination, 'I am gonna hate this,' moment. But it didn't last.

This is Paul's break up album and 'Glassjaw's' début from 2000 is one angry record. It reminded me of an album I bought around six or seven years ago by 'The Used', certainly the vocal style used here by Daryl Palumbo is very similar. Every once in a while he just howls. It's a sound I'm not even sure I can make. I could try, but I think that my lungs would have be spooned back in after the event.

Where this album differs from 'The Used' is the sound behind the vocals. It's less polished and anthemic, with a much rougher edge and better for it. It certainly suits the aggression in the lyrics. Reading through some of the lyrics for tracks like 'Lovebites and Razorlines' one can only imagine how badly this guy was scorned, there's an incredible amount of anger here. But frankly who hasn't wanted to scream stuff like this at someone once in a while.

Who you fucking now?

You fucking eat shit, you filthy shit

who you fucking now!?!

who you fucking now!!!!

I kid you not ladies, that is how you make us feel once in a while, but not all the time obviously. It's also an ace song that just hits you hard and low with its power and you can imagine singing/screaming along post a messy break up.

Sometimes when you listen to a band you can hear them going through the motions as the creative force behind the band loses their muse. This is not one of those moments. Snow Patrol's last album was a pastiche of the previous one as Gary Lightbody found happiness outside of the band. Glassjaw use the raw emotion of a relationship failure to create an album that attacks the same topics that Lightbody's band write about but in a completely different way. Here it's all about the raw anger, rather than the melancholy. And fuck, does it sound dangerous.

There are moments of relief from all the intensity 'Ry Ry's Song' and 'Her Middle Name was Boom' are less over powering, the latter being one of the best songs on the album.

'Majour' though, which comes at around half way is stunning. Great riff and a stonking vocal. A proper post punk rock song. Album closer 'Hotel of the White Locust' is by far my favourite track here though. It's such a potent song full of all that angst and anger everyone of us has felt at rejection.

Who could ever..

Who the fuck could ever..

Take the place of me?

Who could ever..

Who the fuck could ever..

No one can the place of me?

Couple it with the music that accompanies the track and you have a perfect example of where the EMO school should have headed. This is not gonna be an album for everyone. The lyrics alone would put some off. It is hard, it is heavy, but there's a quality throughout that shines through. It may not be an album that I'll listen to loads (I'm in a happy place) but the next time I get my heartbroken it's coming out for sure.*

4/5

Now go see Paul's review at The Blog on the Motorway. Oh and while you're there have a read of his piece entitled 'Fallen Idle'. If you were a fan of the Smashing Pumpkins it pretty much sums up how we all feel about Billy Corgan.

*This post contains my first official F-Bombs. Sorry to anyone offended, but Glassjaw's lyrics wouldn't look right with a bunch of f***ing stars in them. Alright?

Cross Blogination #6 Eels - Electro-Shock Blues

Cross Blogination is back after a weeks break, the blogging project where formulaic666 and I review an album on our blogs. Either one we've suggest to each other or one someone else suggests to us. This week the album was suggested by @jenniepark.


I, like most of you I'm sure, was more than aware of the Eels before I started listening to this album. 1996's 'Beautiful Freak' was an album that I loved, the single 'Novocain for the Soul' pulling many of us in during those post Nirvana years. Quite why I never had this, the follow up, is a question I've been pondering all day after listening to the album this week.

'Electro-Shock Blues' doesn't contain a 'Novocain for the Soul' moment but it's a better record than its predecessor but maybe I was put off by the subject manner (more on that in a sec). But frankly I missed out and this is an album I should have owned before now.

Eels were always Mark Everett's band, and this album is all about him and his writing. Released in 1998 the album deals with where 'E' (as he is known) was at in his life. To say he was in a bit of a dark place is something of an understatement. His sister had just committed suicide and his mother was dying from lung cancer. His father had died 1982, E found the body, so he was dealing with being the only member of his family.

Musically I'm at times reminded of Beck (where did he go?) but without the funk, so although the album deals with some bleak themes, there is an uplifting sound to it through out which sort of provides the hope behind the words.

It doesn't get much bleaker than the opening track 'Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor,' where the lyrics are lifted directly from his sisters journal. 'My name is Elizabeth and my life is shit and piss,' is just a sample of what's contained within. Must have been incredibly hard to sing and record for E.

There's this delicate breakable quality to the album that gives you a real sense of what this sad period in E's life was doing to him emotionally.

'Dead of Winter' towards the back of the album is about his mother slowly dying of cancer.

So I know you're going pretty soon

Radiation sore throat got your tongue

Magic markers tattoo you

And show it where to aim

And strangers break their promises

You won't feel any

You won't feel any pain

Affecting and mournful stuff. Also hard to listen to and the opening line of the following track 'The Medication is Wearing Off,' is a perfect reflection of grief. I'll let you find it yourself, I do like setting you homework, but if you've ever lost someone you'll get the words.

What comes in-between those last few tracks and the first one is brilliantly pretty album about losing your loved ones in difficult and unpleasant circumstances. The only track I recognised was 'Last Stop: This Town' which was one of only two singles released. It's a nice tune but this was always going to be a difficult album to sell to the record buying public. The second track in, 'Going to Your Funeral Part One' is about going to his sisters funeral. It's not an easy listen as you get an insight into how E felt about his sister and how he finds a memory that allows him to miss her. And yet the song is a great one.

E clearly knows that the album is a tough journey for the listener and he end the record with a great song of hope and moving on. 'PS You Rock My World' is a track that leaves you feeling that despite the crap that's happening to E he's gonna be ok. 'And I was thinking about how everyone was dying and maybe it's time to live.'

Some times when people are in dark places they do their best work and that is very true here. Last night I was doubled up in pain when another kidney stone kicked off big time and this has been a lovely album to come back around to slowly over the course of the day. Very dark, but never so bleak you want to turn it off.

4/5

Now go see what Paul thought: Blog on the Motorway

Cross Blogination #5 Dashboard Confessional - The Places That You've Come to Fear the Most

The second Dashboard Confessional album from 2002 is an album that makes me feel sad, uplifted and aware that sometimes a cheesy, slightly bitter love song is still something that I adore even at 36.

This is Chris Carrabba's solo stuff and it's all accoustic guitars and laments about an ex. 'Dashboard' became more of a collaborative effort on later albums and although the follow up was good 'they' rather than 'him' were never as good as 'he' was on this album.

It's a record that I can sing every word to. There's a live album that contains many of the tracks form 'The Places that You've Come to Fear the Most' performed for MTV Unplugged, in front of a live audience, where every song is sung pretty much by the crowd.

It is a break up album. I think it got me through two. It is about mean girls being mean and that. It struck a chord.

The first three tracks are about as good as, 'I've just been scorned,' songs get. Opener 'The Brilliant Dance' is about being dumped for the first time by your first girlfriend. 'And breathing is a foreign task, and thinking just to much to ask, and you're measuring minutes by a clock that's blinking eights.' Who hasn't felt like that? I certainly have. Second song 'Screaming Infidelities' is basically the follow up to song one. 'I'm reading your note over again, and there's not a word that I comprehend, except where you signed it "I love you always and forever." ' Bless Chris, he got hurt pretty bad I guess. I love the imagery of the song. The poor guy in his room, his ex's hair on the floor or bed, and he know's she's with someone else. I've been there too...

'The Best Deceptions' is the best Dashboard song by some distance. This time the girlfriends gone on a trip and played away. She's sorry and wants to get back together. Chris isn't having any of it though.

'I'm waiting for blood to flow to my fingers,
I'll be all right when my hands get warm.Ignoring the phone,
I'd rather say nothing. I'd rather you'd never heard my voice.
You're calling too late too late to be gracious you do not warrant long goodbyes.'


I should probably point out that this isn't REM. There's no allegory here, no need to figure out the lyrics, but with a bottle of wine and that, 'I've just been dumped,' feeling in your gut it's a super album to sing/vent along with.

It never quite measures up to those first three tracks most of the rest of album is about another relationship slowly dying. There are some great lines but deep down I know I love it most of all because it's just a great sing along album.

'Standard Lines' is probably the darkest song here. It begins as a track about a relationship that has ended in the couple drifting apart and splitting. They've said it's for the best but Chris is secretly drinking his way through the break up. When they bump into each other somewhere in small town America they use the classic 'I'll call you soon' lines to each other but inside he's in bits. (I'm not sure whether it's necessarily a good thing that I can relate to so many of the songs...)

So what that the lyrics sound like some teenager ranting? 'Screaming Infidelities' is one of my favourite songs and 'The Places...' is a good album. Maybe not a great one, but one that I still recommend to everyone. Especially if they've just been dumped.

4/5

I went through a faze of trying to convert most people I knew into Dashboard and I succeeded with a fair few people, I wonder what Paul thought of it. Go see for yourself. Blog on the Motorway.

Cross Blogination #4 Tool - Ænima

When I put this album onto i-Tunes it knew that it was metal and I knew a bit about Tool, roughly the same amount as i-Tunes...

This is a band I should have been listening to for years. I loved it because it was the opposite of what I expected. I was waiting for the blur of industrial rock and impenetrable wailing.

What I got instead was something unusual, cerebral even. I had no idea Tool made albums like this. This is crafted metal. Dark dense and intoxicating. Sure in parts it's heavy, really heavy but then I've never been afraid of a track that pounds the senses, there just has to be melody somewhere even if you have to work at the song to find it. And there is melody here, in spades.

Take a song like 'Forty-Six and Two' as an example. Over six minutes long and full of spiralling guitars and that quiet loud aesthetic that I love. The vocals from Maynard James Keenan are buried deep down in the song at times, barely a whisper. But when he cuts loose, man can this guys rock a chorus.

And there's humour here, self depreciating and vital. Check out 'Hooker with a penis'. It sounds like it should be on a Goldie Looking Chain album from the title but it's a rebuke to a fan for accusing the band of selling out. And it's brilliantly written. 'Point that f***ing finger up your ass.' Class. The 'F*** you, buddy,' refrain at the end of the song is just so full of contempt for the idiot that dared to criticise.

I've got into this thing of sitting up close to my PC speakers, which aren't bad, and turning my music up loud while I write or tweet and I've done this three times with the Tool album. The bass makes my monitor shake. In particular 'Die Eire Von Satan' which is sung completely in German makes the whole desk rattle. I'm very tempted to type the translated lyrics out in full here for that track but the context from the sound of the song to the words would be lost. So I'll leave you to investigate that yourselves. (Consider it homework.)

I did a bit of research after listening to the album and discovered that the whole thing is a tribute to Bill Hicks one of my favourite comedians who died in 1994. That kind of made it even more special a discovery. There's a small snippet of Hicks just before the final track which is the stunning thirteen minute long 'Third Eye'.

Thudding bass. Check. Thumping drums. Check. Some screeching. Check. This is the art of noise. Brilliant. Oh and there's a bit that sounds like a fly but is actually an ion... honest. It will freak you out.

Go listen to this. I dare you.

5/5 (and I don't give them out lightly.)

Now go to Paul's (@formulaic666) blog to see what he has to say about one of his favourite albums. Go. Go now! GO HERE!

Next week my attempt to 'mess' with Paul's head.

Cross Blogination #3 Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

This week Paul and I are stepping well out of our comfort zone with a genre neither of us are 'fans' of. Jazz. The album was suggested by @butterflygrrrl (LJ) who is a massive Miles Davis fan.

Firstly let me say that I can appreciate the beauty and the technical brilliance of Miles Davis' trumpet playing. The album is considered his greatest and it does ooze class from every note. The man is a complete legend.

I'm taken to some smoky café by the music, where I'm sipping on a warming black coffee on a cold day and possibly reading a book, but is that really where I want to be?

Honestly and apologies to LJ, no, probably not.

It just isn't my cup of tea. It's the sort of music I would love seeing played live to see how it's being created but to sit and listen to on your own? Nah. It's great background music, but to be honest I don't really do background music, I like to live inside a song and I can't seem to do that with Kind of Blue because I can't connect to it.

It's not that I don't like this album, I can see why it's so popular, it's the best Jazz I've ever heard and the five lengthy tracks here do all sound gorgeously luxurious. The album was recorded in 1959 over the course of two days yet it sounds as though months of work have gone in to each track, every note so perfectly placed. I can not deny that there is a mournfulness to all the tracks that I like. However it doesn't move me in the same way that I'm moved by say a great singer, a great riff or a delicate acoustic number.

So now I'm sat here, typing, wondering why that is. What is it about this music that doesn't touch me? Why can't I connect to it? It's an album that is in every top 100 list as being one of the greats but why wouldn't it be on mine?

I think there's an element of it just not being 'music that I grew up with' so it's not part of my personal 'life soundtrack'. Ok, so it takes me to a smoky café (probably in France...) but that's not somewhere I've actually been. But there is a decision to be made here. Will it become part of my life soundtrack? Will my ears prick up when I inadvertently walk into somewhere (a smoky café?) and hear 'Kind of Blue' playing because I've been listening to it loads when I'm at home? Probably not.

If you like Jazz and don't have this album then you should own it but my guess is that you already do. The 50th Anniversary edition has lots of alternate versions of the songs but I stuck with the original five tracks for this review but if you are a fan I imagine you'd love it. Me, not so much.

2/5 (If you are me.)
5/5 (If you love the Jazz.)

Nice.

Now go see what Paul thought at Blog on the Motorway for the Cross Blogination.

Cross Blogination #2 Rival School - United by Fate

So this week I got to choose one of my favourite albums for Paul (formulaic666) and I to review. As a band, Rival Schools burnt brightly for one album then disbanded and a much muted second album never materialised in the shops. They have recently reformed and been touring, it'll be interesting to see if they capture the magic of their début from 2001.

Cross Blogination #1 Clutch - Blast Tyrant

I'd never heard of 'Clutch' so when Paul (@formulaic666) suggested them as our first 'Cross Blogination Band' I was a bit, 'errrr... ok then.'  But actually if this is gonna work that's how it needs to be.  I'm guessing that plenty of you won't of heard of them either.  If you've come here first, because I know you out there in the real world, I doubt it.  Certainly none of you have ever mentioned them to me.  I'm guessing if you know Paul he's gonna have made sure you know all about Clutch.

So how to describe Clutch.  'Fricking good,' would be a start.

Seriously Paul, thanks, this is a great album, I shall be getting my hands on more Clutch albums.

When I was a student I shared a house with a couple of interesting characters one of whom we shall call Jason (his name was Jason) and he was very into his 'metal'.  Wore a lot of black leather and that.  Jason, if you're out there, you would adore Clutch.

I did a bit of reading up on the band before I got hold of the album and they were described an American 'Stoner Rock Band', which for me conjures up the sound of Dinosaur Jr etc. But for me Clutch are way more funky than that.  Most songs have a driving groove to them, you can easily imagine bouncing along to them in a small, dark, sweaty club, beer in one hand fag in the other.  Neil Fallon has one of those classic 'rock' voices, gravel and soul and you can not help but slip into that mild head banging motion to the throbbing guitars.

Lyrically it's pretty dark in places, in others there's an underlying humour that I really like.

Best songs for me on the album are 'Subtle Hustle', all pounding sexy groove with heavy guitars and 'Ghost', which is a slower more thoughtful track.  I do like a bit of quiet/loud in my rock and this has it in abundance with some great old school guitar playing.  Good stuff.

It's riff city here, each song sounding low slung and vaguely dirty.  Which, obviously I also really like.

It's an album that sounds very American, you just wouldn't get a British band making stuff like this.  I guess that's partly the joy of living in a country where a more niche sound can find a decent enough sized market to support it.

I can highly recommend it for a journey to, I imagine it's a great driving album, but I made good use of it on my boat trip on Friday.  The old dear next to me probably thought I was one of the cleaner cut guys on the boat, little did she know what my i-Pod was feeding into my ears.

Clutch guys.  Check them out as long as you don't mind your rock heavy.  And even if that's not your bag get hold of (download) 'Ghost', it's a great tune, I promise.

4/5

And of course that would usually have been the end of my review but now you need to go read the other half from the man who helped make all this possible.

GO ON NOW!  GO HERE!

We hope you enjoy out Cross Blogination, let us know what you think.

Oh and read the post preceding it on Paul's Blog about Patrick Swayze.  Sums up a lot of our feelings on a sad day.

Two weeks time and I get to turn the tables on Paul.