Thief Of Hearts. (from Erotica)

On the one hand: rhythmically, this is perhaps one Vogue-a-like too many. On the other hand: when it comes to constructing effective pieces of dancefloor fodder, that Shep Pettibone has always known what he’s doing. As a song: fairly forgettable. As a groove: it works well enough.

Love Tried To Welcome Me. (from Bedtime Stories)

A classy, yearning ballad of lovelorn heartache, buoyed by a lush orchestration and a shuffling, acoustic Latin feel (which puts me rather in mind of Gloria Estefan’s rather fine “authentic” phase of much the same period).

Shanti/Ashtangi. (from Ray Of Light)

Pretentious, more than a little ridiculous, and quite misjudged. The sort of “cultural appropriation” which ultimately comes across as mere “me too!” bandwagon jumping (I think someone must have played her a Transglobal Underground album). Makes Boy George’s Bow Down Mister look like a triumph of World Fusion Music by comparison (which, come to think of it, it was). Madge’s Edina Monsoon “I’m chanting as we speak, darling” moment.

What It Feels Like For A Girl. (from Music)

The gender-politicking spoken intro is my favourite bit. So much so, that its message rather overshadows the rest of the song which follows, lovely and well-judged as it is.

X-Static Process. (from American Life)

Contained within the flow of the album, this works well as a simple, gentle interlude piece. Taken out of this context, it doesn’t quite have strong enough legs of its own. A pleasant enough idea is merely repeated a few times over, never progressing anywhere in particular.

5 points: Love Tried To Welcome Me
4 points: What It Feels Like For A Girl
3 points: Thief Of Hearts
2 points: X-Static Process
1 points: Shanti/Ashtangi

The chronological flow is broken up, as Bedtime Stories now edges ahead of Ray Of Light. Meanwhile, the gap at the top narrows...

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Yesterday sin was Stupidity, and today's sin is Lust. Unfortunately, I was a day too late for Stupidity. This morning, I spent the best part of an hour and a half laboriously hoeing our new Designer Garden, only to be told I had been holding the hoe upside down all along. Talk about making a rod for your own back. I do, it has to be said, have something of a troubled relationship with the physical world. It's the price one has to pay for being such a rarified, cerebral soul. A creature of the drawing room, not of (as Niles Crane once put it) the great al fresco.

I was also a day too early for Lust, but - somewhat regrettably - we're not much given to talking about such things round these parts.

Changing the subject as quickly as possible...did you realise that Troubled Diva is an anagram of Voidable Turd? I didn't, until today (via Sad Minges Of Mum). Make of that what you will.

Finally, this week's top two bloglinks:
1. Diamond Geezer's marvellous cigarette health warnings.
2. The House of Lords debates spam: a genuine transcript, unbelievably enough.

1. Calexico at the Rescue Rooms last week. Great sounding act (Tijuana meets twang), especially the brass section, but I'd like them better if the songs themselves were stronger, and if there had been more of a sense of performance. As it was, there was too much heads-down earnest/worthy muso noodling for my liking. I recommend second-hand dark suits and frilly dress shirts. I also recommend a stronger front-man, both in terms of vocal range and stage presence. The ideal candidate for this band? Chris Isaak, I reckon. (Though Dymbel suggested Leonard Cohen.)

2. Manitoba & Four Tet at the Rescue Rooms last week, which I attended with Stereboard, Elisabeth of (the newly-redesigned) I'm Hip To You, and her partner Tag. Manitoba: three multi-instrumentalist mentalists in teddy bear masks - with two drumkits, Glitter Band style. Rocktronica, that's what I'm calling it. With shoegazey psychedelicky overtones. Marvellous. Four Tet: one lanky frizzy-haired dude, his laptop, and a box of twiddly knob-type things. Folktronica, they've been calling it. Laptronica, too. (Actually, all three of the night's acts used laptops during their perfomances. Laptronicastock! God knows how they managed, though; I find it difficult enough blogging on a laptop at weekends, still less perforrm live music on the damn things. So are laptops the new guitars, then? I hope not - it's difficult to look edgy and rock-n-roll when you're hunched over and squinting at your little screen.) After the visceral thrills of Manitoba, Mister Four Tet came as something of an anti-climax - so sadly, I broke a cardinal rule and proceeded to talk loudly most of the way through his set. Oh dear. Leffe Blond is stronger than it looks, isn't it?

3. Sin 4/7 - Sloth. One of my absolute favourites. I duly observed Sloth Day by not bothering to write about Dwarf 4/7 - Grumpy. Although my train journey to London yesterday gave me plenty of source material. (Yes! Why not sit there and scroll through all your available ring tones, you solipsistic twat?).

4. Last night at the Retro Bar. God, this was fun. We all ended up go-go dancing on the seats at the back, just underneath the speakers, with a perfect view of the screen in what was otherwise an obscenely packed venue. Latvia won the vote on the night, followed by Germany and Spain. My favourite is still Iceland, though. Best tune for a long-shot flutter at the bookies: Ukraine, which is grossly undervalued in my opinion. We also had great fun singing You Are My Sunshine and Hey Jude during the Austrian entry, Fly On The Wings Of Love during the Irish entry, and I Believe I Can Fly (for the second year running!) during the final Slovenian entry.

Speaking of the final Slovenian entry: Luca and I had worked out that the cheesy Eurovision clichés must have been doled out by a committee beforehand. You have the flamenco guitar intros...you have the key changes for the final chorus...you have the bit where the instruments drop out, so that everyone can clap their hands above their heads...you have the homo-erotic video...you have the Anthem For World Peace...you can rhyme "cry cry" with "bye bye"...you can rhyme "sky" and "high"... But where, I cried, where was the cheesiest rhyme of all? I needn't have worried - they had merely saved it up to the very last song, whose chorus runs:

He sang to me "nanananana",
So naturally he set my heart on fye-ya,
He truly was my one diz-eye-ya...

Oh joy. I think I actually let out a small cheer at this point.

No time for any more sins, dwarves or Madonnas, either. It's the weekend, and that designer garden won't weed itself. Ta-ra, then.

To watch (and later to vote on) all 26 Eurovision preview videos at the Retro Bar, with Chig, Luca, Marcus and a cast of thousands. I've also printed off Chig's excellent song-by-song review to read on the train, by way of pre-match revision. The sheer giddy thrill of it all!

(I might post an on-the-spot Audblog later, if ambient volume levels allow.)

Update: The Audblog was made, but seems to have been swallowed up somewhere along the line. Maybe that's for the best. (Note to self: before Audblogging, it is generally advisable to think about what you're going to say, before just launching in willy-nilly on the expectation that you'll be able to busk it. Especially if it's late and you've had a few.)

Waiting. (from Erotica)

An ordinary song is lifted by a moody production, and in particular by some delightful jazz piano fills (from one James "Sleepy Keys" Preston, who pops up again later on Secret Garden).

Forbidden Love. (from Bedtime Stories)

Late night sultry steaminess, of the "if this is wrong then I don't wanna be right" variety. The subliminal whispers are particularly effective.

More than any of the others, Bedtime Stories comes across as such an even-flowing album. This was the CD you always put on when you brought someone back, wasn't it? I remember now. Smirk.

Sky Fits Heaven. (from Ray Of Light)

She was great when she did all that epic-progressive-trancey-tribal-k-hole stuff, wasn't she? I'd forgotten how effectively she (and Mr. Orbit) had appropriated the genre, and added something of their own. The pseudo-spiritual twaddle in the lyrics is best ignored, though. "Fate fits karma so use it - that's what the wise man said to me. Love fits virtue so hold on to the light - that's what our future will be." Getting dangerously close to Jon Anderson territory there, lady!

Don't Tell Me. (from Music)

No arguing with this one, is there? Or am I being unduly influenced by that phwooarsome cowboy video? Oh, possibly - but there's still no way this is getting less than full marks.

Intervention. (from American Life)

With its irresistably lilting chorus, this could so easily have been fleshed out into a massive radio-friendly crowd pleaser - and yet the production has been kept so sparse, minimal, almost demo-like. Wilful contrariness, sheer laziness or artistic bravery?

But then at the end of the track, all the components finally come together and the whole production blossoms into life, gloriously. Sod it - this has got to get the five points instead.

5 points: Intervention
4 points: Don't Tell Me
3 points: Sky Fits Heaven
2 points: Forbidden Love
1 points: Waiting

Well, would you look at that. Seven tracks in, and the albums are now stacked up in reverse chronological order. She just gets better and better, doesn't she? Is that the conclusion - or is there still time for things to turn themselves around?

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Labels: whichmadonna

Anna talked about male pee-shyness (sometimes known as called PUR: Pre-Urinary Retention) and then said: Pee. Enjoy it.

OK. Done that. Piece of piss.

Arf.

I've been crap at these so far, having only managed to blag the promise of some free rhubarb (just the promise, mind - I couldn't even blag real rhubarb!), and to synthesise some palpably insincere Eurovision-related anger.

So, let's have a bash at Pride then. D says: Write about what you're most proud of. But I reckon that in order to do this properly, the Pride in question should be of the smug, superior, boastful variety, rather than the Healthy Recognition Of Self-Worth variety.

Permission to swank off, then.

Woo! What can I swank off about?

No contest. It has to be our newly landscaped and planted garden over at the cottage, which was completed last Thursday. It was designed for us by the guy who's doing Princess Diana's memorial garden, you know! Seriously! He's written 18 garden design books, and presented two garden design TV series, and everything! He's even a professor of garden design! Yes, I knew you'd be impressed! Do you know what Hell it has been, not mentioning this before because it would only look like swanking off? Thank you, D! Thank you for giving me permission at last!

(Incidentally: do you think that on the anniversary of Di's death, we'll start getting cellophane-wrapped floral tributes stacked up against the outside wall?)

All the way through the project - which has gone swimmingly well, without even a single hitch - K and I have been maintaining what you might call a Hands Off approach. Basically because we know f*** all about garden design. Or even about gardening, for that matter. K mowed his first lawn on Saturday, and I have now learnt what a Cultivator is. All this work over the last couple of months, and now it's suddenly over to us to make everything grow, and stay alive. Gulp.

A bit scary then, but in a good way. A brand new enthusiasm. New skills to learn. An excellent counterpoint to all that sedentary desk-bound blogging during the week. Might even keep me vaguely in trim (because I refuse to get sucked into all that gym-based flexing-and-pumping malarkey). Gets us out of the house. Integrates us with the rest of the village. (Amazing: as soon as you start pottering about with a hosepipe or a hoe, everybody suddenly stops to pass the time of day with you. So that's how to Fit In!) We've even been invited to participate in the annual Gardens Open Day. Us! With two days' life experience to our names! A good incentive, though. If the General Public are going to be traipsing through at the end of next month, then we'd better make sure it all looks good.

So, yeah. We've got a brand new cottage garden - which we didn't actually design, construct or plant ourselves - and it is making us very happy indeed. That's got to be wrong, hasn't it? Have I sinned properly now?

Before. (Click to enlarge.)




After. (Yes, I know it all looks a bit bare, but nothing has really started growing yet, and the crab apple tree had to go back. It's a bit more lush round the corner, actually. Yes, they are indeed proper hand-made wattle hurdles, thank you for asking. So new that they've even still got the willow buds on them.)

Phew.

Tricky business, this In Depth Thematic Analysis thing. Because, in order to do my subject justice, I am having to pay much closer attention to her lyrics than I would do normally - and I'm not someone who generally pays a great deal of attention to lyrics. With notable and honourable exceptions, of course (Mister Cave, Mister Cohen and Mister Cocker, to name but three). But really, I'm more of an Overall Musical Texture man. If the words sound nice when set against the music, then that will generally do for me.

(Perhaps it is no accident that the third album I ever bought was Walton & Sitwell's Facade, whose entirely nonsensical lyrics are merely designed to sound nice.)

Besides which: often, if start to pay too much close attention to the lyrics of a song, I will become irritated by the triteness, the limited range of stock sentiments, and - above all - by the same tired, inescapable old rhymes. Heart/apart. Love/above. Feet/beat/heat. Waiting/anticipating. Moving/grooving. Night/alright. Place/space. Teacher/preacher. And - most especially, and most fingernails-down-blackboard annoyingly of all tired old rhymes - the dread, dead coupling of fire (fye-ya!) and desire (diz-eye-ya!)

Also: there's a risk here, of which I'm becoming increasingly aware. Focus too much on the lyrical theme, spend too much time teasing out meanings and subtexts, and comparing/contrasting with the rest of the artist's oeuvre hem hem, and it is all too easy to lose sight of the main ingredient: the music. Which is, of course, much more difficult to write about in the first place, unless you're some sort of musicological theorist type. Don't know me augmented fifths from me diminished sevenths, mate!

So, all with that in mind, let us proceed to...

Bad Girl. (from Erotica)

A rueful (and sublime) universal anthem for the emotionally f***ed-up. Show me the hard-bitten Scene Queen who hasn't Lived This Song, Lived It I Tell You!, and I'll show you a liar, sir. Classic Madonna balladry, even if she does have repeated difficulties holding the note on the word "blue".

(Actually, I rather like that. It shows vulnerability. Today's digitally-enhanced, voice-coached-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life, Careful Operatic Diction Madonna would never have allowed that to happen.)

Human Nature. (from Bedtime Stories)

"I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me." One of my all-time favourite lines, and a maxim for us all, I feel. Overly defensive shows of bitter, self-obsessed, yah-boo-sucks-to-the-lot-of-yer defiance don't come more magnificent than this, with its delicious atmosphere of malicious menace (and a cool-as video to boot). No regrets, hon? Really? None at all? OK, keep repeating that to yourself, and maybe in time...

Nothing Really Matters. (from Ray Of Light)

So, you're saying that you used to be self-obsessed ("I was the only one"), but now you've changed? So why, pray, do you continue - to this day - to sing about nothing but yourself? Huh? Answer me that one. I've got you now, haven't I?

Nice tune though.

(Now, don't misunderstand me here. It's not the self-obsession per se that I'm objecting to, merely the delusion that Madam is no longer self-obsessed. As far as I'm concerned, she can sing about herself as much as she likes, provided that she doesn't become boring and repetitive about it. After all, Eminem has built his entire career on doing just that. Besides, who am I to criticise someone for banging on about themselves the whole time? I'm a bloody weblogger, aren't I?)

Nobody's Perfect. (from Music)

All the deft sonic flourishes in the world (and there are plenty on show here) cannot disguise the essentially plodding, prosaic, laboured feel of the track. Not a highlight.

Nothing Fails. (from American Life)

Sometimes, there can be nothing more off-putting than reading a unanimous chorus of voices, all telling you that Nothing Fails is the classic on the new album. Contrary as I can be on occasions like these, I therefore stubbornly resisted its charms for ages. That much vaunted gospel choir? Pale re-tread of Like A Prayer, innit? Those lovely acoustic guitar pickings? Don't Tell Me Part Two. The sentiment? Gawd, how many more times do we need to know that she's in love with Guy Ritchie? We know!

But I could only miss the point for so long. This really is the out-and-out classic on the new album, goddammit. You were all quite right. It's a beautiful, touching heartfelt ballad which combines simplicity and depth with a touching sense of resolution, and the choir sounds bloody glorious. Cinq points.

5 points: Nothing Fails
4 points: Bad Girl
3 points: Human Nature
2 points: Nothing Really Matters
1 points: Nobody's Perfect

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Labels: whichmadonna

...a randomly generated poem, from the random poem generator (via Swish Cottage). Out of five or six attempts, this was my favourite by far. Unedited, apart from a couple of mis-capitalisations.

Rise the spectrum today.
I am
so if I had before before be offering me
into a shop assistants, wishing
I could
be any of doilies,
though, and hopefully
there was a tradition, but I
have taken request
for
this list, so
if here especially
the stubs back. upset my furniture out.
neatly. I can but it right break over, back and you
really good, the airport
minibus.

The first person to get this right wins a cup of pink tea, in honour of 'bel Karen's new site, Rise v2.0. Love that strapline!

Update 1: After a number of ever-closer guesses, David managed to get the full correct answer. And I thought this would take days! How many more times must I under-estimate you?

Update 2: The correct answer was: all of these songs contain that most dreaded of all rhyming couplets: fire and desire.And let that be an end to it. Enough with this fye-ya! diz-eye-ya! nonsense.
I Have Spoken.

Anna requested some sneeze-related Situationist Theatre. Being in an uncommonly snuffly state of health right now, this should have been easy. Friends were briefed accordingly, and Wagamama chosen as our venue-in-the-round. The plan being that it would all kick off at the end of the meal.

Except...we bloody well forgot, didn't we? Task failed.

I feel like I should be forced to live on "basic rations" for the next week, or something.

It was difficult to manufacture anger today as D requested, especially after such a mellow Bank Holiday break. Could anything at all spur me to anger right now? I dredged and I dredged. Someone suggested thinking about Margaret Thatcher. Nope, not even that reliable old standby could do it for me today.

Until I remembered the flagrant injustice meted out to poor old Vanilla Ninja, whose thoroughly ace Club Kung-Fu failed to qualify as this year's Estonian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, despite being the clear favourite with the Estonian tele-voters. In the end, the hand-picked "international" jury of so-called "experts" (including - pah! - Michael Ball, if you please) placed it last (LAST!), opting for a song called Eighties Coming Back instead, and thereby depriving the rest of the world of the best pop single of 2003 thus far. OK, so this all happened - and was blogged about - a good few weeks ago, but the anger still burns deep, deep within.

Oh, and D said I had to break something. Come here, cheap & nasty supermarket brandy glass...

audblog audio post

(Oh, and D asked for a Primal Scream as well. Except that mine came out as more of a Primal Squeak, I'm afraid.)

Where Life Begins. (from Erotica)

I can still remember eyeing up the empty CD box in the racks at Selectadisc. Erotica? Deeper And Deeper? Bad Girl? Why's It So Hard? Toe-sucking on the back cover? Wa-hey! Why, this album is gonna be non-stop heaving pulsating raunchy rumpo from start to finish! Run that hot bath and light those scented candles!

Which, of course, it wasn't at all. All tease and no action, like so much mass-marketed "erotica". Except for this: an eye-popping ode to oral gratification which is, in truth, more comic than arousing. Can you make a fire without using wood, indeed. There has always been a thin line between "erotic" and just plain funny...and this is just plain funny.

Oh, and I think she might just have been listening to a few Soul II Soul records before recording this one...

Inside Of Me. (from Bedtime Stories)

...before going the whole hog and enlisting the help of Soul II Soul's producer (Nellee Hooper) for her next album, of course. "Sensuous" Madonna rides again, with breathy vocals courtesy of Baby Doll Madonna. I've already cracked the "thin but appealing" gag, haven't I? That's a pity.

Skin. (from Ray Of Light)

Still more Sensuousness, although considerably more disturbed and ambivalent this time round, with Madonna less the controller and more the victim. An Underworld-style rhythmic urgency is overlaid with typically lush William Orbit soundscapes, combined with a steadily building tension/intensity that really is most effective. Only let down by its unmemorable melody.

Amazing. (from Music)

The second William Orbit collaboration on Music, with a punchy, immensely satisfying widescreen production and an unusually (for Madonna) high reliance on a "rock" guitar sound. Terrific stuff.

Nobody Knows Me. (from American Life)

Yet more tedious lyrical self-obsession, you say? Yeah, whatever. But to be honest, I couldn't care less what the old girl's singing about when the, uh, Groove is as solid and as compelling as this. noodle has already commented on "the way she lets Mirwais go all unpleasantly Chicago 87", and this is a prime example, the track sounding like early rudimentary acid house (Tyree/Adonis/Phuture if we're being specific), before that trendy London lot got hold of it a few months later.

5 points: Amazing
4 points: Nobody Knows Me
3 points: Skin
2 points: Where Life Begins
1 points: Inside Of Me

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Labels: whichmadonna

It's gratifying, if a little weird, to find myself linked (in passing) from Ian Penman's groovy new blog, The Pill Box. I say weird, because it honestly never occurred to me that The Legendary Ian Penman would ever trace the slime-trail back through to this place, still less link to it. I mean, sheesh: for all I know, Miss Madonna Herself will be popping up in my comments box next (and she wouldn't be the first international recording artiste to do so, either) - "Nascent Messiah complex? I'll give you nascent Messiah complex, asshole!" Because, according to my own particular (humble, provincial, don't-get-out-much) Weltanschauung, there's not a whole heap of qualitative difference between The Legendary Madonna and The Legendary Ian Penman. So, you know, really jolly thrilling actually.

Anyway. If you're here from there (as a good few of you have been over the last few days), and you're thinking: I didn't come all this way just to read some middle-aged poof in a nipple-chafing T-shirt wibbling on about Madonna, then let me invoke this handy customised weblog re-direction service for you.

So you dig The Pill Box, huh? Well, try these for size, punk rocker:

• The World Backwards (writing style)
• It Makes No Difference (spiritual heir?)
• The Yes/No Interlude (cultural pre-occupations)

I do try to be helpful.

::: ENVY :::

Yesterday, D said: Being already in the possession of rather too many covetable items for my own good (K and I are, after all, the Material Boys), I didn't think I'd be find it in me to do this. But a task is a task, and I'm not in the habit of shirking. So I scored some home-grown.

Rhubarb, that is. OldEngland and NewEngland were talking about all the lovely rhubarb in their garden, and I went into "Ooh, lucky you, I love rhubarb so much" Gush Mode, and - without much of a struggle - rhubarb was duly promised.

Earlier in the day, K went several steps further, and blagged a bloody lawn mower. ("No, you have it. No, I wouldn't dream of taking money for it.") Maybe this is why he is a successful business tycoon, and I am still an Office Drone Wage Slave.

Rhubarb...lawnmower.
There's no contest, is there?

::: SLEEPY :::

Anna said:Apparently, my mouth sags open - and I fart. Confessional blogging!
But no snoring, so that's OK then.

Today's sin is Anger, and today's dwarf is Sneezy. Go deh.