...partly because, oh dearie me, this is far from a vintage year. Far too many post-Lordi macho rock guitars for starters, and what good are those to any self-respecting Eurovision fan? And also, cramming a record twenty-eight songs into the Thursday night qualifier is un peu de trop, even by my near-fanatical standards.

However, I am taken by the Bulgarian chorus of “More pee!”, and by the swishy young mister from Belarus:Mister Belarus’s chorus runs thusly:

“You set my beating heart in motion, when you cast your loving potion over me.”

I wonder if he’s been to Bulgaria recently?

Sorry.

Labels: eurovision

Mike to K: I think you’ll like this. It’s professionally relevant.

K to M: Oh. My. God!

(via Twitter)

Update: Thanks to the estimable Vicus Scurra for pointing out that this is a load of old twaddle. Boo. As you were, readers.

Labels: linkage

In lieu of the Great Troubled Diva Meditation On Class (which will be appearing in the fullness of time, honest), here's the most recent crop of freelance stuff.

1. A gig review of the Senegalese musician Nuru Kane, at the Djanogly Theatre on the Nottingham University campus.

This was the first show that I have managed to persuade K to attend as my Plus One - and hence something of a major achievement, as he doesn't really do Going Out On A School Night. (He's not usually home until 7pm, at which point the telly generally wins out over any further exertions.) In such situations, K's inner Little Miss Anthropy often comes out to play, and it was most enjoyable to witness him slagging off the predominantly academic audience under his breath, for no good reason other than our own private entertainment.

2. A gig review of Low at the Rescue Rooms.

The result of a fairly random punt on my part, and not a gig that I was particularly looking forward to, having attempted to familiarise myself with Low's music during the wholly unsuitable hours of daylight. Expectations thus flattened, the show that Stereoboard and I witnessed came as a pleasant surprise. Good to see Lisa Rullsenberg and Cloud there as well, in a part of the venue that shall henceforth become known as Bloggers' Corner.

3. An interview with Maria McKee, which I have made available in podcast form, with musical excerpts, for a limited period only. I shan't be making a habit of this - but it was a particularly enjoyable interview, and the new album's great, and it's not picking up nearly enough media attention, and so I want to give it a little push of my own. If you like what you hear, then the album can be ordered from Amazon UK here, and from Amazon USA here.

Finally, if you live in the London area, don't forget Sunday's charity screening of Al Gore's superb An Inconvenient Truth. This could be your last chance to see the film on the big screen, now that it's no longer on general release - and see it you should, trust me. Full details are here.

This article originally appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post.

Speaking to EG from her home in California, Maria McKee was on buoyant, easy-going form throughout our conversation. We started by discussing the new album, Late December. This feels very much like an album of two halves – almost like the old-fashioned Side One and Side Two – with its warm, accessible, country-tinged and surprisingly radio-friendly first half standing in marked contrast to the more prickly, dramatic, histrionic second half.

“Initially, I didn’t visualise compartmentalising the album into two sides. But my favourite albums are real records, and I grew up with Side One being one thing and Side Two being something else. I think it’s almost ingrained in you. Being an artist who has an eclectic range, half the art of making an album is in sequencing the tracks.”

“My husband (Jim Akin) and I set out to make an album that we would enjoy – and in doing so, we had a wide range of songs that we wanted to make work over one album. It seemed like the best way was to put the darker songs towards the end. To hook people in, and then to let them sit down for the show…”

The opening number is also the album’s title track.

“My husband and I live and work together. We have a very small flat, and we’re in each other’s faces the whole time. Sometimes I go away and do a little tour by myself, and give him some space. Then I’ll come home, and he’ll have these marvellous tracks for me to write to. That was one of them. He thought the music had the right mood, and he told me that he wanted the lyrics to have a lot of New York imagery. That was his vision. Then when we were looking through his photos, and trying to decide which ones to use on the album, the title just seemed to work.”


With Akin making such a major musical and artistic contribution, perhaps not everybody appreciates the team effort involved.

“We do everything together. He records, engineers and masters everything; he leads the band and plays a lot of the instruments. I probably wouldn’t make albums if it wasn’t down to him.”

For anyone who has lost touch with McKee’s solo work since her emergence in the late 1980s, following the demise of the country-rock band Lone Justice, some of the newer material may come as a surprise. As a stylistically diverse artist, the sound of each successive album is impossible to predict. Naturally, this can cause friction with record companies who seek to market her in one particular way.

“It did when I was part of the major label system, absolutely. It was a constant thorn in my side, and also a thorn in the side for anyone trying to make money off an artist like myself. But now we’ve gone independent. We make the albums at home, then we deliver them onto the doorstep of the record company.”

These days, Maria’s work is released by Cooking Vinyl, an independent label with a solid reputation for upholding the artistic integrity of their acts.

“They signed me as the artist that I actually am, and they don’t seem to expect anything in particular. They just enjoy the fact that I’m fairly prolific. So it’s amazing to be able to deliver an album, without having them say: We don’t hear any singles, you’ve got to go back in the studio. It’s fantastic, a dream come true. Every day I have to pinch myself!”

Although many people still associate Maria with Show Me Heaven, a UK Number One single from 1990, fewer people are aware that she also penned A Good Heart, which was a chart-topper for Feargal Sharkey back in 1985. Having covered the song on last year’s live acoustic album, Maria returns to it again on Late December.

“A lot of people don’t know that I wrote that song. I started including it in my repertoire when I did this little acoustic tour last year. I really enjoyed singing it. Then my husband heard it and said: That’s kind of a magic combination – a hit song, and you sing it really well, and you did also happen to write it, which is a good story – so let’s release it.”

Maria’s new version compares more than favourably with Sharkey’s original, which is let down by the somewhat dated production techniques of its time. It also benefits from a wholly unexpected and rather splendid harpsichord solo, which could well be the first of its kind on a pop recording since The Beatles’ In My Life.

“We were going crazy trying to figure out what to do during the musical break. We had some guitar solos, but it just sounded naff. My husband suggested the harpsichord. At first I was fighting it – “No, no, I hate it!” – but now I love it.”

The song was written when Maria was just 18 years old, “hence the very innocent, quixotic lyrics – My expectations may be high, I blame it on my youth – which now I have to sing with a bit of irony. But the lyrics still hold true to me.”

As for Show Me Heaven – taken from a movie soundtrack, and wholly unrepresentative of her other work – any worries that Maria might be unwilling to discuss it were quickly dispelled.

“I don’t mind at all! It was a hit in the UK and Europe, but it did absolutely nothing in the States. It’s the story of my life! A Good Heart never did a thing over here, either. It may not represent my work as a singer-songwriter, but it does represent my vocal style: big, lush and dramatic. And if truth be told, it was fun to have a Number One song, with a different audience. The people who come to my shows don’t expect to hear it – nor do they care if I even play it.”


Having spent many years living in Dublin, Maria has now returned to her native California.

“I’m always trying to leave, and I always come back. It’s in my blood. I’m fifth generation Californian – my great-grandfather homesteaded here from Italy. But I’ve spent a lot of time in Ireland, and it’s still my second home. I have family and god-children there, so I still go over all the time.”

After her UK tour, Maria will be back here in June, tutoring a week-long residential songwriting course for the Arvon Foundation. But is songwriting a discipline that can ever be taught?

“I don’t know that it can. What I’m going to teach is how to keep your muse open, and how to be at the ready for the inspiration. To expand your lexicon as an artist, to assimilate your influences, and to take risks with your subject matter. I’m going to deconstruct a few songs that I believe are near perfect – like Amazing Grace and Bridge Over Troubled Water – taking them line by line. But I’m not going to sit down and teach somebody how to write a song. I can only teach them what I do, and what I’ve learnt. If anything, it will be more like a philosophy course.”

Maria McKee and her band play the Nottingham Rescue Rooms on Tuesday May 1.

FOR A STRICTLY LIMITED PERIOD ONLY: Download my interview with Maria, which also contains short excerpts of some of the tracks from Late December.

Labels: eveningpost, interviews, popmusic

This review originally appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post.

There’s a line which has to be crossed with this music. If you’re unable to cross it, then Low will sound like the most boring, miserable band you ever heard. But once you step over that line, their particular brand of understated melancholy can become quite magical.

A three-piece act, headed by the husband and wife team of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, Low are masters of the art of stripping music down to its bare essentials. The playing is simple, sparse and unadorned. Mimi stands impassively behind a skeletal drum kit, sketching out basic rhythms, and gently harmonising with her husband. The songs are uniformly downtempo, with occasional subtle surges of energy. A rapt silence prevails, punctuated by surprisingly enthusiastic whoops of applause between numbers.

During the truly beautiful (That’s How You Sing) Amazing Grace, couples embrace each other around the venue, lending the song the feel of an alt-rock “Our Tune”. Rarely have the Rescue Rooms felt so downright romantic.

The newer material, drawn from the band’s eighth album Drums and Guns, blends seamlessly with old favourites such as Belarus – accompanied by vocal tape loops – and the comparatively rousing Dinosaur Act, which closes the show.

An authorised live recording of Low's April 10th show in Washington DC can be downloaded here.

Labels: eveningpost, gigs, popmusic

An edited version of this review originally appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post.

Given that some of the freshest, most exciting music on the planet is currently being made in West Africa, chances to hear it live in this part of the country are all too rare. It was therefore a great treat to witness the Senegalese singer/songwriter Nuru Kane – recently nominated for a Radio 3 World Music Award – and his band Bayefall Gnawa cooking up a storm in the unlikely setting of the Djanogly Theatre for the best part of three hours.

Unusually for a West African musician, Nuru draws many of his influences from the highly rhythmic, almost trance-like Moroccan music known as Gnawa. During some of the longer work-outs, you could almost sense the swirling hubbub of Marrakech’s famous Djamaa El Fna Square, with its story-tellers, snake charmers and performing monkeys. At other times, the hypnotic repetition evoked the Afrobeat sound of the late Fela Kuti.

With a strong emphasis on percussive elements, the band combined rhythmic precision with a delightful looseness of spirit, all tied together by Nuru’s authoritative presence and gentle enthusiasm. Although some of the pastoral delicacy of their recorded work was lost along the way, the sheer visceral thrill of the playing more than made up for it.

Labels: eveningpost, gigs, popmusic

Young Woman #1: "..and then he called me "mate"! No, it wasn't that - he said "cheers". Cheers! Weirdo. I'm really begrudging to go on a date with him now. Right, this is my floor. See you later."

Young Woman #2: "Yeah, see you later mate..."

1. A detailed appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of last.fm, which I have spent the past few days grappling with, in a concerted attempt to Get The Point Of The Blessed Thing.

Instead of all that, I offer you My last.fm "Loved Tracks" Radio Station. Please note that, in order to get the thing working, I have had to stretch the definition of the word "Loved". (But they're all dead good, I promise.) Please also note that tracks play at random, so the sequencing may be a little strange. Please also note that selections are limited to tracks that are available for full-length streaming via last.fm, which narrows the scope dramatically. (But they're still all dead good tracks, honest.)

2. An in-depth examination of class-consciousness, middle class guilt, chips on shoulders versus silver spoons, my extended family's unusually complex relationship with existing class structures, and my own crashing snobbery as regards Deep Suburbia and the passive-aggressive competitiveness of the Organic Vegetable Delivery set. ("Number 23 only got carrots this week. We got kohlrabi!")

3. Advice that, with the wisdom of hindsight, I would give to my deeply unhappy 16 year-old self - with references to the recent Virginia shootings, which have stirred up some uncomfortable memories of my own adolescent revenge fantasies.

4. Our Big Day Out in London Town on Friday, featuring a learned dissertation on the Hogarth exhibition at Tate Britain, followed by an amusing series of vignettes centred around shopping for outfits in Savile Row, and culminating in K's Grand Theory that the juxtaposition of High Society and Low Life in Hogarth's work is mirrored by the contrast between Gieves & Hawkes and Abercrombie & Fitch. But then, he was more than a little drunk by then.

5. More amusing vignettes centered around last week's Nuru Kane concert at the Djanogly Theatre. The line "We could be teachers, just for one day" would cause particular amusement, as would K's crashing snobbery re. the predominantly academic audience (Little Miss Anthropy had definitely come out to play). We were also much taken by the Health and Safety sign at the edge of the Univeristy lake, which said DANGER: WATER.

Yeah, like I'd ever have got round to any of those...

Update (1): OK, I'll do ONE of them. Namely, the one that gets the most votes in the comments box by the end of today. In certain blogging circles, this is known as "doing a Scaryduck". Nowt new under t'sun, etc etc.

Update (2): The matter is settled. By an overwhelming consensus, the Number Twos have it. A meditation on Class Issues will therefore be along in a wee while.