Politalking is Changing
You heard it here first! You heard it here only… Well, anyway, Politalking is to undergo a shift away from the more news-oriented format we used in the past. Rather than news, we will be focusing on writing about singular news stories about technology, science, media and a little bit of politics, less of the industrial business mentions we were doing before.
Why? Well, it became something of a downer constantly writing about bankruptcies and collapses and frauds and wars and all those other intensely depressing things which are occurring in the world. Unfortunately for us, we simply don’t have the power or influence to make writing about such things truly worthwhile on any sort of philanthropic plain.
So, instead, we turn out proverbial pens to the work of technology, science and media, where the developments and evolution are always interesting and worth discussion in this modern age.
We hope you all enjoy the new version of Politalking, which may have a name change, when it comes back very soon.
Until then, thanks for reading, and sleep tight…
Moral questions on fertility treatment
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Fertility Society are in the process of finalising a joint statement warning women in their 20s and 30s to carefully consider freezing eggs to suit lifestyles and career aspirations, according to a report in The Observer.
The article consults Professor Bill Ledger, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Sheffield University and a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, who says that it is perfectly fair for women with cancer about to undergo chemotherapy to freeze their eggs to avoid seriously damaging their child bearing abilities, but said it was morally and ethically questionable for women to choose to freeze their eggs for the purpose of allowing a certain lifestyle.
Any and all medical subjects, particularly those which specifically work to retrace the steps of nature, are always going to have, if not be entirely grey areas. This one seems indicative of much of the want from the medical profession to continue progression in their fields whilst attempting to maintain a full sense of ethical and moral control. I don’t disagree that the morals of women deciding to freeze their own eggs, abusing the service in this way does denigrate what its original intention very likely was. But is this really any different from women who get abortions when their lifestyle doesn’t suit a baby. That may seems callous but that doesn’t just include those women who do this due to career, that encompasses those too young to look after a baby or those aborted the result of a rape. If anything, this represents both a parallel and turn from those aborting due to lifestyle needs. Women freezing eggs for this reason are inherently putting forward their desire to have children, admitting that they cannot currently provide the kind of love and attention they need without having to sacrifice much when the entire process could be delayed and performed better later in life. If anything, that seems a very responsible act rather than anything callous or lacking in moral fibre.
I understand the need for the medical profession to express the need for their progressions to be used ‘responsibly’ but this seems more a PR effort laying out outdated if noble ideas which fail to resonate in the modern world.
‘Shameful’ Wall Street
President Barack Obama has described Wall Street executives as ’shameful’ following the news of their receipt of almost $20 billion in bonuses in the past year, despite the hundreds of billions in taxpayer money extended to the troubled industry to prevent it from collapsing. His comments come after the past few weeks in which John Thain, the former chief executive at Merrill Lynch, has become the unofficial poster boy for Wall Street excess and greed. This image was perpetuated by both the revelation of his spending $1.2m on a remodelling of his office after taking over at the bank last year, his request of a $10m bonus and his rushing through of bonuses for executives just prior to the takeover of Merrill by Bank of America earlier this year, the latter of which could end up being paid back.
Obama is right, this sort of behaviour is shameful. Thain seems to have believed, although he later waived his bonus, that he should be paid extra compensation for essentially running a company into the ground, losing its independence and reputation, but not quite performing as poorly as Dick Fuld, his counterpart at Lehman Brothers. As for the level of bonuses being given, where is the humility? Wall Street institutions have collapsed to a point where none of the big five (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman and Bear Stearns) exist as investment banks any longer, due to failure-into-merger, outright failure or shift to bank holding company status, the latter for the sole purpose of gaining state aid. How the executives of these institutions can believe they deserve more, I just cannot fathom. Surely a key for things getting better is not only stimulus packages and lending incentives, but a forced return of humility and responsibility amongst those partly at fault for the problems we are all paying for.
News Morsels
Gordon Brown, unveiling his new banking stimulus plan, says the new measures are necessary to protect jobs in the UK as banks are encouraged to raise lending levels. Shares in Royal Bank of Scotland collapsed in trade on the back of the new government rescue and its unveiling of a record loss, the worst seen in UK corporate history.
Kenneth Clarke, the former Chancellor, returned to the British political fray to take up the role of shadow business sectretary, putting him head-to-head with Lord Mandelson.
Israel says it will withdraw its troops from Gaza before the inauguration of Barack Obama amid the cease fire in the region which ended a brutal three-week barrage.
Power-sharing talks continued in Zimbabwe today between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.
Russia and the Ukraine have signed a ten-year gas deal which will clear the way for supplies to resume across Europe.
Tech News Morsels
Slim pickings today as I’ve been recovering from an atrocious bout of flu. While I get myself back up to speed with the world here are a few things that leapt out from my feed reader today…
The digital switchover isn’t due in the UK until 2012 but in America it was going to be much sooner. Barack Obama is in favour of moving the February deadline to June to enable the many who will not necessarily be geared up to make the change. There’s a tiny nugget of slight irony to Obama’s support for a delay in change… No? Just me then.
I like music! Don’t you? Well heck, some people like music so much they’re willing to throw a ridiculous amount of money at their separates for ultimate audio quality. You’re possibly right to assume there’s a certain amount of bitterness to this entry as I’m reminded on a daily basis that my mother has a profoundly better system than I have, purely by waking up and looking at my stack of equipment. It’s painful sometimes. But I think audiophiles and wannabes like myself are united in thinking that $64,000 might be a bit much for a turntable.
I’m staying on the music tip here and submitting a story about iPod headphones being breeding grounds for nasty bacteria. Does this really come as a surprise when you think about it? In particular the article highlights something truly lovely:
Harmful bacteria was found on 92 per cent of ear swabs taken from people who regularly shared their earphones with friends, compared with only eight per cent of those who shared less frequently.
All the more reason to not stick these things in your ears, give me doughnuts any day.
Citigroup: A mistake?
Two interesting pieces concerned with Citigroup in Time today. One, from Curious Capitalist Justin Fox, considers what the problems were that finally brought the insitution, once the world’s largest financial services company, to its knees. The other, from Douglas McIntyre, argues that Citigroup never really mattered and that its demise was always inevitable as keeping such diversity under one roof simply doesn’t work.
Fox rightly points out in his piece that many of the points put forward by McIntyre, specifically that Citigroup was too much of a mixing bowl of corporate and commercial banking worlds, that such a model exists widely in Europe and does not necessarily dictate that the institutions must fall. Granted, the majority of British retail banks with major investment banking operations, especially Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, have struggled in recent months owing to the problems coming from corporate finance operations, but groups like Bank of New York Mellon and State Street prove that weathering the storm can be done by diversified single operations.
Citigroup’s problem is set out nicely at the commencement of McIntyre’s piece, that former Citi boss Sandy Weill wanted to create the biggest financial group in the world and went for broke with the merger with Travelers Group. They overstepped their bounds in too short-a-space to build a sustainable business and they suffered because they didn’t balance the commercial and corporate banking worlds as well as so many of their peers. They should have been able to follow the example of HSBC in weathering the storm, but they got greedy, like so many of their US peers, and now they sit with AIG in providing an example that greed ain’t so good.
Clinton Promoting Diplomacy
Hillary Clinton spoke of the promotion of ’smart power’ during her confirmation hearing for the position of US Secretary of State, following the party line Obama ran with during the campaign of being open to discussion and negotiation with perceived enemies. She said she would lead the new administration in forging new relationships globally and eschew the ideologically-driven foreign policy philosophy of the Bush era.
Everything is different when you are campaigning and trying to win every vote from every corner of your party, but doesn’t this seem a near u-turn from Clinton from her statements early in the campaign last year when she advocated ‘totally obliterat(ing)’ Iran should it launch a nuclear strike on Israel. Amid the Iraq war and Bush’s war president aspirations, Clinton’s remarks provided Obama with a chance to paint Hillary as another war-hungry candidate and was likely another major factor in his beating her to the nomination.
I have no doubt she means what she says, but you can’t help but sigh as the politicking that has gone on for her over the past year, and reflect that the US did manage to elect a new president who didn’t pander to all sides of the party during the campaign and try to win those gun-loving Republicans.
News Morsels
Britain is in decline! Separate reports today from the British Chamber of Commerce and the British Retail Consortium indicated that essentially we are in the toilet and nothing can save us now!!
Israeli troops are reportedly coming under fire on the border of the country with Jordan. Also, Egypt has rejected a call from Qatar for a Middle Eastern summit to consider the current crisis in Gaza.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said the stimulus package announced by Barack Obama will provide a boost to the US economy, but will need further support in addition to the moves to spark any real recovery.
UK Foreign Minister David Miliband said today that he does not believe Pakistan had any involvement in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year.
Deaths in Zimbabwe from the cholera epidemic have reached 2,000, according to the World Health Organisation. Nearly 40,000 people in the country are said to have been impacted by the disease.
Campari Photoshopping Once More
There was a minor uproar late last year when Campari, the alcoholic apertif, decided to photoshop Jessica Alba down around her waist, essentially pushing her to a point nearly beyond shapely recognition. Now the company has made the decision to hire Eva Mendes and Salma Hayek and although Hayek’s are basically just polished to make her look like a plastic doll, some of the Mendes photos have seen her bustline shopped literally beyond comprehension.
The question someone must surely be asking by this point is why? Why does his company continue to hire these notoriously beautiful women and then crush them into some bizarre form of ‘accepted’ beauty? Beautiful women photographed by someone with ability need no editing to still look beautiful. Surely, surely, there is someone in advertising/publishing that understands this. Isn’t there?
News Morsels
Ministers have ordered an inquiry to be launched into children’s services in Doncaster following the death of seven children in the area.
Primark, the discount clothing retailer in the UK, has been found to be employing workers for under the minimum wage on slave labour-like hours in Manchester.
Jen-Pierre Bemba, a former rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been accused in the International Criminal Court of being responsible for ordering mass rapes in the country.
President George W Bush held his final press briefing, taking the opportunity to defend his record in office while also offering a long list of the mistakes made.
An official in Gaza says the death toll amongst Palestinians has now reached up to 900, including around 380 civilians.
Obama Chooses Openly Gay Bishop for Inauguration Invocation
Much was made in the past few weeks over Barack Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to deliver the prayer at his inauguration. Warren, noted for being openly against homosexuality, which he has compared to incest and paedophilia in the past, will now be joined by the Rt Rev V Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop elected to the Episcopal Church in 2003, in delivering the prayer. Given the outrage from the LGBT community over the choice of Warren, the move from Obama seems only fair in providing a truce to that community and stamping now that Warren’s views do not reflect that of his administration.
It begs questions though as to why Warren was chosen in the first place, likely attributable to a desire from Obama’s team to indicate to the religious section of the Democratic party that a place for them does exist. With the latter move, bringing in the openly gay Robinson who is planning a civil union with his partner in the near future. It may feel like reactionary, apologetic politics, but this seems, as Ezra Klein notes here, like a truly inclusive move by Obama and undoubtedly another encouraging sign that when he’s wrong, he might admit it before its too late to mend.
Tech News
The Consumer Electronics Show is currently underway and here’s a little personal selection of highlights and other bits and pieces.
AOL ad revenue drops 18% on previous quarter, according to some number fudging from Imran Khan of J.P. Morgan.
Move over Vista, the upgrade initiative for Windows 7 starts on July 1st. It’s crazy to think that Windows Vista has only been out just under two years and we’re already due for another bug-riddled nightmare. The exact point of Windows 7 has yet to be revealed to me.
I must assure you that this link is mandatory and you also are not imagining it: Official Hello Kitty touchscreen mobile phone.
A compelling case for managing nuclear assets at a co-operative international level rather than leaving individual nations with differing policies to get on with it.
I was browsing for a netbook the other day, for no other reason that I just want one so bad. As Engadget have pointed out, it’s not a huge amount of info but news that an Eee PC and Eee mobile phone running Android is mouth-wateringly tantalising.
The love of my technical life, a Cowon D2 PMP, will no doubt be throbbing at the thought of a 2Tb SD card expansion (firmware upgrade permitting). That’s right, 2,000Gb on one little card.
News Morsels
Israel and Hamas briefly ceased battle today to allow aid for Palestinians in Gaza. The moves comes ahead of a possible truce negotiated by France and Egypt. An update to that, Hamas has rejected the cease fire, although Israel says it accepts the terms of the truce.
Russia cut gas supplies through the Ukraine today, leaving a host of European countries struggling to warm up amid cold temperatures.
The women’s clothing retailer Viyella has fallen into administration.
Five guards from the US private security firm Blackwater have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges brought related to the shooting of seventeen Iraqi civilians in 2007.
Kevin Pieterson resigned as England’s cricket captain today with the ECB set to announce Andrew Strauss as his replacement this evening.
Banks Defying Lending Calls
Britain’s banks are defying the call from the government to start lending again, warning that credit will become even more scarce in the first quarter of the new calendar year. In spite of the call from Gordon Brown for banks to make credit for households and businesses more readily available, all have cut back on lending in the past quarter and plan to do the same in the first three months of 2009, according to a report from the Bank of England.
This one appears a true doubled-edged sword kind of moment within the development of the financial crisis. There will be a strong tendency amongst consumers and businesses, as well as the media, to attack the banks for taking such action. Yet, there are two things to take in.
First, it’s very possible that the current balance sheets of our domestic lenders do not allow for such a move. They simply may not be able to balance providing large levels of credit to the consumer lending market with managing other investments and keeping shareholders, and traders, happy.
Second, their reluctance to provide lending levels similar to we had seen during 2006 and 2007 is only really fair. The housing market in the UK outgrew itself and became a monster and now it’s not a crash we are seeing, but a correction. The housing market is correcting itself back to levels where first-time buyers can rejoin the ladder and where banks can more easily manage lending levels. The correction will be painful but it’s likely those who purchased houses above their price range, making a financially irresponsible move which relied on a continuation of the unprecedented era of growth in the UK continuing beyond it’s eventual fall. That decision has been proved a weak one and those that made it will suffer during the downturn. Those who have remained responsible with their money will probably come out okay because they will have investments tied up in other places than their home.
It all seems deeply unfair but truly, in the long run, this is a necessary evil for the economy. Banks should really provide more lending to households but only really for first-time buyers and for those in true trouble who did not reach beyond their means and are only being hit by other people’s mistakes.
The real problem to all of this is that no one wants to take the hit. Banks don’t want to be the ones to bear the burden of having to provide more lending facilities to people in the country at a time when they are struggling with all the impacts of the global financial downturn. People don’t want to take the hit because they don’t think they should. The majority of them did not buy beyond their means and they rightly feel they shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s problems, but that’s not how the crisis will work and eventually, one of the two sectors will be hammered. In the meantime, it’s the people really paying for the crisis. We paid to bailout some of our largest banks, who are now refusing to lend back to us. If you want the true characeterisation, it’s a complete clusterfuck of greed, stupidity and arrogance from every side of the coin and, no matter which side you lie on, we will all suffer the consequences.
Technology For 2009
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely time counting down the seconds to 2009, a year which in the tech world looks to be quite an interesting one. Gizmodo has a great rundown of the top things to keep an eye on this year which includes a new iteration of the iPhone, the next generation of USB and Windows 7. One little device that hasn’t made the list is the pocket projector.
The latter half of 2008 saw the release of several tiny handheld devices for projection but I think that 2009 will see these devices attract more mainstream attention. The most prominent one at the moment seems to be the Optoma Pico model, a smart looking box of tricks that hints at excellent integration with other mobile devices. A shrewd marketing marriage of the Pico and iPhone might just be a killer partnership; pocket projection, the new sat nav?
News Morsels
Israel has rejected the calls from the international community for a 48-hour truce in its attacks on Gaza. Iran has urged its colleagues in the Arabian League to act on the Gaza attacks with president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying that making speeches and deploring the actions is not enough. Some hardline student groups in Iran are calling on the government to authorise suicide attacks against Israel as action on the crisis.
Pakistan is due to re-open the Khyber Pass, a key NATO transit link and path for supplying US military personnel in Afghanistan, in the next couple of days.
Rod Blagojevich defied all his many and varied critics to name a successor for the vacant Illinois senate seat left open by Barack Obama.
The Washington Post has completed its three-part deconstruction of the evolution of AIG Financial Products, the innovative unit of insurance giant which eventually brought the company to its knees.
Arts: Sam’s Albums of the Year
It’s been an excellent year for albums, a host of career-best performances and a slew of records which seems perfectly to capture the mood of western nations. A mix of cathartic rage and reluctant hope for a new age as the Bush years ended in the most miserable fashion. The albums I’ve chosen all seem to capture at least a part of this prevailing mood and understand that the collective consciousness desires party and loud, head-clearing tunes to forget, but also songs that empathise with the downer culture so slyly farmed into existence in the past eight years. So, without further rambling ado, my albums of the year, post-jump of course.
13. Deerhunter – Microcastle / Atlas Sound – Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Those who know me will tell you that this choice is a nye-on miracle. Deerhunter sit inside a bubble of my musical mind, alongside Animal Collective, as a band which all sources I trust seem to love but that I just don’t get. I still don’t like Deerhunter’s previous album, Cryptograms, but Microcastle has burrowed into my mind with espionage-like stealth. I’ve come to appreciate the album in the past few weeks as something of a modern, psych-ambience minor masterpiece. It’s far from perfect but when it hits its stride, as on the superb ‘Nothing Ever Happened’, it’s a truly incredible album. Microcastle shares its spot with Atlas Sound’s Let the Blind… partly because Deerhunter’s Bradford James Cox is the band, but also because the two albums share a similar space of finding a spacey beauty inside sounds to encourage feelings of isolation and loneliness. Two minor works of brilliance, and a musical hurdle overcome. Animal Collective, you’re next.
12. Rachael Yamagata – Elephants… Teeth Sinking into Heart
Yamagata has become the Emmylou Harris of her time, lending lush vocal harmonies to a number of semi-indie luminaries, most notably working alongside Ryan Adams and Conor Oberst. Her second album picked up where its predecessor left off, producing astonishingly beautiful, languid and touching hymns about the kind of calming, soothing love you imagine is practiced among only the effervescently artistic sects. Along with her encompassing voice, she’s also a sterling songwriter and here finds more time to allow her voice to frame the songs while never skimping on the semi-country arrangement, placing her closer to being a less-caustic version of Jenny Lewis. The most lasting moment comes with ‘Don’t', a fragile, to the point of the listener fearing it could disappear at any second, and heartcrushing piece that should soundtrack everyone’s favourite indie movie love scene next year. In a world where Duffy is among our top sellers, more people should venture further back in the alphabet in their local record store and treat themselves to something with a little more soul than a Dusty impressionist.
11. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig Lazarus Dig
All these years gone and yet, everytime he return to the fray, Nick Cave continues to produce funky, dirty and weird records that, with growing frequency, rock like the angriest punks in your local dive. While Dig Lazarus Dig never really scales the heights of the ridiculously brilliant Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus from a couple of years back, it does incorporate much of the garage band thesis explored on Grinderman into the general sketch of the new work. Dig Lazarus Dig rocks and swings hard, sounding like The Stooges one minute, The Doors the next. It’s groovy, sexy and oddly sensual in places, although the kind of sensual that carries an element of danger and potential doom in the distance. If nothing else, Cave appears to have embraced age with vigour, both accepting the march towards death and simultaneously rejecting all the conventions that should transform him into the most gentle of rock dinosaurs. Instead of falling into that trap, Cave continues to impress and could still kick any young band around seven ways from Sunday on stage.
10. Why – Alopecia
Categorising is much derided amongst musicians but so often they make music which can so easily be filed within a given section. Why isn’t quite uncategorisable but the music on Alopecia certainly skirts a rarely-successfully-tread line between alternative rap and modern indie rock. There are moments on this record that make you forget this entirely as stories are weaved around crisp wordplay and love/hate vocals, then followed by a soaring chorus and some bombastic, yet somehow still understated, backdrops. It remains low key throughout as lead man Yoni Wolf deals up tales that managed to be down and up, often within the same verse, while retaining a political bent without falling into prosletysing. Sometimes beautiful and usually at least intelligent, this is the kind of cerebral mixture of hip hop, electronica and indie which rises above the alienating experimentalism of previous efforts within the ‘genre’. Try before you buy but I promise you won’t be disappointed if you give time.
9. Portishead – Third
Portishead were always brilliant. They plowed their own furrow which was ripped off by a number of less suitors to their crown in the future who forgot to write their ‘dinner party music’ with the kind of depth that meant that while pleasant, Portishead always created records which dug deeper than your average. Doubts that third might not work seem only to be based on other bands coming back after lengthy hiatuses and all were rewarded with maybe, just maybe, their absolute best album. Third is oddly confrontational, setting out with something to prove and proceeding to prove every inch promised. The music flits between relentless beauty and harsh, sexy noise. Beth Gibbons asserts herself across the tunes, bringing folksy charm to songs that in sound batter, beat and lull. ‘Machine Gun’ and ‘The Rip’ stand out but so much here just transcends the ‘comeback’ tag, leaving all the pretenders yet again wondering what they can possibly offer.
8. Grouper – Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
Entirely thanks to my lovable and oft-unstoppably drunk writing buddy John, Grouper have entered my life and look unlikely to leave anytime soon. If a more haunting record is released in the coming year, nightmares of the most ethereal kind will ensue. If a folk revolution was allegedly started in the past year through Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, this album should be the true frontrunner for attempting to drag folk music into a new era. Reverb saturated mood pieces all with liberal sprinklings of open-tune acoustic guitar frame the voice of Liz Harris. The songs drone and shift slowly around, always grasping attention while never on their knees pleading your listening time. This is music to soundtrack the very calmest times prior to the harshest storms and might well be the most beautiful album of the year which never seems to be aiming to create anything to be termed under the conventions of traditional beauty.
7. No Age – Nouns
Possibly the perfect album to follow on from Grouper, sharing a space entirely left of that band but occupying a spiritual kinhood space in which music is made with bull-minded singularity, looking to simultaneously be cathartic and oppressive. No Age produce some of the best noise rock this side of anywhere. The full album is a short, sharp shock of pummelling guitars which never outstay their welcome. They almost never reveal any sort of pop sensibilities and yet the album itself is near sing-along in places. It’s addictive, violent and burning with youthful rage. It may never have aimed to find itself on such a mantle, but this is the record that most succinctly represents the mood of so many young people, only in the past year finally understanding the pain their parents have experienced in living under the policies and missions of the Bush administration. This album finds the primal scream so many of the politically-savvy would want to throw into the world and, more than any of this, it rocks its fucking balls off.
6. Frightened Rabbit – Midnight Organ Fight
I mentioned earlier that people buying the bloodless music of Duffy should seek further back and find themselves some Rachael Yamagata. Well, on an even broader note, all of those who this year indulged in purchasing Coldplay, Glasvegas and Snow Patrol for their Range Rover stereos should reconsider and get themselves Midnight Organ Fight. All of the bands above undoubtedly write and produce some wonderful songs, but they are so hard to like because such as sense of commercialist ambition seeps into their personas (less so Glasvegas, in fairness). This album blows all out of the water, both in terms of soaring choruses and songs which manage to blend Nick Cave-like lines of caustic romance and heartbreak with a gritty, hard Scottish singer’s love of lilting/bold vocal choices. Every song on here could so easily fill the air at Glastonbury but will never get such a chance, maybe a good thing for us fans. This is music that feels like it belongs to the listener, like it was made in diary entry form and we now hear the heart of the man pouring into the ether. If their brilliance at writing stirring modern rock songs was matched by success commercially, Chris Martin would start to sleep very poorly indeed.
5. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive
Last year, The Hold Steady created the album which, alongside The Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise and The Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree, as my favourite record since the turn of the century. Stay Positive is a fine follow-up to that epochal work of genius which struggles to maintain the highs but provides much food for thought for future Hold Steady full-lengths. The highpoints are outstanding (as I mentioned in my songs of the year post previously) but the overall mood is less open and friendly than Boys and Girls in America. This isn’t a party album, this is the morning and the year after the party. You have boyfriends trying to find middle grounds in burgeoning relationships, being arrested after a hard-drinking night in Memphis and other pieces which locate darker sides of growing up and the problems we all face. It’s another of the records I cited earlier as capturing a mood amongst listeners of pessimism for the future but this time finds that optimism that surely all now have during the age of Obama. It’s not by any means an explicitly political record but The Hold Steady do seem to focus on finding that mood of listeners. On Boys and Girls they blew out the party, examining the melancholy of youth and now they find the that melancholy flourishing and need to resolve to beat the downer. Still, if nothing else excites you about that, it does include the line ‘Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer/I think he might have been our only decent teacher’ on ‘Constructive Summer’, maybe the single finest thing in the band’s entire canon.
4. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
Hyped through roofs covering other roofs, Bon Iver’s record justifies the vast majority of the slavering praise smothered on it throughout the year. It is certainly amongst the most jarring, wrenching heartbreak albums ever committed to vinyl, served well by its backstory of being created in hermit-like isolation by Justin Vernon where only his thoughts, which were likely unpleasant, angry and sad, could accompany him. Despite that, he finds a space of folk music which draws somewhat on the cathartic kind of indie rock perfected on the debut of Arcade Fire, blowing his top about love and life with nothing held back and all forms of sympathy and empathy elicited. When he allows himself to bring arrangements on top, he’s a dab hand at avoiding this becoming a distraction from his cutting voice, an instrument in its own right that he uses primarily for throat-shredding emotion which characterises the mood of his album. Not to end on a downer for Vernon, but you wonder where he can go next. Heartbreak is a deep well to be mined, but his experience here seems of such grave importance to his emotional state that you wonder whether going beyond the second and third records, quite what he will provide his audience with that can match what he served up for the debut.
3. Fucked Up – Chemistry of Common Life
The most brilliant hardcore record since the century rolled over, Fucked Up have created a brutally angry, epic rock album that, like the best genre albums you will hear, pushes boundaries while also adhering to the tick-boxes of its chosen musical sector. Fucked Up’s record, their best by a distance, starts with flute which must at least partially reference the prog adventures of Jethro Tull, before launching into the slow-motorik guitars which back the guttural howl of singer Pink Eyes. The record flirts on the edges of prog constantly, allowing the songs to breath far more than the more punk-leaning portions of the hardcore world, which mostly serves to provide an indication of the kind of guitar brilliance that does exist in the genre’s internal world. They put all others to shame with their chops and the conviction of the album which really does provide the world with the kind of primal scream more would enjoy could they find the bravery needed to embrace such an adventurous, essentially punk band.
2. M83 – Saturdays=Youth
Three albums in and M83 have found a groove they like at last. Their first two albums, mostly MBV-aping and occassionally brilliant, have been distilled through a lens covered entirely with records that soundtracked the best John Hughes movies in the 1980s. Saturdays=Youth is the soundtrack to the movie Hughes would have made today, indulging heavily in teenage pretension and woe-is-me romanticism but all set to rousing, thick dream-pop and only, at just the right times, entering back into soundscaping guitar at crescendo to send songs out on supersonic highs. While it’s essentially just a case of the band taking its sound and throwing it through the pop mixer, the discipline with which they play and indulge in whims and yet maintain the structure and quality of the songs is astounding. The very best moments, especially ‘Graveyard Girl’, explore emotions that most of the gothmo bands peddling black eye-liner and self-harm could never capture while avoiding over-sympathising with its protagonist, allowing us as the audience to decide how we feel about the character M83 put forward to us. You may find that their heroines and heroes are a turn off, too much teenage romance and sugar-sweet melody, but walk away from this lot at your peril because beneath such superficiality lies losing-virginity album of this decade.
1. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
The first two (widely available) records from TVOTR are brilliant in their own right. The first is inventive and plucky, innovative in the most charming way in blending indie, electronics and doo-wop. The second is astounding, one of the finest of the past five years, a claustrophobic epic which explicitly explores the kind of negative mood that the world was experiencing at the time. Neither were fun. They are brilliant, but Dear Science is everything I ever wanted to hear when expecting another album from TVOTR. It’s warm, live-sounding and empathetic. It’s funky, almost Prince-funky in so many places, and its optimistic. ‘Golden Age’ is peppered with incredible musicianship of the kind Nile Rodgers would be proud and provides a prophetic anthem surely influenced by the kind of hope audacious proposed by Barack Obama and his rise. Outside of that, they make sexy and dirty pop songs, still filtered through the avant-lense favoured by Tyondai Braxton, and even indulge themselves in one song, in ‘Shout Me Out’, that kicks into gear in the finest fashion of the most fist-pumping rock music available. Dear Science is by such a distance the year’s best album, it becomes near unfair to compair. Every song sounds perfectly formed but without the kind of perfectionism which created distance with the audience on the band’s other albums. Everything it in its right place but this time the heart is part of the puzzle. The songs exude an energy and warmth that nothing else managed to achieve in the past year while still losing nothing of the epic subject matter that the band’s other work vanishes into. It is their best, the year’s best and could provide a soundtrack to the coming year which, while tough, finally is touched by a light emerging at the tunnel’s end.
The Most Honourable of Mentions: Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue; Titus Andronicus – The Airing of Grievances; The Black Keys – Attack & Release; Beach House – Devotion; Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes; The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Lie Down in the Light; Harvey Milk – Life… The Best Game in Town; Flying Lotus – Los Angeles; Sigur Ros - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust; Beck – Modern Guilt; MGMT – Oracular Spectacular; Man Man – Rabbit Habits; Vivian Girls – Vivian Girls; Marnie Stern – This is it…; The Dodos – Visiter; She & Him – Volume One; The Week That Was – The Week That Was; Lindstrom – Where You Go I Go Too; White Denim – Workout Handshake; Lykke Li – Youth Novels; REM – Accelerate
This Site is Not Yet Rated
In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham suggested that film-style ratings could be enforced on websites in the future as the government seeks to apply certain standards of decency to its regulation of the internet.
Burnham is reportedly soon to meet with the incoming administration in the US to try and hammer out a dual effort from the US and the UK to form a set of international rules and standards of practice for English-language websites.
Is this ridiculous? Well it makes little difference really. Just like with movies, people younger than the age stated for their admittance to a website will still find a way to get online without any real hassle. It’s hard also to see what exactly they are aiming at regulating. If they are to focus on the videos depicting violence towards strangers or bullying on YouTube, well that’s already being focused on by the site itself, alongside owner Google, so the government will likely only get in the way there. If they want to regulate pornography online, fair enough. But as I said before, teenagers below the age of 18 who want to watch porn online will continue to do so through their own savviness online and through the opportunism of those running the sites to provide links and pathways for those kids to take their parents’ credit cards and order up whatever takes their fancy.
Where else could they regulate really? They could target websites showing pornography involving children. Except the police are likely to be far more effective in punishing those that use these sites. It’s even possible that deterring certain people from watching the furthest reaches of pornography online will take away the pressure valve usage of the internet and drive them outside into the real world where damage can be done far beyond the friction burns on their good hand.
I’m struggling to find anywhere the government can really levy any influence or use in regulating the internet. Part of the appeal of the online environment is that it is self-regulating. People in chat rooms will stick to a certain set of rules and will chide and lambast those breaking the code until order its restored. Message boards and forums have become the place to go to find true reviews and experiences with products and services around the world. Censoring anything written in either of those domains threatens both free speech and a major facet of the internet’s appeal.
So, Mr Burnham. Think once more about what on Earth you can achieve from attempting to regulate the internet, outside of perhaps grabbing the votes of the ignorant few who believe online not to be the next frontier of information and education, but the home of lewd and deviant sexuality and the playground of fraudsters and thieves.
Thankfully, Burnham has been routinely derided (here, here, here and here) for his reactionary idiocy. Not only that, but his Twitter account has been kidnapped too. The internet is mad, Mr Burnham.
News Morsels
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said the attacks launched by his country on Gaza is the first in a set of stages of action as the military attempt to put an end to militant rocket firing in the region. Violence occurred in a protest against the attacks which took place in Yemen. Israel is reportedly considering a temporary cease fire to try and give Hamas militants a chance to end rocket fire campaigns.
The US Treasury has announced it will give $6bn in bailout funding to General Motors’ financial arm, GMAC.
England and Liverpool footballer Steven Gerrard has been charged with assault following a night club altercation which occurred in Southport over the weekend.
Pakistani authorities commenced a campaign against Taliban militants in the tribal region of the nation along the border with Afghanistan today, shutting down the NATO supply routes.
US consumer confidence dropped to an all-time low in December, hammered by massive job losses and weak market environments for housing, equities and other investment sectors.
Facebook has come under fire once more after it emerged the social networking site is banning photos of mothers breast-feeding on the site, deeming the pictures unsuitable for its service.
Mexican Violence Fault of Border Controls?
Bernd Debusmann, writing in his column for Reuters, argues that the problems currently plaguing Mexico as regards warring factions of authorities and drug cartels can be attributed both to the weak gun laws enforced across the US and the problems with border control in Mexico.
His facts are all relatively strong but he seems to concentrate far too much on the problems of the border control when the true problem, not just here but in so many other walks of life, is the gun culture which constitutionally pervades the US way of life.
In a country where school shootings remain a near-epidemic problem, many Americans still feel it necessary to fight for the second amendment rights to own and carry guns. I understand the need to uphold the constitution the country is founded on but given that the document was written well over 200 years ago in the fastest evolving nation on Earth, surely there needs to be greater understanding of that amendment’s meaning for modern life. Surely, there is no one in the US who can claim that selling an FN 5-7, or cop killer to give it’s real moniker, to the general public is a necessary evil to retain the right to carry arms.
The gun culture in the US will never end. Too much history, tradition and pig-headed ideas about freedom are involved to truly make strides in preventing the sale of guns like the one above. But can’t these people see that there will never be a need for anyone, be it for home protection or hunting, to own an armour-piercing weapon. If they make it across the border into Mexico, where the problems run far deeper than border control issues, then that is the fault of the manufacturers selling such ridiculously high-powered weapons to people in the first place.
