Landfill Sprechgesang
I was desperate for this newsletter not to become a space for reviews of other people's reviews, but here we are and here it begins. I read a review, a music review no less (music journalism is v much not dead!!) last week and phrases from it have implanted themselves into my DNA. I need to share it, and because of the intrinsic vanity of the internet, and indeed of having a newsletter, I want to share my thoughts on it too. Because it made me feel things - things besides cautious optimism or crushing depression. Things like ponderous confusion, amused distraction, surprise agreement, fresh understanding.
"Landfill Sprechgesang?" asks writer Fergal Kinney of Yard Act's album The Overload for The Quietus. Even the question mark is a riot. Quizzically tipping the words up in a knowing query, it's exactly the irritating, know-it-all tone I find this particular band's music strikes with me. I'm aware - I'm obviously too old for it. Too jaded to hear youthful, mardy dispatches from the Big Hard World as though they are new observations. I'm ready to have my arse spanked for being so cynical. However:
"The album has been praised for bluntly confronting post-Brexit Britain, but why does the country it describes feel curiously unmoored in the present? Outside of a reference to "fake news" that might have felt urgent half a decade ago, almost none of its observations and namechecks couldn't have been written in the 1970s and '80s."
Alright! So somebody else feels alienated by this!
As the piece stretches out in long, considered strokes it becomes a deep dive into contemporary post-punk. I have never been good at identifying trends as they happen, and why, and so when someone else can put their finger on a zeitgeist, I find it thrilling. It sounds so obvious now: Dry Cleaning, Fontaines DC, BCNR, Billy Nomates, Self Esteem, Wet Leg... all of my favourites headed up by the unexpected messy splash that was Sleaford Mods. All of them chatting over music, despondent but somehow totally engaged with their personal driving forces, be they rage, depression, empathy, art for art's sake. This is how we do things at the moment, and I just hadn't noticed. And Kinney's brave bash at describing why this is thrilled me even more:
"So-called British alternative music had been politically quietist to the point of amnesia in the early '00s – seemingly to exist on a separate timeline to, say, the Iraq war. Over the last ten years, however, the shock caused by a new Conservative government, austerity and the 2016 EU referendum seemed to force some kind of sea change. As a performance technique, sprechgesang provided bands with a powerful vehicle – a formal solution to the problem caused by the vocabulary of politics feeling jarring when sung. Sprechgesang counteracts the earnestness implicit in melody, shrinking the distance between vocalist and listener."
I learned in this paragraph why the band the review was about pissed me off so much. Right now, I just can't get behind being muggy and cool. I'm angry and unempowered about everything. Jibes about growing your own veg and play-acting about the working class (whatever that is these days) can fuck off, quite frankly. Give me reality, give me doom I can wallow in, or give me total surrealism and escape. If you can't do any of that, give me a swerve.
(I'm v aware that the author of the original piece is friends with people I know so please know that I am going to be very embarrassed about the glowing praise I've heaped on this stranger fairly soon.)
Other Stuff
This recipe for Kkanpunggi 깐풍기 is easy to follow and results in the most perfect fried chicken-based teatime treat ever. You won't regret making it. I'm going to try it with tofu next week.
Holographic chocolate. Fucking COOOOOOOOOL.
Awful to read more and more accounts of abusive cultures in hospitality, and this one was particularly shocking to me I guess because it was all out in the open. People dining at Mana may have seen it. Reminder: abuse of staff should not be tolerated, stop letting top chefs off the hook for having rage issues, addiction issues or for abusing their staff mentally or physically simply because they can make tasty food. Your dinner is not worth it.
Looking at rainy paintings is helping me to see a bit of beauty in the grey, violent weather right now.
My Stuff
I don't have much to say here except thank you for your ongoing support for my bar and for my writing work, however infrequent that is at the moment. More news coming soon about upcoming projects I'm working on. Stay safe in Storm Eunice.
Van Gough - Rain 1889