Kate Nash album review in NME

My 40-word review of Kate Nash’s debut album, Made Of Bricks, appeared in this week’s NME:I’ve read NME pretty much every week since I was about 16, so it’s nice to see my words in print within its pages. A few years ago, I went through a phase of sending in one-sentence letters. A few made it onto their pages, including the most succinct of my efforts: “The only way to get a letter printed in NME is to mention The Strokes.”

Inane and out of touch...

My Sports Argus column is well under way (complete with new photo - below, taken by talented Sydney photographer Daniel Boud), and my intention to grind people’s gears a little this season is already having effect. Last week, someone wrote a letter to complain that my writing was “inane” and “out of touch”. This was the column that offended them so:This Saturday saw my first trip to Withdean since Sheffield Wednesday put the nail in our relegation coffin at the end of the season before last. It was odd spending a whole year away from the club (I was overseas), and I am pleased to be back, sampling the electric atmosphere of Withdean.

The fact that the visit of Northampton was my first appearance at Withdean this season means I didn’t make it to either of the two home pre-season games. To be honest, I deliberately avoided both of these matches, even though they were against Premiership opposition.

I have absolutely no idea why anyone would want to attend a friendly match unless the opponents were one of the big boys, like Manchester United or Liverpool. The thought of Messrs Rooney or Gerrard treading the Withdean turf would certainly have been enough to draw me through the turnstiles, but my mouth hardly watered at the thought of Fulham visiting our home town. Friendlies are obviously invaluable to managers and players, but what do they offer supporters, other than making our wallets a bit lighter for the benefit of watching a disjointed, dull game of football? We’ll all see enough of them during the season anyway.

Similarly, the game against Reading was something I had little interest in. I wouldn’t have minded seeing the legends stretching their tired old legs, but testimonials are something that I don’t necessarily agree with. Don’t get me wrong, I think Kerry is a top bloke and has been a great servant to the Albion, and the same can be said for Gary Hart, but the idea that professional footballers in this day and age should be given an extra payout at our expense just doesn’t sit well with me.

I’m sure many will disagree with my opinion, but footballers earn a lot more than us, even at the Albion’s level, and so I feel reluctant to throw any more of my money at them. Where are the testimonials for the members of staff who give many more years of service for a fraction of the wages that the players earn? For me, testimonial matches belong back in the days when footballers earned a relative pittance and had to scrape a living once their playing days were done. Okay, so it’s nice to pay tribute to players we respect like Kerry and Harty, but with footballers earning big bucks while fans are paying ridiculously inflated prices for tickets, surely testimonials are an unnecessary and slightly insulting anachronism? Lots of us give years of service in our jobs, or are forced to change careers in our 30s, but you don’t see us getting a tasty pay-out.

While we are on the subject of The Argus, check this out, it was a piece in the paper about a charity pancake race I did a few years back (below). Get a load of that Peter Andre hair. What was I thinking? (click the picture to see it in all its glory).

Regina Spektor interview

Regina Spektor was still little-known in Australia when I last spoke to her at the end of 2006 about the release of her fourth long-player, Begin To Hope. While music lovers in the U.S. and the U.K. have long-since been mesmerised by her diverse, piano-led tales, word took longer to spread to these shores. However, such was the record’s charm that it was easy to envisage this country quickly falling head-over-heels in love with the Russian-born New Yorker.

Predictably, the album has been so well-received that the clamber for tickets to see Spektor’s first ever Sydney show at The Enmore Theatre meant another date had to be added. This leads me to ask the delightful songstress if it feels somewhat strange to be selling out sizeable venues in a country that she has never previously visited. “Absolutely,” she confirms in her delicate New York accent. “It’s very, very strange and I’m feeling a lot of pressure. In other places it’s a little bit more natural because I started out in small clubs and little bars and worked my way up. It’s a strange feeling just to show up in a place and to have something that in other places you have to put in the time and the work for. I feel like I’m getting handed something and I’m like: ‘Wait. Don’t give it to me. You need to see if I’m worth it first’.”

 

To see Regina Spektor perform live is an experience so captivating and intimate that it feels like she is singing to you and you only, and proves that she is indeed well worth the fanfare that she arrives to. Pleasingly, the anticipation is reciprocated, even though she has to overcome a massive fear of flying to make it here at all. “I can’t wait. I’m terrified of the flight and the jetlag – I’m a very nervous flyer, but I’m excited about everything else. I really hope I won’t just be doing promotion and playing. I want to see some real places and get a feel for the country.”

In spite of her keenness to take in some of Sydney’s attractions, you’re unlikely to spot this particular tourist embarking on the Harbour Bridge climb during her time in the city. Being a consummate professional, her need to put on a great show takes precedence. “I put so much energy into my shows and I need to have lots of physical and mental strength, which means I can’t go sightseeing all day and then just pop in to sound-check. I feel the desire to come through every time and give people the most that I can. So I can’t spend the day running around the city getting tired and then be like: ‘Oh whatever. The show will be fine’.”

As well as being fully committed to performing to the very best of her ability when she sits down to tickle the ivories at The Enmore Theatre, Regina will also treat us to some previously unheard material. “I have written some new songs and I’ll play some of those. Everything is mixed up together: old songs, new songs, middle songs, album songs and demo songs. It’s all a big mush.” In keeping with the vagaries of her set-list, her musical style is also wonderfully eclectic. She offers tender piano ballads, anti-folk romps and playful vocal melodies so varied that when I ask what her songwriting process is, she struggles to answer; eventually admitting that the way she creates her music is something of a mystery, even to her. “In that way I’m kind of a crappy interview,” she states.

 

Her refreshing unwillingness to simply reel off a hackneyed quote when faced with a question she doesn’t know how to answer brings me back to a point we discussed last year. The bashful, unassuming 27-year-old is open in her aversion to doing interviews, which makes me wonder if she is starting to find them any more bearable as her profile grows and she gets more practised at dealing with journalists. “I guess it depends who it is and how I’m feeling. Sometimes I’m still like: ‘Oh this sucks. I just want to make songs.’ It’s not hard for me to talk when interviews are nice like this one, but sometimes interviewers have an agenda, or they’ll seem to want to phrase things in an aggressive, sarcastic manner and bust my balls. Those aren’t a pleasure, but in general…” she pauses, before asking with a nervous giggle: “I don’t know. You spoke to me before. Have I gotten any better?”

The way that the genuine and friendly Regina patiently and thoughtfully answers my questions as I stumble through our conversation with the bumbling awkwardness of a schoolboy with a crush suggests that she is a better interviewee than she gives herself credit for. In her a sugar-sweet tone, she continues: “I hope that it’s one of those things where I am still in the transitional state, and either the interviews will die down because I’ll have eventually talked to everybody in the whole world, or I’ll learn how to write music in these conditions. I feel like something’s got to give though because, although it’s been an exciting year, it’s also been a bit frustrating to not be able to make as much music as I’d like. I’m the least prolific that I’ve ever been,” she
laments.

 

Even though Regina may not be as productive as she’d like, she is still incredibly fruitful in her songwriting and has “tons and tons of songs waiting to see the light of day.” While this is an exciting prospect for those of us who have played her latest album to death, her next record is still very much in the pre-production stage, and she is keeping a typically open mind about how it will sound, as things can easily change once she gets in the studio. “It’s all theory at the moment. It’s like baking a cake in theory, but then all of a sudden you have to handle stuff with your own hands and you accidentally spill half of the milk so you’ve only got half of it in the cake. Everything changes, you know? Man plans and God laughs. I might meet someone tomorrow who plays the best banjo I’ve ever heard and I might end up with banjo on my record.”

While banjos have so far failed to permeate Regina’s output, it is true that she has no fear of pushing the musical envelope in her vividly-imagined stories. On one song she plays piano with one hand and uses the other to hit a chair with a drumstick. Elsewhere, she sings Russian couplets, applies differing accents, or uses her voice as an additional musical instrument. These nuances make Regina Spektor’s music as interesting as it is charming and, as she is set to prove with her debut live dates in this country, she one of the most talented and intriguing songwriters of our generation. Hers is a unique talent which should be cherished.


Read Rob's previous interview with Regina here.
Read the review of Regina's show at Sydney Opera House here.

Erin Marshall Live

Erin Marshall is an artist I've written about on a couple of occasions. I'm used to seeing her gently strumming her acoustic guitar in little indie venues, but here's a clip of her proving that she can comfortably adapt to the big stage while retaining her affability.
There is another clip from the same show on youtube. Oh, and here is Erin perfoming live on telly.

David Ford at the Soho Revue Bar

I spent the evening of my birthday in a transsexual club in London, watching David Ford (below) perform. Here is the low-down:Accompanied by his ragbag band, which was made up of fellow Eastbourne group The Late Greats and excellent new multi-instrumentalist, Hannah Peel, David Ford took to the stage before a sold-out crowd in the very heart of dirty Soho looking, as always, like a sartorially-elegant hobo, and opened his performance with current limited-edition single, Go To Hell.

During a set gleaned from his debut album and the forthcoming sophomore effort, the singer was typically engaging, and juxtaposed the earnest subject-matter of his work with endearing, meandering between-song ramblings about topics ranging from the price of beer to transsexual strippers.Musical highlights included State of the Union, the intelligent, ingeniously-crafted political rant from his first long-player, which went down a storm as always. It is perhaps the closest thing Ford has to a greatest hit at this point in his career and, as a signature tune, it still sounds impressively fresh and important, despite being more than a couple of years old now. Similarly, the follow-up single, I Don’t Care What You Call Me, still oozes deliciously miserable malevolence.

However, in spite of the effervescence of his older work, the evening was really all about his new material, of which the hushed And So You Fell stood out most. The heartbreaking lullaby tipped a cap to Tom Waits’ gentler, more ruminative moments and brought a shroud of melancholy over the room without ever dipping its toes in the murky waters of over-sentimentality.

Elsewhere, Requiem - the bastard love-child of Bright Eyes’ Road To Joy and Ford’s own State of the Union, brought things to a crescendo with the singer screaming vocals over a thrilling cacophony of drums, guitars and trombone as the evening neared its conclusion. The hour-long set was rounded off with crowd-favourite and “note to self”, Cheer Up (You Miserable Fuck), which encouraged a mass singalong during the frighteningly infectious “la-la-la” part. In spite of the rapturous reception that his songs had received throughout the evening, Ford still seemed surprised to be called back by his fans for an encore and, as he ambled back onstage, he told the audience that he assumed they’d all “just fuck off home” at the end of his set. After a few hollered requests, which included calls for future single Decimate and a slightly more optimistic suggestion of The Final Countdown, the evening was brought to a beautiful close with an impromptu solo version of A Long Time Ago. As the applause rung in his ears, Ford removed his beat-up old hat, smiled and pointed to the door. “Now, go home,” he laughed.

As well as being a successful showcase of his outstanding new material, it was a gig which further proved that, as a live performer, David Ford can hold his own against absolutely anybody. Hopefully, with the imminent release of his second album, Songs for the Road, which is more accessible and radio-friendly than his acclaimed debut, this gifted singer/songwriter will begin to gain the recognition he deserves. In a world where it seems that many bands can sell a mountain of records on a molehill of talent, David Ford’s step into the big-time really is long overdue.

Reading 2007: Converse won't cut it...

If you are going to Reading this year, then it might be an idea to pack a pair of Wellies.This is the state of the Reading site as of last week. Festival organiser Michael Benn (above)told NME: " I guess about 25 per cent of the campsite is under water at the moment."

However, he insisted that the festival would definitely go ahead, with car parks and campsites being moved if necessary.

Photo by Tom Oxley

Reading 2007 - Who to see...

I just saw the full line-up for Reading for the first time. If you’re going this year, then here are my musical tips for a top weekend:Must See:
Arcade Fire (don’t miss them whatever else you do)
Klaxons (ooh-ee-ooh-ee-ooh-ee-ooh-ee-ooh-arrrr)
Kings of Leon
CSS (best party ever)
Jamie T (above)
New Young Pony Club (below)
Bloc Party
Interpol
Tokyo Police Club
The Gossip
Albert Hammond Jr (surprisingly great frontman)
The ShinsShould See:
Kate Nash (is she worth all the fuss? I hope so)
Ash (awesome festival band)
The View (little cunts but with a few good tunes)
Cold War Kids
The Scare (Australian, and better than….)
….The Horrors
Silversun Pickups (Pumpkins/Pixies revisited)
The Sunshine Underground
Peter Bjorn and John (whistle along)Maybe See:
Alberta Cross (friends of Angus and Julia)
Pippettes (from Brighton. Pretty dresses)
Charlotte Hatherley (above)
The Young Knives (tweed post punk)
Operator Please (teenagers from Australia. And, no, they’re not in the same league as Bridezilla but might be worth a squizz anyways)

Don’t See:
Razorlight (urggggghhh)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (worst band in the world)

Talk of the Town

As of next weekend, I will recommence my weekly column in The Sports Argus following a summer break.So, if you happen to buy it every week, you're stuck with another nine months of me pontificating about all manner of things football-related. Lucky you.