Everything You Need #5, Friday 23rd July 2010

It's time (and always a pleasure) to plug Everything You Need again, and whilst I'm not fortunate enough to be DJing this time round, I am still quite closely involved: the Everything You Need Twitter account is operated by me. Starting from eleven p.m. this evening, your £2 will get you four hours of the best music you could ever hope to hear at a clubnight. Tonight, above all else, I'm hoping for some Replacements. I've lost count of the number of occasions I've danced around to "I Will Dare." But once more can never hurt. You're encouraged to make your own requests, though, so if there's anything in particular you fancy hearing, write it down, hand it in, and wait on tenterhooks in the hope that it'll get played. And make sure you stick around for the raffle, with the lucky winner getting to take home half of the takings on the door (keep those fingers crossed!). Hope to see you down there.

Mercury Music Prize 2010

So, the nominations for the Mercury Music Prize 2010 have just been announced, meaning everyone can squabble over who was picked and who was left out, whilst arguing about whether the award has any particular relevance these days anyway. I haven't listened to most of these albums, and if I'm honest I probably don't intend to. I've heard good things about the Villagers record; need to spend more time with Wild Beasts; and enjoy the xx's debut quite a bit. Outside of those three, there's nothing here that really convinces me that British music is in particularly rude health. Ah well. There's always next year.

Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions
Corinne Bailey Rae - The Sea
Dizzee Rascal - Tongue N' Cheek
Kit Downes Trio - Golden
Foals - Total Life Forever
I Am Kloot - Sky At Night
Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can
Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
Paul Weller - Wake Up The Nation
Villagers - Becoming A Jackal
Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
the xx - the xx

I've never paid that much attention to Jesca Hoop in the past, but thanks to the good folks over at NPR Music, I'm able to remedy that. They're streaming her second album Hunting My Dress in its entirety ahead of its release (June 26th, if you'd like to mark it in your diaries), and I know I'm going to be taking the opportunity to acquaint myself with her work.

Stream Jesca Hoop's latest album Hunting My Dress over at NPR Music

Somehow, Liars don't seem to get the credit they deserve. Sure, their records are usually released to critical acclaim, but considering that over the last ten years they've knocked out five albums that range from great to stunning, I can't help but feel as though they deserve to be held in higher esteem. Their latest long-player Sisterworld is a reminder of both their talent and their versatility (their constant ability to reinvent themselves is one of their greatest attributes), and they recorded four of the tracks for a new Daytrotter Session which is well worth listening to.

Download the new Liars Daytrotter Session here

"This is what I don't have:

- Plans

- Enthusiasm

- A girlfriend

- The sense that things fit together and that everything will be all right in the end

- A winning personality

- A watch"

When the narrator of Erlend Loe's Naive. Super takes stock of his life, the bad far outweighs the good. Aged twenty-five, he is struggling to find any meaning in his life, and making a list of what he's lacking only draws further attention to his perceived failings. Yet making lists is one of the things he's best at. From a literary perspective, it's a simple device generally employed to quickly convey pertinent information about a character, and in the hands of Loe it is undeniably highly effective. For example, it's hard to read the list the narrator makes of things that used to excite him as a child and not want to write up your own; however, considering his depression causes him to revert to to something akin to a childlike state (his greatest pleasure in life becomes the time he spends playing with a ball and a hammer-and-peg toy), said list becomes incredibly poignant. Halfway through the novel, I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops.

My second contribution to Write In For Writing's Sake was posted this evening, and as always I'd be greatly appreciative if you followed the link to read it. This week's subject was 'Uncomfortable,' and after considering an airline cabin as the setting (and a rather more literal interpretation of the theme), I eventually settled on a house party, with a narrator who is anything but happy to be there. Once again, I didn't find it necessary to draw upon my own real life experiences too much, although I imagine most people can relate to the circumstances depicted within the story. Let's face it, at one time or another we've all found ourselves in a room comprised entirely of total strangers, and all felt the sense of discomfort that stems from struggling to find your place, and your voice, within said room.

I think it'll take me a while to process Inception. My initial (undeniably) hyperbole-laden reaction to the film is that it is nothing less than a ground-up reinvention of the action movie genre. To wit: the bar has been raised to such an extent that the usual underwhelming summer blockbuster mediocrity that just about passes muster will (hopefully) no longer so readily be accepted. It is undoubtedly Christopher Nolan's finest hour, surpassing both the critically adored Dark Knight and The Prestige (my own personal favourite), and is a tremendous piece of cinema that demands multiple viewings in order to fully digest the wonderful-but-labyrinthine plot. Superbly acted and utterly captivating throughout, I cannot wait to see it for a second time.

Ed Cottam performing at Fletcher Moss Gardens

Back in April, a friend of mine had a birthday celebration held in Fletcher Moss Gardens that featured the music of Hungry Ha Ha Ha, Jess Bryant and Ed Cottam. Whilst footage starring the first two acts emerged shortly after the event, it's taken until now for a video showcasing the music of Ed Cottam to be posted online. Having just watched it, I thought I'd share it here for your enjoyment. You can even see me in the background (I'm the guy who's unnecessarily overdressed).



www.myspace.com/edmundcottam

Seeing as how the focus of the blog this month appears to be literature (not something I planned, but let us say that it is a decision intended to celebrate the first meeting of the Everything You Read book club), I would like to share with you a passage that occurs early on in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections:

"I'm saying the structure of the entire culture is flawed," Chip said. "I'm saying the bureaucracy has arrogated the right to define certain states of mind as 'diseased.' A lack of desire to spend money becomes a symptom of disease that requires expensive medication. Which medication then destroys the libido, in other words destroys the appetite for the one pleasure in life that's free, which means the person has to spend even more money on compensatory pleasures. The very definition of mental 'health' is the ability to participate in the consumer economy. When you buy into therapy, you're buying into buying. And I'm saying that I personally am losing the battle with a commercialized, medicalized, totalitarian modernity right this instant."

It's a wonderful bit of prose from a novel that, twenty pages in, had failed to capture my attention. Now, I find myself one hundred pages along and absolutely enthralled. Having had a conversation earlier this evening centred around what drives the reader to carry on when a novel doesn't immediately grab them, The Corrections has provided me with a rather simple answer: some books are slow starters, and the very nature of literature contains the promise that things may pick up in spectacular fashion at any moment.

Hopefully, I'll be able to find the time to keep reading it at this rate. There's a wealth of stuff to tackle at the moment, though. Vintage Books were kind enough to send me a copy of John Lennon's In His Own Write for review. I'm expecting Naive. Super by Erlend Loe - the first selection of the aforementioned book club - to arrive any day now. And I started Dante's The Divine Comedy the other day. It somehow seems rather fitting that, as soon as my degree ends, I rediscover my passion for books.

Over at City Lifers, you can read my review of The Peters Port Memorial Service, the debut album from Scottish band Mitchell Museum. I found it to be a very enjoyable record, for the most part, and a sure sign of greater things to come in the not too distant future. And "Tiger Heartbeat" will definitely end up being one of my most played tracks of 2010. It's worth getting on board before they become huge. Then you'll be able to say you were there from the start.

www.mitchellmuseum.co.uk