Hermione Hoby on Music
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Section:OBS RW PaGe:30 Edition Date:120617 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 15/6/2012 19:20 cYanmaGentaYellowblack Section:OBS RW PaGe:31 Edition Date:120617 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 15/6/2012 19:21 cYanmaGentaYellowblack > > ‘Self-awareness is a dangerous thing’ Everything But the Girl !op interview, page 32 THE LIVE REVIEW Hermione Hoby on music Will this be a good year for the Roses? Think you’re too old to listen to pop? After 16 years away, the reunited Take a leaf out of Bernstein’s book… Stone Roses sparkle just enough to After a friend extolled its weirdness last week, I went and found a YouTube video dispel memories of their last, recently posted by Adam Bainbridge . Bainbridge records wistful, lo-fi dance disastrous, festival performance music under the name Kindness , but this isn’t a music video. It begins with him, long-haired and serious-faced, delivering a monologue about pop music. Then the camera jumps out to reveal him seated at a keyboard next to a cute kid in a strip y top. An informal, 16 years, and the atmosphere is relaxed Sesame Street -style music lesson ensues. – at least until the music starts. LA The second part is all very sweet and Judee punks the Bronx wake everyone up with sincere, but there’s something about a joyous, full-throttle set. Singer Matt his opening words that seems off – a Rogersers Caughthran is soon crowd-surfi ng, little mannered, a bit old-fashioned then organising a mosh with him in and faintly familiar. To compound the the middle. Maximum eff ort at 1pm: it oddness, there’s the slight, sideways leaves everyone beaming. fl ickering of his gaze that suggests he’s The afternoon continues sparkily. reading off a cue card. Then he delivers Glimpsing the void: ( Hultsfred festival Festival-goers seem more passionate a line that jolted me out of puzzling. Pop Hultsfred, Sweden here. Some particular peppy pleasures music, he says, is “completely of, by and come mid-afternoon, such as Seattle for the kids. And by kids I mean anyone Teenage kicks: Kitty Pryde’s modern pop sound has bewildered some listeners. hip-hop duo THEESatisfaction’s from eight years old to 25.” snappy wordplay and dance-moves, That mildly murmured edict hit vented their bewilderment online in So this is the Third Coming. Their fi rst and Swedish six-piece Den Svenska my 27-year -old ears like a Zimmer- O kay Cupid is fresh droves. “Uhhhh, what? Is this a joke that was at the much-mythologised tail-end Björnstammen (the Swedish Bear frame blow to the backs of the knees. everyone’s in on but me?” asked one. of the 80s , when indie and dance music Population). Half-OK Go indie, half Twenty fi ve ? Kindness, you kill me with and funny enough to I can be guilty of dismissing things swaggered together, and the Stone Day-Glo Hot Chip techno, they bounce your cruelty! as “a bit adolescent”, but O kay Cupid is Roses’ debut album became the baggy- around onstage, foliage in their shorts, It made me want to ask a question remind me that fresh and funny enough to remind me trouser-wearer’s bible. Second Coming and get the crowd going wild. that, like those twin impulses of that teenage culture has its own validity, – their December 1994 follow-up – Elsewhere, old-fashioned delights adolescence itself, is both facetious and teenage culture has not just a validity aff orded through the came a t Britpop ’s high-water mark. abound. New Zealander Willy Moon sincere: am I too old for pop ? He kindly its own validity quasi-anthropological lens of adults’ Singer Ian Brown, guitarist John rocks up in a white suit like a cross obliged via email. After joking that I ironic distance. That said, I really wish Squire, bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfi eld between David Byrne and Jerry Lee was “certainly too old to be a music Bernstein w as around to interview her. and drummer Alan “Reni” Wren had journalist – they generally peak in their Earnest discourse with “its makers, In 1967 he proclaimed pop music been away just long enough to be early teens”, he went on: “ But seriously, this new breed of young people with “part of a historic revolution – only now greeted like returning heroes. But And then comes ! e Stone Roses’ Ian pop matters most when you’re younger. long hair and fanciful clothing” follows. these young people have gotten control after a disastrous meltdown 18 months Brown: ‘ he even At that early stage, our appreciation Time turns these inquiries into a of a mass medium, the phonograph later, the Third was never meant to something fans have takes his anorak off ’. of pop, and of music in general, is quaint curio we can laugh at, disowning record”. But in 2012, “the young happen – at least, if you believed Squire Photograph by Emma uncluttered by history, signifi cance or our collective naivety in the same way people” have something even more in 2009. “I have no desire whatsoever been dreading: a Svensson/Rockfoto other people’s expectations. It’s just a we do our personal adolescent passions powerful: Mac Books, Tumblr accounts to desecrate the grave of seminal wincingly off -key rush of joyful acceptance.” and obsessions. Watching someone in and YouTube channels . Manchester pop group the Stone There’s a reason his video seems the 60s address the perils of pop music In making available virtually all Roses,” he said then. Now, things are note from Ian Brown weird. Those words are almost half is a similar feeling to fi nding an old recorded music , the internet has razed diff erent. But are they really? a century old : he is in fact quoting school binder doodled all over with taste hierarchies . As Ian Williams of the It’s the fi rst day of the Hultsfred Leonard Bernstein . In 1967, two years names of boys and bands and thinking: avant rock band Battles has said, “there festival, deep in Swedish birch-and- Lewis, playing rockabilly twisted with by the north’s indie past – as does his stalks the stage, wielding his maracas always inconsistent anyway? Or the to hang up; the third time he succeeds. Am the Resurrection – is a genuine, after Dylan had sneered, “ Something oh my God, I was so young. are no guilty pleasures any more”, and elm country. The site is gorgeous, on woozy, processed beats. “Wa-ow!”, he haircut, the fi rst Stone Roses barnet of like someone divining for Es. The dressing-up of a memory? As the set It’s a metaphor for the whole set, and a eye-moistening, lump-in-the-throat is happening here/ But you don’t That’s something 19-year-old Kitty that means less ageism, too. Having a lake, with four stages tightly packed howls regularly, as his female drummer the day. crowd aren’t enthused yet; they’re continues, glimmers of hope appear. totem for what follows. moment. Brown gives the set list to the know what it is/ Do you, Mr Jones? ”, Pryde , the Florida teenager behind no hair to whip back and forth needn’t together. At noon, it’s been heard that plays, stops and smokes. LA’s Vintage At 9.40pm, only 10 minutes late, come mainly Swedish teenagers after all, B-side Standing Here (from 1989) Waterfall cascades; Brown hits every person who gave him the fl ag. Then the Bernstein presented a CBS special recent viral track Okay Cupid , has to impede balding men from enjoying the Roses’ crew have arrived – good Trouble also impress with their Sam the Stone Roses themselves. But where’s not Haçienda casualties. Then comes gently warms the heart. Ten Storey single note perfectly. In a glorious whole band come stage-front, and hug. called Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution . look forward to. Coy and giggling, she 11-year-old Willow Smith ’s ebullience. news given what happened two nights Cooke-meets-Stax stylings, which are Reni? Pulses quicken when a drummer something Roses fans have been Love Song’s melody reminds you how This Is the One, Brown wanders Then they bow, but Reni does Online footage shows the smartly raps: “I don’t care how long it takes to To echo James Murphy of LCD ago. In Amsterdam’s Heineken Music just sharp enough to not sound too retro. with dreadlocks appears, but it is Reni dreading: a wincingly off -key note from touching this music could be. Brown over to Squire, and makes him laugh so away from Brown, awkwardly, suited, grey-haired director of the New get you after me/ I wrote our names Soundsystem (already losing his edge Hall, Reni allegedly stormed off before But nostalgic sounds can get tired. indeed, wearing a ridiculous hat. As Brown in I Wanna Be Adored. It gets even takes his anorak off , and starts to with his dancing. As She Bangs the hammily. This is no resurrection quite York Philharmonic seated at a piano, a on my binder/ And everybody laughed back in the dark ages of 2002 ), the kids the encore; in a YouTube clip widely Despite a decent romp through the he pummels Love Spreads into life, it worse. In Made of Stone, Brown starts joke with the Swedes (“I said: ‘Tack Drums sparkles, you remember that yet. But the Stone Roses are alive. paragon of avuncular tolerance as he at me .” The track is syrupy in two will always be coming up from behind, circulated soon after, Brown called the Who’s Teenage Wasteland, the Gaslight becomes obvious how much his drums a verse while his bandmates are still on [thank you]!’ I can’t help it!”).