Soundbites: The predictable Mercury Prize winners, Paul McCartney defends Yoko & more!


In today’s Soundbites we take an extended look at what now seems to be the predictable alternative after this week’s Mercury Prize announcement, but there’s still room for Paul McCartney to come out in support of Yoko Ono, Spiritualized to slag off a good old festival sing-a-long, and the week’s most popular video to be highlighted.

British band Alt J 1612477a1

There were no outstanding candidates on this year’s Mercury Music Prize shortlist according to the head of judges when the nominees were announced back in September. But even before that announcement, Alt-J were being pretty much unanimously tipped for the 2012 award. When the shortlist was confirmed, with Alt-J duly making up one of the twelve Album Of The Year artists, the betting may as well have been closed there and then. Last year, it was a similar story with The xx.

A closer look at the band and their debut album explains it all. Formed in the university halls of Leeds, honed in Cambridge, and recorded in London, the creative path of their debut ‘An Awesome Wave‘ is like a wet dream for the current crop of critical judges – so keen as they are to glorify high brow, sweater-wearing guitar music. ‘An Awesome Wave’ undoubtedly, and adeptly, marries together a myriad of musical styles, showing off the talents of a group of clearly talented musicians. But is it this world that is now the sole domain of good, note-worthy music? The type that you need to spend a whole week in a dark corner with to dissect its every subtle nuance?

Noel Gallagher said recently in an interview with the Seattle Weekly that ‘the enemy of music’ is ‘Interesting’. It’s a word often bounded about when discussing bands such as Alt-J. “Elvis wasn’t interesting,” Gallagher continued. “The Sex Pistols weren’t interesting. The Beatles weren’t interesting. They had something that was fucking real and dealt with emotion. Do you know who’s interesting? Bjork. Interesting is fucking ridiculous. It annoys me.”

As usual with Noel, there’s not many shades of grey in his opinion. Good music can undoubtedly be ‘interesting’ and this is by no means some sort of backwardly snobbish attack on the genre. Indeed, the aforementioned The xx were thoroughly deserving of their award last year after crafting a wonderful record. But, in influential circles at the moment at least, it seems to be only music worth talking about. And the inevitability this week of a prize which so often used to revel in surprise makes you wonder whether these bands can now still justifiably think of themselves as ‘alt-indie’ or ‘anti-mainstream’, or whatever other pretentious label they care to adopt, and whether they are in fact becoming as predictable as more, shall we say, straight-forward rock n roll is so often derided to be.

In fact, with the least surprising winner in Mercury’s history now crowned, maybe it’s time for that world to be the critically celebrated alternative once again.

Anyway…It’s safe to Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono didn’t used to get on. We all know the many runs-ins between the pair since Yoko entered The Beatles world in the mid-60s. And since the break-up of The Beatles in 1970 fans have often been quick to blame Yoko for the disintegration of the world’s greatest band. Of course, anyone with even a modicum of understanding of the end of the Fab Four knows there were far more deep lying reasons behind their demise than a small woman sitting in the corner of Abbey Road, occasionally being allowed to suggest a high-pitched wail should be added on to this track. So it was nice to see McCartney publicly acknowledge that fact this week, when portions of a forthcoming interview with David Frost were obtained by The Guardian. “She certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up,” McCartney says. “When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him. So it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave one way or another.” More from Macca on a far bigger influence in The Beatles’ split right here.

Everyone loves a festival don’t they? Weak over-priced beer, rain, mud and countless bands, most of whom can enjoy the chance of playing to a crowd several times greater than they’ve ever experienced before. Everyone except Spiritualized‘s Jason Pierce that is. “Yet bands, in their wisdom still soak up the glory, like they’re worth THIS many people,” he has told Drowned In Sound. “Or worse, when you get those awful singalongs, and a band’s ego kicks in when the crowd sings their words back. It’s as if they’re standing on stage thinking ‘This is what we’re worth’ and really the audience would sing We’ll Meet Again if it was playing.” Read more at this link.

A break for The Killers seems to have done them good. They’ve reacquainted themselves with guitars, fallen back in love with Nevada, and released a well received, big selling album. The band were in London this week to appear on the BBC’s long running Later…with Jools Holland series. The live performance of ‘Runaways‘ in the most popular video of the week – check out our Videos section and news roundup for all the latest new and classic promos.


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One Response

  1. Ben Trovato 4 November, 2012