Watch with No Rock: Shirley Manson

Shirley Manson talks to CBC about how failure can kick you up the arse and get you moving, and 20 years of Garbage:

The season of goodwill touches the Kinks

While Liam battles on, something of a sign of hope in a miserable world - last night, for the first time in two decades... well, this happened:

Yes, Ray and Dave Davies, on stage, together, doing a Kinks Song. Without anyone getting punched at. This was at the Islington Assembly Hall.

Embed and breakfast man: Pins

Ooh... there's a new Pins video:

Embed & Breakfast Man: Little Joy

That rundown of ten years ago reminded us that we miss Little Joy, the Strokes spin-off project...



Officially, they're on hiatus (because no band ever ends these days, does it? Even when the lead singer is punching the face of the drummer, their manager is booking the comeback tour), but they've not done anything since 2009. There's still a MySpace page for them.

Embed and breakfast man: Kate Nash

To offset the bad taste of Hollywood deciding to not let Dre beating a woman up spoil a good story, here's Kate Nash talking to Broadly:

Embed and breakfast man: Flo Rida & Audrey Roberts

It's what you've been waiting for - and by that I mean "you probably haven't been waiting for it" - Flo Rida and Audrey Roberts together for the first time:

Rose McDowall's solo album is coming back

You know what? It's thirty sodding eight degrees outside and I'm hot, so I'm going to paste a press release in here and that's okay because it's worth reading, alright?

Born in times of difficulty and adventure, Cut With The Cake Knife is the debut album from Rose McDowall, solo-artist and ex-member of cult pop group Strawberry Switchblade. Originally recorded in 1988-89 and now re-mastered and getting the re-issue treatment from Sacred Bones Records (U.S.) & Night School Records (UK, EU)

Marking the beginning of an extensive archive project spanning Rose’s 34 year career, Cut With The Cake Knife will include unreleased recordings alongside unseen photographs and detailed new sleeve notes.

Recorded in various locations around the UK and Iceland following the break up of Strawberry Switchblade, the original 9-track Cut With The Cake Knife album featured songs written and demoed for the group’s fabled second album.

Rose McDowall began her career in her hometown of Glasgow, operating within the nascent punk scene with her first group The Poems. After a meteoric rise to pop stardom, which saw Strawberry Switchblade achieve chart success, world tours and global fame, McDowall’s relationship with partner and friend Jill Bryson disintegrated. The aftermath of her pop career saw McDowall earn a new reputation as an underground artist, collaborating with Coil, Felt, Current 93 and Nurse With Wound among others. Cut With The Cake Knife was recorded against this tumultuous backdrop and is one the most affecting collections of direct pop songwriting committed to tape.

The album opens with one of McDowall’s most heartfelt, honest moments: Tibet; a simple song written with absolute truth about the loss of friendship. For errant Switchblade fans it’s a prime example of why McDowall’s legacy is so important: shorn of unnecessary ornament, it’s one of many songs here that speak loudly and clearly about universal emotional states. Production values throughout lie somewhere between glossy, 80s studios and home-recorded demos but it’s a sound that only heightens the poignancy in McDowall’s voice: her best instrument and one that can evoke vulnerability, as in the near-angelic harmonies on Sixty Cowboys or swirling excitement as in the number 1 hit that never was, Crystal Nights. But perhaps her prowess is best summed up by the album’s title track, written for the 2nd Switchblade album yet thriving here, in which Rose projects a powerful protagonist, tinged with violence but still playful. At the heart of even the most upbeat, transcendently “pop” moments is a beautiful melancholy, a nagging heartache McDowall can call her own.

As Rose writes in the 2015 edition sleeve notes: “They’re real sad songs, about real life.”

Cut With The Cake Knife is out September 18th on Sacred Bones (U.S.) / Night School (UK / EU)

Could I make this 'exciting news/half-arsed post' even more so? Yes. Here's a YouTube embed:

Karen O, baby

Yes, Karen O is going to have a baby.

But more importantly, this:

Embed and breakfast man: Garbage

Garbage have teamed up with Brian Aubert out of Silversun Pickups for their Record Store Day single. This is it:


Record Store Day is an annual event where rare records are hidden in shops for people to hunt down; the winners get to sell them on eBay at huge profits.

TV times: All Shook Up

I don't know why the BBC aren't trumpeting about this from the top of their highest trumpeting towers: All Shook Up, a new (pilot) music series that's iPlayer only.

It's presented by Marc Riley (is this his first TV work since UK Play closed?) and episode one features Slug, Lonelady and The Wave Pictures. It suggests Nightingale-era Whistle Test styling that Later With Jools went for before the put out tables and invited James Nesbitt and Tomas Shafernaker in to watch.

Hugely recommended. And there's some extra offcuts on YouTube, too:

Embed and breakfast man: Cats And Cats And Cats

More cats, because... sometimes you're writing about Rihanna and kittens, and you start to wonder whatever happened to Cats And Cats And Cats?



You can pick up Cats And Cats And Cats' Catsalogue LP for just two quid over on Bandcamp

Embed and breakfast man: Garbage

Vow by Garbage. Released twenty years ago this very morning.

Embed and breakfast man: Sharon Van Etten

Sharon Van Etten took her new single, I Don't Want To Let You Down onto the Ellen show last week. (Sidenote: I don't think the book shop set looks very convincing these days. It might be a while since I last watched Ellen.)

Embed and breakfast man: Emmy The Great

Emmy The Great's S EP is getting closer... it's due out on the 27th. Here's one taste of it:

Embed and breakfast man: Allo Darlin

Allo Darlin went to KEXP and did a live set. It's lovely, and it's here:

Minaj: The Nazis were artistic nazis

The man who put together Nicki Minaj's nazi video has issued a statement:

Before I start, be clear that these are my personal views and not the views of Nicki Minaj, Drake, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, or Young Money.

First, I’m not apologizing for my work, nor will I dodge the immediate question. The flags, armbands, and gas mask (and perhaps my use of symmetry?) are all representative of Nazism.

But a majority of the recognizable models/symbols are American: MQ9 Reaper Drone, F22 Raptor, Sidewinder missile, security cameras, M60, SWAT uniform, General’s uniform, the Supreme court, and the Lincoln Memorial. What’s also American is the 1st Amendment, which I’ve unexpectedly succeeded in showing how we willfully squeeze ourselves out of that right every day.

Despite the fact heavy religious and economic themes were glossed over, there’s also Russian T-90 tanks, Belgian FN FAL, German mp5 (not manufactured until 1966), an Italian Ferrari, and a Vatican Pope.

As far as an explanation, I think its actually important to remind younger generations of atrocities that occurred in the past as a way to prevent them from happening in the future. And the most effective way of connecting with people today is through social media and pop culture. So if my work is misinterpreted because it’s not a sappy tearjerker, sorry I’m not sorry. What else is trending?

First of all: "Sorry not sorry"? Is it still 2012 in America?

Jeff Osborne, the artist who directed the “Only” lyric video, issued a statement via MySpace

Oh. I suppose if you're still using MySpace, "sorry not sorry" must seems as new and astonishing as the first time someone from Britain came face-to-face with kangaroo.

Still, it's nice to have that clarified. It's not about Nazi Nazis, it's just 'hey, aren't all regimes a little bit nazi-like, have you ever thought that OMG it's so obvious when you think about it and aren't CCTV cameras just jackboots attached to walls, right?' Nazis.

It's not unusual for Godwin's Law to apply in YouTube comments. There's more than a few piece-to-camera YouTube videos where it can be invoked. I think, though, this might be the first time Godwin can be pressed into service for a lyric video.

Hey, Jeff, here's one for you: why don't you take a picture of Obama, right, and put a little moustache on him? SEE IF PEOPLE CAN HANDLE THAT TRUTH.

Embed and breakfast man: The New Pornographers

The New Pornographers did Letterman yesterday. Here, don't take my word for it - here they are...

Embed and breakfast man: Sia

Fancy watching Sia do a song with the New York Gay Men's Choir? Let us help you with that:

The Arctic Monkeys: let's have a quick unwrap

So here's the new Arctic Monkeys video:

Clearly, there's a tongue in a cheek here, right?

Mr Discopop points out that some people might have missed that:

"More gratuitous, self-aggrandizing tripe from the ego of the century," grumps, arrloid, who is not alone in feeling Alex's ego has run rampant like a feral donkey.

"His confidence is sexy but this is a bit much," writes Anna Farid. "The only thing bigger than his ego," concludes FSAfykm, "is his nose".

Mr D shakes his head:

The clip, for Snap Out Of It, pokes fun at Alex Turner's "sexpot" image, with actress Stephanie Sigman (that's her above) in floods of tears, smooching pictures of Alex on her TV and hungrily devouring a steak.

Over on YouTube, though, everyone has missed the point spectacularly.

And he's right.

Up to a point.

Because this is a wonderful cake-eat, cake-keep moment. Yes, there's a terrific sending up of the sexyliciousness of Alex Turner, but at the same time, the very act of sending up the idea is a reminder of that status. And there are less self-satisfied ways of lampooning your sexysexysexy credentials than hiring Stephanie Sigman to prance about in her bra.

It's all a bit 'ooh, fancy that people think little old me is sexy', innit?

Embed and breakfast man: Kristeen Young

But why, Kristeen, why would you have poisoned Morrissey with a headcold? Why would you do such a thing? Why?

Oh... the devil made you do it.