Author: crystaltipps

Spotify Discover Weekly: a review

crystaltippsLeave a comment

Spotify launched Discover Weekly at the end of July, making Mondays a little less terrible with specially curated playlists and keeping its customers out of the clutches of Apple Music. I wasn’t initially convinced that the service would be of any use to me…like most people, I just Shazam all the alt-rock I hear at Starbucks and call that music discovery. Plus, I listen to a pretty eclectic selection, from Elliott Smith (for contemplative strolls) to the gangsta rap I play at predrinks and parties for a smidgen of cool. In short, how could it make any sense of it all?! Would it suggest experimental Latvian hip hop or white noise? The Longpigs or JoJo? Oh, and it had divided opinion online…

I was surprised, then, that my first Discover Weekly experience induced an existential crisis of French New Wave proportions. I was bombarded with bands I hadn’t encountered in ages and desperately wanted to explore further: Mercury Rev, Sonic Youth, a few Scottish bands from the 80s like The Vaselines and Josef K, Les Savy Fav. There was an element of rediscovery, too, with big Velvet Underground and Stones tracks, and a couple of songs that I hadn’t heard since the days when I exclusively wore 500% polyester clothes from Camden, like Whitechapel by S.C.U.M.

This week offered some strong suggestions, too. FIDLAR’s skate punk vibes made for an exciting new discovery; The Fall’s extremely off-kilter cover of Lost In Music by Sister Sledge (complete with garbled Franglais intro) made me giggle; I stopped and paid more attention to stirring folk of The Staves. Minimal Britpop revivalists Superfood made a decidedly Blur-shaped impression and I starred about twenty songs by The Modern Lovers, a 70s/80s pre-punk band from the US I’d only heard of in passing.

Overall, however, this week’s playlist didn’t totally deliver. Sure, the big rocky choruses and guitar music from snivelling indie upstarts of the previous playlist remained intact, but it wasn’t as disquietingly Orwellian as I would have liked. An ancient Killers single took me back to vomit-flavoured houseparties circa 2008. The most ubiquitous Stone Roses, Smiths and Pulp B-sides jostled for attention, just in case I’d been in a coma for my entire life. And what to make of The Liquidator, much-loved reggae instrumental and, erm, UK football coverage staple. Inexplicably, there were no less than three ska/reggae songs in this week’s playlist, as jarring as peach and aubergine emojis permeating polite conversation. As I only listen to Bob Marley’s Greatest Hits once every ten years or so, I may well have had my account hacked by the Jamaican Julian Assange.

Spotify might not be able to cook me pancakes on a Sunday morning, but its playlists often touch on the music I really, really like (think “38 year old’s severely weathered iPod classic”). Nevertheless, a human touch will always trump top secret algorithms. That, and a little less reggae.

Spotify, will you take a walk on the wild side?

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: a generic title too far?

crystaltippsLeave a comment

I really didn’t want to like The Diary of a Teenage Girl, the 94%-on-Rotten-Tomatoes coming of age film du moment. I think part of it lay in the non-specificity of the title; as an intersectional feminist who grew up hoping to be reincarnated as either a) a Malibu Barbie or b) Slash, I’m wary of anything claiming to be the “one true female experience TM”. Take Girls, for example, a show which bears the world’s most universal title whilst chronicling the world of a very specific, chronically anxious type of New Yorker, inhabiting a world circumscribed by a very specific, chronically anxious New Yorker. Even the title of Lena Dunham’s autobiography – Not That Kind Of Girl – sets her up as an other to some prefigured definition of US-centric millennial promiscuity. If Lena Dunham – straight, white, able-bodied, liberal yet loaded – is the other in Western culture for talking about mental health and getting her tits out (important shit, I concede, but let me rant a little) then what hope is there for all those other voices out there?! I say this as somebody who raced through NTKOG and Caitlin Moran’s books nodding her head with as much vigour as I did when reading Roxane Gay’s. I don’t want other women to enter into check-your-privilege-themed Twitter beef. However, I also say this as someone who balks a little at the former two’s penchant for one-size-fits-all titles, when the content of such works is often deeply individual.

So, onto The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Presented sans Lolita-esque male gaze by a female director, Marielle Heller, it is a brilliant film about sex, getting your heart slowly unseamed and all of the terrible bits in between. It’s a piece about growing up that both recent arrivals into adulthood like myself and others still enduring that awkward, Impulse-scented phase can relate to in equal measure. In case I haven’t already made it clear, I loved it. Brit actress Bel Powley is wide-eyed and probing as Minnie, a 15-year-old struggling with millenia-old virgin/whore tropes as she embarks on a love affair with her mother’s boyfriend. Although it’s set in the 70s, the message is current, and completely believable for a young audience bombarded with contradictory messages and pressures. As such, the specificity of the title is – on reflection – of a market of solidarity rather than superiority. Minnie’s life as a white teenage girl at a “hippy” school in San Francisco isn’t held up as the only teenage life or the most important or even the most relevant. Rather, it figures as a knowing composite of some of the things – scary, exciting, revelatory, crushing – that can happen in any young woman’s life. There are many relatable aspects to Minnie’s tale, even if – on a superficial level – it might seem an unrepresentative portrait of girlhood.

Generic film/book/series titles will probably continue to annoy me. Maybe it’s just a personal thing, like preferring green apples over red, or my irrational hatred of beach sliders. Perhaps it’s an extension of my annoyance at having to reconcile all the (wildly different) parts of my identity under the “young woman” umbrella, as I once did with “teenage girl”. That said, I can probably make an exception for something as rare and beautifully retro as Heller’s film. That so many teenage girls won’t get to see it in the cinema due to the kthanksbye attitude of the BBFC, who rated it an 18, only emphasises how misconstrued so many of our experiences really are.

DOATG
Bel Powley and Alexander Skarsgård as Minnie and Monroe. Credit: Sony Pictures Classics

Serial: a fitting end to the crime drama that wasn’t

crystaltippsLeave a comment

**spoiler alert — go and listen to the final episode of Serial before continuing**

logser

Serial – the twelve-part whodunnit phenomenon that put the word podcast back in the popular vernacular – has come to an end. There’ll be no more Mailchimp, no more prepaid prison calls and – crucially – no more questions from the show’s host, This American Life journalist Sarah Koenig. It seems unlikely, however, that the show’s fans will forget it in a hurry. What set this murder mystery apart was that it both respected the fifteen year old cold case at its centre in a way that true crime shows so often don’t (Crime and Investigation Network, I’m looking at you) and brought it to life.

In Serial – the story of an honours student imprisoned for life on a weak testimony and circumstantial evidence – notions of good and bad, guilty and innocent, were placed in apposition rather than opposition over and over again, a chiasmus of contradictory character traits. Profiles of human beings with thoughts and feelings were crafted through a sophisticated narrative that often included big, searching questions about the universality of the human psyche. Could a young man from a religious family also dabble in theft and drugs, or was it a sign of his duplicitousness? A teen fundamentalist with scores to settle would make a killer TV plotline, but for Koenig a killer it did not (necessarily) make. Ripping apart the version of events presented at trial meant casting aside caricatured notions of psychopathy or even sociopathy, dealing solely in fact, and bringing in new experts including the Innocence Project, a legal organisation who review cases with DNA testing.

Some listeners may have felt cheated by this week’s final instalment, however. After all, Koenig promises an ending about two minutes in, only to return to the same brand of wrangling which has underpinned every single episode. Whilst new infomation is revealed, her final conclusion is the opposite of the dramatic “no-sliver-of-reasonable-doubt” denouement. It is, however, the only kind of ending that is authentic with regards to such a complex case. The truth might be stranger than fiction (god knows that Criminal Minds has never dedicated an entire episode to cell phone tower pings), but it’s often messier and more elusive, too. Thus, she concludes, that although she cannot be 100% sure of exactly what happened that day, there was certainly not enough evidence to lock a 17-year-old away for life.

So, what exactly happens in episode twelve? Koenig delves back through the evidence which she and her team have collated over the past fifteen months, checking out the inconsistencies in the case of Adnan Syed – currently behind bars for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in Baltimore – one last time. It’s a process that’s nearly as frustrating as Syed’s repeated inability to remember anything but the most pedestrian of details from the day that Hae went missing, as Koenig and her two producers – Julie Snyder and Dana Chivvis – talk cell phone calls and legal loopholes once again. This being Serial – cerebral, solid – the final look at the details of January 13th 1999 had a serious purpose, however: reaffirming the ambiguities at the heart of the state’s case against Syed once more. Koenig admits to exploring new avenues right until the end (what if there was something they’d missed?) but the main point of retracing their steps was to show that even if a new version of the truth was yet to transpire, the accepted version of events was undeniably flawed. From the Nisha call to the Best Buy payphone: they were all ultimately jokers.

Hae Min Lee’s brother Young took to Reddit back in November. “TO ME ITS REAL LIFE”, began his distressed missive. “To you listeners, its another murder mystery, crime drama, another episode of CSI”. The post goes on to talk of his family’s grief, before concluding that Koenig was either biased or gunning for a big ending. His suspicion and hurt were understandable, especially when you consider the thousands upon thousands of posts which have appeared alongside his own on the site’s Serial subreddit over the past three months. From potential libel to downright dangerous vigilantism, there was many people in this online community who were playing an unethical game of Cluedo from behind their screens. The same can’t be said of Koenig, Snyder, Chivvis and co, however, who built up an intricate narrative that eschewed speculation in favour of cold, hard, fact. That the big, sensational shocker of an ending Mr Lee and so many others expected never came is a testament to the fact that this hugely popular show was a dispatch from reality rather than a masterclass in voyeurism.

A bad musical feminist?

crystaltippsLeave a comment

*Whilst I’ve had releases from Sleater-Kinney and Girlpool on repeat of late, I’ve been teetering between riot grrrl and girly girl for as long as I can remember. The top comment on a new SK track on Youtube (“welcome back ladies… save us from beyonce, j-lo, nicki minaj, taylor swift, and the rest of these pop ho-bags.”) got me thinking about whether it’s possible to embrace seemingly opposing cultural output. (Clue: it is) This is also the question at the centre of Roxane Gay’s half-memoir/essay collection ‘Bad Feminist’, which I highly recommend.

Am I a bad musical feminist? A little bit of context: at 11, I had convinced myself that I was a half-decent songwriter. Every echoey middle eight, however, betrayed a love of the bubblegum pop of Britney, Xtina et al. Even when I was ploughing through visceral chords – stripy rayon tie and twelve Claire’s Accessories crucifixes around my neck – my lyrics were all based on my maths class crush, the Aaron Samuels to my Cady Heron (minus the Lohan looks and plus a little caustic acne). I was effectively a one-woman Xenomania.

Somewhere between 13 and 14, I started listening to the kind of XFM-endorsed Noughties indie which makes me highly nostalgic nowadays. I had a nu rave phase along with half of the free world, followed by the obligatory Converse-and-Nirvana era, followed by a few months spent lurking around Camden Market chowing down lukewarm curry. Somewhere along the way I even got into Joan Jett. I had a guitar, an amp…and neighbours who probably wanted me dead.

(I looked like a bit of a wee rebel didn’t I?)

And YET, I couldn’t quite shake off my frivolous, whimsical, girly self, nor my acute awareness of my love/hate relationship with my gender. My MySpace page was a homage to Donnie Darko and Oscar Wilde (cool) but also featured copious paragraphs on my love for miniature Japanese toys (not so cool). And then it happened: I stumbled upon (via MTV2 maybe?) the duality of the riot grrrl sound, the not-so-latent anger that came with a side order of heartbreaking harmonies. Plus, ripping to iTunes was all the rage, so you could pick up a lot of quality cast offs at charity shops and the second hand section of HMV.

I wanted to be like the L7 girls, Veruca Salt, Bikini Kill, Sleater Kinney, even Courtney Love (my first blog was, of course, written anonymously by a Miss Love-Cobain), but even when I saw the subversive femininity of these artists at work, I struggled to reconcile this with the part of my being that unironically owned a dance mat.

In the end, I grew up, started writing this blog, listened to everything going and somehow avoided making a proper decision about it all. Oh, and the great postmodern vortex that is the internet continued to mess with the idea of “high” and “low” culture. Latter obsessions with Elliott Smith, Suede and Aztec Camera coincided with an interest in following every two-bit talent contest going, obvs.

I do sometimes still look at myself in the mirror, however – head-to-toe Topshop, a couple of unrebellious piercings – and feel as though I could have made a choice. I could’ve got better at the guitar instead of spending my late teenage years listening to Pitbull remixes in sweaty West End clubs. I could’ve embraced the “unnatural” hair.

But hey. “DO I REALLY GIVE A FLYING FUCK???”, I think, downloading the new Taylor Swift album, and giving female peace a chance. Being a full time Riot Grrrl would be too contrived and maybe a little exhausting. You’ll find the real me reading books with titles like ‘Bad Feminist’, teetering precariously between Joanna Gruesome and Little Mix, and having occasional existential crises on the internet. I wouldn’t – and probably won’t ever – have it any other way.

Full Time Hobby at 10

crystaltippsLeave a comment

It’s been a good little period for the record label anthology. Hot on the heels of XL’s two-disc 25 year anniversary release “Pay Close Attention” which dropped at the end of August and artfully segued from Tyler The Creator to Adele, comes Full Time Hobby’s 10th year compilation, another two-disc effort featuring the likes of Tuung, White Denim, School of Seven Bells and The Hold Steady. “What The Hell Are You Doing?” – a question which co-founder Nigel Adams encountered when he and fellow Mushroom Records compadre Wez channelled Creation, Elektra et al. and set up the label back in 2004 – is an ideal introduction to the label or an ace companion for the already initiated.

Full Time Hobby’s new compilation “What The Hell Are You Doing?” is released today. 

Gigs I went to and liked*

crystaltippsLeave a comment

*Not quite gig reviews, not quite blog posts

Sinkane album launch party, Shacklewell Arms, September 12th

Around a week before I go to see Sinkane at the Shacklewell Arms, I sum up his latest release “Mean Love” as “”groovy pop-rock”, if groovy didn’t conjure up images of Austin Powers and bell bottoms”. Thankfully Sinkane (born Ahmed Gallab), is the antithesis to this poor description: nonchalant, the UK born, US raised one-time Caribou and Of Montreal collaborator leans against the merch table watching support band Swim Mountain (recently praised by 6Music) just moments before he’s due on stage. His Soulja Boy-esque Twitter handle (Sinkane Tell Em!) oozes swagger, but standing on stage he has a calm class to match his sound, which – over the course of his past two releases – has grown in range. Gallab’s role as musical director of “ATOMIC BOMB! The Music of William Onyeabor’” – a supergroup honouring the music of the Nigerian synth legend – seems telling of his current guise. With “Mean Love”, he too has painted futuristic strokes onto a Pan African canvas. Joined by guitarist Jonny Lam, bassist Ish Montgomery and drummer jaytram for tracks from “Mean Love” as well as 2012’s “Mars”, he takes the crowd of his first sold out London show on a soulful voyage, from the breathy vocals and reggae beat of “Young Trouble” to the East African-inspired pulse of “New Name”, which on record comes complete with the coolest horns since St Vincent’s Digital Witness. There are ethereal moments, like the hypnosis-inducing synth line of “Young Trouble” (Gallab’s also commanding keyboards). The Sinkane live experience is varied and uplifting, a United Nations of groove which – thankfully – comes minus the bell bottoms.

Sinkane tours Europe before returning to the UK for a show at Hackney venue du jour Oslo on December 1st.

Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, Bristol Exchange, September 4th

“It’s Lennon!” squeals my friend, pointing to a fellow with a headband and circular specs and doing her best impression of a Cavern Club reveller. As it turns out this is not John and Yoko’s son Sean – rather it is one of the troupe who accompany him and partner Charlotte Muhl on tour. He’s a slightly taller, more imposing version of his bandmate, although the glasses. Powering through tracks from Midnight Sun, which was released back in April, they refuse to falter even when Lennon’s wah pedal gives up the erm, goastt. From mafia-themed Seventies throwback “Poor Paul Getty” to the sprawling psychedelia of “Too Deep”, it’s wall to wall rock, full of screeching guitars and choral harmonies. Cutting and pasting the best parts of the 70s but remaining distinctly modern and self-consciously East Coast, there’s no chance you’ll confuse “Animals” with “All You Need Is Love”.

 

 

Animals In The Wall exhibition

crystaltippsLeave a comment

animalsinthewallposter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo (17)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Thursday, I went for a sneak peak of the Animals In The Wall exhibition, which is on until September 7th at Shoreditch’s Londonewcastle Project Space. Alongside 40 pieces of art by Beat icon William S Burroughs (1914-1997), there are original new works by contemporary artists which engage with the – still pertinent – areas of counterculture/rebellion, anti-consumerism and skepticism of political intrigue. It’s an intriguing mix of visual works including film and two installation rooms, one of which houses a dreamachine (a zoetrope-type device created by Burroughs’ contemporary Brion Gysin).

Other notable pieces come from Bolivian “enfant terrible” Gastón Ugalde, pithy Brit graffiti artist Mobstr and Australia’s Ben Frost, who once faked his own death in the name of art.

Here are some bits by Burroughs himself (copyright of his estate):

70a-WSB-small 82-WSB-small

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here is my favourite piece he inspired (by Ben Frost):

20140828_193607 (1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Animals In The Wall is a free exhibition, curated by James Elphick (Guerrilla Zoo) and Yuri Zupančič (William Burroughs Communications), and you can find it at 28 Redchurch Street, E2 7DP.

…parce que je ne sais pas mes chers

crystaltippsLeave a comment

*

photo (1)

❥ I am now in NW Spain to get better at Spanish and breaking my selfie ban. The skirt cost five euros on sale at Zara which – aside from surviving absinthe – is my biggest achievement of the year so far.

photo (4)

Here’s the first bit of graffiti I found in Spain, on the back of the toilet door in the bus station. After no sleep for a full twenty four hours it seemed intensely poetic. “We’re the Eiffel Tower lit up on the 14th of February”. Oh, it was a little piece of Paris, I thought, as I finally got to have a wee after my near three-hour coach journey. Alas, it turned out to be a lyric from a song by some sub-Jonas Brothers Spanish boyband called Melocos (and here I was thinking it was a 17th century poet). Will be interesting to see what other musical offerings I can find out here, preferably not scrawled in the bog.

Anyhow, here’s what I did in the latter part of 2013 whilst living in Montmartre/Pigalle and finding out about life under various guises (student, journo, translator , professional hide and seek champion, actual twenty-one year old human being etc).

❥ Rock En Seine Festival. SEEN TRENT REZNOR LIVE ☑

Phoenix were amazing, although on home turf in France I suppose the crazy reaction was no surprise. They are France’s great indie hope and Bankrupt was amongst the best releases of the year. Likewise Laura Mvula, although she didn’t draw a large crowd 😦

❥ MaMa Apero soiree

❥ Made In Chelsea s6 preview among other telly bits for The Guardian

❥ SPECTOR live review and Le Trianon venue guide (coming soon) for my friends at Gigs In Paris

❥ Benjamin Clementine  singles and new one from Sivu x Marika Hackman for The Line of Best Fit. Also contributed to the Best Fit end of the year rundown. 

❥ Bought my fave albums of the year (Shulamith by Poliça and Kurt Vile’s Wakin’ On a Pretty Daze) from a great record store called Balades Sonores in Paris’ 9th arrondissement – will 2014 be the year I properly get into vinyl?! Started shopping in a little vintage store with great music which made me appreciate the Stones more.

❥ Gained an obsession with bullet points and Boursin, and went to Disneyland where I realised that the golden age of Disney is definitely over.

– GIGS:

 

❥ Jake Bugg at L’Olympia, Paris, 21/11/13

I walk past an Elton John poster on our way into the Olympia. Now there’s an artist you can rely on to still be standing! (shitty pun very much intended) As for Jake Bugg…in ten years time will he just morph into a morose version of Frank Turner? Or will he age backwards, headlining Glastonbury 2024 as a five year old child? Whilst I jest, so much of THE BUGG FACTOR comes from his age (19). Weirdly, the French promoters have decided to almost fetishise this – three days after the release of his second album they’ve billed him as a “British Justin Bieber”, which as well as being hilariously inaccurate is quite offensive to pauvre Jake who is rather established in his own right. Once he starts playing, however, his age just isn’t relevant. A few things get a little loss with a French crowd, notably new track “Two Fingers”, which historically wasn’t really the Gaellic insult of choice. The crowd here flick their peace signs at Jake like wannabe harijuku girls in accidentally benign fashion.

Shangri La, that aforementioned second album, means lots of new material, with lead single “Lightening Bolt” getting a great reaction. Ultimately though it’s tracks from his debut album like “I Can Taste It” that get the best reception. Has he already peaked? Unlikely, but if he wants to hang onto fans the media and PR machine which surrounds him should start focusing on his pitch-perfect voice and quality songwriting, not the fact that he would definitely get ID-ed buying vodka at Sainsbury’s.

❥ Suede at La Cigale, Paris, 11/11/13 (part of Les Inrockuptibles Fest).

Ever drunk slightly warm Heineken in a room full of people double your age? When the room in question is La Cigale and Paris-loving Britpop pioneers Suede are playing and the cups have Debbie Harry’s face on them it’s quite enjoyable. Temples are support, not that their Seventies-inspired look/sound is given much attention. (Toy, moody band du jour and recently hyped on BBC 6 music by Brett Anderson himself, would have possibly been a better choice).

Suede kick off with Still Life from Dog Star Man – it’s weird hearing it without the strings but poignant nonetheless. Next up are two tracks from 2013 ‘comeback’  Bloodsports: Barriers and It Starts and Ends with You. Still unmistakably Suede, but nicely matured like good cheese or wine or Brett himself, who has the same magnetic quality but a little more wisened. Trash, from my favourite Suede album – Coming Up – is riotous as ever, the crowd joining a sweaty Bretty for anthemic chanting on the chorus. Animal Nitrate is next. This song encapsulates Suede – the band, the brand – at that crucial moment where everything grew from in 1993. It’s as dark and ambiguous as it must have been at time (I’m not too sure however, being in the new wave of Suede fans and having been born in 1992).

They dash from the old – We Are The Pigs – straight back to the new, but nothing ever feels jarring or outdated. The Drowners – one of my favourite Suede songs from their debut feels so powerful and hopeless, with Brett ensconced by fans in a rather surreal scene (see below) yet also detached from everything around him.

Back to the future for more Bloodsports before a few classics that no quality Suede set would be without: So Young and Beautiful Ones. The latter is my all-time Suede fave track and singing along, wildly off key, was the highlight of the night. A little encore ending in acoustic mode rounds off an amazing set from a band who somehow are both effortlessly nostalgic and always, erm, In Fashion.

*

HJD