Rien a dire

Not a lot to report here:

Currently listening to Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid, which I can highly recommend. Not least because the elder teenagers in our house give a snort of derision when the name Elbow comes up. Always to be recommended - causing the teenagers to deride one's 'old' taste. We are not teenagers, after all. A certain degree of sophistication must have stuck after all these years.

And reading/read Tracey Chevalier's Burning Bright. Why does she write as though English is about her third language? Is she really French? She takes interesting ideas, then dilutes them to within a whimsy of being dull, and expresses these diluted ideas in tortured English. How can a book about Blake, even is he is vestigial to the story, be dull? I don't know, but Chevalier has managed it. Weakened initial premise, poor writing and dull denouement. Absolute certain proof that critics and awards/film script writers are poor judges.

Curiously, as Chevalier is let down by her use of words, they are one of the intriguing thing about the Elbow album (another horse snort from teenagers whenever I say Album. I had to translate it once into Yoof speak). The opener, Sparrows, is a stonking great love song "you are the only thing in it when you are in a room" delivered in a broad northern accent. And all hail to the band for sticking to their roots and especially the singer for not affecting a mid-Atlantic non-accent. Mind you, the words don't always work that well. He, the lyricist, obviously has spent far too long in betting shops: "a horse fit for glue" is not great, but the idiosyncrasies of their lyrics and rhythms make for an intriguing and rewarding listen. Not first time, but there was enough here to make me come back and back and now I think its one of the albums of the year.


If you've got this far you may as well indulge me with my recommendation for Nick Lowe too. At My Age is a good album, as is the oddness of the lyrical direction in some of the songs; I Trained Her To Love Me as one example, gives pause. Makes me laugh. Which is why I'm delighted he's at Cornbury this year as I've got my tickets and will be there. Other people seem pleased it's Paul Simon on top of the bill. Me, I'm pleased it's Nick Lowe.

There you go, nothing to say, said in several hundred words.