HOHOHO!

Christ, is it 2008 yet ? Remember when the Millennium seemed to be inching slowly closer (what will the twenty-first Century be like!!!????......ahh, I see... ) time has sped up post 2000, innit. Actually, talking of regional variations (see previous post) heading down Trafalgar Road to buy a screwdriver yesterday my suspicion that “izzit” is now the default question tag/response to all questions was confirmed. The exchange went like this:

(geezer in skully) “ I thought you was still up in Woolwich.”
(young women (surprised)) “Izzit?”

Let North meet South in your very own discourse Mr Impostume:

“Yous two have been to the bingo, izzit?”

Part TWO

Yep the triptych thing's stuck… so here’s three more, I’m ashamed to say, pretty predictable choices for best albums of the year, lumped together on the basis of colour-scheme really. If the albums below all glowered to varying degrees then these three largely glowed.

It’s tempting to say that “ Comfy in Nautica” the Impostume’s Joint Number 1 album of the year, was simply the most life-affirming record ever made. Its devotional, fourth world, endlessly efflorescent pop was like some weird Arcadian Microverse saturated in impossibly rich colours and peopled by a more intrinsically joyful species than our own (izzit?). Waves lap at the shore, the vegetation teems, the air takes on rich hues, children sing and cry, thunder rumbles overhead, it’s tumultuous and tumid, fecund, overflowing and brought to mind the opening sequence of Malik’s fantastically great “ The Thin Red Line” and much of the slightly less great “The New World.” While Caina, Wyatt, Albarn gazed around the long, darkening day, the leaves rusting, long fingers of mist creeping in, Panda Bear was enjoying an Endless Summer of the Soul. Few records have ever sounded so generous, so bountifully full-to-the-brim with the sheer beauty of the world. Panda Bear was a kind of Anti-Hamlet ( WTF!? Now you’re going too far) somehow, he had of late, found all his mirth, re-animated his own quintessence of dust and set it all dancing ( that’s enough Shakesbear and Panda Spear comparisons, already!) The album which has most closely approximated the experience of being young and in love, running downhill toward the sea on a glorious mid Summer day. If I ever met Panda Bear ( careful now, don’t go doing a Woebot on him) I would probably feel the need to somehow personally thank him.

Obviously I only heard Black Moth Super Rainbow as Blissblog was banging on about them, and of course, he was bang on. There was as much colour and light in Dandelion Gum as you could need. A huge, glistening, multihued glacier of a record, it should be prescribed on the N.H.S as a cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder. Like finding the sweetshop of your childhood dreams hidden inside a dilapidated hillbilly shack. Great tartrazine-colured washes of sounds, exquisitely toothsome peaks of pink-icing inflected Moog, long, fizzy strips of sugar-rich Vocodered-up vocals. Chemical without being at all toxic, this was the kind of palette that only Chemistry can bring you, hyper-vibrant, a peek inside the mind of a supersmart kid hyped-up on Haribo.

What was I doing enjoying a Radiohead record? No-one was more surprised then I was, (actually, no-one else cared…. aha, you like the new Radiohead album, right. So???!!!) never having had much invested in them, generally finding them a bit too exactly-what-an intelligent-modern band-should-be and that Thom Yorke solo album downright dull. It might be the fact that I can’t even remember what “Kid A” or “Hail to the thief” sound like but “In Rainbows” seemed to sideline Yorke’s emoting and grimly adolescent “lyrics”and get on with some sinuous, glitchy, flowing and free floating, wonkily propulsive post-pop that put me as much in mind of Pram circa “Imaginary animals” as anything. Plus “Bodysnatchers” had that Killer-riff/ pealing echoplex guitar thing going on that, dammit all, it’s just hard to resist and " House of cards" was the best song U2 never got round to.