There isn’t really a consensus on what the single best Fall album is. However, I did come across a thread on a fansite asking devotees to nominate their favourite album title. Not album – album title.
The historians of punk are in full flow. Jon Savage's book England's Dreaming and the BBC Four's documentary series Punk Britannia have documented much of what needs to be said. But punk was as much a visual statement of intent as a musical one, which is why a new book of photographs by Sheila Rock is such a welcome addition to the punk library. Rock was there at the start, taking pictures for NME, Smash Hits and, most importantly, The Face, where her images did much to establish its commitment to style.
While it’s impossible to recreate the impact of their astounding first Sixties sally, it’s still a thrill when a new album appears bearing the name “Stooges”. Punk’s ragged-arsed Detroit progenitors first popped up again in 2007 with visceral live shows but a lacklustre album, The Weirdness. Since then original guitarist Ron Asheton has died and, in a strange mirror to history, James Williamson, guitarist on 1973's classic Raw Power, has returned to the fold (following a 30 year career in engineering management!)
Frank Turner has been setting his life to music ever since he re-emerged as a heart-on-the-sleeve singer-songwriter type some time in 2005, and so it’s hard to avoid the temptation to play therapist when considering his most personal collection of songs to date. Tape Deck Heart, his fifth album since then, is more love and loss than love and ire.
The bassline starts, "1979" flashes up on screen and, over a scratchy recording, the voice intones "Walking down the street, I get punched; you're walking down the street, you get punched".
PunksNotDead's not going to hold your attention for more than a few minutes, but in those few minutes, this hyperkinetic, luridly day-glo explosion of punk attitude and violence encapsulates everything that's great about the indie games scene – it's the ideas, stupid (and they're free).
On hearing the opening track of this album, a friend said “I didn't expect to be listening to new albums of the YYYs 10 years on!” And this is kind of understandable: of all the new rock bands of the early 2000s – The Strokes, The Vines, The Hives, The White Stripes – they had the most air of hipsterism, their kooky demeanour and New York clubbability making it understandable that some could think they were a trend-driven flash-in-the-pan sensation.
Paramore’s fourth album picks and chooses from so many genres that, first time around, I thought that I had accidentally begun to play it on shuffle. Its opening two tracks make an incongruous pairing: the seemingly light-hearted “Fast in My Car”, with its “we just want to have fun” refrain, and the gothy first single “Now”, which piles on the war metaphors.
Victims driven to death by the mob, women and men violently rutting in animal costumes, a black comedy about a snatched baby, a naked man dancing alone in his own fantasy - many and varied are the images in the nearly 200 danceworks created to the notorious Rite of Spring since its premiere exactly a century ago.
“Punky young girl needs a middle aged man/ Whose mid-life crisis you began/ …such a work of art…lift up your skirt, let me lick the alphabet/ …what’s under there? I hope to Christ it’s lingerie.” The voice is sinuous, cajoling. The creepy, ridiculously catchy Kate Moss-inspired “Punkyoungirl” immediately grabs the attention on the former dandy highwayman’s first album since 1995. Along with “Stay in the Game”, a spindly, eerie dirge which could have been in Adam and the Ants' repertoire circa 1977/78, it revisits an era when whips were withdrawn from the valise.
