Why are you dancing when you could be alone?
Carl's counterfactual of Tricky headlining Glastonbury in a world where the 'Britpop counter-revolution' never took place makes one wonder who else might have become mainstream were it not for 1995's Great Camden Retreat From Modern Popular Music. The comparison with The Cure makes perfect sense. One of the things lacking in the last decade or so has been popular (but not populist), Goth-ish (but without Nick Cave's Faulkner aspirations), futurist-inflected (but hardly vanguardist) groups like The Cure, New Order or Depeche Mode, soundtracks to hundreds of thousands of teenage bedrooms but not sounding utterly embarassing when out of them. Another group who might have fit this particular bill but never quite have, due mainly to the English suspicion of most things other than amplified busking, is Ladytron. English only in the vaguest sense, with backgrounds including Scotland and Bulgaria, and based in Liverpool, which, with its ambitious, purposeless architecture and attendant 60s transmission tower, is clearly not England.
The early records got tied up in the still rather misunderstood electro vogue of a few years ago, and indeed the Teutonic stomp of 'The Way that I Found You' sounded magnificent in clubs (when I used to go to them, ho-hum). Their true vocation however, as became obvious on their best record, was as a kind of streamlined stadium electro-goth, but the fact that they played synthesisers, wore matching clothes, had female members who clearly had more of a role than being music-press crumpet, and the fact that it was unclear whether they were 'dance' or 'rock', all discounted them from ever really being that big in Britain. Conversely, they're the sort of group that are probably huge in say, Greece, or Slovakia, among serious young women and men. Funnily enough, they also have a new record out. It exists in exactly the same place as all the others, where characters are eternally 'drinking alone' in the midst of terribly complicated relationships, Inter-Railing about the place and fully conversant in Bulgarian. Despite some excellent moments it doesn't match Witching Hour, and the lack of the John Carpenter-esque instrumentals that have punctuated their albums hitherto is a shame - but then the Cure made some extremely patchy albums as well, did they not? Long may they wear asymmetric fringes and be played in Estonian bedrooms.
The early records got tied up in the still rather misunderstood electro vogue of a few years ago, and indeed the Teutonic stomp of 'The Way that I Found You' sounded magnificent in clubs (when I used to go to them, ho-hum). Their true vocation however, as became obvious on their best record, was as a kind of streamlined stadium electro-goth, but the fact that they played synthesisers, wore matching clothes, had female members who clearly had more of a role than being music-press crumpet, and the fact that it was unclear whether they were 'dance' or 'rock', all discounted them from ever really being that big in Britain. Conversely, they're the sort of group that are probably huge in say, Greece, or Slovakia, among serious young women and men. Funnily enough, they also have a new record out. It exists in exactly the same place as all the others, where characters are eternally 'drinking alone' in the midst of terribly complicated relationships, Inter-Railing about the place and fully conversant in Bulgarian. Despite some excellent moments it doesn't match Witching Hour, and the lack of the John Carpenter-esque instrumentals that have punctuated their albums hitherto is a shame - but then the Cure made some extremely patchy albums as well, did they not? Long may they wear asymmetric fringes and be played in Estonian bedrooms.
posted by owen hatherley at 2:29 pm
3 Comments:
Not that I'm a big fan of theirs but don't Radiohead fulfill the role of popular, Goth-ish, futurist-inflected band? Gorillaz also spring to mind.
Radiohead - yes, to an extent, and that's one of the things I like about them. Unlike the three I mentioned though, nobody other than the criminally whimsical is ever going to be playing them in clubs. Also their influence is entirely malign, albeit through no fault of their own. Gorillaz seem a sort of atoning-for-my-role-in-counterrevolution thing from Albarn, but they're a good thing, in their way...
Thom Yorke does seem to want to still be taken seriously once the lights are off and the Ketamine wraps are out... witness the dalliance with Modeselektor and Burial and all that lot...
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