// November 2007
Kylie Minogue - X
I’m going to get my Gay Licence endorsed for this, I can tell, but…
I must confess I’ve found it hard to get excited by Kylie albums for a few years now. I’ve long considered that the singles off Light Years were by far the weakest parts of the album, but I was generally dismayed to find that they provided the template for the successors Fever and Body Language which both largely failed to deliver much beyond cool beats and polished production.
The most I’ve sat up and taken notice of late was with the simple but soaring melody of “I Believe In You” or the hypnotic and buzzing “Giving You Up” which made me think that Kylie might deliver the goods from now on, but sadly X really is a dispiritingly hit-and-miss collection of tracks which either promise much but fall at the last hurdle, or else spend their time in a seemingly hopeless search for a melody.
It’s an amazingly soulless album all told, and Kylie has never seemed more of an anonymous guest vocalist on other people’s tracks. Even on “2 Hearts” where the original Kish Mauve version just has the vocal wiped and redone with no other changes whatsoever to give it a bit of Kylie sparkle. (I mean… yes it’s a solid enough track, but let’s face it: it was three years ago.)
Most of the other songs are upsettingly melody-light, attempts to compensate for their anaemia made with jitteringly beat-heavy productions or slices of by-numbers-electro. “Like a Drug” is one of the few occasions when these styles and the song actually work properly and make a satisfyingly uplifting little groover. By contrast, on “In My Arms” these production styles cripplingly overwhelm what could have been quite a nice song. A lot of the time it just seems to be achingly hip, with a few Fever-lite tracks thrown on as a token bit of fun.
It’s not all bad though, and despite showcasing some of the most appallingly spiky or lacklustre offenders X still also has some of Kylie’s best work in years such as the stunningly beautiful track as “No More Rain” which is a definite highlight. “Sensitized” too has more than a little character and feels oddly like an Impossible Princess throwback (which is no bad thing).
Of the others “The One”’s chorus feels vaguely phoned in to start with, but it soon builds up to be a wildly superior and satisfying moment on the album. Only slightly less successful is “Wow” which is a deliberate nod towards “Love at First Sight” from Fever but holds its head above water accordingly.
So, for me it’s basically all about: “Like a Drug”, “2 Hearts”, “No More Rain”, “Sensitized”, “The One” and – if you got it on iTunes - “Magnetic Electric” which is a baffling omission from the final tracklist considering what did make it.
If I were you I’d take these six tracks, hit the internet and bolster them up with some of the leaked tracks from early in the year which are far superior to the remainder of the official release.
Then if you’re still feeling a bit empty go and get Rachel Stevens’ Come and Get It to see how a stunning pop album with an anonymous vocalist should be done.
Posted on November 26, 2007 | Filed Under Pop Music | 2 Comments
Validation at last!
The Evening Standard have reviewed my mate Rob’s pub The Vauxhall Griffin rather positively (and rightly so, it’s rather fine).
But I’m particularly gratified by the fact that the quiz he and I run there got a mention.
Admittedly it was a one-word description, but as far as adjectives go I think “lively” isn’t a bad one at all.
Posted on November 25, 2007 | Filed Under My So-Called Life, The World we Live In | 0 Comments
Verity Lambert
So, the first ever female BBC producer - and the woman responsible for the first ever series of Doctor Who - Verity Lambert passed away yesterday.
Okay, so she was in many respects responsible for So Haunt Me and Eldorado, but even those are only minor blips on an otherwise stellar career which included such acclaimed dramas as GBH and the Naked Civil Servant to name but two.
Her death is unfortunate not only because it came the day before the 44th Anniversary of Doctor Who (tonight - about 45 minutes ago in fact), but also because it came a couple of weeks before she was due to be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the Women in Film and Television awards.
On the basis of her work alone Verity Lambert was clearly a truly remarkable woman, and I hope she rests in a peace well-earned.
I for one shall be raising a glass to her memory tonight.
Posted on November 23, 2007 | Filed Under In Memoriam | 0 Comments
Lost and Found
There’s a turn-up for the books.
Just realised that the Fiction page wasn’t working properly so went to go and get it sorted (’tis done!), only to click on one of the links there to a Doctor Who short story I wrote for the Eighth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith called “Lost and Found“.
The prose needs a bit of tidying up here and there, but I’m actually struck by what a nice little piece it is. It’s not, even if I do say so myself, too bad at all.
Posted on November 16, 2007 | Filed Under Reading and Writing, Site News | 0 Comments
Who’d be a Writer, eh?
Sorry if I’ve been a bit quiet of late. I’ve been somewhat pre-occupied with taking part in National Novel Writing Month which is now just halfway through - and I’m pleased to report I’m also just over halfway through myself.
The idea is relatively simple, to write 50,000 words of a novel between 1st and 30th November. Today I stand at X words which isn’t admittedly a major amount over, but I’m just impressed I even managed to get as far as 50% of the way this early - I was convinced I’d make it to 30,000 only.
It’s an interesting process though. The idea is to write, obviously, but that’s just write. No editing is allowed - that’s what you do in December, apparently, or more likely (in my case) January. During November you just literally have to fill the pages with words. It means that, if the mood takes you, you can just do the fun bits and sort it all out later, but I’m trying to work in a slightly more linear fashion at the moment - not that it has entirely worked out that way given the jumps back and forwards in time.
So far in those words I’ve had one murder (and one attempted), one extra-marital affair, one mugging that isn’t really, a missing boyfriend and a suicide. And that’s without tying the events at two different ends of a decade together or getting to the militant Christians or blowing anything up.
All of that, of course, looks vaguely promising, but I’m also aware of its major failings already. Thankfully the plot is sort of straightening out in my head as I type and kind of works as a whole which is good, but it’s been hard to write some of the more functional “getting A to B” type stuff done, and some of the prose seems horribly clunky (although some of it I really like), and there have been moments when at the end of a long day my brain just didn’t want to do it and the words had to be almost literally wrenched from me.
But it is proving quite a positive experience all told. I thought 50,000 was a lot of words for a novel, but I strongly suspect that the final first draft when I complete it in the future may be nearer 100,000 before I begin to wield a scalpel over it (and boy will I be trimming away).
But yeah, even though I may still miss the target by the end of the month, I’m still feeling quite a sense of achievement. It’s an idea I’ve been mulling over for about two years now so it’s nice to finally start seeing it work its way down onto the page. And it also means that my claim on the front page of this very site to have started a novel doesn’t now have to have the whispered qualifier “in my head” on it.
So ultimately it’s made less of a liar of me. And hurrah for that.
Posted on November 15, 2007 | Filed Under Reading and Writing | 0 Comments
A Conversation Overheard On the Train…
So, I popped down to Canterbury last weekend to help my Dad celebrate his 61st birthday - or, as he put it, the fortieth anniversary of his 21st birthday - and thus the early hours of Saturday morning saw me on a train bound from Victoria with a bunch of other Kent-bound individuals.
It was a dull journey, it always is. Well… actually, I say dull. Travel is generally not a favourite pastime, but of a bright autumn morning the scenery rushing past was quite pretty I suppose. And there wasn’t much in the way of pretty males to ogle en route so I was content with that.
But at Gillingham (a town not known for its classiness) a young couple boarded the train and sat in one of the seats diagonally opposite me. She was in leggings, needless to say, and he was extremely casually dressed, but quite cute in a sort of “could do with a decent skincare regime” sort of a way. Together though it must be said there was certainly a certain kind of crack-addict chic about them.
They were chatting. I was plugged into The Device so wasn’t aware of their conversation until we passed Selling and began to approach Canterbury. I duly unplugged myself and began gathering my things together. Idly, as one does, listening in to what’s going on around me in case there was anything interesting to be had.
Oh boy.
At first, you see, I thought they were talking about their jobs. There definitely was that sort of “and Janice in accounts said this, can you believe it?” sort of vibe to the conversation. And they were talking about money, particularly how she’d been given a hard time over it and how, or so I thought, she’d finally been made an offer which she’d thought was unacceptable and she’d had to think about it for a bit.
It was only as the train pulled into the station that one final fact suddenly changed the whole nature of their conversation as it finally became clear to me that what they’d been planning to offer her hadn’t actually been a payrise at all.
It was a custodial sentence.
The home counties really aren’t what they used to be, you know…
Posted on November 8, 2007 | Filed Under The World we Live In | 0 Comments
And so it begins…
Lord. The first of my Christmas shopping arrived today.
How organised is that?
Posted on November 5, 2007 | Filed Under My So-Called Life | 1 Comment