they sound like the buzzcocks or talking heads maybe. or prehaps they are closer to any art school band anywhere in the world, posing, playing overly complicated nonsence, whilst there ‘lead’ “singer” yelps on as he was a man in his 40’s doing an impression of a pre-teen doing an impression of interpol. lazy and definetly plagerising in places.

hot damn this was like having my head dunked into joy,
take this image and run with it, and some money and buy this little brilliance, this unsurpassed sample of heavens elevator music and smile, smile like a Cheshire cat manufacturer whose just replaced his entire work force with a machine.

Like finding an old sock, that still fits perfectly at last a little something from my youth, to yours.

if you don’t know this band, you are not alone, such a treasure as this is usually well hidden, under the ocean, in a rusting hulk, called the french music industry.

the hoopty-doopty swingsong songs are fairly inoffensive, but it is when the record, as a whole, is viewed together, at sunrise, in the pyranees, when you are high on peyote and the whole world is breaking you over that horizon, the whole light and damnation of the truth rushing towards you, when this album is half heard through the walls of a tumbledown farm house and the wind picks up and calls it to you and you are there, in that moment, then you know you have witnessed genius, that this album is for all time, that it signifies more than just the actual, rude music of its etching, and is truely a record of rural france, of dawn everywhere and that it has always been as such.

The album - helpfully titled f#a#* - was strikingly cinematic, recalling Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to Paris, Texas and Terrence Malick’s films Badlands and Days Of Heaven. Their style of splicing tape recordings of the angry disenfranchised and the mutterings of militias into their music echoes ’60s libertarian outsider counterculture. Their use of “authentic” instruments, field recordings, downhome folk forms, and lo-fi acoustic Americana, meanwhile, places Godspeed in the canon of maverick North American folk-artists that includes archivist Harry Smith, composer/carpenter Harry Partch and singer Tom Waits. Yet they produce more self-consciously beautiful, solely instrumental music than those artists, and arguably also lack their humour and warmth. Most of their songs follow the same formula: start slow and quiet, then go really fast and loud. It’s certainly true that much of their music is based around dynamic sonic crests and swells, but the sheer scale of their thunderously loud sound means they generally get away with it. Godspeed You Black Emperor! are certainly unique in modern rock music. Instrumental music with traces of contemporary classical is rarely drooled over, but Godspeed’s alternative idealism, combined with the sonic assault of a Japanese noise band, makes for a strangely seductive proposition.

Oh and they’ve disbanded. The name, incidentally, comes from a Japanese biker gang. Or rather, a translation of “Buraku Empororu”, a film by Japanese director Mitsuo Yanagimachi.

STELLABRANDSPANKINGFANTASTICSTARR,
i don’t care that it maybe could be described as derivative, unimiginitive, because it is all this and more, it is only unimiginitive if you yourself do not imagine that you have never heard anything like it before, because you haven’t, have you? so its brilliant

it works, the whole of it; the album, rarely, works as a whole, it can be listened all the way through and the stand out tracks, obviously “My Coco”, are not so far ahead of the snarling pack as to mark this as obviously blighted as say that single selling mechanism that is Hot Fuss, or even the mightlily overrated Franny Ferdinand.

Previous singles “Jenny” and “Somewhere Across Forever” revel in the Pixies punk-pop perfection with a crescendo of stop-start guitar hooks and twists, but this album firmly moves on from this 80’s reverie. its opener,”In The Walls”, with its gothic guitars, is a knowing mockery of the smiths and the cure, it would sound perfect in some swanseaic teenage bedroom, with black paint and eyeshadow, but it is when you actually here the music, rather than just listen to it, that you realise, that this is a denial of their influences and a firm f$ck you to their fans.

the bass driven savoyard/pop-funk of “A Million Reasons” takes the lead from savoyard/punk-funksters Hot Hot Heat, while the exhilarating “No Weather” is pure vintage-Ash. but again, i believe, rightly, that this is a snub to them, a musical anti-tribute that only the most foolish will take as hommage.

so hurray for them and the stellastarr will long remain upon my turning wheel of music, for it lasts and ages like some mad self refilling, ever aging, bottle of port wine, like a thing that gets better with age, like a maggot.

Motown takes on the social issues of the day and wins! well, drugs, racism, violence and the war in Vietnam are no longer a problem- they’re the main inspirations for Hollywood. this is often sited as one of the best albums of all time and i’d say it was really up there. like it matters what the hell i said. still its really really good. insightful, ground breaking and often, well, erotic. What’s Going On, Mercy mercy me etc are all fucking brilliant. laters

Sweat mother of christs ma. put this album and lie back on your bed. make sure it made- the duvet and all in place, your pillows fluffed. take off you shoes and lie down. perhaps you’d like some tea, or as i prefer a jd and coke. now lie there sipping. hopefully its a sunday morning and last night was a big one- but it hasn’t hit you yet and the music carries you through the night like some extended deathbed flashback. its going to be alright, you no matter, you know.

The vibrant gypsy rhythms, and hazy summer feel, the rainbow, the wonderful, the sheer positivity, there is no oppositional assertion of identity, who cares, just join in, hot summer evening, building like a head of red wine, a giant mong of bong smoke, gently creeping up and knocking your head off, and bringing you with it, it builds and builds, and you simply dance and that, and that is, that is perhaps, not the half of it. La rue Ketanou, Y’a Des Cigales Dans La Fourmilier la rue ketan’tgetenoughofit.

There is some of that is brilliant, but fuck it so much of it is toss. nearly as bad as smile, what a crock of minge. that tubby drug hoover wilson is wildly overrated. whatever, laters.

Suppose i should take this seriously. tell you a story and make the album live in your ears before you have a chance to run out and buy it like a pack of lemmings. I should describe each member of the band and perhaps pick on the front man/woman and tell you their story, making the music somehow more profound for its context. well, whatever. here’s what i can find on wiki. they come from Austrailia and they all, all 500 of them it seems from the photo’s i can’t be arsed to count, some of them might be fat, anyway all of them play everyone elses instruments like some sort of swingers party but with flutes and guitars. anyway that all leads to the instruments not being played very well. either that or their just not very good at it. they’ve toured with bands much more interesting than themselves, but nothings rubbed off seemingly. fuckit, laters