vitriol

Looking at the latest issue of Music Week, I note that The Kooks are still hanging around the top 20 album chart, with whatever their pissweak excuse for a record is called. Don’t this unpleasant bunch of stage school brats sum up everything wrong with the term “indie” in 2006? A world where multinational lager companies sponsor alternative rock festivals, emo has somehow traveled from Rites Of Spring and Texas Is The Reason to Panic (and no, I’m not putting the exclamation mark in, you tossers) At The Fucking Disco and any bad metal band with their fingernails painted black, while the NME is doing advertorial spreads with Topman? Oh yes, the NME. Where to start? Their relentless quest to persuade the readership that New Rave means anything outside of a few East London art school students seized with an ironic nostalgia for Altern8? The Klaxons are the musical equivalent of sitting around the sixth form common room talking about the TV programmes you used to watch when you were a kid, and don’t you forget it. Listen, mate, I’ve been round the block a few times, I remember Romo, and Fraggle for that matter. You’re not fooling anyone. Or how about the championing of a –what is it? third, fourth, fifth generation? – Cramps tribute act?* Or the whoring out of reviews to whatever’s got a good promo plot this week? Nine out of the ten for the Kasabian album? It’s okay, but it’s not all that, is it? I’m not sure if this your actual editorial interference from record companies with big advertising budgets to withhold, or just the writers being scared of missing the boat as spectacularly as they did with the second Oasis album, which received lukewarm reviews all round, only to be declared Best Thing Ever when everyone in the UK went and bought 37 copies each. Of course, this trend started with the third Oasis album, which was greeted more rapturously than a busload of orphans taking a wrong turn into the Catholic Priests’ Country Awayday Weekend, but was actually one long evil burst of cocaine flatulence. I am aware that criticising the NME as an act of cultural subversion is about on a par with saying that racism is bad, but these things all need to be said.