TV: Doctor Who - Last Christmas

Doctor Who often works by having The Doctor turn up in other peoples’ stories and own them.  So it was quite amusing seeing a Doctor Who story briefly invaded by Father Christmas in ‘Last Christmas’.

The last Christmas in Doctor Who terms was ‘The Time Of The Doctor’ and was a horrible mess.  (I first watched it recovering from a seizure, but further watches didn’t improve matters)  What was going on in it was anyone’s guess – it included the worst of Steven Moffat’s writing (the self-referential continuity, kitchen-sink plot) and I for one only kept watching to get a glimpse of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor – by then, all that Trenzalore stuff I just didn’t care about at all, and that’s speaking as a fan.  It being a Christmas episode we were sat around watching telly as a family I was expected to translate this into comprehensible drama terms for my parents and then fiancé.  Perhaps that has coloured my opinion of it as an episode, but I remember it as being something of a nadir.

Well it’s been a year – since that brief glimpse of Capaldi we’ve seen him in his successful first series and now in this, his first Christmas Special.  As with the episodes in this year’s series the plot in ‘Last Christmas’ is much more focused.  The story is set in a scientific research centre at the North Pole, but takes place in dreams, that turn out to be dreams within other dreams. There are aliens where you have to avoid even thinking about them (which gives ‘Blink’ and ‘Listen’ a run for their money in terms of Moffat's list of abstract threats) and there is Father Christmas.

I was deeply sceptical of Father Christmas being in Doctor Who like the Mr Grinch McScrooge I am, and if he had been in last year’s end-of-year pantomime any scepticism probably wqould have been justified as being a cheap gag.  However, in this episode Father Christmas meant something and I liked it.  Father Christmas represented dreams, and in this story dreams weren’t stable or safe – dreams were mercurial and potentially lethal.  To put it bluntly, if you were dreaming in ‘Last Christmas’, the chances were you had a face-hugging monster eating your brain.  Father Christmas strolled into a normal(ish) Doctor Who story to completely disrupt things the way the Doctor normally would.

 

"And a Merry Christmas to all of you at home!"

Doctor Who often works best when it’s in unchartered waters like this and has successfully messed around with dreaming and the unconscious from ‘The Mind Robber’ to the Dream Lord in ‘Amy’s Choice’.  ‘Last Christmas’ succeeded by setting up the audience for that most predictable and generic of Doctor Who stories, the base-under-seige, and then successfully throwing something as bizarre into the mix as Father Christmas and still getting away with it.

Nick Frost’s Santa was judged perfectly right – it was actually about as understated a performance you could ask for when the performance in question is Santa.  Peter Capaldi didn’t make any concessions to sentimentality just because it’s Christmastime, oh no – but he did show signs of his Doctor slowly thawing out as time goes on (oh, and grinned and whooped whilst driving Santa’s sleigh).  Clara was excellent as ever, although the weakest scenes seemed to be based around her, for instance the first dream sequence reuniting her with Danny seemed to just be going on for the sake of it; and the scene where the Doctor went back to save her but she had aged…  But then it turned out it was all a dream and she hadn’t!  Yep, it was a story about dreams but that was one little dream too far.

Those are very uncharitable quibbles though from a fan who was left happy.  This was a good episode of Doctor Who which didn’t patronise its audience (regardless of age or level of fan-knowledge), was scary, clever and funny – oh yes, this year Steven Moffat showed that guy who wrote last year’s show how it’s really done.  (Ho, ho, ho…  Oh please yourselves.)

It also showed that this supposed 'dark' direction that the show has taken is just as capable of lightness as earlier eras, but that lightness comes in chinks and comes with sadness - perhaps ironic that the Doctor Who Christmas Special with the least fairytale-like plot in some time should also be the one that gets to have Father Christmas.

RADIO: 'Raw Meat Radio' - Chris Morris Documentary, BBC Radio 4 Extra

Chris Morris is known chiefly for his epithets – “Godlike Genius”; enfant terrible”; “Media Assassin/Terrorist”, and so on.

After his reputation he is known chiefly for his TV work of the 90s, especially The Day Today and even more especially Brass Eye.  And even even more especially the Brass Eye Special.  These news spoofs are indeed absolute classics (although not as flawless as hype would have you believe).  Because the targets of The Day Today and Brass Eye are news presentation they haven’t dated as much as you might fairly expect for programmes made before New Labour came to power.  Probably the most influentuial comedian of the 90s Morris was unique in having no roots in stand-up; he instead came to prominence through radio.

Raw Meat Radio was a documentary concentrating solely on this sometimes neglected aspect of his career, bypassing almost entirely the more familiar TV stuff.  For someone of Morris’ reputation there haven’t been that many insights into his work, and Raw Meat Radio was happy to do some oblige with some talking head material and stories about his career.  Its 3 hours were roughly divided into 3 sections – On The Hour, the Radio One Music Shows and Blue Jam.  

Looking back at On The Hour you find yourself unconsciously

comparing it to its TV incarnation, The Day Today, in a completely unfair way.  On The Hour hasn’t really held up as well as The Day Today has, or certainly not based on the episode included as part of the documentary.  It sounds too bitty, and some sections drag. On The Hour was a game-changer in Radio 4 comedy, brought a new generation of comics to the forefront of the media (especially Steve Coogan), and so on.  But the bits that work the best are mainly bits that sound somehow incomplete because these were perfected on TV.  The best section for me of the episode here was the clip of On The Hour from the 1950s, complete with received pronunciation newscasters and jazz music...

It’s the Radio One Music Show clips that sound the freshest out of all the material in the documentary, partly because it’s the least familiar but also because it sounds so much like Morris letting his hair down and having a laugh.  If you can track down the complete shows on the internet (and you definitely can) you can listen to a great blend of Britpop and Hip Hop from the mid 90s as well as some good old insanity.  (I came across the description ‘chummy psychosis’ somewhere on the internet and that’s as good as any)  Prank calls/interviews and surreal sketches with Peter Baynham about opening tortoises and the dead body of Johnny Walker are the highlights.  Sketches where Morris tells Paul Garner to humiliate himself in public are less interesting, although because of their unpredictability can still be funny.  Garner repeatedly refusing to go back into a shop to ask whether the owner has “been to hell” while Morris and Baynham scream at him is actually funnier than it would have been had he obeyed his orders.  In these sequences it seems pretty clear that Paul Garner is Morris’ dupe, the person we are really laughing at.  I’m not sure Paul Garner always realised this (as he says in the documentary – he could have easily stood in a corner quietly saying that he was obeying his crazy orders without any of the hassle).  It’s certainly the Music Shows where Morris’ skill for persuasion is at its most obvious.

The Music Shows were a bit of a headache for Morris’ boss Matthew Bannister who explains on the documentary that he had okayed a sketch about Michael Heseltine’s obiturary tapes as long as it was made clear Michael Heseltine wasn’t dead.  When Morris opened the show with the decidedly ambiguous “If we hear any news on the death of Michael Heseltine we’ll let you know” led to the show being pre-recorded not very long into its run.  This is probably the most notorious stunt from the Music shows, and at least 5 minutes is spent talking about it.  It’s interesting that Peter Baynham doesn’t hold it as a crowning glory of what they did on the show.  
The documentary moves on to Blue Jam, a project that Matthew Bannister helped bring to Radio 1  was a completely new direction for Morris –

it was a ‘dark’ sketch-show interlinked with monged-chilled records, and didn’t have anything to do with the news.  Listening to the sketches out of context of their show makes them seem unbearably slow-paced – the Unconcerned Parents (who show a shocking lack of interest in the disappearance and murder of their 6 year old son) seems to drag on and on.  Similarly, the Rothko the Dog monologue (“he’s not a very good dog, but he’s an even worse lawyer”) didn’t seem as funny.  I suspect that this is because the bright and breezy approach of the documentary sets completely the wrong mood for enjoying that sort of thing.  It’s funniest when you’re on the verge of falling asleep, not bookended by some reminiscing by the writer.  Even so, one of Blue Jam’s selling points was in fact its power to shock, and it sounded tamer than I remembered.  

3 hours is a long time to listen to a documentary about any subject, but if you’re interested in 90s comedy in general Raw Meat Radio should raise some interest.  It was planned for an old unheard Chris Morris sketch to be exhumed on 6Music the following Saturday, but this was cancelled at the 11th hour – the official line is for reasons of quality control than for any last minute censorship.  But maybe also for reasons of lack of interest.  Chris Morris has finished with radio but he is a genius at it – he is uniquely talented at using his voice to force people to enter his world, without them necessarily realising it.  Not only the unwitting members of the public but the listeners themselves are taken to strange places before they have time to realise what’s going on.    


Listen to Raw Meat Radio here

MUSIC: Pixies - Doolittle 25

One thing that seemed to be impressive about the 25^th anniversary of Doolittle was that the Pixies seemed to be more interested in releasing new material instead.

Well that turned out to be wrong didn’t it?  Here it is – just in time for Christmas – Doolittle 25, a re-release of the album with B-Sides, Demos and Peel Sessions.

If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in B-Sides, Demos and Peel Sessions (and believe me, I am), you’d think this would be the mother of all packages.  It’s not even very expensive.  What makes it much less impressive is that the Pixies have already released a complete B-Sides and Peel Sessions separately roughly 15 years ago, meaning that a significant amount of the songs on Doolittle 25 are almost certainly on the shelves of the people most likely to buy Doolittle 25.

Then...

Another point of minor contention is that the album hasn’t been remastered, which is so much expected of deluxe editions it feels like it should be pointed out in big letters when something hasn’t been tinkered with.  On the whole I think most remasters are pretty good – I certainly haven’t come across a remastering which has made something sound worse.  In this respect I think I am relatively easily pleased – just look at the one-star reviews of Nevermind on Amazon to read some audiophiles kicking off about something called the Loudness War and a lot of uses of the word ‘dynamic’ in a way I don’t really understand.  Some things definitely need remastering (the Beatles remasters were necessary), sometimes it can seem like pouring old wine into new bottles.   Really though if you are going to buy an album for the second time it’d be nice to know they’ve done something to improve it.  Even by just a little bit.  It’d be better to be lied to in a way.

It comes down to this: realistically it’s going to be a majority of existing Pixies fans that  buy Doolittle 25, and Pixies fans will very definitely own Doolittle already, probably the B-Sides and BBC discs as well. So that leaves the demos.  And, Demos usually being the weakest sibling in the Bonus Track family, that’s where Doolittle 25 really hung for me – they effectively rereleased a bunch of stuff we all had already and the only real new content was some demos.  And that would have been really bad; only the demos actually turn out to be really, really good.

...and Now!

I normally skip over demos on deluxe rereleases and I suspect the majority of people do.  With the benefit of hindsight they’re often little more than really awful sounding versions of songs you like.  It’s possible in some cases to make a case for it being interesting to see ‘the creative process in action.’  But just because it’s interesting from a historical point of view it doesn’t necessarily make it fun to listen to.  I mean, who listens to the Beatles Anthology series now?  Who listened to it then?  Even hardcore Beatles fans don’t actually listen to the Anthology series.  The reason for this is that seeing the creative process at work is like knowing how the magic trick is done.  You think you want to know, but really you don’t.  Recent examples include Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions… and Fear Of A Black Planet and Led Zep’s back catalogue – all the bonus tracks are either throwaway or virtually identical to the original.  The alternative 'Stairway To Heaven' is a musical spot the difference but no more.

However, there are exceptions that prove the rule, and the demos on Doolittle 25 are an exception.  As I said in a previous post, although I like all the Pixies’ albums for me Surfer Rosa captures a raw energy whereas Doolittle is just a bit too polished and clean and frankly less fucked up.  Well the demos on Doolittle 25 can give you a glimpse into a world where Doolittle was made in a similar way to Surfer Rosa, or even Come On Pilgrim. The demos are even all laid out helpfully in the same order as the original album. When it comes to the Pixies I believe they were not served as well by ‘polished’ production, or at least they were made less exciting by it.  That doesn’t mean I think they only worked as a raw grungy outfit, more that there are parts of Doolittle where it feels like the production is filling in some gaps that would have been left more intriguing let alone.  That works great for something quite bombastic like ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’, but not always.  ‘Tame’ is a great example of the production of Doolittle doing the song a disservice.  Listening to the demo of it, the heavy breathing from Frank Black is bestial and creepy.  On the album it sounds merely percussive.  And that’s fine – it is after all a matter of taste – but I find with a band as seminally weird as the Pixies I’d rather hear them being bestial and creepy than merely percussive.  I mean, the second half of Doolittle has some tracks that I’ve always thought of as filler pretty much, but the demos of 'No 13 Baby' and 'Hey' feel more like a brush with insanity and therefore more alive than the album versions. 

Admittedly, this is quite a specialist vindication of Doolittle 25.  It’s basically great news for Pixies fans who thought they got a bit tame after Surfer Rosa and wondered what it would have been like if they hadn’t.  The world is not full to the brim of people (especially in 2014) wondering that.  Doolittle 25 shows what a transitional album Doolittle was - it was apparently during the making of this album that Deal and Black learned to really loathe each other for instance (which is such a given now you tend to forget that they probably managed to be in the same room as each other for whole hours at a time).  So even though there’s a something a bit suspect about another reselling of a much-repackaged and resold (and tiny) back catalogue, I’ve chosen to forgive Doolittle 25 that.  I've chosen not to get up on my high horse and instead enjoy it for making an album I’ve always felt was slightly overrated make complete sense to me.

EPILEPSY: Epilepsy, Language and Political Correctness

Everyone seems to know the rules when it comes to other forms of disability but what could cause offence to an epileptic?

Well, for a start calling someone an epileptic is not the done thing anymore – that’s sufferer of epilepsy to you.  But I don’t blame you if you didn’t know, I didn’t until researching this post.  But I don’t think it is offensive in the same way that calling (for instance) someone a cripple could be.  And generally speaking I don’t think epilepsy has such a clear cut equivalent.

My epilepsy sometimes worries people when I mention I have it.  Because it is not something that people know a great deal about it tends to put people outside of their comfort zone.  Sometimes I see panic creep into someone’s face if it comes up in conversation and they realise they don’t know what to say about it.  Quite often the urban myths and misinformation that are more famous than facts rush to the surface, and common comments tend to be of the “Ah, so you have to be careful around flashing lights then do you?” variety.  But there aren’t many words that someone would say in conversation that would have me intervening to say “Excuse me, I suffer from epilepsy and find that offensive.” 

Brainstorm - Bad?

Thought-shower - Good?

The closest there is to an offensive word connected with epilepsy in common usage is ‘brainstorm’.  Brainstorm originally meant – according to Wikipedia – “a state of temporary insanity”, which is presumably why it is deemed offensive.  Offensive, that is, if it’s used to describe a seizure.  But I have never heard this usage before, and I suspect most people haven’t.  It was, apparently, quite common in the 19th century, but hasn’t been in this context for a very long time.  Brainstorm now ‘means’ throwing ideas around and I’m willing to bet most people aren’t aware of this other usage.  Sporadically, overcautious but well-meaning organisations will suggest replacing the term brainstorm with ‘thought-shower’ in their meetings.  I am all for political correctness - I really am, I think on the whole political correctness is an attempt to make sure language is inclusive.  But trying to replace ‘brainstorm’ as a term is just tilting at windmills.  It’s also overwhelmingly considered non-offensive by people with epilepsy in studies.  In fact it causes offensive in its own way because it suggests that epileptics (or, sufferers of epilepsy) have skins as thick as a sheet of paper. 

This leads into a larger issue – people are less likely to be offended by specific words than they are by the way that they are spoken to or treated.  As someone memorably tweeted me, “I don't get annoyed by jokes and such. What irks me are those that think I've the IQ of a turnip because I'm epileptic.”  Exactly.  Words and jokes without any malicious intent are absolutely fine by me – something much more likely to really annoy or upset is, for instance, someone talking about me as if I’m not there when I’m coming round from a seizure.  There isn’t really that much in terms of language which is specifically and of itself offensive to people with epilepsy, the thing that will cause offense is ignorance and and ignorant behaviour, which is not unique to epilepsy or even to any disability but which is something that anyone in any minority group has to deal with at some point in their lives.  Actions speak louder than words, and I’d rather be treated respectfully and sympathetically and hear myself described as ‘being epileptic’ or ‘having a brainstorm’ than be spoken down to or ignored.

Oddly in a way, the terms which have been deemed as being most potentially offensive regarding epilepsy are the names given to seizures within the medical community until relatively recently – Grand Mal and Petit Mal.  These terms translate roughly from French as ‘Great Evil’ and ‘Small Evil’ which is certainly outdated and unsophisticated.  Grand Mal seizure were how seizures involving convulsions were described, and Petit Mal referred to seizures where people ‘zone out’ etc.  But it strikes me that these terms were phased out more because they were completely inadequate to keep up with the advances in epilepsy research over the last 50 years or so.  Over 20 different types of seizure have been identified to date, some relatively common and some much more obscure, but clearly an upgrade in language would have been necessary regardless of any potential inappropriateness of meanings. 

Of course, my cultural perspective is as someone living in a Western, first world country.  In some countries, the idea of epilepsy being to do with the literal seizure of someone’s mind by demons persists. I suppose in such cultures the descriptions of the condition as involving Great Evils or Small Evils might seem a sophisticated way of describing it, as in some countries there is no word for it.  The UK generally speaking might be ill-informed when it comes to epilepsy, but it is also aware of it as a mental health condition and not a spiritual malady.  Which is definitely a good start.

To end, a Medieval description of epilepsy before the word epilepsy was coined was ‘The Falling Sickness’.  I rather like the idea of having ‘The Falling Sickness’ – it sounds quite quaint and makes it sound as if my main problem is tripping over my feet all the time, like a cross between having a neurological disorder and being Norman Wisdom…

With thanks to @themockedturtle for their tweet.  For more information about epilepsy, please visit the Epilepsy Society and Epilepsy Action websites.

STAGE: Tom Stoppard's Arcadia - Nottingham Playhouse

Arcadia is Tom Stoppard’s play currently on at the Nottingham Playhouse.  It is a brilliant production and very funny and thought-provoking.  The thing that comes across most strongly is the importance of the arts and literature and how these relate to the sciences.

The play uses the device of switching between the early 19^th century and the present day, and features a cast of characters in both worlds which represent in some shape or form the arts.  

Byron also haunts the 19^th century plot offstage, an invisible trickster who represents genuine poetic talent and remains aloof.  The poet who we do see onstage, Ezra Chater is not aloof – he is the anti-Byron in fact, a nervous cuckold desperate for the recognition of his peers.  He lacks talent and isn’t interested in poetry as a way of examining some unknown truth but as a way to do well.  He turns out to be a botanist, and not very good at that either.

Arcadia is Tom Stoppard’s play ending tonight at the Nottingham Playhouse.  It is a brilliant production and very funny and thought-provoking.  The thing that comes across most strongly is the importance of the sciences and how these relate to the arts and literature.

In the 21^st century, literature is represented not by poets but by academics portrayed as detectives of the past.  Bernard Nightingale is the career academic who doesn’t care about discovering the truth unless it gets him in the papers, and this aspect of his character parallels Chater’s.  Spotting the parallels between the two settings is where much of the fun and the comedy of the play comes from. A lot also comes from Nightingale himself who is a brilliant buffoon who gets his comeuppance and is brilliantly played by David Bark-Jones.

The play uses the device of switching between the present day and the early 19^th century, and features a cast of characters in both worlds which represent in some shape or form the sciences.  The tutor Septimus Hodge and his pupil Thomasina Coverly have inquiring minds and enjoy exploring ideas (well, Septimus enjoys it as a break from sleeping with the ladies of the house).  Through the eyes of Thomasina something like mathematics feels like exciting new territory to be explored.

So, by the present day, literature has become something that needs decoding like a maths puzzle – indeed something where the lives of authors overshadows their works to a certain extent.  This difference in perception is conveyed in a wonderful detail of direction – in the past, the signed manuscript of Chater’s worthless poem is pawed by the characters with unconscious disdain.  In the present it is handled by Nightengale and Hannah Jarvis (his more reasonable, less self-serving equivalent) with delicacy and reverence. 

In the 21^st century the sciences are mainly represented by Valentine, a man who while not exactly cynical about mathematics is currently frustrated by the subject – he has found Thomasina’s exercise book from 200 years ago and has become mildly obsessed with understanding it.  Maths isn’t new territory to be explored in his mind but, like an obscure poem, a code from the past to be cracked.

His explanations of algorithms, of recurring patterns that emerge when examining a specific group of figures sums up what is happening in the play very nicely.  Everything between the two worlds seems apart but then parallels begin to be drawn and soon patterns within both eras emerge that are so similar they can completely merge.  The past begins to interact with the present literally and obliviously as if life is some mathematical equation which reminded me of Douglas Adams’ work.  I would say the work of fiction most similar to Arcadia is Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency with its blend of comedy and inquisitive interest in science).

By the end of the play, Valentines explanation of how nature moves in traceable algorithms is paralleled by the modern and old worlds integrated in a form of organised chaos – there is a conversation going on and by closing ones eyes to who is actually talking it becomes perfectly coherent.  The present is always, painfully, going to die at the hands of the present, Et In Arcadia Ego.  The party that ends the modern part of the play will end because death is present even in Arcadia.  Thomasina’s death at the age of 17 is tossed away as a piece of trivia in the present, she too was once an Arcadian.  This chaos is moving and feels like it comes from our knowledge that these lines that seemingly interact with each other over the centuries, and I can safely say it is the first time I have been moved so much by something so firmly rooted in the intellectual and also the first time I have been made to think so much about the root of emotion in the theatre.

TV: Doctor Who - Season 8 Finale 'Death In Heaven'

‘Death In Heaven’ was quite frustrating but at the end of it all enjoyable, which is the absolute best you can hope for from a Doctor Who finale.  One of the joys of New Who is the masochistic delight of the last episode of a season not living up to the expectations raised by a brilliant penultimate episode (along with lots of hints dropped throughout the series…) 

This year’s penultimate episode was especially creepy – some nice cyber-steampunk ideas used to segue into scenes of modern Cybermen partying like it’s 1969 all over again.  And then the brilliant reveal of Missy as being The Master gone – yep, I know! – Glaswegian.  Oh, and she’s a woman now too as well.  It gelled together really well in its own right and felt like a story sure of itself enough go at its own pace. 

But, as in finales of all the other series of Doctor Who the ending of the season went at a breakneck speed, didn’t all make a lot of sense and the pacing was firmly back into kitchen sink territory.  Not all necessarily for the bad, either.  The bulk of the episode felt like a more or less

"Those UNIT guys get all the best lines..."

equal balance of set pices that worked and ones that didn’t.  Throwing in UNIT as padding into a story that really didn’t need any padding immediately felt like a mistake as it completely changed the pacing.  I know that the season’s loose (make that ‘very loose’) theme has been, essentially, ‘The Doctor doesn’t like soldiers but is a bit like them in some ways, but won’t admit it, or at least doesn’t want to, at least, not just yet.’ But when you’ve got a female Master and Cybermen from the Graveyard, UNIT and its characters are going to be the most boring part of your story by default, and in introducing them you’ve just lost about a third of your screen time to them instead of the interesting bits – own goal.

Sure enough, the UNIT parts of the episode felt like the weakest throughout. Having Kate Lethbridge-Stewart murdered by Missy was very gutsy and showed that the stakes were being considerably raised by the producers in terms of storytelling.  So having her turn out not to be dead but in fact rescued by her Dad in Cyberman form was a disappointment as well as being a rather mawkish one.  The scenes where Cybermen started to emerge from the graves was an extremely effective scene.  When the Cybermen flew around like The Amazing Rocket Men From Mondas they looked a bit daft though.  It was effectively chilling seeing Danny as a burnt out emotional wreck; seeing him give a rousing speech to his fellow Cybermen seemed completely overdone, unless it was intended as a satire on those kind of speeches in war films…  I don’t think it was though. 

Missy was brilliant – basically, a psychotic Mary Poppins – and a sex-change hasn’t changed the brilliantly crap quality of The Master’s Dastardly Schemes.  But then she was shot and it was all over apart from a brilliant scene of The Doctor and Clara lying through their back teeth at each other.

Whenever there’s a finale in Doctor Who, there’s a good chance it won’t be satisfying because it never really has been – the closest a finale has come to having a really satisfying ending is probably 2006’s ‘Doomsday’, but there a lot of the plot-holes could be papered over by showing Daleks and Cybermen together!  At the same time!  And the fact that the increasingly smug Rose was going! 

The year before, there was all the ‘Bad Wolf’ stuff that had building up to a conclusion - bookies were taking bets on what it all meant, but I think “That Billie Piper having sucked in all of time and space after opening bits of the TARDIS she shouldn’t have” wouldn’t have been a favourite.  In fact, they papered over Bad Wolf not having a proportionately satisfying ending by having The Doctor regenerate.  The wrapping up of the ‘Bad Wolf’ mystery is a bit convoluted and on its own manages to feel a bit like a cop out without being one, setting the tone for a lot of future series endings. 

The year after had the Magic CGI Monkey Doctor Thingy turn into a sort of Cosmic Jesus through the power of prayer, making The Doctor’s solution seem even more insane and megalomaniacal than The Master’s Dastardly Scheme for a change.  By the time of Matt Smith’s finales I gave up trying to understand everything going on and just enjoy them like a shaggy dog story or a pantomime (why does he need to marry River Song?  He doesn’t, but go with it cos look at them there having fun with it!)  And you don’t enjoy a pantomime for the strong plotlines do you.

So ‘Death In Heaven’ was not too bad an ending at all for a series that has as a weak spot with strong series closers.  I didn’t walk away thinking that maybe I would understand it on a second watch.

One of the joys of the character of The Doctor is that he can just turn up in any story he likes and do whatever he wants in it.  He’s never going to be pinned down into one kind of story for long – or at least if you do try to keep him in your base under siege style stories too long he’ll simply get out of them by turning into Jon Pertwee, who might even turn into Tom Baker if you make him hang out with soldiers for too long.  So giving a character as mercurial as The Doctor the lead in a show (especially Capaldi’s Doctor, who is capable of walking off mid adventure when he’s done with it) and expecting a neat ending to a series that wraps everything up in neat little boxes…

Well, if it did happen, the show overall might not be as good.  The finales get the most hype and in practice they rarely live up to that hype.  This series overall has been exceptional however and Capaldi has been a different kind of madman with a box.  How will he get on against Father Christmas remains to be seen of course.

MUSIC: Thom Yorke and U2

Hey, look guys, it’s something we’ve never seen before – big names in the music world releasing stuff in a like, totally different way!  You know, like Beyonce did last year!

Or indeed, Radiohead did with 2010’s In Rainbows.  Let’s face it, the selling of music (as opposed to the making of it) has always loved a gimmick.  And you wait a year for a gimmicky music release then two show up at once.  

Let’s look at Thom Yorke first.  His latest solo album has been released on BitTorrent as an attempt to find a way for artists to be able to still earn a decent wage in these dark days of Spotify.  It’s not actually a novelty for Yorke to be releasing his album like this, not that much of one anyway.  He’s a man with a keen interest in technology and the music industry and always has been.  

Tomorrow's Modern Boxes - the music is about as colourful as the cover,
come to think of it.

I’ve delayed writing about this subject for a week or two because I really like Thom Yorke and I was trying to give his solo album more of a chance.  Unfortunately the album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is a little bit boring and very short, and the thing about a gimmick is that it’s a great way to set off a word-of-mouth campaign only if you’ve got some really good, like amazing product to sell.  But the album isn’t really good, or at least not good enough to give Yorke’s message enough weight.  It’s not awful either, but it doesn’t inspire the urge to spread the word.  It’s the worst thing you can have from an artist like Yorke – from someone who is seen as such an innovator, it’s very meh. 

The In Rainbows ‘Download and Pay-What-You-Want’ stunt worked at starting a debate about online music for a lengthier period of time (although not really that much lengthier) because the music on that album is outstanding.  And that was never actually going to be a meaningful direction for the future except for people who were already rich and could afford to take a risk in order to look cool (which is why Yorke’s stance against Spotify seems ridiculous as he is more responsible than most artists for encouraging the idea that digital music need not necessarily be paid for).  This new BitTorrent idea is a much more realistic proposition as a business model that could work, but because the content is uninspiring it will be ignored.  Also, it has been said that they see paying for a package through BitTorrent to be seen as an alternative to streaming music, but to me I can’t see that much of a difference between buying a BitTorrent package or an album through iTunes or Amazon.  It’s based on an old system, an album-buying system.  We’re in a world where a lot of people value diverse content more than 8 mediocre songs by the same person.  A last point about this - Thom Yorke is an established name, but if he wasn't how would we know what his album sounds like?  There's no airplay I'm aware of, it's not on Spotify or other streaming clients, you can't buy individual tracks on Amazon.  A new artist would not break through and be recognised through this business model.

Although it might  be slightly cheaper buying a BitTorrent 'album' there’s a reason why people associate torrents with pirating, and the idea of people paying any money at all for a torrent file at the moment seems laughable.  I’m by no means arguing that it is right to pirate by downloading torrent files, but it’s surely no secret that people who currently download torrent files are highly unlikely to be paying money for them right now, and it’s going to be very hard to encourage them to start.  It’s an alternative to streaming only if it is for free.  Which is expressly against Thom Yorke’s point.

And then there’s U2.  Their gimmick – having an album appear on Apple users’ gadgets overnight for free – actually is quite a sweet intentioned one and has been pretty successful for them.  Songs of Innocence is 13 (down from 6) in the album charts and so it’s not exactly been the ‘massive backfire’ some people in the press have dubbed it.  

Songs of Innocence's dreadful cover. Wonder what the follow up album
could possibly be called...?

However, it is a bit embarrassing if as an artist you demonstrably can’t give your music away to people.  To the extent Apple had to release an app to help people get rid of it.  People felt that having music put on their phone was something akin to an invasion of privacy.  I think that is perhaps overstating it slightly, but then I’m an Android user so what do I know?

Rather like Radiohead’s In Rainbows trick way-back-when, this idea of giving an album away for free is not a business model that can work for any band that doesn’t have more money than they need.  It was a shame that Bono had to apologise to people for what was intended as an egalitarian gesture.  It was definitely a gesture made by a band who are out of touch with their own popularity but it’s not really done them any harm.  In fact it’s done them a massive favour because if this album had been released in the traditional fashion hardly anyone would be talking about it.  As with Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes it is an album that comes and goes without making much of an impression.  Whereas Yorke’s music sounds unassuming quite a lot of the time however, U2 are going for epic, Epic, EPIC all the time and reliably not getting there.  It achieves the job of making a U2 album well enough but doesn’t seem to be interested in doing anything else at the same time.

Really this is the issue with U2 and Thom Yorke’s albums – it’s become about the medium and not the message for them now.  Or rather they think that the message is best expressed through the medium rather than through their art, since that's where they've chosen to put the emphasis in their interviews and promotion.  On hearing these albums it is no surprise whatsoever that the only things I have read about them in the press or heard about in conversation have been to do with downloads etc, rather than the music.  Regardless of intent when musicians talk more about the method of buying their latest album more than their art they sound only one step away from describing how an iPod works.  

These are artists clearly more interested, Yorke especially, with music formats and the future of the music industry than with the actual music.  Yorke seems keen to really change the way we listen now, but needs to seriously work on having some more interesting and exciting music if he wants to do that.  I’ve deliberately delayed this post to give both albums a fair hearing but I don’t think these are growers – they’re just some of the emperor’s clothes being repackaged again for the digital age. 

TV: Doctor Who - Sweary Man In Space

Since 2006 The Doctor has been an unambiguous hero, with even Christopher Eccleston’s prickly Doctor Nine being the guy you can trust to be your friend.  After the departure of Matt Smith as the lead Peter Capaldi is now The Doctor and the show has taken a complete departure as well.  

This is of course the beauty of a show like Doctor Who – it has its own built in reboot button meaning that every few years it can regenerate and become something completely different.  It can and does rebel against itself, meaning that Matt Smith’s cuddly Doctor Eleven has been replaced with Peter Capaldi’s spiky and truly alien Doctor Twelve.  The Doctor is now a very ambiguous hero, and a much more interesting one.

The infamous Capaldi eyebrows...

Peter Capaldi is best known (in Britain at least) as being the sweary spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in The Thick Of It.  That role involved a lot of swearing and that probably isn’t going to figure much in his portrayal of The Doctor… It hasn’t yet, anyway.  He’s the first actor to play the Doctor in the new series to be so closely identified with another cult role.  Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant were established character actors and Matt Smith was virtually unknown.  To a lot of people Peter Capaldi is Malcolm Tucker.  This isn’t necessarily a problem, especially as Doctor Twelve shares a lot of Tucker’s character traits – it means there’s a shorthand way in to getting a hold on the character.  There were jokes aplenty when Capaldi’s casting was announced about how the new series of Doctor Who would be ‘Sweary Man in Space’, but I don’t think anyone expected that to actually happen to the extent it has.  In fact The Doctor is an even more intimidating figure than Malcolm Tucker ever was and that’s saying something.  He’s perhaps not as aggressive but he’s a highly volatile personality handling life or death situations and that’s worse, especially when you’re used to The Doctor being a friendly and open person.

In the second episode of this latest series, ‘Into The Dalek’, a soldier seems to be about to die and The Doctor throws something to him, smiles a crocodile grin and says “trust me”.  The soldier then dies quite gruesomely, and it turns out The Doctor was just using him to measure the radiation levels (or something).  Everyone is shocked but The Doctor brushes it aside irritably, saying “He was dead already, I’m saving our lives”, and moves on.  This is maybe something other Doctors would have done, in a tight corner; but no other Doctor would have behaved so callously.  David Tennant’s Doctor for instance would have said his trademark line in this sort of situation, “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry”, and looked… well, sorry.  Peter Capaldi’s smiles like a predator in order to manipulate the situation then gets on with the job.  This moral ambiguity has made for more complex themes so far.  For all of Christopher Eccleston’s angst in playing Doctor Nine, he was still playing a broadly heroic character that you could relate to.  This new Doctor makes you ask the question – does saving the day automatically make you a hero?  In the last episode, ‘Kill The Moon’, he actually walks off and leaves the humans to it – he says it’s their home at stake and he has faith in Clara to make the right decision.  Then buggers off, mid-adventure.  This is not typical adventure hero behaviour – but then when was The Doctor ever meant to be a typical adventure hero?

"Be my pal, tell me - am I a good man?"

Speaking of Clara – she’s great nowadays.  I never really took to her as a character when she started, mainly because she seemed all wrapped up in being a gimmicky ‘Impossible Girl’ plotline, but also because she didn’t seem to have as much chemistry with Matt Smith as he had had with Amy and Rory.  She really clicks with this new Doctor though, and has a real dramatic purpose as an audience identification figure.  There’s not actually been that much need for an audience identification figure for ages because The Doctor has been played as an essentially likeable eccentric.  Now he’s being played as a character just the right side of unlikeable she’s absolutely necessary to the show – The Twelfth Doctor, as with Malcolm Tucker, can only work well as part of an ensemble.  It basically feels like Clara’s regenerated as well, and definitely for the better.

The last few years have shown us The Doctor in a touchy-feely light – basically as a bit of a weird human.  Well The Doctor hasn’t been this alien since well before we actually knew he was an alien, back when William Hartnell was the guvnor.  The Doctor isn’t your fun uncle or eccentric older brother anymore – he’s your grumpy Scottish grandfather, and you were sorely trying his patience even before he walked into the room.  He’s still your friend, just, but he’s the kind of friend you worry about introducing to other people.

It’s quite shocking, and it’s refreshing after the charming characters we’ve got used to having as the lead.  The Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors all have scenes where a great deal is made out of The Doctor being what monsters have nightmares about, or about being the ‘Oncoming Storm’ or the ‘Last Of The Time Lords’.  Most of the time however, they’re fun to be around.  The reverse is true with this one – he is witty, but he’s not a comedian and he’s more serious and alien than not.  Compared to the Classic Doctors, Doctor Twelve is like a cross between One and Six.  Colin Baker’s Doctor was meant to have a character arc where he started out brash and unlikeable and gradually became more and more at peace with himself.  It didn’t really work out that way because the cack handed way it was approached nearly killed the programme.  But it’s a good idea for a character arc and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what they’re trying to do with the character in his Twelfth incarnation, but this time doing it right.

And does it work?  Personally I love Peter Capaldi as an actor, and at the moment I’m enjoying seeing him be The Doctor a lot.  The character has obviously been designed to rub against the previous characters of the new series – sometimes this is overdone   when scenes make him just a bit too unlikeable, seemingly just to remind you that Peter Capaldi is not Matt Smith.  It works because it does what every new Doctor should do which is to shake the viewer out of their comfort zone and put them in an entirely different type of show.  His debut episode dropped Doctor Twelve into what would have been a fairly standard Doctor Eleven story and showed how different the series would be – Matt Smith’s Doctor wouldn’t have poured his enemy and himself a whiskey before throwing him to his death.  It’s a whole new game and one that's turning our to be a different kind of fun.

EPILEPSY: Clocking On

Don't Say Brainstorm - An occasional chat about Epilepsy...

This week it’s been National Epilepsy Week, a time to try and raise awareness about the very common and equally misunderstood condition I and millions of other people have.

It is a condition that can cause worry to people when you tell them you have it, because not everyone is fully aware of what it means.  Sometimes saying “I’m epileptic” results in a politely sympathetic, rictus smile trying to hide eyes that are way out of their depth.  Sometimes it provokes lots of curious questions.  Luckily, for people who don’t like being put on the spot, saying “I’m epileptic” is something you’re not likely to have to say.

The workplace is one place where you are going to have to say it at some point, however, and it’s probably the most awkward context.  Workplaces can be where people might feel more exposed to criticism or judgement than they would in social or familial ones.  But however well controlled your epilepsy is you have to let your employees know about it.  Apart from anything else, it means that if you have a fit at work people will know what to do; but from a less selfish perspective, it’s a really shocking thing to see happening and it’s unfair to leave people unprepared for it.

I always worried about mentioning it up in interviews.  I remember bringing it up once or twice in some of my first interviews when they asked if I had anything else I wanted to discuss, which made for some awkwardness at the time and then left me wondering later on if that had cost me the job.  It shouldn't feel awkward, because professional people shouldn't be prejudiced against medical conditions; but there are some employers out there who, given the choice between a sufferer and a non-sufferer, would choose the non-sufferer any time.  

I’ve worked for more managers who have been absolutely lovely about the whole epilepsy thing, but there are some ill-educated bastards out there so in interviews you have to be canny about it to give yourself a chance.  It is not right and it is not fair.  In a perfect world you should be able to say “I’m epileptic” outright and not have to worry about it costing you anything.  But it’s not a perfect world.  It bothered me for a while until I asked a consultant about it, who recommended letting prospective employers know the moment after a job offer has been made.  It’s blindingly obvious in hindsight – you’ve been assessed on your own merits, and judged worthy enough.  If they rescind the offer, they can only do so if the epilepsy would affect your ability to work or it’s discrimination.  It feels a bit devious to someone like me because my instinct is to be open about everything.  But I’ve found it a good rule to follow, and it means that if you don’t get offered a job it was because you failed on your own merits and not because of some condition you happen to have.

So once the interview’s done and you’ve got the job, then you have to tell everyone else and see what their reactions will be (I always think of this for some reason).  Where I work at the moment, I am supported extremely well, to the extent that they want to learn more about the condition to deal with it as best as they can.  I’m really grateful for that, because I have worked for some idiots in my time. I remember one manager from one of the Big 4 supermarkets say to me my epilepsy was “becoming more trouble than it’s worth”.  While I was coming round from a seizure on his shop floor, no less.  I believe he really thought that part of it was a ‘put on’ by me – that it was something I could control if I really, really tried hard and in the meantime was using as a convenient excuse to go home early.  In a different place, an office where I was temping, I had a seizure and almost everyone was really nice about it.  The one person who handled it badly was, again, the manager – he helped me up and out of the office to get me home but kept saying again and again and again “but we won’t be a able to pay you for this afternoon because you’re a temp you see, so you only get paid for the hours that you do, so we can’t pay you for this (etc).”  I wonder if epilepsy disturbs a certain kind of manager because they see it as something they have no control over happening in their office.  I felt sorry for the guy in the second example, because he was just a bit clueless and in a bit of a flap.  He was well-meaning.  The guy in the first example on the other hand was cold bastard.  

Those incidents happened a long time ago though, and there’s much more acceptance of disabilities in the workplace in general now.  I work for a company at the moment that have been terrific about the epilepsy – they want to learn more about the condition to make sure they are doing everything they can, and that’s wonderful.  I think epilepsy will take longer than certain other disabilities to be ‘normalised’ and accepted in a fuller way because of a lack of education about it, but things are generally changing for the better.  Awareness is continually being raised.

And a very happy National Epilepsy Week to all you at home!


Find out more about epilepsy (and Epilepsy Week!) at The Epilepsy Society and Epilepsy Action websites.  And please comment to let me and others know about your experiences with epilepsy.

TV: Prey

Prey, ITV's answer to The Fugitive, ended on Monday and it was a bit of a damp squib.

Prey was the perfect example of the thrill of the chase being more exciting than the ending.  The ‘hunted man’ story is enormous fun, especially when Our Hero is being hunted by the police, as the majority of dramas and films still have us on the side of the authorities by default.  Even when we know Our Hero is innocent, there is still something nicely subversive about being asked to identify with a man on the run from the law.

Our Hero in Prey is Marcus Farrow, a policeman wrongly suspected of murdering his wife.  Farrow’s got a violent temper but is on the whole a good person, and he is played by John Simm, which makes him at least 50% more interesting.  He goes to ground and tries to find out what really happened to his wife before the police catch him by doing research into a murky case he was working on at the time. 

There were lots of very good set pieces in Prey, nearly all of which featured John Simm on the run and nearly but not quite being caught.  Because Marcus Farrow had a violent character when irked, you were genuinely concerned that he might accidentally murder someone in his desperation.  Lots of sneaking around and subterfuge – this is what Prey did well.  Very well in fact, for at least half its screentime.

The ‘hunted man’ story is all about the set pieces, which is why conclusions can be such a pisser.  Yes, we do want to know what all the running around has been in aid of, but it needs to pull off the trick of being satisfying without being too drawn out or implausible.  But last episodes have to be about the conclusion.  Prey demonstrated in its third and final episode how hard it can be to finish a series with aplomb by giving us resolution, resolution, resolution.

The thing is, the cat and mouse stuff can keep on going for ages and still be entertaining even on a relatively simple plot, but Prey had a cover-up conspiracy as its premise which meant that it was setting itself up for giving an ‘epic revelation’ conclusion.  But it couldn’t convincingly do this, instead opting for one of the most clichéd wrap-up plots in thriller stories (the one person he thought he could trust whilst he was on the run turns out to be the baddie!  Who would have thought it!) But even then it didn’t quite work, because the big reveal of the villain happened far too early in the episode, meaning that too much of it felt like it was spent hanging around waiting for Marcus to catch up with us.  During the first two episodes, we had great fun complimenting John Simm on his cleverness from our sofa and basically enjoying the ride, but the last episode gave us too much time to work out that some of this was a little bit silly.

Which is a shame, because Prey was working really, really well as a cat and mouse chase drama – The Fugitive, set in Manchester – but sort of opted not to be one in the end and being a police melodrama instead.  Plot points were piled on for absolutely no reason – Farrow’s friend Shaun had betrayed him in episode 1, OK, fine.  But having Shaun then confess to Farrow he’d been sleeping with his wife for the last 10 years at the end made it seem like a soap with guns.  It managed to make the ending feel rushed and drawn out at the same time.  Prey kept the audience watching through the momentum of the action, but by its end it was obvious the action was supporting the plot and not the other way round.

At the end of it all though, I don't think it necessarily matters if the ending of something like Prey is a damp squib.  If you watch something that you pretty much know is going to be mainly enjoyable for the thrill of the chase, you can't complain that you didn't enjoy the bit after the chase had finished.  It just would have been a bit more satisfying if it had ended with more style instead of falling on back on cliche and melodrama.

TV: In The Flesh - Series 2

I watched the start of the second series of In The Flesh this week, and surprised myself by really enjoying it.

I’m not a fan of horror.  I feel guilty about dismissing a whole genre, because I like to think of myself as culturally open-minded,  but it doesn’t entertain me and I don’t really know why. 

I don’t like not getting it; it frustrates me that an entire genre can escape me.  A lot of my friends do like their horror (to the extent where some of them are involved in making horror films) so over the years I’ve seen some high-end examples that should have given me an 'in': a few Saw films, The Ring, Shaun Of The Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, Zombieland, Hostel - loads of the stuff really, and most of them in the end pretty much drew a blank, the occasional exception proving the rule.  If anyone wants to try me with more recommendations, recommend away!

It never works its gory charms and for me watching a horror film is a bit like staring at a blood-spattered magic eye poster for a few hours and then walking away baffled.  The only horror films I really enjoyed were Peter Jackson’s early attempts at film-making, Brain Dead and Bad Taste - they are extremely funny, good-natured and more fun than anything else he went on to make.  But that means that I enjoyed them as slapstick comedies rather than horror, so doesn’t really count.

The fact that I liked In The Flesh so much probably doesn’t count either then, because I enjoyed it as character-based drama that satirasies society.  Damn.  In The Flesh, nominally ‘about’ zombies but really uses them in an allegorical way to make a drama about society’s religious, racial and medical outsiders.  It’s set in a Northern community post-apocalypse and focuses mainly on 20ish Kieren, who suffers from Partially Deceased Syndrome (PDS).  He is an outsider who is making efforts at integration.  He takes medication to keep him ‘normal’ and wears contact lenses to hide his tell-tale glaring eyes.  He works in the local pub, but wants to go abroad and see Paris and gives every impression of being a normal 20 year old who just happens to be dead.  He represents the acceptable face of the undead – he wears make up to hide his dead flesh to make the point literal, in case the audience hadn’t picked up on that yet.  The idea of being a zombie is normalised into modern society in the same way that being a werewolf or ghost was in Being Human (albeit for more dramatic and less sitcom purposes).

He is not like the undead we see at the start of the episode, who perpetrate a terrorist attack on a tram by snorting some stuff that made them go batshit crazy and then killing everyone.  Not only do the trams in Nottingham look better than the Salford ones, you can bet NCT wouldn’t let that kind of thing happen on their turf.  These are the undead who give the undead a bad name, members of the Undead Liberation Army.  They have a cult-commune base, and Kieren’s old friend Amy is one of them.

The prejudice shown against the undead is all of the small town variety that UKIP trades on – women gossiping in corners, men sneering and making abusive comments in the pub.  In the midst of all this, a party called Victus has a new MP in town, trading on peoples’ fears of the other for political power (as if that could ever happen).  She is a black woman, in a rather unsubtle effort to show that being in a minority group herself does not mean she is not open to feelings of prejudice. 

It all kicks off in the pub at the end of the episode (it is made by BBC Salford after all), and it looks as if Kieren is going to stop trying to assimilate and join the revolutionaries, who are open about their difference to everyone if a little dogmatic with it…  It should be interesting to see what happens – I’m guessing that Kieren is going to enjoy the freedom in not having to pretend to be the same as everyone else for some time, but at some point is going to renounce their way of existing when they try to involve him in something naughty (possibly against his sister if the programme-makers are being unimaginative).  The UKIP, sorry, Victus MP has some agenda of her own which also drew me in – she’s already murdered a rabid undead, and persists in calling them ‘its’ instead of ‘hes’ or ‘shes’.  Bitch.  This was the start of a second series – I didn’t see (or, in fact, know the existence of) the first series and didn’t feel I was missing anything here, so I don’t know how much of this was a continuation or a new start.  It’s an interesting mashup of lots of different things, from thrillers to Coronation Street (the ladies bitching over a pint could have been cut and pasted from a soap), and although horror tropes are the most obvious ones on show, they’re actually the least integral to the storytelling.  Which is perhaps why I ended up enjoying it so much.

MUSIC: Pixies - Doolittle & Indie Cindy

There’s a new Pixies album, but first – the past…

 

It’s 25 years since the release of the Pixies’ Doolittle.  Doolittle is a slightly disputable masterpiece, but a masterpiece all the same – it’s the Pixies album which will always be on Classic Album lists, that’s for sure. 

I’ve always thought Surfer Rosa was their best album but maybe that’s because it’s how I got into the Pixies.  I’d tried listening to them before because of their indie reputation (massively influential on Nirvana and Radiohead and loads of other people I liked), but never really got them, apart from ‘Where Is My Mind?’ which I only really knew from Fight Club.  But once when I was ill and found a tape of Surfer Rosa in my sister’s cupboard I put it on on a whim.  The tape was on repeat and some time on the fourth go round it clicked and I understood it.  (Digression: I’ve noticed a lot of the music and books I cherish the most I hated at first.  Is this just me?  Is the lazy part of my brain attempting to stunt the culturally aware part or something?) 

Doolittle sounds less unique than Surfer Rosa to me, and therefore less of an achievement; but perhaps that’s because it was one of those albums that was so influential it became the indie norm.  It has a first half with skittish pop-rock songs with bizzaro lyrics and a darker, atmospheric second half bridged together by the a anthemic ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’.  Frank Black was obsessively listening to ‘The White Album’ during the making of Doolittle and in terms of making an album greater than the sum of its parts, it shows.  ‘Debaser’, ‘Monkey…’ and ‘Wave Of Mutilation’ don’t lose anything outside of the context of the album, but most of the other songs work better as slow-burning mood-builders, culminating in ‘Gouge Away’, possibly my favourite ending to an album (possibly not – it all depends on when you ask me, really).

Anyway, the big Pixies news this month is a new album, their first for 23 years.  After they split in the early 90s they started touring in the 00s, but these were purely ‘Greatest Hits’ shows – as a creative entity they seemed to have ended for good.  And then quite unannounced they started releasing new music last year.

The Pixies’ reunion has a lot in common with The Beatles’mid-90s reunion we mentioned a few weeks ago in two major ways.  One is that both bands had been dormant for so long and had an influential legacy that new material would always be compared unfavourably to.  The other similarity is that the reunion in both cases was missing a member.  The Beatles at least had two unheard John Lennon vocal tracks to base new songs around; the new Pixies songs have had no input from Kim Deal, their charismatic ex-bassist who quit two weeks before the new material started coming out. 

When ‘Bagboy’, the first new Pixies music in ages was surprise-released last year I was pleasantly surprised that it worked as well as it did.  Faint praise there, I know, but the song had and still has for me an aggressive strangeness and didn’t seem embarrassing.  It didn’t feel out of date, either – where it failed, it failed on its own terms and not for being a museum piece (like The Beatles’ ‘Free As A Bird’). 

And, in fact, a lot of the new material is just as good as some of the songs on Trompe le Monde and Bossanova.  The truth is that the memory cheats and the last two Pixies albums have songs as forgettable as some of the worst on Indie Cindy.  Indie Cindy has some great moments, just not as many as there would have been in their peak.  Playing it alongside Trompe le Monde I don’t see a massive gulf in quality – both albums have a similar killer/filler ratio (though Indie Cindy doesn’t have anything nearly as good as ‘Planet Of Sound’…)  It’s arguable that, for better or worse, Indie Cindy just picks up where Trompe le Monde left off.

Pixies songs in the 21^st century seem to be longer than 3 minutes and veer disturbingly into an MOR vibe sometimes, but they are recognisably Pixies songs. Neither does Indie Cindy sound like the work of a band who’ve cynically slung any old rubbish together to exploit their influential reputation.  They do sound like they’re into what they’re doing whether I think it works or not and that’s the main thing.  ‘Bagboy’, ‘Magdalena 318’, ‘What Goes Boom’ and ‘Snakes’ are all songs where it gels together really well.  ‘Magdelena 318’ is especially weird and insidious, Frank Black’s subdued but still powerful vocals with a mournful surf guitar mixed with a more typical crunch.  On the negative side: ‘Blue Eyed Hexe’ is a fairly weak re-hash of ‘U-Mass’; ‘Another Toe In The Ocean’ and ‘Ring The Bell’ are bland and forgettable.  The title track has some appallingly bad lyrics (“I’m in love with your daughter… I’m the one who’s got some trotters/You’ve many mouths to feed”  Oh dear). 

There’s one thing that nags me.  Indie Cindy isn’t really an album so much as it is a compilation of all the new material that’s been filtering through since ‘Bagboy’ was released for download last year – there is nothing on this album that hasn’t been released already.  This is a major irritation, and undoes a lot of the general good feeling I have toward the band when listening to it.  There is a lot more of a sense of artistic viability in some of these tracks than there was in The Beatles reunion tracks, one-woman-down or no; but releasing an album out of 3 EPs (the last of which was only out a month ago) seems like a casually cynical piece of marketing, and makes it feel like the whole thing was done for the money after all.

Anyway, I’ve deliberately not read reviews of the new Pixies songs to try and make for a non-biased blog, so I’m going to go and read what savagings they’ve no doubt been getting in the press…