In Brief

Various things I almost posted about over the last few weeks before deciding I couldn't be arsed:

- The Shred Yr Face tour. 300+ miles travelling to make it to and from the two closest gigs to Brum (Manchester and Leeds) but it had to be done, how often does a tour come along with a decent headliner and two even better support bands, both coming from the U.S. and probably not back any time soon?

- Cloned Mammoths. Fuck yes!

- We are Beautiful, We are Doomed. Ok so its a good album/record/extended EP/bunch of songs/whatever else they want to call it this week and they had to fit in a fancy booklet, bonus DVD, mini poster and badges but did the box have to be quite so big? Surely most people like to keep CDs in some sort of order, which becomes a bit tricky when one of them refuses to fit on the shelf (I couldn't even slide it in above the others, did it really need to be the best part of an inch thick?)

- Jeffrey Lewis. Playing Brum in two days, yay. Got paid yesterday so I can afford to go to Island for post-work/pre-gig half price cocktails. Fuck going home and madly rushing to get back to town before the first band is on (Kategoes apparently on at 7.30, I'd never make it anyway)

- 9 Lessons & Carols for Godless People. Less than a month away! Now its on for 3 nights can I legitimately refer to having 'opening night, front row tickets' like a smug cunt?

- Andrew Gilligan. He appears to have fucked with the wrong blogger.

2008: The Year That Shitgaze Stole My Heart

Seriously: Shitgaze

The sobriquet "shitgaze" is an amalgamation of the name of another indie rock genre, shoegaze, of which shitgaze shares some common elements, and the word "shit", presumably because shitgaze recordings and performances regularly "push the needle in the red", i.e., they stretch the limits of their amplifiers to produce distorted sounds. In, other words, according to San Diego CityBeat, "it sounds shitty"

I already had more than half the albums listed so I ordered Magic Flowers Droned (which is a mess, but in a good way)

Not sure I agree with the name, can't really argue with the shit part but just what "common elements" does it have with shoegaze, except that they've decided to lump A Place To Bury Strangers in there despite them not really fitting. Times New Viking certainly don't deserve that, I was just listening to the Shred Yr Face tour 7" and I'm pretty sure that hidden under an ocean of noise TNV's contribution contains the best pop song of the year.

p.s. Yeah, long gap since the last post, been a bit depressed recently and not felt like it but Milk is Politics and Have You Ever Heard The Lovely Eggs? turned up in the post today and I ended up digging out a few other 7"s I'd bought this year* which has cheered me up enough for long enough to get this far.

*I'd forgotten how good The Boat Song/Temptation single is, David Holmes has some competition for single of the year after all...