A long way

(Morning Star, Saturday 22 October 2005)

ALBUM: Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel
(Mute)

THE ethereal world of Depeche Mode is an interesting place for sure.

Dave Gahan seems to think that he's some kind of messiah and is clearly delighted that he has had the honour of his own acquaintance.

The appearance of the word "angel" all over this record - their first in four years - lends credence to the fact that Gahan reckons that he's a wee bit spiritual - and as far as pomposity goes, it's clear that the Mode still have it in spades.

But, for a band who started out with a definitively 1980s electronic-cheese reputation, they've come a long way.

Their gothic electronica is once again "in" and their trademark dourness seems to compress the misery that many of us feel about modern life and hand it back to us on a platter.

The first half of Playing the Angel is packed with a raft of impressive would-be singles, including the wonderful opener A Pain that I'm Used To and The Sinner in Me, while single Precious attempts the lyrically unthinkable - rhyming damaged with manage - but makes it all work regardless.

Although the tunes drop off noticeably in the second half, the intensity is still there and it rings as true as on any of the band's previous best work.

Depeche Mode had better watch out, they're approaching their 20th release and they've never sounded so fashionable.

I'll go to jail... But not Iraq

(The Sun, 17 October, 2005)
Court martial for RAF ace

A Scots RAF officer faces being jailed for refusing to return to Iraq because he believes that the war there is illegal.
Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith is to become the first British office court-martialled for refusing to serve in the conflict.
Proceedings against the highly-decorated officer for 'refusing to obey a lawful command' are due to begin this year.
Last night a pal of the 37-year-old unit medical officer for RAF Kinloss in Merseyside revealed, "He takes the view this is worth going to prison for."
Spirit
The friend added, "Malcolm joined the RAF out of a spirit of idealism. It was good old Battle of Britain stuff - helping the good guys fight the fascists.
"When he first went to the Gulf in 2003, his awareness of the legal position was far less than it is now. He is now ion no doubt that the war is illegal."
Kendall-Smith - decorated for two previous tours in Iraq - was suspended on full pay of around £40,000 a year after being quizzed by Royal Military Police in June. He was charged on October 5.
The defence case Kendall-Smith is putting together is set to hinge on the RAF law that a serving officer is justified in refusing to obey a command if it is illegal.
Lawyers will argue his commission requires him to act under 'the rules and discipline of war'.
International experts insist that there was no legal backing for the invasion of Iraq, launched before the United Nations passed a second resolution approving force.
Under military rules, Kendall-Smith cannot comment.
His lawyer, Justin Hugheston-Roberts, said, "This is the first case of its kind involving Iraq."
The Ministry of Defence confirmed, "An RAF officer is due to appear before a general court martial."

Franz's plan

(Morning Star, Saturday 15 October 2005)

ALBUM: Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better
(Domino)

UNIQUE music is a rarity these days.

Everyone sounds like everyone else, blurring genre barriers and baffling music fans until there's no way to tell who's the rocker-turned-rapper and who's the pop star-turned-chanteuse.

Franz Ferdinand are hardly unique in history - their jagged guitar stabs and skinny ties owe more than a little to the new wave bands of the 1970s - but, in the here and now, they're one in a million.

First single Do You Want To - sounding unfeasibly like Don't Bring Me Down by ELO - recycles the winning formula of Take Me Out, welding two different songs together, but it works to bring listeners with them through an album that's much heavier and certainly more adventurous than their 2004 debut.

The noisy cartoon swagger of This Boy shows that Franz have balls aplenty, while slower tracks such as Eleanor Put Your Boots On are not out of place either. The standout has to be Evil and a Heathen, an unapologetically punchy blast of pure punk.

It seemed as if Franz Ferdinand's trick was to capture the zeitgeist. By adopting an angular Krautrock style when guitar music as a whole was moving in just that direction.

But the more you listen to this, the more it seems that Franz themselves set the template all along - and we are just their slavish style servants.

Doherty washes off tabloid dirt

(Morning Star, Saturday 01 October 2005)

LIVE: Babyshambles, Fat Sam's, Dundee

THE circus of Pete Doherty rumbles on. Even people who don't care about him, his missus or the drugs are bombarded with it every second from every angle.

The packed crowd in Fat Sam's would be easy to put down to that media saturation and people are certainly animated before the band come on, presumably because they want to be ready to dodge the Doherty vomit, although many from the previous night's gig in Aberdeen were not so agile.

So the band come on. It's not the second coming and there isn't an aura emanating from this skinny young whippersnapper in a striped jumper. Quite the opposite, as, with his hair plastered with sweat to his pasty brow, Doherty looks, for all the world, like a centre half in a junior school six-a-side.

Opening with Do You Know Me? his demeanour seems defiant. He sings: "I don't think so" in response to the titular question, determined to perform the music that he loves and journos be damned.

The idea that the crowd are just morbidly fascinated with the tabloid tale is quickly dismissed, as voices raise all around to join the singer in a raft of rocky, as yet unreleased material.

The fans start up with the well-known "ooohh ooohh ooohh," before the band launch into Killamangiro, but, shortly afterwards, a power cut stops the music short.

Gradually coming back in with bassist Drew McConnell pounding out the Rapper's Delight bassline is genius and the audience, predictably, love it.

That's probably the biggest shock. As this thin, shaggy-haired youth spins around onstage, hitting himself on the head with the microphone, the band actually seem much more together than their last gig in Dundee a mere 12 months ago.

The songs are tight, the crowd go mad for recent single Fuck Forever and there is a genuine mutual affection bubbling under all the raucousness.

Earlier in the day, Doherty told an interviewer: "It's exciting to be doing at last the thing we do best, well, the only thing we do really, which is play our tunes."

A quote which sounds for all the world like rock star rhetoric turns out to be truer than 100 tabloid column inches.

Babyshambles are a confirmed musical success and that's before they've even released their first record.