From pop's early days

(Morning Star, Saturday 18 February 2006)

ALBUM: The Hollies - Staying Power
(EMI)

HAVING appeared on the first ever Top of the Pops in 1964, The Hollies have proven that their staying power is quite almighty.

It seems incredibly unlikely that the old timers of British pop will be invited onto the show in its new guise, with their yester-pop crafted for Magic FM listeners. Well, we may be surprised.

In the meantime, this is tipped by the band themselves as their best ever studio album and who am I to argue?

First, the idea of the band still being The Hollies after all this time is an anathema to their youthful exuberance, not to mention how many are still original members. Very Stranglers.

Many tracks here are full of the same old pop ideas, but they don't really have the charisma to carry them off.

The Spanish guitar in So Damn Beautiful is peculiarly nauseating, while album closer Let Love Pass is unwieldy for the casual listener and just too too much.

With the vocal harmonies The Hollies are famed for peeking in every so often, most notably on Touch Me, there are sparks of inspiration, but the overall effect on this listener is one of antipathy, amplified to repulsion when the sleeve reveals Enrique Iglesias's part in the songwriting duties.

Juggernaut of revenge

(Morning Star, Thursday 09 February 2006)

Get Carter, Byre Theatre, St Andrews

WITH a burst of strident period music, Red Shift's production of Get Carter haemorrhages onto the stage, all bloody and grimy and full of despair.

Better known as the 1971 film starring Michael Caine in his most iconic of roles than from the 1970 novel Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis, productions of Get Carter will forever be held up against Caine's defining celluloid interpretation.

Vicious gangster Jack Carter (Jack Lord) travels from London back to his childhood home in a northern steel town for his brother's funeral.

Suspecting that his death was not an accident, Carter sets out to find the culprits, weaving a heady and often violent path through the booze and fag-soaked north, finding momentary pleasure with tawdry sexual encounters.

Lord asserts himself early on in a blackly comic interchange with Daniel Copeland's Gerald Fletcher.

His Carter is a juggernaut of revenge, unstoppable until his brother's killers are brought to rough justice. He shines here as the punisher - remorseless and unforgiving but also brash and swaggering - and smart enough to watch his own back.

The female roles played by Sally Orrock and Angela Ward are uniquely strong, each woman inhabiting three distinctly separate characters.

This is a play full of strength and venom, where even the set is deceptively complex.

The only letdown is a soundtrack populated with a raft of recognisable hits so staccato in their appearance as to resemble a round of guess the intro. Recommended anyway.

The new cynics

(Morning Star, Saturday 04 February 2006)

ALBUM: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
(Domino)

KIRSTIE MAY introduces us to new rock upstarts the Arctic Monkeys, a Sheffield four-piece with a nice line in snappy lyrics and top tunes.

If you don't know who the Arctic Monkeys are, you must have been burying your head in the sand.

They are a critically lauded, recently successful band with a nice line in snappy lyrics and rocking tunes.

But, if that's all you know, you're still pretty clueless, because there's so much more.

Like a gang of little scoundrels who besiege your local offy, these four Sheffield boys have something of the glue sniffer about them.

Graduates of the school of junkie youth, like a Busted put together by Pete Doherty, Alex Turner and pals are dirty and dour, displaying a disenchantment and cynicism far beyond their average 19 years.

Their first single, I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, was number one with a bullet off the back of a guerilla net campaign.

The song soundtracks a hundred school discos - sweaty and sordid, mindful of its own youth.

Dancefloor's chart success was echoed by its follow-up When the Sun Goes Down, a tale of hookers and horror in the north, ruled by a riff straight out of Keef's back catalogue.

The album clearly has a lot to live up to - the success of the singles means that the eyes of the music world are fixed on their every move - and there are already detractors baying for their demise.

But, take a step back from all of this superfluous journo opining and the fact remains that the Arctic Monkeys are just a very good band.

Maybe you don't like Turner's disinterested vocal, particularly on the sweet Mardy Bum.

That's your choice, of course, but bear in mind that he is merely aping the misanthropic Dylan at his most churlish.

Maybe singing in Yorkshire accents pisses you off, although the band themselves prize that honesty above all, as detailed in Fake Tales of San Francisco, a warning tale for indie poseurs everywhere.

Maybe you feel that their better-than-chav style is unpalatable, as they clearly have roots in that culture. Witness A Certain Romance, the album highlight.

Rolling in with a heavy drum sound, the song itself displays a ska tempo, the backdrop to a tale of two tribes destined not to see eye-to-eye.

But Turner's detailing of the differences creates a "them and us" scenario, that we know better than smashing people's heads in down the Red Lion, as much good as this knowledge does us.

When people say they like good music, it's often because they like a nice tune or the singer's got good hair.

But it takes effort and passion to like the Arctic Monkeys, because that's what they deserve.