A certain ratio

Billy Paul and Philadelphia sound documentary

The King of Pop has died at 50

It’s been five years since director Shane Meadows and his long-term on screen collaborator Paddy Considine last worked together. That was for Dead Man’s Shoes, a violent revenge drama that took Considine’s natural, wired intensity and amped it up to an uncomfortable degree. Considine tends to specialise – for Meadows, at least – in charismatic, explosive figures and while his run of movies together with Meadows has proved thrilling and memorable, you might have cause to wonder where they could take their collaborations next.

What to make of The Fiery Furnaces? A brilliant band, maybe, whose frequently demented surfeit of ideas has proved too overwhelming for all but their most assiduous listeners over the past few years.

The last time I saw Simone Felice anywhere near a London stage, he was hanging above it, wild-eyed and shirtless, from a monitor in the ceiling of the 100 Club, from which precarious position he was leading a boisterous crowd through a rowdy version of a song called “Ruby Mae” from the recently-released new album by The Felice Brothers, who were at the time roaring towards the climax of a typically rambunctious show.

I’m conscious that, with the Lemonheads and Sonic Youth posts last week, the blog’s slightly in danger of degenerating into something of a dewy-eyed home for alt-rock fans who were students in the late ‘80s. But unfortunately, I’m going to have to keep this going for a while longer, since the new Dinosaur Jr album represents another band of that generation sustaining their current run of form.

Former Drive-By Trucker makes confident country-soul record

I was making some notes on the new Sonic Youth album, “The Eternal”, this morning, when it occurred to me that writing “pop” down again and again was pretty absurd – one of those delusional fallacies that people who don’t listen to too much actual pop have, I guess, when a rock band starts working in a notionally punchy way.

Blur guitarist’s eccentric talents are a delight

Punk before they called it that. Weird.Loud. Thrilling.