Too Big to Fail? Johnson needs to defend London from his own party

It is always far easier to be in opposition than to govern. In the run up to his election Boris promised lower fares, more police and cleaner politics in City Hall. In every borough there was to be cakes and ale for all, with barely a pet project, protest group or cunning scheme not indulged by the Conservative candidate.

Yet cakes and ale have been in short supply since Boris opened shop, with police numbers falling, fares rising and accusations of cronyism spoiling his cheer. And with the new government now threatening to choke off his supplies, the business of Boris is facing seriously hard times.

The solution is to pose as an independent Mayor fighting the governments “savage” and “crazy” cuts. As a model for his plan, Boris is using his predecessor Ken Livingstone, who long staked out a reputation as an independent critic of his party.
Like Ken, Boris knows that his party need him to succeed in City Hall. A loss for Boris in 2012 would be a huge blow for the Conservatives and Boris’s cakes and ale business is simply too big to fail.

Yet Cameron cannot be seen to give a Tory Mayor too big a favour and his coalition partners are already getting restless.

Last week Liberal Democrat Transport minister Norman Baker warned that “there is a feeling, justified or otherwise, that London gets a very good deal. If we are all going to have to take difficult decisions they have to be fair and not be seen to advantage one part of the country over another.”

Baker’s comments will have rung true with those parts of the country who already receive far less in transport subsidies and consequently pay far more to get around.
Yet as mayor Boris must defend London against this charge, not just because of the damage that it would do to his election chances, but because of the far bigger damage that it would do to the UK economy.

Every pound invested in London gets a far bigger return than elsewhere. And without the promised tube investment, the city will gradually grind to a halt, with TfL estimating that a third of tube stations will regularly have to close just to safely deal with the crowds.

At the current rate of population growth by 2020 ticket gates at some stations would need to be closed every six minutes with delays and temperatures reaching critical point.

And with conditions unbearable underground, more and more Londoners would be forced into their cars with all the added congestion, pollution and misery that would produce.

So whilst cutting off investment in London’s transport system might seem like the most palatable option now, the reality is that big cuts would derail the very motor of the economy that is driving Britain forwards.

Boris can see the danger of this and is trying his hardest to pose as the man who will fight off disaster. Yet for all the headlines it still isn’t clear what the Mayor is actually doing to prevent it.

After a series of stories about the Mayor being “ready to explode”, the Financial Times approached the Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles to see what was actually happening.

The paper was told that there had been “no conversation about funding between Pickles and Johnson” and that there was “no meeting in the diary” either.
Pickles’ team claimed that “the whole exercise seems to have been artificially created to bolster Boris’s credentials.”

Times are hard in government right now. But for a Mayor struggling to be both in government and in opposition, the times must be even harder still.

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Cross Kings shut, Stag’s Head is next

Britain’s pub companies aren’t the most popular firms in the land. With their love of crap beer, high prices and bland boozers, drinkers aren’t in the habit of toasting their names with nut-brown ale.

But North London has just lost one music venue and looks set to lose another thanks to disputes with a company whose way of doing business has been branded “a disaster for British pubs”.

The Cross Kings was once a haven of good taste in the rapidly-gentrifying back streets behind King’s Cross station.

Once a bar for leering backpackers out to get smashed and get laid, it had been transformed into a much-loved spot for new bands and up-and-coming comedians to ply their trade, while by day its clientele ranged from self-conscious hipsters to older drinkers in their Sunday best.

Adored by performers and regulars, the Cross Kings should have had a rosy future, particularly with Central Saint Martins art college due to move into a new campus across York Way next year.

But it’s now boarded up after a dispute with Enterprise Inns, the Cross Kings’ management complaining about being “bled dry” by the firm on its Facebook page.
Despite the Cross Kings’ busy diary of events, they say they were given just a week’s notice before the bailiffs’ arrival on 9 July. It is not known what Enterprise’s plans for the building are.

A couple of miles further down the Regent’s Canal, the waters are no less choppy for the Stag’s Head—still in business at the time of writing, but only just.

Tucked away down a Hoxton backstreet, this unassuming local has also become a favourite on London’s live circuit. But its management is handing the keys back to Enterprise on 8 August, complaining of an “unrealistic rent increase and high beer prices”.

Its Facebook page complains: “When you’re tied to a brewery that refuses to support you and shows this by increasing rent… there is little way out.”

The loss of the Stag’s Head will be keenly felt locally, just weeks after nearby Barden’s Boudoir closed its doors.

So what is going on when successful venues such as these are having to close?

Last year, a committee of MPs said the UK’s big pub companies —such as Enterprise—should face a competition inquiry over the way they treat their pubs, adding that many cases amounted to “downright bullying”.

In particular, they criticised the so-called “beer tie”, where pubs are forced to buy beer from their owners, often at inflated prices. The Campaign For Real Ale says this can add 50p to the price of a pint.

Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland—the chair of parliament’s all-party Save The Pub Group—said: “I’m afraid the way the model has been operated by Enterprise and others has been a disaster for British pubs.

“Frankly, the sooner it changes… the better.”

There could be change on the way. The Office of Fair Trading is investigating the pub market, while the government wants pub companies to announce reforms by next summer.

Any changes will be too late for the Cross Kings and the Stag’s Head..

853blog.wordpress.com

Retro Chick: the phenomenon of the 50s Housewife

Reading the Daily Mail is a roller coaster ride: I know it’s going to make me queasy but the adrenaline kick is strangely addictive. Especially when it is dishing up atavistic propaganda like ‘The new feminist housewives: How the latest generation of graduates are choosing full time motherhood over high-flying careers’. Any DM use of the f-word—‘feminist’—is guaranteed to be richly entertaining and this article, penned by the bucolically-monikered Diane Appleyard (DM, 14 July 2010) is no exception.

As evidence that a “generation” of women is fleeing paid employment for the subtle joys of floral housedresses and cooing at toddlers, the Mail offers a handful of middle-class humanities graduates who collectively enjoy a very casual relationship with reality. “I could be earning a fortune” chirps stay-at-home mum Kate Wheatcroft—brave words for a history graduate in the current economic climate.

The article is, of course, really about economics. This seems to have escaped the attention of its pinny-wearing protagonists, whose fiscal analysis is limited to bragging about their wifely frugality.

“We have very little money,” says mum Ellen Fletcher. “We live on my husband’s salary… and there is nothing left over for any extras.”

What Ellen and the rest of them fail to see, is that living on their husband’s salary is a profoundly political act. Not in a ‘the personal is political’ sense, either. This is basic credit crunch economics and, frankly, the sort of thing a history graduate should pick up on.

Alas, Kate has been too busy procreating to take a hard look at why, in this particular place and moment in time, society is urgently dusting off anachronistic ideals of feminine behaviour and treating them to the tabloid hard sell. They are oblivious to the fact the Daily Mail feature is an explicit attempt to normalise female economic dependence and to reinforce to women that their primary social duty is to be good consumers.

The first hint is the use of the “latest generation” in the title, which deliberately evokes the Second World War-referencing “the greatest generation” appellation.

There is also direct reference made to being a “Fifties housewife”. Remember what happened in the aftermath of the Second World War? Soldiers came home to find women working happily and productively outside the home. This was a social nightmare. Work gave women autonomy and meant they were competing with men for scarce jobs, two heavy blows to fragile male egos. Something had to be done, and quick, so the media, government and corporations ganged up to invent the feminine mystique and sell women on dependence fantasies where they stayed at home doing the hoovering in high heels, and making cookies for little Jimmy and Suzie, while their men went out to bring home the bacon. The cult of maternal devotion was a tough sell though. Women who enjoyed jobs and freedom were mostly forced out of the workplace with the aid of overt employment discrimination.

Sixty years on and the economy is in crisis. Women are once again a significant threat to male social and economic hegemony. The difference is that it is now marginally more difficult to dismiss a female employee just for being a woman. So the media, led by the dutifully small-c conservative likes of the Daily Mail, has to work twice as hard to convince women that it’s in their best interest to be financially dependent, to stay at home and to function as consumers rather than producers. Appleyard makes this quite clear with the comment that Ellen, Kate, et al are living the “Cath Kidston dream”—that is to say, they are buying into a pre-packaged fantasy based on consumption and rearing more little consumers to feed the machine. Never has the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” been more apropos.

cilwarncke.wordpress.com

Jellied Eels: The News in review

Team Expenses Scandal continued to collect star recruits with Tory MP Zac Goldsmith under investigation and Lord Taylor of Warwick being prosecuted over his records. The Independent states that the prominent Tory peer is ‘alleged to have claimed over £11,000 in expenses by pretending that his home was outside London’, although this was his actual residence.

A housing battle of another kind came to a legal close, with the Appeal Court ruling that peace protestors in Parliament Square must leave the site. The Democracy Village, awkward to attack with its anti-war foundations, has been instructed to dismantle after Boris Johnson played the World Heritage Site card. According to the Daily Mail, the group was initially formed to oppose the Afghan war but ‘had become little more than an al fresco dormitory for drug takers, drunks and the homeless’.

The Evening Standard reports on City Hall’s own contentious inhabitants, with Boris spending nine times more than predecessor Ken Livingstone on headhunters. The £450,000 expenditure in two years follows Johnson’s campaign criticism of Ken Livingstone for spending an ‘“excessive” £17.4million on consultants in the previous eight years’.
This hasn’t quashed Boris’ value on the nose. With Labour candidacy not announced until September, Betting Agency Paddypower has already marked the incumbent as favourite to win the 2012 Mayoral Election. Ken Livingstone has a probability of 11/8 to Oona King’s 5/1.

Tory MP Philip Hollobone’s attempt to maneuver his Private Member’s Bill banning certain face coverings, read Burqa and Hijab,* through Commons has not been met with grassroots support. Speaking to the Telegraph, Hollobone said he will refuse to meet with women wearing full Islamic dress at his office unless they lift their veil. The Kettering MP then challenged other European nations to ‘sit up and take notice’. However* Immigration Minister Damian Green* said that there is no possibility of a Coalition proposal emulating the recent French Bill.

Random Interview: Alan: Retired surgeon and volunteer at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum

The Hunterian museum is not for those with a squeamish nature. Inside the packed cabinets are jars full of preserved specimens, including an in-depth study of a human foot, complete with a corn, the skeleton of an “Irish giant”, diseased body parts as well as a range of animals with skin folded back to reveal their delicate insides. The exhibition is a time freeze of John Hunter’s quest to understand the reality of life and how it works. Entering, I was stopped in my tracks by a display of fetuses, preserved over 200 years ago. I felt overwhelmed by the competing sensations of sadness and curiosity but realised there was something undeniably fascinating about them. A few weeks later I spoke with retired surgeon Alan about his experiences as a surgeon and why he thinks the Hunterian museum is so important.

SNIPE: What sort of a surgeon are you and why did you decide to become one?

ALAN: I’m a urologist, that’s water works. ‘Piddlers’, as we used to be called. I’m a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and I retired in 2005. Basically people and medicine fascinate me.

S: But there is a difference between being a people person and wanting to look at people’s insides..

A: Basically if you want to do it you want to do it. I found it fascinating the process of the diagnosis and treatment and satisfaction and joy comes from the patient being better than when they come in.

S: As a surgeon how do you manage your composure and nerves during the most intense operations?

A: You train so that you become used to handling tissue and redesigning parts. People ask me “what was the first incision like”? You never forget that there is a patient there and you do the best for the patient. In emergency situations nothing in the textbook can really prepare you. Yes you can set bones, operate on a kidney, but it’s all about working from basic principles. You decide to take it out, save part of it. You take a deep breath and think back to basics. None of us can say that we have never sweated a bit and thought – this isn’t going right, but you take a grip of yourself, stay calm and don’t panic. Sadly, patients do die on the operating table and that is the worst thing, but it’s part of the experience.

S: Does being a surgeon make you think more about your own body and the fragility of life?

A: No, basically. I am a bit scared of having an operation. I know too much. Although I have had a few myself.

S: What drew you to decide to volunteer at the Hunterian Museum?

A: As a surgeon I am used to talking to people and explaining to patients so they are aware of details. It’s a very useful perspective to be able to now talk to people and help them make sense of the exhibits.

S: The museum is interesting but also a very strange and curious place. Thinking of the fetuses, how do you think this is relevant to people? Why do you think there is a value in the public seeing these exhibits?

A: It’s very powerful to see these images in 3 dimension, much more powerful than pictures. Going back to your example, people ask all kinds of questions, have the babies been killed are they plastic? You can stop them and show people this is how we developed, this is how you became who you are. In the rest of the museum there are displays of diseases we no longer see anymore. People can see how surgery has developed. As horrific as it is, you can see how war has helped improve medical advances in plastic surgery, blood transfusion and fractures. Even in my lifetime there have been tremendous developments. I like saying to the young surgeons, “I know I sound like a boring old man, but in my day we didn’t have keyhole surgery” and they look at me with mouths aghast. I’ve also seen the development of antibiotics, anesthesia techniques, ultra scan, etc.

S: John Hunter seemed to be quite obsessed with looking at the insides of all kinds of animals as well as human parts, do you think he was an eccentric to some degree?

A: No, I think he was a very interesting chap, he was not only a surgeon but was also interested in how things work. There are various animals displayed so you can see how they work as he was interested in all living things, making comparisons. He had a brilliant brain. Things were more deficient then; we have so much more technology and this is how people learnt. Also the embalming techniques are quite advanced for the time.

S: Some may say there is an element of beauty in the exhibition, Do you think there is a blurry line between science and art?

A: Absolutely, Some artists come into the museum to sketch the exhibits. I quite like to watch, not being any sort of an artist myself. As a surgeon though, you can’t leave anything to chance. You can’t think, that’s sewn together reasonably well, I’ll just leave that there, because it will come apart. It is an exact science when you take things out. Some surgeons sketch their operations. Some of the original surgeons were tremendous artists.

S: If I’m honest, when I was walking around the museum I started to feel a little bit sick by the time I got to a video of a heart operation. Do you think there are two types of people, those who can handle it and those who can’t?

A: Well there are but we all have our own particular areas. I used to work with someone who was a brain surgeon. I can’t stand it. It looks horrible. The thought of all the brain and the mind and the soul. You don’t know what you are going to produce at the end with the brain. When you are in the brain it just looks the same.

I decided to keep out of there and avoid that. When you are operating on a kidney you know exactly how to achieve the outcome.

S: But I suppose if you were at a dinner party it would be quite impressive to say “actually I am a brain surgeon.”

A: No not really. Very few of us accept we are surgeons. At cocktail parties you end up getting cornered by people asking about their aches and pains.

For more information about how to visit the Hunterian Museum go to www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums

Why must words hurt? Love in the time of cougars

It’s a dangerous time to be a word. Put yourself in the place of the word cougar and think how you would feel. One minute you’re pottering around in a peaceful corner of the dictionary, minding your own business and referring to a mammal native to the Americas. The next, Courtney Cox has come out of nowhere, pounced on you and crowbarred you into the title of her dramedy Cougar Town, and Grazia is fretting over whether or not you’ve become an offensive term. It all happened so fast, but now it’s done and your meaning has changed forever. It’s time to take stock.

As someone who was recently cougared, I take a particularly interest in the subject. Is it wrong of me use the word in this sense, even though it’s currently everywhere? Should we fight to give it back its old meaning? Words are slippery things, and can easily elude our clutches. For example, according to official cougarology, I should now be called either a cougar “cub” or a “victim,” which suggests a certain confusion as to whether I was being mothered or attacked. I suppose I’m still a bit confused about that too.

Winston Churchill famously said that anyone who wasn’t a conservative by the age of forty didn’t have a brain. This may apply to politics, but the old dog certainly can’t have been talking about sex Conservative it was not. I suppose there’s just no point wasting time on inhibitions when you’ve seen it all before.

There we were, me ravishing a woman old enough to be my mother; her all over a boy young enough to be her son. Psychologically, it was pretty fucked up. There was clearly some deeply troubling Oedipal stuff going on in both our minds—dark, unholy thoughts best left unsaid. But we both knew they were there, and the space between the thoughts and their expression was filled with some really great sex.
Wow, I thought. Cougars.

In the morning we shared the mirror. As I spiked my hair with styling fudge, and she caressed her face with L’Oreal Revitalift Anti-wrinkle and Firming Eye cream, we caught a glimpse of each other’s vanity and vulnerability reflected alongside our own. For a moment, we were both more cub than prey.

That’s what we need to remember when we toss around words like cougar to describe each other. It’s not the word that is important, it’s the person, and no word is ever going to do justice to the multitudes contained within. That’s why I don’t have a problem with the word cougar any more than MILF or toyboy or twink. They’re just words, and they’re funny, and the sooner we choose to read them as descriptive rather than pejorative, the better.

When Tina Fey’s character in Mean Girls pleaded with the girls to “stop calling each other sluts and whores…it just makes it OK for guys to call you sluts and whores,” she had the right end in mind, but the wrong means. She should have told them to start calling the promiscuous guys sluts and whores as well.

Much like the St. George’s Cross was an insignia of racism until those of us without tattoos and rottweilers decided we quite wanted it back, so should we cheerfully look forward to the day when “I am a slut” will be no more an offensive sentence than “I have blonde hair.”

So if someone you know is being a cougar, call them a cougar. If someone is sleeping around, be they straight or gay, old or young, male or female, then call them a slut. To their face. But not as an insult, just as a noun. That way, together, we can truly build a better world.

744 Hours - 7 must-see shows

UNDERAGE FESTIVAL » 1 August
Victoria Park | Tower Hamlets, E3

Teens between 14 and 18 must move fast to get tickets for this fourth annual mix of hormones, future music and Topman sponsorship; where kids brought up under Harry Potter and Labour get bonkers in the park. No parents, 19-year-olds or booze allowed (highly edgy security). £29.50 gets a line-up—overseen by geriatric tastemaker Sam Killcoyne (18)—headed by Ellie Goulding, MIA and Lightspeed Champion. The bill is probably better than Lovebox and also includes interesting acts like Stornoway and Everything Everything, and a ‘Community Music Stage’. The kids are coming up from behind—until the embarrassing Harry Enfield Dads come to pick them at 8pm, when the festival ends. Amy Liptrot

JENS LEKMAN » 3 August
Union Chapel | Compton Avenue, N1 2XD

The last time Jens Lekman blessed our shores with his own unique brand of self-deprecating chamber pop, he’d just released one of the albums of 2008 with Night Falls Over Kortedala and crooned his way across the UK including shows with Bon Iver, Josh Rouse and Wildbirds & Peacedrums. In his two year absence, he’s since quit Sweden for a life of leisure in Australia – only stepping out for a handful of dates in the warmer climes of Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Lekman returns for a one-off show in the glorious surroundings of the Union Chapel and, with no new album to promote, expect greatest hits galore. Anyone who has seen Lekman perform can only testify of his magnificence on the live stage; with the added backdrop of the Union Chapel to enhance the experience, even Jesus Christ might swing by. That is, if he can get a ticket. Rich Thane

RATFACE » 3 August 2010
The Windmill | 22 Blenheim Gardens, SW2 5BZ

Ratface is a vocalist who sings/screams/raps/gesticulates wildly over Casiotone lo-fi backing tracks and Wu-Tang beats from a grainy 8 track. Augmented by a back up vocalist and the occasional Casio stab, Ratface shows are raw, violent, funny and a whole lot of fun. Having fronted much-missed hardcore punk band Dead Letters, Russell moved to Bristol and started gigging solo under the Ratface moniker, moving between vocal loops, scattershot rap and hectoring post punk lyricism, Ratface straddles many potentially awful cliché pitfalls but darts amongst them with such nimble grace he deserves a knighthood (he’d send it straight back). A living genius. Go see for yourself. Sebastian Reynolds

A HAWK & A HACKSAW » 3 August
Café Oto | 18 – 22 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL

This Leaf Records-sign Balkan/Klezmer/Mariachi fusion folk ensemble are stalwarts of the ATP scene, and after tours with unlikely indie megaliths Portishead, their audience is growing. Jeremy Barnes’s previous work as drummer and organist in legendary acoustic rockers Neutral Milk Hotel can’t have hurt. Hailing from Albuquerque and often gathering a mixture of English, American and European musicians, every tour is different and consistently excellent. Based around the flowing accordion work and swooping vocals of Barnes and the virtuoso flair of violinist Heather Trost their ranks are often swelled by tuba, cimbalom and trumpet for fascinating variations on eastern European roots musics. Look out for mooted new album, provisionally titled ‘No Rest For The Wicked’, soon. Sebastian Reynolds

FUCKED UP » 9 August
Barfly | 49 Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8AN

There’s plenty to like about Damian Abraham. He’s got a great name for starters, like God and the devil wrapped into one. It makes sense then that he’s the size of two men, a sweating, snarling 20 stone punk monster known as Pink Eyes on stage (though Shouty Mouth or Clammy Forehead would suit just as well). He also spent the $20,000 2009 Polaris Prize money on funding a right-on cover of Do They Know It’s Christmas, featuring Wu-Tang and Yo La Tengo yelling into a Dictaphone while listening to the original on his iPod. And his band is just as awesome. Mike Williams

YES WAY » 13 – 15 August
Auto Italia | 1 Glengall Road, SE15 6NJ

DIY promoters Upset The Rhythm and innovative curators Auto Italia collaborate to showcase the most exciting sounds and visuals from the UK underground for the second year. No-wavers Islet preview their October tour, gamelan fanatics Chora demonstrate why the Wire love them, La La Vasquez and Plug return and there’s a special ‘opening night’ party with Lovvers, Cold Pumas, The Human Race and Sub Pop dudes Male Bonding on the 13th. Sian Rowe??

GOLD PANDA / MAX TUNDRA / DAM MANTLE » 17 August
Madame JoJos | 8-10 Brewer Street

Evergreen midweek indie-dance-whatever party White Heat has teamed up with Rockfeedback for this stellar night of live leftfield electronica. Gold Panda was one of the hype bands of 2010 after his inclusion on the crazily over-valued BBC Sounds list, but his catchy, supine synth squiggling is well worth your time (unlike much of that list’s all-hype-no-tunes inclusions). Max Tundra is a 100-carat genius, making mind-bending pop that combines the 8-bit aesthetic of Germlin and DJ Scotch Egg with tunes fit for the Jackson 5. Dam Mantle opens with an amniotic, low-key, ambient take on things. John Rogers

Diary: Simon Raymonde

Monday The week started off with a firecracker at 10.30am when I got a whiff that 6 Music had been saved. It took all my might not to call everyone I knew but as the news was embargoed till 11am I had to sit on it. After all our campaigning it really felt like something of great import had just happened. A victory for the underground.

Tuesday Wavves have got themselves a new manager, dude who looks after Courtney Love, and I figure I should call him to discuss King Of The Beach. It’s one helluva record. Beastly good. Abe Vigoda’s brilliant new track Throwing Shade should be up on Soundcloud soon – exciting. Their new sound is a thrilling a leap forward.

Wednesday Met with John Grant to discuss Edward Munch, La La Land, Alan Partridge, Mock and Toof, Solvent (the band not the abuse) and then looked through the stunning footage from Mountain Man’s St Augustine’s Tower show last week.

Thursday Announced new headline show we are promoting for Mountain Man at St Giles Church. Got new mixes from Swedish band I Break Horses, which I then played 20 times without pause. So thrilling. Then off to judge the Green Man Poll gig at the Monarch with the winner opening the Green Man festival in August. Phil from Mojo and Stephen from Moshi Moshi are fellow judges. We agreed after a hot and sweaty show that the Dufflefolks (not a great name admittedly) were the deserving winners.

Friday A very productive label meeting. We sat out in the sun in the courtyard and talked about how much we love Edwyn Collins, how good Arcade Fire gig was, the merits of Lloyd Cole (I wasn’t having it, others disagreed), and how the new Walkmen album is their best yet, and sent John Grant off to Cardiff to shoot the Chicken Bones video. The treatment is insane and I can’t WAIT to see it!
Another week in my quiet life.

Simon Raymonde is the founder of Bella Union and a former Cocteau Twin

Best Coast: riding the wave

As a result of the rise of low-cost bedroom recordings and the rise of the internet as a tool for communicating and distributing music over the last decade, it increasingly feels like one could never run out of bands to discover. Using blogs, MySpace profiles and webzines, anyone with a passing interest in music can daily read names they’ve not read before, see promo shots they’ve not seen before and hear songs they’ve not heard before. With such a modern media overload to contend with, we all build filters both conscious and subconscious, either favouring certain blogs or blocking out bands with triangles as part of their names.

Best Coast got vetoed by a number of this writer’s personal filters initially: young girl talks about hot weather, weed and cats a lot, plays lo-fi beach jams and sings simple, naïve lyrics about boys ‘n’ shit. I’d considered the whole package to be a pretty face on top of a stack of buzzwords from the last twelve months, a contrived set-up. This, as I was soon to find out, serves a massive injustice upon Bethany Cosentino, the voice/brain/face of Best Coast.

Having spent a childhood with a musical family keen for her to succeed in the field,
Bethany began writing songs when she was fifteen under the name Bethany Sharayah. They were sweet country-tinged pop songs in the style of Rilo Kiley and attracted some attention from major labels, which she remembers with mirth, boiling her flirt with an A&R hotshot down to “it was just like a dude handed me a business card and was like “I wanna have a meeting with you” and I was like “no” and that’s what happened.”

Soon after deciding that this style of music wasn’t what she wanted to devote herself to, she started psych-drone twosome Pocahaunted with a girl called Amanda Brown who she met at community college. “I got to smoke a lot of weed, I got to hang out in a dark recording studio with this other weird girl and we would just make these weird trippy songs and we got to open for Sonic Youth out of it, which was pretty cool.” A support slot during which they used twelve minutes of their allotted thirty and sat on the floor playing one chord progression over and over, but one which enabled Bethany to become friends with Thurston Moore.

Having fulfilled many a musician’s wildest dream at such an early point in a career could potentially have skewed her outlook on the whole business. Instead, she moved to New York to start anew and left the band as one, three thousand miles separated them and two, it was another genre which didn’t ignite sufficient passion from within to be an on-going concern.

This drastic diversion in style helped Bethany to consolidate her identity as a songwriter. “I was in this band, playing this kind of music I had never been familiar with, music that I’d never listened to, so if it did anything, it allowed me to realise that the music I wanted to be making is nothing like this. And before I was in Pocahaunted I was making pretty poppy, singer-songwriter stuff, so it was obvious that I’m a pop songwriter at the roots.”

New York proved too cold to sustain someone so in love with the sun and the beach and as soon as she touched back down in Los Angeles Bethany began work on Best Coast.

“The cool thing about Best Coast is that it’s the first band I’ve ever been in, the first project throughout the whole of my musical history that I’ve been really proud of and really excited about because I think it’s the kind of music that I would want to listen to.”

“This is something which really interests me; making music evocative of 50s and 60s eras and California and this whole beachy aesthetic that’s been tagged onto this band. That’s what I want to create: I want to make music which sounds like that. This is the kind of music I’ve been listening to for years now, beachy, Californian, 50s/60s stuff. I’m like “cool, I’m making music which is reminiscent of that time” and even if it’s not, if it doesn’t exactly sound that way, if it’s making people say “I live in Madison, Wisconsin where it’s freezing and I’m listening to Best Coast and I feel like I’m at the beach surrounded by palm trees”, that’s fucking awesome, that’s what I want to do.”

A few listens of the upcoming debut record Crazy For You and the affectations are there strong and true. Sweet, reverb-soaked vocals on top of lo-fi guitar and backing harmonies bring a sound of 60s pop songs updated to fit modern slacker life – lots of ooh-wah-wahs and “I wish he was my boyfriend” alongside liberal references to a weed habit that sail close to the gauche. After closer examination it appears as just another example of the honest, open and unabashed way Bethany presents herself and her life. She’s young and doing what she wants to be doing—making music, getting stoned, watching Seinfeld with her buddies and hanging out with her cat, Snacks, who adorns the front cover of the album.

One wonders what kind of mileage such juvenile pop songs will have in a year’s time when new buzzes like ‘witch house’ have taken off and subsided again, but this is a girl going with the flow, concentrating on the here and now.

“Who’s to say that in two or three years from now I’ll be into goth and industrial music, who fucking knows, I might try to do something like that, because the kind of person I am, my interests change a lot, the stuff that I’m into changes a lot.”
Make the most of her upcoming shows because her mind is supple for change, and learn from my mistake: don’t make assumptions about Best Coast.

Perfume Genius: I hear dead people

In 2008, Mike Hadreas’ web page read: “Cool guy. I think he’s dead”. He didn’t really need to write anything at all. As Perfume Genius’ debut album ‘Learning’ demonstrates, the biography is the songs. They describe relationships with an older man; smoking weed and listening to Joy Division (“Mr Peterson”). There’s addiction (“Write to Mother”), modern love, and coming to terms with homosexuality (“Gay Angels”). Even the piano, the second star of the delicate album, comes with it’s own story. His teacher Maxine, someone he describes as a “legitimate woman”, could easily slip into one of the songs with her grizzled paws, lookalike German Shepherd and fusty aroma.

“I wrote a paragraph about me and it sounded convoluted, like I took myself too seriously,” he explains, smiling as if to prove he’s not desperately morbid. “I don’t like to change things. I tried to go back and re-record the songs at one point but it didn’t feel right. A lot of them I’d only played when I’d written them and I even had to re-remember them for the live show”.

That’s the reason Hadreas is in town. It’s his first UK show at London’s Hoxton Hall, something he’s been looking forward to since signing to Turnstile Records, a UK label that flew out to meet him when he was just a shadow on the net. He admits that the live performances are what he’s always imagined Perfume Genius to be. “Although I am trembly,” he says, putting out his hands, “on stage I think even my brain shakes”.

To calm those nerves, he recruited his friend Alan to sit calmly on the second keyboard, joining Hadreas for duets. “I’ve been a real hippy about that,” he explains of his live setup. “I played with a guy who was a really good musician and I asked him “do you know what that song is about?” and he’d say “um, yeah, sure I do!” and never really say what. I knew that he didn’t know and I needed him to really understand, you know? Alan has been through a lot of things I have and we have similar life experiences and that’s really important. He’s really nice too!”

These meanings have struck a chord with many Perfume Genius fans, who often write letters to Hadreas about how they identify with his experiences. It’s something that he’s found particularly helpful, especially in the moments when he’s not so sure where his music is going. “It’s good that I’m getting these ideas and stories out to people,” he says. “It makes my fear seem so goofy”.

As the show eventually proves, he had little to worry about. Even listeners who have not experienced the troubles that the singer has find his simple stories inspiring. Like Raymond Carver, someone who Hadreas admires, he lets his audience read between the lines.

And perhaps it’s funny, considering his original internet bio, that the kind of fervent fandom that Hadreas inspires is often reserved for, well, dead people. The damp-eyed mythical persona that some have created for him (away from the reality of him loving jodhpur ski pants, wanting to cuddle Tom Jones and loving Diet Coke) isn’t a millions miles away from those surrounding Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis.

Yet as he takes stock of the past, he definitely won’t be stopping like those guys. He’ll return to the UK before the end of the year and hole himself away at his mother’s house to write more songs for a second record. “I’ve been learning how to…” he stops and shakes his head. “I shouldn’t say “learning” so much! I mean, I’m figuring out how everything works. I haven’t ever been this healthy and I feel like I’m making the right decisions, even if I haven’t made them in the past. Having people watch me can be strange, but hey, I hope they keep on doing it.”