Prawns are sometimes eaten on their own, perhaps with one dip or a variety of dips; tossed into salads; or cooked as part of Asian dishes, for instance with noodles, or as key components of curries or dumplings. Think of this recipe then as a decidedly less adventurous way to prepare prawns: sans dips, greenery, and Asian influences, but instead as a lower calorie variation on fish and chips, or simply as an unbreaded and unbattered version of prawns/shrimp/scampi and fries. Think of this easy recipe, in short, anyway which will allow you to best enjoy it.
The differences between prawns and shrimp are confused and mildly contested. The two terms are not scientific, and where a distinction is made, it is that prawns are larger species – with longer legs and more sets of claws – while shrimp are smaller. However, ‘shrimp’ is the commonplace term for all varieties sold and served in the United States, while in the United Kingdom and many other Commonwealth countries ‘prawn’ is much more common, with ‘shrimp’ reserved only for very small species.
The situation in the UK is the case in Australia too – despite the popular saying ‘throw another shrimp on the barbie’, which in fact originates from a series of Australian Tourism Commission advertisements aired in America in the 1980s, starring the actor Paul Hogan. To promote the country in America, ‘shrimp’ was used instead of ‘prawn’, despite ‘shrimp’ rarely appearing as such within Australia. The first advert in the series was launched during the National Football Conference Championship Game in January 1984, and soon helped take Australia from 78th to 1st on the list of the most desired vacation destinations for Americans.
The point is that you can use prawns or shrimp to make this dish: whatever differences there are should matter little. My recipe simply requires that you stir fry or pan fry the seafood, with garlic and other spices and flavourings, for a few brief minutes. Meanwhile, for the fries I used frozen fries rather than cutting and cooking potato from scratch. I have had some success using a mandoline on potatoes and making french fries, crinkle cut fries, and crinkle cut chips; but I’ve never managed the level of crispness which I achieve by simply throwing frozen fries into hot oil. It is worth taking frozen fries out of the freezer a while before cooking, to allow them to defrost.
I spiced the fries with a Swedish ‘pommes frites krydda’. This is a combination of ordinary salt, onion salt, celery salt, paprika, and sugar. You might use a combination of these ingredients; you may opt for just paprika; and I am aware that some people enjoy elaborating their fries with supplements such as Parmesan cheese. For this dish, Parmesan may prove too much – but I am not about to circumscribe your preferences, and warmly afford you the opportunity to spice your fries however you wish.
Ingredients (for two people)
200g peeled prawns
400-500g frozen french fries
2 garlic cloves
1 small red chilli
Garlic powder
Lime juice
Soy sauce
Salt
Pepper
French fry seasoning (salt/’pommes frites krydda’/paprika/etc.)
I reckon that I used about 400-500 grams of frozen french fries for two people, which produced a not-insurmountable surfeit of fries. I know that I used 200 grams of peeled prawns, from frozen, which proved about right.
Method
Heat enough sunflower oil in a deep pan or wok to cook the french fries.The oil will need to largely – but not necessarily entirely – cover the fries.
Cook the fries, in a couple of batches if necessary, until they are golden in colour and crisp on the outside.
Once cooked, set the fries aside and spice.
In a frying pan or wok, heat a little sunflower oil.
Dice the garlic cloves and the chilli, and add to the pan.
Throw in the prawns.
Season the prawns with salt, pepper, and garlic powder and some chilli flakes if desired, and fry them lightly in the oil, tossing for three or four minutes.
Add a splash of lime juice during cooking, and a dash of soy sauce as you’re about to turn off the heat.
I used the same large wok for all of the cooking: frying the fries first, then getting rid of the excess oil before cooking the prawns. The prawns do not need much cooking time. Serve the prawns atop or beside the fries; and with some sort of side salad, beans, bread, or whatever.
Scotland voted on Thursday to remain within the United Kingdom – with 55% and 2,001,926 voting ‘No’ to Scottish independence, while 45% and 1,617,989 voted ‘Yes’ – after more than two years of heated debate, but also on the back of a late pledge by the three main Westminster parties to grant Scotland greater devolved powers as part of the UK. The pledge, signed by David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Ed Miliband and published on the front page of the Daily Record at the beginning of the week, promised ‘extensive new powers’ to Scotland.
More devolution for Scotland in the case of a ‘No’ vote was always on the agenda, but the scope of these late-promised powers is a matter of debate between the three parties and between the parties and the SNP. The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood already legislates for Scotland’s health and social services, education, housing, transportation, agriculture, fisheries and forestry, environment, arts and sport, tourism, and economic development. The Scotland Act 2012 – which amended the Scotland Act 1998, which established the devolved Scottish Parliament – additionally gave Scotland’s Parliament the power to raise or lower the rate of income tax by 10p in the pound, uniformly across all tax bands; as well as some other minor powers relating to taxation and law and order. However the Act is not due to be fully realised before 2016, and is now likely to be superseded. At the moment the Scottish Parliament can alter the rate of income tax by 3p in the pound.
Maximum devolution for Scotland – ‘devo max’ – would imply allowing the Scottish Parliament to legislate on everything except foreign policy and defence. It is clear that any move to extend Scotland’s powers will fall some way short of this. So far, discussion around the pledge for extensive new powers for Scotland has centred upon three issues. The first is greater still Scottish authority over taxation. The SNP would like complete control over taxation within Scotland, including absolute control over income tax rates, corporation tax, and air passenger duty. The Conservatives appear ready to give complete control over income tax rates; while the Liberal Democrats would offer this and more. Labour, however, seem willing to allow the Scottish Parliament to increase tax rates as they see fit, but not to unilaterally cut the top rate of income tax.
Secondly, the pledge vowed to consolidate Scotland’s authority over its NHS. This is against a background of gesture from Westminster threatening cuts and further privatisations; but also in a context whereby the NHS in Scotland apparently faces a funding gap of £400 million. Thirdly, and related to the issue of the NHS, is the promise to retain the Barnett formula: a mechanism for allocating public expenditure levels in the United Kingdom’s four nations, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Based on population, the Barnett formula has resulted in Scotland maintaining a significantly higher expenditure per capita than England: as it stands today, Scotland spends £1,623 – 19% – more per head than England on public services.
Embellishing a timetable established several weeks ago by Gordon Brown, David Cameron announced yesterday morning in his post-referendum speech that Lord Smith of Kelvin – a former BBC governor, and chairman of the organising committee for Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games – will oversee the process towards greater devolution for Scotland. The timeline is short: detailed proposals are to be written up by October, and they should pass consultation by November before a draft bill is published in January. Any legislation will not be passed until after the general election in May, and the continued implementation of the Barnett formula is likely to prove a sticking point within the UK Parliament.
The promise of greater devolution for Scotland has brought a surge of attention to the West Lothian question, and the proposal for ‘English votes for English laws’. In short, the question – first raised back in 1977 by the West Lothian MP Tam Dalyell, in the build up to the failed Scottish referendum of 1979 – asks why Scottish MPs can vote on English laws, while English MPs cannot vote on Scottish laws as they have no access to the Scottish Parliament. The proposal suggests that where legislation only concerns England, only MPs from English constituencies should be allowed to vote.
It is easy to go back and forth over ‘English votes for English laws’. Superficially, the proposal sounds eminently reasonable; but when you realise that two of its main proponents over the past weeks and months have been Conservative MP John Redwood and UKIP leader Nigel Farage, suspicions grow in the mind as the body is immediately beset by revulsion. On the other hand on Thursday night, as the referendum results filtered through via the BBC, Ming Campbell – former Liberal Democrat leader and current MP for North East Fife – agreed that, with more powers promised to the Scottish Parliament, an end to the ability for Scottish MPs to vote on English laws is not only inevitable, but logical and fair.
In fact, the proposal was part of the Conservative manifesto for 2010; but the coalition government determined to set up a commission to investigate rather than act. The McKay Commission reported in March 2013, broadly supporting procedural change; but averring that ‘Under the Commission’s recommendations, no MPs would be prevented from voting on any bill, and the right of the House as a whole to make final decisions would be preserved’ and ‘Our proposals retain the right of a UK-wide majority to make the final decisions where they believe UK interests or those of a part of the UK other than England should prevail. We expect that governments will prefer compromise to conflict.’
English laws – as opposed to UK laws – would in theory cover the areas of health, education, transportation, and culture. Foreign affairs, defence, energy, and basic welfare provision and pensions are prominent among the realms which would then remain the concern of the UK Parliament. But with greater devolution for Scotland when it comes to taxation, it is unclear to what extent England might be allowed to set its economic policy independently from the rest of the United Kingdom. This is an intractable problem with the concept of ‘English votes for English laws’, because it is arguable that given the population of England and the size of the English economy, the decisions it makes economically will always have a disproportionate impact on its partners north and west of the border.
With Scotland voting to stay part of the UK and the focus turning to the West Lothian question, what also show through upon analysis are both the strengths of the union between Scotland and England, and the divisions within English society. ‘English votes for English laws’ is a populist proposal, and might well appeal to the vast majority of the English population. But it is hard to see how, in practise, it would benefit vast swathes of the country.
In the 2010 general election, Scotland returned 41 Labour MPs to the House of Commons from 59 contested seats. This amounts to 69% of Scotland’s seats won by Labour. In the North East of England, Labour won 25 from 29 seats. In the North West, Labour took 47 seats from a possible 75; and in Yorkshire and the Humber, they won 32 seats from 54. This means that in the north of England, Labour won 66% of seats. Yet in England as a whole, the Conservatives won 298 of 533 seats; giving them an election victory – although not a majority – in the United Kingdom with 307 seats out of 650.
When it comes to politics, the north of England is ideologically and economically closer to Scotland – and to Wales, where in 2010 Labour took 26 out of 40 seats, or 65% – than it is to London and the South East. However it is without its own parliament, and without the benefits brought about in Scotland by the Barnett formula. It suffers from a lack of representation in parliament and from a shortage of investment in jobs and in cultural life. And it seems perverse that one of the consequences of the close referendum in Scotland might be the further diminishing of the north. If ‘English votes for English laws’ becomes implemented – which may not require the passage of any new legislation – then the viewpoint of northern England will be increasingly marginalised as it loses the effective balance provided by Scottish MPs, and sees Labour struggle to attain a majority on English-only issues of legislation.
Other problems are posed by ‘English votes for English laws’. Would this change require a separate parliament building, which would be the preserve of English MPs and English matters of debate – and if so, where would an English Parliament be located? Otherwise an English Parliament could simply sit in the Commons on a rotational basis: sitting two or three days a week, with the UK Parliament sitting the rest of the time. Alternately, the UK Parliament could remain intact, with Scottish MPs even allowed to debate English laws, but voting limited to English politicians.
On Thursday night, the Times political columnist Daniel Finkelstein raised the notion that, more than an English Parliament, such a fundamental change to legislative procedure could require an English executive – a vast and unwieldy undertaking, which would have wide-ranging ramifications for governmental ministers and the civil service. Labour are advertising a constitutional convention to consider the future of political process in the United Kingdom, reluctant to accept ‘English votes for English laws’, especially as David Cameron seems set to bind further Scottish devolution to the enactment of the proposal. Meanwhile on Thursday night, Labour MP Jim Murphy took a pleasantly contrarian perspective and asked, given the breadth of powers enjoyed by the Greater London Authority, whether London’s MPs should also face a limited role when it comes to legislating for the rest of England.
This argument in particular raises the potential solution of greater devolution for England’s regions. The manner and the terms of such would be difficult to agree upon. Would the present tiered system of local councils remain; would a powerful layer of government emerge at regional level, between Westminster and the local councils over England’s nine regions; or would the concept of city-regions, experimented with in Manchester and Leeds, be spread out across the country? The powers handed over would be open to dispute. And where ‘English votes for English laws’ would seemingly benefit the Conservatives, there is the view that greater devolution for the regions would play into the hands of Labour. Any shift in powers could be complemented by a more representative voting system. But to accept that the strength of feeling shown in Scotland extends throughout the UK requires significant devolution to the regions – and the development of a genuine localised politics, a process which appears both viable and necessary in today’s globalised, interconnected world.
Following the 2014 Swedish general election, which took place yesterday, 14 September, Sweden is set for a new government and a new political leader. The results show the Social Democrats with 31.2% of the vote, while the incumbent Moderate Party’s share has fallen to 23.2% from the 30.1% they won back in 2010. The Social Democrat leader, Stefan Löfven, will become Sweden’s Prime Minister, and must look to form a coalition government in trying circumstances. Sweden’s far-right, anti-immigration party, the duplicitously named Sweden Democrats, have increased their vote from 5.7% in 2010 to 12.9%, which makes them the third largest party in the country; and it is such a share of the vote that it means a minority ruling government appears inevitable. Even with the support of their usual allies, the Social Democrats cannot reach a majority in the Riksdag.
Since 2006, Sweden has been governed by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party, and the Alliance for Sweden: a four party coalition to the centre-right of Swedish politics, comprising the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, the Liberal People’s Party, and the Christian Democrats. After the general election of 2006 – and following twelve years of governments headed by the Social Democrats – the Alliance for Sweden had enough seats in the Swedish Riksdag to form a majority government. Retaining power in 2010 as they beat off opposition from the Red-Greens – a three party coalition on the left, comprised of the Social Democrats, the Green Party, and the Left Party – they fell two seats short of an overall majority, owing largely to the Sweden Democrats, who entered parliament for the first time and took twenty seats.
The Red-Greens had formed their coalition explicitly for the sake of the 2010 election, and when the gambit horribly failed, the coalition quickly broke apart. In the intervening years, the Swedish public have been moved by a series of scandals involving the privatisation of state welfare and schooling; by a persistently high unemployment rate, particularly amongst the young; by more rounds of tax cuts; and by the falling performance of the country’s students, as ranked by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment. Hence it has proved time to restore the Social Democrats to government.
The Social Democrats have been the major party in Swedish politics throughout the last century. 1911 saw the first Swedish general election with universal male suffrage, and the emergence of a modern party and parliamentary system. In that election, the Social Democrats finished in third place, with 28.5 % of the vote: behind the General Electoral League – which, after a couple of name changes, would become the Moderate Party – with 31.2%; and the Free-minded National Association – a precursor of today’s Liberal People’s Party – which won the election with 40.2%. The Social Democrats would become the largest party in the Riksdag three years later in 1914, although Hjalmar Branting would not become the first Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden until 1920.
The general election of 1921 was the first in Sweden with universal suffrage, as women won the right to vote. Over the next decade, power shifted between the Social Democrats, the General Electoral League, and the Free-minded National Association in the Riksdag – which operated as a bicameral legislature from 1866, with the first chamber indirectly elected by county councils and municipal assemblies, and the second chamber directly elected by eligible members of the populace; until in 1970 the two chambers merged to form a unicameral assembly. From 1936 until 1976, the Social Democrats enjoyed forty years of unbroken power.
Set against this long background of Swedish politics, despite the Social Democrats’ achievement in being returned as significantly the country’s largest party, and with the ability to form a government, their polling percentage is still relatively small. At general elections from 1936 until 1970, they uniformly won over 45% of the vote. And from 1914 until 2006, their vote never dropped beneath 36%. In 2006, they managed only 35% of the vote, making them still the largest party in the country by some margin, but resulting in a loss of power up against the Alliance for Sweden. Then in 2010, as the Red-Greens coalition did its constituents more harm than good, their vote fell to 30.7%.
31.2% of the vote this time round is a minor increase, even if any increase was largely unexpected. It suggests that the Moderate Party have failed to consolidate their successes in 2006 and especially in 2010, rather than the Social Democrats reaffirming their traditional dominance. Indeed, from the same historical perspective, 23.2% of the vote is not at all bad for the Moderate Party: between 1932 and 2002, their vote never rose above 23.6%; and dropped as low as 11.5% in 1970, a year after they changed their name to the Moderates in response to the perception that they were too right-wing.
With the Social Democrats having lost their old hegemony, and a distrust of the political establishment almost as characteristic of Sweden as it is of the rest of Europe, the resulting vacuum has been largely filled by the Sweden Democrats. The other parliamentary parties have repeatedly asserted that they will not work with the Sweden Democrats; and they are likely to resist any engagement despite the Sweden Democrats now holding the balance of power between the left and centre-right. The party formed in 1988, with various connections among its early membership to overtly racist and neo-Nazi groups, including the Nordic Reich Party.
The Sweden Democrats are not alone in bearing uncomfortable former ties to Nazism: the affiliated youth wing of the General Electoral League in the 1920s was the National Youth League of Sweden, which became increasingly radicalised and began supporting the German Nazis in the early 1930s, before the General Electoral League’s leader Arvid Lindman severed the connection in 1934. The National Youth League would briefly form its own far-right political party, which received just 0.9% of the vote in the 1936 general election, before the movement fissured and fizzled out.
Still, the Sweden Democrats retained some of their old connections, along with the slogan ‘Keep Sweden Swedish’, until beginning a process of moderation in the late 1990s. Especially under the leadership of Jimmie Åkesson since 2005, the party has attempted to distance itself from the vestiges of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Indeed, the party has even argued that its opposition to extreme forms of Islam amounts to strong support for sexual equality. Nevertheless, after the success of 2010, three of the party’s MPs were were forced to stand down owing to racist incidents. And the party continues to court controversy through provocative advertisements: as in 2010, when a commercial depicted a horde of burqa-wearing women chasing down an elderly Swedish lady in a race for benefits. The Sweden Democrats continue to campaign predominantly on restricting immigration and encouraging immigrants to return to their countries of origin; bolstering this thrust with what are increasingly common right-wing policies across Europe, including the renegotiation of EU membership and increased spending on defence.
While yesterday’s results mark a surge in support for the Sweden Democrats since their emergence in the 2010 election, the newest party to feature prominently in the election were the Feminist Initiative. Founded in 2005, in Sweden’s European Parliament elections held earlier this year the Feminist Initiative won 5.5% of the vote – enough for one seat, making the party the first feminist party to hold a seat in the European Parliament. Yet despite this result and much media interest – with co-founder and co-leader Gudrun Schyman appearing on stage over the weekend with Pharrell – achieving only 3.1% of the vote in the general election leaves the party short of the 4% required for a seat in the Riksdag. It also means a significant number of wasted votes, in so far as the 3.1% of votes for Feminist Initiative candidates will play no part in the construction of Sweden’s new government. But the party is well placed to continue to grow, and if the Social Democrats look more secure come the next election, more voters on the left of the political spectrum will be inclined to opt for the Feminists.
Sweden’s party system and proportional representation tend to result in the need for coalition governments. The Alliance for Sweden’s rule as a minority in parliament after 2010 was hardly an exceptional case, and weaker minority governments have been commonplace. Yet the results of this general election make the constitution of Stefan Löfven’s new Social Democrat-led government difficult to gauge. Any collaboration with the Sweden Democrats has been firmly ruled out. It is plausible that the Social Democrats will ally once again with the Green Party and the Left Party. But this would still provide only 43.7% of the vote, and 158 seats in the 349-seat parliament. Löfven and his party would then have to seek support for their policies on a case-by-case basis.
On the other hand, Löfven has expressed his openness to the possibility of partnering with the Centre Party and the Liberal People’s Party. These could add another 11.5% of the vote and an additional 41 seats. However, on the chance that they do break up the Alliance, it is unlikely that these smaller centrist parties will work alongside the Left Party. The Left Party splintered from the Social Democrats back in 1917, and as the Communist Party of Sweden had a history of cooperation with the Soviet Union. While the Green Party’s anti-nuclear and environmental focus is reconcilable with the aims of the others, the Left Party’s strong views on foreign policy and taxation, and absolute opposition to privatisation, make them an uneasy bedfellow even for the Social Democrats.
So the Social Democrats may have to forego the Left Party if they want to entice the Centre Party and the Liberal People’s Party. The Centre Party and the Social Democrats were once close, working hand-in-hand as coalition partners between the 1930s and 1950s when the former went under the guise of the Farmers’ League; but the Centre Party has moved to consolidate itself on the centre-right of Swedish politics ever since. Any union between these two will have been made more difficult still after a televised spat between Löfven and the Centre Party’s leader, Annie Lööf, in the run-up to Sunday’s election.
Responses to the release a week last Sunday of at least dozens of pictures of naked or partially clothed female celebrities can be very loosely grouped into two opposing points of view. One would decry not only those who gained, possibly traded, and then released the pictures, but also all those who knowingly viewed them – depicting both parties as either criminal, cruelly exploitative, or guilty of a pernicious and emblematic lack of restraint. The other would largely bypass the issue of distributors and viewers, and would instead assert the foolhardiness of the celebrities in enabling their images to be accessed. There certainly exist a variety of third ways: viewpoints marked by their lack of point-of-view; or those which move beyond the individuals immediately involved and more direct issues of agency to consider the processes of cloud computing. Yet these alternative perspectives have been sidelines in what quickly became a polarised debate. Certainly the apparent theft and the dissemination of images which were taken in the privacy of people’s own homes, and stored via supposedly private storage services, is just cause for anger and lament.
But actions which might seem morally wrong based upon instinct or strict logic become muddied, because of the manifold ways in which we use the internet. This applies particularly to the viewing of the nude images. So much of what we do on the internet may, upon reflection or conceived in another context, appear morally objectionable, or at least straddling an uncomfortable grey area somewhere between our moral ideals, the law, our desires, and what we feel ourselves entitled to in response to our desires and the apparent inequalities in the world. Yet many of these behaviours are now so widespread and routine that they are rarely discussed: whether we rationalise them internally or simply allow them to accrue by habit; presume that because they take place on the internet they can have little meaningful effect; or dismiss them from consideration because they don’t fit easily within popular topics of discourse.
Take, for instance, the porn industry and its practitioners, who are being remorselessly squeezed by the proliferation of free sites. When we view or watch for free pornography which we would otherwise have to pay for, we are effectively withholding money from actors, producers, and publishers, significantly restricting their incomes and the very opportunity for others to make a livelihood in what might otherwise prove a widely lucrative field. Where the porn industry is discussed, it is often with regard to the safety of performers, or within a vague dialogue which presumes – without an abundance of definite evidence or the capacity to place assertions in a wider historical context – that the ability to access free pornography tends to corrupt the minds of the young and the flourishing of healthy sexual relationships.
The economic impact of watching pornography for free is less discussed. And this implies a series of questions regarding how we value different lives and different endeavours, and how we weigh expressions of upset. Is a loud cry of anger – particularly from a well-liked famous person – or are egregious invasions of privacy of greater concern than the steady eradication of a group’s income? When we evaluate upset, do we consider and seek to take action based upon its immediate expressions, or do we attempt to identify a longer-term impact on people’s lives? All upset may be cause for lament, but clearly we prioritise when it comes to the upset we discuss and attempt to alleviate.
The argument that our actions on the internet threaten livelihoods remains, but with different layers of complexity, when it comes to the pirating of music and film. More so than in relation to online pornography, there is the concept that downloading music and film for free actually encourages investment: people engage with what they enjoy, and as a result become more likely to buy singles, albums, and DVDs; to pay for streaming services; and to attend concerts and cinemas. Perhaps with such a wealth of entertainment available, free and immediate access approaches a necessity if we are going to be able to make diverse selections as to where we then spend our money. And perhaps the ability to access content for free, even if it is unlawfully, admits many to a realm of culture from which they would otherwise be unfairly restricted.
The artistic worth and the economic viability of these two forms is implicated by the scandal concerning the released images, because many of the female celebrities involved are artists in the worlds of music and film. While piracy continues to pose its challenges to these industries, will the earning potential of these celebrities fall or rise owing to their indecent exposure? Does this matter at all given the avowed distress the exposure has caused? If the distributed pictures have served to show prominent female celebrities as ‘real’ people, with not atypical female bodies, does this shift the stress placed upon their appearances and place it instead upon their art? Of course, the logical extension to this thought would produce a requirement that people in all walks of life strip so that we can demystify their appearance and judge them on works alone.
It is also worth considering what we make of the improper exposure of art, in contrast to the improper exposure of bodies. Music albums and song demos, film scripts, settings, and costumes, and drafts of novels are all routinely leaked before their finished products are due to be released. These are invasions of privacy too – impinging on the ability of artists to create and to allow their creations the light of day only when they are ready. Such leaks can have financial consequences and creative consequences, both of which can cause emotional tumult.
Internet practises and the utilisation of social media networks bring up related issues of copyright. Photographs and videos, and especially written content on blogs and forums, can be effectively stolen and repurposed for monetary gain – but with no legal recourse for the original authors, owing to never-read clauses which give service providers rights of use and rights of licensing. And all of this is to say nothing of what is, in any moral sense, the mass theft of people’s data by governments throughout the world: a theft not only potentially of pictures, but of the very fabric of lives, from the people we correspond and talk with, to the places we go, the bills we pay, the things we watch and listen to, the websites we view, and the information we access.
Analogies between the NSA and viewers of the distributed pictures have been drawn, but these are hardly appropriate: an online viewer of illicit material is not equal to a security agency. A more accurate analogy would be towards a hypothetical situation whereby the NSA were collecting all of the data they already collect, and plastering upon the internet its most salacious aspects: viewers of these aspects would be equatable to viewers of the released celebrity images. A lurid and insatiable curiosity is one of the hallmarks of activity on the internet, but this is not criminal in itself, morally suspect rather than morally wrong, and hard to distinguish from the myriad minor ways in which we exploit people and not uncommonly debase ourselves. If ready access to music and film can prove liberating, the profusion of popular articles which comprise only paparazzi photographs – often questionably obtained – or unfounded gossip serves to corrupt the media landscape, and ultimately the way all events and issues are analysed and reported.
Returning to the celebrities involved in the photo leaks, their misfortunes encourage us to consider other peculiarities regarding our conceptions of privacy. Is age a barrier to privacy? Do we implicitly – and perhaps increasingly owing to the influence of social networks – perceive a sort of sweet spot: an age range at which others, regardless of fame, are more acceptably subject to exposure? How does interaction with celebrities through social media platforms modify our sense of them as private individuals? Is it a greater infringement to view a couple in an intimate moment than to view a person posing alone? Despite the assertions that a reasonable expectation of privacy does not and cannot subsist on the internet, it is clear that we are private people as much as we are social, and must find or build ways to keep to ourselves even as more and more of us is given online.
All of the above arguments are not mean to closely reflect back upon and elucidate the specific matter of the celebrity photograph leaks. Nor do they amount to any sort of call for an immediate and radical overhaul of our internet activities. Rather, they are an attempt to outline and think through some of the entanglements which make any thrusting response to the leaks – whether demonising those who have viewed or would view the images; or doubly demeaning the women whose photographs were stolen for some supposed lack of sophistication – feel unsatisfactory. Throughout, we ought to be conscious of the dignity of other people and the broad effects of our actions, and continually keep in mind and be willing to subtly rethink the ways we use the internet.
The smallest of questions can impel the most vociferous judgements and debates: in grammar, in philosophy, in sociology, but most of all in matters of aesthetics. We do not believe that our eyes can lie to us. ‘Who wore it best?’ implicates a primal dual as much as it does centuries of human refinement. It is a question we are bound to ask ourselves anytime we see two similar or dissimilar people wearing somewhat similar items of dress.
This series will succeed in capturing not only the fashion zeitgeist, and emerging trends or brazen singularities, but also frozen moments in the history of time. For some of the pieces in this series will be archival, delving into a long and rich past of people wearing clothes, and their clothes vaguely or less vaguely resembling the clothes worn by others. At issue are fashion’s broadest strokes and most minute details: sweeping concepts may be compared as often as certain designers and specific items of clothing. A vivid and sympathetic visual imagination may be required to navigate apparently disparate garments, and to discover the hidden connections which lie between.
The first piece in this series features 400 metres runner Christine Ohuruogu, an Olympic and twice World champion in her chosen event; and Serena Williams, multiple-time Grand Slam tennis victor, and one of the greatest players ever to have adorned her exterior with racket and fuzzy balls.
Christine Ohuruogu raced on Saturday in the Great North CityGames. A concept devised by the ever-innovative Brendan Foster and his Nova International, the Great CityGames see elite athletes competing on specially designed track and field structures, in the hustle of city centres and with spectators afforded the opportunity to stop by and watch free of charge. The Great North CityGames is located on the Quayside between Gateshead and Newcastle, and has been held annually since 2009 on the day before the Great North Run. With the stretch of track running between the Sage Gateshead concert venue and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, this is an eminently suitable place for fashion as well as athletics.
Ohuruogu was one of many athletes who had competed the previous evening in Brussels – the last Diamond League meeting of the season, but one which produced a number of world-leading performances. In the men’s high-jump, Mutaz Essa Barshim recorded the second-best jump of all time at 2.43 metres, beating Bohdan Bondarenko into second place after he managed a still-impressive 2.40-metre leap. The two men jumped 2.42 metres in New York earlier this year, and appear ready to break Javier Sotomayor’s twenty-one-year-old world record of 2.45 metres sometime in 2015. Justin Gatlin achieved the best ever combined time for an athlete running a 100 and 200 metres on the same night: his 100 metres time of 9.77 seconds was the fastest in the world this year, while his 200 metres time was 19.71, combining to better a mark set previously by Ato Boldon.
Renaud Lavillenie established a new world-leading height in the men’s pole vault of 5.93 metres. Barbora Spotakova threw a world-best of 67.99 metres in the women’s javelin. Allyson Felix’s time of 22.02 in the women’s 200 metres saw her take the world lead in the event ahead of Daffne Schippers, who ran a seemingly unbeatable 22.03 in the process of taking gold at last month’s European Athletics Championships. And Mercy Cherono impressed in the women’s 5,000 metres to take the overall victory in the event – and $40,000 in prize money – ahead of Genzebe Dibaba.
On one bank of the Tyne on Saturday, Ohuruogu proved victorious in the women’s 500 metres – a unique event which pitted her against 400 metres hurdler Eilidh Child, and 800 metres competitors Lynsey Sharp, Jenny Meadows, and Alison Leonard. Child won a gold medal at the European Championships in Zurich after taking silver at the Commonwealth Games; and Sharp has bolstered two silver medals with some exceptional performances across recent Diamond League meets. But Ohuruogu has had a relaxed season, and easily possessed the strength to win out over this unusual distance, which saw the five ladies hurtling and jostling down an incline before reaching the track.
As the athletics in Brussels wound down on Friday evening, Serena Williams took to Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York and was soon busily dispatching with Ekaterina Makarova. Makarova’s journey to the semi-finals was exceptional: she progressed against Eugenie Bouchard in the fourth round and Victoria Azarenka in the quarter-finals, and hadn’t lost a set all tournament. Yet Serena beat the twenty-six-year-old Russian 6-1, 6-3 in precisely one hour. So she found her way through to to the 2014 US Open women’s singles final. There on Sunday she faced Caroline Wozniacki. Wozniacki was participating in only her second Grand Slam final – having reached the same stage of the US Open in 2009, only to fall to defeat against a then-returning Kim Clijsters.
Williams reached this year’s final without dropping a set, while Wozniacki had to endure tough battles against Magdalena Rybarikova and Maria Sharapova in the early rounds. And in the final, Williams proved typically too strong and too accurate for her opponent, winning in two sets – 6-3, 6-3 – to claim her sixth US Open crown, and her eighteenth Grand Slam in total. Tying her with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, in the open era she is behind only Steffi Graf, who reigns supreme with twenty-two titles to her name.
If New York trumps even the Quayside as a centre of world fashion, still by virtue of performing over the weekend on Saturday rather than Sunday, Christine Ohuruogu managed to display her outfit first. She wore a vest with prominent black splotches and spots over a white background; with black side panels and the Adidas stripes running down the sides in white. Her shorts were black with pink trim. And she wore bright pink running trainers. Serena Williams wore an animal print dress in black and white, with a pink Nike logo; and with a ruby headband and ruby print wristband. Her trainers were black with a pink Nike swoosh.
The similarities between the outfits worn by the two ladies rest upon their bold black and white prints, offset by highlights in shades of pink. To call the prints worn by these women merely ‘animal’ would be to resort to the inexact. Animal prints differ from one another. Cheetahs have a fur which is covered with relatively small black spots. Unlike cheetahs, leopards and jaguars possess not spots but rosettes. Rosettes are rose-like markings, comprised of a dark outer line and a lighter inner shading. Jaguar rosettes are larger than leopard rosettes, have thicker lines, and their inner shadings are marked by lines and dots. The image immediately below shows, from left to right, the coats typical of cheetahs, leopards, and jaguars:
So it is clear that Serena Williams wore a leopard print dress. Indeed, she varied during the two weeks of the US Open between the black and white leopard print and a version in pink. On the other hand, it is debatable whether Christine Ohuruogu wore an animal print at all. If it is determined that she did, her animal must surely be some sort of hybrid – showing the solid black of a cheetah’s spots, but with the patternation somewhere between a leopard and a giraffe, and the intensity of the blacks also calling to mind the zebra. Perhaps her wardrobe simply cannot be defined in animal terms. Regardless, of these two highly accomplished and endearing sporting outfits, my modest preference is for Ohuruogu’s.
Feeling only moderately provoked but more to the point inspired by Pitchfork’s list of the 100 best albums of the decade so far, I have compiled and extensively written out this list of my own. My list forgoes EPs, otherwise works by Blood Diamonds and Holy Other would have made the cut, Zola Jesus would have been placed higher, and Burial and FKA twigs may have been contenders – and perhaps I should have looked out for all of these a little bit, without encouraging them to take figurative dives for the metaphorical short-end money. I am also ignoring some excellent reissues and compilations: The Beach Boys’ The Smile Sessions; Robbie Basho’s Visions of the Country, one of several of his works reissued by Grass-Tops and Gnome Life; and the recently uncovered tandem of albums by the synth-pop artist known as Lewis. The list could have borne more rap and ambient electronic artists; and young and older luminaries of independent music, June Tabor, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Grouper, and St. Vincent, have marginally missed out. There is little sense and only a throwaway impulse behind the inclusion of two How To Dress Well albums, for instance, but not a third; or spurring the presence of Before Today but the absence of Mature Themes. Great albums always grow with age, which at least explains a proclivity towards the earlier years of the decade. I chose twenty-one albums because that is how my endeavour came out; and because there is something to be said for odd numbers, and for numbers which – like my own years – divide neatly by seven, an important figure for all manner of reasons.
21. Frankie Rose – Interstellar
Uniting rather than replacing the sounds of 60s surf pop and proto-punk with 80s synthesizers and new wave – like The Cure gazing skyward at night-time on the Florida Keys, or more simply Blondie turned celestial – Frankie Rose’s second solo album is a distilled triumph of pop music. The titular opening track introduces Rose as a disembodied voice on an astral plane, before a drum hits and she rebounds in the space between it and earth. This is the modus of Interstellar, bounded by glossy synths, glimmering chimes, and pulsing percussion, and rounded by Rose’s vocals, which at points coalesce with the music, and sound especially clear and open-throated on the album’s ballads. At the core of the record is the outstanding middle sequence of ‘Pair of Wings’, ‘Had We Had It’, and ‘Night Swim’.
20. Waka Flocka Flame – Flockaveli
Replete with a motif of mouthed gunshots, Waka Flocka Flame’s debut album is in the same gesture brash and grandiose. In name and conception, full of featuring artists, Flockaveli is an explicit call-back to the gangster rap of the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Yet it steps away from those forebears thanks to Lex Luger’s relentless production, which features dense and heavy-hitting drums, synthetic throbs, and flourishes of orchestral bombast; and Waka Flocka Flame’s aggressively playful vocal delivery. Buoyed by his percussive onomatopoeia, tracks thrust and double back upon themselves, winding up before unleashing with renewed intensity.
19. Zola Jesus – Conatus
Not as tightly wound as the Stridulum EP, Zola Jesus’s third full-length retains its industrial rhythms, dark synths, and Nika Roza Danilova’s voice: at once commanding and empathetic, calling out from a frozen horizon and intimately within the listener’s head, provoking a visceral response felt in the throat and the chest. Zola Jesus’s songs build and change shape. As her singing urges on and reaches a crescendo, the supporting synths may surge in accord, or they may dissipate into murky ambience; or else the music may sustain, while her words fall and inhabit the space with a hard-won hesitancy. On Conatus, Danilova’s singular voice is sometimes subsumed into layered choruses, and instants of voice bounce against and between one another. Her sound has widened, retaining its distinctiveness through more familiar song structures, as on ‘In Your Nature’; and excelling amid the dance environment of ‘Seekir’.
18. Olga Bell – Krai
Russia today – after the contested addition of Crimea and Sevastopol – is comprised of eighty-five federal subjects. Most of these subjects are oblasts, which are provinces with federally appointed governors and locally elected legislatures. Twenty-two republics are afforded more autonomy than the oblasts; five autonomous subjects see even greater autonomy granted to areas where ethnic minorities predominate; and there are also the federal cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, to which Sevastopol was added in March. ‘Krai’ is a historical designation, retained for nine of Russia’s subjects which were once considered frontier territories. Today, Russia’s nine krais function much like oblasts. The nine krais extend from Krasnodar, which looks out onto the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea; to Perm, by the Ural Mountains; Krasnoyarsk, a vast expanse in the heart of Siberia; Primorsky, which borders China, North Korea, and the Sea of Japan; and to Kamchatka, which gazes towards Alaska over the Bering Sea. In short, the krais cover the extent of Russia; and capturing that scope and that diversity on a single record is a stern task, but one at which Olga Bell proves adroitly capable. Trained as a classical pianist, she scored a throng of instruments for Krai, and cello, electric guitar and bass, harp, drums and glockenspiel are prominent among those which fill up the album. Rhythms coil and undulate, or drone as the sound slips effortlessly across the nine pieces from folk to the abstractions of modern electronic music. Voices of all accents accumulate, breaking apart in the best moments as the blazing clarity of Bell’s voice comes through.
17. Majical Cloudz – Impersonator
From within a small space, Devon Welsh commands an audience. In spare songs, comprised of short loops of synthesized keys and strings – guitar, organ, and piano are prominent – Welsh pushes his voice into the gaps of the music, stretching words out and conjuring unexpected sounds and searing emotions. His voice is at once straining, and decadent in its luxurious depth. Welsh’s partner in Majical Cloudz, Matthew Otto has noted that the majority of Impersonator was recorded or processed through analogue equipment – providing the album with a warm background hum, which is allied with brief bursts of white noise which create a lively surface texture. Welsh’s lyrics are acutely personal, yet often cloaked in an elusive language which makes their sentiment feel diverse and general. Some of the album’s strongest songs, including the title piece and ‘I Do Sing For You, show him curiously exploring his craft and his identity as a writer and singer.
16. Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven
Daniel Lopatin’s Warp Records debut takes its impetus from constrained aesthetic production and the confines of modern life, and frames a view of America in wide perspective. The record’s title indicates Lopatin’s interest in Oulipo, a school of writing founded by Raymond Queneau, and whose practitioners have included Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, which seeks creativity through the imposition of constraints and adherence to identifiable patterns. One of Oulipo’s constraints, referred to as N+7, involves replacing each noun in a text with the noun seven places after it in a dictionary. Lopatin followed Oulipo’s strictures on R Plus Seven to spread disfigured vocals throughout his record. Chopped choirs chatter and chant, accompanied by synthesized brass and saxophone, new-age harmonies, and the sounds of nature, which break through and provide moments of respite. There is a sheen to these pieces which recalls something like Opiate’s Objects for an Ideal Home; but where that record is playful and often warm, R Plus Seven is more fractured. Concerned hums and throbs lie at the heart of tracks, and after the adjusted celebrations of ‘Americans’, tension increasingly builds. The word ‘wait’ is uttered on ‘Problem Areas’ – the only fully enunciated word on the record. The tension reaches a laden and hectic climax in ‘Still Life’, before ‘Chrome Country’ unburdens in a choir of children.
15. Mount Eerie – Clear Moon
‘If I look, / Or if I don’t look, / Clouds are always / Passing over’ – so sings Phil Elverum, the opening lines to ‘The Place I Live’, the third song from Clear Moon. Elverum consistently relays for us, compassionate and clear eyed, those minutiae which substantially comprise all of our lives. Clear Moon was the first of two records he released in 2012: both it and the denser, more experimental Ocean Roar focused immediately upon his hometown of Anacortes, Washington, and were recorded there in the large room of a converted church. Yet through both his lyrics and his music, the detail of his observations, the scope of his speculations and misgivings, and his tracings of the landscape come together to extend beyond the provincial and evoke that which is essentially human. On Clear Moon, accompanied by a rumbling acoustic guitar, steady percussion, and occasional backing vocals which wisp and wind, Elverum’s voice thinly sustains and encompasses.
14. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
I saw Kanye West last year at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, and his was an exceptionally conceived and fantastically rounded stage show: allowing space for elaborate costume changes and for a tirade against capitalism, slickly and energetically offering some of his biggest hits, but with an extended and improvised version of ‘Runaway’ at the culmination of the evening portraying the supremely talented and instinctively daring musician at the heart of his records. ‘Runaway’ is both the most introspective song and the star feature on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but the album is a tour de force: by the time the first piano chord on ‘Runaway’ plays, the record already seems to distend backwards, to the bluster and drama of ‘Monster’, with its featured performances by Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, and Bon Iver; to the horns and psychic gesturing of ‘All of the Lights’; and to the tribal sounds and Kanye’s snarling vocal delivery which urge on ‘Power’.
13. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today
While Before Today proved a breakthrough album for Ariel Pink, noted for its clean sound after a decade of lo-fi recordings, and for its hooks which seemed to reconfigure generations of popular music, still the album also served to crystallise some of those aspects which have remained hallmarks of his peculiar aesthetic. Ariel reworked a number of songs for the album, including the centrepieces ‘Round and Round’ and ‘Beverly Kills’. I have discussed his music before in the context of heteroglossia, particularly in relation to the successor to Before Today, 2012’s equally engaging Mature Themes – but no two songs better disclose the tension-filled multiplicity of voices of which his music is uniquely capable. Ariel Pink combines sudden shifts in pitch, rhapsodic choruses and static refrains , and lyrics which contrast openhearted honesty with vague ejaculations and disconnected quotations from old Hollywood.
12. Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Chords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
Fiona Apple’s fourth album is defined musically by her piano playing, its plush jazz sound sparsely constructed whether softly repeating or restlessly pushing forth, and by variegated percussion: along with utilising field recordings, Apple and her drummer, Charley Drayton, are listed in the album credits as playing ‘thighs’ and ‘truck stomper’. The loose and flexible patterns of the percussion and the restrained piano allow Apple’s voice to hold the centre. Her singing is fearless, rolling out into torrents of words with palpable expressive vigour – the straining movements of the muscles in her face as she sings almost show through. The Idler Wheel… also possesses some ofsharpest lyrics written, from the vertiginous psychological insight of ‘Every Single Night’, through pages of personal history, to cultural allusions both recondite and pop-cultural, as in ‘Anything We Want’, which references folded fans and fighting championships.
11. How To Dress Well – What Is This Heart?
Where How To Dress Well’s predecessor Total Loss could feel like a coming together of inspired fragments, What Is This Heart? is more cohesive, despite being the most stylistically varied and sonically diverse work of Tom Krell’s musical career. From the acoustic guitar of album opener ‘2 Years On (Shame Dream)’, the bell chimes which spartanly introduce ‘What You Wanted’, and the industrial beats of ‘Face Again’, each song seems to inhabit a discrete realm of sound and to push towards a distinct genre; further on into the album, there is the steady orchestral surge of ‘Pour Cyril’, and the smooth R&B of ‘Precious Love’. What unites all of this is Krell’s voice, which sounds more relaxed and more tender than ever while reaching lofty tonal and emotive heights. The lyrics depict entangled family history, and see Krell engage acutely – most notably on ‘Repeat Pleasure’ and ‘Words I Don’t Remember’ – with the complexities of love, through its movements of desire and surfeit, as it both compels and cloisters the individual self. The flow of his language too is richly developed, on ‘House Inside (Future is Older than the Past)’ for instance, as the syllables pile up through the first three verses before the punchingly elegant chorus.
10. Jolie Holland – Pint of Blood
Jolie Holland’s songs have always had the quality of sounding, upon first listen, like nuanced and well-sung reworkings of American standards. Welcoming rather than requesting your time, as the songs open up over repeated hearings, their subtle gradations come into focus along with the poetry of her voice and her lyrics. Holland’s voice has become more ornate as her career has progressed, and this has sometimes seemed to alienate fans and serve as a barrier to her music, disguising her careful choice of words. Yet her voice has a majestic tone, and utilised in this way turns her pieces into encompassing soundscapes, amplifying rather than detracting from the underlying emotion. On Pint of Blood, tight song structures and amplified guitar and piano accompany her vocal reverberations: through the sneering ‘All Those Girls’; the moving ‘Tender Mirror’ and ‘Gold and Yellow’; coming to a close with Holland’s interpretation of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Rex’s Blues’, as she elongates the lines and embellishes the song’s steadfast fatalism.
9. Sean McCann – Music for Private Ensemble
Beginning his career with a series of experimental noise pieces released via cassette, on Music for Private Ensemble Sean McCann moved decisively towards modern classical composition. Playing an array of strings, keys, woodwinds, and percussion instruments himself, and sampling others, McCann’s four arrangements – with distinct parts – feature over a hundred layers of conscientiously edited instrumentation. The pieces fluctuate abruptly between different sounds and moods, with finely shaped tumult and orchestral swells giving way to spacious interludes. They are characterised by McCann’s violin, fluttering and billowing glockenspiel, dimly lighted French horn, reiterating cello, and a gentle choral conclusion – in ‘Arden’, the third section of the album’s final piece – built up by McCann from the vocals of Kayla Cohen.
8. Julia Holter – Ekstasis
Julia Holter has cited illuminated manuscripts as an influence on her music, while Ekstasis was inspired particularly by the Alain Resnais/Alain Robbe-Grillet film Last Year in Marienbad. These sources show through in Ekstasis, in its rich colours and bold contours, and in the impression it creates of cyclical navigation between long corridors and rooms which, though their features change markedly, remain inexpressibly the same. Though the sound is lighter and the compositions more complex, there is an austerity to Ekstasis which is reminiscent of Nico. Fragments of words emerge to be sung – as in ‘Goddess Eyes II’ and ‘Goddess Eyes I’, variations from the original on Tragedy, where the lyrics come from Euripides Hippolytus – and whirring pop structures advance from multilayered and jagged ambience. The album that results is densely musical, meticulously constructed, and yet in its fluid patternations and vocal flourishes instantly memorable.
7. The-Dream – Terius Nash: 1977
After three acclaimed albums established The-Dream as the grandest album-focused R&B artist since Prince, but failed to result in glorious commercial success, in late August 2011, The-Dream released for free this work under his birth name, and with his birth year as the title. Seen as a stop-gap while work on what would become IV Play progressed, the record went unheralded, even after Def Jam released it commercially at the end of 2012. But despite The-Dream sounding sombre as he dwells on failed love, Terius Nash: 1977 is a roundly accomplished work. The first five songs are especially strong, from the irony and wordplay of ‘Wake Me When It’s Over’ to the free-form crooning at the end ‘Ghetto’. And amid bright synths as he defiantly elaborates his feelings upon the wedding of a former lover, ‘Wedding Crasher’ stands – next to ‘Yamaha’ and ‘Cry’ – as one of The-Dream’s defining moments of the 2010s.
6. A$AP Rocky – Live.Love.A$AP
Critics digress, finding difficulties with A$AP Rocky’s commercialism – which seems to a suggest a culture which only embraces the rampant materialism of the mainstream and economically upper-class – and with the subject matter of his lyrics. All this can be laid aside, for Live.Love.A$AP is a perfect harmony of sound. Combining the influence of Southern hip-hop with the emergence of cloud rap, Rocky’s voice lingers and lulls effortlessly over loops and beats provided by producers including Clams Casino, A$AP Ty Beats, and Beautiful Lou. Any hack can write socially conscious lyrics, but few possess Rocky’s ear for cadence, his rapping languid yet emboldened and packed with internal rhymes. ‘Bass’ is especially remarkable, defined by Clams’ low-frequency looped sample which has an impalpable, gaseous quality. Live.Love.A$AP is enhanced too by entertaining cameos from SpaceGhostPurrp and A$AP Ferg. This is the best rap album released so far this decade.
5. Robyn – Body Talk
Body Talk – a compilation of three mini-albums bearing the same name released throughout 2010 – is an album of singles which speak across and echo within one another. Its numerous highlights – among them ‘Dancing on My Own’, ‘Hang with Me, and ‘Call Your Girlfriend’ – portray not the full bloom of love, but relationships which are tentative or disintegrating. Robyn’s romantic hold is therefore never firm; but her voice is both plaintive and commanding, as she endures tribulation and heartbreak without ever doubting or denying her sense of self. The depth of her voice is allied to crisp but continually surprising electronic music, to produce a potently moving, eminently dancable masterpiece of pop.
4. How To Dress Well – Love Remains
Love Remains was love on first listen. How To Dress Well’s debut album smothers softly a beautiful falsetto voice and R&B melodies underneath layers of thick reverb and unsettling percussion. Opening with ‘You Hold the Water’ – introduced by a line from Julianne Moore, from the Todd Haynes film Safe, with this borrowing from film a consistent facet of How To Dress Well albums – the first five songs sound like keening turned towards popular music. Tom Krell laments in turn strained relationships, a body and mind broken down, and the irrevocable past. ‘Suicide Dream 2’, the longest track on the album and one of its standouts, is equally stately and anguished, emerging steadily and dissolving in profound pain.
In the middle section of the album, the tempo picks up and the songs become more dance-oriented, but the album is unified by a resolute aesthetic, by the production and Krell’s voice. The atmosphere and the conceptualisation of the music call to mind projects like William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops and Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks; the rhythms have seen How To Dress Well placed at the forefront of a posited movement which has been alternately dubbed PBR&B, alternative R&B, or bedroom R&B. Yet four years after its release, Love Remains still sounds like nothing else, and could equally have been produced in an empty church: it is an intensely personal and deeply spiritual record, which dwells close to the ground and still ascends as crooked smoke.
After the exuberant breaking clear of ‘Decisions’, ‘Suicide Dream 1’ provides a coda to the album. Krell’s continual refinements of these compositions – on the orchestral Just Once EP and for live performance – have shown the strength of the structures which underlay the sound of Love Remains. His two subsequent albums – Total Loss as well as What Is This Heart? – have proved equally affecting, maintaining something of the same pace and depth of feeling, while significantly broadening his sound palette and bringing his voice to the fore.
3. Joanna Newsom – Have One on Me
Released in 2004, The Milk-Eyed Mender was a breathtaking debut album, which drew from the modes of folktale and the methods of modernist literature as much as from the sound palette of folk music; showcasing across concise, compact songs Joanna Newsom’s agile harp playing and her exceptional voice, at once delicate and twisting and flowing forth with words. Ys, which appeared two years later, featured ornate orchestral arrangements, with movements which seemed to capture mythologies in the act of their initial telling.
In touring for Ys, Newsom began working as part of a five-piece band, and together she and band-member Ryan Francesconi rearranged the album’s songs for live performance. These processes palpably influenced Have One on Me. Combining apparent performative ease with prolonged length and elaborate ornamentation, the album sprawls over two hours and three discs. For the first time, Newsom accompanies herself on piano as well as harp. Songs including the title piece and ‘Good Intentions Paving Company’ stretch out, and drive and build to a climax; and they sit happily next to shorter pieces like ’81’ and ‘On a Good Day’, which play as redolent parables.
Indeed, the album’s musical openness extends to its lyrics, which offer American histories and biographies and accounts of the road along with some of the most personal evocations on record. Prominent among these are ‘In California’, and ‘Does Not Suffice’, which closes Have One on Me and reprises the progression from the earlier song, as Newsom recounts in close material detail the strained ending of a relationship. ‘Baby Birch’ is especially devastating, culminating in violent discord as Newsom subjugates the realm of nursery rhyme and allows herself to sound sinister, as she suggestively depicts life’s losses and closed doors.
2. Björk – Biophilia
Conceived as a project as much as an album, the music of Biophilia was intended first to dwell within the rooms of a house-museum in Iceland, then to lead a 3D film which Björk hoped would be directed by her frequent collaborator Michel Gondry. When Biophilia eventually came to fruition, it was as a multimedia endeavour: comprising an album, accompanied by a complex of apps for the iPad and iPhone – replete with games, musical scores, and short essays – and a series of residencies at which the music was to be performed.
Björk’s first Biophilia performances took place in Manchester across June and July 2011, as part of that year’s Manchester International Festival. I attended one of these performances and – aside from the pleasure at seeing Bjork in such an intimate venue, joined by the excellent Graduale Nobili choir, and with the bespoke instruments crafted for the event, including a pendulum harp, MIDI-controlled organ, gameleste, and singing Tesla coil – was enraptured for the first time with ‘Moon’ and ‘Thunderbolt’, and invigorated by ‘Crystalline’, a piece of electronic dance music which draws from drum and bass and had just been released as the album’s first single.
At the same time, the concert closed with ‘Declare Independence’, a song from Björk’s previous album Volta. An exceptional work, with ‘The Dull Flame of Desire’ – based on a translation of Fyodor Tyutchev, and featuring Antony Hegarty – a highlight, Volta always felt to me more like Björk’s earlier albums: a strong collection of disparate songs rather than a closely integrated world, such as those evinced by Homogenic, Vespertine, and Medúlla. The performance of ‘Declare Independence’ in Manchester provoked a fuller conception of Volta. It was a rare and uniquely powerful instance of the communal potential of music. Still, Biophila marked for Björk a move again towards sparser electronics, alongside crunchy beats, unusual time signatures, and lyrical contemplation, with songs which entwine the private with the physiological, and all manner of natural and celestial phenomena. Björk’s voice freely traces the outlines of the music, and – as on Medúlla – she sounds close to the listener. The album stands with the best of her works, which together comprise one of the greatest catalogues in popular art.
1. Grimes – Visions
Grimes is often discussed within the framework of the postinternet – a product of the internet’s profusion of materials, its endless repetition and recontextualisation of images, its viral videos, its fractured texts and snatches of songs – and one of the characteristics of the internet’s materiality is that it speeds up time. With so much to view and to download, and popular content shared with millions and then shared again across a multitude of social networks, trends rise and fall with rapidity and what once gains favour quickly grows old. Yet despite the the wide acclaim and the wide appeal Grimes and her album have won since its release at the beginning of 2012, from the opening shuffle of ‘Infinite ♡ Without Fulfillment’, Visions still sounds like the shock of the new.
Age cannot wither, nor custom stale its infinite variety; and Grimes too makes hungry where she most satisfies: but it is not only the rhythmically propulsive loops and the exquisitely layered vocals, or the diverse influences which range from experimental noise music to K-pop, which make Visions a great album. Nor can it be reduced solely to an inherently modern or feminist manifesto – it took time for people to fully grasp the lyrics to ‘Oblivion’, for instance, while other songs offer profound enjoyment though their lyrical content remains undisclosed, abounding in utterance and expression while eschewing determinative statement. Equally important is the album’s structure and consistent sense of space.
It moves coherently from the opening’s multiple voices into the soaring synths and vocals of ‘Genesis’, while ‘Oblivion’ begins a movement into industrial sounds, squelching percussion, and dance. ‘Vowels = Space and Time’ explicitly gestures towards the inexplicability of language. ‘Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U)’ is monastic, and develops musically and lyrically the sense of waiting which is sustained throughout as one of the album’s predominant themes. Indeed, for an album with so many musical ideas and which abounds and rebounds with so much energy and replenished confidence, Visions feels markedly tranquil. An album which merges the generous impulse of a song like ‘Be a Body (侘寂)’ with the tender intimacy of ‘Skin’, Visions is the record of a person quietly embracing life at the same time as she boldly impels it onward.
culturedallroundman 