Album/Live Reviews

A lot of people are gonna tell you that these two styles of music can never coexist peacefully, that this is no time for fence-sitting, and your colours must be nailed to a mast post-haste. Jesus! This is 1973, not 1943, and if you want to listen to Black Sabbath and Van Der Graaf Generator one after the other then you can. And if it earns you a few days sitting on your own in the sixth form canteen, at least you’re still cooler than those bozos who like Slade, right?
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my creation has drowned me
Fed has a false beginning. A sole electric guitar riffs absently through a melancholy blues progression; heads upwards; pauses; then, boom. Full band. Full colour. Tracking shot of a lonely figure walking through morning streets that are – suddenly – filled with light, movement and crowds; a sunburst of horns, strings and percussion, and all the world’s a film, each step’s a swagger.
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“With a song I come to you/Like a troubadour/With a simple serenade/That, and nothing more” – ‘One Song’, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.

These words are actually unsung in the movie, the song cutting straight to the whole “One love/I have but one love” denouement, excising the build-up, the detail. It’s a shame. The introduction conjures up a wandering minstrel, doomed to travel, looking for fair maidens to seduce with a few well-chosen chords, but of course Disney has never been renowned for its complexity. It’s a shame, because these opening lines have, for years, put me in mind of the brothers Herman Düne, and in particular André since he flew the coop at the start of 2007 to wander solo.
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Uh, oh, it’s that ‘difficult-second-album-on-a-major-label’! What to do? How about: spend lots of time trashtalking about “bloody and loose” production values, spreading rumours of forthcoming eight-and-a-half-minute long singles, and letting it be known that the whole deal is to be recorded on tape, promising a sound several continents away from the gleam and sheen of 2005’s million-selling, post OC ‘breakthrough’ album, Plans? Yeah, that oughtta do it.
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