Forget Me Not

A few years ago I started reading Iris Murdoch’s the Sea the Sea, and put it down 40 minutes later cause it was boring as all hell. From what I remembered the protagonist was some old woman who was dying and lived in a lighthouse. Or maybe I’m getting it mixed up with another book by another woman writer who I haven’t read all the way through. Anyway, this week I picked up The Sandcastle, which does what indie bands do, which is choose a title for a record based on one conciet that occurs about a third of the way through. The more I think about it the more I hate it when people do that. It smacks of deliberatley trying to find a title and meaning for your product, which is ok in itself, but then when they sort of deliberatley obscure it seems smug somehow.

There’s a band from the UK called Gentle Friendly who I liked when I saw them supporting Ponytail (who I didn’t like) and listening to their tape (which I cant even remeber the title of) I like more and more, despite them having the worst band name since the Artic Monkeys. Actually Gentle friendly is better than The Artic Monkeys but only just.

There’s nothing particularly secretive about what GF do. It’s a casio, a loopstation, a couple of mics, a delay and a distortion pedal,and live, a drum kit. And it sounds like that. It’s lo-fi that takes the end result seriously but not the process. I wish more bands went about composing the same way.

The sandcastle great for the first third, but I’m still waiting for some great psycho-social revelation about 1950’s england. So far, all we’ve had is adultery and cricket.