Great review by Ian Maleney (Irish Times Fri. 24th Nov 2017) of Liam Gallaghers new Disc...........

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/noel-gallagher-s-high-flying-birds-who-built-the-moon-review-a-dried-up-oasis-of-dross-1.3299720

Ouch! that hurts. I preffered Noel's previous two albums to the current one other than the single from it which is great. I need to play the album again I think. Liam's new album on the other hand hits all the right notes all through. There's even a pretty psychedelic sounding song amonst the bonus tracks.

I don't blame Maleney for his Simon Reynolds-esque rant though, some of which I agree with. I don't go for the rock's dead thing at all. It just needs to re-invent itself as it does every couple of decades. It's all rather reminisent of the 1980s indie band 'anti-rockist' stance. I'm just glad there's so much variety in music nowadays.

PM:relaxed:

Paul,
Sent this in, as I was gettng tired of lazy reviews of new/old music...one guy recently gave up his subscription to Shindig Mag.as he felt awarding 3-5 star reviews were becoming the norm where all reviews became cliched and boring( thats what I picked up on ).
So this review takes no prisoners and calls the proverbially spade a spade etc,takes me back to NME of punk era........speaking of reviews what ever happened to Write/Hear great reading etc......and thanks for the mention of Flashback, mines in the post.

Yes, it is one of those reviews that does indeed go back to NME and Parsons / Burchill 'The Boy Looke At Johnny' et al. I think it would do a lot of good to have a few more like it as well. I do have some material for a long overdue #3 of 'Write Hear' from some time ago but not enough for an issue. I will have to do better. If anyone fancies witing something, do send it in.

PM:relaxed:

Unfortunately things have changed and the reliable previous 8-10 year cycle of interesting pop/rock 'movements' is no longer applicable I think. This is partly due to the change in media, which is far more dispersed and diverse. Previously a scene would germinate, others would pick up the baton, develop it, cross-pollination would occur and then it would eventually get to a mass audience and explode. Beat, psych, prog, glam, punk, new wave, acid house, rave etc. all happened that way. There were limited TV shows, limited radio and limited print media that supported this type of grass roots to mass movement development.

There are no real significant scenes or movements in music anymore and there haven't been since the 1990s, when the internet changed everything. So we now have much more diversity, more accessibility, but it never goes anywhere particularly new or exciting and tends to appeal to only small seperate sections of people.

I would agree with that in the main. I do think though that young preople do still (re)invent musical genres, just not in the same way i.e. there's not any overt or radically different sub-cultural visual youth cult that goes with it. Whatever reader's views, I think something like Grime (which I like) is an example of that. It has been refered to as a form of punk rock in that it comes from the streets and is concerend with everyday life and experience. I like Stormsy and others I have heard. I do think that is a thing that is of the social media generation.I think there have been a lot of micro-musical innovations in British black music over the last twenty years that probably didn't cross over from their cult or club followings the way Grime has started to. I'm thinking of groups like the Young Fathers and their approach to to the re-structuring of soul singing for instance. I am barely musically literate in these areas but peripherally at least, I have noticed sounds I feel were inventive at least. I also like the poetry rappers like Kate Tempest that can artiulate states of being and the human condition in a very intense and relatable way. Something again that has only become prominent in recent years

I think what also happened with social media is that the past became accessible in a way it wasn't before. The past became something you wanted to know about or listen to or discover rather than think of as 'old fashioned'. New music used to come from creatively agitiating against the past; these days it's all about reverence for the past. Both appraoches are important I think. Maybe it's amatter of balance.

I think that the Irish Times review is a good thing as it reminds us that over-reliance on the familair and the expected can lead to complacency (which is why punk had to happen 40 years ago and why Bowie was so succesful) and it does need taking to task sometimes.

PM:slightly_smiling_face:

Well Grime began about 15 years ago. Previously a new genre would develop over about two years, peak and would be passe after 4 years. I see it as stagnation really, the same has happened in dance music, which had a very rapid and interesting progression from abour 1988 to 1993 and has been retreading ever since.

I don't know enough about jazz or classical, but again it would seem to be diminishing returns and individual novelty in recent years. And when was the last significant movement in art? Perhaps that rapid development of movements and illusion of 'progression' was a particularly 20th century thing, where mass communication between large groups became possible. Now it tends to be individuals. Yes, there is interesting music still being made, but I tend to think of individual artists rather than scenes and any genre scenes that are still around tend to be ones that have existed for some time.

I agree, though Grime of course came and went and came again. It's not that long since it has broken through to the mainstream and Stormsy was a headline act at Glastonbury, speaking to many more than Grime's core constituency which would have been unthinkable ten years ago.

I think the individualism / compartmentalisation of youth / music preference etc in its time will eventaully lead to a more inclusive form of musical culture. Music making over the internet itself is collaborative. I am also thinking here also of the early synth cold wave stuff from the early-mid 1980s, the cassette culutre of youths with meagre equipment in their bedrooms making their music to tape and distrubuting it by post (as my younger brother did). There was a whole scene around that where many of the artists involved never even met but had regualr postal contact and that was before the internet. And don't forget video games weere going to be the new rock 'n' roll. All rather Mark Twain I think, reports about my death are highly exagerated etc.

I stil think there's plenty of room for musical optomism anyway.

PM:relaxed:

Sure, an entertaining review but slipped up with a very hackneyed headline. My contention has always been that you have to put in the research - seek and you will find innovative, original variants of rock n' roll by talented new musicians and songwriters.It's not just about waiting for the next CD by a "celebrity" to drop through your letterbox. Having said all that I do confess to liking the Gallagher disc anyway.