Old news: The Pontiff makes a record, plus other unusual career moves…
The news that Pope Francis has recorded a prog rock album will have come as a surprise to many, especially Keith Richards or Shane MacGowan who may have awoken after a long night in hospitality believing they’d slept through to April 1st. But no, the Argentinian pontiff is set to be his country’s biggest musical export since Eva Peron (a Madonna lookalike with diva-esque tendencies).
You might argue that maybe the artist formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio should just stick to what he’s good at – er, working massive stadium-sized audiences into a frenzy. But in actual fact ‘Wake Up!’ seems not that bad. The Frankmeister has worked with Italian muso Tony Pagliuca, himself a contemporary of UK proggers Van der Graaf Generator, and come up 11 ‘tunes’, including the very indie-sounding ‘Wake Up! Go! Go Forward!’. Recorded live in South Korea, it boasts some decidedly post-rock guitars and proggy brass flourishes added afterwards.
Some rock stars will be concerned at this foray into their territory. It’s not as if you’d catch musicians preaching to the world after all. Alice Cooper has already seen the writing on the wall and is set to to narrate Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood, while David Bowie is working on the Spongebob musical. But there’s a sense that musicians should just play to their strengths (Tin Machine anyone?) Pop star Sam Smith’s lacklustre Bond theme has been roundly lambasted, and Smith is no John Barry (or even Simon le Bon). As for kooky jazz-pop waif Paloma Faith’s take on the Rugby World Cup theme music, her rendition – reminiscent of an injured goose – has attracted a 10,000-signature petition for its removal. A less surprising career move is Radiohead’s Thom Yorke’s foray into scoring, for a Pinter Broadway play, though some might prefer to hold out for the sitcom The Libertines claim to have written (or possibly lived). With the jury still out on their reformation album, perhaps one to hang onto.
Often an artist’s career change may be put down to following their muse, but more likely it’s when things aren’t going quite to plan. Morrissey is bemoaning a lack of record companies clamouring for his signature – clearly having never heard of indie labels or even crowdfunding.
But instead, perhaps buoyed by the reasonable reception his ‘Autobiography’ received, Moz has moved into fiction (please God, let ‘List of the Lost’ be fiction). The verbose and rambling debut has been universally panned, with not one “bulbous salutation” to be found in the review pages. Sleeper’s Louise Wener, Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart David, and Luke Sutherland out of Long Fin Killie have written (non-musical) books to critical acclaim (the latter a Whitbread prize nominee), but the former Smiths frontman may have spoiled it for everyone else. After all, asking a musician to pen a novel is like putting Jeremy Clarkson in charge of a buffet. Or letting George Osbourne run the economy. Maybe the Pope should just stick to preaching to the converted.
Dune Witch Trials
Waving At Airports
(number4door)
Brevity is the soul of hit, as Shakespeare never said. But this Glasgow four-piece would surely agree. None of the songs on this five-track EP clock in at more than three minutes – indeed ‘Birthday Pitch’ is a concise 107 seconds – but they pack in enough catchy hooks and punchy choruses in five tracks to keep most bands going for an entire career. Drawing from US indie rock as much as their homeland the tunes lurch between acoustic balladry on the title track and fuzzy skewed grunge on the singalong of ‘Motorcade’. The most obvious comparison is with Guided By Voices, in part due to the occasional feel that a short tune could be drawn out into an epic thanks to the surfeit of musical ideas. But as another saying goes, never outstay your welcome. HHHHH
