Never Listen To Electric Guitars

I am not a music critic, quite the contrary, and I wouldn’t ever want to be known as one.
Neither have I aspirations of becoming a music intellectual (or any kind of intellectual for that matter) so don’t worry k-punk your turf is safe.

1.2.3.4.Hit it..!

The Devil Plays Rock ‘n’ Roll (Death by Sexy is the meaning of life.)

Not Death Metal: Eagles of Death Metal

Everytime you get to thinking that rock 'n' roll is dead (finally, really, no way back now) some bunch of misfits hit you in the gut with it.
I don’t know how tongue in cheek this album is, since these guys aren’t teenagers., but it manages to be cool and amusing, cheeky and wild all at once.
If the teenager in you was ever enthralled by QOTSA's video for Go With The Flow you will appreciate this.
Gone are all attempts at navel gazing, gothic posing, credibility seeking – this is rock and roll at the Stooges level. But it's Iggy without the angst.
In a country that is now unashamedly censorious of it people, these guys have managed to get away with it by stripped away all evidence of questioning authority, or of walking the thin line between what is and what is not acceptable. In fact they have used the one left-over acceptable rebellion from the 50's and 60's: sex.

I love subversity on any level – but the subtle/obvious subversity exhibited here is bye-the-way, since this lot kick you in the balls and make your body listen.
This is teenage rock ‘n’ roll for all generations – a wide demographic – but it works beyond any cynical thoughts of marketing since it isn’t marketed – not as far as I can see anyway.

Jesse"The Devil"Hughes - Republican

In a weird contradiction, they manage to incorporate into this stripped down frame an element of tex-mex psychedelic gospel. It makes your head nod, your head spin; your body move.
This is the devil’s music. Christian fundamentalists (not to mention all of the other kinds of fundamentalists) may well find this as objectionable as they find the evil Harry Potter trash.
They will you know… well if they can take the time to think about it they will…
Put it this way, some uptight-guilt-ridden-middle-aged-man-with-incestuous-thoughts-about-his-daughter (anybody remember him) is bound to object to this smut.
And as the last hum fades and the room goes quiet, you go back Jack and do it again 'cos this is nothing more than teenage sex… and what other requirements can there possibly be for rock ‘n’ roll.

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My AK-Rig Goes Boom

Blue Lines was launched in the hazy years of daddy Bush’s Desert Storm after famously having their name curtailed to Massive by their record company for fear of being seen to glorify the 1991 yanqui assault on Iraq.
It was a launch that showed a new view; a non-egocentric vision of music’s future; invisible magicians behind the music.
Unfinished Sympathy, both track and video, became an immediate classic – hitting a visual and sonic vein in the collective unconscious.

Not content with being the platform for the careers of a number of vocalists – and, on Protection, introducing the wonderful Tracy Thorn to a new generation of listeners – they grace us with music that speaks directly to the soul; is both non-aggressive and cool; says it all by explaining nothing at all.

Mezzanine hit hard, a hole below the waterline; brutal and bleak, spiky and arachnoid, an album that takes no prisoners, an album that took Massive Attack, unbelievably, to a deeper level.

And then there is the whittled-down-to-perfection 100th Window.
A wall of sound that is at once minimal and complexly layered, fragile, subliminal, dark and frightening, it murmurs at the edge of your awareness, leaving little barbs in your consciousness, compelling you to return.
And when you do, you’ll find the one you love is you.

Massive Attack is the soundtrack to the end of the world; being neither whimper nor bang, but rather a deep tug of regret.

The Far Queue awards Massive Attack 1 000 000 stars (and 1 universe) for services to the soul.