the storm is coming.

Two more days..

Stressed out over two exams in the next two days, and all I want right now is to be sitting in my back garden on a sunny evening, with some beer, some burgers and some good friends. Gah!

Surreal Football: How to do an important meeting at university or school or work

surrealfootball:

1. Consider carefully the context around which the meeting will play out.

Can they throw you out as a result of this meeting, or is it about something relatively minor? The answer to this question is going to affect where you go next, quite obviously. If the meeting is a minor one – perhaps…

The greatest thing, or the greatest thing?

nonleaguedogs:

Guiseley AFC v Stalybridge Celtic

@jonchorne

The state of Arsenal, and why a seven year drought is a small price to pay

I was drunkenly trying to articulate this to my granddad earlier, and I still think it makes sense.

Everyone in the media seems desperate to point out, when Arsenal are knocked out of various competitions, how many years it’s been since we last won a trophy. It’s now seven, and will have been at least eight by the next opportunity. This is painted as being some dreadful, awful thing. While it’s far from dreamland, I’m not immensely dissatisfied, and I think the same holds for a lot of fans. It’s not our God-given right to win every trophy going, and I, for one, am quite pleased a lot of our supporters realise that. We’re competitive in all the competitions we enter, having finished in the top four of the league every year under Arsène Wenger, and looking reasonably good to do it again; we’ve reached the knockout stages of the Champions League consistently, generally being put out by Barcelona, the best team in the world, and running them fairly close at times; we’ve had a few decent runs in the domestic cups. I’d rather be running close in various tournaments than win one and do dramatically badly in others (looking at you, Liverpool).

The number of years since a trophy has last been won is similar to the number of years since Arsenal left Highbury, and I don’t think this is any coincidence. The construction of the Emirates Stadium didn’t come cheaply, and the club has had to work out various ways to finance it, including ways directly connected to the on-field performance at the club. Wenger has said before that the club “needs” to make £20 million a season from player sales, and this has generally been met. Now, this is where my point above about being competitive comes in. In my view, keeping this club competitive on all fronts while managing so effectively to balance the books and keep paying off the stadium, makes this derision of not having won a trophy almost laughable. When we look back on this period of the club’s history in 15 or 20 years’ time, I think Wenger will be lauded for the way he’s kept the club a major force domestically and in Europe, while managing to pay off a state of the art stadium. We may even go so far as to say that asking for major trophies to be delivered during this period was ridiculous. OK, you can’t blame Szczesny and Koscielny’s mixup in the 2011 League Cup final on paying off a stadium loan, but that was a freak occurrence rather than indicative of horrific decline.

Once the stadium has been paid off, normal service should resume, right? All the money that is generated by the club (which is not inconsiderable) can go straight back into the squad. It’s my understanding that the majority of Arsenal’s debt is connected to the stadium, rather than simply spending beyond its means on player contracts and so on, and it’s in this regard that Arsenal is so often seen as the ideally run football club. When the burden of the stadium is off the club’s collective shoulders, we really should see the benefits of the planning set in place by the club, aided (well, hopefully) by UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations, which should, in time, eliminate the artificial book-balancing by rich owners.

So, reasons to be optimistic. Short term pain (and how painful is this spell, anyway?) for long term gain. And credit, really, really ought to go to Arsène Wenger, because it’s very difficult to imagine another manager coping with the sort of headlock situation he’s in with regards to finances at the moment. He’s often painted as being naturally tight-fisted, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. He’s a man who spent £13 million on Sylvain Wiltord, for goodness’ sake. Yet he’s coped admirably with the position he’s been put in, and not once complained. Of course he’ll be remembered for winning the double in his first full season, for the Invincibles, but I really hope this period goes down among his achievements as well.

And why the fuck not, a couple of other reviews

Sebastian - Love In Motion (single)

French electro artist Sebastian, from the Ed Banger Records school of Justice and, er, Uffie, collaborates on his new single “Love In Motion” with Mayer Hawthorne. Put simply though, it’s just not really a single. A dull mechanical beat plods along through the verses with Hawthorne’s distorted vocals way too deep in the mix. You might expect this to build up to a big chorus, but it disappoints in this regard as well, leaving you wondering just what the point is. It says a lot about Sebastian’s production when you think he could take a few ideas from Skrillex’s remix, which is actually quite interesting until it reaches that hideous creation they call “the drop”. Best of all, though, is the remix from the ever-excellent Rustie, which loops 90s house piano over pounding drums, and makes far better use of Hawthorne’s voice than Sebastian’s original production. The album from which this single is taken, Total, isn’t bad, but this track simply falls flat.

—

White Rabbits - Milk Famous (album)

White Rabbits used to be so interesting. Their debut album Fort Nightly was a brilliantly cohesive collection of guitar-pop tracks with a mysterious, nocturnal atmosphere. Their second album featured “Percussion Gun”, one of the better songs of the year, and certainly their best yet. What made them great was the energy instilled in almost everything they did… and that’s exactly what’s missing from their third record, Milk Famous.

It’s just boring. The first song that you could describe as upbeat comes in at track number four, and it’s hardly a barnstormer like “Kid On My Shoulders” from the debut. Of course, not every album has to be full of belters from start to finish, and, indeed, many benefit from welcome breathing space. But Milk Famous breathes so much that it’s suffering from hyperventilation. It reeks of a band trying too hard to be cerebral and abandoning the raw instinct that made them so exciting in the first place.

It’s difficult to work out who this album would appeal to. Its lack of standout tracks makes it unlikely to grab a new audience, yet there seems little to attract old fans either. A couple of the later tracks on the album, “Danny Come Inside” and “The Day You Won The War”, are worth a listen, and hint at the kind of sound that White Rabbits used to make, but they are immediately followed by the closing dirge “I Had It Coming” which is the most forgettable thing you’ll hear all year. Sadly, it’s this track that is most representative of the band’s direction: from something interesting and exciting, to forgettable tedium.

My WU LYF review

qmunicate ain’t published it yet; dunno if that’s ‘cos they reckon it’s shite, or just haven’t got round to it yet, so fuck it, I’m gonna post it here. It’s pretentious as fuck.

—

It feels appropriate, as Glasgow’s first sunny day of the year comes to an end, that WU LYF are in town. Their songs ooze long summer days in backs of friends’ cars, drinking on the beach; being young. Their music produces genuine warmth, with the singer providing youthful enthusiasm. Not a band for the Glaswegian winter.

First though, Scottish support act Holy Esque take to the stage as white noise interrupts the background music playing over the PA. They have a simple set up but make a lot of noise, playing a short set of urgent, upbeat distorted rock songs. Standout track “Rose” can be found online. The fourpiece are only on stage for twenty minutes, but it’s long enough to make an impression.

WU LYF (“woo life”) made their name by being elusive and cryptic in the way they marketed themselves, but show no signs of that this evening, acknowledging the crowd as they come on stage and chirpily wishing us a happy St. Patrick’s Day. The early part of their set is troubled by technical problems but no one seems to mind. The venue, a converted warehouse, is spacious and echoey, but the band’s massive sound fills the room comfortably. You get the feeling that if word continues to spread and their following grows, they would be more than comfortable filling out stadiums.

The band play through their debut album Go Tell Fire to the Mountain in its entirety, which progresses from funeral march to raucous celebration, often within one song. The drummer plays to within an inch of his life, complemented by warm, jangling guitars. Mid-set, they slot in a cover which seems to fall a bit flat among the audience, but provides a necessary breather. It probably says more about the quality of their own songs that someone else’s doesn’t quite fit. The set reaches its climax with cathartic chants to “We Bros”, and it feels like something important is happening as the sizeable crowd revel in the moment. And that’s what WU LYF are about: enjoying being young and having pure, innocent fun.

IT’S A LIFELESS LIFE WITH NO FIXED ADDRESS TO GIVE

BUT YOU’RE NOT MINE TO DIE FOR ANY MORE, SO I MUST LIVE

Writing

Doing a gig review tonight for a uni magazine. This means my pretentious ramblings about music will now exist in print! (Or at least, somewhere else on the internet.)