Hooks (Hers)

...That's 'hers' to the 'his' I took a couple of weeks ago (...and, once again, taken before opening, naturally...!)

'Jeff, Who Lives At Home' is an entertaining, funny ultimately life-affirming little American indie movie. Beck and I both enjoyed it: it reminded me of 'The Descendents' in tone, possibly because at heart it had a positive treatment of an apparently dysfunctional family (and who can't relate to that theme!); whilst it made Beck think of 'Sideways' since it is, as she pointed out, in it's own odd way both a buddy-movie and a road-movie. Well worth a look.

Anyway, returning to the ever-expanding musical palate, today we drift from Calypso over to the somewhat more sonically twisted world of weird post-punk nobodies Corchazade, who I tracked down after an intriguing recommendation from the one and only Steve Albini in this curious web-chat interview thing he did (entertainingly summarized here - let's face it, if we're gonna trust the man's opinion on food we should be on fairly safe ground with interesting noise generators of the 1980's...!) Not sure why my interest was piqued, actually, and if it was the Nottingham connection that seems to be an error anyway on the part of the mighty Steve as everyone else net-wise seems pretty sure that this lot were from Bristol. That said, the music (an EP and an album released in 1985 and an unreleased (but digitally available) second album that I've not got round to yet) is pretty great, though possibly ahead of it's time and geographically displaced. The opening, title track on the wonderfully named 'Aaah, You Are Light As A Feather' EP comes on all lilting and post-rock, rather like an anglicized take on the sound that Slint were about to pioneer in the States. Elsewhere, a slightly ramshackle hint of rockabilly twang and the odd Mark E. Smith yelp slips in to suggest something of a sliding link between post-punk and Pavement. No idea why the band didn't go on to greater things: John Peel, who played them once only, was apparently put off by their name, which seems a trivial enough reason - it is a truly terrible name, mind...!