Slick Rick — “Children’s Story”

Known as “hip-hop’s greatest story-teller”, Slick Rick is at his narratorial best in “Children’s Story”. Delivered in his signature conversational style and accent (existing somewhere between cockney, Australian and Bronx), Rick spins a compelling yarn about a young kleptomaniac who tries to rob an undercover cop. The chase scene that ensues is hilarious (especially when “Daaaaaa-ve the dope fiend” lends the boy a “spanking shotgun”). Rick is quick to undercut this hilarity by having the unarmed boy shot down by the police, but then reinstates it with the two children he is reading this ‘story’ to complaining ‘Uncle Ricky is reeeeally weird’. A golden-age hip-hop classic.

Laurie Anderson — “O Superman (For Massenet)”

Unfairly known by many music fans as simply Lou Reed’s wife, Laurie Anderson was in fact making some of the most startlingly avant-garde pop in the 80s and 90s, long after Lou Reed’s musical endeavours had peaked. In ‘O Superman’, inspired by the aria “Ô Souverain, ô juge, ô père” from Jules Massenet’s 1885 opera Le Cid, over a repeated 1242 beats of the sound/word ‘ha’ Anderson weaves a stunning dialogue between uncertain characters. Mother, daughter, living, dead, man, woman, ‘O Superman’ is a song of universal communion.

Tom Tom Club — “Genius of Love”

Like Laurie Anderson, Tom Tom Club are also plagued with being associated with a more famous act. In Tom Tom Club’s case, husband and wife Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz are also members of Talking Heads. It’s only natural therefore that ‘Genius of Love’ is a brilliant synthesis of two distinctive Talking Heads styles: the rhythm-focussed material on Remain in Light (particularly ‘Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)’) and the beautiful melodies of ‘This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)’.

Bad Brains — “Pay to Cum”

Bad Brains were that oddest of hardcore punk bands. Thanks to their background in fusion jazz, their music was more versatile than any of their 4-chord peers. ‘Pay to Cum’s 1:33 features tempo changes, varying vocal harmonies, a bloody cowbell (which before James Murphy and the Rapture was actually quite the underused percussion instrument) and ends with a downstroke so loud, final and clear it’s basically an aural exclamation mark. Influencing the great (Beastie Boys) the awful (Red Hot Chilli Peppers) and every punk band in between, ‘Pay to Cum’ is Bad Brains definitive statement.

The name ‘Bloody Knuckles’ might draw to mind the slightly sadomasochistic classroom game played with 50p pieces, but Oxford regulars will recognise it as the name of the termly night dedicated to house music. Of course, definitions have changed – Bloody Knuckles isn’t about Tomorrowland-esque big room house, as popularised by Avicii, Hardwell et al. Instead, it’s a retrospective to the music you might hear playing in, for example, a club in 80s Chicago. A club called the Warehouse, perhaps.

It’s here that the name Bloody Knuckles starts making more sense. A tribute to a man who’s often called the godfather of house music, the night is named after one Frankie Knuckles, who brought a fusion of soul, R&B, disco, and European electro to the eager ears of predominantly black, gay men who filled the members-only Warehouse wall to wall. It’s this Warehouse that is credited for giving ‘house’ music its name. Clearly, ‘Warehouse music’ was too much of a mouthful.

His eclectic mixes brought in an ever-wider crowd, attracting an audience that threatened to deprive the members of the Warehouse of a space for themselves, with the room now packed with white, straight faces. Frankie – being black and openly gay himself – sympathised, and so 1982 saw him opening up a club of his own: the Power Plant. He spent five years here, as house music exploded onto the scene. By this time, house was spreading like wildfire across America, and by the time the Power Plant closed in 1987 it had reached the far corners of the globe.

House music isn’t restricted to Frankie Knuckles, though. Ron Hardy, also a DJ in the gay scene, is often credited with pioneering the variation in samples house music is famous for. While Knuckles was playing mainly disco at the Power Plant, Hardy was mixing in samples from tapes brought to his club, The Music Box, by fans who wanted to be more involved with the music.

A celebration of all of this and more, Bloody Knuckles is a glance into the past. Three decades later, the quote from their tagline still holds true:

“How hot is house music right now?” the cameraman asks a young Frankie Knuckles. “On a scale from one to 10,” he replies, “It’s 12.”

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

Fans of CHVRCHES will find themselves at home as the first chords of ‘Never Ending Circles’ cascade into an immediately catchy opener to their 2015 album. Every Open Eye comes nearly exactly two years after the Glaswegian trio’s debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, and in the intervening two years it’s clear that they’ve taken the time to refine their sound.

It’s a confident move, indicative of a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset – yet they’ve made some subtle improvements. Part of this is a delicate balancing act – the instantly recognisable bangers that’ll get played to death in Topshop are juxtaposed with the two slower tracks on the album. Martin Doherty’s sole outing as vocalist, ‘High Enough To Carry You Over’, is a soulful ballad breaking up the middle of the album, and ‘Afterglow’ lives up to its name as a dreamy comedown bringing Every Open Eye to a graceful close.

This confidence could be seen in a different light, however. Side by side, someone new to CHVRCHES wouldn’t be able to draw a distinction between this fresh outing and their debut album. Doherty may have expressed a desire not to go down the oft-tread route of a dark, brooding second album (though a listen to the lyrics in Every Open Eye might make it seem otherwise), but the alternative seems to have been that CHVRCHES have found a comfy perch atop their laurels.

★★★★☆

Four Stars

Elizabeth Woolridge Grant is a lady of many guises: ‘Gangster Nancy Sinatra’, ‘Lolita got lost in the hood’ and Lana Del Rey are amongst her most famous self-christenings. Persona is a ductile concept for this singer, and whilst she has grown from YouTube sensation to Glastonbury headliner, her identity remains ever ephemeral and romantically mysterious. Her latest studio release, Honeymoon, exhibits the usual saccharine recipe of bad boys, blues and sunsets, but in true femme fatale style, something sinister lurks beneath the porcelain sweetness. This album plays host to an intriguing collision between Del Rey’s signature retro-mania and the darker contemporary concerns of media pressure and identity.

 In Del Rey’s latest Radio 1 session, she couldn’t decide whether Honeymoonwas ‘far out’ or conservative. I choose conservative, simply by listening to the first and titular track. ‘Honeymoon’ is divine, immaculate, and the closest the album gets to the ‘Video Games’ anthem we all adore. omplete with sighing violins and tingling echoes of film noir, the song guarantees goosebumps. You could be forgiven for thinking Henry Mancini is alive and kicking, not least that he helped produce this epic track, one that wouldn’t go amiss on an old Hollywood film score. ‘Salvatore’ is also distinctive, transforming Del Rey from crooning Californian Queen to purring 1940s Latina, teasing her elder Mafia amore, whilst eating “soft ice cream”. ‘Art Deco’ likewise has a vintage gleam with its fragrant whispers of Great Gatsby jazz (allegedly, the song is about Lana’s pal Azealia Banks).

It’s Lana’s lustrous contralto vocal range that binds this album; switching from syrupy, ‘mademoiselle’ timbre to deep, husky jazz seamlessly – occasionally bolstered by synth-organs – her singing is tremendous, as is her delicate handling of language. “Pink flamingos always fascinated me”, the opening lyric of ‘Music to Watch Boys To’, colourful as it is, is teased out sumptuously as Lana lingers deliciously over each syllable. But some lyrics miss the mark: “my past seems stranger than a stranger” in ‘Freak’ and “it’s not simple, it’s trigonometry” in ‘Blackest Day’. Yet Lana’s acrobatic voice conceals such droops; she is able to transform something so simple – “I like you a lot” – into a rich and haunting lullaby.

Honeymoon is a hybrid album though; a chimaera of velveteen Lana and psychedelic Lana. The yoking of Born to Die’s tender, warbling strings with Ultraviolence’s electro-pop pulse bequeaths us nihilistic trap-pop numbers like ‘High by the Beach’. The song’s ‘fuck you’ mantra, with Lana’s dissonantly gutsy lyrics – “the truth is I never bought into your bullshit” – has earned it comparisons with Rihanna’s ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’. Her video, less shocking and controversial than RiRi’s bloodstained spectacle, still surprises.

An undoubtedly baked damsel in distress whips out a large firearm from a guitar case to shoot down a paparazzi-laden helicopter. Though ripe for metaphorical interpretations, this video ultimately personifies the paps as an abusive lover, with the “weird drone” (Lana’s own words) of the chorus conjuring up an incredibly trippy atmosphere. Exchanging the genre’s trademark grit for her personal nostalgic glitz, resisting media scrutiny has never looked so glamorous.

‘God knows I tried’ and ‘Swan Song’ similarly depict this struggle. Lamenting stardom’s curse, Lana serenades, “I’ve got nothing much to live for ever since I found my fame” in the former, and declares “I’ll never sing again” in the latter. Citing the “white tennis shoes syndrome” – excuses made to avoid work, a quaint term for procrastination – Lana entices her lover to put his white tennis shoes on, follow her, become lost and be free. What with a swan song typically denoting the final performance of one’s career, many were left convinced this melancholic melody was Lana’s retirement notice. But since a cover of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ ends the album, we can relax a bit.

Honeymoon is peppered with artistic legends: Bowie, Simone, Dylan, T.S. Eliot, The Eagles, Billie Holiday. This could be dismissed as a kudos-quest, but Lana’s originality sparkles. The tracks aren’t individually as distinctive as previous albums, but as with any release, closer inspection reveals depth. Satisfying expectations of innovation and imitation, Honeymoon is a winner: “I could drink it like tequila sunrise”.

If there ever was a time when we took exorcists seriously on the big screen or the little, it has long past. Clichés as cumbersome as Marley’s chains seem to have weighed down the exorcist horror genre, and consigned it to everlasting internment in shitflick hell. But even though the clanking of those clichés can be heard all the way through ITV’s latest foray into the genre, Midwinter of the Spirit, if this series were put in any metaphysical realm it would be limbo – because while watching it you’re really just waiting for the next thing to start.

The thing which makes Midwinter of the Spirit dull, really skull-numbingly dull, is that it has no idea whether it should be embracing these clichés, or mocking them. Much of the time it tries to hold them at an ironic distance, as if its creators thought a few sarcastic remarks about sacraments would do for the exorcist genre what Skyfall’s gadget jokes did for James Bond. But we don’t need to take Bond’s gadgets seriously in order to enjoy a Bond film – they are simply begging to be ridiculed. But in order for us to find an exorcism on screen scary, we must be convinced to take its attendant mythology seriously. We must believe, for the duration of the B movie or TV episode, that the poor patient in their sickbed really is possessed, and that muttering a few words while grabbing their ankles really will cure them.

Unsure what to do, Midwinter of the Spirit sends up this hocus pocus in one scene, then begs us to take it seriously in the next. It tries to have its cake, and transubstantiate it.

I got the sense while watching Midwinter of the Spirit that its chronic self-consciousness stems from something more than a desire not to seem hackneyed. I don’t imagine I’m the only viewer of films such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose, through whose head flash thoughts like ‘What if this poor girl just has epilepsy? What if this priest is accidentally just screwing with her head?’ The traditional exorcism scene, with its straps and its screeches, its cuts and its cries of no more, is by its nature very nearly an exploitation scene; it’s only stopped from being one by the metaphysical claims it asks us to accept. What most exorcism films do not address is the possibility of the possessed person not actually being possessed; this is enough to make you uncomfortable even if the words ‘based on a true story’ do not fade in just before the credits roll.

Perhaps Midwinter of the Spirit self-deprecates because it wants to say to us ‘this may seem ridiculous, but it’s true!’; maybe it wants to suggest that its characters have already done all the worrying and doubting of exorcism that needs to be done, so that we, like them, can now accept it as just another public service which needs to be performed, like plumbing or creating traffic jams. But so far this has not been the effect. With only one more episode to go, Midwinter of the Spirit remains at crossed purposes.