★★★★★
Five stars

In my recent internet skulking, I’ve come to find that much of the fan conversation surrounding the new Mad Max film is dominated by mentions of age. Director George Miller (who also helmed the three previous entries in the post-apocalyptic car-western franchise) is rounding 70, and it’s been 30 years since the last entry, Beyond Thunderdome. ‘But does it feel like the old films?’ cry those yet to take the plunge.

It’s not an unfair question to ask, but it ultimately does the film a disservice. This is no mere imitation, no attempt to recapture the magic of the 80s; Mad Max: Fury Road has molten blood and gasoline coursing through its veins, and an iron heart to pump them. Miller is an uncompromising visionary, and this is the head-rattling, bone-crunching stuff of his visions. If ever it doesn’t feel like the old movies, it’s because the intensity and insanity have been turned up beyond belief – the result is incredibly fresh and, resoundingly, the best Mad Max film yet.

Fury Road is an exquisite cocktail of elements from earlier films in the series, running a split between the more story-heavy first entry, and the straight up action of the second. Though the film leans more towards the latter (the bulk is essentially one extended chase sequence, with a couple of detours here and there) it nonetheless presents us with some of the franchise’s richest characters, not least in Charlize Theron’s ‘Imperator Furiosa’. Furiosa is an inspired creation, equal parts warrior, mother and leader, which has led many to applaud Fury Road for its feminist bent. If this wasn’t exactly Miller’s explicit intention from the outset, it’s nonetheless extremely refreshing to see men and women so naturally and evenly integrated in a blockbuster of this kind – the rarity of this sort of treatment cannot be exaggerated.

The character of Max himself has seen something of an overhaul from the Mel Gibson trilogy. Tom Hardy is solid in the role, though he lacks something of Gibson’s tacit aura of sly wit. Where Gibson’s Max was a silent, unfeeling warrior, Hardy plays him as an animalistic mutterer, haunted by visions of his wife and child. These visions hark back to the character’s for- mative moments in the first Mad Max film, and do a fine job of setting the stage for those who haven’t seen it. Fury Road is just as enjoyable for newcomers who haven’t seen the original trilogy; this is neither a reboot nor a sequel but, in Miller’s words, an “episode”. The franchise has never been big on chronology and this is no exception, though series veterans will get a nostalgic kick out of the buggy, rig and muscle car designs.

And these machines are glorious. The extended action sequences which make up a significant portion of Fury Road are stunningly and outrageously choreographed, every bit the vehicular equal of The Raid or Oldboy’s martial arts mastery. The scenes are absolutely thrilling throughout, and Miller and co know exactly when to mix it up and throw in new ideas, so it never even begins to feel stale. The effects (largely practical, and you can tell) and imagination on display are uniformly breathtaking. See it on as big a screen as possible – the visceral joy of the visual experience is overwhelming.

Of the (appropriately thin) plot, I could mention the slight middle act sag, when we take a very necessary break from the fireworks. But the film is so fucking awesome (and it’s clear that everyone involved had as much fun as you will) that I struggled to care – Mad Max: Fury Road is the best film I’ve seen this year, and I can’t wait to go again.

1. ‘Always Look On The Bright Side of Life’ – Monty Python

Play them this, whilst simultaneously telling them, ‘It could be worse, you could be doing mods’.

2. ‘Harlem Shake’ – Baauer

I feel like a harlem shake in the Rad Cam right now might result in a mass murder.

3. ‘Crazy Frog’ – Axel F

To be honest, this will piss off anyone in the vicinity.

4. ‘Lazy Song’ – Bruno Mars

“Today I don’t feel like doing anything.” Because you’re a second year and they’re a finalist; yes, they get it.

5. ‘Zombie’ – The Cranberries

Play this through your headphones so loudly that you remind all the finalists around you how little sleep they’ve had.

Tearing up the Spotify Top 50 in Poland with a massive 10 per cent of the slots, this week I’m writing about Królowie zycia by the one and only, Gang Albanii. Haven’t heard of them? Well, neither had I until last Saturday. A quick Google search reveals two things: a) they have no English wiki page and there are no English language reviews of their album (making this a Cherwell exclusive I suppose) and b) that they are defined on rateyourmusic.com as falling under the genre of comedy rap.

Now, I have to confess, my Polish falls between sketchy and non-existent. Okay, so maybe it’s just non-existent. On that basis, I really can’t talk about the lyrics. However, I can safely say there is nothing comic about those filthy basslines. The underlying electro vibes fit well with the husky overtones of what I can only presume are unparalleled wordsmithery. Pushing the barriers of dubstep and grime, Albanii’s subject matter is possibly on the adult side, with songs like ‘Marihuana’ (banger) and ‘Napad na bank’ (Bank Robbery). Popek, one member of the group (who is actually quite famous and has collaborated with Big Narstie, JME, Krept and Konan etc) lives in London so with a bit of luck, maybe we’ll see them being dropped on another huge night at Cellar in the coming weeks. Regardless, get on Spotify and get listening.

What do you do with a poet who has outlived his movement? Kerouac, Cassady and Spicer drank themselves to death; Ginsberg and Burroughs made the rickety leap to poet-celebrity. The San Francisco born poet Gary Snyder has survived in part by lingering in the calmer peripheries of the chaotic Beat Generation. He may have been immortalised in Kerouac’s 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, but he has always seemed separate from that break-neck, self-destructive style of living and writing. One of his most famous poems, 1969’s ‘Riprap’, has none of their frenetic urban energy. It begins, “Lay down these words / Before your mind like rocks.”

A$AP Rocky’s sophomore was always going to be different; the only question was the extent to which A$AP Mob’s star member would switch things up. The psychedelic production of Live.Love.A$AP and Long.Live.A$AP is still around but here it’s married to soulful sung hooks and flourishes of guitar and piano. In opener ‘Holy Ghost’, these complement Rocky’s Southern style; appearances on the record by Juicy J, UGK and Lil Wayne attest to the debt Rocky owes Southern hip-hop. Meanwhile, ‘Everyday’ features a 1970 vocal sample of Rod Stewart, while on ‘L$D’ he surprises by, well, singing.

Happily, Rocky’s irresistible flow remains, both lazy but compelling at once. Mid-album trio ‘JD’, ‘Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye 2’ and ‘Electric Body’ offer trap beats that sound as if Rocky remembered to chuck in some run-of-the-mill gangsta rap as an afterthought – ‘LPFJ2’ has the most menacing beat you’ll hear in 2015 and ScHoolboy Q helps by killing his verse on ‘Electric Body’. As for features, M.I.A. and Future disappoint on ‘Fine Whine’, though Wayne, Kanye and Mos Def are proof, if any was still needed, that Rocky is well and truly part of hip-hop canon. Ultimately, A.L.L.A. offers a fulfilling balance of familiar A$AP Rocky and experimentation. Harlem’s Pretty Flacko has stepped it up and is heading for greatness.

Do you feel that indie music is now too mainstream? Does rap make you want to kill yourself? Well, if you want a new tune for your life, then look no further than Gogol Bordello.

No one could accuse this gypsy punk band of being too mainstream. With excessively colourful videos that look like the best acid trip of your life and such lyrics as, “Caravans are leaving, and her breast is heaving,” the band mixes traditional gypsy folk tunes with punk and dub and enough bohemian spirit to make the Moulin Rouge jealous.

Whilst having started in New York, the endless list of band members come from a shit ton of different places across the globe and you can really hear it in their sound, not least of which through the accent of their lead singer which really brings in that Ukrainian folk vibe you’ve always been pining for. If you’re a language whiz, it also seems that they have made an album entirely in Russian, though given my lack of ability to read Cyrillic, it really could be any language; key point, get on that multi-lingual, multi-cultural hype (oh so PC).

Rolling Stone named them “the World’s most riotous live band” and they aren’t particularly tame in any other format; profane, though witty titles are to be expected – ‘Think Locally, Fuck Globally’. In their artist’s statement, They claim that they plan to achieve their aims (God knows what they are) through “acts of music, theatre, chaos and sorcery”. If that’s not worth a listen, I don’t know what is.

Roommate reactions: “It sounds like the kind of thing they beat animals to death to”; “Music induced headache”; “I quite like it, I don’t really have anything interesting to say about it”; “Pretty jazzy, he’s got some bold looks”; “It’s easy to sing along to cos they don’t sound like real words”; “This is why Russia wants to annex Ukraine” (no idea if this was meant as a positive or negative).

Entirely upbeat, you get hit in the face with music and peculiar lyrics, “start wearing purple” repeated god knows how many times being a particular favourite, and really can’t help but enjoy it, though anyone prejudiced against accordions: this isn’t the band for you. In short, they’re crazy and well worth the listen. Also, their frontman has an out-of-this-world moustache.

This week’s artist is Sofonisba Anguissola (1532 – 1625), an Italian painter who set a precedent for women being accepted as students of art. She was born into an aristocratic family of Cremona, and her father made sure that she received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts.

Britney Spears suggested in a recent interview that she should head back to school in order to help her kids with their maths homework. She needn’t bother. With the absolute void of original ideas in her latest release, ‘Pretty Girls’, she definitively proves that multiplying anything by zero inevitably produces absolutely nothing.

Repurposing others’ creations is nothing new – it’s a central tenet of postmodern art, which relies on appropriation, reproduction and compilation as its driving creative forces. If postmodernists believe that we’ve reached a historical epoch in which almost everything which can be done has been done, then ‘Pretty Girls’ is a great argument that we’re about to enter an age of humanity’s regression. The song, or rather the spectacle – stalling music sales mean song and video are inseparable as promotional vehicle for an artist’s other ventures – is nothing but diminished returns.

‘Pretty Girls’ is a clusterfuck of other people’s ideas, pasteurised by the moneygrubbing hands of corporate America. If you shoved Gwen Stefani on a toner-deficient photocopier, ‘Pretty Girls’ is what would come out of the printing tray. So what does the song and video steal? The video’s plot replicates that of Geena Davis’ 80s flick Earth Girls Are Easy, whilst its aesthetics lift liberally from the same period’s gaudy styles. Musically, it evokes the aforementioned Stefani, whilst its production team, The Invisible Men, replicate a superior DJ Mustard beat, which in turn is built off of hip hop’s traditional reusing and remixing of samples.

The song then, is a triumph for postmodern pop, a concept which is currently dragging any number of songs along a solid run atop the world’s charts. Last year, ‘Pretty Girls’ co-star Iggy Azalea rode the same formula to career-making success with her hit ‘Fancy,’ which with it’s 90s styled, Clueless-replicating video and familiar Mustard-stealing production, is in many ways ‘Pretty Girls’ high achieving older sibling. Charli XCX built her recent album, Sucker, off of a similarly hollow appropriation of style and sound, borrowing overtly from 90s teen queen flicks and pop punk sounds. But at least her appropriation was born of some wit and sonic adventurousness. Less so, Ariana Grande’s ‘Break Free’ video, stuffed with vintage science fiction iconography, Meghan Trainor’s Motown voice and 60s pastels, Carly Rae Jepsen’s Video Star stylings, Robin Thicke’s Marvin Gaye apeing antics. The list goes on.

Yet perhaps the greatest example is the recent world conquering‘Uptown Funk’, a paper-thin 80s homage in sound and aesthetics that had no other reason to exist than serve bitesized nostalgia up to anyone who missed out the first time around. Even Taylor Swift recently got in on the action, her ‘Bad Blood’ video borrowing concepts and imagery from a plethora of classic genre movies – Sin City, Tron, Kill Bill, Matrix, and even Spear’s own ‘Toxic’ video – cycling through as many cultural touch stones as possible, with nothing to say about any of them.

What unites them? A shared determination to avoid originality at all costs. They’re three minute recaps of ideas someone else previously popularised. Their instant familiarity makes them palatable and reassuring. In this sense, they are perfect pop – instantly digestible, easily remembered, and completely inoffensive.

And now comes ‘Pretty Girls.’ The video even remixes the song itself to ensure nothing escapes its creative black hole. Sure pop has relied on homage for years – an obvious example is Britney’s own sci-fi voyage to Mars for the ‘Oops!… I Did it Again’ video, which even referenced Titanic in its dialogue break. But this trend is different in its refusal to offer anything new. Its appropriation provides no commentary on its references. At its worst, it can barely even muster a knowing wink at the audience. You like that film that time and popularity has bequeathed some pop cultural cache upon? Here’s the best bits. Come see me on tour! But ‘Pretty Girls’ may mark the death of this trend. The public are beginning to demand more – just look at where the song is currently languishing in the charts. And yet that neon nightmare of a video still dances before me every time I shut my eyes.