It was great to drop into WH Smiths this morning and see the September issues of Plan B on the shelves of music press. Sitting cheek by jowl with the NME, it looked resplendent, if naturally and beautifully out of place. By which I mean its individuality really stood out. Whilst the rest of the bland music press could be pretty much interchangeable with their choice of cover stars and headline layouts, Plan B looks immensely cool. It fixes you with a cool, challenging stare. And it’s not just about Beth Ditto’s visage on this issue; a cover that Miss Amp rightly raves about in her editorial inside. It’s more than that. It’s a whole aesthetic… no, not an aesthetic… a whole way of thinking and of being. Plan B has, like Careless Talk Costs Lives before it, been a kind of secret society for the cultural outsiders of the land (and globe, I guess) over. And it’s been great. It IS great.
The weird thing is though, that more and more I find myself not really being into the music that Plan B covers. Much of it for me sounds too wilfully obtuse or orthodox alternative rock, which is akin to saying what Rock largely means in this day and age. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. The writers are still special and write words I want to devour, and occasionally there will be an aside or a thrown away review that sets its hooks into me and pulls me in. And does it matter that those are often words about something I’ve just heard myself? Does it matter that what I’m picking up on most are the words that reinforce my own discoveries and tastes? Does this suggest that I am getting old and resistant to new sounds? Maybe. But who cares.
Whatever. Everett makes an amusing aside in his singles column about the Pipettes press releases never using any Plan B references, when the magazine was surely responsible for a significant degree of their initial coverage. It’s a shame, because just as Plan B giving the band positive coverage early on helped legitimise the group in many people’s eyes, so referencing Plan B in press releases alongside the likes of the Daily broadsheets would help further legitimise the magazine in reader’s eyes. It’s a two way street. Or should be… But then, that’s the Music Industry I guess.
An aside – the Phoenix café sound system really is appalling (I’m sitting on a sofa in the bar – all but deserted at 11am on a Saturday, surely the best place to be). Their CD player skips with alarming regularity on whatever CD is playing, so everything ends up sounding like some avant garde Glitch noisescape. It’s insane. I need to plug in my iPod and play something to escape… and what better to listen to than the sublime sounds of the fabulous Esiotrot.
Now I saw some of this Brighton based bunch down in London recently when they played on the same bill as Pants Yell! They sounded pretty good on that occasion and I was suitably intrigued to chase them for a copy of their recent Schmesiotrot album. Everett (again) mentioned something about them in Plan B recently, and his comments about them having links back to the Postcard bands were spot on. For me there are those references of course, but also a host of others. Hefner are maybe the most obvious connection, but there are hints of The Pastels, The Orchids, The Visitors (the Sidmouth ones, not the Edinburgh ones), Ballboy, Hidden Cameras and, most intriguingly, occasional nods to the supple rhythms and edge of The Sea and Cake. And what about The Gist? Or The Feelies… or indeed Del Amitri when they were the best band in the world (no, really, they were, they were!). What’s hilarious of course is that these kids are so young they have likely not heard of many of those groups, and their list of influences or inspirations would probably leave me looking blank and confused. This is as it should be. A two way street of learning.
But I really do love Esiotrot with a large chunk of my heart. They have a song called ‘Sally Loves The Beach Boys’ and really of course every Pop group should have a song about loving The Beach Boys, if not girls called Sally. Nothing against Sally’s the world over, of course… some of my best friends are Sally’s. Ahem. There’s also one called ‘There’ll Be A Time For The Nice Guys’, and you know I’m a sucker for great song titles like that. Key line is “I wish you’d stop going for stupid pretty boys who treat you like shit and don’t know as much about music as you do” which is so great, and almost as good as the lines about men loving skateboards too much. If this song was around when I was seventeen it would have been my anthem. Possibly. And did I say they had a man with a horn? Reminded me of Greg from the mighty Church Grims if you really want to know. And did I say they had a kid on guitar and singing who reminded me of Jonathan Richman circa the first Modern Lovers album, and that’s mighty fine, mighty fine indeed. And did I mention the Beat Angel on drums? Lindy Morrison meets Anna Karina. Classy ain’t even close to being in it, dude.
I swear if I was younger and more tremulous I would have a plethora of their lines etched out on the covers of my English books. In blood. I’d be falling over myself to pledge undying adoration for this group, just as I would be falling under buses in striving to cover my love for the individual who goes for those pretty boys in the first place.
But hey, that’s the magic of Pop. Isn’t it wonderful?