Lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living

Or, the mockney Charles Trenet

Listening to Lily Allen’s “Littlest Things,” it occurs to me that her mildly urban beats are all a smokescreen; what she really wants to do is become a chansonnier. And why not? London could do with a female Jacques Brel; well, maybe more of a calypso Peter Sarstedt, but either way I approve.

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Populist fantasies

So, I understand New Labour putting forward reactionary proposals; they’ve always been functionaries of a particular form of neoliberalism. What I don’t understand is their basic lack of any political sense. The intriguing thing is that every stupid thing the government does is presented as if it were a canny political move. Owen pointed out […]

Despite the terrible cover

And the mediocrity of Sexy/Back (like a disappointingly restrained knock-off of “Maneater”); FutureSex/LoveSounds really is heartbreakingly good. “My Love” is a great example of cold pop, a sort of wierd ghost-rave (but not at all hauntalogical; more hammer horror, or Scooby Doo). k-punk is great on the Christina Aguillera album. He’s particularly right about the […]

Now this is a story all about how my ideology got flip turned upside down…

…and I’d like to take a minute just sit right there I’ll tell you how I came to advocate a liquidationist position in the Communist Party of Great Britain. After I’d stopped laughing at Rowenna Davis’s description of Martin Jacques as a “credible leftist advocate,” I realized the story of the erstwhile Marxism Today section […]