Albums of the Year 2013

In alphabetical order by artist

Neko Case – The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You

Neko Case‘s latest album sees her produce a varied album which showcases her abilities both as a songwriter and as a performer. The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, possibly the longest album title since Fiona Apple’s megalith of a title in 2012, sees Case infusing her music with more to the rock end of the ‘alt’ scale from her traditional place in the country scene, though there are still wonderful examples of the genre such as the lilting ‘Calling Cards’.  Case’s lyrical ability is at its best in the strident views of the album, which sees her singing on ‘Man’.  “a woman’s heart is the watermark of which I measure everything” and from ‘I’m From Nowhere’ “..and maybe you can take this over and wear the pants into the next century” and the stripped back, echo heavy story telling of ‘Nearly Midnight, Honolulu’ and forthright ‘Man’.

Best Track: ‘Calling Cards’

Deafheaven – Sunbather

Of the albums to appear in my top eight list (usually a top five, but there were too many great albums this year) this is the only one that is of an artist new to me. The remaining seven are all artists I like, have previously bought music by and, if I’m honest, was expecting to have to find a place for in my end-of-year list. Not so Deafheaven, the American black metal band who I came to after the buzz that accompanied their second album Sunbather became too strong to ignore. When I first listened to the opening track ‘Dream House’ I was amused when the vocals, which according to  YouTube are: ‘hindered by sober restlessness. Submitting to the amber crutch’, came horrendously screaming out of lead singer George Clarke.  I’m still amused by the idea that any of the pained wails mean anything, though this is possibly unfair given my choice at position six, but over repeated listens they became less aggravating and more a beneficial addition to what is a musically interesting, if challenging, album of heavy metal. The highlight is the last track ‘The Pecan Tree’, which begins in typically robust fashion but slows to a simple piano refrain which builds to a guitar-led crescendo with Deafheaven’s unique of  vocals playing over the top. The album will not be to everyone’s taste, but will be a gateway for many to move from post-rock to metal.

Best Track: ‘The Pecan Tree’

Frightened Rabbit – Pedestrian Verse

With Pedestrian Verse Frightened Rabbit have now produced three consecutive albums of the highest quality. After 2008’s Midnight Organ Fight and The Winter Of Mixed Drinks in 2010 it was hard to see how the band could continue to produce such excellent music without becoming staid or be accused of lacking ambition. 2013’s addition to their canon was not only better than their previous efforts but moved into new ground without losing the essence of the band’s sound. Take the opening track ‘Acts of Man’, more discordant and angular than the band have ever been, but very much in keeping with their previous body of work. It is a more adventurous album, the interlude ‘Housing (In)’  is a fine addition to the list of great pop songs under two minutes, and an oddly positive album. The lyrics of Scott Hutchinson are still magnificently melancholic and self-centred, see ‘swallow the sweet self-loathing’ of the dreamy ‘Nitrous Gas’, but seem to air previously unseen moments of optimism. ‘The Oil Slick’ is almost an epilogue to the sea themes of The Winter of Mixed Drinks but the twanging bass shows the progress that the band have made musically and the song climaxes with Hutchinson singing ‘still got hope so I think we’ll be fine’ amid a harmonised choir of the wordless backing vocals that are a feature of an Frightened Rabbit album. This is their finest album yet and is close to being perfect, only the middle order of the muted ‘Late March, Death March’ and ‘December’s Traditions’ marking their card. And the latter I am coming around to, mainly thanks to the fantastic line ‘sticking plaster on a shattered bone’. There are so many truly great stand out tracks on this album that it is amazing that it works as a whole, but the most stand out of the stand outs is ‘State Hospital’ which is a heart-wrenching song alone but devastating when combined with the superb video. My favourite album produced in a very competitive year.

Best Track: ‘State Hospital’

Moonface – Julia With Blue Jeans On

Spencer Krug took the unusual step of using just a piano for accompaniment on his latest Moonface released entitled Julia With Blue Jeans On. Krug is a strong keyboardist but his entire discography has been one of complex, layered sounds which need to be unravelled like puzzles and his voice is rougher than would be usually found on such a stripped back almost classical album. But Krug’s greatest strength has always been his way with words and the simple sonorous clink of the piano allows his lyrics to take the spotlight. On opening track ‘Barbarian’ he delivers the line ‘how I asked you where you want to be buried and you asked me the name’, inserting a pregnant pause with dulled piano which predicates how we should read the next line: ‘of the town where I was born.’ There is as always with Krug some recycling of previous work, the song ‘November 2011’ reuses the melody from Dragonslayers ‘Silver Moons’ and the titular Julia could well be the same as Yulia who awaits her Cosmonaut partner in the Wolf Parade song of the same name, but there is always something fresh and improved whenever Krug revisits old material. Likewise the move to a more acoustic sound on Julia has led to some of his best work. A triumph in the face of risk.

Best Track: ‘Julia With Blue Jeans On’

The National – Trouble Will Find Me

Having made 2010’s incredibly successful High Violet it must have been tempting for The National to continue with the formula that had served them so well. The obvious comparison would be with their British doppelgänger Elbow, who followed up the immense commercial success of The Seldom Seen Kid with the equally anthemic Build A Rocket Boys! Fans of the band’s earlier work felt it was a sell-out to the new audience who could sing along with gusto to ‘One Day Like This’ but were stumped by anything that preceded it. That it not to say it is a bad album, far from it, but for die hard fans it was not the album they could or should have made. In The National’s 2013 album Trouble Will Find Me the band produced an album which was, for the most part, the antithesis of anthemic. The record is full of low tempo tracks with little lead instrumentation, relying on the rhythm section to give shape and solidity to the songs. The music seems to have been mixed and buried into the background, a beguiling susurrus which creates space for Matt Berninger’s lyrics to adopt the centre stage. “Put the flowers you find in a vase, if you’re dead in the mind it will brighten the place” he sings on ‘Graceless’, the one track which harkens back to the commercial successes of the previous album with a bright (ignoring the lyrics) track which provides a cerebral sing-alone.  This is not an album which is likely to suck an audience in and become their new favourite on first listen. But it does have the wonderful quality of having depth and offering more on every play. It is unlikely to ever match the success of High Violet, but arguably is a richer and more rewarding work.

Best Track: ‘I Need My Girl’

Sigur Ros – Kveikur

Sigur Ros have now been producing music for nearly two decades and after albums Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust and Valtari were, largely, poorly received it had been postulated that the band had little more of value to give. I personally felt that Valtari was a positive regression which took the band back to what they did best, making beautiful ethereal music which felt timeless, in the sense that to listen to it was to lose sense of the progression of time. Critics felt it was unadventurous and an easy, lazy, effort. Not so with new album Kveikur, which translates to fuse and lives up to the name. First song ‘Brennisteinn’ features a a gravelly sound of crushing rocks and then a blaring horn which could be lifted from any post-Inception trailer. It serves as a warning, a signal, that the slow meditative Sigur Ros of the previous album has been put aside. Drummer Orri Páll Dýrason features more heavily and leads out a stronger sound. There are signs that the band has  retained the desire to produce music which appeals to a wider demographic, the radio-friendly length and sounds of similar cuts ‘Isjaki’  and ‘Rafstraumur’ are welcome and hugely evocative palette cleansers. A career saver? I would argue they didn’t need it. But Kveikur is another fine edition to a quality discography of a genre-defining band.

Best Track: ‘Rafstraumur’

Sleigh Bells – Bitter Rivals

In Bitter Rivals the noise-duo Sleigh Bells have continued to infuse greater and greater levels of pop into their music but have kept the noise and the incredible attitude. The opening and titular track begins with a jangling guitar and finger clicks, before exploding into the ultra-aggressive compressed guitar licks and Alexis Krauss’s punk-pop voice which have become the hallmarks of the band. Where previous album Reign Of Terror had channelled the sound of 60s girl groups, there is less cute on this album and more focus on the fuzzed out auditory assault that lead guitarist Derek Miller can produce. Krauss still has a feisty cut glass voice that you feel would have changed the face of reality music television shows, had she been born later or had less success earlier. The only misstep on the album is the song ‘Tiger Kit’ which on the surface is the closest in sound to Sleigh Bells first album but oddly features animal sound effects in the background and finishes with the terrible line ‘so make like a banana, and split!’ However skip or endure this track and the remainder of the album is perfect, particularly track four  ‘Sing Like A Wire’ which produces menace with the hollow beat of the drum machine and occasional bursts of klaxon-esque guitars even before Krauss delivers the line ‘dreamed I was the hunter, with the never-ending thirst.’

Best Track: ‘Sing Like A Wire’

Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires Of The City

Vampire Weekend’s album was released to widespread critical acclaim and has been the subject of much writing so little more needs to be said but to add that they have produced the best pop album this year and the third instant classic of their career (out of three). ‘Diane Young’ is a Fitzgerald-ian gem of bad behaviour amidst privilege with an infectious stuttered chorus, ‘Unbelievers’ is almost a wondered conversation about religion (“Girl, you and I will die unbelievers, bound to the tracks of the train”) pondering on the nature of death in a matter-of-fact manner with no hint of malice. Religion is a theme on a number of the song’s 12 tracks, none more so than ‘Ya Hey’ which has already been written about such poignancy and passion that to elucidate further seems futile. The album is unmistakably the work of Vampire Weekend but still feels new and at the forefront, an impressive feat for a band with a very distinctive sound that could easily feel overdone or gimmicky. As good as this album is, you can’t help but look forward with eagerness to what they will create next as they show no signs of running out of creativity or talent.

Best Track: ‘Diane Young’

South African Blood, English Heart

Source: images99.com

Although I am slightly late to the controversy, Jack Wilshere’s comments earlier this month about nationality and sporting teams provide an opportunity for me to espouse an opinion I have quietly held for a while but not yet voiced. I am myself not fully sure that it is correct. I am not fully sure it works. But I feel it is worth airing if for nothing more than to play devil’s advocate. Cricket will be my chosen vehicle, it is my sport and the games arena in which the  debate is most heated but the most complex.

It is worth repeating the statement from the Arsenal and England midfielder that provoked so much debate:

“If you’ve lived in England for five years, for me, it doesn’t make you English. You shouldn’t play. It doesn’t mean you can play for that country. If I went to Spain and lived there for five years, I’m not going to play for Spain. For me an English player should play for England really.”

Coverage of the incident increased when England cricketer Kevin Pietersen, never a man to keep his thoughts bottled up inside, responded on Twitter. His was a telling phrase:

“It’s about representing your country! IN ANY SPORT!”

Your country? many would say. You were born in South Africa. You grew up in South Africa. You played for a South African cricket side and even played against England in a tour match. You moved to England when you were twenty years old. You still sound like the kid from Pietermaritzburg. How can you call yourself English?

Pietersen qualifies to play for England team courtesy of a British passport that is his birthright, having been born to an English mother, but he also qualifies on dint of an outstanding natural talent that he felt was never going to be fully expressed in South Africa. Pietersen emigrated to play for Nottinghamshire because he felt the South African quota system was preventing him developing ahead of inferior players. True? Debatable. That he is a true genius in cricketing terms who has earned his place in the national side through runs? Of no doubt. English? Tough to argue.

He is not the only player in the England team who was born out of country but has forced their way in through talent. Of the England side currently beginning their winter tour of Australia, proudly wearing the three lions against the old enemy, Pietersen is one of six: Matt Prior (born in South Africa), Ben Stokes (New Zealand), Boyd Rankin (Ireland), Jonathan Trott (South Africa) and Gary Ballance (Zimbabwe) being the others. Six out of seventeen squad members don’t pass what must surely come to be known as the ‘Wilshere Test’.

But is this fair? Of the six, Trott Pietersen and Prior all have one parent who are English. It is far from unusual for a person to have such a mixed background, particularly amongst members of the Empire where Commonwealth postings, and thus foreign births, were common. Indeed, some of the finest and most English of English cricket captains, Andrew Strauss Colin Cowdrey and even arch-Englishman Douglas Jardine among them, were born outside our shores. The benefits of being victims of a guilty imperial past.

True, this is not the case for the remaining three. But Rankin changed his representation because of the lack of Test match opportunities in his native Ireland and Stokes was moved to England by his family, seeking work, when he was six. The ambition of the Irish fast bowler must be commended and the necessity of the Stokes family in uprooting understood and appreciated.

Making a living is an important part of life. The most important part of life, depending on your outlook. To work is to live and if making a living is your life, then is not England their life? If they are not English in breed or breeding, then they must feel proud and indebted to the country for giving them a chance to live out their dreams of playing cricket at the highest level.

For some, it is more than just opportunities. It is literal life. Fawad Ahmed, the Pakistan-born Australia leg spinner, played his first international match earlier this year for his adopted country. Many will see his début as Antipodean desperation to replace the irreplaceable Shane Warne. Ahmed might just feel glad to be there at all, having fled Pakistan when militant extremists threatened his life for supporting a NGO that championedwomen’s rights. Begrudge a Pietersen or a Trott, who it is easily argued moved for glory, but do not begrudge Fawad.

For me, it is cases such as these that require a new way of looking at nationality. Society is more multi-ethnic and mobile than ever before.  The businessman who moves to New York or Singapore for work and wishes to become CEO is not castigated. The average man-on-the-street who moves overseas for a better life is celebrated rather than scorned. The world is a global village, we are no longer fazed by uprooting our entire lives and setting up somewhere new. National sports teams must reflect this. To me, you belong to a country when you commit to it and contribute positively to it.

The six England players in the Ashes squad all live in England. They play for English clubs (when allowed) and mentor the next generation of national players. They inspire the next next generation to pick up a bat or a ball. More materially, they have bought houses here, pay tax in England, contribute to the local economy. They have married English women and given birth to children with the right to call themselves English. They contribute to English society and have committed their future to the English cause.

Not English? Then we’re looking at English the wrong way.

Death on the Line

It occurs to me that one day I may die on the tube.

No, let me recant that. It is too passive a statement.

The tube is killing me.

It is slowly murdering me, an hour and half of my life a day, Monday to Friday. It is grinding me down in the press of bodies that crash through the tunnels like a human flood.

Again, the wrong phrase. A plague. We of the rat race are just that, rodents who carry disease and pestilence down into the bowels of London and incubate it there in the cramped airless spaces of the Underground. We cram ourselves into corridors and carriages, leaving no space between ourselves, shoulders fitting into armpits and legs intertwined like lovers, sharing breaths and microscopic pests. This is a world exchange, the tourists and recent immigrants diversifying the parasites and bring cultures from all corners of the world.

They stress me these tourists, though do not think me xenophobic, for the visitor from Halifax or Swindon is as bad as those from foreign climes, their obliviousness and indecision grates. They float around the city, my city, in large groups where every participant is as ignorant as the last. They clump in chock points and clog junctions as they stare unknowingly at maps which reduces thoroughfare to a trickle. They are ponderous where we are swift. They are obstacles and hazards. Their unexpected and illogical moves trip us in connecting walkways and force us to the edge of platforms where one slip or misjudged step will see us fall.

A flat-faced battering ram, twenty tons of metal fired along the tracks. You can feel the power as you stand on the platform edge as the wave of the train blasting through the still air hits and pushes you backwards. A mindless system, like the bullet from a gun, that has no fear or caution and would go through an interloper on the line as if they weren’t there. The engine jumps and bucks, barely reined in by the carriages leashed to it. Occasionally lines converge and the adjoining wall fades away to allow the separate lines to race side by side for a brief, almost hallucinatory,  moment before vanishing from view as the walls close back in in, mere feet away once again. The speed is almost unimaginable considering the how close the brick of the tunnels are. Should just one jump prove successful, one bounce or jolt be strong enough to move the metal monster off the precisely calculated preordained route, it would dash us all to pieces against the unyielding walls and bury us beneath stone and ground in a communal metal coffin.

We are horribly trapped in those minutes between stations, trusting to the reliability of our train and to the goodwill of our fellow man. Who are you riding with, youth group or gang? Devout Muslim or radical extremist? It is a system of equality, everyone and anyone rides. Spotlessly suited business men sit next to tool-toting builders while glamour girls edge carefully away from murmuring swaying drunks in the gangway and all are welcomed in until the doors slide closed and trap us with each other. It is almost a mental exercise. If 100 people get on  at Westminster and there is a 1 per cent chance of a psychopath being among them, will I get safely off at Waterloo?

Of course, invariably, the answer is yes. And so we slog up the thoroughfares, mind our feet on the trudge up the escalator before breaking free into the fresher air of London town. And we live our lives for the evening or weekend free and calm beneath clear skies and high ceilings. But sooner or later we wake in darkness and stumble once again into the gloom of morning to be buffeted ad battered, coughed sneezed on and generally discomforted. We avoid falling beneath the axles, the serial killer gets on the next arrival and the signals don’t  fail and condemn us to a head-on death. We reach our embarkation point and our reward is to sell our body and soul for the next eight hours.

The tube is killing me.

YouTube Jukebox – Tour Videos

Is there much better, in the minds of fans and unknowing distant observers, than the life of touring bands? The girls, the booze, the adoring fans: living one long party where it’s always your birthday. And the music. Of course. Always the music.

Bands will always say they love touring. And you would imagine that to be true. Performing what you have created for people who are fanatical about your work must be a great experience.

But touring brings its own pressures. Bands split, musicians go off the rails with drugs and alcohol, the tedium and tiring nature of constant travelling wears down even the most hardy and enthusiastic of performers. And that was just the good old days. Now, the need to perform repetitive and inconsequential media events tests a bands ability to give a serious answer or to even give any answer at all (see Sigur Ros conduct what must surely be in the top five of the worst music interviews ever to have had the misfortune of happening to an unsuspecting music journalist and to the listening public).

So which is more accurate, living the dream or the nightmare? Those of us not blessed with musical talent will never find out. Thankfully, bands throughout the history of popular music have given an insight into the life of a rocker through the ‘rockumentary’. There are uncountable numbers of full length films, some absolute masterpieces, which detail life on the road, but the little cousin, the tour video is the pure distilled form. Months of touring packed into three minutes for you to view from the comfort of your own home, Youtube Jukebox brings you some of the best examples of the genre.

Japandroids

 

First out of the gates is a video which celebrates the music. Japandroids have a reputation for being a joyous live experience and their video accompaniment to the song ‘The House That Heaven Built’ certainly does nothing to attempt to dispel this. This is good ol’ rock n’ roll, just two boys rocking up in a van, setting up their gear and rocking out. The black and white shooting style harkens back to older days, just as the band seem to. A simple set up of one guitarist and one drummer, playing in small-ish venues to small-ish but fantastically enthusiastic crowds whose enthusiasm is matched by the band members who then do their own roadie work before moving on to the next show. The image is of having an uncomplicated good time both on the stage and off it, whether that be necking Gentleman Jack and roasting chickens or skeet-shooting Molotov cocktails thrown by your demon-like sound man. This is truly a celebration of the touring life, though one as experienced by a band closer to the bar-room than the arena.

Justice

From the first shot, as a jet flies over a brilliantly clear and bright blue sky, this video sets out firmly on the party side of the tour life. Justice, a French electronic duo of considerable popularity in the house music scene, are shown enjoying the fruits of their successes. They play to arenas of euphoric crowds, stay in the finest of hotels and party with only the pert-est of scantily clad women. Throughout the video it’s unclear how far they are lampooning their status or how much they are celebrating it, their touring life is rock and roll almost to cliché even down to the them being arrested for assaulting a fan. The pair come across as being far too cool, fans look overawed to even be able to touch them and the shot of Xavier de Rosnay planking looks as contrived and stupid as all shots of planking do, and also aware of just how cool they are.

Frightened Rabbit

It is quite possibly unfair to criticise Justice for appearing to be living like rock and roll stars when that is actually what they are, perhaps they can no more help living it large than a jelly can help fitting the mould. But it does come across slightly badly when compared to a viewpoint of a smaller band on tour, such as Frightened Rabbit. Though a name in their chosen field, playing indie-pop folk-rock is not generally the launchpad to international stardom and their commercial success and recognition outside of knowledgeable muso’s has been modest and the tour video that accompanies ‘Dead Now’ is similarly self-effacing. There are shots of fans enjoying show in intimate venues, which are often sold out, but the tone of the video is of the members wandering around America as tourists unbelieving that they have been allowed to play outside of Glasgow. There are numerous shots of US cityscapes, often shot from below from the viewpoint of a tour bus or a wide-eyed sightseer and the overall feeling is one of pleasure at just being there. Frightened Rabbit have become a, albeit it moderately, successful band but they still give off the impression of being five Scottish teenagers living a moment they think can’t last.

The Kills

The least rockumentary of the videos presented here, and the most rockudrama. Although to describe the action, duo play live on stage interspersed with shots of them travelling to or resting between their next performances, would suggest no difference from any other video on this list there is a definite staged style. All the shots of lead singer Alison Mossheart and guitarist Jamie Hince offstage are shot in a despairing blue tint and include the band members. And no one else. In hotel bars, on foreign streets, in aeroplanes and even on the set of a talk show, they are alone. But even together, they are apart as they sleep across from each other in tiny bunks on their tour bus or in single beds in their hotel room. A duo, apart from everyone else, but also apart from each other. This video is rockudrama in that all the others appear natural, as though a band member or a roadie has turned on a camera every so often and just observed what is occurring. In contrast, The Kills video cannot be anything other than a well planned and choreographed performance. But even for that, it is an inspired reflection of the nature of touring upon a pair of artists.

The Killers

While the offstage action is carefully choreographed in The Kills video, the planning for their similarly named peers The Killers comes in the performance. They put on quite a show, as the phrase goes, with fireworks and confetti accompanying the crescendo of their big hits. Even those who are not adoring fans of the band would find it hard not to enjoy the wholehearted effort that goes into their arena gigs. Which makes it odd that from their most recent album they chose ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’ to soundtrack a touring video. Though diehard fans see the song as the natural sequel, or possibly counterpoint, to their breakthrough track ‘Mr Brightside’, it lacks any of the energy and innovation of the original. This is reflected in the video, which shows the band performing at half speed and makes them look sluggish, which in no way reflects how they actually approach playing live. There are few scenes offstage and so to show the band, who clearly love what they do, in such a passion-less style is to misrepresent the commitment they give to each show. A rare case of a touring video tones down a band.

Queens Of The Stone Age

There could be no toning down of QOTSA. If the Japandroids video showed a small indie-rock band rocking out, the video to First it Giveth shows how the pure rockers do it, balls out. Literally. The video is a myriad of quick cuts which emphasise the energy of the band, but no better summary can be given than the shots of then-bassist Nick Oliveri obliterating his guitar with great prejudice and then hurling it into the vast maul of the crowd all whilst covered only by his many tattoos.

The National

Rounding out the list is the alternate version of ‘Terrible Love’ by alternative music poster-band The National. This is possibly the most comprehensive of the videos as it covers so much of the touring life of a band, particularly the media events that bands undertake. The shot of Matt Berninger and Scott Devendorf riding an escalator up into darkness is both elegant and possibly quite symbolic of the themes most often undertaken by the band. They are undoubtedly an intellectual act, best visualised in the video by the sharp suited Bereninger turning glasses in mouth away from a panorama of a mountain range, and their social conscience is shown in their rallying for the 2010 midterm elections. The segments which show their actual performances show that they have a physical as well as cerebral side, particularly lead singer Matt Berninger’s tortured movements show the intensity they put into their much-loved shows. Behind the scenes there is a real community feel to the packing dressing rooms, unsurprising perhaps in a band of five members, of which four are brothers and two twins at that, and a genuine humour and friendliness to the backstage hijinks. When bands form and dream of what their future tours might be like, this video might not be far away from what they imagine.

 

Albums of the Year 2012

In alphabetical order by artist

Blood Red Shoes – In Time To Voices

Blood Red Shoes will not be remembered as the greatest band that ever walked the face of the earth. They may not even be remembered as the best band from Brighton. Boy-girl duo Steven Ansell (drums and vocals) and Laura-Mary Carter (guitar and vocals) produce simple rock n’roll music without frills or concern for decibel levels. The solidity of their records does not even speak to the noise they produce live which is at odds for the minimal set-up the band have on stage. Indeed, on a large stage they look positively vulnerable until they tone up and blast off. And while the songs have very little clever poetical wordplay, deep thoughts or progressive music, they are catchy and pleasingly melodic in places.

Best Track – Stop Kicking

Fang Island – Major

Fang Island describe their music as ‘everyone high-fiving each other’ and their first self-titled album lived up to this, providing bouncy instrumental tracks supplemented only with yelps and ‘woos’. Any tracks with lyrics, ‘Daisy’ being the obvious example, were slurred to the point of being incomprehensible. The realisation that their follow-up would include full, intelligble, vocals was met with concern from fans of the first, who worried that their playfulness and joy might be lost. While the album is a more considered effort than the first and has seen the band develop, they’ve not grown into a stifling maturity. First track Kindergarten even makes this clear in its chorus of ‘and all I know, I learnt in Kindergarten.’ The energy and vibrancy of the first album is still there but have been joined by pithy lyrics which lend themselves to sing-a-longs. The vocals themselves are not particularly strong or with any great character, but in their simplicity comes a real stadium rock feel that the average tone deaf fan can belt it out to. This mixes in with charming moments of deftness in the first and last tracks on the album, the aforementioned ‘Kindergarten’ and ‘Victorinian’, which driven by piano are lighter than the rest of the album but no less sunny or singable. This is a grown up record by a young and youthful band.

Best Track – Chime Out 

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

The world failed to end, as predicted by the Mayan calendar, on the 21st December this year but you feel had Godspeed You! Black Emperor climbed to the top of Mount Zion that day and cranked their amps to eleven the rapture may have arrived on schedule. Given that several songs on this LP date back some ten years, written and performed but not included on previous albums, it is no surprise that this does not move GY!BE in any new directions. But what Allelujah! does is to refine and refocus. Gone are the several minutes of near silence in the middle of movements and the sampled inserts which, while they do add to the atmosphere of the songs can deny them momentum. But this album has largely done away with these and is all the better for it. While the individual tracks do contain discernible movements within them, they flow between and build, seen best on opening ‘Mladic’ which builds up to a final six minutes of jaw-dropping doom-laden guitar work. The third track, ‘We Drift Like Worried Fire’ is also a particular highlight on an album which is as good as anything GY!BE have produced before.

Best Track – Mladic

Sigur Ros – Valtari

The new Sigur Ros album ‘Valtari’ bears similarities to Godspeed’s Allelujah. GY!BE had reformed to produce their album, while Sigur Ros had been hiatus some years previous and had not since produced new music, and GY!BE modfied their sound, which was also true of the new Sigur Ros record. In breakthrough success ‘Takk’ and follow-up Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust’ (2005 and 2008) there had been a move towards more ‘radio friendly’ songs which, while unmistakably in the sound of the band, were more concise and conventional than early albums. ‘Valtari’ was released with the band stating that it would be ‘floaty and minimal’ and this was exactly what was produced. More in time with the ‘Untitled’ era Sigur Ros and clearly owing a debt to lead singer Jonsi’s work with Alex Somers on ‘Jónsi & Alex’, the tempo is far slower than on recent albums and has a more spaced-out quality which is likely to turn off some recent converts and delight purists.

Best Track – Ekki Mukk

Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror

Sleigh Bells were simultaneously one of the most maligned and celebrated bands when they released their début album ‘Treats’ in 2010. For some their hyper-loud brand of electro-pop was a revelation whereas for others it was brainless party music. With drum machines. For the fans, the combination of swaggering guitars and lead singer Alexis Krauss’ sugar sweet vocals, which along with their look and lyrical themes evoked the stereotypical image of American High School, made not only great party music but just great music period. The new album was promoted by the band as being heavier and more serious and while the guitar sounds produced by Derek E. Miller, the instrumentalist of the duo, are indeed crushingly heavy the pop influences can be heard clearly too, with songs such as ‘Leader of the Pack’ and ‘Comeback Kid’ are far too sparkly to be mere grunge. But equally there are songs like ‘Road to Hell’ and ‘Born to Lose’ which showcase the darker side of the band, both musically and with lyrics about suicide and lost love. For those that previously scorned the band, there will be little to change their minds. The songs are still loud enough to sound fuzzy and under-produced and the album wouldn’t sound out of place at a house party. But for the fans and the new discoverers this is a dirty gem of a record.

Best Track – Road to Hell 

Honourable Mentions:

Dan Deacon – America / Best Track: Lots 

Moonface – Heartbreaking Bravery / Best Track: Headed for the Door 

We Are Augustines – Rise Ye Sunken Ships / Best Track: Chapel Song

Alt-J – An Awesome Wave / Best Track: Ms

El-P – Cancer 4 Cure / Best Track: For My Upstairs Neighbour (Mum’s the Word) 

The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten / Best Track: Handwritten 

Yeasayer – Fragrant World / Best Track: Reagan’s Skeleton

First Will and Testament

I recently had to name a next of kin for pension information, as having started a new job it was necessary to begin some level of planning for the future, and part of that involved thinking ahead to my inevitable death. For some people this is quite difficult and perhaps even discomforting. Personally I prefer not to think too hard about the end of my life. As an all-encompassing atheist (no God, no reincarnation, no becoming one with the universe) all I have to look forward to is ashes to ashes.

But at the same time I know what I want from my death. Some might think it slightly morbid or pessimistic a 24 year-old in a prime state of health, give or take a few too many bacon sandwiches and an injury-hit torso, to be thinking about but I consider it realistic. As people get older it becomes statistically more likely that they will need a will and instructions for their disposal, that’s because they’re closer to the degradation and cell death which leads to an eventual terminal decline. But even as a young person I am far from immune. The risks associated with living are high, from the errant hockey ball to the bad trip and fall, the mugging gone wrong to the clichéd bus. No-one anticipates the surprise death. That’s why it’s a surprise.

Given that we can at any time just fall down dead it makes sense to have thought about what happens if it happens. I know I’m not the only one, I’ve spoken to other people my age who’ve had similar thoughts. What unites us is an organised mind, and that one day it will happen. What concerns me is that aside from over-dinner conversation (I am that depressing a meal companion) I’ve never stated to those who might need to decipher after an untimely death what my wishes are. So I’d like this to be considered a guide for those that survive me.

First, burn me. Preferably in some kind of Viking funeral, low boat kindled and put to flame before pushed into the misty millpond surface of a wide lake. I’m ancestrally a bit Danish so I think I can get away without it appearing affected. But if firing up a ship should prove impossible, and health & safety law being what it is I wouldn’t be surprised, a standard cremation would do.

I don’t need anything fancy, I just don’t need to be buried. I don’t feel the need to have a little plot of my own for eternity. I think that’s partly because I’m following the example of my parents, neither of whom want to be interred, and because of the atheism. Being buried generally, unless you follow the household pet amidst-the-tulips method, involves graveyards in the shadow of churches and that’s not for me. I wouldn’t actively recoil from the setting as a Dawkins or a Hitchens might, but it would be false for me to take the trappings of religion in death when I’ve never followed it in life.

There are other options for disposal of remains, but natural burial is a little hippie for me and the more scientific options sound a little devoid of feeling for those preceding me. So cremation. As to where I’m scattered my current favourite would be my home cricket ground. It’s an immensely pretty place on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere, a wide open field surrounded on several sides by light woods and blissful silence. I’ve spent a number of happy days in sunshine there and I’d be satisfied to contribute to the soil on my favoured leg side. No last words, no big spectacle, just thrown into cow corner where I’ve mechanically dragged so many balls to over the years.

It’s in the cremation ceremony, where I have specific requirements. Just as in life, I intend to be a music snob to the end and it is important to me that I go out with tunes that befit the occasion and mystify everyone in ear shot. Although I have a desire to avoid a religious ceremony the hymns and associated music that go with it do lend the right atmosphere, solemn dignified and thoughtful. So the songs I’d like played reflect that but also my tastes and tracks that I play regularly. I don’t see the point in selecting something just because it fits, it should be something that had a direct meaning and regular plays.

So accordingly one of the songs, and it would be the one I’d like to close with,  would be ‘Ára bátur’ by Sigur Ros. The band are one of my favourites but the song also evokes a choral feel that would work well at a funeral. And it shares something with my second choice, ‘Gathering Storm’ by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I’ve always felt this track, which keeps to the apocalyptic emphasis of the band, is a doom-laden reverb-heavy cover of Amazing Grace and so would add a traditional theme to proceedings while staying true to my character. It is heavier than Ára bátur but is almost as lengthy, coming in at six minutes* with the Sigur Ros song being just shy of nine minutes. And let it be in no doubt that I want them played in full. I want all who attend my send off to be given a proper time to grieve for me. And given fifteen minutes of Icelandic wailing and screeching violins I think loved ones will have gone through a full range of grieving and probably will have recovered significantly to resent me for having inflicted such a trial on them. It’s how I’d like to be remembered.

*Even this is cutting it down. The full track is eleven minutes long, but the part I’m especially fond of is only a segment of it. You’re welcome future funeral attendees.

The third song I’d like played will be a welcome relief as it is only two and a half minutes and features lyrics. In English. ‘Naked as We Came’ by Iron and Wine is about love and loss and is a beautifully delicate track from the Americana folk of Sam Beam. While it hasn’t got the ceremonial sounds of the other songs, the lyrics are just perfect for adding the celebratory element, the reminder that as painful as it is, death is the natural fulfilment of life and the equalising element to birth. Naked as We Came.

YouTube Jukebox – Great Live Versions

The advent of the internet has changed the music industry in a number of ways, many of them to the detriment of artists and record labels. But to fans the changes wrought have been highly beneficial, both for those buying and consuming music illegally and legally alike. For legal listeners there are a number of pluses to the internet age. Being able to listen to tracks posted online by newly discovered artists, live preview streams of soon-to-be released albums, the ability to download and play music the instant it is published. But one of the lesser aspects of the change in music is how live music is now available online.

With the National Theatre Live and similar endeavours the theatrical world has attempted to boost audience numbers with the increased availability and better geographic spread of performances. But there is debate concerning if replaying these otherwise unique performances diminishes their impact. The same could be said of live music. With so much concert footage available online these days, ranging from low quality videos with shaky pictures and cutting booming audio all the way up to performances shot by major Hollywood directors.

With quality footage from around the world, from musicians of all genres and levels of fame, the armchair music fan can see some fantastic performances from the comfort of their own home. With this in mind, here are some examples of amazing, interesting, funny and powerful live music recordings culled from the monolith that is Youtube.

Malcolm Middleton – We’re All Going to Die

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In an attempt to break the monopoly of X-Factor starlets at the top of the singles chart come Christmas, Scottish musican-cum-misery guts Malcolm Middleton released a Yuletide tune. In his own inimitable style he made it about the inevitable and lonely arrival of death. The official video for the song shows its seasonal aspirations, featuring a drunken Santa wandering London, and is a treat in itself. But the Radio 1 live version is on another level for two reasons. Firstly, the inclusion of sleigh bells give it both a Christmas-y feel and also a delicacy that the more up-tempo album version lacks. Secondly, having a children’s choir in the studio doing the backing vocals. Seeing a group of fresh-faced school girls intoning the chorus line of ‘We’re All Going To Die’ alone with great relish is frankly hilarious. Unfortunately and not incredibly surprisingly, the song only made it to 31 in the charts come Christmas week.

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Arcade Fire – Rebellion (Lies)

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The Arcade Fire have climbed from being a  reached the point in their careers where their stage shows can be vast, expensive affairs, directed by Terry Gilliam. But at heart there band have a passion and exuberance which goes beyond precise direction and choreography, nowhere better demonstrated than this Coachella performance. A slightly…weary Win Butler dismantles a mike stand, Will Butler envelopes Richard Reed Parry in a clock whilst the guitarist plays on and the rest of the band bring the song to such a rousing end that it seems their instruments are liable to explode. The fact that this clip is taken from a movie about the Coachella festival does mean that the cinematography marries beautifully with the increases in tempo and cuts to all the interesting action, but at the core is still a whirlwind performance from an anthemic band.

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The National – Mr November 

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This one’s easy to explain: taking inebriated performing to the next level, lead singer Matt Berenger gets totally butchered and climbs all over the audience as the band plays on.

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The Antlers – I Don’t Want Love

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Any fan of The Antlers would do well to watch them live. Their performances, two of which I have been fortunate enough to experience, takes heed from the shoe-gaze elements of their albums and slows it right down. Not only does this make seeing them live feel considerably different to listening to their recorded music but also increases their potency. This is especially true of the falsetto vocals of Pete Silberman, which stretched and extended take on even more vulnerability and emotive depth in a song about continuing habits you’d rather break.

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Freelance Whales – Generator First Floor

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I first became aware of this song thanks to another live performance that audibly is far superior to this one. The trains shuddering into the station and the station announcements should ruin the, albeit rambunctious, acoustic gig. But the environmental noises, the announcements in particular, just become part of the performance and add to the quirky slightly twee nature of the band. The station announcer becomes almost a spoken word backing sample of the type used extensively by post-rock bands, ‘Welcome to Arco AM/PM’ by Godspeed You! Black Emperor being the track it puts me in mind of. The location is what makes this a great performance but watching it always makes me wonder if it was a wise choice. True, a large group of clearly quite enthusiastic and appreciative onlookers can be seen gathered behind the band and no doubt more are congregated out of shot behind the camera, but there are a number of travellers that seem put off by the band blocking their platform. Does this well-meaning attempt to spread a little sunshine into the daily underground gloom of commuting actually cause more bad feeling than it alleviates?

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Frightened Rabbit – Different Names for the Same Thing

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Another song in a unique location but this cover by Scott Hutchinson of Frightened Rabbit couldn’t be more different. Where the Freelance Whales were having to play over the sound of trains and swaying away from hurrying commuters Hutchinson stands alone amidst still trees and a fast running river which provides the only extraneous noise. The simple acoustic nature of this track works well with the natural setting and undoubtedly would have far less impact without the sound of the stream in the background. Acoustic songs often tend to have a raw power to them and adding in the elemental nature of water only increases this effect. Where the video for the Freelance Whales benefits from being in a busy spot, giving lots to see visually, the audio benefits from the quiet solitude of the riverside which gives nothing to distract from the vocals and gentle strumming.

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Fanfarlo – We Live by the Lake (Black Cab Sessions) 

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The Black Cab Sessions are a fine example that a simple idea is often the best. Put musicians into the back of a cab and film them performing a song. It’s a gimmick concept which reduces any gimmicks that can cover for otherwise poor musicians. There’s no hiding behind a huge stage show or autotune in such minimal settings. Every video I’ve yet seen has been excellent, which may be down to good curation by the producers or possibly in only showing those that cut muster, and particular favourites include Sunset Rubdown, Bon Iver and Fanfarlo. ‘We Live by the Lake’ highlights the traditional folk aspects of this band which work well when pared back. The setting makes for an incredibly intimate atmosphere and puts you right there sitting next to the band, almost in your own personal performance.

This Modern Love – Part One

The best house parties were always thrown by at Pete’s. He wasn’t a great party planner by any means, but he did always get a lot of booze in. And would then disappear. Everyone at the party would know Pete, but no one would be able to say where he was. This may have been due to their state of sobriety. In accordance with the availability and cost, alcohol was being drunk by all and all were drunk. To be seen to be empty handed or, worse, relatively sober was to be sent to the kitchen on strict orders to not return until carrying a large glass of something that would strip paint and ‘one for me while you’re at it.’ As the party had started in earnest a couple of hours ago the large modern house had begun to reek of booze, desperation and despair.

Greg didn’t want to admit it, but was feeling the second and was closing fast on the third. Since breaking up with his long-term girlfriend the previous year he had been in a romantic rut. It wasn’t the lack of sex that was particularly worrying him but the complete lack of getting anywhere near a lack of sex. Greg wasn’t the best looking guy, standing only 5″10 in his thickest shoes and weighing in at ‘could use fattening up the poor lad’ and he had character rather than handsomeness in a thin face which gave him a perpetually miserable look. He had tried to grow out his dark brown curly hair and beard to give him a rugged look, but he had just ended up looking like a relatively well-treated prisoner-of-war. He didn’t tend to inspire the kind of lust in women that made them throw themselves at him.

Luckily Greg’s best features weren’t his features. He had a modest intelligence that was combined with being witty at times, characteristics that were only accentuated when the company he was keeping was so sloshed wine and vodka was practically seeping out of their ears. Greg was himself slightly handicapped by being pickled as a herring but he was still managing to come across well to the group he had ingratiated himself with which, aside from him, consisted of two recently single ladies who were complaining about their bad luck with boyfriends.

Greg considered his love life in terms that would have made sense to Archaeologists. It  had began with the Linda months, followed by the time of Mary which led unto the reign of Amanda. The breaking, reformation and final cataclysmic splitting with Amanda had led to  the subsequent Fallow Years until the long Catherine era. He was considering the current time to be The Great Depression. Even the Fallow Years had seemed bountiful by contrast. He explained this to the girls, one of who quickly recognised the narcissistic properties of considering yourself in these terms and drifted away to find someone less pretentious.

The other girl, whose name was Amy, which Greg found out when he politely asked, was not quite as smart and stayed. She wasn’t as bright as Greg either but she wasn’t as dumb as he thought. More accurately, Greg didn’t have the intellectual edge on her he egotistically thought he did. Amy was thought of by most people as a bit dim but this was a false impression built around her broad Northern accent, frequent use of her local colloquialisms, her blonde good looks (shoulder length hair, bright blue eyes in a soft rounded face and a classical Monroe figure) and lack of qualifications. But she was practical and logical and had what she thought of as street smarts. Admittedly, most of the time this boiled down to recognising that she could use her body and her sexuality to get what she wanted, but Amy believed in playing to your strengths.

While Amy did have an active sex life, she didn’t plan on sharing it with Greg. She wasn’t as perceptive as her friend, and so hadn’t figured out how much of an arrogant arse he was, but she found him boring so the same result was guaranteed. She was just looking for a way out when their one-sided and patronising conversation was interrupted.

“What have we here!” Greg winced.

Amy looked around and saw a larger male figure fast approaching. “Do you know that guy?”

Greg frowned so hard it almost gave off physical force. “Yes. Unfortunately.”

“Greg, who’s your friend?” Danny sauntered over to the two of them. Intentionally hadn’t walked but sauntered which Greg recognised as his ‘I’m going to steal this girl from you’ stance and gave Danny a pissed-off look, which was met by a smile. Greg did his level best to wordlessly indicate to Danny that he liked this one and that he should go away. Danny kept a blank smile which indicated that he recognised Greg’s message but was going to ignore it. He stepped over to Amy and held out his hand, which she took.

“Danny. Charmed.”

“Amy.” She looked him up and down, noting that he was well toned and dressed to show it off in a tight white t-shirt and fitted navy chinos that ended an inch above his white deck shoes. He had a bit of a stupid haircut, very short on the sides but long on top and plastered over to one side, but it seemed to work on him. He had a strong tanned face and a confident smile. Amy had a soft spot for guys like him. Greg, wearing straight leg black jeans and a fuzzy grey cardigan which were hanging loosely around his frame, shrunk into himself slightly at the sight of Amy grinning at Danny.

“Has Greg told you that you look gorgeous in that outfit?

Danny broadly winked at Amy, looked over at Greg. “He hasn’t act’ally.”

Danny victoriously put his arm around Greg who stiffened, which made Danny laugh and hug him tighter.

“He’s got an eye for a good looking girl has Greg, but he doesn’t act fast enough. That’s why I follow him around, so I can steal them off him.”

Greg looked straight at Amy. “Not so good at keeping them though are you Danny?” Amy didn’t get the inference, but even if she had would have put it down to jealousy and ignored it. Danny did though and his man hug on Greg increased in pressure past matey and on to macho.

“No, you’re right there mate, but that does mean that I’m single and open to offers. Are you single and open to offers lovely Amy?”

“Maybe. Maybe’m looking for someone tonight. Maybe I let some looker sweep me off me feet.”

Amy always felt the reputation she had was unfair. When described by other girls it was always using the letter ‘S’. Slag, slut, skank, slapper. Even occasionally strumpet, though only ever amongst the more verbose gossips. Men would never use one of these S words, but instead talked in appreciative terms of her…willingness. Amy would admit that she was willing but didn’t think that was such a bad thing. Sex was an integral part of a relationship and Amy didn’t see the point in getting in bed with someone if you didn’t know if they were any good in bed. Once suitable qualifications had been established she was happy to settle down to a sexual monogamy and would stick to it rigidly, jettisoning her partner if they ever transgressed. Didn’t that make her not a slag? Surely a loose woman was someone who had multiple partners, who wasn’t faithful or true to a relationship? Most of the men she had dated were by that definition sluts.

And she had dated a lot of men. Amy looked around the room as she pretended to listen to Danny, she had already decided she’d sleep with him if he ever shut up long enough for her to tell him to find a room, and calculated that she’d slept with probably 75 per cent of the men at the party. Amy didn’t like being alone. That wasn’t to say that she couldn’t be physically by herself, she quite liked having her own space, but more that she liked having someone who would be there when she called, when she needed them or wanted company but only when she wanted them. It was quite a tough criteria and so, Amy reasoned, it was necessary to sleep with a lot of men in order to have a reasonable chance of finding one that met her needs. Danny was saying something on this topic and Amy zoned back into the monologue.

“Oh there’s some choice bachelors in tonight. Hah! Like the Boy Scout. Did you see that the Boy Scout is here?” He asked the last bit of Greg, who nodded.

“Who’s the Boy Scout?” asked Amy, to which Greg pointed at a man at the far end of the room standing on his own looking hopefully around the room. He was tall and lean with a great head of curly brown hair. He had a reserved look to him, even from the opposite end of the room and Amy imagined that his face looked sorry and worried most of the time. “Why’d ya call him the Boy Scout?”

Danny and Greg shared a smirk. Danny set down his drink on a nearby shelf and launched into telling the story, giving Greg no time to get a word in edgeways and possibly reassert a presence in the conversation.

“Boy Scout’s name is Louie, Now, Louie’s ex-girlfriend used to nag him constantly about how predictable he was, how he was so repressed and controlled and never did anything exciting or unexpected or anything like that. So he decides he’ll show her how he can be spontaneous and whatnot. So he takes her to dinner at a fancy restaurant, insists they get dressed up properly and everything, and waits for her to get up to go to the toilet. So he follows her, grabs her and pulls her into the men’s toilets and starts to ravish her.”

“Ravish her?”

Danny grimaced and waved his hands about in a confused way. “You know what I mean, snogging her neck and stroking her legs, that passionate romantic shit that women go nuts for.”

Amy, who considered that passionate romantic shit to be very romantic and not at all shit, wished that more men like Danny would consider it. Confident and self assured was very attractive but knowing that there was more than one way to sexually engage with a woman could guarantee the ugliest man a beautiful girl in his bed every night. Danny wasn’t ugly, but he also was unobservant. He missed the dirty look Amy gave his previous statement and carried on with the story.

“Problem was she got so excited by him doing this that she tried to give him a blow job. That was when she found out he had a condom on. He’d been wearing it the entire night so they could have spontaneous but safe sex.”

Amy twigged. “That’s why you call him Boy Scout, because…”

The others chimed in with her: “He’s prepared.” They all looked over at Louie, who realised that the Condom story was being told again and began furiously blushing. Louie didn’t have great deductive or instinctive abilities but just knew that the story was the first thing any stranger was told about him. He rushed off to another room in the house.  Danny waved at him as he went out and Amy felt a bit bad. She thought to herself that maybe that story could be interpreted as romantic, a man suppressing his natural instincts to try and be a better boyfriend. Then she realised that Charlie must have been wearing a condom throughout the dinner and when they had travelled to the restaurant, and the romanticism fled as quickly as Charlie himself had done.

“So, how’s about me and you leave Greg here and go find somewhere quiet?”

Amy seriously considered it, but then remembered she had duties tonight.

“Actually I better go find me friend, she’s been having a bad time lately and by now’s probably crying on a toilet floor.”

She thought that this would send them running, most men having a severe allergy to the tears of women. Instead Greg and Danny shared a tired look. Greg downed his drink and placed the empty plastic cup next to Danny’s.

“We’ll come with” he said. On seeing Amy’s surprise he shrugged. “I was wondering where Charlie was.”

Charlie was not most men. Looking at him from only a biological perspective he had all the attributes of a typical man. But looking at his physical form without a scientific mindset gave a hint as to his difference. Charlie looked cherubic, short and slightly pudgy all over, especially in the face where his cheeks were tinted as though constantly blushed. He had curly hair that was not a golden blonde but was enough of a light brown to stay in the angelic mould. Charlie himself was well aware of the comparison. As a child he had found himself in a starring role in all of his school nativity plays, always as Gabriel. Parents, all, not just his own, would coo and aww when he was revealed on stage and after the performance had finished he would be congratulated on his incredible performance and perfect-for-the-role image. And after talking to him they would comment that he embodied the very characteristics of an angelic being.

Caring. It was the caring that people really noticed about Charlie. Just talking to him for a few minutes was enough time for his compassion and sympathy to show through. He would ask questions and listen to the answers, probe people on issues that seemed important to them and then add his own contribution without ever turning the conversation onto himself. He would defer to his conversational partner on issues where they held dominance and would consider their opinion carefully where it clashed with his own. He was the same in any company: friend or stranger, male or female. He was not most men.

Especially where romance was concerned. Most men looked for only a few things in their women: tits, arse and low-maintenance. And they could give or take booty and busts. With Charlie, the more complicated the girl the more he was interested. He did have a type as far as looks were concerned, striking dark girls with high cheekbones and slim figures, but what he mostly like was vulnerability. The girls who had eating disorders, the girls who had broken up with their boyfriends and the crazies. Oh, how he was attracted to the crazies. Greg really hoped Amy’s friend wasn’t one of the crazy ones.

Amy Greg and Danny picked their way through the crowded living room, making their way to the stairs. House parties made difficult to tell who was truly drunk and who was just well on their way. At least in a club or a bar, those who had hit the floor could be safely considered to have run their race and could be swept out of the way by the staff. In the informal and comfortable settings of someone’s home, and many of the people at the party had no idea whose house they were in, revellers were spread everywhere. Some stayed standing, swaying, but most had found a place to recline. The lucky ones had found single-seat armchairs and used the opportunity to cheekily invite a member of the opposite sex, or two if they were really fancying their chances, a knee to sit on. Settees were crammed from arm to arm, with a couple more perched precariously on the arms, hanging their legs off the edge as they sat diagonally to allow them to lean back against the wall. Those who had began to buckle later had found a place on the floor and were lolling about in various shapes, arms and legs splayed if they had the space. It was these people who provided the challenge for the travellers, who needed to play a careful game of legs-only twister to avoid the limbs that littered the beige carpet.

They eventually made their way to the stairs where more people were seated. Generally in pairs they were staggered up the steps and so the group were forced to take the long route, weaving their way around the sitters. Greg was reminded of when he ascended the steppes of Nepal on his gap year. As they had climbed the worn winding path in an early morning start they had found themselves moving into a layer of mist which clouded their vision and made his breath heavy in the high altitude. In Nepal they had crested the ridges and found themselves above the fog, able to look across a gentle wispy sea. The house had a similar effect, an thin smoke started at the foot but the further they climbed the thicker it became until they turned the corner at the head of the stairs and saw in an open door across the landing a roomful of stoners blazing like a forest fire. There were six or seven of them strewn across the room, all transfixed by a muted cartoon on the widescreen TV on the wall or the sounds of Joy Division which was crackling from a pair of portable speakers. Amy stopped momentarily to peer into the haze but the boys ahead of her had already seen their destination.

It was indeed a bathroom floor. All in white was the room, plastic floor tiled walls painted ceiling porcelain fixtures, and so was the girl slumped face down half on the floor. She had a floaty white dress and thin white tights beneath it, the only colour on her body coming from the pink bra straps peaking out from below the white shoulder straps. This was almost literally the only colour she had, for her skin was as pale and cold as the bathtub she was clinging to.

“Have you got a friend here? What’s her name?” Charlie had got onto his hands and knees beside her and was gently holding her shoulder, likely half to try and rouse her and half to keep her from fully falling to the floor.

“She’s here mate.” Greg motioned to Amy, who came through the door and joined Charlie on the floor. “Amy, Charlie. Charlie, Amy.”

“Alright duck.” Amy shooed Charlie out of the way and took her friend by the shoulders, firmly as a friend can. “Come on love, had a bit too much to drink have we Gracie?”

“I think she’s had more than a drink.” Charlie stood to get out of the way as Amy turned Grace toward her and Danny and Greg who were leaning on opposing sides of the door frame. As Greg saw her face he knew it was best to extricate Charlie from the situation as soon as possible. Grace had a classical beauty to her face, all straight lines and cream skin and pale grey eyes. She was a face that could have launched a thousand ships where Amy was a face that could have sold a thousand lad’s mags. In her long white dress and dyed black hair that reached down to the small of her back she was the very image of Charlie’s ideal woman.

“Well her friend’s here now Charlie, we can leave her to be taken care of now.”

“One sec” Amy had managed to balance Grace against the bath. “She needs sobering up, she’s proper out of it. Can’t get a sensible word out of her. I’ll go get some water.”

She left the bathroom and Charlie made to replace her at Grace’s side. Greg grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the bathroom.

“Watch her” he said to Danny over his shoulder. “Charlie, you’ve done your job. She’s fine and you’ve kept her there till her mate’s arrived. You can leave her to it now.”

Charlie shook his head. “She’s not alright, she’s taken something.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve seen a lot of drunk people, I know what alright drunk looks like.”

Greg grimaced and tried not to let Charlie see it. He was right on that point. Greg himself had benefited from Charlie’s expert care on more than one occasion. In fact, it was so far past more than one occasion that he had lost count. “Alright, even if she’s not alright, even if she has taken something, what can you do? You’re not even first aid trained. And how do you now Amy’s not better able to take care of her, she could be a nurse for all we know!”

“I knew you weren’t listening. I told you I’m a sales rep half an hour ago.” Greg grimaced again. He hadn’t heard Amy come back up the stairs and he waited until he could hear her footsteps change from the soft press of carpet to the tap of heels on hard bathroom floor.

“Either way, she’s here now, we should go.”

They spent the next ten minutes arguing about what to do. Greg didn’t really know why he was bothering. Once Charlie had found a girl in distress he was smitten.

“Look, let’s ask Amy what she thinks about this, Grace is her friend and maybe she doesn’t actually want our where the bloody hell has she gone!”

Greg and Charlie had walked into the bathroom to find Grace sat alone. She looked up at them this time though and seemed able to focus on them. Charlie went back to her side and Greg walked back into the corridor, looking up and down for their absent friend.

“Danny! Danny!”

His head appeared around the door jam of the weed den, a decently sized rollie clenched casually into the corner of his mouth.

“Sup?”

“Where did Amy go?”

Danny shrugged and looked blearily around with half closed eyes. “She went to get some water ages ago.”

Amy had gone to get some more water as Grace had become more cogent but on the way had been intercepted by a handsome man who had without ceremony, but importantly without sleaze or cockiness, had asked her if she might be interested in coming home with him. Amy was so taken by his confidence and deep brown eyes that she went with him. It took her three further nights of decent sex but poor early-morning-exit excuses before she talked to him long enough to realise that he was only interested in her reputation. Amy wasn’t the brightest girl. If so, she might have realised that random men don’t ask if you’d like to have sex with them unless they are pretty sure of the answer. And only want the sex.

It took Greg fully half an hour to find someone who had seen her leave. He cursed friends, acquaintances and girls he had only just met equally and then returned to the bathroom where he helped Charlie carry Grace to a taxi. He had suggested moving her to one of the bedrooms and leaving her to sleep it off, the half an hour had seen her improve to a state where she probably could be left, but Charlie had insisted that they take her back to theirs’ where she’d be safe and could be monitored. Greg had had enough by this point and relented, pausing only to try and tell an incredibly baked Danny that they were leaving. They carried Grace to a taxi, sandwiched her upright on the drive home and dumped her onto Charlie’s bed at the end of the journey.

Charlie carefully removed her shoes, delicate white plimsolls that were badly scuffed and scratched despite looking new in unaffected areas, and had covered her over with a multicoloured throw that he had frequently used for this purpose. He thanked Greg for helping him again and, once Greg had gone, turned the bedroom light off and scrunched down in his deep battered leather armchair that sat in the corner of his room. Charlie intended to stay awake and watch her, make sure her light breathing stayed regular, but he soon fell asleep. By the time he woke in the morning she had gone.

This Modern Love – Part Two

Greg wasn’t incredibly surprised that Grace had disappeared, but he was relieved. If he was in the same situation, though having Charlie as a best friend he knew he never would be, Greg thought he would leave as soon as possible to avoid the embarrassment of having to thank a total stranger for making sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit whilst simultaneously freezing to death in a town centre gutter. And while most of the women Charlie shouldered home graciously slipped out into the pre-dawn light as soon as they were sober enough to walk in a straight line and figure out where they were, some stayed. These women Greg thought of as stray cats. You brought them in weak and fed them up till they were strong and well enough to go back out on their own, and then their catty nature would kick in and they’d act like they owned the place. As soon as Greg saw one come down the stairs and shakily ask if there was any chance of a cup of tea he’d know they had another one.

The last one had been the worst yet. Maxine. When she came downstairs she asked for herbal tea and then burst into huge racking sobs when Charlie apologetically told her they didn’t have any. For the first week he knew her, Greg doubted that Maxine made it through even one conversation without bursting into tears. And not just crying, hysterical wailing that penetrated every wall of the house like a sonic nuclear assault, physical tantrums where she would throw herself onto the floor and convulse in frenetic bouts of epileptic twitching that left her limbs and head splattered with deep bruising. When not crying Maxine would mentally withdraw into herself and sit unmoving and uncommunicative for hours, screaming and lashing out if anyone tried to pull her out of it. Greg was convinced she was schizophrenic or bipolar but in her composed times she would deny it fervently. She’d just been through a hard time, her boyfriend had left her for her best friend, the two getting married so quickly that Maxine was forced to confront the fact that they’d been going behind her back for quite some time.

Which to Greg’s mind wasn’t quite bad enough to have brought on the tsunami of emotion that had swept into their house. He didn’t say so though, because once she’d come out of her depressive crying phase she’d moved into her aggressive fighting phase. She spat orders and abuse and turned the self-flagellation of her writhing on the floor into a flail of fists and teeth that would lash out at the slightest provocation. But only when Charlie wasn’t around. When he was she would have frozen any butter you cared to place in her mouth such was her easy nature and sunny disposition. She was suddenly everyone’s best friend, sickly sweet in her happiness and enthusiasm about everything. Her moods might have been predictable, but that made them no easier to live with. And Greg literally had to live with them. Charlie had managed to persuade him to let her stay and for the next four months he regretted it every day. It’s hard in a small two-bedroom terrace with a cramped kitchen and cosy living room to avoid another person. Greg spent those months voluntarily locked into his bedroom emerging only to cook and shower or to leave, a prisoner of conscience. His long vigil only came to an end when the Iron Curtain that had separated the flatmates crashed down in spectacular fashion with Maxine storming out screaming of multiple affairs and Charlie weeping in his room.

Charlie fell in love easily and deeply so breakups were always hard for him. Especially when infidelity was involved. Charlie would give a person every break, was sympathetic to every character flaw, but he was a romantic through-and-through. There were certain things you just did not do and chief among them was cheating. The following month had been almost as hard as the months that preceded it for Greg. There wasn’t the constant crying or hitting that had come with Maxine, more a quiet depression and a complete lack of enthusiasm, but with Charlie he actually cared. Luckily Greg wasn’t the only one who cared. Most people would agree that no matter how many people they call friends and would call them friend in return, there were only a few they could truly rely on to be there in the worst times. Greg had known which few to ring and they’d all answered the call.

They were all here now, much in the same way as they had been when they were rehabilitating Charlie. He couldn’t be motivated to go anywhere or do anything then and so they’d all crowd into his room and just be there. Their seating positions indicated the friendships. Danny would always claim Charlie’s big comfortable chair for himself, refusing to consider any complaints about the unfairness of this but never offering any reasonable responses as to why this might be so. Most of the time Twat would sit up against one of the arms, arranged at his master’s feet like the big dumb obedient dog he was, ready to snap at any one who argued with Danny’s divine right to comfort. It would be Greg or Jules who would challenge the status quo but only because they refused to let Danny to have it all his own way without at least a bit of a fight. Really, they were happier to be together on the bed where they lay with a close but platonic arrangement. Charlie sat in the far corner of the room, propping a cushion against each of the two white walls and cocoon himself into it, never thinking to unseat someone else and take a more comfortable position.

“Anyone want a drink?” Charlie levered himself up and moved across the head of the bed towards the door. He had suggested going out earlier that day to Greg, who had been delighted. It had been a week since the house party and he had been worried that Charlie was going to regress back into a depressive state. In the build-up to the party and during its’ early hours he had seemed almost back to his cheerful self. But when Grace had disappeared in the following morning it was almost as if Maxine had left him all over again. He had retreated back into his room and Greg had been on the point of sending an SOS out to the group when Charlie had suggested they all go out. It was a Saturday night, so the others had been right up for it.

“Have we got any of that gin left?” A G&T would be bang on.” Greg heard Jules snort beside him.

“What?” He playfully pushed her leg that was stretched out next to him.

“That’s a well gay drink for a man to order.” Jules put her leg back closer to Greg, kicking him slightly less playfully in the ribs.

“Ow! Fucker that really hurt! Doesn’t using ‘gay’ in that context make you a traitor to homosexuals?”

“Doesn’t ordering such a gay drink make you a traitor to heterosexuals?”

They looked at each other and laughed. From the chair beside the bed they heard the sounds of barely muffled laughing, laughter that shared malice where theirs was warm. They both looked over and saw Danny quietly saying something in Twat’s ear, both of them peering over at the bed as they conversed.

All groups larger than two people are inevitably closer to an alliance than a friendship. One person will be incredibly close to another but hate the third person who is close to the second person. Person A and C then get on only for the sake of person B, who will dislike person D but have to accept them because they are dating C and the two are practically bound at the hip. A can’t stand D either and so will become closer to B which will later require gestures from A to C to return them to the fold when they breakup with D. Unfortunately, C broke up with D because D cheated on them with B, who blamed drink if you’re interested, and they don’t want anything to do with B and keep telling A that unless A no longer sees B, A and C can’t be friends any more. Grudges, animosity and loving loyalty bind people together in tangled strings that require constant attention to keep them from strangling all the participants in their own backstabbing and bitching.

The group crowded into Charlie’s bedroom was no less afflicted by this. Charlie and Greg were the foundations, both symbolically and chronologically. They had been friends from an early age and had been closer to each other than they had been to their other siblings, probably helped by the fact that unlike with their siblings they were never forced to live in close proximity with each other, and stayed that way through life. They attended all the same schools and even went to the same university. Whilst both men could give perfectly logical and practical reasons behind their choices that had nothing to do with the other being there, it had been an unspoken fundamental priority. They did however concede to living apart in their first year, which gave Greg the chance to meet Jules.

It was perfectly possible that Greg and Jules could have met and become friends even if Charlie had been living with him, but it was unlikely they would have become as close as they did. Greg had a miserable living situation, hating and being equally and reciprocally hated by his five other flatmates who were all the bestest of bestest friends. Therefore when he met and became friendly with Jules, who lived in the flat above his and also had unlimited reserves of disdain for her bedfellows, they clung to each other like the only sane people left on earth. For the rest of their first year they were in and out of each others rooms so often that the standing joke was that Greg was trying to turn Jules straight.

The first words Jules had spoken to Greg had been “I’m gay, so don’t even fucking bother alright?” Greg hadn’t needed to be told. Jules’ look was so lesbian that other members of her LGBT group at uni had considered kicking her out for furthering stereotypes. Her dyed red hair was cut short and left to riff up on top in a mini-mohican which she would periodically ruffle to ensure it stayed spiky. She had stubby manly features on a cramped face, wore plaid shirts and baggy jeans which spilled over her desert sand coloured workboats so often that it might as well have been a uniform. Her voice was low and deep and was used mostly for swearing, which along with her macho swagger made her pretty intimidating. It was something Jules knew and loved. She was very self aware and equally intelligent, able to win an argument through fierce debate on a range of topics. She and Greg spent virtually their entire first meeting, a boring party at a neighbouring flat, arguing about Ayn Rand over vodka with both of them claiming to have won the discussion when in fact neither of them had any real claim to victory.

“Either way, G&T is vile. I’ll have a lager if you’ve got one Chaz?” Jules asked politely. Charlie nodded and went to get the drinks.

Jules also got on well with Charlie, which was a quick way to become a great friend of Greg’s. She appreciated his ability to listen as a man. Women listened differently from men and Jules found an intimate conversation with a woman to be unsettling. They picked up on too much, would could cut right to the heart of the matter and then expect to talk about it in great detail. Charlie was a better listener than most men but even he lacked the intuition and perceptiveness to be able to see what was really wrong and to expose it in such a way that made not talking about it impossible. With him Jules was able to discuss matters at a superficial level which left all the worst bits dark and secret but still made you feel better for having talked about it. When Greg suggested that the three of them should find a place to live for the last years of their degree both Charlie and Jules were all for it.

It was at the house warming for the place they rented that Jules and Greg first met Danny. Charlie had been talking about a mate he had met at the pub for a couple of weeks, someone who apparently was a bit of a character, always full of stories about naughty things he had been up to and ready for a laugh. Charlie saw him as a rough diamond, a bit of a geezer who might play at the larrikin but underneath was a good guy. He did feel that at times Danny could take it a bit too far but he saw it as an extension of Danny’s vulnerabilities that he felt the need to cover up with bravado. After five minutes Jules and Greg both thought that Danny was all bravado and forever after never took to his chippy nature. Danny in turn never liked their pretensions and saw them as upper class snobs. He might have played the lad persona a bit, but at heart and in background that was what he was. Born into a family who put the work into working class he had been lucky enough to attend a good state secondary school which showed him that it was possible to be successful without a polished accent. Attending university might have stopped being the act of a class traitor in Danny’s town but it was still noted. You were something if you kept going at 16 rather than getting a job and depending on who you talked to that something was either good or bad. It was little wonder that Danny felt the need to play to his roots, to overplay his roots. He felt the need to remind everyone constantly of where he was from so they knew straight from the outset what to expect, so they could treat him as such from the start.

It was why he got on so badly with Jules and Greg. In their dislike of him he saw the manifestation of the entire class struggle that meant that anyone with a regional accent would never get anywhere but fundamentally useless people would become important through sheer dint of having a suitably reputable background. It was a sad fact that he never gave them anything but both barrels of the suppressed minority and they never treated him as anything but a dodgy chancer who used people. Their main evidence for this was Twat.

Twat’s real name was almost lost in the mists of time. His parents may have possibly still called him by it but he had lost contact with them and everyone else just called him Twat. Even Danny, who was easily his closest friend called him by it. The origins of the name had been long forgotten but it had stuck, mostly due to him being the absolute personification of what people meant when they used the term. This was built up through a long list of character faults, but chief among them was his aggression. He liked a fight the way alcoholics like drink, it goes beyond pleasure and into pure necessity. At some point in his life some caring soul had tried to give him a chance in life by channelling his rage through sport and had introduced him to rugby. It should have been perfect, the game for hooligans played by gentlemen, a chance for him to cathartically release his anger in an environment that would condition him to be disciplined with it’s release. The problem was that Twat wasn’t competitive, just angry. Being competitive might often be mistook for being aggressive but the difference is that a competitor has to win. Aggressiveness is for its own sake whilst competitiveness is because someone is keeping score. The issue was that Twat didn’t care at all for the score. Rugby for him was an excuse to use his body as a weapon against other people in a situation where the police were unlikely to be involved. He rarely finished a game and was kept on by his club only because his fearsome reputation for violence was enough to cause even the hardest opposition player to shit himself when Twat looked at him.

This was the reason Danny and Twat were such good friends. Danny had quickly recognised that to be a friend of Twat’s was to never have to fear physical retribution ever again. Danny’s cheeky-chappy attitude and eye for a good figure often got him into trouble with boyfriends, husbands and people bigger than him who he’d pissed off, and having Twat around was good for his looks. He was a nuclear deterrent in a Stone Age world, standing 6″4′ with biceps the size of Jersey and no imagination for the consequences of beating a man’s head into a pulp. Which funnily enough was how Danny and Twat had met. Danny and several friends had taken a special trip to a pub which was known locally as ‘The Wild West’ for how rough and ready it was. Danny and his mates thought they were pretty rough and ready themselves. They quickly found out how wrong they were. Within a minute of entering one of his friends had knocked into Twat at the bar. By the end of the minute Danny found himself the group’s official spokesperson, by dint of neither of his friend’s having sufficiently movement in their jaw bones or teeth in their mouths to be able to complete sentences. Luckily for him, Danny had a quick enough tongue and an understanding of what amused a man like Twat to soon have him eating out of his hand. They quickly became inseparable.

Charlie and Danny had never reached the level of friendship that the former shared with Greg. The two of them were closer to brothers than friends, and even that possibly underestimated the bond they shared. They had the history of siblings but without having lived together during their formative years they didn’t have the memories of being under each other’s feet or competing for resources and affection. They had though grown through their formative years together which had led to them sharing many of the same opinions and tastes. Danny, to his credit and contrary to much of his nature, didn’t try to emulate this closeness. Instead he played to his strengths and was the jester who said the things Charlie never would and did the things he definitely never would. In Danny he was able to experience the life of a rogue vicariously and to enjoy the highs and lows that came with it whilst maintaining the distance to be able to morally shake his head at the extremes of Danny’s behaviour. Twat was one of the things he disagreed with. He recognised that they had a symbiotic friendship, one that had mostly developed out of mutual need. Danny was like the birds that sat on the back of hippo’s and ate the parasites off their skin. He kept the hulking Twat out of trouble by being able to keep him distracted and diverted from things that would otherwise anger him. Charlie saw that this was a good thing for Twat as Danny had so far proved to be the only person who had ever managed to keep him under control. But at the same time, Danny was happy to let him off the lead if it would be to his benefit. Charlie thought that having Twat around brought out the worst in Danny.

Charlie came back into the room with drinks, a weak G&T for Greg as there had been very little gin left and ice cold cans of lager for Jules Danny and Twat, which he distributed to them and then went back for his own.

“So where are we going tonight?” Greg looked over at him and only him, but it was still Danny who answered.

“Let’s go to Twingo’s.”

Beside him Twat nodded like he was on a string. “Yeah yeah, quality tail in there.”

Beside Greg Jules reluctantly also nodded. “He’s fucking right.”

“Fuck yes I’m right. Better leave them to me though little girlie.”

“Suck my dick.”

In a different world, a world where the laws of romantic comedies ran things instead of physics, Twat and Jules would have eventually fallen in love. From different backgrounds they nevertheless had a lot in common. They both liked a scrap, they both liked girls until they woke up the next day and had both played rugby. And like most rom-com love interests, they loathed each other and would constantly insult and demean each other verbally. But the loathing between them wasn’t the kind that came from a passionate frisson, it came from a deep and abiding dislike that meant that if they ever were to lean their heads in towards each other it was more likely they’d go for each other’s throats rather than kiss. It was safest not to leave the two of them alone for longer than a minute or two. Even letting them talk within the confines of a group was still a bit risky.

Jules had tensed up on the bed and Twat was quite clearly making to get up. Greg saw Danny move his legs from across the arm of the chair so they gently rested against the big man’s shoulder. He tried to move the conversation on with a tone that indicated that he hadn’t noticed any of it.

“Nah, it’s crap in there. Let’s go to Hang the DJ.” Greg looked over at Charlie expectantly even as he heard the groans from the others.

Charlie loved Hang the DJ, it played his kind of music, which was quite obvious if The Smith’s reference in the club’s title was considered alongside the posters that hung in Charlie’s bedroom. It was wall-to-wall Morrissey, with his quiffy self-satisfied holier-than-God-himself revolting bloody face staring down morosely. Or so Greg thought. Charlie had discovered his music during a tender period in his life when a girl he desperately loved was paying no attention to him and the self-pitying lyrics of the Mozfather really talked to him. Even now ‘Please, please, please, let me get what I want this time’ was Charlie’s grief song, the track that he would play and Greg would hear wailing through the walls when upset. Greg had heard it so often recently that he had found himself humming it to himself, which had made him instantly angry with himself. He hated The Smiths. He hated their lyrics, their boring music, the way Morrissey talked absolute shit constantly and how Charlie treasured their self-pity as wisdom. He hated Hang the DJ for its’ mere association with the band even though he liked quite a lot of the music the club played.

Charlie blushed and shook his head. “No, let’s go to Twingo.” Greg was shocked. Charlie would always jump at any suggestion to go to Hang the DJ and his exuberance would be reluctantly persuade the others to come along, as he would rarely ask for anything. Greg gave him a silent questioning look which Charlie looked away from.

“Damn right.” Twat pulled himself off the floor and drained his beer in one massive gulp. “Let’s go ladies.” He crumpled his can with one hand and dismissively tossed it onto Charlie’s cupboard before walking out of the room. “Come on, let’s go let’s go let’s go!”

This Modern Love – Part Three

The rest of the group took a little longer to be ready. Danny always insisted on using the bathroom before going out. Even though he had carefully bathed shaved and sculpted before coming to the flat, he still wanted to check that everything was perfect. Charlie took the opportunity to clean the crushed and almost-empty cans out of his room and Greg slowly finished his gin, much to Jules’ amusement. Eventually Danny emerged from the bathroom and declared himself ready to pull. They locked up and left.

The flat was only fifteen minutes from town so they walked in. A stranger walking just behind them would have thought them to all be the closest of friends. As far as the friendliness of intra-group relations went, this was the best part of the night. They had all drank just enough to make them tipsy, though Twat and Jules both thought that word was far too cute and preferred ‘buzzing’, and in that happy state the frictions between them all melted away. Twat’s aggression dropped after his first couple of drinks and made him amenable to even a little gentle joshing which put Jules and Greg at ease, making them behave more warmly towards him. And while drink made Danny no less lippy it made him easier to bare. They walked as one group rather than the smaller cells they had been before and would soon be again.

It was a mild night and they had all done without coats. Danny had pulled a stylish black jacket on over a straight fitting  t-shirt but all the rest wore colourful shirts. The Twingo bar had opened relatively recently and was still rigidly adhering to the ‘no shirt no service’ rule, enforced by its humourless hairless doormen. Wearing tough puffy black stab-proof jackets with fluorescent bands, advertising their security company, on their upper arms and black combat trousers which ended in severe boots they looked every inch amateur militia. Some doormen preferred to head trouble off early, seeing their roles as prevention rather than containment. Just the way these two stood showed that they had no interest in mediating or being diplomats. As they moved up the queue the group watched them at their business, all except Charlie who was engaged with texting on his phone. One of the bouncers was throwing an irate teenager out of the doorway for wearing trainers, being drunk and not showing sufficient respect by calling him ‘Mr’ Bastard-who-won’t-let-me-in. The doorman, with just enough restraint to be able to justify it to any superior who might ask, pushed him out into the street. The youth tripped and after several faltering steps in an attempt to keep his balance, rolled to the ground with little grace but with his swearing continuing. Greg laughed and tapped Charlie’s arm, but he only glanced up before going back to his phone.

“He’s alright, the other one is a bit of a bastard.” Twat conversationally said as he nodded over at them.

“Which is which?” Asked Danny.

“The one who chucked that guy, baldy, he’s fine. The little bloke on the right with the ear stud, he’s the one to be careful of.” No one would have dreamt of questioning Twat’s authority in this manner. Most doormen in the  town knew him by nickname and he would tell them that he’d remember their faces.

The smaller doorman walked out into the street and when he was a couple of yards away swung his right leg like a footballer and stuck a massive kick into the ribs of the slowly rising lad, his toe cap making a deep cracking thud as it hit. The boy went down without the breath to swear this time around and in the line several groups of young lads wearing baseball caps decided that they might want to try their luck at a different venue and quickly left.

This moved the queue on that bit quicker and they soon found themselves at the front. Through habit Jules had moved front and centre. Whilst she was tomboy dressed, she was still a girl and they advertised her prominently. There had been many busy nights where four lads together would never have been given entry but having Jules there had opened doors. Both doormen looked them up and down and gave Twat a ‘no-nonsense now lad’ look before ushering them in.

Inside the place was a muggy mass of heaving bodies taking up all the small space. On the sunken dance floor off to the left they moved to the pounding music in ripples, a badly co-ordinated wave of flailing limbs and bobbing heads where no one individual was in sync with another, even those right next to them or even dancing with them. On the right, the group had to imagine the sleek metal bar which lay beyond the pushing and elbowing throng which was fighting to get served. The bar was covered with a mess of drinks taps giving the illusion of choice but were the same three choices replicated down its length. The wall behind, which could be seen in patches over the heads of the shorter patrons, had a couple of long silver shelves fitted to it in a tiered fashion and a giant mirror above  reflecting the necks of the many bottles that lined the shelves. The staff behind the bar sprinted up and down to try and keep up with the demand, pulling pints and slopping shots with a frantic energy that they would have to keep up until the early hours.

“Anyone want a drink?” Jules had leaned into the group to shout into their faces. They all screamed their orders back at her, trying to be clear above the music. This was undoubtedly the last group conversation they would have for the night. To try and talk to more than one person at a time in a club like this was to risk permanently straining your vocal cords. The only way to talk with any accuracy was to lean in close to someone, grab them by the shoulders or neck and all but press your mouth to their ear and spit the words directly into their brain.

Charlie had given his order and gone back to texting, which made Greg curious. Charlie would respond to a text if someone sent a simple request but if it threatened to develop into an extended conversation he would make the effort of calling, preferring the personal touch of talking. Even in a club, where making a call involved pushing your way out, standing in the rain or cold and then having to push your way back in and spend twenty minutes trying to find where your friends had got to, Charlie would choose the verbal conversation over the bastardised writing.

He had been sending and receiving texts ever since they had joined the queue to get in, and he had had ample time to conduct a lengthy conversation whilst they were outside. The only obvious explanation Greg could think was that the recipient wasn’t in a position to take a call, like in the middle of a noisy bar. Like in the middle of a noisy bar that Charlie had agreed to going to even though he wasn’t a massive fan of it. Greg watched Charlie lower his mobile and look around expectantly. Greg followed his gaze and when he saw no-one familiar moved in close enough to make himself heard by his friend.

“Charlie! Who are you meeting here!”

“Grace!”

“Oh for fucks…!”

“Well not Grace exactly!”

“What?!”

“Here they are!”

Charlie was waving someone over to them, from the lounge area directly ahead. Sandwiched in an awkward position between the bar and the dance floor were a number of black fake leather settees positioned around coffee tables. It was hard to see who Charlie was gesturing to as the walls in the bar were painted the darkest black and the only light came from dim overhead tubes that illuminated only the first few feet down from the ceiling. Drop something on the floor and you left it there. To drop to one knee or bend to fetch something from the murk was to risk being lost in the tangle of legs. Greg could see a couple of bodies making their way over to them, one slightly taller than the other but both decidedly female and neither with the slightness to be Grace.

As they got closer Greg realised the shorter figure was Amy. The first thing about her he noticed was that she was wearing a pair of denim hot-pants that didn’t deserve the name, being more thong than pants and more fission than hot, and a pink vest with a generous cut at the neck which revealed a livid red bra beneath. These were the first and only things Greg noticed about Amy. A less than subtle cough managed to draw his attention onto the second figure, who was now standing directly in front of him. Charlie went over to her, looking embarrassed.

“This is Amy’s sister Hannah, she’s also one of Grace’s best friend!” He shouted over to Greg.

Greg looked the tall girl up and down. She was several inches taller than Amy and had a more athletic build, not muscular but with a leanness and primed look where Amy had soft curves and a lazy swing of her hips. He had only half heard what Charlie had shouted over the music, but looking at Hannah’s it was clear she was related to Amy, they had the same small snub nose below large blue eyes and a small but plump mouth which at the moment was seriously clenched tight. Greg suspected that Hannah was slightly protective over what was probably her younger sister and wasn’t that impressed with how impressed he was with her choice of dress.

Hannah wasn’t. She also wasn’t particularly impressed with her sister. Despite having lost Grace because she was screwing some idiot guy she had still had the nerve to come out in full ‘shag me’ gear, clearly ready to be taken home, on a night when she was meant to be making up for her fuck-up by finding their friend.

Hannah was Grace’s best friend and had been since they were five, just after Amy had been born. While they were young the two of them had often played at being mum to the newborn, taking care of her and comforting her when she fell or injured herself. But as they had all grown it was clear that Grace was the one who had needed protecting. The oldest of the three of them she was nevertheless the most emotional and sensitive, always the one to have a bad breakup or panic under stress. Amy had grown up to be a close friend of hers, but she lacked the necessary selflessness to be able to be what Grace needed. That was Hannah’s job, the only true mother of the group.

Hannah watched as Charlie explained the situation to Greg, unable to hear him over the music. She didn’t know what he was saying but knew what he would be telling them. Grace had recently been getting more withdrawn and depressed, which wasn’t unusual but unlike other times Hannah hadn’t been able to figure out what was wrong and Grace wouldn’t tell her. She was always up front about everything, the good and the bad. When she was happy she was the happiest person anyone could ever want to know, always smiling and laughing, nothing touching her good mood. Unfortunately when she was sad, the same applied.

Hannah and Amy, mostly Hannah, had been keeping a close eye on her and trying anything they could think of to pull her out of her rut. So when Amy had said they should go to the house party, Hannah had agreed that it was worth a try. At the last minute she had to go away for work, and had left Amy in charge. Since abandoning her at the house, neither of them had seen or heard from her, which was unusual. Even at her lowest Grace would answer calls and respond to texts. She knew that if she didn’t Hannah would panic and wouldn’t stop until she had found her. So when she stopped communicating a month ago, Hannah had started looking for her. She had become really worried when her flatmate had said she hadn’t seen her at all that month.

Which brought Hannah to the Twingo’s. Barfly friends of Amy had reported seeing a girl who might have been Grace there every night that week. Reports were mixed, given that Amy’s barfly friends spent most of their evenings in bars drinking, but they were definite on the fact that she was there. Hannah and Amy had got in touch with Charlie, as he was the last person to see her properly and had asked her on Facebook if she was okay after disappearing from his house, to see if she had said anything to him about her life, if she had become confessional to a complete stranger and admitted where she was. Charlie hadn’t had the first idea, but he had been eager to help them look for her. And he had said that he’d enlist his friends to help.

Charlie was hovering on Greg’s shoulder like the angel of his better nature. He didn’t appear to be having much success. Hannah could see him shaking his head, pulling exasperated faces with over-expressive facial ticks and vast sweeps and flicks of his arms showing his indifference to the situation. Charlie was desperately trying to convince him, actually having to hang on to him as the conversation went on and Greg appeared to be threatening or actively trying to walk away.

Hannah had seen enough. Greg had not made a good first impression on her. She knew that her little sister was a bit of a flirt, and also knew that was at best an understatement and at worst at complete misrepresentation, but she still felt that a man should be a gentleman and show some respect her as a person not look at her just as the bits of skin that she was more than happy to show off. From what Amy had told her and what she had seen, Greg was not a gentleman. She walked over to the boys and gently slipped in between the two of them, slipping her arm around Greg’s shoulders, manoeuvring him a couple of yards away from Charlie. The two of them were of roughly the same height so she was comfortably able to rest her arm across his back and neck. She smiled back at Charlie over the bridge between them and then, still smiling, spoke slowly and calmly into Greg’s ear.

“Listen, I don’t have time for this and your boy won’t do it without you, so come help us find Grace.”

Greg wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t trying to break away from her as he had with Charlie. “It’s none of my business, and it shouldn’t be any of Charlie’s. Your sister, you find her.”

“Make it your business.”

“Why should I?”

Hannah pushed slightly at his opposite shoulder, wheeling him around so they were face to face, very close together. She moved a tiny bit closer to him, her free arm joining the other around his neck while she bent one knee slightly so he would be taller than her. She looked deep into his eyes and slowly leveraged her arms around his neck to draw her mouth up to his ear. She spoke slowly, seductively.

“I’m an international athlete you know?”

“Mmm” Greg made a noise that seemed to come from his entire body rather than just his vocal cords.”

“So that makes me pretty….fit.”

“Mmmmmm”

“I could do all sorts of things to you.”

“Mmmmmmmm”

“And you’ll fucking pray I don’t.”

“Mmm?”

“I’m a Taekwondo black belt and world champion. I could kick your bollocks into the next Olympic cycle.”

Greg drew his head slowly back away from her and looked into her eyes. They were large and blue, eyes you could drown in. Especially if someone was holding your head down under the water.

“So” Greg said after Hannah had led him back to Charlie and Amy “let’s find Grace.”

They split up and set out in search. The packed bar was not the easiest place to conduct a rescue mission. It was impossible to see more than an arm’s length in any direction and moving around required a concerted effort.  The best approach was softly softly, to constantly be on tiptoe and ready to pirouette, snaking and slaloming around individuals and using your arms as suspension to palm off anyone who unexpectedly lurched into your path out of drunkenness or dance. It made for cautious and slow progress, having to be constantly aware in the claustrophobic surroundings where at any point the crowd could part to let a limp body crash into your path. Seen from above, it was like dropping a pebble into a lake and watching the ripples spread. Just one person stumbling could set of a great chain of collapses, curses and combat.

The girls had it relatively easy, having only to worry about half of the bar population. If they knocked into a man or clipped a hairy arm, they were instantly forgiven. Men know that there is nothing quite so charming as chivalry. To be able to smile through a soiled shirt and to accept no apologies was the best cold introduction any man would ever be gifted. And look, they could say, I’m drinkless. I’ve got to get a new one now, surely you’ll join me for one? You owe me that much after all. No no, please, let me get these. You’re very welcome…what is your name? That’s a lovely name, I’m…. It was almost infallible. In an age where manners and decency had become retro, almost historical, there were men who actively sought out opportunities. Wide elbows and carefully considered placement, even at times sidestepping into an attractive girl’s path were all cynically used in an opportunity to prove their cheerful courtesy.

But man on man was a different story. A spilt drink or a heavy barge was seen as an opening salvo in the war of machismo. To accept the rushed stammered apologies was to admit weakness. The only course of action was a full retaliation an overwhelming escalation that left you standing over your battered and bruised enemy, catching the eye of any girls that happened to be nearby. And this was just the moderate males. Not all were like this, true the lowest level of street fighting man would put his dukes up when surprised only in self-defence and drop them at the first sign of remorse. But they were the minority, overwhelmed by the moderates and worse by the extreme end of the scale. These were the sharks, the dark mirror of their fake-chivalric skirt-chasing brethren, employing much the same tactics in looking for a scrap,  chasing slight nudges and trodden feet as excuses to kick off. Twat was the perfect example, the great white of the fighting cock, being known to buy a spare drink to hold at arms length waiting for some poor bastard to blunder into it. Greg had on one occasion, after begrudgingly praising his adaptation of the classic fire ship tactic used against the Spanish Armada in giving up an asset to secure a strategic advantage, asked why not water masquerading as vodka? Twat’s deep confusion at the idea, his protestation that it wouldn’t be an issue if he could just get another one for free, said a lot about the nature of the shark.

In the great demarcation of lovers or fighters Greg and Charlie would both have identified as lovers, despite both being fairly deficient in this area and each fully knowing it. That was how little they liked to fight, Charlie because he saw doing so as a betrayal of human progress away from animal instinct and Greg because he’d lose. They were therefore both moving with exaggerated care around the bar, mime like in how obvious each movement was and how plainly the intention was broadcast to allow for no confusion and unfortunate incidents. They had initially gone the same way, but Charlie had moved in towards the bar where the clustering of people and noise was thickest, Greg losing sight of him almost immediately as he cut in to question the staff.

Hannah had produced photos of Grace for them and instructed them to ask around about her. They were stiff formal passport sized pictures, clearly stockpiled for official use, non-smiling shots with the top of a smart shirt collar framing her pale face, the normal surround of her long black hair pulled back behind her head. Charlie had been showing his copy to anyone who had stopped for long enough or didn’t ignore his polite request for them to say if they’d seen her. Greg was doing his bit, although with far less earnest worry than his friend. Rather than stopping people and making them take a good look he was happy just to flash it past their eyes and move on in one slick movement. He could have done it properly and made absolutely sure but if even Charlie, persuasive and believably worried, was being brushed off he didn’t see that he would do any better.

“Seen this girl?”

“No.”

“Seen this girl?”

“Nope.”

“Seen this girl?”

“Wha?”

“Seen this girl?”

“Na…wait, let’s see that. Yeah, she’s on Emmerdale isn’t she?”

“No. What about your mate, seen this girl?”

“No. She’s hot though.”

“Thanks a fucking bunch.”

After twenty minutes the most positive response Greg had received was someone adding ‘sorry’ to their negative response. He had reached the stage where even threats of death from scary women who might actually make good on their promises wouldn’t be enough to scare him in to any further questioning. His flash and dash method had brought him all the way through the crowds to the back of the bar, to a black wall which had no other ornamentation than people leaning against it. Greg worked his way back against the stream to the bar. As with most places, at the end of the bar was a dead zone where a sneaky drinker could slip ahead in the queue by ordering from the very end. This was even easier at Twingo’s, where the bar took a sharp right angle to allow for a double door fire exit in the corner. This gave a good two metres worth of perching room, which Greg took. He leaned against the metal and tried to look bored and frustrated, as if he’d been there for ages and deserved serving next. He suddenly felt someone tap his arm just above his elbow. He turned to see a man in a suit giving him a smile. The music and the constant crowds had overloaded his awareness of his surroundings and the man had been able to get right next to him without him ever noticing. The man was literally on his shoulder, his thin chest pressed up against Greg’s upper arm and a discoloured smile on a face that was too close for Greg to see anything but yellowed teeth moving incomprehensibly.

Greg moved back slightly and signalled that he couldn’t hear a thing. The man rolled his eyes, though it wasn’t clear whether it was frustrating at the noise levels or at Greg’s inability to listen properly. Greg thought it was probably directed at him and was slightly offended and instantly disliked the man. There was something about him, about his manner, that was easy to dislike. His face had a permanent smile that only really happened on one side of his mouth, a slight upturning of the upper lip that looked nervous and shifty. He had a very drawn face, hollow cheeks and dark eyes with hair that was retreating quickly and seemingly early, as he didn’t look like he was much more than mid-30s. He was a small guy, about Greg’s height but with no weight to him, which made him look like a scarecrow in his nice suit. The suit was more than nice Greg realised as he took a proper look, it was a very nice suit and possibly even tailor made. It was a black which seemed more lustrous than the gloom in the bar and the open waist showed that the insert was a metallic blue without a seam or loose thread visible. The three buttons that would have done the jacket up were small and nicely set into the cloth so they didn’t stand out. The sleeves had no buttons at all, giving the arms a clean line. It wasn’t the kind of thing you wore to a place like Twingo’s where you were contact with any surface was likely to leave a mark and there was the distinct possibility that at some point drink or blood would get spilled over you.

He moved closer and Greg saw that he slightly hunched up, not dramatically but enough to crease the shoulders of his jacket and to shorten the cuffs, pulling them back down when he noticed trying to get them straight. Something wasn’t right about this man in a suit like this, it was too good for him. He clearly could afford it but he wasn’t wearing it with poise. He was too aware that he was a man in a very nice suit in a nasty place. It was a concerted effort to stand out, to be clearly better than everyone else there, richer and more successful, but he didn’t have the confidence or the gravitas to properly tower over guys like Greg. When you had clothes like that people should be shrinking back away from you because you are clearly someone important and therefore worth more than them, financially and in terms of value to society. Even the biggest class warrior would struggle to suppress the natural urge to tug their forelock to someone well dressed and with an upright bearing. This man had moved forward apologetically, with a slight reserve that suggested he half expected to be pushed away. Greg was suspicious of anyone who could afford fine tailoring but couldn’t wear it well.

“…heard you were looking…” With the man closer some of what he was saying came through. Greg shook his head and leaned in and down slightly to hear him.

“I heard you were looking for a girl!” His voice was jokey and boyish, sounding like it was on the edge of giggling.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“People tell me these things mate, they know I know girls!” He didn’t quite wink, but the cheeky chappy ladies man was present everywhere else. “Know a lot of girls, you want to find a girl I’ll know her!” He laughed and Greg smiled weakly. The man got more and more annoying as he talked and treated you as though you were instantly a friend and found him funny. Greg turned back to the bar and pretended to be keen to get a drink. The man followed him, nudging against his elbow as he mirrored Greg by leaning on the bar.

“Yep, so when I heard you were looking for a girl I thought I’d come help you out. You don’t need to be trawling this place mate, you just need to ask me and I’ll set you up!” He pushed home his point with an elbow strong enough to nearly knock Greg off the bar. “Like a wingman eh? You come with me and I guarantee you go home with an absolute beauty!”

Greg had had enough. You got people like this most nights, either drunk or just slightly challenged, who’d monologue at you enthusiastically and miss any subtle hints to go away. So at that point you had to be unsubtle. He turned and faced the man full on, pushing his face forwards slightly to get into his personal space. “You sound like a fucking pimp.”

The man in the black suit giggled nervously. “No no, no, no, not at all, no.” He took a step back. “Definitely not, no.”

Greg stared at him. The man giggled again. Greg’s eyes widened. “Holy shit, you are a fucking pimp!” At that moment he got a sick feeling in his stomach. He pulled the picture of Grace from his back pocket where he’d shoved it for safe keeping. It was slightly bent and battered from the rough way he’d treated it and grimy from being handled a lot, but it was still clearly Grace. He held it up in front of the suited man’s eyes.

“You know her? She a friend of yours?”

The man looked like he was trying not to, but he took a look. It was only for a second, his gaze quickly flicking off the photo and then darting around the room, but it was enough for Greg to see recognition and fear.

“No, I don’t know her, she’s not one of my girls.”

“What? One of your, what? Where the fuck is she and what the hell are you doing with her?” Greg found that he was genuinely angry. He hadn’t cared until now about this girl and whatever her problem was, she was just another project of Charlie’s that would eventually bite the hand that fed it. But the slimy ambitious bastard in front of him was something to do with why she was screwed up or at the very least was benefiting from her being like that. Greg didn’t consider himself a great idealist, moralist, gentleman or humanitarian. But he did believe that you didn’t give anyone problems, they were all to capable of doing that for themselves. He grabbed the guys lapel and felt the smooth fabric soft beneath his gripped fingers.

“Where the fuck is she!”

Just at that moment he spotted Charlie and Hannah. They were front of the queue for drinks, probably a good half way down the room, speaking to each other. With his free hand he waved at them frantically and shouted for them. In an incredible piece of luck, the song that was played had just hit a slow come down and they both heard him and looked over. He gestured them to get over to him and saw them disappear as they forced their way into the crowd towards him. Greg was aware the man had been shouting as well, but hadn’t paid attention to what he was saying. The arrival of two burly doormen told him that it was whatever the modern version of ‘Guards! Seize him!’ was.

They had come up from behind him, one of them lowering the trap on the door to the bar as the other tapped Greg on the shoulder. They weren’t the same bouncers that had been running the door outside, but in many ways they were interchangeable. Big, muscular, angry looking and definitely not your friend. The trailing hulk caught up with the other and they both crossed their arms and looked down at Greg.

“Let him go.” Greg complied quickly, holding his hands up like a hostage as he did so. The pimp stepped back and smoothed down his lapels with sweaty hands.

“It’s nothing, honestly. We were just arguing and it got a bit heated. You don’t need to chuck us out.”

Both bouncers took their eyes off him and looked over at the pimp. Greg followed suit and saw him motion with his head towards the door. Before he could turn around Greg felt the two of them grab his arms, each taking one in a single heavy grip. The thought flashed through Greg’s head that if they walked off in opposite directions they could tear him in two. Thankfully they both started the same way, towards the door, just as Hannah and Charlie broke out of the crowd.

“What’s going on?” Charlie shouted at him.

“He knows where Grace is!” Greg shouted back and instinctively tried to point at the man in the suit, which naturally failed as his arm was being pinned to his side. Charlie and Hannah both got the message though, Hannah instantly trying to move past the bodyguards to get to him. The man holding onto Greg’s right arm reached out to grab her and was shocked when she grabbed back and appeared to rotate his wrist through a 360 degree arc. He cursed her and wretched his hand back, nearly pulling her off her feet, let go of Greg altogether and roughly dug his fingers into her shoulder and began dragging her away. The other guard had got hold of Charlie with his free arm. Despite having the two male prisoners he had a much easier than his colleague, who was being fought every inch by an incensed Hannah, who was alternating between threatening him and the pimp.

Hannah’s abuse seemed to get to the pimp, who gave back as good as she was giving. But where Hannah’s female voice was strong and intimidating his was reedy and broken, betraying fear rather than anger or rage.

“What are you going to do bitch! You’re nothing! Stay out of the West Side or you’ll get yours! Stay away from me!” The last statement seemed closer to pleading as he watched Hannah kick and scratch the professional security man who was far bigger and more physically able than himself. “Stay out of the West Side!”

The bouncers manhandled and lady-handled them to the door and unceremoniously pushed them out of it. Charlie and Hannah managed to keep their feet by stumbling a few steps while Greg found his feet had swapped sides and he hit the ground. As they picked him off the ground they watched the two inside doormen quietly talking to their outdoor brothers, no doubt telling them that these three were barred. None of them even bothered trying to re-enter. They started to walk away, Charlie texting Danny to tell them they had left.