Musical Musings

I love me some music, yes indeedlydoo. I don’t listen to new stuff anywhere near as much as I should though. This is largely due to shoddy updating of my digital music (I am old school, and still buy CDs – so sue me (NB this is not an actual invitation to actually sue me. I also would imagine your grounds for doing so would be more than a little dubious)). So it was pretty good a week or so ago when I got hold of (and subsequently placed in my CD player (and pressed play, you bloody pedant)) the ‘new’ albums by Broken Bells and The XX. Both of them are much goodness. In fact, I would say The XX album is the best début I’ve heard since the Strokes’ ‘Is This It’ back in 2001.

Broken Bells are Dangermouse (not the cartoon character, the renowned producer) and the singer from The Shins. The Shins are good, by the way, as are actual, real, physical shins. Physical shins are sometimes underrated, I feel. Celebrate your shins. They are now officially body part of the day. Well done, shins. We will celebrate with a concert by The Shins (NB – we won’t).

The XX (or is it ‘the xx’, or ‘The xx’? It really is far from clear, and frankly, not exactly important (I have now just checked on Wikipedia, and it appears to be ‘The xx’, which I must admit somehow offends my slightly anal sense of order. I think it should be ‘The XX’. Capitals are innately more satisfying. (Oops, I’ve done the brackets-in-brackets thing again, bad me))). (Returning to the point) ThE xX (hell, lets go upper-or-lower-case-crazy!) are concerned, I feel like I am coming to the party a bit late, with my first listens to the album (imaginatively titled, ‘xx’ (yes, actually ‘xx’, though it should of course be ‘Xx’ – capitals, dear boy) being a few days before they got a Mercury nomination. I will now be shunned by all the cool indie kids (I am 30 years old and should not be hanging with the kids – further proof of this being that I just used the phrase ‘hanging with the kids’. Twice).

I remember before I went to University how important music was to me, and how every spare penny would go on the latest CD by whoever (yeah, well done the younger me, getting much use out of the second ‘Space’ album these days, are you? (N.B. The first one is, I maintain, still a slice of quirky-pop gold)). Point is, those days when you would argue about someone’s music taste and who was good and ‘rubbish’ seem so long ago. I can’t keep up anymore. It’s a young man/ woman's game. And I’m only 30. But then, I don’t want to be one of those people who are old enough to know better still reading the NME, do I?

In summary: Broken Bells and The xx are goodness. I should listen to more new music. I also need to spend a weekend digitising loads of my more recent CD purchases (but then I would have to use iTunes - urgh...).

Onwards!

Levin