Implementor

Review: Ballad of the Broken Seas — Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan.

So the tweeest girl in Glasgow and the frontman of Screaming Trees (and occasional Queens of the Stone Age vocalist) Mark Lanegan got together to make a record. I think probably literally nobody would have predicted that particular pairing but literally everyone I’ve spoken to about it thought it sounded like it ought to be brilliant. And fortunately, it is.

Lanegan’s menacing growl is obviously a perfect foil for Campbell’s dreamily angelic voice and with a backing at turns shimmeringly folky or poundingly urgent, the combination is applied to an impressively varied range of songs.

If there’s any criticism to be made at all, it’s that the songs where both artists have significant vocal input, like Ramblin’ Man and The False Husband, are a little bit stronger than those that don’t. But that’s kind of like complaining that the moon on a stick you’ve just been handed isn’t gold–plated too.

An excellent album. I hope there’s a sequel.

1. Install Total Recorder on my laptop.
2. Find a CD player with a line–out that’s capable of playing track one of the, incidentally otherwise superb, 2046 soundtrack. Because none of mine will touch the “enhanced” hunk of plastic crap and neither will my PC.

   

3. Connect the line–out to my PC’s line–in and record the track that way, so I can have it in lovely Apple Lossless format, rather than a shitty downloaded low–quality MP3.
4. Take the CD out of the CD player, melt it down, and fashion it into some sort of spike.
5. Find out who’s in charge at EMI Music, track him down, and brutally stab him to death with it.

Must dash: busy!

Apparently it is now a FACT that ugly people are more likely to be criminals. In your face, modern science!

I look forward to heist movies featuring scenes of gangsters vetting potential accomplices by posting their photos on Am I Hot or Not?. And “my client is really hott, right? the defence rests”. And rating girls in bars on the number of crimes they look like they’ve committed. Although I imagine this is quite a blow for anyone convinced that nice guys finish last. And possibly they ought to have considered whether pretty people are just better at getting away with it.

Incidentally: I have no criminal record, ladies.

So I’m sitting in the bar at work. A perfectly ordinary end to a perfectly ordinary week and I’ve barely tasted my second beer. Surely a splendidly relaxing evening lies ahead.

Well, no. Not five minutes later, somebody wants to get past. There was probably room anyway but I’m an accommodating sort, so I pulled my stool in. And in the process, slammed my knee into the corner of an unexpected beam under the table.

It didn’t hurt or anything. It didn’t hurt because I’d hit a nerve so precisely that pretty much my entire left leg had immediately gone numb. And the numbness spread. I had just enough time to hear my colleague start taking the piss before I came over all dizzy and keeled over.

From that point it’s a little hazy. Apparently I came to a couple of minutes later just as every first–aider in the building rushed to my aid, only to stand up as if nothing had happened. And thirty seconds later promptly collapsed again, backwards over a stool, in cartoon fashion, cracking my head on the table and then floor along the way.

All of this was to the accompaniment of OMD’s Enola Gay, incidentally. Words can’t describe the feeling.

The second time I woke up, flat on my back on the floor, I felt absolutely fine, just a little bit tingly in my hands and face. Even now I find it hard to believe I banged my head twice in quick succession. But obviously, everyone was very concerned, so I had to explain that no, I’d had plenty to eat, very little alcohol to drink, had no history of illness in the family and hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary all week two or three times to different people. And then to the paramedics in their ambulance.

Interestingly, it turns out I don’t bleed very much even when purposely stabbed with a needle. Apparently it’s also really, really hard to take my blood pressure and heart rate, although once they’d managed it everything appeared to be okay. It took a while to convince them that I haven’t seen a doctor since I was about 12 years old but other than that I just had to sign to say I didn’t feel like I needed to go to hospital and that was that.

This story could probably use some sort of insightful conclusion about now but really all I’ve learned is that it’s possible to be apparently entirely indifferent to pain but still bang your knee hard enough to knock you out twice in rapid succession. Also that Friday nights in are pretty fucking dull.

What’s ailing you this evening?