Never mind the fact that Gene does bear a marked resemblance to the Smiths. The British foursome had a similar approach to UK guitar pop — a love of joyous songcraft composed of equal parts intelligent words, cheeky melodies and a sense of grandiose melodrama. But where Morrissey basks in his miserabilia, Gene singer/lyricist Martin…
Pulp proves that old saw about perseverance. It took ages, but singer/auteur Jarvis Cocker grew to become a star, recognized as British pop’s most astonishing storyteller and acerbic social commentator, beloved by those with a taste for wit, fashion and panache. But in Pulp’s earliest incarnation, it sounds as if Cocker’s goal was to be…
Johnny Marr discovered Morrissey in 1982, sometime after, one assumes, Steven Morrissey invented himself. Wags asserted that not since the Who had so formidable a talent been married to such an embarrassing, nay pitiful, lead singer. With the demise of the Smiths five years later, hastened by Marr’s inability to cope with the stardom his…
Of the new millennium’s crop of danceable punk solutions — Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, the Killers et al. — London’s Bloc Party has the most creative potential. Compared to past tourmates Franz Ferdinand, with whom the band shares Gang of Four’s jagged guitar/dance beat template, Bloc Party seethes with a righteous passion and seriousness that stands…
In just a few years, Norway’s Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge have achieved electronic music’s holy grail — the creation of soulful, moving techno while maintaining anonymity. Much like Air, Röyksopp successfully brings chill-out atmospherics, jittery rhythms and a sense of sophistication to modern techno, but warmth sets them apart from their Gallic peers and…
