Insatiable

'I got a Jones, Martha,
Oh yeah, it be like this...'

Justice

Bible-dance outfit Justice recently unveiled their long gestating second album, Audio, Video, Disco. It is that record every artist who has romanced the big leagues has had to make: the comeback. You’ve read the hype numerous times before, with hope and hidden fear, headlines proclaiming “the return of your favourite [fill in genre] heroes” and “the second coming.” You may remember The Stone Roses, in a particularly admirable move, even calling their sophomore effort just that. After the five-year wait that followed their eponymous debut, however, The Second Coming couldn’t have proved itself more of a false prophecy. Surrendering their hazy-pop sound in favour of Led Zeppelin-lite blues rock, that album’s legacy stands only to document the death throes of a once great and adored band; one that almost destroyed them.

By all accounts, it is rare nowadays for new artists to offer us a good mystery to unravel; a discovery to explore; a zeitgeist for us to adopt and fight for. Yet 2007's † was arguably such a product. A stunningly immediate record – propulsive, over the top, and era-defining - it also raised a conundrum: How do you top, or even follow, something so unabashedly big? Historically, success has had a strange way of changing how artists relate to their talents, their appeal, and the newfound expectations of them. In the wake of their first album, Pablo Honey, Radiohead virtually drove themselves crazy trying to ensure that their second had the next ‘Creep’ on it. It was only when producer John Leckie persuaded them to road-test some of their new songs with a string of dates did the band have a breakthrough. For that, we were blessed with The Bends. Of course, it’s never always so easy, nor artistically warranted. The graveyard of pop is littered with the corpses of bands struck down by the crippling self-analysis that comes with the pressure to emulate what it was that worked in the first place.

When the Klaxons recently bowed to the pressures of their label to re-record their follow-up with more hits, they were treading a well-worn path indeed. Whereas The Stone Roses were able to milk Geffen’s goodwill for the best part of a decade, the Klaxons have had to deal with a different beast entirely; an industry so in flux it was already in recession before the rest of the economy hit the skids. According to singer and bassist, Jamie Reynolds, Polydor gave the band just over a month to pen something more pop, less “dense” and not so “psychedelic” - in short, not the album they’d made. Inspiration much? Of course, following up any cult-classic can be an onerous task at the best of times. More than once will you come across the words “sell out” in search of an online ‘fan’ consensus of what eventually became Surfing The Void. And the worst of it is, the historical verdict on that album will most likely be offset by the tedious strictures the band faced from their paymasters whilst making it. We should be thankful, then, that Ed Banger is no Polydor; Audio, Video, Disco may have arrived much sooner, but would have sounded far less interesting otherwise...

If you haven’t caught the whole album yet you would have sampled it in the first apéritif, ‘Civilization’, and perhaps more so in the second single and title track. Hear it? That’s the sound of backlash. Yet it’s also the sound of a new direction; of a band trying its utmost not to emulate themselves; a band scratching away at its own veneer. So much nostalgia comes with the passing of four years, and such changes, however great or small, can prove critical for a band’s audience. Not that Justice seem to be paying much attention. Audio, Video, Disco is unmistakably a gambler’s record; purposefully straying from the overly familiar sample-heavy noize that formed much of †'s success for a more laid-back, ‘70s dad rock approach. As such, you’ll struggle to find your next hit of ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ amongst these 11 new tracks. That isn't to say that the Parisian duo have delivered anything less than what you'd expect from them, however. Only now there's a newfound sense of risk that pervades their sound.You only need listen to the first few strains of the operatic, opening volley ‘Horsepower’ for immediate recognition of its cinematic scope; this is an event album, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. And yes, it is truly something to behold.

Artists who stumble in their later work often do so because they have grown into preconceptions and all of its suffocating boundaries. Some just remove themselves entirely from it and offer a curveball so bizarre it seems almost non-canon. Hello MGMT’s Congratulations. Yet for the most part, artists listen to what is said about them and become, for lack of a better term, musically farmed. You can’t condemn them for it; they are human too. It’s just a far cry from what at first may have been some friends mucking around in a studio or bedroom and having fun. Indeed, naivety can be the essence of great art; it can be a skill. There are mistakes in a beginner’s work but these are itself a kind of quality. As it stands, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay have yet to iron out the creases of their greatness. “We do music in a really naive way,” they told Pitchfork recently, “We're not always fond of well-painted paintings, and [the] same goes with music. We make music without knowing much about the real process of writing or recording, and that makes us do things that are not logical or well-done in a strict technical way.” There is a beautiful irony, you could say naivety, to this considering that arena rock is a démodé genre known for its technical proficiency. The concept of a pastoral daytime record that is also intrinsically electronic is a conceptual underpinning that alone deserves to be commended. Electronica has always been for the night, the cities, the clubs. It's too lazy to critique Justice, as many are doing, of simply delving into the sounds of yore, especially when they are progressing into their own realm with such formidable force as this. Maybe it will be recognised as such by the time they finally get to LP3.

T.L.N.D.

Wilde

The Regency period was a time that swung between extreme elegance and sodden brutality; exoticism and excess; an age when William Wilberforce was denouncing the slave trade as Beau Brummell was denouncing an imperfect cravat with equal gravity. As such, it was also an age that saw Oscar Wilde promote the life of Jesus without recognising his divinity, whilst blending Christianity with his own self-realised Aestheticism without a hint of facetiousness. It was Christ who showed Wilde that sorrow is the ultimate type of existence; that by turning one’s life into a compelling subject for aesthetic appreciation, he could transform his into the most perfect work of art, the most sublime of tragedies.

By uniting personality with artistic perfection, creating himself out of his own divine imagination and imparting beautiful words, Christ had fashioned himself as the supreme individualist. He proved once and for all the power of personal magnetism and what it can accomplish. His life was the prototype for all dandies; one that affected others through its very existence rather than through any efforts of work or persuasion. Christ sympathised with sinners as Wilde sympathised with criminals; he was a precursor of the Romantics and a master of paradox; he was the first modern artist.

Alas, Wilde enticed his age to crucify him, and of course it was acquiescent in such matters as other ages. Style is when they’re running you out of town and you make it look as if you’re leading the parade. Wilde wanted the public to see him pilloried – with the court at the foot of the cross - for like all dandies worth their name, his belief in the ultimate autonomy of martyrdom was his sword, his shield, and his crown. He wanted his audience to see him, like Christ, as a male heroine; a passive public sufferer. Indeed, after being taken into custody, passive resignation would be Wilde's only performance. Self-pity hereby became the dandy’s own mesmerising litany - their grief being too exorbitant, too pure for this world. And so by making his life a spectacle, Wilde had emasculated himself just as Christ had done before him, leaving nothing but his own glorious image.

Living in a self-made tempest for all to see, the true dandy finds solace from mediocrity; Christ was crucified for our sins, Wilde for our gaze; both for our adoration.

‘The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It will always worship you… Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.’

Chivers

Gainsbourg

2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the year France’s answer to Jagger, Bowie and Dylan, all rolled into one smoke cloud of controversy, died of a heart attack. Two decades on and Serge Gainsbourg is still the best enfant terrible the world has ever had; the consummate man of taste.

Depending on your introduction to him, Gainsbourg will either be known for his musical brilliance or for his devilish non-conformism; with the elegant, lyrical wordplay, ruthless desire for transformation (just check his 1979 album Aux armes et cætera - Reggae! Rita Marley! Sly & Robbie!), and daringly eclectic taste in musical arrangements often being overshadowed by Gainsbarre the “provocateur.”

Alas, nothing succeeds like excess...

And yet Gainsbourg was actually a storyteller before Lou Reed and a model ‘promoting’ rock star before any of them. He changed the French language, he put English into it; he created words and made it even more beautiful. He was at once vulgar and sophisticated, a poet and a buffoon, a dandy and a drunkard. In the honourable tradition set forth by Byron, to judge the style of the man is to judge the content of the man, and you can only reach the content through the style. After suffering his first heart attack at 45, Gainsbourg insisted he be covered in his extremely valuable, highly fashionable Hermès blanket, declaring that the hospital’s own brand would be “too ugly.” Such was the Perve of Pop: a champion of exquisiteness even in the face of death.

'Oh, I can’t help quoting you,

Because everything that you said rings true,

And now in my cell,

Well, I followed you.'

Business Casual

Sebastian

The most beautiful name in the English language is Sebastian. It is a word that takes flight when it is spoken; all gleaming and crimson. Saint Sebastian, Sebastian Horsley, Sebastién Tellier, Sebastian Akchoté. It is not without reason that Sebastian was also the name Oscar Wilde adopted as his alias whilst on the run in France. A good name should unbalance you. It should haunt us and suggest ways of being and even aspects of behaviour.

‘The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,

Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain…’

SebastiAn knows this. The cover of his debut album, Total, has an obscure connection with the ethereal ‘Sebastian’ paintings of Guido Reni and the subject matter’s complete desire to consume and be consumed by the beauty of himself. Indeed, it also shares an appropriate affinity with the explicitly rich context of the artist’s name, and all the sexually perverse narcissism that comes with it. SebastiAn is not merely kissing himself; he is kissing Sebastian Dangerfield and Sebastian Venables, too. Jean-Baptiste Mondino has once again created an image of both profound style and sublime taste.

In the hooligan world of art, this connection will be understood. Had Monsieur Akchoté been called Roy or Donald... perhaps only the music therein could save him. And it is here that SebastiAn proves himself an even greater tastemaker of the past and present.  Ensuring no sacred rock is left unturned; SebastiAn’s Total is the product of someone exploring infinite possibilities. Heavy-metal dance? ‘Doggg’ alone gives me so much hope, albeit in entirely different ways, for the future of both musical genres.