The Null Device

Music I don't want to hear again

Some music that I've heard more of recently than I would have liked:

• Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Big dumb Aussie pub rock, sounding like a cross between AC/DC and something from Sunbury in 1972. They're's nothing particularly interesting about it, no musical innovation beyond the blues-based rock formula, nor any wry commentary or post-ironic cleverness in the rather lumpen lyrics (to think that your typical British Carling-indie lad band, for all that genre's knuckle-dragging awfulness, is ahead of them here puts it in perspective), it's just straight up meat-and-potatoes Aussie Rock. And yet all the coolsies think they're the best thing ever. (And I do mean all; if you aren't into them, you are, by definition, not a coolsie, and should consider deleting your Mess+Noise account if you have one and staying well out of Fitzroy/Newtown.) It's almost religious; Local And/Or General play runs of two of their songs in a row, which is one reason why I've stopped listening to Local And/Or General.
• George Pringle. A nasal-voiced early-twentysomething from Oxford or somewhere who does spoken word over electronic beats. To be more precise, she does tedious, terminally self-indulgent spoken-word over monotonously repetitive beats. All her songs follow the same formula: the lyrics are about the narrator's mid-youth crisis, and alternate between enumerating her possessions/the contents of her music collection/the subcultural signifiers she repeatedly dons, Mighty Boosh-fashion, with the rudderless anomie of her life. A fragment might sound something like "I dyed my hair black then bleached it blonde then dyed it black again. Walking down the high street at 3PM, listening to The Clash and Girls Aloud on my iPod, smoking a cigarette. If you had any idea what it's like to be me..."* The beats sound like they were put together in 15 minutes in Fruity Loops, and, lacking any musical variety or progression, are as monotonous as Ms. Pringle's complaining delivery. After a few songs, you're ready to stick a biro through your eardrums to make it all stop. For some reason, though, Anthony Carew keeps playing her on The International Pop Underground (which, I must say, is otherwise excellent); perhaps this is because he has never sat through an entire set by her (as I did once, when she supported Emmy The Great).

* Actually, I just made that up, but you get the general idea.

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