15 more songs to go after this; no more tonight! Hot Chip are precisely what Depeche Mode or The Pet Shop Boys were - but now - that is, masters of sexy vaguely ominous, smart, literate synth pop. And this one just happens to sound a lot like Tears For Fears, too. Oh boy. 'Motion Sickness' was, I think, the greatest British pop song this summer, catching as it did (as it does) the dizzying power of "the wall of sound" versus "the world is sound" - "everything locks to my grip" echoes Avril Lavigne's "Losing My Grip" but is far weirder. "World of entertainment in your hands".... the song is almost a Nirvanesque series of commodified non sequiturs mocking the music industry, but celebrating, paradoxically, the industriousness of music. Pop for Adornoheads?
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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