It’s been five years since the gothic rock cabaret of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and the longest gap between two Bad Seeds releases in their 30 years together. But where Lazarus and the two Grinderman albums packed a weighty punch, Push The Sky Away is much more of an exercise in restraint. It’s as though Nick Cave has taken off his boxing gloves and sat down for a good old think.
His trademark gospel-style delivery is at its brooding best on ‘Wide Lovely Eyes’, ‘Higgs Boson Blues’ and lead single, ‘We Know Who U R’. Lyrically, see ‘Water’s Edge’ for four minutes of tense imagery set to an incessant bass riff and straining guitar hooks. The middle sections frequently rise into a crescendos of strings and cymbals before falling gently back into the tickle of a hi-hat, the echo of a guitar or the murmur a sighed sentence. As a frontman, Cave has mastered the art of being entirely sinister and entirely graceful at the same time.
‘Jubilee Street’, ‘Mermaids’ and ‘Finishing Jubilee Street’ ease the transition through the halfway point of the album and, again, hypnotic vocals are there to captivate your attention, jolting you awake with the occasional menacing line. At times, Cave is downright creepy. He howls and moans his way through most of the tracks but just when it seems like it all could get a bit much, the mood calms and the next transition is already upon you. Moments of disturbance are craftily scattered throughout what is, on the whole, a very serene and tranquil soundscape. If you compare it to many of his previous releases then there’s definitely a lot less of the in-your-face references to sex and death. As an album it feels much more calculated and more complete as a finished article.
After a few runs through, it becomes harder and harder to predict where the Bad Seeds can actually go from here. Expansion seems impossible off the back of such a well-crafted record. It’s gentle, yet fierce; tender, yet raw; calm, yet vicious. These seeds sprout on the first track and mingle with each other over the next forty minutes, intertwining like vines up a brick wall. You might even catch yourself sitting, open-mouthed, staring at nothing in particular. But that’s not a bad thing at all.
It’s a cold February night, and there’s a glistening sheen over the pavements. If they’re having this weather in the States, I mused, it’ll be a credit to each of the seventy one thousand fans who travelled to New Orleans to watch the Super Bowl Final XLVII between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers (in case you’re wondering about the numerals, as I was, that means it’s the 47th final of the tournaments history…apparently).
But I’d been told that the University’s American Football team had summoned all lovers of the sport to congregate in “256” in Fallowfield to watch the game live. So at 11PM on a sunday evening I was to be found sitting amongst players and fans alike, feeling rather bewildered by the whole event, this being my very first venture into the sport. I was assured, though, by my friend and fellow physicist Luke Hart, who had just come from the University varsity match himself, that it would be simple to follow, and shouldn’t end much later than about four in the morning. Lucky for me I don’t have Monday morning lectures!
But this was to be more than a conglomeration of devotees to a sport most Britons wouldn’t pay a blind bit of notice to; this was a gathering with a purpose. The University’s AF team isn’t funded as well as other teams such as rugby or football which also enjoy fierce varsity rivalries, and so the team may well find themselves in the predicament that though they qualify through their victories for play-off spots and even the national conference, they simply aren’t able to afford to pay their way to the matches. So in an effort to raise a bit of money to go with their recent victories they have organised and sold tickets to this celebration of arguably the pinnacle of the sport. A pay-to-play poker tournament has also featured, and captain Chris Payne is hopeful of the teams ability to make it all the way to the top.
“We were really happy with the win over Man Met today but felt it could have been much more comprehensive. They fed off our mistakes a little bit, but in the end to win by more than two scores is good innings. I was really proud of the whole team, ‘cos this was massively a team victory, with special mention to my other captains Leroy, Matt and James.”
Leroy Owusu-Addea, the line captain, has been accepted to the GB squad for American Football, and with his impressive frame and beaming grin, his purple striped hair was hardly needed to help me find him in the throng of two hundred partying fans.
“It was for a bet!”, he laughs, “But I’m really proud to be representing the University, and it was such a good match. To sell out the stadium with fans supporting us is really great and we’re really enjoying the season.”
But as for the sport itself? I found the final to be a very exciting experience, with plenty of impressive feats and displays of skill that any sportsman could appreciate. And our University team, with talent, skill and dedication in spades, are looking like they’ll be going places, with matches coming up against Burnage and hopefully a play-off against Bangor.
Tickets are just three pounds each so get down and support our team in this bizarre but brilliant sport! Oh, the final? The 49ers dramatic comeback might have been completed but for a missed catch for a touchdown right at the death, better luck next year boys! Ravens 34 – 31 49ers.
“We were in the studio, tracking those songs, and every time we came out into the break room, we were confronted with those images, seeing the buildings falling.” Denver Dalley is reflecting on the recording process for Desaparecidos’ only full-length record to date, Read Music/Speak Spanish. “They seemed to be playing those pictures all week, and then they just disappeared after that.”
Picture the scene: a band formed, partially at least, out of a shared sense of societal discontent, suddenly finding themselves in an intense moral quandary; they couldn’t have known that the week they’d booked in the studio to lay down an album of songs that were bound to be perceived as anti-American would see unimaginable terrorist atrocities committed on their own soil. “It was such a sensitive time, and we obviously started to think about how we were going to come across. I do think people were kind of relieved to hear people expressing those views at that time though; it’s important to voice your viewpoint, no matter what’s going on.”
Desaparecidos released their debut record in 2002 and disbanded not too long afterwards; back then, frontman Conor Oberst’s primary project, Bright Eyes, was commanding too much of his time to allow his noisier outfit the necessary attention it needed to develop. With Bright Eyes wrapping up an extensive world tour in late 2011, Oberst finally found himself in a position to commit to other projects, although Dalley divulges that there were other reasons why now is the appropriate time to bring the old band back together.
“In our home state of Nebraska, we’ve got these poorly-worded, very anti-immigrant bills that are trying to force their way into law. The same thing’s going on in Arizona, too,” he says of the proposed laws that led, back in 2010, to Oberst organising the Concert for Equality that saw the band make their initial reformation. “We just felt that, rather than tiptoe around the argument, it was best to try to point a finger at those we felt responsible, and use the band as a vehicle to be able to yell at the racists involved.” Dalley is referring to last summer’s ‘MariKKKopa’, a new track aimed directly at a racist sheriff from Maricopa County, Arizona.
After an extended spell away from the group saw the individual members mature both musically and personally, you’d probably expect there to have been some difficulty getting back into the old songs when the first rehearsals began. “You know, that’s one of the things that impressed us a lot when we started back. It was really easy, and the excitement we felt realising that that energy was still there really drove us to carry on playing together. It truly felt like we were picking up where we left off.”
Fans of the considerably mellower Bright Eyes will always have struggled to come to terms with the idea of Conor Oberst playing in a post-hardcore outfit, but Dalley insists that the band have always been on the same page as far as their influences were concerned. “In the early days, we were all sort of united by listening to a lot of Slowdown Virginia, Cursive, Weezer, Fugazi, Pixies, and so on, and come to think of it we’re all still listening to those bands today, collectively and individually. I can’t imagine a time when we won’t be inspired by that music.”
Thematically, Read Music/Speak Spanish attacked corporate greed and materialist culture in modern America, concepts that have only been brought into even sharper focus in the years the band have spent away. “It’s obvious that a lot of those issues are even more relevant today than they were when we made the record,” says Dalley. “It’s not too surprising to me that those ideas are still resonating with listeners now.” It made sense, then, to ask how the band felt about Barack Obama’s recent re-election. “Well, we certainly weren’t pulling for Romney. We were glad to see Obama win, but he’s still got a lot of promises to deliver on – gay marriage, immigration reform, fair taxation. It’s tiring to see him constantly ground down on those pledges, because he’s trying his best to work with an opposition that refuses to entertain anything that comes from the White House.”
The political climate has barely improved since Desaparecidos were last on the scene – and there’s certainly a strong argument to suggest that it has, in fact, deteriorated – and it’s only served to fuel the dissatisfactions that drove them in the first place. “I really feel like the live shows are a lot more intense now. It’s controlled chaos these days, but we are all better players, and we all seem to lock in tighter than we did previously. The new songs we’ve written really seem angrier than ever before.”
The release of ‘Anonymous/The Left Is Right’, to mark this overseas tour – which sees Desaparecidos’ first-ever dates in the UK – has got Dalley thinking about what the future might hold for the band. “That’s the second seven-inch we’ve released since things started up again, so I guess we’re halfway to a full-length now,” he laughs. “I don’t think any of us want to force new songs for the sake of it, but we all want to carry on. I suppose we’re as curious as everyone else as far as the future’s concerned. We’ve all got other things going on that need our attention too, but for now it’s nice to just focus on one project that we’re all enjoying, where we’re all having fun playing together. That, for me, is the most important thing.”
The EU has been around for longer even than many of your lecturers, but it is still a comparatively young institution. Now only 55 years of age, the EU was born out of a war-ravaged Europe. It is responsible for many of the things that we take for granted today: easy access to Europe, workers’ rights, prosperity, and peace.
Before the Schengen Agreement opened the borders between European countries, you needed a visa to travel Europe. Inter-railing was a nightmare, and hassle at border checkpoints was the norm. Today, you can travel freely, and even live and work abroad without any trouble.
As well as allowing you to work across Europe, the EU also protects many of your rights. In 1975, the EU made it so that any woman paid less than a man for the same job can seek redress through the courts. This protection has been extended to give part-time workers (frequently women) the same rights as full-time workers. You are also entitled to 4 weeks’ paid holiday per year, 1 day off per week, and 11 hours rest in every 24 hours thanks to the working time directive.
We are also undoubtedly richer as a country for our participation in the EU. Most of our trade is with Europe, and this is aided by the EU’s total removal of internal tariff walls that would stifle our trade. British businesses can also compete on an equal footing with foreign concerns in the EU, and this has benefited us enormously.
Finally, and most importantly, the EU has ensured peace in western Europe. Where once we would have used guns and soldiers to settle our differences, we now use trade and diplomacy to resolve disputes, guarantee democracy, and keep the peace. We live in an unparalleled period of peace when compared with any other time in history, and the EU has had an important part to play in it.
Europe is now a continent united. Alone, we would be buffeted about in the economic and political currents of the world; but the EU is greater than the sum of its parts, and we are stronger for our membership of it. Therefore, the only sensible vote (should there be a referendum on our membership) is a vote to keep us in.
No – Ben Marshall
In light of the eternally negative publicity of the European Union in the UK, it’s not surprising that the country is largely distancing itself from this organisation – and for good reason.
For wealthy nations like Britain, the price of membership every year hugely outweighs any benefit that we gain from it. It is estimated that our expenditure for the EU from 2007 to 2013 is a whopping £105 billion – the equivalent of every British citizen paying nearly £200 per year. And what is this money being spent on? Well almost half the EU’s annual budget goes towards the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which is basically money paid to EU farmers to try to help them produce enough food for the continent. Sounds OK? Quite the opposite – it’s fraught with problems.
Firstly, with the money we contribute to the scheme compared to subsidies British farmers receive from it, it’s a losing proposition. The other astounding problem is the fact that 70% of the scheme’s funding goes to just 20% of European farms, ultimately meaning that there are many farmers in the EU who are missing out on any benefit at all, and are surviving on as little as £5,000 per year. How’s that a fair system? As for the remaining half of the budget, don’t get me started on the kind of things that is spent on. Lavish private planes and luxurious hotel suites for top EU fat-cats are all on the list, as well as outrageous amounts being spent on ill-thought-out legislation. You may recall the hugely controversial Lisbon Treaty that the UK was bullied into signing in 2007; it effectively means Europe can simply impose laws on the country, thus transferring yet more of our national powers to Brussels. What a joke.
All this spells out one word – disaster. A system that, to a large extent, has already failed. Just look at the diabolical state of the Euro. A so called ‘United States of Europe’, which is the track that those power-hungry Eurocrats are taking us down, simply wouldn’t work. Time we got out of this shambles now before it gets to that.
