The year ahead in.... classical
music I film
I theatre
I comedy
I dance
I visual
arts I TV
To pop, as with everything, there is a season. As Christmas comes to an end
and pop's established big hitters vacate the playlists, so begins the next
phase: getting to know the latest batch of stars in waiting. But there's
another reason why record companies launch new acts at the beginning of the
year. Record sales are at their lowest at this time, so just a few thousand
downloads ensure a Top 10 single. With the big names out of the picture,
it's the nearest pop gets to the FA Cup.
In reality, the overnight successes vying for your attention in three weeks'
time will have been, in some cases, incubating for years. The burnished
creations of heart-on-sleeve troubadour Gary Go are designed to find favour
with anyone who has waved their lighter at a Paolo Nutini or James Morrison
show.
With the anthemic monochrome indie rock of To Lose My Life - released in
January, supported by an extensive tour throughout February - White Lies are
expected to impose themselves upon 2009 the way Arctic Monkeys did on 2006.
Whether they do, of course, is anything but a foregone conclusion. Lately, our
buying habits as pop fans have begun to resemble those of volatile
shareholders, able to give or withhold their backing on a whim. Perhaps
that's not surprising. The charts are scattered with acts - some permanently
installed, some just passing through - who we voted in to do the job. Some
of them have been doing it for so long that, we have forgotten their
beginnings on the talent shows which brought them together. A 13-year-old
girl with tickets to see Girls Aloud on their Out Of Control tour in April
will have been five when they first appeared on Popstars: the Rivals. A
scheduled autumn release for Leona Lewis's second album (sessions begin next
month) with a tour to follow in 2010, makes it likely that, come next
Christmas, she will have outsold every other British singer.
Should Amy Winehouse pull herself together and return with any sort of new
material this year, it's hard not to wonder where she would fit in among a
prevalent sense that right now - post Duffy and Gabriella Cilmi - we really
couldn't manage a single slice of retro-soul black forest gateau.
The reaction meted out to the 2007 Mercury prize appearance by Natasha Khan's
Bat for Lashes suggests that the public appetite for a freakish
fin-de-siècle Kate Bush may be peaking. Resisting the urge to polish the
waxing tidal invocations of Fur and Gold into something more radio-friendly,
Khan's second album, due in April, has seen her create a heroically strange
new alter-ego - apparently “a David Lynch-style film noir femme fatale”
called Pearl - and bag a duet with Scott Walker in the process.
Khan bears testament to the fact that, these days, a savvy artist will take
the requirements of the mainstream with a pinch of salt. The kind of people
who seek out their live music in arenas are not known for their loyalty.
Razorlight were a stadium act until their third album Slipway Fires
appeared, to spend only three weeks in the Top 75.
Having returned with what they had deemed their poppiest album to date, Keane
are in the unenviable position of commencing a tour, at the end of January,
on the back of an album (Perfect Symmetry) that has all but disappeared
after its opening single, Spiralling. Who, right now, would swap with
Scissor Sisters - the rumoured recipients of £1 million to headline the V
Festival in 2005 - now faced with the prospect of finding the fanbase they
lost with their last album? Their third album is set for release this autumn
with no guarantee that anyone in the world at large is still interested.
Certain artists, of course, will shift records and tickets in any climate.
Abetted by opening sets from Jay-Z and Girls Aloud, Coldplay's stadium shows
are a perfect time to see a band whose creative and commercial peaks have
intersected. Beyoncé's June shows have already sold out. So, perhaps for
reasons more to do with voyeurism, have almost all of Britney Spears's.
Clamour for Take That's summer tour will no doubt be intensified by Robbie
Williams' recent intimations that he may join them at selected shows.
Released in February, Morrissey's Years of Refusal is a welcome throwback to
the sonic pugilism of Your Arsenalboasting, in Something is Squeezing my
Skull and One Day Goodbye Will be Farewell, two songs to rival the best of
his solo canon. Massive interest should greet the next album by Manic Street
Preachers - it features previously unheard lyrics written by Richey Edwards
prior to his disappearance in 1995. Due in March is No Line on the Horizon,
the imminent U2 album that sees the Irish monoliths back with producers
Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. According to guitarist The Edge, the new batch
of songs “sounds like a U2 album but it doesn't sound like anything we've
done before.” Among the rumoured highlights are Unknown Caller (a song
recorded last year in the Moroccan city of Fez) and the seven-minute Moment
Of Surrender.
Right now, though, there's arguably not a single artist from rock's old guard
to rival the vein of inspiration that seems to have consumed Bruce
Springsteen in recent years. To anyone but a core of fans who refuse to
believe that Born to Run can be topped,: 2007's Magic was the most inspired
E Street Band collaboration yet. Due in January, Working on a Dream marks,
in Springsteen's words, an attempt to catch “the energy of a band fresh off
the road from some of the most exciting shows we've ever done”.
In depressed times, it's easier to sell an established artist than a new one
by an unknown artist. Even a runaway critical success such as Fleet Foxes
has created less revenue from 120,000 album sales than the reunited Blur
will on one night of their UK shows this summer.
For their part, pop's class of 2009 will find it increasingly hard to wedge
themselves into a space already full of relics and casualties from the
previous 53 years. White Lies notwithstanding, however, the best thing about
the new vanguard of indie musicians coming through in 2009 is their lack of
anything that might traditionally be termed ambition. Having already
delivered some of the most thrilling shows of 2008, Glasgow's Broken Records
are amassing a snowballing following by merging blazing Balkan violins with
literate lovelorn melodies that answer to names likesuch as If Eilert
Lovberg Wrote A Song It Would Sound Like This.
More than ever, women are also making the running. Florence And The Machine
(pictured) brings her titanium self-confidence to bear upon clattering pop
parables about coffin-builder boyfriends and birds whose souls sing out the
sins of the people who eat them. Following in the footsteps of 2008's most
whip-smart pop women Lykke Li and Ladyhawke is La Roux. Having been selected
to receive the second ever Brits Critics' Choice Award (Adele won it last
year), Ahead of an imminent support slot on Lily Allen's February tour, her
new single Quicksand is a opening shot from an artist singlehandedly able to
make elastic 80s electropop sound better than it ever did in the 80s. The
list goes on: the distressed harmonic fem-punk of Brighton trio Peggy Sue;
the hot-bloodedchamber-folk ofgroup Six Day Riot ; the sultry, somnambulant
oscillations of Berlin's Moon Unit - all bands forging their own path,
indifferent to the fact that this really is no way to make a living. Here's
hoping they prove themselves wrong.
GLASTONBURY 2009
If Emily Eavis was nervous when The Times spoke to her in June 2007, it was
hardly a surprise. Glastonbury needed to sell its remaining 20,000 tickets
to break even. And, even then, if it rained again, or if Jay-Z confirmed
Noel Gallagher’s declaration that hip-hop didn’t belong in Glastonbury, the
festival’s prospects for 2009 looked bleak. What happened next, of course,
is the stuff of legend. “We have about 15,000 tickets left [for 2009’s
festival],” says Eavis, “And they are steadily selling.” Better still,
having seen the effect that Jay-Z’s set had, the Eavises reported a marked
upturn of interest from artists whose fees normally put them out of the
Festival’s price range. “I’ve never known us to have so many great bands
wanting to play,” continues Eavis, “We have some very special things lined
up for 2009, and without giving any line-up specifics away, it really looks
set to be one of our most exciting bills ever. We have one or two people
headlining who are complete first timers, which I think always raises the
bar.” Complete first-timers? Who could she be referring to? Names recently
thrown up by the rumour mill have included Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young
– neither of whom have stopped by Glastonbury in 38 years of Festivals.
Eavis’s lips remain sealed. But, whoever else plays, it seems reasonable to
assume that Oasis might give Worthy Farm a wide berth on this occasion.
Glastonbury Festival 2009, Worthy Farm, June 24-28 (www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk)
