Just What We Needed

The great and good of the music business and the music press had gathered to crown Queen Amy and to show solidarity in her times of need. Unfortunately the judges had decided that this years winner of the Mercury Prize would go to the Klaxons for Myths of The Near Future.

My own personal choice was Bat For Lashes album Fur and Gold, I would have voted for this because I think Natasha Khan is an artist with originality pouring from every, well pore, in the same way that Kate Bush, Bjork, Cat Power and, some twenty five years ago, Elizabeth Fraser did.

Anyway back to the winner. Klaxons have been called Nu-Rave by the media, the band actually used the phrase themselves in an interview when they were asked that most tedious of questions, "describe your music." The NME however displaying their usual lack of ambition, originality, call it what you will, took the offhand remark at face value and a new musical genre was spawned, one that now includes Shitdisco and New Young Pony Club. So how would I describe the music of Klaxons, well if I could only use one word it would be - vibrant. When I put this album on in the car it makes me smile, there are some cracking tunes on it, and not just the four hit singles that have been taking from it. You can hear Leftfield, Fatboy Slim, The Beat, Underworld, Chemical Brothers and The Jam in there if you want, but the thing that puts this album above a lot of others is its lyrics.

Gravity's Rainbow opens with:

Come on with me through ruined LiPGLOCK

Across Tangian deserts we'll FLOck

MADcap Medusa Flank my Foghorn

We'll change four seasons with our first born.

Gravity's Rainbow was the Thomas Pynchon novel that in 1973 was in the running for the Pulitzer prize for fiction but 11 of the 14 jury said that the book was 'unreadable, turgid, overwritten and obscene.' Well literature prizes loss is music prizes gain.