Poisoned Chalice

For anyone still concerned about the Mercury Music Prize the nominations have been announced and can be found on the official site. A pretty uninspiring list by any standards, the Best British Album during an era when the best music is coming predominantly from Scandinavia and North America seems like eternal damnation by faint praise to these ears.

No strong feelings on the outcome, either, but depending on the odds, Speech Debelle or The Horrors might give you a decent run for your money.

Legal disclaimer: Gamble Aware: Don't gamble unless you know the facts. Being responsible about gambling means knowing whether to gamble and how much money or time to spend.

If It's Tuesday There Must Be A Gratuitous Belgian Link At The End Of The Dump

We meant to go to see LaRoux and The Electrilickers at The Rainbow back in February but it was snowing and we're fairweather fans so point you instead to a review by the hardier and more local Baron.

In other news, we really like the album Embrace by Sleepy Sun, trippy but undeniably powerful stuff, and they'll be playing ATP on May 8.

Elsewhere, Twenty Major takes on the banks with his usual foul-mouthed flair.

Still with time to spare? Try to unravel the in-jokes over at Power To The People! and Awesome Pals. Co-conspirators at the latter site, Los Campesinos!, also have their very own blog where they ask the very reasonable question 'so what do you want to know?'

For fans of Bob Dylan there's an mp3 of the cheerfully-entitled 'Beyond Here Lies Nothin' from his forthcoming album available for free download from the official site. Bob's voice is more cracked than ever but the choon chugs along rather nicely and successfully whets the appetite for the full record.

And finally, we know it's getting harder for music promoters to tempt punters to part with their hard-earned but the organisers of the recent Kraak Music Festival in Belgium appear to have taken a possibly literal and certainly NOT-SAFE-FOR-WORK approach with their invitational poster...

I Am Curious, Yelle

We know little about Yelle other than that they're French and Ce Jeu is the third single taken off their album 'Pop-Up'. You can sit there berating us for our lack of research or just take in the colourful fun of their video, which apparently contains a brief nipslip at 2:09 so might not be safe for work if your boss has 20:20 vision. We described this elsewhere as 'a generous slice of Eurovision cheese sizzling on a beefy electropop patty' but this was possibly just us getting carried away with ourselves...



Yelle, then: officially a scream.

Psssst!

Could Bret Easton Ellis' least noted book provide the source material to the best screen adaptation of his work? Take a sneak peak at the trailer for The Informers below, which contains enough sex, drugs and rock'n'roll to make it NOT SAFE FOR WORK viewing.

Manic Mondo

Because the internet would just be boryn without a bit of Robyn, we start off this Monday mini-mitherpiece with some self-styled self-regarding nonsense from the suddenly big and bossy Ms Wilder. Titbits include revelations about wandering through London with her blouse undone to the waist, but it's not just blogging ninja divas who suffer from wardrobe malfunctions, as Rihanna shows in this set of dubious-safety-for-work photos, proving that not even an umbrella (ella, ella, ella) could hide your blushes when it's that nippy out.

Raising our eyes from the gutters to the stars somewhat, Warren Ellis gives a sceptical glance back at speccy sci-fi boffin Joe 90 (via LMG) and Carl Hiassen's Lucky You is being adapted for the British stage. Elsewhere, various bods recall this year's Indietracks; On Dancefloors is a Bristol music blog with a funky attitude; In Pictures: Kate Bush is 50 and, remember Cardiff pop kids, Tell The Police The Truth.

Bloggers don't so much fade away as they do diversify, a case in point being Creepy Lesbo's Slash Media (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) in which she samples some of modern pop culture's gashtronomic delights. Skin Flicks is much more safe for work, although as he considers himself to be a very angry man and is found pleading for fallen women to be shown to him, maybe due caution should be shown after all.

Meanwhile, the undisputed star of Bristol's Dot-to-Dot, the inimitable Big Jeff, has MySpace.

And wherever else your browser points you, remember, Jesus Can See!

Grace Bothers

Savage Grace, Electric Cinema, Birmingham, Saturday July 26 2008, 4.30pm.

CAUTION: CONTAINS MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS.

This is your intrepid inquisitor's first visit to the Electric Cinema since it was re-opened to much blogging hullabuloo a few years back. It's now touted as the oldest operating cinema in the UK, and it is a grand building, although your long-in-the-tooth loafer remembers it rather differently in its' Tivoli guise in the 80s, when it was considered something of a sleazepit where we made furtive forays to see B-movies like James B Harris' Cop and Craig R Baxley's criminally-under-rated Action Jackson. Visiting the cinema now feels a much more welcoming, middle-brow experience, with plush sofas; pretty, friendly box-office staff and a silver spoon to go with your white chocolate and raspberry ice-cream.

Tom Kalin's Savage Grace is the cinematic fare this afternoon, a film that is apparently attempting to re-construct the events leading up to the savage murder of a socialite by her troubled young son in 1972 London. The film is pretty to look at and mostly watchable, contains some strong performances (notably Moore as the doomed diva) but has too many serious flaws to be considered a success. Any film of such relatively short length is going to suffer from the episodic structure imposed on it here, leaving the viewer to struggle to get their teeth into the filletted fare on offer, and as a psychological study it's a non-starter as we're left none the wiser at the end of the film why the son takes the knife to his mother then calmly orders a Chinese.

Wikipedia's references to the real-life case would suggest that the film has played fast-and-loose with many of the facts of the case, something that would have made more sense if it had made the story more interesting not less. As it is, Kalin has made a film that brings to mind past movies like Mommie Dearest; Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?; The Sheltering Sky and Ma Mere, but only serves to highlight their relative superiority to the shallow showboating on offer here. Although any film that reacquaints us with elfin curveball Elena Anaya from Sex and Lucia ain't all bad so gracias for that.

Related link: Moore happy to embarrass kids.

Half Term Report

The Parallax View pick of the best albums released in the UK for the first time between January 1 and June 30 of the year 2008. To clarify, Yeasayer's mighty 'All Hour Cymbals', which would have been a shoo-in for the Top 10, has not been included because it was released in November 2007, even though it didn't receive wider exposure until it's re-release in Spring. Similarly, new releases in July by the likes of The Hold Steady, Leila and Tricky will have to wait until December's year-end list (we're sure they're all cool about this in their own distinctive ways).

We can't pretend to have heard every single qualifying release, but of those we did, these were the best -

1. VELOCIFERO - LADYTRON
2. Santogold - Santogold
3. Stainless Style - Neon Neon
4. Youth Novels - Lykke Li
5. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
6. Alas I Cannot Swim - Laura Marling
7. Hold On Now, Youngster - Los Campesinos!
8. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp
9. Neptune - The Duke Spirit
10. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver
11. "Couples" - The Long Blondes
12. El Rey - The Wedding Present
13. Nouns - No Age
14. Waited Up 'Til Light - Johnny Foreigner
15. Falling Off The Lavender Bridge - Lightspeed Champion
16. Reality Check - The Teenagers
17. Box Of Secrets - Blood Red Shoes
18. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
19. X Marks Destination - The Whip
20. We Started Nothing - The Ting Tings

The usual disclaimers apply. Bad luck to some decent albums by the likes of MGMT, The Mae Shi and Isobel Campbell/Mark Lanegan for just missing the cut. Please use the comments box for feedback, vitriol, kudos, whatever.

Gruff Justice

Off out shortly to Brum for the rest of the day, but in the meantime let your eyes have a lunchtime feast over The Mercury Music Prize nominations, which contain few alarms or surprises, and include a couple of top contenders for album of the year to date in our upcoming Half Term Report (due by the weekend) in Neon Neon and Laura Marling. Radiohead and Burial are also worthy choices from 2007 for the MMP, with Burial and Laura Marling probably the best value bets, as genre contenders with broader appeal usually do well in these kind of competitions. A second successive win for a dance-orientated record may be risky, so my money's on Ms Marling for the folkin' good album 'Alas I Cannot Swim'.*

*Remember, pop punters, always gamble responsibly, and with money you can afford to lose.

Peter, Bjorn And Gone

We begin with some sombre news that left us feeling flatter than Beirut as Victoria Bergsman has left The Concretes to concentrate on a solo career. We know that The Concretes are a solid unit containing multiple songwriters and vocalists, but Bergsman has a unique delivery and dry stage banter that will be difficult for the Swedes to replace. It does though kinda explain Bergsman's recent diversification - as well as singing on Peter Bjorn and John's recent PV Single Of The Week 'Young Folks', she's credited with providing Camera Obscura with haircuts on their latest long-player 'Let's Get Out Of This Country'...

Simon Sweeping The Nation went to the Truck Festival at the weekend but all we've got to show for it so far is this blurry but still fantastic photo of Dead Kenny's summer crush Emmy The Great in a seriously short skirt. It has to be said we'd have had difficulty finding our focus in the circumstances, too.

In theatre news, a new Terry Johnson play is always something of an event (eg. Insignificance; Hitchcock Blonde) so book early for a limited four-week run of Piano/Forte at the Royal Court Theatre. Sopranos star Alicia Witt and Kelly (Mrs Henderson Presents) Reilly head the cast.

This year's Big Brother we can take or leave, but what is certain is that contestant Imogen Thomas's ex-squeeze is a dastardly dick for releasing a home sex video purporting to feature the purrty Welsh miss in a rarebit of graphic action. But we admit we still looked at the NOT SAFE FOR WORK evidence (purely to identify the culprit concerned, 'course). Time and motion students can download the EXTREMELY UN-WORKSAFE full video from here.

Random Reading-bashing always provides an amusing diversion.

'Night, Warden.