‘There is comfort in pop fandom – I’m reassured by a new Fall release. Michael Bublé fans can say the same of him’ Like a lot of people, I was thoroughly seduced by the first Fleet Foxes album, to the extent that my initial thought on hearing their new one was: hold on, do I actually need this? They smelt, from the start, like a band that did a particular thing very well. Did that mean they should do it again? Subsequent plays of Helplessness Blues have left me little the wiser. Fleet Foxes are very kind indeed on the ear, so it’s easy to lose yourself in their heartbreaking wistfulness – but it was the first time around, too, and a second dose of this immediately soothing folk-pop feels a little like sucking both thumbs at once. Perhaps they’ll be one of those bands that simply sticks with the style they’ve got and wrings maximum effect out of it. A couple of weeks ago I asked friends on Twitter to name the acts who had gained the most critical acclaim with the least stylistic variety. I got a range of convincing responses, from the Ramones to the White Stripes, which pointed to two ways to keep critics onside without changing your sound too much. One – the most common – is to go the AC/DC route, and spin your consistency as a brand of no-bullshit efficiency or truth-telling. The other is to be so idiosyncratic that you own your own patch of pop from the start, like Stereolab. What was interesting, though, were the answers that got me all defensive. Take the Fall, for example. Once you’ve been initiated, it’s very easy to see the group shift between post-punk, rockabilly, and art rock: play Totally Wired then Free Range and the differences are obvious. Except they’re also not – to the non-fan, the primary texture of the Fall is absolutely changeless. The band is forever a scary man mumbling nonsense over a savage clatter: next to that, the precise nature of said clatter is irrelevant. We like to think that the fan’s perspective is more valid, and it’s certainly more rewarding and interesting to hear from people who’ve dug into a band enough to track its progression. But it’s also the case that the idea of artistic progression flatters the listener: there is a strong element of comfort in pop fandom, not necessarily tied to any smoothness in the sound. Once I’d been buying Fall records for a while I realised I felt reassured – cosy, even – when each new one appeared, and I’d imagine a Michael Bublé fan would say much the same about him. These powerful feelings are obscured when we focus on the differences between records. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with comfort, but it helps if we’re honest about it and don’t dress up habit as discernment. “Same as last time, only better,” is a powerfully attractive proposition: just ask Adele. It’s also a potential trap. When the BBC opened its repeat season of Top of the Pops with a 1960s clip show, a familiar highlight was Status Quo doing Pictures of Matchstick Men. But for all the song’s charm, the main intrigue is trying to spot hints of the band’s future as the ultimate icons of rock consistency. You can hardly imagine these likable hippie chancers evolving, like some terrifying Pokémon of pop, into the Quo’s perpetual boogie machine. But there were flashing glances from Francis Rossi to Rick Parfitt that seemed to say: “Hey, Rick, let’s ditch this psychedelic malarkey and just chug.” Fleet Foxes are as un-Quo a band as you could find, though I already get the sense that if they wanted to make the same record forever, they’d find an uncomplaining fanbase. But Helplessness Blues reminds me more of Portishead’s second album. Both records worked to consolidate a debut that hit big out of nowhere. Both managed to completely satisfy expectations and still leave a niggle of disappointment. Portishead, back then, looked as if they might make a career out of consistency. Instead they vanished for a decade, tore the guts out of their sound, and returned
Continue reading …In Hackleburg, Ala., everybody knows everybody. But the small town of 1,576 was so devastated by last Wednesday’s tornadoes it’s having trouble accounting for everyone, the New York Times reports. “One of our friends we thought was dead, we saw at a truck stop,” says one resident. “He thought…
Continue reading …Introduce him to some playful erotic bondage, advises Pamela Stephenson Connolly I’m a 29-year-old girl who has always been turned on by submissive fantasies – such as being raped, tortured, tied up etc. I know these are common female fantasies, but my problem is I can’t have an orgasm during normal sex. I can’t even get turned on unless I think about submissive situations. My partner wouldn’t understand if I told him what I really crave. Sometimes I think I should just give up on normal relationships and find a partner who’ll be my “master” as opposed to a kind, loving, normal guy who I can enjoy all other aspects of my life with. It’s interesting that you think your current situation is the opposite to what you crave, because this “normal” relationship actually has all the trappings of power-exchange sex. You withhold pleasure from yourself because you don’t allow your partner to understand who you really are sexually, and he – through ignorance – is unwittingly performing a dominant role. People are more multi-faceted than you think, and he may surprise you. Your desires are not unusual. Stop allowing your guilt to maintain this unconscious acting-out of your sadomasochistic desires. Find a gentle, palatable way to gradually introduce him to some playful erotic bondage, domination, or role-playing in a safe, sane and consensual manner. If you tandem “vanilla” fantasies with the submissive ones you will eventually develop more variety, but give yourself permission to accept your sexual style. • Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders. • Send your problem to private.lives@guardian.co.uk Sex Relationships Pamela Stephenson Connolly guardian.co.uk
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Corn Exchange, Cambridge Dividing 19 years of marriage by $20m alimony, John Cleese’s former wife made $3,650 each day she spent as Mrs C. The divorce has driven Cleese to undertake his first ever UK standup tour. Alyce Faye Eichelberger (for it was she) gets it in the neck for a tart 10 minutes, before spiky cedes to cosy and our host settles into rose-tinted reminiscence of his TV heyday. It’s more This Is Your Life than standup, but Cleese proves a better tour guide than he was a hotelier, leading us along the promenade of wartime Weston-super-Mare and up to the giddy heights of 1960s and 70s entertainment. The funnies here are more likely to be found on grainy old film footage, of Cleese and Marty Feldman on their 1960s sketch show, say, than live onstage. Cleese traces his ascent from stifling lower middle-class, where the apex of ambition was avoidance of embarrassment, to Broadway, where he ended up part of a hit Footlights revue. We see slides of him, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor onstage, screen-grabs of a scene he performed with Peter Sellers, and clips of the Frost Report, Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, with well-oiled anecdotes attached. Ex-wife-bashing aside, there’s no hint of the black humour Cleese claims as his trademark. His drily funny commentary can’t hide a serious-mindedness, and he encourages, rather than undercuts, the reverence in which his once-anarchic comedies are now held. But stateliness is redeemed by Cleese’s affection for his co-stars of yesteryear, and his gratitude that opportunity came his way. It’s a nostalgic evening rather than an especially comical one. While Cleese may be now relatively short on dollars, in showbiz memories he’s still a rich man. Rating: 3/5 Comedy Brian Logan guardian.co.uk
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Testimony of 12 survivors released by spy agency as US ordered to cut military presence in Pakistan to a minimum Battered by American accusations of duplicity and collusion with Osama bin Laden, and withering criticism at home, Pakistan’s army is striking back with the main tool at its disposal: the word of his surviving relatives. The military’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, or ISI, is releasing a steady drip of testimony from the 12 survivors of the US raid on Bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad. It includes the account of bin Laden’s 12-year-old daughter, who said she saw her father shot, and information about his 29-year-old Yemeni wife, who is being treated at a military hospital in Rawalpindi. Analysts said the army was seeking to deflect attention from angry questions about how the world’s most famous fugitive could hide less than a mile from Pakistan’s top military academy. “A damage limitation exercise is going on,” said Cyril Almeida, columnist with Dawn newspaper in Islamabad. “The army is scrambling to come out with a coherent response to questions that don’t have easy answers.” In its first statement since the raid, the army ordered the US to reduce its military presence in Pakistan to a “minimum level”. It was a symbolic move, given there are only 275 US soldiers in Pakistan, but one that sought to stem intense public anger over Sunday’s unilateral American commando raid. Some Pakistani officials would prefer if the world focused on the violence of the raid. Photos that emerged on Wednesday showed the bodies of three men lying in pools of blood, one being the “courier” whose calls led the US to believe Bin Laden was in the compound. Reuters, which published the photos, said they had been bought from a “Pakistani security official” who wished to remain anonymous. The testimony of Bin Laden’s family members, made public through the ISI, has helped focus attention on the circumstances of his death, a narrative in difficulty after the White House was forced to correct significant details, such as the initial claim that bin Laden used his wife as a human shield. It later emerged that Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, a Yemeni aged 29, remains alive and is being treated for a gunshot wound at a medical facility in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, close to Pakistan’s military headquarters. A photograph of her passport was given to or obtained by the Pakistani press, and has been widely republished. Pakistan’s 500,000-strong army, which prides itself on its nuclear arsenal, has rarely had to endure such a barrage of accusations. In recent days White House officials, the CIA chief, and a host of senior US politicians have either insinuated or bluntly alleged that the ISI is playing a “double game” that may have included support for Bin Laden. David Cameron joined the chorus of discord, saying Bin Laden’s death left “lots of questions” to be answered. The criticism is not just from the west. In Jakarta, officials say that an Indonesian terror suspect arrested this year in Abbottabad was intending to meet Bin Laden, raising questions over how isolated he was in his final months. In Afghanistan, a former intelligence chief told the Guardian that four years ago Pakistan ignored a tip-off that Bin Laden was hiding near Abbottabad. Amrullah Saleh, former head of the National Directorate of Security, which has a long-standing rivalry with the ISI, said that he had believed in 2007 that Bin Laden was hiding in Mansehra,very near Abbottabad, in one of two al-Qaida safe houses. When he put this to Pakistan’s then president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, he grew furious and smashed his fist on the table, said Saleh. “Am I the president of the Republic of Banana?” said Musharraf, Saleh recalled, leading an alarmed President Hamid Karzai, also at the meeting, to intervene. Saleh, a fierce critic of Pakistan who has now entered Afghan politics, said he had no doubts that Mullah Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban, is hiding in an ISI safe house in Karachi: “He is protected by ISI. General Pasha [Lieutenant-General Shuja Pasha, the ISI director general] knows, as I am talking to you, where Omar is, and he keeps daily briefs from his officers on the location of senior Taliban leaders.” But the Pakistan army’s greatest worry is at home, where it faces unprecedented criticism. The Bin Laden operation has triggered a barrage of questions about whether the military knew of the assault, and, if not, how US helicopters managed to enter from Afghanistan without permission, carry out a violent 40-minute raid in a town teeming with soldiers, and fly out unhindered with the body of the world’s most famous fugitive. Pakistani newspapers have carried sharp editorials against the army, while even pro-army TV personalities (hugely influential in Pakistani politics) have made extraordinary attacks on the generals. “Never before has there been such sustained and fierce criticism of the army,” said Almeida. “You would have to rewind to 1971 [when east Pakistan violently seceded to become Bangladesh] to find this kind of national outrage and discontent.” “People are saying: ‘We spend hundreds of billions of rupees on you guys every year, and what do you have to show for it?’ It strikes at the heart of what this military feels that it exists for.” The accusations could cost Pakistan dear. Enraged by the idea that the military sheltered Bin Laden, some US politicians have called for the US government to slash the annual $3bn aid package, mostly to the military. Pakistan’s Washington lobbyists, under orders from President Asif Ali Zardari have begun a public relations offensive on Capitol Hill to counter the American allegations. But despite the invective, American officials have offered no hard evidence Pakistan was colluding with Bin Laden. Pakistani officials point to their role in arresting several senior al-Qaida figures, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, over the past decade. Pakistan Osama bin Laden United States US foreign policy US politics Taliban Declan Walsh Jon Boone guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Eric Cantor moved quickly last night to dispel reports that he was aiming for a bipartisan budget compromise. With talks with the Democrats and the White House beginning today, the Washington Post had posted a story headlined “Medicare Dropped From GOP Budget Proposal,” in which Cantor was quoted as saying…
Continue reading …President Obama is making his first visit to Ground Zero as president, a trip the White House views as “closure” in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, reports the Daily News . He first visited a city firehouse, meeting inside with firefighters and eating lunch with them. “When we say…
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Al-Qaida ‘loyal’ main suspect in the bombing of cafe popular with foreign tourists, police say Three people have been arrested in connection with the bombing of a busy tourist cafe in Marrakech, Morrocan officials said. The three suspects in the bombing of the Argana cafe in the popular Jamaa el-Fnaa square last week were all Moroccans, the country’s official news agency reported. Police said the main suspect in the blast, the country’s deadliest for eight years, was “loyal” to al-Qaida. Jamaa el-Fnaa , next to the city’s historic market area, draws crowds of tourists with its snake charmers, fire-eaters and tooth pullers. Most of those killed when a remote-controlled nail bomb was detonated at lunchtime on 28 April were foreign nationals – including one Briton, French, Dutch and Canadian tourists – and at least 23 others were injured by the explosion. The British victim was Peter Moss, a 59-year-old travel writer, broadcaster and comedian who lived in West Hampstead, London.A video released before the attack by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility. Counter-terrorism experts believe the group was one of several likely candidates. Moroccan authorities said the bomb had been packed with nails and set off remotely and not by a suicide bomber. Counter-terrorism experts from several countries, including Spain, have been sifting through the wreckage of the cafe. They said the man disguised himself as a foreign visitor to plant the explosives, devices that could be detonated remotely, authorities said. He had learned to make the devices on the internet, the statement said. It added that investigators found some explosive materials and tools that were discarded after the explosion. “He made many attempts to go to such hot spots as Chechnya and Iraq before deciding to make this attack on Moroccan soil,” the statement from Moroccan officials said. It did not provide any details about the other two suspects or about where the arrests had taken place The attack is the deadliest in Morocco since 12 suicide bombers killed 33 people in co-ordinated strikes in Casablanca in 2003. The latest attack was a blow to Morocco’s most important tourist city. Tourism is Morocco’s biggest source of foreign currency and the second biggest employer after agriculture. The attack adds to the challenges facing Morocco’s ruler, King Mohammed VI, as he tries to prevent the uprisings in the Arab world from reaching his normally stable kingdom. The monarch has promised to reform the constitution to placate pro-democracy protesters. He recently pardoned political prisoners, including some alleged militant Islamists. Morocco Global terrorism al-Qaida David Batty guardian.co.uk
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The makers of Grand Theft Auto are set to revolutionise gaming by exploring the noir crime genre. Here the aim is to interrogate criminals – not kill them Two police detectives burst into a filthy apartment. A
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Lib Dem grandee and close Nick Clegg ally calls PM ‘grave disappointment’ and says no campaign has told ‘regiment of lies’ Lord Ashdown, one of Nick Clegg’s closest allies, accused David Cameron of a breach of faith, describing his refusal to dissociate himself from a “regiment of lies” poured out by the no-to-AV campaign as setting him apart from every British prime minister of the postwar period. The former Liberal Democrat leader also predicted that Cameron’s behaviour would have long-term consequences for the coalition, including the terms on which it eventually ends. He told the Guardian: “So far the coalition has been lubricrated by a large element of goodwill and trust. It is not any longer. The consequence is that when it comes to the bonhomie of the Downing Street rose garden, that has gone. It will never again be glad confident morning.” The ferocity of his attack, made after consultations within the party, follows what looks like certain defeat in the referendum on the alternative vote due to be announced on Friday. The party also faces severe losses in the English council elections as results emerge. Senior figures in the yes campaign were predicting a 60%-to-40% defeat on a desultory turnout, with one admitting: “We were providing a solution to a problem the British public did not recognise.” Another said: “Once David Cameron moved in the way he did, the polls moved. It was unstoppable.” Ashdown is furious with the no campaign for personalised attacks on Clegg that accused him of broken promises on tuition fees and spending cuts, and arguments that AV was a “Lib Dem fix”. Ashdown, who led the party for 11 years until 1999, said: “The bottom line is that Liberal Democrats are exceedingly angry. We believe there has been a breach of faith here. If the Conservative party funds to the level of 99% a campaign whose central theme is to denigrate and destroy our leader, there are consequences for that. “What that means is that this is a relationship that is much less about congeniality, it becomes a business relationship, a transactional relationship, and maybe it will be all the better for that.” He went on: “David Cameron is the prime minister. He sets the tone of politics in this country. It is an unhappy fact that when he was asked to dissociate himself from a campaign that was run on the basis of personalisation and personal attacks, and messages that were far more than some subtle bending of the truth, he refused to do that. “I have to say that he did not dissociate himself from a campaign whose nature I believe every previous British prime minister in my time would have disassociated himself from. That is a grave disappointment. “This is a triumph for the regiment of lies. We live with pretty strenuous political campaigns in Britain, but these were downright lies.” Ashdown also accused Cameron of panicking after demands from his backbenchers to step up the referendum campaign. “In backtracking, to use no stronger a word than that, on what was a private agreement he had with Nick Clegg about the way this campaign was conducted, I think the prime minister panicked in the face of his rightwingers. I regret that.” Ashdown said it would be right if his party now highlighted its differences within the coalition. He insisted the Lib Dems would not leave the coalition until the end of the five-year parliament, saying: “We have set our hands to this task and now it must be completed so the purpose of the coalition has not altered, but the mood music, the atmosphere of the coalition most assuredly has as a result of what has gone on in the past three weeks. I think we should be much more straightforward where we disagree. That is not a criticism of Clegg. “I have always said when asked I did not think the result of the referendum could affect the coalition, but I did think the way it was fought could.” He seemed to imply that the party’s willingness to enter another coalition with Cameron may be affected. “I am very clear that the nature of this coalition and the way that it ends, the mood between the two parties when it ends and therefore what happens afterwards, may well be affected by this.” But he urged his party to hold its nerve, and to realise that popularity will take a long time to recover. “We are in there for the long haul, I recall how long it took us as a party to recover after 1991. It is not this year, next year or the year therafter. It is about being strong enough when the dividend comes.” He urged his battered colleagues to keep their nerve. “I am someone who has presided over a party represented by an asterisk denoting that there is no perceptible support for the party in the country, so I am used to setbacks and difficult days as this looks as though these will be. “Anyone that went into this coalition believing that there would be a benefit to the party particularly in the short term was living in cloud-cuckoo-land. We knew perfectly there was a price to be paid for this and it was going to be paid in the short term. “The dividend to be delivered in this will come after three or four years when the government has taken the country through an economic crisis.” He indicated that the Lib Dems’ fortunes were now inextricably bound up with the fate of the economy over the next four years. “The central proposition of this parliament stands: ‘Is George Osborne’s economic judgment right?’ I believe it is. The whole of British politics now rests on that single proposition. The fortunes of the coalition, the fortunes of the two parties in the coalition and the fortunes of the Labour party rest on that.” There is no sign that any senior Lib Dem cabinet member yet wants to revisit the deficit reduction plan. Ashdown challenged Cameron to show that he was the reformer he had claimed to be, by pressing ahead with an elected House of Lords. “It is in the Tory manifesto. Is he going to deliver or not? Let’s see the prime minister’s determination.” He also lashed out at Labour’s failure to back reform, saying: “Yet again Labour has proved it cannot be trusted with reform. Labour claims to be a great radical reforming party but whenever it comes to a key issue of reform, we find Labour defending the status quo.” Clegg and Cameron will try to show it is business as usual when they publish a checklist of coalition achievements before next week’s anniversary. There will be a symbolic joint foreword by the two men. There will also be some action on youth unemployment next week. Meanwhile Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, waiting anxiously for news of the scale of the Labour advance in his first nationwide electoral test, will urge the electorate not to be duped by the promise of a coalition mark 2, predicting sham concessions by the Conservatives. AV referendum Alternative vote Paddy Ashdown David Cameron Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Conservatives Labour Electoral reform Liberal-Conservative coalition Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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