I am now 44. I had hoped to stay cool until April 8, 2011, when I turn 45. However, I have been spotifying of late, catching up with all the latest bands and new tracks or songs or whatever they are now. Downloads is so vulgar. Anyhoo. Sleigh Bells is a new band with an album called Treats. And it is really loud, glaring, and sort of like 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' for thirty-minutes without the super-smart lyrics, with punk girls and fuzz and funk. That is it feels blow-your-head open new and on a different level of noise and generation. I think this may be the first album that I recognise as genuinely excellent, subversive and fun that my ears will have to adjust to. I am no longer able to just jump right into the music's head, to be Larkin about it. But I am sidling up to this. I want to wear bells.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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