E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

This wouldn't be an Eyewear blog without a review of a Simple Minds album. In rear-view, none of the recent, critically lauded comeback LPs have been truly as great as that run from the 1980s - but usually as pompous, majestic, grandiose, religious, and shimmering. My love for this band is in their sure-fire surges of greatness cranked up to 11, and utter refusal of irony - they are the sincerest, and most engaged of bands - emotive, political, passionate - lacking nothing in the way of conviction. In terms of launching into the crowd with dedication to songcraft, pulse of inspiration, and faith in a better future - this is maximum uplift. Now, 40 years after 1982's New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84 - the greatest new romantic/ new wave LP of the 1980s, tied with one by Echo & The Bunnymen maybe; and arguably one of the most romantic and religious works of Scottish poetry and music ever composed, their latest is back - more bombastic than ever. In terms of grandeur, and rock dr...

Imploding The Mirage , as critics and reviewers will quickly inform you, is a title that refers to the famous Las Vegas casino's demolition, which made way for something arguably even snazzier, or more empty. Born in Vegas, that most artificial and symbolic of American places (famous for gambling, glitz, misadventure, criminal origins, and mass murders), The Killers - named after a Hemingway-based film noir, but following in the footsteps of numerous rock acts that have signalled their outlaw claims with similar names ( Jerry Lee Lewis was called The Killer) - are a very American rock band. That their lead singer, Brandon Flowers , is famously a Mormon and allegedly a straight arrow, albeit flamboyant on stage, only adds to the resonant enigma - they are part of the myth of the American Dream, while in classic post-modern mode, nod to the artifice, albeit a non-nihilistic one with a God. Their inoffensive, hummable songs, mainly about broken hearts, yearning, broken lives, and ho...

THEY LISTEN TO MUSIC Eyewear likes to make lists of pop songs that can be found on Spotify, and share the news with you, our dear readers, every so often. Here is our brief summary of the 12 best songs of the year so far, as we move into the start of summer. I was sad to leave off Drake, Goat Girl, La Luz, Simple Minds, Ezra Furman, St Vincent, Iggy Pop, US Girls, Beach House, etc - all top candidates with great new songs - but this was the winnowed, ultimate list. And as always, this is a personal selection, but I think you will find a fair balance of American and UK tracks, with gender balance maintained, and most contemporary genres included. There is a clear frontrunner, and it is the most significant video/single so far of the year - 1. Childish Gambino - 'This Is America' Impossible to forget the images of the dancing, prancing, weirdly killing figure in the video, which seems to represent the mercurial intemperate low-attention span of American culture - his ...

Taste is a matter of opinion - or so goes one opinion. Aesthetics, a branch of pistols at dawn, is unlikely to become unruffled and resolved any time soon, and meantime it is possible to argue, in this post-post-modern age, an age of voter rage, that political opinion trumps taste anyway. We like what we say is art. And what we say is art is what likes us. Simple Minds - the Scottish band founded around 1977 with the pale faces and beautiful cheekbones, and perfect indie hair cuts - comes from a time before that - from a Glasgow of poverty and working-class socialism, and religiosity, in a pre-Internet time when the heights of modernity were signalled by Kraftwerk , large synthesisers, and dancing like Bowie at 3 am in a Berlin club. To say that early Simple Minds was mannered is like accusing Joyce of being experimental. Doh . The band sought to merge the icy innovations of German music with British and American pioneers of glam and proto-punk, like Iggy Pop ; their heroes were ...

Aim High, more often Year-end Best of lists are invidious, and, also, these days, ubiquitous, to the point of madness. But we have loved them for years... so... In the spirit of austerity and limiting resource-expenditure, Eyewear, the blog , this year will focus on the TOP ONE of various categories. Note we cannot claim to have seen or read everything, including The Post , or Lady Bird , which may end up winning the Oscar in 2018. So here goes. (we have not included our Eyewear books; nor have we included books of poetry, that may follow in 2018) BEST NOVEL 2017 1. The Transition - novel by Luke Kennard Oddly overlooked by some, this brilliant mock-dystopian millennial epic was both brilliantly funny, and insightful, and the debut of one of the UK's best-known younger poets. A great British comic novel, easily comparable in laughs per page to Lucky Jim . BEST FILM 2017 1. Good Time  If this was a longer list, we'd have room for Bladerunner 2049 , The L...

SHE WAS A SPY, NOW SHE LOVES TO LISTEN TO POP Eyewear, the blog  loves to share news of great popular songs (tracks) so you can hear our playlist. We are on Spotify endlessly as we edit. We favour indie guitar bands, 80 revivalists, synth-pop, dream pop, and George Michael , as well as Ska and The Smiths . We are publishing Sarah Walk , whose work is super - but we won't list her here, as that might be considered cheating... check her out. No National, lcd soundsystem or Fleet Foxes here, or The War on Drugs , sorry.... they would all make a best of year's end Top 100, and may well do.... Here are 25 recent tracks that over the summer and last few weeks have wormed their way deep into our psyches. 1. 'Persistence' - Albin Lee Meldau Hardly a household name, he should be. This is the sort of passionate throwback to CCR guitar rock too many hipsters have aimed for of late. He achieves something classic, catchy, and oddly poignant here. 2. 'Royal Highness...

THIS POET LOVES GOOD MUSIC 2016 has been more bad news than beach.... But in the midst of the worst times, popular culture, at least these past 100 years or so, in league with profit-oriented impulses, has managed to precision tool craft, emotion, structure, style, skill and pathos into a heady mix of song, dance, film, that has often seemed to surpass the moment, and ease some of the pangs and traumas.  No one in WW2, for instance, would begrudge the singers who gave the homes, bomb shelters and troop tents some measure of gladness in the dark. War is good for the entertainment business, as is economic struggle, and trouble in general.  The darker it gets, the better the songs. As if in keeping with that general idea, 2016 appears to be a masterclass in top flight popular music. Here are the 8 tracks - some top 40, others decidedly indie - that most got us dancing, toe tapping, or swooning, on the sunny sad and sifting days of this most challenging of recent...

SHE VOTED BREXIT, NOW SHE REGRETS IT... Eyewear, the blog , loves to recommend new songs for you, our loyal and scattered readers, residing in various places across this wondrous globe. Erm, anyway, it has been a shit few weeks (again) in terms of the Year 2016 - a crap rubbish low year, which is killing more beloved celebrity musicians, film-makers, writers, boxers, actors, etc, than ever before. Someone should call time on 2016 - can we vote again for 2015? Anyway, the musical year is top notch - I cannot recall when more major artists brought out new material in such proximity - and it keeps coming ( Radiohead , Tegan and Sara , The Red Hot Chili Peppers , Drake , Rihanna , etc). Perversely, as always, these are not on the list below, which is actually simply songs that currently form what we in our office would call Earworm Brexitania . These are songs we turn to, in this awful dire chaos of the sun, and listen to a lot, because they are cool, and we like them. T...

AMERICAN RAWK GAWD The American New Wave moment had some weird and off-genre (power po, and indie-rock) bands in it - all great in their own ways - think Devo, The Cars, The B-52s, Talking Heads, Blondie, Cheap Trick , The Ramones , and even ZZ Top - curated by an eclectic and hungry MTV that could make Huey Lewis appear avant-garde at first. Meanwhile, try and name a truly great American rock band to rival AC/DC, The Who, Led Zep, The Beatles, The Stones, T-Rex, ELO,  - The Doors? Foreigner? The Stooges? The Eagles? Fleetwood Mac? Tom Petty's lads? The Beach Boys? Guns 'N Roses? Aerosmith? Glass Tiger? Rush? (the last two Canadian) - The Band (last three). The Doors, and The Beach Boys, and Stooges, for sure, but hardly in the same league, really, as The Beatles or The Stones.  Which is where Cheap Trick come in. Improbably, these late 70s power pop oddballs (most famous for 'Dream Police' and 'The Flame' - quintessential high-school dance fixtur...

MUSIC MAKES THE WHEELS TURN 2016 has already been noted as a bit of a Shit Show, in terms of the many beloved musical geniuses who have upped and died. In that way, the year has posted a glum moratorium on joyful appreciation of its bounty. However, every wicked year yields great art and entertainment - the depths of WWII giving us Citizen Kane and Casablanca , for instance, as well as The Four Quartets . It is not obscene to note beauty, skill and accomplishment even amidst the rubble and collapse; it may even be important to do so - to dance during the Blitz. The human spirit needs its creative outlets to seek humanity in the inhumanity and the loss, which is legion. Looked at this way, 2016 is a great year, for music, so far.  In an astonishing array, the year's releases so far include career bests from PJ Harvey, David Bowie, Kanye West , and noteworthy new songs from Turin Brakes, DIIV, The Pet Shop Boys, Weezer, Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, Primal Scream, Suede, Kylie, The C...

M. Ward is a Portland-based singer-songwriter - a description that will either worry you, or not. Eyewear, the blog  thinks he may have just under-the-radar delivered one of the best albums of 2016, already. Ward is known to his fans, and has been making albums like this, more or less, for 15 years; this time, he is accompanied, as all reviews elsewhere also note, with subtle support from Neko Case, Peter Buck and k.d lang - and indeed the overall effect is a bit like a languorous twangy lang album, or the quietest R.E.M. LP ever. With effortless charm and aplomb, More Rain manages to capture precisely what made albums by Lloyd Cole & The Commotions , The Blue Nile, and more recently Boy & Bear  so impactful - the holy trinity of superb vocals with a hint of doo-wop, expertly deployed Americana melodies just shy of early Smiths (with some country echo-chamber), and whip-smart lyrics easily the equal of prime  Elvis Costello . With simple but effective...

SHE LISTENS TO SPOTIFY A LOT It's so typical of me to talk about myself.. Adele 's great song 'Hello' sums up the Selfie age, perfectly, and also Eyewear's BLOG, which has always been of the digital age - self-important, fluid, ephemeral, fashion-aware, ubiquitous, curious, seeking, innovating, changeable, and deeply trivial.   Tis the season, again, of lists and we love them here but know them to be of course profoundly personal - and so what? Here are the fifteen tracks we played most this year at Eyewear HQ, and loved the most - though a few nearly got through, including songs by Madonna and Lana del Rey .... indeed, you know the year is rich beyond belief when we cannot even fit in critical darlings Julia Holter, Diiv, David Bowie , Ezra Furman, Everything Everything , Petite Meller, Peaches, Sleaford Mods, Grimes , Mark Ronson , Sia , Beck, Bob Dylan , Taylor Swift , or Deerhunter , to name just a few.   15 for 2015, get it?  Silly but it helps ...

Readers of Eyewear, the blog , know we love to recommend new tracks, as we find them on Spotify. It's been a good year for pop, rock and indie music, with The Darkness back, and  Brandon Flowers , and Carly Rae Jepsen and even Chic and  Moroder , but here are the ten key songs of the moment we find essential for summer listening. Put another way, these are the ten best songs of the year, so far, judged solely in terms of the love swoon factor: 1. 'SPRINTER' - TORRES - Torres is a young woman now based in Brooklyn whose second album this title track hails from.  With assistance from persons associated with PJ Harvey , the sound is avant-indie, with intense lyrics, and emotive vocals. I love the lyrics, which explore a young Baptist girl's relationship with her pastor, a good man brought low by pornography - "there's freedom to, and freedom from" - it has several transcendent moments (in the classic soft/loud mode) and a soaring sense of theolo...