Happiness - Hurts - Album Review
According to hmv.com, I pre-ordered my copy of Happiness on the 30th of May. I remember doing it, it was listed as Hurts - TBC. At that time, they had one video on youtube, Wonderful Life. This was followed up by what you probably watched if you were a gullible Muse fan who has Facebook, Better Than Love, with Blood, Tears & Gold preceding that. With each song that was put up on youtube, I became more and more excited. Rarely has a band came out of nowhere with songs as polished and brilliant as these, so I could hardly wait for when the album came out (and when it was actually given a title). Seeing them at T in the Park only whetted my apetite further, their haunting live show giving a taster of what other wonders were to come in September.
My copy of Hapiness only plopped on to my doormat on Saturday, but since then it's never been off. It's signed into the bargain, so when they become huge, i'll be able to boast at having a real collectable in my CD collection (or send it straight to ebay if i've falled on hard times). My first problem with listening to the album was the way I had mentally divided it up in my mind. I already knew four songs, the 3 mentioned before and Illuminated, as they were all on youtube and i'd hardly had them off in the run-up to hearing the album. This does create a bit of a problem as it makes the album feel disjointed as you listen to it, but it's certainly boosted by the fact that the rest of the songs are all on a par with what you'd heard already. Each track, even the duet with Kylie Minogue and the rather depressing closer The Water, is a complete work of art, an emotive masterpiece from one of the up and coming passionate singers in music today. Theo Hutchcraft's vocal work is a rare find in todays world of auto-tune and crap new music, one which sounds both polished and yet passionate with every syllable he sings.
The general theme of Happiness leaves its title a complete oxymoron, the majority of the songs are heartfelt pleas to an unknown woman (or, Evelyn) and in each instance of this, you can feel the pain that's in the voice. This is surprising, considering a work of such deep meaning has such a polished, stylised feel to it. Hurts' music is as much about the image as the actual lyrical content, and it does suffer from this at times. There are moments where you feel that whoever produced it (self-produced in the majority, now that I checked) was focusing too much on touching it up and making it just right, and forgot the essence of what was originally there. Thankfully, whenever this happens it simply adds to the charm, so youre enjoyment wont be detracted from as you have it on. Even the occaisonal burst from opera man (another reason to experience them live) doesn't feel too over the top, all of the eccentricities combine into one beautiful package which makes you think, these two (and whomever they have backing them, as there only are two official members of Hurts) are going places.
Ultimately, although i've only had a short time to listen to the album in full, I can tell that it's an instant classic. As I have mentioned before, it irks me greatly that Manchester has produced two brilliant bands and debuts in one year (the other being Acolyte by Delphic), two albums that are definate contenders for album of the year into the bargain. All we have to do now is hope that Hurts stick around for longer than this one effort, as they certainly deserve all the fame they get.
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Next week, i'll review Flamingo by 1/2 of The Killers
Sunday 5 September 2010
Wednesday 1 September 2010
Things I Have an Opinion On #25
The true identity of The Stig being revealed to be a petty little man who will struggle to find employment anywhere.
The above video contains an extremely bad rip of an episode of Top Gear, in which the 4 presenters raced against each other to find the quickest way from one side of London to the other. The Stig, the until recently anonymous driver for the programme, used public transport, and what you see in the video is him reading a discarded Metro (good to see Metros get left on the seat everywhere). The back page features Lewis Hamilton toasting a win from the 2007 season, when his McLaren team-mate was Fernando Alonso. The resultant disgust of The Stig allowed another possible true identity of him to emerge, that of Alonso, which is the basis of that video.
That video was actually quite popular when it was first uploaded, gaining well over 500,000 views before Cogan deleted it (arsehole). The 2nd incarnation isn't nearly as popular, but the message was the same. Fernando Alonso could quite possibly be The Stig. It's very unlikely, but he could be. There was more basis to the argument, but that video was the main basis of the argument.
Today of course, that all changed. Confidentiality agreements be damned, The Stig was writing his autobiography, and he'd be mentioning the whole Stig business regardless, seeing as no-one would buy his poxy book otherwise. He and HarperCollins, the scumbags printing this book won their court case today, and the book will now go to print. I can see the chapter list already:
1. Early life p3
2. Stunts p8
3. Formula 3 and subsequent failure to do well in p15
4. The Stig p16
5. The Future p300
6. Thanks p300
The previous Stig was a man by the name of Perry McCarthy, who also decided to cash in on something which could have been brilliant by writing an autobiography that no-one bought. He was killed off. This should make Top Gear's next series at the end of the year interesting. Do they bring in a new Stig? This would leave much of the power lap times board redundant, so keeping Collins as the Stig would make more sense. The inherent problem with this is of course that the whole character of the Stig as an anonymous, probably insane but very talented racing driver is now shattered, leaving nothing but a very petty man who wanted to cash it in.
In my opinion, Top Gear is nearing the end of its current life cycle. it looked to have perked up a while ago, but the last series showed why it should be getting the heave. Aside from Jeremy Clarkson looking very, very grey, the programme's not funny any more. There's no humour which doesn't involve the obvious being pointed out in unfunny ways, and there's very little in the way of it feeling natural. It's too staged, it's not like the old days when you could watch a challenge like the buy a Porsche for less than £1,500 and think "hey, if me and my mates did that, it'd be the same!" Now, you get stuff like the old British sports cars challenges which aired in the last series, and you think ".... you're trying too hard. This isn't funny." On that note, it seems like it would've made sense for Ben Collins to wait until Top Gear in its current format ended, as it inevitably will do. There would still have been something of a furore over his book, but there wouldn't have been nearly as big a one as the one that ended today.
In reality, he didn't. I shall leave the last word to Top Gear producer Andy Wilman, who posted this on the topgear website last Friday, and say that I agree 100%.
"...but the fact is, the ramshackle, dysfunctional family that is the Top Gear team, from the newest runner right up to Jeremy, Richard and James, has worked bloody hard for many years to make the Stig something worth caring about, and that includes protecting it from a bunch of chancers."
=============================================
I used stuff from here: http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2010/08/27/the-stig-he-is-ours/
The above video contains an extremely bad rip of an episode of Top Gear, in which the 4 presenters raced against each other to find the quickest way from one side of London to the other. The Stig, the until recently anonymous driver for the programme, used public transport, and what you see in the video is him reading a discarded Metro (good to see Metros get left on the seat everywhere). The back page features Lewis Hamilton toasting a win from the 2007 season, when his McLaren team-mate was Fernando Alonso. The resultant disgust of The Stig allowed another possible true identity of him to emerge, that of Alonso, which is the basis of that video.
That video was actually quite popular when it was first uploaded, gaining well over 500,000 views before Cogan deleted it (arsehole). The 2nd incarnation isn't nearly as popular, but the message was the same. Fernando Alonso could quite possibly be The Stig. It's very unlikely, but he could be. There was more basis to the argument, but that video was the main basis of the argument.
Today of course, that all changed. Confidentiality agreements be damned, The Stig was writing his autobiography, and he'd be mentioning the whole Stig business regardless, seeing as no-one would buy his poxy book otherwise. He and HarperCollins, the scumbags printing this book won their court case today, and the book will now go to print. I can see the chapter list already:
1. Early life p3
2. Stunts p8
3. Formula 3 and subsequent failure to do well in p15
4. The Stig p16
5. The Future p300
6. Thanks p300
The previous Stig was a man by the name of Perry McCarthy, who also decided to cash in on something which could have been brilliant by writing an autobiography that no-one bought. He was killed off. This should make Top Gear's next series at the end of the year interesting. Do they bring in a new Stig? This would leave much of the power lap times board redundant, so keeping Collins as the Stig would make more sense. The inherent problem with this is of course that the whole character of the Stig as an anonymous, probably insane but very talented racing driver is now shattered, leaving nothing but a very petty man who wanted to cash it in.
In my opinion, Top Gear is nearing the end of its current life cycle. it looked to have perked up a while ago, but the last series showed why it should be getting the heave. Aside from Jeremy Clarkson looking very, very grey, the programme's not funny any more. There's no humour which doesn't involve the obvious being pointed out in unfunny ways, and there's very little in the way of it feeling natural. It's too staged, it's not like the old days when you could watch a challenge like the buy a Porsche for less than £1,500 and think "hey, if me and my mates did that, it'd be the same!" Now, you get stuff like the old British sports cars challenges which aired in the last series, and you think ".... you're trying too hard. This isn't funny." On that note, it seems like it would've made sense for Ben Collins to wait until Top Gear in its current format ended, as it inevitably will do. There would still have been something of a furore over his book, but there wouldn't have been nearly as big a one as the one that ended today.
In reality, he didn't. I shall leave the last word to Top Gear producer Andy Wilman, who posted this on the topgear website last Friday, and say that I agree 100%.
"...but the fact is, the ramshackle, dysfunctional family that is the Top Gear team, from the newest runner right up to Jeremy, Richard and James, has worked bloody hard for many years to make the Stig something worth caring about, and that includes protecting it from a bunch of chancers."
=============================================
I used stuff from here: http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2010/08/27/the-stig-he-is-ours/
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