>If you live in the UK, you’ll have heard all about Blur re-uniting for a few huge gigs next summer. This was a bit of a surprise to everyone, seeing as Blur‘s main protagonists, Damon and Graham, apparently hate each other; that the drummer now seems to be getting on with a career of repeatedly failing to become a Labour MP; and Alex the insufferable bassist is now an insufferable cheese-maker.
All those enlivening inter-band foibles aren’t my gripe with this reunion, and neither is the awful, recession-mocking £45 ticket price. It’s the fact that, now they’re back together and might even make a new album, they are putting themselves in direct contravention of one of the main Laws Of Rock: Stop making music when you hit 40.
This isn’t an ageist rant – just look at the facts: would you really be any poorer if the combined discographies of Paul McCartney, Paul Weller, Oasis or the Rolling Stones suddenly ended at the point where the songwriters hit 40? Nope, not really. Even – whisper it – David Bowie – hasn’t done anything really good since his mid 30s. If Blur do record a new album, I hope it disproves this rule. But I hope even more that they don’t go near a studio at all.
A band that deserve to be spending more time in the studio are Today’s New Band, Photons. They’re from San Fransisco and, having spent too long now looking out of a window into the Manchester rain, this fact alone is enough to make me mad with jealous rage.
The problem is that Photons are far too lovable to ever focus any mindless hatred at. Their songs are dreamy, happy and sweet; the sound of the eight band members shunning worry, despair and all the other frivolous anxiety that is associated with modern life, and choosing glee instead.
Goodbye For Now is a festive Indie sea-shanty, inventively and rousingly clomping into a big, happy chorus. Cease and Desist is a rollocking clatter, both wild and focused together, and finding time to pop in another big chanty chorus. It’s imbued, possibly unknowingly, with more human feeling than most songs ever manage. Something Left To Live For is much more upbeat than the title suggests a plink-plonking melody gleefully dripping through the whole song.
The Photons are rousing, positive and inventive. Are these youthful traits, put into song by people too young to be corrupted by cynicism to think of money-spinning reunions? Who knows, but try to figure it out for yourself by listening to their ace songs here!
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