Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Radio 2 Goes Twee

Tonight on Radio 2
Paul Morley is both fascinated and confused by the number of different musical genres that exist today.

In this four-part series, he sets off to find out where all of these new genres have come from and what, if anything, do they mean to music fans today.

Each programme finds Paul talking to current champions of a new music style and the artists that have influenced them.

Tune in to find out everything you ever wanted to know about psych-folk, glitch, twee, post-rock, emo and perfect pop in the company of Lou Reed, Billy Bragg and Bernard Butler amongst others.

I'd probably have greater enthusiasm for this programme if the presenter weren't "confused" by the subject. The clever money's on a descent into cliches and misreadings, but I hope indiepop's political fire is examined and clueless, bandwagon-jumping neophytes are bitchslapped. I won't find out. I'll be at the Absentee gig.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the press release I saw they didn't even spell Talulah Gosh correctly so I'm boycotting it :)

Anonymous said...

Then you misssed a really great programme! While there are perhaps chunks of the story missing, the programme definitely concentrates on the political content of the movement, and dismissess the bandwagon jumpers by simply ignoring them.
Morley even pronounces "Pastels" correctly, which surprised even me.
Listen again at Ben's link.

Fire Escape said...

Thanks for the report, Harv. I'll listen to it later today.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm ... I thought Morley's pronunciation of Pastels was odd! It didn't bother me ... but it wasn't how I would expect a Brit to say it. There was once a hilarious discussion on the indiepoplist on how to pronounce it. I think Mike Appelstein nailed it with his "Past'uhls".

The documentary was really good and I suspect that Morley DOES have a Top 10 Favourite Sarah Singles :)

Fire Escape said...

Any initial scepticism was swept aside. This was a very well put together, intelligent documentary.