singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart

it's christmas. well, it was. so i've given myself a little present. came online to cddb a couple of cds i'm ripping to my phone and just thought i'd have a little look on the arcade fire website while i'm waiting. i like arcade fire. a lot. i'd been telling myself that i wouldn't be downloading anything from their album and would have the will power to wait til it could get my grubby little hands on it in the shops. a couple of weeks ago zane lowe had the world exclusive play of a new song 'intervention'. obviously within a couple of hours it had appeared on the internet and i was downloading it. i justified that one by thinking that it was actually just a new version of a song which i've had an acoustic early version of for about a year, so that's fine really. and it's got church organ on it, so it's a bit christmassy. it's all rather wicked. the other day intervention went on sale on the US iTunes store. except it didn't. someone fucked up. they uploaded the wrong song, labelled it as intervention and let the internet do its worse. which is how i came across it and downloaded it and am listening to it now. which is definitely breaking the rules. it's called 'black wave/bad vibrations' and i like it. it's different to funeral. but it's the arcade fire. and it's new. and the goddamn album's not out til march 26th, so it's going to be hard hard work getting through the next three months.

frosty the bowman

i've been watching vodafoof tba with snow patrol playing in the royal opera house. it's all quite good. although they're not especially cool, i do have a soft spot for em - what with being a hopeless romantic i can't resist songs about broken hearts and failed relationships. one things with impaired my enjoyment somewhat was the inane blithering of edith bowman who was doing all the links. trying to work out what she was on about was similar to trying to get your head round a distinctly difficult series of cryptic crossword clues. maybe it's a scottish thing. she reminded me of the scottish hotel owner from little britain. it's not the serman on the mount, it's a corporate whore fest with some pretty sounding songs. or maybe it's because she's a bit of a blonde airhead.

yeah, but is it art?

i've not written in here for a while. slapped wrist. that'll have to be a new years resolution i suppose. lots to write about. fab holiday (see photos), work xmas do, not to mention close encounters of the orlando kind. one thing that caught my eye i wanted to write about was something that happened a few weeks back. some guy called michael stone burst into the irish assembly with some homemade explosives. now, that in itself isn't anything i'd usually comment on but this week he appeared in court where his lawyer gave the defense that, instead of trying to blow the place up, kill oodles of people and throw the irish peace process off course it was all in fact a piece of perforance art. if it wasn't all quite so serious, it'd be hilarious. it must have been a real eureaka moment when they band up with that stroke of genius. i've not been to see the turner prize yet this year, but i reckon he's probably made himself an early favourite for next year.