Footballing Infograph

With The Premier League over, this infograph looks back at some of the biggest calamities and disasters of the 2013/14 season.

Banksy Infograph

Sign Of The Times

When the recession hit back in December 2007 many were hit hard by the banking failures. It wasn’t long before men and women were out of the job and businesses were struggling. Seven years later, the shadow of the recession still looms over Great Britain and has severely affected the job market. In fact, around 20% of young people (men and women between the age of 16 and 25) are unemployed. This is the highest rate of unemployment since 1997. With youth unemployment costing £4.7 billion a year, few could laugh at the situation... Few with the exception of BBC 3!

Invasion of the Job Snatchers is a six part series that chronicles unemployed young men and women competing for jobs in the town of Christchurch. In the current job market this seemed to me like a poor idea for television; on paper it seemed sure to irk and irritate as well as make light of what is honestly a dire situation in the United Kingdom.  The difference between a programme like Invasion of the job Snatchers and the X Factor is the latter programme deals in hopes and dreams. With the amount of TV talent shows on air these days it is arguable that we, as an audience, have become somewhat desensitised to the shattering of peoples hopes and dreams. A failure to achieve a dream does not shock. Invasion of the job Snatchers instead deals in people’s livelihoods and to see someone fail to achieve a job is truly worrying. When a Britain’s got talent or X Factor contestant is voted off or otherwise loses it is not the end of their job. Very rarely does a runner up or contestant fail to achieve some small musical or entertainment career, One Direction being a primer example of this. When the young people who took part in Invasion of the Job Snatchers left the show there was a strong sense that they would continue to struggle to find work. One contestant named Benny Cracknell, a flamboyant and eccentric but hard working employee, failed to get a job simply because there was not one available for him, a sad fact about today’s job market. Other contestants included Carl Owen, a young man with a criminal record who had lived on the streets as a homeless youth, and Adam Pike, who had been made redundant and could not find work due to his lack of qualifications.

I did however find that I enjoyed the programme. It was extremely cathartic to see contestants such as the single father Sean Blain succeed and gain his job in a garden centre. It was also easy to relate with some of the employer’s anger and irritation; for example the contestant Rachel was continuously late managed to cry her way into a job before throwing away the contract she was offered at the end of the programme. The programme did raise a few important issues however. The youth of today really did seem to have an issue with laziness, rudeness, and sense of entitlement. Though some candidates were obviously picked to juxtapose the conservative town of Christchurch and create a conflict, Britain's youth came across as utterly hopeless and unemployable for the most part. Perhaps BBC 3 didn’t create an entertainment show, but instead have present us with a cutting edge social study.

Same-sex Marriage Infograph

An info graph detailing the current status of Same-Sex Marriage and specifically in the United Kingdom.

Roger The Alien Infograph

American Dad Info graph

With American Dad moving to TBS in summer, this info graph provides all the information concerning the many disguises worn by Roger the Alien.

Adam Ant @The Ritz

Adam Ant and the Ministers of New Super Heavy Funk Punk @The Ritz, Manchester

The Dandy Highway Man isn’t feeling so dandy anymore.

So, Adam has replaced his Ants with a new Band; Will Crewdson, Tom Edwards, Dave Barbarossa, Leigh Gorman and Jola, also known as the Ministers of New Super Heavy Funk Punk. Of course Barbarossa and Gorman once left the original Ants to pursue a career in Bow Wow Wow but there seemed to be no hard feelings here. Adam strutted on to the stage an hour late to a riled audience, looking like an amalgamation of a pirate and biker, and leered at the crowd as the deep Bass-line of Cartrouble shook the room. As Adam delivered the first line of the song, all discrepancies surrounding his tardiness were forgotten. 

The first half an hour of the show served to remind the audience that Prince Charming was not always a pop star. Thunderous Punk Riffs and a sexually charged performance, with lyrics to match, almost erased the Dandy Highway man persona and replaced it with a Punk Veteran. But by song 7 Ant gives into audience pleas and blasts out “Stand and Deliver!” which is quickly followed by the jangly-upbeat Ant Music.

The songs sounded stripped back but the duel drum kits and harsh guitars somehow replaced the multi-layered tracks found of Ants record and translated the hits into fantastic live renditions. Goody Two Shoes almost cements Ant’s status as pop icon.  Ant however is quick to shatter the pop image that the hits inevitably carry with them as he breathes to the audience “I may look nice, but I’m dirty”.

The show ended with a blend of the thrashing punk guitar riffs of Physical (You’re So) as Ant was clearly reminded of the Ritz’s curfew of 11pm. As Ant sauntered off stage to leave his band mates to one last cadenza, the audience roared their approval at the marvellous blend of his Prince Charming pop hits and early punk rock. Ant proved why he deserves to continue to sell out venues and if you get the chance, at £20, this is not a show to be missed.

The Take Off And Landing Of Everything-Album Review

How does a band follow up a Mercury Prize winning album?

Elbow have continuously flown the flag with pride for British music. The Mercury Prize winning The Seldom Seen Kid gained Platinum status and famously remained in the UK album charts for 3 years. An impressive feat. But how does a band follow up an album such as The Seldom Seen Kid? Was the answer Build a Rocket Boys? In my opinion, no it was not. Though a fine album, it seemed to reduce the noise of the band and become somewhat of a Guy Garvey solo album. This was made evident through the chronicling Garvey’s youth in songs such as Lippy Kids that were so riddle with nostalgia that it felt like the soundtrack to a Hovis Advert. The B-Side compilation Dead in the Boot was not the answer either. It certainly was an excellent B-side compilation album and felt like far more than a stop-gap between albums, but lacked the characteristics that had made The Seldom Seen Kid and Leaders of the Free World the excellent albums that they are. Don’t get me wrong, Dead in the Boot and Build A Rocket Boys are both fine albums, they merely lacked the same qualities demonstrated in The Seldom Seen Kid. I am not suggesting that Elbow simply should have released an album of “stadium anthems”, because that would be an awful waste of talent.

Keep calm and buy this Album.

But there is an answer to how does a band follow up a Mercury Prize winning album and, though it may have taken Elbow two releases to discover the answer, Elbow have indeed answered the question; The Take Off and Landing Of Everything. This album was not released for the next big hit, such as One Day Like This, but for the masses of fans who have come to appreciate and love Elbow’s distinctive and pleasant sound. Garvey sticks, lyrically, to themes and topics close to his heart. The album’s second track ,Charge, charts Garvey’s irritation with being from “Another Century”, he puts it, whilst trying to remain relevant and, though this is certainly not an attempt to create the next anthem, one can’t help but imagine “Glory be these fuckers are ignoring me” being chanted by the masses at a festival or arena. The album’s opening track This Blue World almost seems the opposite to One Day Like This both tonally and with respects to the lyrical content, which concerns Garvey’s split from long-time girlfriend Jane Unsworth. Though a gentle and soft song, This Blue World paints the image of the morning after One Day Like This when everything has gone to shit. But don’t be deterred if you dislike any slightly depressing music, the album has plenty of pleasant cheerful moments.

Though I personally found some criticism to be unfounded, such as the band being boring and unchanged *cough* NME *cough*, it is obvious the Garvey has a tendency to slip into a discussion of his love of all things booze related. It is arguable that this is relevant in an album that concerns going through and overcoming a mid-life crisis, but it wears thin after a while. In fact, six of the ten songs contain references to, to borrow a phrase from Roger the Alien, “The Devils Nectar”. A few of the compositions did feel rather reminiscent of some Elbow classics. Fly Boy Blues certainly emulated the sheer epic riffs found in Grounds for Divorce or Leaders of the Free World whilst This Blue World “borrows” a small section of One Day Like This as the Guitar climbs its way back down the major pentatonic.

The Take Off And Landing Of Everything is a good album, there is no doubt. It is not however as “friendly” as The Seldom Seen Ki” and perhaps not the best place for a budding Elbow fan to start. Despite this, a solid album deserving of a solid score, The Take Off And Landing Of Everything earns its 8/10 rating.