CHARACTER FROM NICK CAVE NOVEL WRITES HEARTWARMING LETTER TO 10-YEAR-OLD FAN

Euchrid Eucrow, the protagonist in Nick Cave’s debut novel And The Ass Saw The Angel, has penned a touching reply to a 10-year-old fan who wrote to the character asking for advice.

“Dear Euchrid,” wrote the boy, “all that my idiot schoolmates listen to is chart music and the only books they own have been written by that camp bloke off Little Britain. Many of them still believe in Santa Claus, the cretins, and they write to him regularly. But I believe in you, Euchrid, so I am writing to ask if you have any advice for me? Mummy says the only reason I’m disruptive in class is because I’m cleverer than all the other children.”

Eucrow’s empowering response can be read below:

As ah dictate this here letter, ah am up to mah feeble chest in quicksand and so ah believe ah had better make this a brief consultation, most unlike mah creator’s first novel. As ah am certain you are already aware, ah am a mute who speaks in a southern states dialect so our two situations are rather different. Come to think of it, how does a cottonpickin’ mute even begin dictating a letter? Anyhow. Mah pa was a cruel man and like most women mah momma was a drunken bitch-whore... Like you, ah was always different from mah fellow townsfolk and to cut a very long story short, here ah find mahself in a patch of God’s own sinking sand awaiting mah unfortunate fate.

Advice? Blessed advice. Mah chief instruction is to scribble down material inspired by the Old Testament. Pen lyrics about murdering females in the most cowardly way. Glamorise criminals, thieves, ruffians, villains, rogues, scoundrels, executioners, and Kylie Minogue. Form a troupe of wandering minstrels. Attack members of your own audience. They’ve paid you to busk, and they can goddamn pay again... with a suckerpunch to the temples! Embrace opium; it is a well-known creative aid and helps maintain a strict routine. Write an incomprehensible novel about a no-good mute such as I. Follow it up with a dark sex comedy set in the old country about a bedraggled old pervert who's obsessed with Avril Lavigne’s pert buttocks. How old did you say you were, again? Photograph your wife as naked as the day she was born for an album cover, while you stand fully suited in close approximation of the sleeve to Spinal Tap’s Smell The Glove. The world is waiting for you, kid. 

As for me, death’s delights are a-coming and ah had better prepare mahself for mah almighty reckoning. Oh, and don’t forget to befriend Will Self. Amen!

SPINAL BAP'S TOP ALBUMS OF 2018

Low - Double Negative
When Low had almost completed work on their latest album, a bored studio intern rested his elbow on the wrong button and accidentally wiped over half the music with dusty fuzzy noises. Instead of starting the recording process from scratch, Low decided to weather the storm and just release the botched results anyway.

Lo(w) and behold it turned out to be the most critically acclaimed thing they’d ever done. Every reviewer on the entire planet was soon hailing Double Negative as the masterpiece Low had always promised, an apparently thrilling sonic evolution with its spilt-coffee white noise effects acting as some kind of metaphor for societal collapse.

I’m not saying those people are wrong but if your favourite Low album is the one on which you can hear THE LEAST AMOUNT OF LOW then maybe you aren’t really a Low fan at all. Maybe you should just detune your wireless slightly when listening to Radio 3.

(Having said that, the clumsy intern still proved himself a more talented knob-twiddler than Jeff Tweedy did on that terrible one he produced.)

Robyn - Honey
SHE’S THE CREDIBLE FACE OF POP MUSIC
SHE’S THE CREDIBLE FACE OF POP MUSIC
SHE’S THE CREDIBLE FACE OF POP MUSIC
SHE’S THE CREDIBLE FACE OF POP…
Why aren’t you listening?
I mean... why are you STILL not listening?
What do you mean you’re not interested?
SHE’S THE CREDIBLE FACE OF POP MUSIC
Hello? Hello? Where are you going? Wait.
She’s the...

The 1975 - An Online Inquiry Into Briefs
The latest album from Wimslow’s answer to leading INXS tribute band INXSIVE was promoted via a series of puff pieces printed in respectable publications with a clearly premeditated and sensationalist “my struggle with heroin” angle. Talk about glamorising the use of hard drugs to impressible young pop fans. Tell you what Matty “Matthew” Healy, come back to us when the habit’s gotten so hard you haven’t performed for over half a decade and you’re found dead from a speedball overdose like the sorry bloke from Alice In Chains. That’s what a real rock star looks like. Decomposing and surrounded by paraphernalia. Not nicely posing, surrounded by Pale Waves’s Heather.

Nine Inch Nails - Sandwich
Nine Inch Nails’ “ninth studio album” (six tracks, 30 minutes, £16.99 on vinyl from HMV) was conceived as a political protest record. However, during the recording process it soon evolved into a concept album about sandwiches. It includes the tracks ‘A Bread Of Ourselves’, ‘Starch Of The Pigs’, ‘Big Man With A Bun’, ‘That’s What I Baguette’, ‘Head Like A Wholegrain’, and ‘I Do Not Want This Ham And Cheese Toastie Because I Ate Too Much At Breakfast Time’.

Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer

This is the greatest hits album we’ve been waiting for: all of Prince’s biggest hits packed onto one disc. Arguably the most influential artist of the 1980s, Prince is one of the very few musicians of this or any other era to find a massive and intensely loyal audience while still being praised by critics and musical contemporaries alike for his bold experimentalism and prodigious instrumental skills. His brash, high-energy mix of pop, rock, funk, and psychedelia picked up where Sly Stone left off, and the result was music that was revolutionary in its sonic experimentation and provocative fashion. This collection brings together the absolute best of Prince’s Warner Bros. recordings on one hit-jammed disc.

Thom Yorke - Suspiria (Music For The Luca Guadagnino Film)
“Look Jonny, I can do film music too. I can. I CAN. I can do film music too. Why do I keep repeating myself, myself, myself? I can do film music too. I can. I can do film music too. Filllmm musiiic toooo. Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon. Yesterday I woke up scoring a remake. Yesterday I woke up scoring a remake. Yesterday I... Ice age coming. Ice age coming. Why do I keep repeating myself, myself, myself? Look Jonny. Jonny, look. I can do film music too. I can do film music. I caaaaaan doooooo fillllllllm muuuuusic toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...”

Chris Rea and The Queens - Chris
The ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ star sent shivers down the spine of the pop world earlier this year when he decided to shave off his famous beard, drop the second part of his name and reinvent himself as simply “Chris”. This was no fickle attention-seeking gesture, however. The freshly clean-faced Chris invented a whole new form of woke pop defined by its emotional inclusiveness, informed in its discussions of gender, sexuality and class, and steadily determined in its ambition to overturn masculine and feminine social stereotypes. Still had quite a lot of songs about cars, mind.

Ed O’Brien - 50 Shades Freed (Music For The James Foley Film)
Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien followed in the footsteps of his bandmate Jonny Greenwood by composing his first ever film score for the adaptation of E.L. James’ ‘milf filth’ novel Fifty Shades Freed. O’Brien noted that “Jonny’s just so far ahead - he understands orchestral works, he can read music, he’s studied it all” adding that “so I copied him but with more RUMPY PUMPY.”

Philip Selway - Avengers: Infinity War (Music For The Film By Whoever Directed That One)
Radiohead’s Philip Selway followed in the footsteps of his bandmate Jonny Greenwood by composing his first ever film score for the Marvel Comics superhero blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War. Selway noted that “Jonny’s just so far ahead - he understands orchestral works, he can read music, he’s studied it all” adding that “so I just copied the soundtrack from Avengers Assemble and stuck a new track on the end called ‘BIG CGI BADDIE MAKES FIFTY PERCENT OF CAST VANISH DRAMATICALLY THEREBY CUTTING STAFF COSTS FOR THE NEXT EXPENSIVE SEQUEL.’”

Colin Greenwood - Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Music For That Stupid Abba Film)
Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood followed in the footsteps of his bandmate and brother Jonny Greenwood by composing his first ever film score for 2018’s jukebox-comedy-musical-sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Greenwood noted, “Jonny’s just so far ahead - he understands orchestral works, he can read music, he’s studied it all” adding that “so I just forced Pierce Brosnan to sing ‘Morning Bell’ over and over again and insisted each one was a different original ABBA song. Nobody was any the wiser.”

HAPPY NEW GUY GARVYEAR

It has become virtually impossible to listen to the radio, switch on the television or enjoy an artisan pork pie in Manchester’s trendy Northern Quarter without being confronted by the ubiquitous bristles of Elbow frontman Guy Garvey. When not presenting his own 6Music radio show, he’ll be chatting to Lauren Laverne or Marc Riley about the latest Elbow studio album, best-of Elbow album, Guy Garvey solo record or collaboration with I Am Kloot.

He’s only gone and broken into television too, adding profound wisdom as a talking head on last year’s BBC4 Tom Waits documentary (“If I did what Tom Waits did, I’d be kicked out of Elbow”), ruining The Beatles on the John Lewis Christmas advert, and playing a cameo role in the acclaimed sitcom Peter Kay Berates A Ditzy Woman Who Is Deemed Less Intelligent Than Him In A Small Car For 30 Minutes.

It turns out all this was merely the first phase of Guy Garvey’s sinister plan to dominate the entire BBC schedule, as demonstrated by this glimpse at the forthcoming listings...

Radio
Desert Guyland Discs
Each week Kirsty Young asks a celebrity castaway to select which eight Elbow songs they would take to a desert island. They can also take a book with them, besides their complimentary proof copy of Garvey’s forthcoming autobiography Good Guy To All That. Episode 1’s guest is none other than the legendary Sir Guy Garvey.

TV
The Guy At Night
Not content with his daytime monopoly of the media, Garvey sleeps soundly while amiable scientists Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Brian Cox provide running commentary on the astronomical beauty of the snoring giant.

Elbow Selecta!
A reboot of Leigh Francis’ vulgar sketch show in which Garvey plays a grotesque caricature of resurrected chart botherer Craig David. Unlike Francis, Garvey doesn’t require a latex mask because his face is already unfeasibly huge.

Stars In Their Guys
The timely relaunch of the Matthew Kelly-presented talent contest in which members of the public impersonate pop stars. The twist here is that every single week all the contestants are forced to mimic the one and only Guy Garvey. It’s still less monotonous than The X Factor.

Film
Les Misera-Elbows
Big budget movie adaptation of the successful Broadway Elbow musical set in the nineteenth-century French town of Angoulême which as we all know is twinned with Bury, Greater Manchester. Craig Potter plays the anonymous “Elbow Member 00002”, imprisoned for stealing a loaf out of Doves’ feeble indie shtick. Sing along at home, everybody: “I dreamed a dream of Garvey, Guy / Rugged, handsome, Seldom Seen Kidding / I dreamed a dream of Garvey, Guy / Though I found his music to be middling...”

SPINAL BAP'S TOP ALBUMS OF 2017

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Have A Flying Banana
With seven members, two drummers and a flagrant disregard for patience, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released more albums in 2017 than Donald Trump sent spectacularly ill-informed tweets. The first of about 692 LPs was performed entirely on customised hollowed-out fruit and consisted of one 45-minute Australian psych-rock reinterpretation of the classic cockney knees-up ‘Let’s All Go Down The Strand And Have A Banana’.

Morrissey - Low In IQ
On his eleventh solo album, indie rock’s surliest martyr stuck it the to the nefarious forces of the mainstream media by unleashing a much-needed truth bomb on the sedated minds of the sheep-like public. Via his MOR warblings Morrissey informed us that Queen Elizabeth II, Emmanuel Macron, Michelle Obama, Barry Scott from the Cillit Bang adverts, Ant & Dec, Jamie Redknapp and The Weeknd are all sinister illuminati lizard people. You just have to squint your eyes a bit and spend too much time by yourself in an LA mansion. The Mozfather also revealed that our tap water has been laced with fluoride with the express purpose of making the public more susceptible to the art of Banksy who is secretly a double-agent of MI5, that Lena Dunham was an inside job, Ellen Degeneres died in a tragic accident back in the 1990s and was replaced by a doppelganger of Owen Wilson, Hurricane Maria was faked by the BBC news, no one will let you say Christmas anymore, and Israel proudly invented the banoffee pie.

Queens Of The Stone Age - Bellends
Oh come on, he didn’t mean to kick her in the head. He was just trying to help her get a better shot of the underside of his shoe. Anyway, you can’t even boot an innocent female photographer in the head anymore without being hounded by the alt-left forces of oppression. It’s political correctness gone mad! She was probably fat and ugly anyway which is why she’s behind the camera instead of in front of it like lovely Kate Moss. I bet she has no sense of humour and I could easily beat her in an arm-wrestling contest, wrote Giles Coren in his latest column for The Times.

LCD Soundsystmeh - Amehrican Dreameh
In 2011 Jamehs Mehrphy disbanded LCD Soundsystmeh even though the act is essentially just him anyway. This year Jamehs Mehrphy returned with a new LCD Soundsystmeh album. The whole thing was orchestrated to make money and everybody was fine with that, as that is what music is for. Mehking lots and lots of mehny.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Polywonkyplonkywoowoo
By mid-April, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard were already on their 116th album of the year. Building on the 115th’s innovative fusion of tinned spaghetti instrumentals and operatic Go Compare vocal work, Polywonkyplonkywoowoo was a concept album in three chapters which narrated the interlocking stories of Zuko: Destroyer Of Planets, Flabby Ian The Moss Monster and a final character based loosely on the classic Sega Master System protagonist Alex Kidd. All this was set to a furious neo-psych post-prog soundtrack complete with complex polyrhythmic freebop cyber beats. So quite similar to Elbow’s Little Fictions, then.

Arcade Fire - Everything Foul
One of the most irritating promotional campaigns in recent times saw Arcade Fire impose a strict dress code at their concerts which dictated that no audience member was allowed to wear a band t-shirt bearing the name of any musical group objectively superior to Arcade Fire. That didn’t exactly narrow it down. The campaign rolled on with Arcade Fire claiming ownership of the millennial pastime of eating Subway sandwiches while watching repeats of The Big Bang Theory on their iPhone in a crowded quiet coach.

Then all of a sudden the whole thing was revealed as an elaborate hoax. Not just their most recent album rollout but also Arcade Fire’s entire career, including even Funeral when they were still good. It had all been one long spoof conceived by Jim Carrey when he believed he was the resurrected spirit of Andy Kaufman with some assistance from that Lee Nelson bloke.

Liam Gallagher- As You Wad
When the ex-Oasis frontman announced the first solo album of his career, few expected to it to consist entirely of songs originally performed by the British reggae outfit Aswad. Despite some critics having expressed discomfort with Gallagher’s brazen appropriation of black culture, most agreed that the material was not as dubious as Gorillaz. Without any doubt, As You Wad proved significantly more successful than the second album by Beady Eye, 2013’s UBE40.

St. Vincent Jones - MASSIVEARSEHOLE
First a footballer, then Guy Ritchie’s go-to movie hard man, and now an award-winning multi-instrumentalist who’s every bit as handy with a slide whistle as he used to be with a sliding tackle, there really is no end to the talent of Vinnie Jones. Many of the songs were said to be inspired by the impressive eyebrows of Eric Cantona, one exception being the opening track ‘Hang On Me’ which was written from the point of view of Gazza’s trouser plums. The record fared better than that terrible X-Men film he once did, even if St Vinnie lacks the effortlessly cool charisma of Lana Del Ray Wilkins.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard featuring King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Fuzzy Wuzzy Pomegranate Gasblimp Part I
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s 442nd album of the year was their most ambitiously conceptual work to date. Using innovative Holodeck technology and formal advice from The Ghost Of Christmas Yet-To-Come, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard 2017 were able to collaborate with their future selves in the form of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard circa 2049. Together the cross-period 14-person supergroup managed to create the busiest psych-rock album since King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s 441st album of 2017. No band needs four drummers, mind.

Richard Dawson - Pheasant
Prior to his latest release, everyone had assumed that the alt-folk troubadour was a north-eastern everyman. It turns out that he was a privileged member of the landed gentry all along, as Dawson (real name Richard “Dickie” Davenport-Fiennes IV) revealed in this concept album about the illustrious history of his favourite game bird. Little has been heard of Dawson since his latest gig at Islington Assembly Hall, although sources close to Nicholas Witchell claim to have seen him playing an aggressive round of croquet with Princess Eugenie after a night on the razzle with Ed Sheeran and The Bluntmeister.

SLEEP'S CBEEBIES BEDTIME STORY NOT GOING AS SMOOTHLY AS HOMME'S

Following the success of Josh Homme’s rendition of Julia Donaldson’s Zog on the CBeebies channel, the BBC have booked a succession of other desert rockers to read bedtime stories.

However, the ambitious scheme has already run into various setbacks as it turns out that most desert rockers do not possess the same level of professionalism as the hardworking and charismatic singer from Queens Of The Stone Age.

For example, Homme’s ex-bandmate Nick Oliveri was forced to cancel his intended recital of Where The Wild Things Are after proving wilder than any of the wild characters from Maurice Sendak’s classic tale by driving naked down the Pacific Coast highway with a kidnapped radio promoter in his car boot while firing an unlicensed assault rifle at the sky.

The starkers bassist’s intended replacement, Scott Wino of Saint Vitus, informed BBC staff that he was venturing into the Californian desert to research his performance of an extract from Louis Sachar’s Holes but was last spotted in a confused haze, circling around and around the same cactus while muttering prayers to Helios God of the Sun.

Perhaps the most farcical booking to date comes in the form of the stoner trio Sleep who, having being asked to narrate a picture book together, are thought to have confused what is meant by a “joint” reading. An inside source said that the band has been holed up in the same BBC broom cupboard for the last 18 months with marijuana smoke seeping constantly out of the crack under the door. “Having said that,” added the source, “it’s nothing compared to the scenes of degradation that defined the Andi Peters era.”

At the time of writing, Sleep’s story is still intended for broadcast although producers have voiced concern that the band’s hour-long meditation on Each Peach Pear Plum is never going to squeeze into its proposed 10-minute broadcast slot.

RANKED: ARCADE FIRE'S ALBUMS FROM BEST TO WORST

Contemporary journalism has been widely criticised for eschewing traditional investigative practices, nuanced politico-social commentary and specialist arts criticism in favour of desperate and nihilistic click-hungry ranking. Ranking members of the Kardashian family. Ranking singles by Ranking Roger. Ranking yourself into apathetic numbness as the world around us slowly burns.

Here at Spinal Bap we are not above such unashamed rankery and seeing as Arcade Fire have a new cassette tape out or something and they’ve appealed to complete rankers since day one, we thought we might as well rank all their albums.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the order we came up with!

Funeral
In first place we have the first Arcade Fire album, obviously. Released in 2004, Funeral offered everything from a semi-tragic back-story to a post-Godspeed propensity for additional viola players. The album earned an unprecedented nine-point-infinity rating from Pitchfork even though it contained nothing that Hope Of The States hadn’t already nailed. Still, there’s no denying this was their first album.

Neon Bible
Arcade Fire’s difficult second album was difficult for the band to make and even more difficult to be excited about unless you happened to work in the offices of Pitchfork. It had that song about cars on it and, y’know, that other one, the other one about the cars. It was better than what was to follow, however, and anyone who disagrees has clearly lost their bag of spherical rolling toys.

The Suburbs
Arcade Fire’s difficult third album is also third in the respect that it is their third best. Not to be confused with a competition from the pages of an upper-class Victorian periodical, Win Butler is the frontman of Arcade Fire. Win described The Suburbs as a cross between Depeche Mode and Neil Young even though neither of those artists peaked with their debut album. Pitchfork were euphoric once more, comparing the record to The Clash’s Sandinista!, Bruce Springsteen’s catch-all genius and The Earth by a supreme being known to some humans as “God”.

Reflektor
If their third-released and third-best album was a little on the long side, Arcade Fire’s difficult fourth album was a never-ending road trip down the dull freeway of Win Butler’s self-indulgence. Across two discs produced by the confidence man who pretended to split up LCD Soundsystem, Reflektor explored dance-rock, art-rock and dub reggae, but mainly dance-rock. New Order remained untroubled. Pitchfork remained in thrall, enjoying the results as much as oxygen, orgasms or cake.

Everything Now
Everything? No. Not with a title track that sounds exactly like Dan Gillespie-Sells from The Feeling covering ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ in an ABBA wig with a panpipe breakdown. Arcade Fire’s difficult follow-up to their difficult fourth album was marketed in an even more patronising fashion than Radiohead’s previous six promotional campaigns combined. The actual music, which they’d spent less time on, was so bad that even Pitchfork scored it lower than the third Kaiser Chiefs LP.

SIX UNRELEASED ALBUMS YOU'D SLAUGHTER YOUR OWN GRANNY TO HEAR

Nostalgic fans who are only interested in Neil Young’s boring old material will be thrilled to learn than the cantankerous Canadian will finally release one of his long-lost albums on July 14. Hitchhiker was originally recorded in 1976 but the material was binned when Young became distracted with other projects such as cocaine.

Young isn’t the only musician with an album or twelve tucked away at the back of his audio pantry. Here are six more records that have yet to see the light of day that it would literally be worth injecting your own grandmother with a lethal dose of diamorphine to hear.

Green Day - Cigarettes And Valentines And The Same Three Chords
The Californian trio abandoned this album when its master tapes were stolen by a benevolent Robin Hood figure hoping to spare the masses from yet more Green Day. Instead, Billy Bobby Thornton and co. dusted themselves off and wrote the bloated concept album American American. But what would that original album have sounded like? Pop-punk, obviously. Working titles included ‘Oi Oi’, ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’, ‘Boohoo Ballad’, ‘Spank Spank’ and ‘Mickey The Mohawk’s Tragic Tale Of Social Security Woe (Woe, Woe, Woah)’.

U2 - Trilogy
According to Bono’s water-polo partner George W. Bush, U2 have at least three albums worth of unreleased material which ranges from bombastic arena rock to acoustic arena rock. I’m not surprised because one of them once slipped down the back of Bono’s sofa only to find its way into my iTunes library and now I can’t delete it without the webcam taking my picture without permission and automatically adding my name to a secret government list of known atheists.

Donald J. Trump - The Art Of Making A Really Really Great Album Like A True Champ
Much like Jesus, little is known about Donald Trump’s teenage years other than he was almost certainly a precocious tool. One theory is that the young Donald spent much of that time working on an ambitious space-prog concept album inspired by Orson Welles, golden shiny things and several books he hasn’t read. It is thought that Trump abandoned his musical aspirations when it finally dawned on him that he could not operate any grown-up instruments with such tiny hands. He then decided to focus on his second dream of becoming America’s least qualified human.

Billy Joel - Everything Since 1993
In a reversal of the hideous portrait in Dorian Gray’s attic, the songs Billy Joel records in his secluded basement are as sprightly and vibrant as the work of his youth while, externally speaking, Joel slowly transforms into a pink fleshy egg. In concert, Joel’s piano has to be secured to the stage floor with extra reinforced bolts to prevent it from being sucked into the air by the force of an entire arena crowd gasping in unison at this upsetting reminder of mortal decline.

Gary Barlow - Eyebrow Of The Tiger
At the nadir of his portly wilderness years, Gary Barlow recorded an entire concept album dedicated to his own right eyebrow. Tracks included ‘Back For Eyebrow’, ‘Everything Eyebrows’, ‘A Million Eyebrows’, ‘How Deep Is Your Eyebrow’, ‘It Only Takes An Eyebrow’, ‘I Will Eviscerate Robbie Williams And Feed His Gunky Entrails To That Prickhole Max Beesley’ and ‘Relight My Eyebrow’. Gary Barlow’s right eyebrow was so touched by the gesture that it has remained raised in erotic stimulation ever since.

Noel Gallagher, John Zorn and Autechre - Vol. 1: Definitely Quabungzizz-X
A couple of years ago, word got out that the ex-Oasis songwriter had recorded a whole album in collaboration with the avant-garde composer John Zorn and groundbreaking electronic duo Autechre. Regrettably, Gallagher shelved the project when he suddenly remembered that it could jeopardise his long-cultivated reputation as Britain’s dullest musician.