Royal Academy Reviews - F*ck Bandnames

Taking up residency as Clash’s in house music boffin is Alex Hills, a composer and lecturer in the Department of Academic Studies at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Unaware of each song’s authors, Alex blindly merits the compositional qualities of the songs given to him by Clash, judging the best of the bunch by its perfunctory arrangement…

This month, (giggle) we get all rude and sweary with five ‘F*ck’ bands.

Song 1 (F*cked Up - ‘Crooked Head’)

I like the beginning of this, it is really patient, just adding one thing at a time, drums, bass, guitars, and waiting a full minute to introduce the voice is quite interesting and risky. What happens next is far less interesting, unfortunately. The incredibly shouty, guttural singing I could cope with as an effect, something which is developed and varied, but it is just relentless and comes across as rather juvenile in the end. The long instrumental in the middle is interesting because it is so long, and like the beginning is a structural risk, but I think it is less successful as it doesn’t take the music anywhere new, and when the one word (which I can’t actually recognise) shouting returns this again seems too obvious. Still, this is clearly trying to be different and interesting, but I think it isn’t really being done with enough musical imagination or variety.

Song 2: (F*ckpony - ‘I’m Burning Inside’)

[Sorry, can't find this video online. Outrageous I know!]

I just find this way, way, way too long. It has good qualities - again, the very patient buildup of the beginning - but I simply don’t find there to be remotely enough here to listen to for nearly ten minutes. I’ve had this issue with house music before, and of course part of the point is the music isn’t really meant to be listened to as a structural whole anyway - the tunes are building blocks for DJs to use - not to mention sober… But if I’m going to give ten minutes of time to a piece of music, I want it to engage with that time, change and develop in a meaningful way, not just sit there like this does.

Song 3: (F*ck Buttons - ‘Surf Solar’)

Another song that starts very well - the near totally saturated electronic chaos is really striking and makes me curious about where it is all going. Keeping it going the whole way through is brave and interesting, too. The issue here for me is a kind of incongruity between these chaotic and quite harsh sounds - the scratchy thing which also keeps going through has the same near white noise aspect as the first sound - and the really trite and simplistic melodic lines. These could be straight out of any basic pop-house anthem and are horribly unsophisticated in comparison to what is going on underneath them. The ending is fantastic, though, because it really comes from nowhere, just breaking off the melody into white noise in mid-flight.

Song 4: (Holy F*ck - ‘Lovely Allen’)

Why do all these songs start with things that are interesting and unpredictable and then deteriorate so quickly into the formulaic? I get bored quite quickly in this one, the little up and down circular melody just isn’t inventive or exciting enough to hear that many times. When everything fades out half way through I’m hoping for a real shift, but instead we just get a differently arranged - and more pompously over the top - version of more of the same. Again though, a fantastic ending that really takes the song somewhere else, crashing into a very interesting brick wall. Fully instrumental acoustic rock is a difficult thing to do: if the form isn’t going to come from the words and verse/choruses, where is it going come from? This certainly has good things in it, but I don’t think enough care has been put into the melodic material itself.

Song 5: (F*ck Shovel - ‘Long Time Dead’)

Ah, some thrash metal for contrast. Really completely not my thing in any way, although the completely even semi-quaver drum rolls at 144BPM are impressive in a strange sort of way. I think it is quite funny that this music that is trying to sell itself as all rebellion and aggression is actually based on skills that are acquired by spending thousands of hours sitting on your own in your bedroom with a drumpad and a couple of sticks. Beyond this display of technical ability, though, I find it hard to get anything of this music - it’s like watching a horse doing sums at a circus, amazing that it can be done, but why do it? Like some of the other songs I’ve been listening to here, I feel there’s a disparity between the sophistication shown on one level and the total lack of care invested in others - here, any sense of balance or variety. Of course, that isn’t in the aesthetic of the music, and I guess that’s fair enough, but it all seems sadly adolescent…

The Verdict

I have to be honest and say that none of these songs really worked for me as a whole. They all - even the last - had things which are interesting or impressive, very often at the beginning or end of the song. Quite often I felt a good idea that opened the song was thrown out in favour of a bad one, or something that started off well wasn’t seen through. This means that too much of this just seems boring to me - even the last song, despite all its frenzy, is pretty dull because of its predictability. I think I like the fourth song the most, especially the quite out-there ending, but even that isn’t very successful for me as a whole. I really find the second song nearly impossible to listen to the whole way through, although that isn’t really its fault, so I think our thrash metal friends, despite all their hours perfecting those drum rolls, have to be the losers.

The Winner?

Holy F*ck (at a push!)