Sugar rush
Marcus Berkmann
As in real life, it’s considered faintly reprehensible in music to have a sweet tooth. Greens are good for you, and so is The Velvet Underground, but right now I’m thinking about going up to the shop at the end of the road and buying a packet of Maltesers, having just listened to a Take That album. I can’t believe I have just written those words. If you had told me ten years ago that not only would I voluntarily listen to a Take That album in 2008, but that it would also be my own copy, which I had bought with my own money, I think I would have assumed that some form of early-onset dementia was about to take hold. Somewhere in the intervening decade, however, it became generally accepted that Gary Barlow, Thingy, Whatsisname and Grungyface possess a certain low-level talent and even write the occasional decent song. I’d loved the two singles, ‘Patience’ and ‘Shine’, so when Amazon discounted the album to £4.98 the other week, I pressed click, albeit with a lump in my throat and a blush extending to my toes. Shame isn’t an emotion I experience very often, but I can tell you it was a lot easier buying it this way than over the counter in HMV.
Pop, though, is in the ascendancy again. Radio One announced recently that it is turning its hoodie-clad back on rock, and indeed roll, and embracing once again the broad church of pop — which, from my brief listens over the past few weeks, seems to mean repeated plays of The Feeling in between all the shouting. Vast numbers of people I know who never listen to Radio One if they can help it are outraged by this decision, which probably wouldn’t have been noticed if it hadn’t been announced in order to attract precisely this sort of attention. The world’s premier music station really should be playing something a little more ... nourishing. With all those young white female singers who want to sound like Aretha, there’s a distinct shortage of vitamins and minerals — indeed, it’s more like eating one of those vast buckets of popcorn they sell in multiplexes, with a side order of Smarties. And after listening to the Take That album a few times, I felt a bit sick and had to go and have a liedown.
As with so many pop albums down the years, the singles are the only songs worth hearing. The others are lavished with the same rich, syrupy production, which I now realise is compulsory for all aspiring pop acts. At least they sound like Take That rather than The Feeling or Amy Winehouse — the only other two pop templates currently allowed — but I’m already starting to think of other vital uses that £4.98 might have been put to.
Some flavours, though, become less satisfying as we get older, if you can still eat them at all. The sweets of our youth always seemed so much more appetising, somehow. These days, by contrast, we have become conscious that our favourite puddings and chocolate bars are full of appalling additives and hydrogenated vegetable fat. What you want is something sweet but not actually life-threatening. I think I’ve found this recently in Ben Taylor, the little-known son of Carly Simon and James Taylor, who released a solo album a year or so ago. Again I bought it cheap, having heard one track (this time on a magazine compilation). Ben has a voice very much like his dad’s and has clearly ingested his parents’ music since the womb: indeed Another Run Around the Sun (Independiente) sounds as though it was made in the mid-70s in California, as opposed to the mid-noughties in RAK Studios in London. But what tunes! There are half a dozen absolute belters on this album, songs that actually grow with repeated listening, with all the usual pop tricks added, but sparingly, as though sensitive to the listener’s digestive system. So, lots of acoustic guitars, strategic use of backing vocals, light and shade in the songs — a bowl of strawberries rather than a bucket of butterscotch-flavoured Angel Delight. Hmm, haven’t tasted that for a while ...
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