recommendation

you know me. i don't try to shove my own interests or tastes down anyone's throat. i even kind of resent it when other bloggers deign to be cultural arbiters. but this is different. if you don't buy or download siouxie sioux's new album mantaray, your life will be the worse.

admittedly, i have a fetish. my main fetish is for NYC in the 1970s. this may have developed from watching "sesame street" while growing up, but it is totalizing: if you show me a movie that takes place there and then, with sideburns and wrap dresses and afros and gigantic cars and leather coats with big wide collars, with a soundtrack featuring cream, i guarantee i will like it. i love the punk movement, hubert selby, jr., the velvet underground, black power, and even simon and garfunkel (come to think of it, listening to them as a kid might have influenced this, too). and of course, the rolling stones and stevie wonder ruled in the '70s and have been extremely lame ever since 1980. second to my 1970s NYC thing, is a 1970s london thing. all that joy division business, e.g. and the clash and rude boys and everything. i don't remember anything about quadrophenia except for its aesthetic. (or was that the 60s?)

and of course good old siouxie sioux was prominent in the london punk scene of the 1970s. and of course when i was a teenager i thought there would have been nothing cooler than to have been at the concert where siouxie and the banshees premiered their version of the lord's prayer. and now? she is a middle-aged lady who loves her job and is kick-ass at it. she can sing. and she can, just as importantly, hire a producer. holy crap, this album is good, and not the least because she ranks among the Coolest People Ever (a list that includes patti smith, of course, arguably siouxie's NYC countepart in many ways but whose most recent collection SUCKS). it's also awesome because siouxie's kinda the same but kinda different, and it's dark, dark, slick and complicated pop. what are you doing still reading this? go get it!