The 2kDozen 500: #303 - The Pheromoans, "Bar-Rock"

Oddball, Fall-flavoured music. This seems to have fallen off the collective radar of late; or at least the tiny green sliver of it that I'm aware of. He is some. Weary, confused sounding Southern art rock. That diseased literary swagger with minimum musical interference.

"What is he going to say/When he finds out/He's not the biggest arsehole/In the building today?"

It seems they don't hang about, The Pheromoans - but then I suppose there isn't much to hold them back. They have a new album, "Does This Guy Stack Up?", which I'm not able to hear yet. But this is from only a few months ago too, I think.

This is music to hangover by. "They have big chins in there", he paranoias on "Men In Black Satin". Alcohol almost certainly plays a part. A much under-understood drug in the creative process, I think. It inspires such literary rambling and ideal levels of self-loathing, random aggression and shaky-handed paranoia to allow some dark grey creativities to flower. It's no accident that MES is a drinker. It's tragic, but it's not accident. (In fact, thinking of things along Grecian lines, you cannot really have a tragic accident; tragedy is fucking you up where you least expected, but deep down most suspected.)

I was watching again the Seven Ages of Rock: Indie Rock on the BBC the other day. It said that Manchester was the home of indie rock. Manchester has given the world a great any great bands - although nothing on any great scale since that monobrowed clutch of twat*; but a UK band like this could only function in London. There are bands that make independent-minded, awkward music that could not find a "home" in Manchester. If MCCR is the home of indie, it's an oppressive home that indie outgrew and shudders to visit. Manchester gave the world a plan of how to make music for yourselves, release it yourselves and cock snooks at the major label dem; but idealising the burg ignores the role of Rough Trade in making that happen.

"The Only Way Is Up" has a great Fall-ish rumblebilly strut, lyrics about "nightmares in the dream home". It's suburban stuff, reaching out to shape a world that reflects the difference that is felt inside. It's music with a brain stood in front of it. With a drop of piss on its trousers and the smell of something askance.

Rating: Drinky Brain Awkwards out of Unhappy Suburbs

*At no point did the High-Flying Berk refer to rock in musical terms, only in terms of its fucking symbolic accessories. I wish for withering death to take hold of his musical legacy and strike it from the Earth.