We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn.

Electrelane - 'On Parade'

It's funny, the cover made me think "I didn't think they made singles like this anymore." It just looks so indie - not necessarily in a bad way, just one that reminds me of how appealingly esoteric and obtuse records by obscure bands seemed to me when my taste in music first shifted in that direction - and the single itself kinda lives up to that. I found it not-all-there on a first listen, but it's growing on me. The highlight has to be the little "doo-doo!" bits which sound like yelps that have then been sampled and treated and are being played on a keyboard (but I could be wrong). It's definitely a song that gets better as it goes along as well as the more often you hear it... The euphoria contained therein is something you can miss the first time.

I dunno, as singles go it's nowhere near as impressive as 'I Want To Be The President' but then, that track apart, I don't really think of Electrelane as a band who *do* singles. Maybe it'll click 100% for me when I hear the album. I'm a bit worried about this Albini bloke though, his thing seems to be to make it sound like the track was recorded in a shed. Oh wait, I mean garage, don't I, that's where the whole "garage rock" thing comes from, right? Only half-kidding and yes, I am a Philistine.

As I pretty much expected, the b-side, a cover of Springsteen's 'I'm On Fire' is the superior track - I don't know if it's the fact that I was blown away when I saw them perform this live, but here Albini's production values become a real plus - it's very raw in the sense of seeming right up there in your face, in the room with you, rather than in a shit indie venue in Camden with a crap PA. It's like this dark, roaring river of Farfisa and bass and crashing cymbals with a girl being spirited away into the night on top of it and shouting about how she's going to steal a girl from a guy (maybe). Okay, that's the poetic bit over with. I realise now why it seemed so appropriate that I was drunk when I heard it: the song itself sounds drunk, crazy loud breaking-things drunk on determination and desire.

The new Electrelane album is called The Power Out and is scheduled for January. I'm not at all sure what to expect from it, but I am pretty expectant and excited...

The first time I met the man like Laces is one of those stories are more or less unrepeatable on this blog due to the fact that I use my real name here and I have family members who are alive and can use Google. Let's just say it was on a Sunday afternoon in a pub in Camden, and by the early evening I was quoting Grant Morrison aggressively at bartenders and looking for the Devil in the bathroom. Let's also just say that Tyrone is one of those people whom interesting times follow like gulls after a fishing boat (to use Eric Cantona's immortal phrase). It's taken him so long to get a blog that I've officially given up Sundays like that and he's moved to Singapore, but it should be worth the wait...

I'm relieved to note that I've read as many as 13 and a half of the UK's (alleged) favourite 21 books - and to be entirely honest, what I'm most relieved about is that there's only one "half" there. I have a terrible habit of starting books I never finish, and this serves as a good reminder that I must read Catch 22 properly at some point... Another relief is the fact that only one of the seven that I haven't read - that's Birdsong, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Gone with the Wind, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, and War and Peace, for the record - is one that I feel that I ought to read at some point (the Tolstoy).

But the really interesting thing is that of the ones I have read, if I had to pick a favourite then His Dark Materials stands out by a mile (even though I'm a bit dubious about the inclusion of trilogies as single works for the purpose of the list). It just really is that bloody good - while I share, to a far lesser extent, a few reservations raised by others about the philosophy being put forward within the books - as a writer Pullman cannot be hyped enough, in my humble opinion.

Of course, this also ties in to my continued disavowal of nostalgia, and of the idea of diminishing returns in culture: that a children's fantasy novel written withing the last decade can leave the canon of 'English Literature' in, well, the dust*... I'll be pleased if Pullman wins overall.

*(Oh come on, somebody had to say it.)

Notes on a Saturday evening:

London was fizzing with William Gibson-esque energy last night. As we hung around outside a couple of Chinese restaurants near the Prince Charles cinema, a girl with brightly coloured dreadlocks cycled up on one of those low-riding rickshaws that are taking over Soho slowly, very slowly. I kept catching a whiff of something unknown but familiar: the way London smelled when I would first visit, strange and almost pornographically grown-up, daunting. It reminded me of why I chose to live here, why I didn't feel that I could live anywhere else - a different type of necessity to that which you feel once you've made a place you're home, and just can't leave for other, sometimes more practical reasons.

A new Ghostface Killah track plays on Westwood as I sit in Nina's bedroom and type this. In the pub where we met people after dinner - most of them well on their way to a state we were never going to catch up with - Danny and I chatted about Westwood, and how while our primary response to him is always hilarity - "Warwick University is one of my favourite spots to tear the party up" being the choicest quote from tonight's show - our basic opinion on a profound level is that he deserves respect...