Author of "The Birth And Impact Of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters And Insatiable Ones"
The heart wants what the heart wants.
We love the people we love.
When I listen to the music of certain artists my heart, what’s left of it, skips, skips, skips a beat. There are very few people in the world of popular music who are deserving of the label of artist. An artist isn’t someone who can rhyme moon with June.
An artist isn’t anyone who owns a copy of “Rubber Soul”.
An artist isn’t a bloke being all blokey.
An artist isn’t razorblades and white lines.
An artist ain’t just who you like.
An artist is someone with control of their chosen medium, with a voice (not an appearance on The Voice), possessed of an ability to make you fink or feel fings wot you haven’t done fought or felt before.
Over two solo albums, and two with Sink Ya Teeth, Gemma Cullingford has morphed from a musician into an artist. Drawing on a wide range of musical inspirations, some obvious, others much more subtle, and pulling on a passion for pop music that includes everything from Bananarama’s “Aie a Mwana” to The Monochrome Set’s “He’s Frank”…and a whole heap of pop oddities and curiosities in between.
She has revealed her innermost thoughts, fears, and passions.
She is fearless.
An artist.
Now she returns with an E.P of songs where her delicate whispered, ghost-like, voice lurks in the shadows of her own music, while performer, poet, and polemicist, Luke Wright drops all the “shit Morrissey says in interviews” (not really), in the style of Piers Morgan flouncing off the set (no, not really).
Wrights words are a case study in what happens when someone with something to say, and the ability to say them, decides to do so…it helps that his turn of phrase, his lyrical/poetic inspirations, his passion and fury, are so glorious that every word is a poem in its own right.
There are just four tracks on FOMO, and each one is better than the collected songs on every album you, and I, are ready to proclaim the album of the year.
Deal with it.
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