Ahhh, steampunk. If being a goth doesn’t get you enough fingers pointed at you, try out this sub sub genre involving alternate histories, victoriana and cogs. To be honest it holds its wonderfully geeky charms and has attracted enough people for a proper shindig in the Cross Kings in Kings Cross. As I am a big ol’ geek too, I’m there.
Faded, one-trick embarrassment Marilyn Manson has, it seems morphed into an angry fourteen year old kid, under attack from the jocks in school.
Blogging on his MySpace page (which is already funny), he has threatened to kill any journalists who fabricate any stories about him. The ’soon-to-be-murdered-in-their-home press’ are obviously quaking in their boots at the though of an overweight has-been and his legions (around seventeen at last count) of outcast children calling at their door. His threat is quite specific..
Not the best CD cover I've ever seen...
As the weather turns ever colder and the nights ever darker, it seems only fitting that we get round to covering some Goth on DownTuned, and they don’t come much Gothier than London’s (And formerly Warsaw’s) Higher Love.
While The Cure are the obvious touchstone throughout this demo, there are touches of U2 (Especially in the twangy, hangy guitar lines) and Joy Division to be had, and at least a faint glimmer of perrenial underdogs London After Midnight and some very early (Read: very odd) Human League. There’s certainly a very 80s vibe going on, and the heavily accented vocals actually help add to the generally vampiric atmosphere at times, putting me in mind of Outcast (not the “Hey-Yah!” Andre 3000 ones…), and this has the potential to be a major selling point for the band, if only they weren’t quite so po-faced (Or possibly “Poe” faced?) about it all. Goth, while being deadly serious, is also an inherently ridiculous form, and it’s best practitioners know and play on this. This failing is unfortunately particularly apparent on “Do You Talk About Love”, where amatuerish production and deadly seriousness combine to create humour for all the wrong reasons.
