"We're all going backwards..."

"...the world's in division"

These words, these lyrics from ...And Stones, are what came to mind recently and repeatedly. It comes from listening to the news too much, from despairing at the geopolitical chaos unleashed upon the world by the orange toddler. As if having climate anxiety wasn't enough, now we can be anxious about everything else as well.

Yes, I know this is me returning to Swagger yet again. Sorry (not sorry). Take comfort in the fact that one day I'll get to the point where I've featured every song on the album at least once... and then I can just stop blogging completely and put us all out of our misery. Until then...

Hey, you in that dress
Yeah, we've all been long-ex-
We've all had that nervousness now
Turn to this stress
And we wonder as we wear business dress
Slip in little flames
About miles apart
Styles apart and miles apart
And stones

Lovers uptown, we went uptown
There were lovers uptown, we went uptown

Hey, we can get close
Close on the one hand
Remembered on the other
But how we got too close in that mood
Yeah, I've been to your town
It was always someone else’s
It was  neat and sparse
It was easily understood
There were never clues in there like ours

Lovers all around, we went all around
There were lovers all around, we went all around

Yeah, I'll say it, I'll say it for you
But don’t repeat it, don’t even think it
We’re all going backwards
The world's in division
Cross everyone else
But give me a description
Of what’s joint in this town
Describe an arc of your own
Describe yourself
Yeah, description

Smaller than thought
How wayward intention
Not as wicked as people say
Send me a letter with clues
Send, send flattering dreams
Send love, send stones, send structures

Love is uptown, we went uptown
There were lovers uptown, we went uptown

Altogether now
Say my name and hi! (Hi! Hi...)
Smile and hold your head back
Close your eyes
Close your eyes and take as read
Close your eyes
Close your eyes, then throw your arms around
Whoever you think it is

TLAP: Guinness 0.0

On a recent pub visit, I asked the corkscrew-haired, indie-chick barmaid if she had Guinness 0.0 - she thought for a bit, disappeared from view, then came back with a can in her hand and said it was the last one they had left. Lucky me...

Guinness 0.0

What's it like? I'll be honest, I'm not the most frequent drinker of the black stuff, so maybe I'm not best placed to judge... but as far as I can tell, this looks like regular Guinness, feels like regular Guinness and tastes like regular Guinness. I'm not sure I could easily tell the difference, and what more could anyone ask from an alcohol-free beer? On top of that, it's tasty too. As with regular Guinness, it takes the first inch of the pint for me to get acclimatised, but after that I'm off and running.

Would I drink it in a pub? Yes.

Would I drink more than one? Yes. It's a creamy, tasty pint!

Would I drink it all night? Possibly not, but only because Guinness can be quite heavy, so I might need some variety.

Stats: 0.0% ABV. Calories 85 kcal/500ml. Fat free! Currently £13.25 for a 10x440ml cans in Sainsbury's

Stars: ★★★★★

So, a song. I was going to go with Zero by The Donnas, but the Imagine Dragons song of the same name gets the nod, not least for its unusual video and deceptively heavy lyrics.

Blue Friday: Comfort Me

Another that doesn't sound too blue, musically, but this is Sparklehorse, so you might know better, lyrically. Who doesn't need a little comfort? I know I do.

With rocks in my dress
And smoke in my hair
I walked into a lake
To get some sleep down in there

Won't you come to comfort me?
Won't you come to comfort me?

With minnows in my belly
And deep in my veins
The breath-robbin' lightning
Was making diamonds of rain

Won't you come to comfort me?
Won't you come to comfort me?

I dreamed I was born on a mountain on the moon
Where nothing grows or ever rots
I dreamed that I had me a daughter
Who was magnificent as a horse

Won't you come to comfort me?
Won't you come to comfort me?
Won't you come to comfort me?
Won't you come to comfort me?

TLAP: Erdinger Alkoholfrei

I went to the pub at the weekend, for a friend's birthday drinks. It was cold and icy, and I cycled, so it seemed like a good time to further my exploration of alcohol-free ales. I asked the corkscrew-haired, indie-chick barmaid if she had any 0% options - she thought for a bit, disappeared from view, then came back with a bottle in her hand and said this was probably the nearest thing she had. That was good enough for me...

Erdinger Alkoholfrei

What's it like? Blatantly advertised by its German makers as a post-sport isotonic drink (really!), this is actually a wheat beer that is brewed according to Bavarian Purity Law, apparently. It's clear, straw-yellow, and pours with a big head. It smells quite yeasty, to my nose at least, and is quite refreshing in a way, but mostly it is just very malty (which is not necessarily to my taste) and surprisingly gassy.

Would I drink it in a pub? Well, I did, so...

Would I drink more than one? Probably not. It's alright but a bit too malty for me. Your mileage may vary.

Would I drink it all night? No (see above).

Stats: <0.5% ABV. Calories 125 kcal/500ml. Sugar 18g/500ml. Contains vitamins B9, B12 and polyphenols. Currently £2 for a 500ml bottle in Tesco

Stars: ★★★☆☆

So, a song, In honour of Erdinger's Bavarian roots, this is Mexico by Munich's The Capitols. What popular music needs is more recorder middle eights, right?

New to NA: The Rare Occasions

Another band that Amusements Minor has brought to my attention, as he continues his never-ending journey into Spotify. The Rare Occasions are an LA-based, New England-bred indie rock band known for their explosive garage rock anthems with catchy vocal harmonies. They formed in Boston in 2012 and, since then, have toured nationally, won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, and released a vast catalog of music online. I know all this to be true, because I've just copied and pasted it from their website.

The song I heard Amusements Minor humming along to is this, Notion. I find it very listenable, even if the vocalist sounds like he comes from up north, rather than LA. I'm also intrigued by the mini-film video. What do you reckon?

I should add that whilst this band is new to me, that video has had 46 million views and counting on YouTube. Where have I been?

Turning over a new leaf

Seems I've written about The Reds, Pinks and Purples quite a lot in the last five or so years. I make no apology for that, because the music is good.

To wit, here's their new single, New Leaf - three and a half minutes of shuffly ear-worm and half-sung, half-mumbled melancholia. "Undersung" is the word I like to imagine exists to describe Glenn Donaldson's style.

See? That was good, wasn't it?

Thank you very much

On the 91st anniversary of his birth, it occurs to me that I've never written about Elvis Presley, in more than 20 years of blogging. So here's some Blue Aeroplanes and Manic Street Preachers, to maintain that proud record.

P.S. Pub quiz trivia time - just realised that Elvis and Bowie shared a birthday.

Music Assembly: Escape

It took me a while to track this down but as ever the inestimable Tunefind came to my rescue. It's Escape, an orchestral piece by the composer Craig Armstrong. It starts with anticipatory strings, almost menacing, the sort of thing you might hear as background music in a Craig-era Bond movie or a Nolan-helmed Batman. But as more and more voices get added, the scope of the piece swells too - it takes on grander proportions. And then the percussion kicks in around the four and a half minute mark. The whole thing ends up leaning heavily into "epic" territory.... which is probably why it got picked up for this old Top Gear review of the BMW M5, where I first heard it. So here it is is context, from Clarkson pressing the M button at 1:05

And here's the piece in its entirety. How does Armstrong not do more soundtrack work?

TLAP: Lucky Saint Hazy IPA

And so begins a new series I shall be calling "Two Light Ales Please", in reference to the placard from the final Smiths gig.

I made my first website, back in the days before blogging, thirty years ago this year. HTML was (and still is) easy to learn, Geocities (kids, ask your parents) provided free hosting, throw in some webrings to generate traffic (kids, ask your parents) and then all you had to contend with was slow uploading via nascent dial-up connections (kids, ask your - oh, you get the idea). One of the first webpages I wrote was a guide to real ales - I set myself a target of drinking 100 different bitters during the course of the year, then gave each a star-rating and a one-line write-up, and posted the whole thing online. In the end I'd hit the 100 before the end of September, such was the frequency with which The Man Of Cheese and I went to the pub in those days.

Thirty years... doesn't seem possible... sigh.

Anyway, times change, and trips to the pub become less frequent (and less bacchanalian). I still like a pint, though. And something I've noticed, as I get older and allegedly more sensible, is that alcohol-free offerings are far more plentiful than they were in my youth. At least they are if you drink lager ... 0% bitters are much rarer. And they're a mixed bag, in my experience, to say the least. So, to mark the 30th anniversary of my original online ale guide, this year I will be sampling alcohol-free ales and reviewing them here. I know, I know, no-one cares ... but then that's never stopped me blogging anything else, has it? Here we go, then: a very short write-up, some basic yes/no questions and, for old time's sake, a star rating.

Lucky Saint Hazy IPA

What's it like? Fruity! Maybe grapefruity, but certainly fruity. Lightish in colour and a little hazy, as the name suggests. Pours nicely but not gassy, thank goodness. Light on the palate, this is a proper IPA that looks and taste like the real thing, albeit a newfangled real thing rather than an old-school real ale sort of real thing. Don't worry, I'll be getting to those.

Would I drink it in a pub? Yes, happily.

Would I drink more than one? Yes. It's nice!

Would I drink it all night? No, that would be too much fruitiness.

Stats: 0.5% ABV. Calories 59 kcal/can. Zero Sugar. Suitable for Vegans. Currently on offer at £5 for 4 x 330ml cans in Waitrose (no, I haven't forgotten my roots, they just have a far wider selection of alcohol-free bitters than any other supermarket in my catchment area)

Stars: ★★★★☆

I'll wrap up each review with a loosely relevant song since, let's be honest, that's what most of you come here for. For Hazy IPA, here's The Bangles covering Simon & Garfunkel's Hazy Shade of Winter, and not just because I've been smitten with Susanna (obligatory sigh) for even more than 30 years...

Randcamp: New Year's Day

Searching Bandcamp for songs called "New Year's Day" throws up a lot of execrable rubbish, not all of which are cover versions of Bono's boys. But here's three that aren't terrible.

Ken Nilsen is a singer songwriter from the US who, from the sounds of this, mostly just wants to play his guitar. This song is two years old today.

Ladyshark are a New York punk 3-piece girl-band. This starts okay and has interesting short-story-esque lyrics...

This is probably my favourite of the three, by the challengingly-named Cancer Kittens. Now eight years old, this is unlikely to lift any low moods.

This might be the start of a new series (Randcamp, maybe?) in which I stick random search terms into Bandcamp and report the best (or worst) findings, who knows? But for now, which (if any) of these three do you like?