The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Like the Banana Splits sang, “I enjoy being a boy.” I want to fuck and fight and see blood and sometimes I hate myself for not being man enough. And sometimes I can be cruel and hateful and arrogant and bloody-minded and pathetic and I love doing coke and seeing dead bodies and I worry about length and girth and I’d probably fuck a 15-year-old if I knew I could get away with it. That’s how I feel about my shit a lot of the time; it’s my base masculinity getting the better of me. I get really male; not like Sports and War Male, more thinking about fucking and heavy revenge on my Enemies Male. I can really hate someone when I put my mind to it and it really makes me feel alive. I would love to kill a man.

I spend much of my time searching for a reflection of the above ugly, childish maleness in music because I like music that reflects who I am, and I am an ugly, childish male. Real maleness in music is weird because, although most musicians are men, they’re not real men. Political correctness invaded music in the eighties and it’s still castrating honesty to this day. Now it’s almost unacceptable to not have a cause or agenda beyond telling the world how you feel, without apologising. I don’t listen to indie music because of all the bookish types telling me how clever they are. Everyone in music was bullied at school, but you know a lot of those bands weren’t bullied because they were slight and didn’t like games; they were bullied because they were smug little cunts. Those bands do kitchen sink lyrics, but they’re too fruity and not normal enough to sing about being normal. It always sounds so affected.

That band Los Campesinos! are the worst for it. Cutesy little bitches. The only band that did that properly was Arab Strap, because Aidan Moffat was brave enough to not hold back. He talked about things in the most intimate possible terms - not sexy-intimate, truth-intimate. He talked about things that pop music doesn’t often address without dosing up with romance, like reading your girlfriend’s diary while taking a shit, borderline stalking, creeping insecurities and suspicions… horrible things. He obviously understood something that the bookish, fey indie bands never could: that life and human relationships aren’t about clever rhymes, a commitment to veganism, rare seven inches, Sylvia Plath or a vintage naval coat. And they’re not about the things you’ve built onto yourself; that pop culture has made you become. They are about an interaction on an intimate level where all your lies are exposed. We all know the most immaculately turned out scenesters are usually the fruitiest dudes; the men who spend time on their hair and who have had a Stalinist revision of the past whereby at no point they were ever anything but in the scene they’re in now. They’re not real men; they’re liars. If girls are down with those boys, they’re idiots because they’re not real people; they’re constructs. They check the scene manual to see how they’re supposed to feel. Arab Strap spoke about being disgusting and awful, stupid, cruel and mindless. There was a genuine confessional aspect to what was being said, with humour and without self-pity. That’s how real men tell the world how they’re feeling about shit.

That confessional shit can go too far, though. The problem with Bright Eyes is he’s too overwrought to be the next Dylan. Dylan has dealt with the whole gamut of emotions. We’re quite a few albums into Conor Oberst’s career and all we’ve really got from him is ‘inconsolably sad’. He trembles and wallows like he’s in therapy and it’s humourless and a bit embarrassing, like when someone you just met at a party tells you about their eating disorder way too soon into the evening. I guess some people listen to him when they’re into a girl and it’s not going their way, but then you just end up feeling like him; like it’s the end of the world.

The thing is, I’m as much of a fag about girls as anyone, and it usually is the end of the world, but there’s no dignity in self-pity. You’ve got to pick it up, compose yourself. I mainly play Nick Cave’s last few records for that: he’s got a million ways of telling a girl he loves her without breaking down or making anyone uncomfortable. It’s like he could turn up at her house, wearing one of those great suits with an open collar he wears, say the shit he needs to say and walk away with his head held high, even if she told him fuck off. No trembling, no wailing or gnashing of teeth, just keeping it together because he knows he needs to. I don’t care if it’s his pop record, The Boatman’s Call shits on all other break-up records because it’s so dignified. There’s no regret - he just accepts his mistakes and gets on with it. Grinderman really had a handle on the seedy frustrations of manhood too.

I haven’t cited as many examples as I’d have liked to. I had this whole spiel on hardcore and metal and how if you don’t like shouting and loud guitars you’re not a real boy (buy a Cro Mags record, you girls), but the point is that life is hard and you’ve got to be hard too. Don’t bitch and whine and spend time on your hair because that’s not being a man; that’s being a spoilt kid. My friends have developed this phrase that’s really helped me recently. It’s ‘man up’. In short: be a man, son, do what you know you need to do, not what you want to do.

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