An address to the better off
These two pages from Pantry For The World are the continuation of the piece comparing and contrasting Momus and McCarthy (which began here), with dollops of Billy Childish, Wings of desire, Jeanette Winterson and Malcolm Lowry thrown in for good measure. Laying my text over an interview with Nick Currie from French music magazine Les [...]
Ruining it for the Kids
At the foot of Pantry For The World’s editorial page, I wrote ‘Some days I listen to but one song, once. That song is “Stumble”…’ That song, as regular readers of Backed with will know, is by Emily, and is available for download here. The words led into the next page, which reported on ‘Doing [...]
Paper covered editions
I’ve been enjoying Littlepixel’s ongoing and eclectic series of album covers turned into Pelican books. They recall Andy Royston’s Faber-esque ‘paper covered edition’ sleeve for McCarthy’s ‘The well of loneliness’. Thanks to Bimble, you can compare and contrast that cover with the Pelicans – and download the still rousing five song 12 inch while you’re there.
Modern Studies
The third stage of my journey from fun-loving pop fanatic and tractor boy to misery pop fanatic and psychogeographic depressive, Pot Plant Pantry appeared in late 1987 and saw me retreating from the throwaway stuff. Stung by a rebuke meted out to me in response to Too Much Hanky Pantry that I should ‘fuck off [...]
All your questions answered
From the deliberately saccharine sweetness of ‘An MP speaks’ to the Byrdsian jangle and drone of ‘Write to your MP today’, McCarthy held firm conceptually. Across their three LPs and nine singles or EPs, the music jangled and the words jarred. And then that was that, the concept perhaps inevitably exhausted. Malcolm Eden resurfaced briefly [...]
