No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.14 - "Not Up To You" (Stereophonics)

Last time this band appeared in these essays, I talked a little about how you have to accept that the acts you love will change. Some will change more than others, though. Some will age better.

In hindsight, my love affair with Stereophonics was doomed from the start. Their first album remains one of my favourite debuts I've heard, but it relies on an alchemical process almost impossible to repeat. The recipe is simple enough - two parts classic rock delivered by a frontman whose tonsils have the density and range of quasars, one part muddled melancholy as you watch the tiny community which offered you nothing as you grew up in it continue to die by degrees. 

The first trick is in actually mixing those ingredients. Sad-gossip-garage-rock? Are you, like, entirely fucking sure? But it works. Or at least, it did in the context of the '90s, when British mainstream rock was crying out for a band that was willing to look past their own dicks. Or, for that matter, to not steal all their good riffs (including a Stereophonics one, actually.)

The second trick, though, is even tougher. The problem isn't in identifying or combining your ingredients; it's in finding them. The band took a while to hit, but when they did, it was with the force of a collapsing coalmine. Catapulted into a world of stadium gigs, Tom Jones collaborations, and backstage shenanigans with Noel Gallagher (which he presumably went into wired for sound), Stereophonics found themselves in a situation where bittersweet songs about backwater bar dramas might be tough to sell, and, more critically, were impossible to source. The lead single from Word Gets Around was about a homeless man who remembers his past just well enough to seek it out, but not well enough to remember where to find it. The lead single from Performance And Cocktails was about a sly deal between a bartender watching who gets most drunk, and a thief who steals from those identified as least likely to notice. The lead single from Just Enough Education To Perform? A tuneless whine about how the music press had been mean to the band. It's almost too perfect that "Mr Writer" was (at the time) by some distance not just the worst Stereophonics single, but their worst recorded song.

Maybe you have to have a certain amount of bombastic self-regard in order to play the kind of stages the band suddenly graduated to. How would I know? All I can tell you is that without that strange, bittersweet taste of nostalgia for something you'd always resented, you may as well be listening to fucking Oasis anyway (though Jones' riffs are still better than Gallagher's).

"Not Up To You" isn't the best song on Word Gets Around, but it's likely the strongest distillation of what makes the album work so well (It's not quite true that there are more truly great songs on Word Gets Around than on their subsequent eleven albums, but I did have to crunch the numbers to check). It's too melodic to be a dirge, (just) too high-tempo to be mopey, but the song's simple structure and heavy haze still recalls shoegaze, only - and this is critical - we're staring at the shoes of other people. Kelly Jones is one of those musicians whose lyrical quality is inversely proportional to his lyrical precision, and "Not Up To You" is a triumph of smudged thumbnail sketches of lives no-one else was in a position to even notice. 

Maybe it's just that simple The songs on Word Gets Around are always about other people, even if Jones' memories are our way in. An accused paedophile, a wedding barely holding itself together, two - maybe three - suicides, one drunk high-functioning, one very much not. And the characters in "Not Up To You" don't even reach those levels of local notoriety. Not even stories, just butts of cruel jokes in low lighting. All they're doing is living and lying and loving and lusting in a village that, save for Stereophonics, we probably would never have heard of. Even though there's an unknown village in all of us.

"Who's to know", indeed. "Who's to know; whatever".

B-Side

"And Bark, And Grunt, And Roar, And Burn"

(Image from Wakelet)

(Spoilers for up to Episode 100 of The Magnus Archives below).

"'Til The World Falls Down"

(Image from Wakelet)

Right. Now we’re talking. Now, things are kicking off.

(Spoilers for all five seasons of The Magnus Archives below.)

Boxing Clever

(Image from Wakelet)

(Specific spoilers for The Magnus Archives Season 1, and oblique references to the whole show)

"Do Not Open" is a fun episode to take apart, because none of my usual routes actually work. There's no way to do much in the way of character study here; the common observation is that Josh is surprisingly smart is correct, but that's a plot beat rather than a character note. Semiotically, the statement is unusually (and ironically) lacking in depth. This in itself isn't a complaint. Not everything needs subtext, and a twenty-minute horror story can certainly do enough other things for it to not need powerful thematic undertows. I guess you could try and link Joshua's experiences in Amsterdam with his time struggling not to open the box, twisting the whole into some commentary on alcohol/drug recovery.  Importantly, though, that would be tasteless. Even more importanly, it would be shit.

No. Let's just take this one at face value. It's certainly pretty enough. Essentially, and this delights me, "Do Not Open" is a locked-box mystery where the goal is figuring out how not to unlock the box. As I've said, Magnus Arvhives fans talk a lot about how smart Joshua's solution is, but that's just one peak among many. Joshua calmly works his way through figuring out the basics of something entirely inexplicable, and keeps himself alive as a result.

This also means the box's contents aren't revealed to us. Yes, we return to it next season, but this early into the show, where there's no firm evidence there even is an ongoing plot, never mind where it might lead, there's no reason to think we'll ever learn what lies inside the box. This is probably, for me, even smarter of Sims than the solution he cooks up for Joshua to delpoy. The need to open the unopenable box for the audience is Horror 101. No, it's more general than that. It's woven into the most basic levels of storytelling, from poor Pandora onwards. If you set up a box whose contents cannot be released, someone's going to do just that. It's just too obviously a source of entertainment, however bleakly defined. We might call it Chekov's Fun.

But no. While it seems very likely that John opens the box at the end of the statment, he does so leaving Joshua - and hence the audience - with no clear idea of the consequences. the mystery is deliberately prioritised over the satisfying reveal. This is true more generally here, too. Why does the box scratch when he puts orange juice on its lid? Is there something specific about it being liquid, linking it to the mellifluous moaning when it rains? Why does the weather affect the coffin, anyway? What lay within the dreams Joshua no longer remembers?  And over all of this, just why did John pick a Brit in Amsterdam to look after a coffin?

I've heard Sims talk about the difficulty in providing enough answers to play fair with the audience, while avoiding giving them so much the mystery is lost. It's a problem every serialised story which trades in mystery has to grapple with eventually, and Sims stakes out his position quite early here. Even with the entire storyline resolved, much of what I've pointed to above still has no answers. Sure, we know now that torrential rain and the flooding it can cause lies within the remit of The Buried, and that the scratching Joshua heard was probably some poor soul desperately trying to escape. There are still far more questions than answers, though.

For instance: just what actually was going on with John? I've not listened to every Q&A Sims has done, so it's possible he's explicitly ruled this theory out, but I'd always assumed the original plan was for John to be an avatar of the Buried, rather than the Stranger. The way he's described as very short, with a strange aura of density, and the way he refers to himself as being "inside" a foreign land, all point that way. So too does the fact the first victims of the Buried we learn of are both called John. My theory circa Season Three was that both lost Johns eventually became avatars, with one getting killed by his own God for not feeding the coffin, and the other one going on to... well, there's a question. Here's another one: isn't it odd that we never actually meet a contemporary avatar of the Buried, literally the only of the fourteen fears that this is true of?

Maybe this is just an example of early installment weirdness, or external events forcing a change of plans (such as the intended fates of Tim and Sasha). Or maybe it's neither of those things, and I'm just playing around in one of the corners of his world that was always meant to remain dark. My point here, once again, is how well Sims manages to make it difficult to tell what's been shifted around. The Magnus Archives, on top of everything else it is, is one of the most coherent serialised stories I've ever seen, even among single-artist works. Part of that is no doubt careful planning, but it's also about the savviness of keeping so much in shadow, you can rearrange things when people aren't looking.

As a horror story, this episode doesn't hit quite as hard as its predecessor (though that says more about how strong the show was, straight out of the gate). Follow ups are always hard, of course (is that why Joshua references The Lost World, Michael Crichton's first sequel, at least under his own name?). And really, in almost every other way, this is a clear step forward. "Angler Fish" immediately showed that Sims could write an effective horror story. "Do Not Open" proved that he knew why what he was writing was effective.

Fifteen To One

(Image from Wakelet)

So. The first of four essays about the four semi-finalists in the Magnus Cup. For those not in the know (and if this applies to you, you might want to rethink their life choices), The Magnus Archives is effortlessly the best horror podcast I've come across in the last seven or eight years. So good that I spent about nine months in 2019/2020 writing a Twitter thread about an episode every single day. Some of those threads were not short.

When even that wasn't enough (and I wrote up the fifth season too, week by week, as it came out), I'm in the process of using the SCIENCE of polls to SCIENTIFICALLY SCIENCE the best episode of the whole damn shebang - all two hundred episodes of it. Check it out on Twitter: the hashtag is #MagnusCup (not the one about swimming) and it's been going on for FUCKING AGES.

Explanations out of the way, I'm gonna chat about "The Eye Opens", judged by humans who press buttons to be one of the top four episodes of the show. It's also the Season Four finale, so if you've not come across the show before, or even if you just haven't worked through the first 160 episodes yet (and again, I did one a day and wrote about it, so save your excuses), I'd stay clear of what unspools below.

Friday 40K: The Littlest Waaagh!

Not done this in a while, innit. It's been... fucking hell, sixteen months since I last finished a model. Partly that's moving house, changing jobs, etc., but also it's because I've been in the process of painting eighteen Ork boys at once (along with three Intercessors, three Plague Marines, a Tyranid Warrior brood, a Tyranid Ripper brood, a spy from Talisman and five miniatures of various sizes from Dreadfleet), in a manifestly stupid way.

Look at them! All arranged in step order, in a most un-Orky manner. I had hoped to have this picture set up so the first mini was entirely unpainted, and the last completely done, but tragically my painting process ended up having nineteen stages rather than seventeen. Thus was my otherwise brilliant and sensible plan dashed upon the rocks of reality.

Not to worry, though! After taking the above photo (in my brand new collapsible lightbox, which thus far is significantly less dogshit than both my previous collapsible lightboxes), I took the dude at the front right and finished him to completion.

Rather proud of this guy - it's the most thorough paint job I've ever done on anything other than my first four Dreadfleet vessels (well, maybe my Hammerfall bunker, depending on how you judge these things). Certainly it's the most ludicrous ratio of time expended to points cost, with this guy being worth... FUCKING HELL, just eight points. Half a point a month is taking the piss even by my standards.

Still, a major milesone. My first Ork model from Assault On Black Reach, released just fourteen years and four 40K editions ago. And hey, the next one is already 84% painted! I'll have a proper Waaagh! together before you know it.

Poetry Hexadecagon

This is ludicrously niche even by my standards, but as part of the general policy round here of trying to keep everything I do in one place, here are sixteen poems I wrote over the last two months, each about an episode of The Magnus Archives. 

(If anyone's reading this who hasn't actually listened to that show, then a) spoilers!, and b) you should get right on that if you're a horror fan.)

Anatomy Class

Hearts want what they want
Even false, spasming, wrong
They want what they want

Family Business

There died a young scion of Von Closen
Whose soul in a tome was then frozen
Until a deal he got done
Brought the page count down one
To ensure he'd no more be arosen

The Eye Opens

Statistics are the numbers of tragedy
A case study: the first day of the end of everything
Number of avatars: 3
Number of fools (hubris): 2
Number of fools (romantic): 1
Number of poor choices: Uncountable
Number of years: 200 (approx.)
Number of fears: 14 (approx.)
Number of victims: 7,000,000,000 (at least)
But the most tragic number?
Number of good cows: Unrecorded

A Guest For Mr Spider

The scratchy hatchy spider spun what Jon would read
John caught a pleb
Who’d fill the spider’s need
Out rang the knocks
And so much for the pleb
And the scratchy hatchy spider knew how to read its web

Bloody Mary

There once died a man who took Keay out
And was bound to the Beholding’s redoubt
Saw no threat in Keay’s bed
Tore the eyes from his head
And the double-blind trial saw him bleed out



Another Twist

The Last

Dear God, people are completely unacceptable
Every one, one too many
Look at this guy!
And that one!
This one has an umbrella! Fucking hell
Go away
GO AWAY
Fuck these seven billion people in particular

Do Not Open

Josh away to get dazed to praise a phase now passed
Nosh and hash, days on the lash, costs that dosh, costs that cash
Takes his bevvies, breaks the levies, and then things get heavy
Mate’s heavy like “dense”, makes no sense, ten grand makes things tense? Steady!
Any levy gets buried until he’s good and gone and ready

So dangles a year, no wrangle, no fear, till “Got I an angle on the Triangle, y‘hear?”
Sod nods, blows his wad, stows all he had for a pad on his tod,
And two mans in a van land to hand off contraband
Bam! Now there’s a coffin, stoppin for nottin, for bare ten grand?
Damn scam’s got heavy; got outta hand by the sand

In deep, there’s scratching and crawling, can’t catch himself falling
Asleep, that’s when the freaks start their calling
“Doubt I’ll make it out of a bout with that lock twice”
Stout lad outfoxed that box with his icebox; nice!
No dice, won’t pay no price, trap best entice new mice

Then John comes a calling, he’s done with the stalling
When’s someone bound underground? There’s one clown down for a mauling
But ground’s bound by no rules, fool, swallows all into its hollow
Choke’s just stoked some bloke gets broke, compressed to coke, do you follow?
So John’s gone, plans gone wrong, and Joshie wonders if he’s won

Our Sims sounds grim on this pick, now it’s out the doubts come thick
Highs and lies in profusion, the conclusion? Prick’s took the mick.
File in the pile styled “Worth Dick”. Recording ends. Click.

Lost John’s Cave





Nothing Beside Remains

I once suffered a man upon my deck
He said – “One day I called my sculpture home
He stood before me, sure he’d hold me in check
Half ruined, half shattered, half husk, all frown
And flame-scorched fist, and sneer set o’er black neck
Telling of a killer, feral and scarred
Yet he survived, stamped by these fearsome things
The hand clenched tight, and the throat set hard
And from dry chapped lips, these words spring free
My name is Jon, the Archivist, all truth I bring
Reveal your Works, ye Mighty, I must SEE!
Nothing beside remains, so cold and dim,
Jon, this colossal wreck; his eyes on me
Yet blind to me, and to where I’ll send him.”



The Panopticon

I watch monsters surge together, thrown
Like waves that meet at jagged stones
And rising from the undertow
A pattern only I could know
Pleasing Jonah Magnus

Once b­­lue, now red in tooth and claw
(So no real change from years before)
A loping hunter guards the fort
This trap in which her mate is caught
Hating Jonah Magnus

The creeping wrong that takes your place
And tears from time what was your face
Is freed from rock to kill again
And so hold ground that I need claimed
Helping Jonah Magnus

Our newest monster, barely born
Alone, yet not, heart whole but torn
With lonely eyes worn like a mask
He sets to Peter’s latest task
Killing Jonah Magnus

When hunters take your face as cue
(As if a mirror wouldn’t do)
It can get awkward ‘for too long
‘Cept these two dickheads went for Jon
Missing Jonah Magnus

Poor Peter really should’ve known
There’re downsides spending life alone
You’ll never catch a gambler’s tell
Or hopeless love, and so he fell
Cursing Jonah Magnus

Now blooms the rose I fed for years
With ninety-three percent of fears
The flower I grew in the dark
Now knows the light, and knows my mark
Seeing Jonah Magnus

Omniscience means I keenly feel
Risk in the villain’s big reveal
But one last trial, and one last brick
Then endless life with one weird trick
Being Jonah Magnus



Checking Out

The Overlook has nothing on
The joys of Hotel Richardson
Don Henley’s vision pales beside
The wonders you’ve in store inside
The corridors that stretch for days
Free you from noise from motorways
The endless rooms where each one leads
Suit of all your convention needs
Just married? Sip on our champagne
And honeyed moon shall never wane
And do not fear you’ll too long stay
Our checkout times all read “N/A”
So join our guests who as one cry
“Walk out that door? We’ll sooner die!”

Monument

Academia isn’t where we keep the smartest people
It’s where we trap those most desperate for validation
And there’s never enough to go around
We demand respect, but we crave attention
Like naughty schoolboys, no tactic too shameful
Half of us riddled with Imposter Syndrome
The other half deliberately stoke it within us
Delighting in how they’ve made bullying into a career
Push back the frontiers of human knowledge?
Mostly you’re pushing against pressure that means to kill you
And even if you do find an idea, sell an idea, deliver on an idea
Half the field will say it was obvious, the other half; obviously wrong
And no-one else, ever, will ever knew you found it at all
The Spiral’s true madness is in thinking me trapped within it
As though insanity pretending to structure is new to me
As though an impossible mansion is harder to navigate than an HR policy
It promises fear, but it offers relief
I have built my life on shifting stone
This new futility finds me well-prepared
And at least I need not compete for grants
Work alone at the impossible, without pay or hope?
That’s what academics call “a holiday”
“Sink or swim” takes new meaning when drowning cannot kill you
But even there, little has changed
Academia always felt like drowning, forever
There’s a calmness with hope drowned too

Grifter’s Bone

Bone! (Bone!)
Let our music set the tone!
This dancefloor’s a battle zone
Your auditory canals
Will always be bleeding

Cos we’re Bone! (Bone!)
Grifting for motives unknown
Can kill live or through headphones
The Slaughter’s deep blood canals
Are never receding!

Bone!



I Guess You Had To Be There

This is a ghost story
I saw a ghost
Who stole our friend in London? The Government!
I saw a ghost
A Spiral’s victim met our gaze
I guess it was on fire?
His statement twisted like a maze
All dogs and roasts and turns and bends
The scratchy hatchy spider webbed shut Brian’s door
I saw a ghost
Whose arms stretch ‘neath rain or sun? The Government
Who’ll choke us with their foul mess? The Government!
Brian felt alone
Spilled his guts on the floor
Now where do I get my money?
And then he said he’d start again!
Whose lies grow best in darkness? The Government!
Dear God, people keep showing up where I am
Every one, one too many
In came Lukas
I’m only here to see Jonah, which is bad enough
Look at this berk!
And made Brian alone
Whining about spiders keeping his friends away
As though that isn’t the dream
And the scratchy hatchy spider knew the score was blown
Fuck this one guy in particular

Tale Of A Field Hospital

At Frere ‘twas typhoid dug his grave
At Spion Kop, gangrene
At Chieveley with the camp plague
The restless man was seen

Dead and deathless Amherst seems
Pursuing his sickening plan
A virus spreads across my dreams
I fear the restless man