Happy Friday. Last weekend I, along with Mark Zuckerberg, Paul McCartney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and everyone else you follow on Instagram, attended the Oasis show at the Rose Bowl. It was great! Had I not been to the show at Wembley, which was positively transcendent, I might have even called it the best night of my life, but a) this venue is where dreams of fun and flow and efficiency go to die and b) too much of the crowd was stood still during songs like “Little By Little” for my liking and also c) Cage The Elephant. The full moon over “Don’t Look Back In Anger” was a particularly gorgeous touch (Leo missed that bit though). Speaking of Gallaghers:
Liam Gallagher’s son Gene has a new grunge band called Villanelle. At least I think it’s a grunge band, there’s only one song out and it’s very “we have Nirvana at home.” This is not a criticism! I love it. The band’s guitarist Ben Taylor told NME they started the band out of “a genuine passion and drive to bring back rock music again.” Someone should already!!!
Gene, whose mother is Canadian-British All Saints pop star Nicole Appleton, was raised on a diet of The Who and the Beatles and became obsessed with Alex Turner after a childhood crush told him she was into Arctic Monkeys. According to this profile in The Times, it was his brother Lennon (whose own band Automotion is more of a Tortoise-y post-rock situation. - also good!) who got him into grunge. “I bet Lennon wishes he’d never introduced me to [Nirvana] because I’m now the biggest Nirvana geek. I even got my dad into them, not that he’d ever admit it. The Arctic Monkeys and Nirvana are the reason I play guitar.”
I actually believe in nepo show business. I recently met the son of two people who are part of mini Hollywood dynasties (one an Academy Award winner) and he was absolutely luminous? Like just a different breed of human. Often star power is genetic! People have a far softer spot for “children of” this generation than they did in the past, because while the sound of the 90s is certainly alive and well, the stringent ethics of Gen X have all but died out. Fine with me. I love Romy Mars.
It was smart to release this new song amidst this year’s worldwide Oasis-mania. The Gallagher spawn have been at every show in a rather tender and touching way (I do love Anaïs’ whole thing). Why not capitalize on the momentum! It worked on me.
It’s also particularly amusing that Gene is making music in the spirit of the American tidal wave that basically birthed Brit Pop as a reaction, and thus created the fertile environment into which his father and uncle found phenomenal success. Time is a flat circle innit. Genuinely can’t wait to hear more music. Villanelle will be touring the UK in December and if the stars align I will catch one of those shows and buy the merch.
I’m a little late but the new Suede album Antidepressants that came out last week is very good? They join Pulp in this year’s list of unexpected later career great albums. I especially enjoy “Sweet Kid.” We love it when Suede leans into their god-given gothiness.
Speaking of later career excellence, The Cure released this great Mark Saunders remix of the song “A Fragile Thing” off 2024’s Songs Of A Lost World.
Friend of the sub Alex Ross Perry put me on to a band called The Pill, a delightfully snotty just bass and drums talk-singy post punky band from the Isle of Wight. A lyric I like off the song “Posh”: “He calls it blow, I prefer sniffy.” I actually thought “gear” meant cocaine in the UK but recently learned that that just means “drugs” now? Unhelpful.
There’s a new Militarie Gun song thank god (save the gun). It’s introspective!
Lastly, sad to hear Bruce “Loose” Calderwood of the incredibly influential Flipper passed away at the age of 66. I wonder if Gene Gallagher’s Nirvana journey has led him back to Flipper like it did for me back in 1993…
As always all the songs mentioned in this post live in the Fast & Loose playlist HERE
Going from Richard Ashcroft to Cage the Elephant is neither biblical nor celestial
Yasi is it time to revisit your theory that bands run out of steam later in life??