Author Archive for Daniel Selwood
Daniel has been a journalist for 15 years, a drinker for two decades, and a music lover all his life. He has worked in print, teletext and online, and has written on a massive range of subjects, from entertainment to the funeral business. He's currently employed as a web editor of a leading trade magazine. Daniel is a northerner, a trencherman, an atheist and a misanthrope. Follow Daniel on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DanielSelwood
Arctic Monkeys – Suck it and See
Arctic Monkeys were defiant, teenaged oiks when they blasted out of Sheffield and obscurity six years ago. “You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham,” acne-splattered front man Alex Turner jeered at the poseurs by whom he felt himself surrounded.
Album Review: Jonny – Jonny
That indulgent track can be forgiven, though, because all those that surround it are so full of fun and tenderness that one might be mistaken into believing that the sun shines out of Jonny’s arse
Music Playlist Feature – Killer Riffs
Turn your bar into Mojo for the night with a Spotify playlist of killer riffs
Album Review: PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
There are examples elsewhere of Polly Jean shoving her perviness into listeners’ ears, but none pop up on Let England Shake
The Decemberists – The King is Dead
There’s no fey, ‘hey nonny nonny’ tut on this, their sixth album; there’s a muscularity, a blue collar element in the spirit of Springsteen
Under the radar in 2010: Top tunes you might have missed
The biggest-selling tunes of 2010 were, by and large, rubbish. These weren’t big sellers, but they were aces…
Best Albums of 2010
Don’t know what to do with the iTunes vouchers you got for Chrimbal? Why not buy the best albums of 2010.
Music Playlist Feature: Northern Soul
Party season is upon us, and the punters want to dance. Forget crunk, grime and X Factor failures… Give em’ some Northern Soul
Dark Matter: Sampling Sambrook’s Porter
Sambrook’s recently offloaded its millionth pint of ale – and now it’s launched a limited-edition porter, the first of many seasonal drinks planned.
Album Review: Kings of Leon – Come Around Sundown
When the Kings of Leon tore outta Franklin, Tennessee, seven years ago they were hairier than Brian Blessed’s arse-crack.
Music Playlist Feature – Funk Juice
“Funky” is a description of the music made by LSD-addled space-dudes who wear boots so towering they’d make a steeplejack puke from acrophobia, and whose trousers are tight, sparkly and bulge alarmingly at the crotch.
Music Playlist Feature – Sunday and All That jazz
You don’t want your clientele suffering from the aural equivalent of ice cream headaches, so make sure there are soul-warming standards in the mix, along with some friendly modern sounds.
Album Review: Klaxons – Surfing the Void
The opener, Echoes, is typical of the band’s quiet-then-loud approach that includes lots of melody and double-tracked vocals, while The Same Space is a thunderous archetype of the album’s thrashing energy.
Music Playlist Feature – One Last Hurrah?!
“Oh, no! Four-o!” “18 with 22 years’ experience.” “Life begins at…” It’s no wonder people feel blue on their 40th birthdays, the messages on the greetings cards are real pissers.
Album Review: Skream – Outside the Box
To regular punters, he’s the geezer who last year brilliantly remixed La Roux’s In for the Kill into a five-minute slow-burner with a tooth-loosening bass line and a final explosion like a giant party popper filled with needles of ice made from the sweat of a million insane ravers.
Playlist Feature – Greatest Bits: Teenage Fanclub
They’re Teenage Fanclub, a band of such excellence that even their patchiest work micturates from high altitude on to the current batch of axe-and-drum twerps
Album review: Scissor Sisters – Night Work
Thankfully, the Scissor Sisters got back into the studio to create something they insist is “super-sexual and sleazy”.
B.o.B – B.oB Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray
It’s a remarkably assured, feel-good performance in the main, with hooks aplenty.
Feel Good Hits for the Summer
Sun, booze and music go together like rum, lime and sugar. Daniel Selwood provides a musical garnish for Summer nights on the sauce.
Weekend Warriors: Louis W
In the first of an occasional series, BarLifeUK meets one of the many part-time mix-masters who are filling bar dance floors across the nation every weekend.
Hellbent For Leather
Your thumb should be facing away from you, as if you were offering the Black Power salute. Now fully extend your little finger and index finger, to give the impression of your fist having horns
Weller Weller Weller Ooof
The Modfather and his muso cronies charge in, chuck around feedback, organ riffs, reverse-looped guitars, wobbly strings and epileptic drumming, and then they leg it.
Album Review: Plan B – The Defamation of Strickland Banks
We’re not yet half way through the year, but it’s probably safe to say this is the best blue-eyed northern soul concept album of 2010.
Gettin’ Jiggy With It
Daniel Selwood confirms what we have long suspected… He’s a bit of a perv.
Album Review: Big Star – #1 Record
Big Star were effing ace, and in the 1970s they released three effing ace albums. Of them, #1 Record is arguably the most bar-friendly.
The Politics of Dancing
Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands war, Dynasty, bleached fringes, the IRA, yuppies, the Chernobyl disaster, MTV, shoulder pads, the miners’ strike, Aids, Ben Elton: the Eighties were horrible.
Anti Twat Music
If you want to make good pop selections with ease, you’ll need to first make a sacrifice. Give up three hours of your (spare) time on a Sunday afternoon and listen, really listen, to the Radio 1 chart show. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be pleasant…
Yeasayer – Odd Blood
The highlight is O.N.E. It sounds like the ‘80s if the decade had been a more carefree time for music and people. It’s a tune that’s likely to get customers who are a little worse for wear claiming they haven’t heard this for years.
Ellie Goulding – Lights
Last year’s magnificent Jakob Remix of Starry Eyed and the deserved success of the single’s unfettered version raised expectations of Goulding’s debut album to nigh-on vertigo-inducing levels in some quarters. The critics’ choice gong at last month’s Brits only added to the ballyhoo
The Whiff of Cheese
There are only two kinds of tunes: belters and duffers. What the legendary Gram Parsons said about country music is applicable to all melodic sound: “It’s music; either it’s good or it’s bad; either you like it or you don’t.”
