Just add strings

Do orchestras add sophistication or pretension to pop ? Plus a celebration of hyper pop and dirty assed rock n roll

I wrote this just after listening to Live in London! by St. Vincent, a recording of the gigs she did at the Royal Albert Hall during last year’s Proms. I really enjoyed it — and have listened a few times since. So why does it not thrill me more ? Why does it leave me feeling slightly queasy?

Because there’s something about rock musicians recording with orchestras that makes me instinctively bristle.

Like a lot about my musical taste, it may be an adverse reaction to things that were done badly in the 70s. Or perhaps more precisely, things that felt wrong — aesthetically or philosophically — even when they were executed perfectly well.

For me, the original sin is Deep Purple with the London Philharmonic Orchestra — scene of the crime, once again, the Royal Albert Hall.

I remember hearing it and recoiling. Not just because it sounded overblown (which it did), but because the whole enterprise felt wrong. It seemed a particular betrayal, because this was Purple one of the handful of bands who I’d now identified as proto-punk, on some tracks at least — one of those bands playing hard and fast, with excitement bleeding out of every pore

— and now here they were trying to gentrify the music.

Rock wasn’t meant to aspire upwards. It wasn’t meant to borrow the trappings of “serious” music. The distortion, the swagger, the noise — those weren’t deficiencies to be corrected by a string section. They were the point.

So the orchestra felt like an intrusion. Or worse, a kind of apology. A quest for respectability.

And yet here we are, half a century on, and the orchestral collaboration is no longer a novelty — it’s almost a genre. St Vincent’s collaborator here, Jules Buckley has built a career out of it, working with artists as varied as Pete Tong, Tori Amos, Louis Cole, Basement Jaxx, Massive Attack, Arctic Monkeys and Dizzee Rascal.

This isn’t fringe. It’s mainstream. Institutional, even.

And — this is the uncomfortable bit — it often works.

Which forces me to admit something I’d rather not: perhaps my objection isn’t really about the music.

Perhaps I’m wrong :Two of my favourite artists, Rosalía, and The Last Dinner Party have demonstrated how strings can lend a lushness to their music.. TLdP have even had a string quartet recreate their first album. and rather lovely it is too

I also love the inspired Bridgerton concept — reverse engineering pop songs into something suitable for a grand Regency ball.

it works, because it commits fully to the conceit. It doesn’t feel like rock trying to be respectable; it feels like fun . .

And where would Raye’s magnificent new album be without the London Symphony Orchestra? (They do get around, don’t they?) Plus a separate string section, plus plus plus big band. It is a phenomenal album which takes her to another level as an artist – review coming soon, but for now just listen to Click Clack Symphony and the way the swell of the strings at the end really works with the song.

So why does my irritation persist?

It’s because I still associate the orchestra with legitimacy. With approval. With grown ups. With the idea that adding strings is a way of signalling seriousness — of crossing over into something more refined.

And that has always felt faintly suspect.

Rock ’n’ roll, doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t tidy itself up. It doesn’t seek validation from older traditions. If anything, it defines itself against them.

So when a band brings in an orchestra, part of me still wonders: is this expansion — or aspiration?

Is it about sound — or status?

Of course, that may be unfair. It may simply be that the musical vocabulary has widened, and that what once felt like a graft now feels like a continuum. The old distinctions between “high” and “low” culture look increasingly artificial.

And yet I can’t quite shake the instinct.

There are moments, even now, when the swell of strings feels like overstatement — a reaching for grandeur the material doesn’t quite justify. To see what I mean listen to the version of “violent times” here and then the album version. It is as if the orchestra is trying to convince you of the music’s importance, by bombast and dramatic swell rather than simply being important.

So I find myself in an uncomfortable position: almost intellectually persuaded, but still emotionally resistant. A convert, perhaps — but a suspicious, grudging one, with a pocket of heresy still intact.

I’ve also been listening to a lot of flamenco and jazz and, late one night, as a counter to all these strings and high seriousness, I found myself listening to some seriously unserious music – like this hyper pop from Berlin-based Angel Rider.

No excuses, no pretensions, just fun. Which is also true of Debbie Sings.

In the case of Onik’s Locker Room Load, certainly not good clean fun, in fact pretty disgustingly filthy fun.

It also features an old favourite of mine, QT, who turns out to be an art project by Hayden Dunham and the late great Sophie. So that means the porny lyrics of ‘locker room’ must be ironic and knowing. phew.

If you like that little lot, you’ll love the new album from the New York electronic duo The Fcukers –

I’m not sure how often I will listen to the whole album, but there are at least five standout tracks. This is the best.

Much heavier, but also in a similar vein, Cobrah – a Swedish singer.

Fun fact: this track followed on from a previoyus track of hers featuring ‘helicopter noises’ created from the treated sounds of farts from the producer’s dog. To round this off, what better than this collaboration between Anna Calvi and the very wonderful Iggy Pop (79)

This could almost be my theme tune. I love it.

wanna do more than just survive

I wanna light my body on fire

I wanna be somebody cause I’m God’s lonely Man

Very much what John Cale once called ‘dirty assed rock n roll”

So on to my first non-jazz gig of the year at The Blue Posts in Soho — the second band, Manchester punks, The Empty Page, captured the spirt of the night with the lead singer’s paean of praise to old-fashioned boozers with small grotty upstairs rooms with sticky carpets, where you can watch great bands for under a tenner.

The Blue Posts is not grotty, but it is an old-fashioned boozer. And a good one. And this was a good night. Very good night.

We’d come to see French Toast and the lead singer Eloise, who was there at the beginning,standing near the back, cheering on the rather wonderful surprise of the evening — Retropxsssy, pushing deep into the small audience to give us some dreamy punky hip hop

plus some hippyish squatting while we jumped into the void, and another dimension. Ok, you had to be there.

While Empty Page was on, a group of teenage Spanish punks came in clutching bags from Rough Trade and doing tequila shots. Eloise was soon in there inciting them to form a mosh pit when it was her turn on stage.

Not that she was ‘on stage’ most of the time for their wonderful set – on a chair at the front, peeling off to her bathing suit, squatting on the floor, body surfing, at the back of the stage and then looking fondly on as the mosh happened. Sadly my moshing days are over – but you could feel the gravitational waves of pure rock and roll, the raw energy. I couldn’t tell you anything specific about the tunes – although I could go on and on about the bass player – probably the coolest, and surely the tallest in town

It was very, very good. Great fun. Truly what rock and roll is all about. And not an aspirational stringed instrument in sight.