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Off the record
Evening Standard 19.09.08
Rebel with a cause: KT Tunstall
They've seen the light: Razorlight's Johnny Borrell
Ice man: Jarvis Cocker is off to Greenland
Look here too
So who's saving the world now?
To completely reword an old Chinese proverb: give a musician some drugs and he'll sing for a day, give him a cause and he'll sing on and on for a lifetime.
They write songs and sell gig tickets and there is no subject on which pop stars do not feel qualified to have an opinion. But is theirs the one the public most wants to hear? Those non-musicians who campaign full-time on various issues seem to believe so, and are never far from inviting their songwriting heroes to partake in another charity album or concert.
Mencap's Little Noise Sessions take place at the Union Chapel for the third year in November, having previously landed intimate sets from mega-selling do-gooders Coldplay and U2. This week download stores started selling a new charity album, Bruce Parry Presents Amazon Tribe — Songs For Survival, a collection compiled by the intrepid BBC presenter that will be released on CD on 6 October.
With profits going to tribal rights organisation Survival International, it features new tracks by bands who sample the indigenous music recorded by Parry during his trips. Whoever thought you'd get to hear an Irish lament, Carrickfergus, credited to Razorlight's Johnny Borrell featuring The Suri Tribe?
Yusuf Islam, Hot Chip and The Go! Team also pop up, as well as Scots singer-songwriter KT Tunstall with a moody new ballad The Hidden Heart. Tunstall, in fact, is fast becoming Britain's worthiest star. She had 6,000 trees planted to offset CO2 emissions made producing her hit debut album, Eye to the Telescope, reduces the carbon footprint of her gigs in consultation with the organisation Sustainable Touring, and has solar panels on her north London home.
Next she's taking her environmental awareness to extremes, setting sail next Thursday for a nine-day expedition to the appropriately named Disko Bay in Greenland. On board will be oceanographers studying the seabed for evidence of climate change and also, unusually, an extensive line-up of figures from the arts.
There's Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, poet Lemn Sissay, ceramicist Julian Stair, plus musicians including Jarvis Cocker, Feist, Martha Wainwright and Laurie Anderson.
The idea is that the travellers will be inspired to create art that references climate change, which could impact more forcefully on a public immune to dry graphs and statistics. Ian McEwan, who joined a similar expedition in 2005, has already announced that his next novel will concern the subject.
At a rather shambolic launch at the Science Museum this week (as one audience member put it: “How do you expect to make it to the Arctic when you can't make a microphone work properly?”) artist David Buckland, director of the Cape Farewell project that organises these trips, explained: “We need new ways of engaging with climate change. What the scientists can't do is interface with the public. We're looking for a
better way to communicate.”
Tunstall is clearly wary of becoming one of those musicians. “I don't want to be an irritating pop star who doesn't know shit,” she said. “This trip is a chance to see what's happening first hand, ask direct questions and be terrified by it.” However, there was also much woolly talk about not really knowing what kind of creative response the expedition might engender in her.
Of course, Jarvis Cocker won't rebuild the ice caps with a ditty about polar bears, but Cape Farewell is right to think that there is a danger of climate change fatigue setting in and the public becoming bored with the message. Most of us are more likely to listen to Jarv than Al Gore — that's the way of the world. And if all these sensitive artists are going to save it in their own small way, let's hope they don't get seasick.
www.capefarewell.com
NEW ON THE NET
* London trio White Lies are our very own Killers and have already announced several gigs in advance of their debut album next year. Get their new single, Death, in download stores on Monday.
* The eighth version of the iTunes store is now available to download, the most notable development being a new “Genius” button, which analyses the songs you listen to and suggests others you might like by looking at all the music on your computer. Digital spying or portal to new tunes? Either way, already many seem to agree it's not as good as The Filter and Last.fm.
* Apple promises it's on the way to ditching Digital Rights Management, which restricts what you can do with downloaded music, but British store 7digital has stolen a march on them by persuading labels to sell DRM-free tracks through them first. That means every album by Metallica, the new Kings of Leon album and loads of albums on EMI for as little as £2.
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