The yeahs of living dangerously

Yes, the New Guitar-Rock Movement, very nice. We applaud it notionally, being desperately crazy in love with fuzzboxes and noise and how frigging cool boys – or, possibly even better, girls – with guitars look, but one still has to have standards. And as such, the only guitar-toters from ’02 we’ll still be bothering about in ’03 are, number one, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, featuring the best new rock god(dess) of the year, Karen O (Chrissie Hynde as a nymphomaniac: ripped clothes, ragged voice, unignorable as a fire alarm) and secondly, The Kills (a teeth-bared blues double act: Polly Harvey circa ‘Wicked Tongue’ poledancing as a weedy Lou Reed gets drunk and watches). Then there’s Detroit’s still-unparallelled holy trinity: the Stripes, the Von Bondies and the Dirtbombs, amen. As for these other concept-haircutted, wardrobe-mistress-whipped, pantomime rock’n’roll motherfuckers (Hives, Vines, Datsuns, D4, Music, Cooper Temple Clause, BRMC, etc etc etc) – sell your records now while you can still get good money for them.

Three bands to raise your heart rate (fact! try it): …Trail Of Dead (the hyperventilatingly good Source Tags & Codes); Godspeed You, Black Emperor! (soulwrenching in the Ambassador); The Uptown Racquet Club (wordless and operatic at Galway Arts and Wonky2). Three bands to blow your mind: The Streets (hilarious, innovative and observationally bang-on); The Flaming Lips (their message: All We Ever Have Is Now, something of which you can never be over-reminded); Gemma Hayes (making a noise you longed for all your life and didn’t know it, but which sounds immediately like home). Five things to make you believe in magic: Bright Eyes (incandescently honest songwriter), Brad Mehldau (post-jazz pianist), The Royal Tenenbaums (best film ever), the World Cup (post-The Man Who Wasn’t There: who saw any of that coming?) and, well, David Blaine (magician). Some hip hop for luck: DJ Shadow, Creative Control, Roots Manuva, and the Badmeaningood series (genre pioneers making mix-tapes just for you).

It was great this year, as well, to be reminded how unspeakably, lump-in-throat proud to live in Ireland we are, and how great stuff happens regardless of the middle-managers and the that’s-impossible headshakers and the governmental good-fortune squanderers and the goats in the media who will eat anything. Independent music still flourishes (Damien Rice; Mundy; The Jimmy Cake; The Tycho Brahe; the away-game successes of The Frames) as does independent business and promotion (Wonky; D.E.A.F.; Road; Ruby Sessions, Lazybird) as does independent publishing (The Yoke; Homage; the Document: A Story Of Hope cookbook).

People like these, who kick against the pricks and trust their own imaginations, make us want to, as the saying goes, be a better person. What more could you ask from a local culture than that?