Critic Cal

At the start of the year I wrote about  the alienation of being bombarded by seasonal jollity when (for personal and/or socially conscious reasons) you're really not 'feeling it', nor sure that you should be. Well, in my church tradition the jollity tends to keep on coming – as, for me, does the disconnect...           ORDER OF SERVICE                  Let’s make a joyful noise before the Lord!          Maracas at the ready, girls and boys;          Before we take our seats and Kevin brings a word,          Let’s make a joyful noise.                  Forget fake news; spurn melancholy’s ploys;          My friends, have we not overcome the world?          Then stand together, with triumphant poise!         ...

"The Mating Game Has Evolved", proclaimed the bottle of shower gel that I'd scraped from the bottom of our where-did-this-even-come-from? toiletries barrel on my hurried way out of the house. "Unleash The Chaos With Lynx Attract For Her – A Fragrance So Irresistible It Will Drive Guys Wild." Chaos did not ensue. Much as I deplore false advertising, I was, on balance, relieved. Still, it got me pondering their promotional premise: hooking up is a unisex sport now. Women are no less free to pursue numerous casual sexual encounters than men. To which I say: yes to equality! and great if we're really (really?!) gonna lay off with the misogynistic shaming ... All the same ... I dunno. Two things: Firstly, "evolved" strikes me as an ironic word to describe a drift towards instinct-led sexual ethics. Isn't, like, the human ability to reason against our immediate animal appetites in part why we fancy ourselves a somehow higher form of life tha...

I will worship ( I will worship ) With all of my heart ( with all of my heart ) I will praise You ( I will praise You ) With all of my strength ( all my strength )  I will seek You ( I will seek You ) All of my days ( all of my days ) And I will follow ( I will follow ) All of Your ways ( all Your ways )...  David Ruis, Maranatha Praise, Inc., 1991 For the uninitiated, this here's a song that the medium-to-considerably happy-clappy sing in church. And in case you're wondering, the bits in brackets are an echo 'traditionally' sung by the female members of the congregation. The pattern is not ubiquitous, but neither is it rare (and never, to my knowledge, is it inverted). The other day, I had the rare joy of standing next to my sister in church, and I noticed that she was singing, not the 'response', as prescribed, but the 'call'. In a momentary pang of vicarious embarrassment I nearly nudged her – much as I would intervene if she was accid...

The 'real' Saint Nicholas was a 4th century Bishop of Myra associated with many miraculous events of varying historical attestability. My favourite of these for sheer exuberant oddness has to be the one about the three young boys, murdered by a butcher during a time of famine, chopped up ( chopped up! ) and pickled in brine for seven years ( seven years! ) before being miraculously restored in answer to the bishop's intercessory prayers. A  16th century French song  on the St. Nicholas Centre  website tells the tale in the good old bluntly gruesome way of good old-fashioned folk rhyme. Meanwhile our modern songs have tragically watered down the contemporary hybrid Santa character beyond recognition, blandly censoring all of the most interesting bits of his biography. Well! I for one won't stand for it a moment longer ...            HITHER COMETH SAINT NICHOLAS OF MYRA       ...

Better to remain offline and be thought a fool than to tweet and remove all doubt. A lesson learned too late by the official England Football Twitter Team during the celebrations following the 2015 Women's World Cup, in which England placed third: "Our #Lionesses go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today, but they have taken on another title -- heroes." *Sigh*. England Football have 1.2 million followers; you'd think they'd run you through some basic information superhighway safety checks before handing you the keys to their authorised social media machine. The pile - up behind this particular remark was ... unsurprising . "Patronising" ... "demeaning" ... "backwards" ... "inaccurate." Sexism in the world of sport is rife, it seems, but generally reviled -- it tends to get 'called out' at least. Sexism in the world of music, on the other hand, is apparently not just tolerated but rewarded, which ne...

There's few songs quite like Pulp's Common People  to jeopardise one's vocal cords. It came on in the car on the way to church the other day, and away we went, belting it out full volume leaving little in reserve for the song-sermon-sandwich that awaited. And oh! did we sing it with feeling. I can hardly begin to tell you how much I really meant it , y'know? She would never understand  -- how could she? How could she have any idea  how it feels ? y'know? to live one's life with no  meaning  ... no  control . Sure, she could go through the motions -- rent a run-down little flat above a chemist, spend her days behind the counter in MacDonalds, acquire a taste for Benson and Hedge's finest, make a name for herself at the local pool hall, shrug her high-brow education off like a sharp suit jacket in a sports bar ... But at the end of the day, lying there weary in bed, still smelling of chip fat, and $%*!-it there's another cockroach --maybe she'd stic...

They don't call me Carolling for nothing. I love a bit of choral exertion this time of year. Bring on the way-outside-of-my-register top notes, the determined-but-disastrous descants, the I-don't-remember-that-one-from-before intervals, the oh-dear-are-we-still-on-this-syllable-I'm-about-to-pass-out slurs... But there's a handful of carols that I find challenging to sing for entirely different reasons -- and top of that list would have to be Away in a Manger : musically straightforward, theologically problematic. In fact, as far as my faltering understanding goes, I find it so debatable in places that I am driven to on-the-fly editing (for example, I'm not convinced about Jesus residing in "the sky", but I am pretty confident that he is "on high" -- which, conveniently, fits the rhyme and meter just as well), selective silence (I've read too much N.T. Wright to sing "fit us for heaven to live with Thee there" without worrying th...

Quite what the professional (ahem) activities of Karren Brady  had to do with the anticipated proceedings of an away match in the West country remain a mystery to me even now. Nonetheless, defamatory speculations on this particular theme, resounding to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus, comprised the central substance of the prologue to Swindon vs. Leyton Orient , which I attended, in great earnest, earlier this month. Once the action centre stage kicked off, the accompaniment subsided into the popular and versatile refrain most famously exampled by the 1998 classic Vindaloo : "Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urgh, Ori-urgh, Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urgh, Ori-urgh, Ori-urrrgh". I must confess I'm not entirely certain of the spelling. There followed a relatively uneventful twenty minutes or so, but for some mildly rankled recitative between a polite young lady spectator who wished to be seated, and a row of youths in front of her who preferred...