Then I found something that REALLY irked me. This morning, I was scanning over my Twitter feed, and came across this. A link to an article on The Daily Mail’s website: “Jet Set Housewives: I’d Rather My Daughter Marry A Rich Man Than Have A Career”.

As someone who has worked incredibly hard to carve a career for herself over the past three years, as well as balancing a degree and a personal life akin to Coronation Street, there’s not many other ridiculous statements that have made me angrier.

Frances Childs is obviously living in a dream world; nearly every young woman I know either has a sparkling working life ahead of her, is already working, or is heading for their dream job. We don’t sit around in circles drinking tea and talking about the best way to trap a man into funding our Miu Miu habits- we enthuse about what we’ve bought from Primark or, on naughty days, Topshop, with the money that we’ve had to earn.

We sigh over how competitive the job market is, and I go on about how vacuously male-dominated and self-obsessed the music industry can be. Not how to get rocks on our ring fingers, or aspirational Agas. Occasionally, we get a bit gooey over baby clothes, but we know that all that’s part of us growing up, not a meal ticket.

The idea of never having your own life, and depending on a man, is utterly unthinkable now. At least it is to me. Who wants to feel like they’re getting pocket money over the age of 20? I’d much rather make my own opportunities thanks. At least then I don’t have to feel as guilty for spending my last fiver on sweets.

God. It’s like the past 90 years didn’t happen. Who needs the vote? Let’s all go whore ourselves out instead. Maybe then Frances can slag us all off for being goldiggers.

According to figures on the British Phonographic Industry’s (BPI) official website, illegal music file-sharing is set to cost the UK music industry around £200 million in terms of lost sales in 2010, with an estimated 7.3m people collecting music through illegal means at some point. Indeed, it has been estimated by an independent research company that the cost to the industry between 2007 and 2012 will be a massive £1.2 billion, with record companies and artists being hit hardest. The BPI cites file-sharing services such as Vuze and Limewire, where users can download albums via torrent files, as being responsible for these losses, and Lily Allen in particular has been extremely vocal on the subject, writing “File sharing’s not okay for British music” in a blog on social networking website Myspace.

For figures in Manchester’s independent music industry, these statistics, whilst worrying, doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

Peter Jones, of Manchester-based record label Heist or Hit, believes that the whole issue of illegal downloading is “disheartening” for everyone involved. He uses the label’s most well known band, The Answering Machine, as an example. “They spent so much time making their debut album, about 3 years picking the right songs, practising and making sure they sounded amazing. And then someone just goes on the Internet and gets it for free in twenty minutes. It isn’t really fair is it?” He goes on to describe an encounter he had with a ‘fan’ at a free show the band put on in London to promote the album- “He stupidly told me that he hadn’t bought the album; he’d downloaded it off a torrent website. He said he was supporting the band and our label by being at the show, which we’d put on for free. When I tried to berate him into buying the album, he carried on with his argument that he was supporting the band ‘in spirit’, before buying a T-shirt, which we probably sell at a loss anyway because the band pay for them themselves. People seem to think they have a ‘right’ to the music.”

Jones also thinks that people illegally downloading his artists’ music takes the satisfaction out of it for the listener. “I definitely think that someone will get more out of an album if they’ve saved up or waited to buy it, whatever, because then they feel more like they’ve earned the right to listen to it and enjoy it, rather than just finding it on the internet and having it alongside another million albums that they won’t treasure on a hard drive.”

So, with all this in mind, does illegal downloading pose a serious threat to the future of Manchester’s small network of bands, promoters and record labels? For Jones, the answer is uncertain:“I don’t think it matters so much whether we’re all based in Manchester or London or anywhere else; but it’s definitely more DIY here, so there’s more of a risk of it all going up the wall.” he says. “I can’t speak for gig promoters, but although more people might pay to go and watch bands as a result of hearing their music illegally, the actual artists benefit far more from people buying their records. As a record label, we make nothing from people coming to watch our bands. I don’t have a problem with people downloading music for free most of the time- I just think that if they really, really love something, they should go out and buy it. Otherwise small labels like ours won’t be able to survive.”

Manchester-based concert promoter Scott O’Neill holds a completely different view on the subject, having seen the number of people attending shows he runs rise dramatically over the past few years. When asked if he attributes this to the rise of illegal downloading, he says ‘Well, people listen to more music now because they can get it for free off the Internet. So yeah, people go to more shows, because they listen to more music. I think people want to feel more like they’re participating in a band’s success now by going to watch them, rather than buying the CD and sitting at home in their bedrooms listening to them.”

However, when asked whether bands benefit from live shows rather than buying music, he replies, “It really depends how successful they are as a whole. If people like the music enough, they’ll buy it, but the cost of promoting a tour generally means that it’s not that big a money-spinner for bands. It’s more for them to promote themselves and make people want to buy their records, rather than making money for themselves.”

For small bands struggling to get a foot on the industry ladder, it can often be hard to get heard by record labels and people in general. Tim McIver, of Manchester-based group Tim and Sam’s The Tim and Sam Band, thinks people illegally downloading music might actually be a good thing for the city’s emerging artists, but believes that it devalues music. Because of this opinion, McIver himself has recently stopped downloading music, whether legally or illegally, choosing instead to buy it on physical formats. He expands on this by saying “I had so much music that I didn’t even have the time to listen to itall. I thought that if I started buying CDs again it would mean I would give everything the time it deserved. I’m a full time musician so I don’t have much money, so when I do get a CD or a vinyl I cherish it.

“The main problem I have with downloading is that it encourages people to have masses of music. In some ways this is great because it encourages musicians to make better records that are more deserving of the listener’s attention but music has a much shorter shelf-life than it used to, which is a great shame.”

He also agrees with the opinion that people are more likely to treat music as something they have a ‘right to steal, saying “To me that means that people use illegal downloading to try-before-you-buy, which I don’t understand. In time I’m sure websites like Spotify and We7 [which are legal streaming websites] will stop a lot of people downloading because it’s a much easier and quicker way to get everything you need. There doesn’t seem any justification in illegal downloading anymore.”

However, when asked if he thinks being from Manchester has hindered his band’s progression, McIver thinks it has instead been a good thing, as it has stopped them playing gigs that aren’t worthwhile for their development. “I don’t think location has much of an impact on ‘making it’, providing you work hard enough. I think if you’re in London it’s easy to fall in to the trap of playing every gig that comes up without making it worthwhile. This is definitely a trap we fell in to when we first started out in Manchester.”

It would be all too easy to berate illegal downloading for all of the Manchester music industry’s pit-falls at the moment. However, a recent poll of one thousand UK 16-to-50 year olds with internet access, conducted on behalf of think-tank Demos by Ipsos Mori, has found that the average person who illegally downloads music on a regular basis spends £77 on buying music through legal means a year, or £33 pounds more a year than somebody who merely gets all their music through legal means. Whilst 61% of these people say that they would stop downloading music illegally if they were threatened with legal action, there is a further 31% that would not be deterred from doing it.

Manchester-based blogger Matt Talbot is one of those people. Through his blog This Week’s Gold, he has started a club-night at one of Manchester’s best-loved venues, The Deaf Institute. He thinks that if he paid for everything he had to play, he’d be bankrupt.

“I definitely download more music than I buy. But then, if I bought everything that people want to hear at the club night, where we DJ, I’d probably not be able to afford to eat!” Instead, he thinks illegal downloading works both ways for Manchester artists – “It’s good for new acts, because it means people can listen to them before committing themselves, and they get to decide if they actually like it- then, if they like it enough, they’ll pay for the record. It’s a lot easier for them if they’re from Manchester too, in my opinion, as the city’s got such a good reputation for music anyway.”

Although Manchester’s reputation for music is stellar, with bands including The Smiths and Oasis still in the public’s consciousness, 2010 has proved a very tough year for the companies that bring new music to the region’s ears. Channel M had to completely close down the arts sector of its programming earlier this year. Much-loved local radio station XFM Manchester had to cease broadcasting regionally, instead redirecting its signal to the London station, and the fate of international music conference In The City hangs in the balance thanks to a spate of recent cuts in the government’s arts funding. Although this might not be directly be attributed to illegal downloading, it definitely shows the effect that the recession is having on where our money goes.

With this in mind, what is the future for Manchester’s music industry; how can it evolve to avoid becoming a mere nostalgic footnote in the city’s history?

Peter Jones thinks that the only way for labels like his to survive is if people make an active contribution- “We ask on our website, if people want to find the album for free, could they make a donation in lieu of a purchase instead- that way, they’re still contributing to the artist’s career in a way. Or, if you really like something, go out and buy it! You wouldn’t go into a clothes shop and nick a pair of trousers. Things really do have to evolve in tune with the Internet though, otherwise it’s going to turn into a right mess.”

Indeed, it’s a shame that the city’s artists seem to be struggling so harshly, due to people thinking that they have a right to free music. Tim McIver has a novel way of making people buy his records; he reckons gimmicks might be the way forward. “Using extra incentives, or gimmicks if you’re being a bit mean, gets people to part with cash and buy your music.” He muses. “For example, our last 7″ single was hand printed by the band, then hand numbered and signed. The whole thing was limited to 500 copies and came with a free tea bag – you can’t get that from a download!”

Islet – Celebrate This Place

When a band is so new that they’re on their first release, it can be difficult to write about them. It’s even harder when Islet are a band that are almost impossible to track down online. Unusually for 2010, there’s no MySpace page, no Facebook link to ‘like’, and no philosophical rambles from the band on Twitter. Fabulous in one sense, because it brings back the idea of a band being inaccessible and mysterious. It’ll probably annoy most of the music press because they can’t have a cheeky looksy on Google to pad out a feature, mind. Following the release of their free EP given away as part of Turnstile’s ‘Bento’ series, Celebrate this Place serves to deepen the intrigue that surrounds Islet further.

One of Islet’s main selling points is that the show they put on when you see them live is fabulously entertaining- swapping instruments, walking into the crowd, and basically acting like they’ve just been let out. Before listening to Celebrate This, it was hard to imagine how they would come across on record, but thankfully the songs are still as engaging to listen to.

EP opener ‘We Shall Visit’ is almost proggy in its initial approach, with hypnotic vocals that wouldn’t sound out of place in a tribal ceremony. Then the drums and the ‘proper’ singing both kick in, and it’s impossible not to want to move about to it. It’s fortunate that Islet manage to pull this off- in lesser hands, it could be seen as a cheesy call for attention.

It isn’t often that an instrumental can be classed as a standout track, but Islet change this with ‘Jasmine’. Apart from a repetitive female vocal, it allows the band to completely lose themselves in their music, and it’s ace; like Kate Bush if she’d been wearing a loincloth and wielding an electric guitar, perhaps.  ‘Iris’ is similar in the sense that it takes in loads of different influences, but its definitely one of the heavier tracks on the EP, with solid, jerky guitar riffs jelling perfectly with the howling group vocals. Then there’s ‘Holly’, which begins in the same proggy vein as ‘We Shall Visit’, before turning into a reggae-tinged tale of obsession. It’s all brilliantly nuts.

Islet definitely work best when they’re sounding urgent and angry- closing track ‘Rowan’, which is so ambient that it sounds almost church-like, just comes across as a bit boring after how exciting the other tracks are. Other than that, whilst Islet are never going to set the chart world alight- they’re far too weird really- Celebrate This is a great, playful taster of what’s to come. Can someone show them how the Internet works now?

Salem – ‘King Night’

The music press have been collectively slipping in their own juices over a clutch of new genres this year. We’re probably all sick to the back teeth of hearing about chillwave now, and when I first heard the term ‘witch house’ being used, I thought I was going a bit mental. Supposedly, Salem are leaders of the coven, and their debut King Night is certainly bewitching, although sometimes not for the right reasons.

Salem’s musical sound hasn’t changed much from their EP, Yes I Smoke Crack- there’s still all the thrilling, woozy fear coming through, dubsteppy beats and beautiful soundscapes. It’s all wonderfully broody and melancholic, end-of-the-worldly…  then Jack Donoghue starts rapping, and it all goes out of the window. He sounds as if he has the kind of cold that’d have you buying shares in Kleenex, and it just feels pretty uncomfortable. Compared to how chilling and beguiling Heather Marlatt’s vocals are, it all just sounds weirdly funny. Thankfully, this only crops up two or three times across the album, but it’s enough to make you cringe.

Awful MC scenes aside, Salem thankfully live up to the hype surrounding them. Sometimes it’s a little over-the-top (the sense of doom on the title track could be put against the theme from Psycho in the creepy stakes), but the album really comes into its own when they tone down the shtick a little. The more atmospheric, less booming tracks on King Night are where it really shines- the delicate electronica on Frost is eerily calm despite the thundering bass, and like the best parts of a horror soundtrack, it leaves you on edge in terms of what’s going to happen next. It contrasts completely with the likes of Sick, where it sounds like the bass has been turned up to eleven to make it sound threatening, and just ends up sounding about as scary and provocative as the Honey Monster looks.

For the most part, King Night isn’t terrible- it has some truly breathtaking, pretty soundscapes going on, springy beats and blasts of bass and distortion that you can feel in your chest. Buy yeah,  Jack Donoghue, if you’re reading, it’s probably best to keep your mouth shut and concentrate on making wonderful, other worldly noises instead. Witches are meant to be scary, not comedy rap stars.

Robyn – Body Talk

Robyn’s musical career has actually spanned three decades, spawning five other albums and a Eurovision Song Contest pre-selection in her native Sweden, yet it wasn’t until 2005’s eponymous release Robyn that she began to gain acclaim in the UK. At the start of 2010, Robyn announced that she would be releasing three brand-new albums this year- the stuff of dreams for both her mainstream and underground fans, yet enough to make others take a step back and wonder if she’s up to the challenge.

I bloody love Robyn’s singles (Be Mine = TUNE), but I must admit to never having listened to her breakthrough album more than a couple of times all the way through, so I was interested to see how she’d tackle the whole three-releases thing. And while the first of the trilogy is more about exploring emotions that make you want to laugh and cry, frustration and playing around with genres, Body Talk Pt. 2 is more of a return to her dancefloor maven side, with an altogether mixed bag of results.

In parts, it’s pretty great. Both ‘Hang With Me’ and ‘In My Eyes’ are really fun, full of sparkly chords, synth that sounds like it’s ready to start flying and some brilliantly distorted vocals, that signify her move back towards the danceable rather than the wilfully experimental. The acoustic version of ‘Indestructible’ at the end of the record is a masterstroke too- after all the beats and bleeps, it shows off Robyn’s more vulnerable side, and proves that she’s got talent in spades.

Disappointingly,  …Pt. 2 isn’t without its flaws. A lot of tracks sound like they’re there to use up time; case in point being ‘We Dance To The Beat’, which is repetitive to the point of being more effective than counting sheep to send you off to sleep. Or the kind of thing you’d only like if you were off your tits on drugs in a club.

‘Include Me Out’ and ‘U Should Know Better’ try too hard to emulate Robyn’s knack for a catchy interlude as well, with the latter featuring a cameo from Snoop Dogg. It just comes across as an effort to salvage something, rather than something worth taking notice of.

Sadly, I found myself feeling a little bit disappointed with the second volume of Body Talk. The idea of bringing out three albums in a year is a brave concept, but I feel she might have been better off doing just one instead and taking the best songs off the three. Saying that, the third instalment isn’t out yet, so it’s hard to judge. When it’s good, it’s very very good- it’s just a shame that it’s mostly filler rather than killer.

Everything Everything – Man Alive (Geffen)

One thing that should be noticed before you read this is how bloody hard Everything Everything are to review, as while there’s a touch of the scenester about them – Franz Ferdinand-esque grooving basslines, the odd case of the Vampire Weekends creeping in around the guitar riffs- ‘Man Alive’ steers gloriously clear of being pigeonholable. A nice treat for my ears given that I couldn’t instantly call it ‘chillwavewitchhousedreampop’, but a right bugger when it comes to writing about it. So I’ve tried my best, but you should see how amazing it is for yourself.

Singer Jonathan Everything’s frantic falsetto bounds around subjects like terrorism, narcissism and even homicidal girlfriends like a cat on speed, particularly on MY KZ UR BF, which really does deserve to be in the top ten singles chart. Suffragette Suffragette probably contains one of my favourite examples of mondegreen in a song EVER. Is he talking about sitting on someone’s face in a sexy way, or talking about sitting on the fence waiting for someone to make a decision? It all gets deliciously confusing after a while, but it’s so cleverly written that you’re at once intrigued and frustrated by it. It’s quite refreshing to hear a band write such brilliantly good pop songs, yet still be really intelligent at the same time.

Schoolin’, which pulls you by the hair through so many genres (pop, jazz, funk, whistling) that you feel like you should be panting with your back against a wall by the end of it. In a good way obviously. It’s like something ELO might have written if they were a bit cooler. The time signatures are mostly all over the place though, so beware when dancing; you might fall over your feet.

This kind of genre-soupy vibe carries on throughout the album, not least on QWERTY Finger. It starts off harmlessly enough with some handclaps, before speeding up into a euphoric mess of synths, three-part harmonies and frantic riffing, then suddenly morphing into a slowed-down anthem complete with some pretty enthralling yelps. It’s bloody euphoric though- it kind of made me think of Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

I could go on in a really gushy fashion about Man Alive, but the last thing I will say is that it’s just so NICE to hear something that isn’t like everything else, that isn’t going to be easily duplicated by a load of identikit bands in two months time. Sure, they sound as if they might be a bit crackers, but it’s all meaningful, brilliant eccentricity. Gibberish, danceable hooks and lyrics that blow other bands out of the water- what’s more to like?

Whilst watching armed with rum, crippling hangovers and a bar of Fruit and Nut that could serve as a door last night, we noticed a new addition to the show. Not just the frankly shootable Geri Halliwell and Konnie Huq, but Auto-Tune. I’m not stupid enough to think that The X Factor is purely based on singing talent- it’s about making money from the phone-in votes and selling records, on who will make interesting telly and who won’t- but there’s something not right when they’re correcting people to make them sound better than they were. I prefer it when there’s more people who are really shit anyway. It’s funnier.

My favourite part of the show is when I can heckle at the telly, to the point where my friends were practically begging me to shut up. Here are my top three heckle moments from last night.

G&S

I personally think that ‘Don’t Stop Believin” is an absolutely heinous song. Journey have a lot to answer for. When there’s a rhythmically disabled Scotsman gyrating to it, not even singing in tune, along with his shy, alright-but-not-good enough mate, it makes me want to sell my eardrums on eBay. I wouldn’t have let her through anyway.

Katie Waissel

‘At Last’ by Etta James is one of my favourite songs when I’m feeling all loved-up, and to be fair, Katie was good at singing it. It was just her whole demeanour that really pissed me off. ‘LOOK AT ME IN MY HEADSCARF AND DITZY MANNERISMS, I’M SO KOOKY!’ You could go somewhere really rough in Shoreditch and find six people exactly the same. If she tones down the twat vibes, I’d quite like to see her do well, otherwise I’ll end up throwing my shoes at the TV.

Crazy Mercy Lady

I felt quite sorry for Crazy Mercy Lady, aka Shirley Johnson. She’s obviously going to be one of the nutters they get to come on for the final live show. After she’s gone through Boot Camp and basically gets chewed up and spat out buy the whole process, how on earth is someone who appeared to be so nuts on national telly going to be able to get a proper job?

There’s a book by Ben Elton that is a parody of the whole X Factor process called ‘Chart Throb’. I recommend it to all. Don’t think we’ve seen a potential winner yet.

Since I first heard Guards’ EP courtesy of a pal’s blog, I haven’t stopped listening to it. It’s dead en vogue in that whole surfy-poppy-beachy way, but it kinda reminds me of Bay City Rollers or something else from the ’70s on the choruses as well. Awesomez. The artwork is pretty cool too:

One of my favourite venues in Manchester, The Deaf Institute, has recently started a label called Suffering Jukebox. There’s loads of good stuff coming out on cassettes and shiny vinyl from these guys, but my favourites have to be Colleen Green (sounds like Best Coast if Best Coast was y’know, good and not a ziney cliché), and Brown Brogues who are brilliantly FUCKING LOUD and 60s garage. Considering there’s only two of them in the band, it’s quite amazing.

Incidentally, Suffering Jukebox are having a launch party at Deaf on August 29th. I’ve shamelessly stolen the poster from their page.

I’ve also been listening to Ghost Train by Summer Camp on repeat again, and a lot of R&B, but that’s not really cool enough to write about.

shell bought some Thomas The tank Engine stuffs, and I took a picture of a steam train first, coz it would have been rude not to. Steam trains are quite nice aren’t they?

Oooh look, another retro photography app. So vintage, so cool.

I bought the News Of The World for some daft reason, and had to hide the cover so I didn’t look like a total social retard. We met up with some people from DOWN SOUTH as well, and decided to drink ‘Turbo Shandy’ to make the most of what the bar had left. Humm.

We saw Internet Forever first, who were indiepoppy in the way that Los Campesinos! are from their second album onwards. Not too twee, lots of keyboard action and the occasional yelp. So that was okay.

After that, I ate Chicken Teddies for the first time in about ten years and saw a bit of Standard Fare. Their album is brilliant, but I didn’t see enough of them as I would have liked really.

I bought a pretty necklace that looks like an envelope from a stall in the merch tent- there were far too many things that I rly wanted to blow my money on. But didn’t.

FINALLY, it was time for the two bands I was dead excited for. First, Slow Club. Oh, this band are so pretty, and I love how two of them manage to make such a brilliant folksy noise. The only thing that annoys me is that they NEVER play my favourite song, It Doesn’t Have To Be Beautiful. Still, we danced and sang along, which was fun.

Then The Pains Of being Pure At Heart only went and headlined the whole bloody thing! They’re one of my faves. HOWEVER. THEY DIDN’T PLAY MY FAVOURITE SONG BY THEM! Very annoying. the sound was a bit crappy too, but they’re always a good band to watch. it was nice to hear something that was ‘a bit lo-fi’ as well, after how saccharine everything else was.

And so it was time to go home to Manchester. We got a very dark, shonky steam train back to the car park, and found the LOUDEST THING WE COULD to put on. And drove along Snake Pass in the dark and fog. It was kind of a perfect, scary antidote to the Balamory-esque atmosphere on the Midland Railway.

In all fairness, Indietracks is a perfectly nice festival; I just had no idea it would be THAT twee. I’m work’s resident indie-popstrel, but it was all a bit too much- I’ve been listening to Brown Brogues, wearing black and chainsmoking for three days to try and get over it a bit. And falling down the stairs, but that’s another story.

To finish, here is another photo. My cat, Annie. She’s bee-yoo-ti-ful. (But makes me fall down stairs)