The countdown continues - or rather, count up (I am going in reverse order, did I mention that?): with 'Honey' by Swim Deep. The video says it all - here are skinny lads, painting walls and themselves, day-glo lotharios, one stripped to the waist, as if a shy Red Hot Chili Pepper; one t-shirt is from Nirvana. It's all cute and teenage, but then there's the honey being licked off the lips of the American pretty girl as if directed by Eddie Powell. Borrowing the echo chamber from the xx, and posturing more than most, this scrawny band has still managed to generate a very captivating pop song. Pure pop, in fact. Honey never looked or sounded better.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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