Waits recounts how Israel responded by sending helicopters to destroy the car of a Hamas militant; "It killed his wife and three-year-old child/Leaving only blackened skeletons," he sings, his voice thick with incredulity. Waits doesn't take sides, merely shaking his head over the futility of it all. "Neither side will ever give up their smallest right," he sighs, "they fill their children full of hate.
" But Waits does lambast his president's lack of action ("He plays chess at his desk/And he poses for the press") and questions why the US supplies Israel with arms. It's a stark, thought-provoking and moving listen. Waits may have come late to political songsmithery, but it fits like a glove.
The wonder of MP3 blogs is that their authors write about music with a fan's enthusiasm and provide free downloads of the acts they rave about. Taking this to extremes is . As well as offering an in-depth written analysis of the (mainly ska, reggae and funk) songs that Lily Allen sampled on her Alright, Still album, it has created a downloadable 11-track collection of the originals called Alright, Steal.
So, for example, as well as revealing that French singer-songwriter Pierre Bachelet wrote the score to 1970s softcore porn flick Emmanuelle after Burt Bacharach turned it down, Alright, Steal features two Emmanuelle tracks as sampled on Allen's Littlest Things. It's a great idea, marvellously realised. Another MP3 blog gem can be found at , which has got hold of Klaxons' belting version of Grace's mid-1990s club anthem Not Over Yet.
Klaxons (below) are the NME-touted heroes of New Rave, though their thrashy post-punk actually sounds neither new, nor ravey. In fact they, like Futureheads before them, seem to be a band lacking in tunes whose only chance of success involves covering someone else's. At least with Not Over Yet's chart-busting melody to hang their raw exuberance around, the hype does seem partially justified.
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