Inter 0 (0) - 1 (3) Liverpool

Fernando Torres showed his class as Liverpool strolled into the quarter-finals of the Champions League with a 1-0 victory against 10-man Inter Milan. The striker scored a superb shot from outside of the box as the English side won the tie 3-0 on aggregate.

The Italians had Nicolas Burdisso sent-off early in the second half for two soft bookings and never looked like achieving an upset. Liverpool were happy to shut out the Serie A leaders, and after Torres’ 64th minute strike they were never in doubt of becoming the fourth English team into the last eight of the competition.

Both teams starting line-ups were disrupted before the game, with Inter missing Marco Materazzi through suspension and Liverpool without Xabi Alonso, who controversially opted not to travel. Torres was deployed as a lone striker, while Inter looked to Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the forward, for inspiration.

Inter played into Liverpool’s hands early on, attempting to patiently probe but only succeeding in allowing the visitors time to settle into their defensive game-plan. There was no urgency to their play, with Javier Mascherano and Lucas Leiva dominating Inter’s pedestrian midfield.

However, with Jamie Carragher deployed at right-back, there were gaps in Liverpool’s defence. Luckily for the English side, the few chances Inter did create fell to the hapless Julio Cruz. He drilled a ferocious low shot from 20 yards after eight minutes, forcing a fine save from Pepe Reina, the Liverpool goalkeeper.

Cruz’s next chance was the product of slick interplay with Ibrahimovic, who showed touches of class, but flitted in and out of the game. The lanky forward slid a neat through ball to Cruz, but his attempt rolled harmlessly wide.

Liverpool’s only opportunities came from mistakes in Inter’s nervy backline. The best of these fell to Torres, who darted into the box after Esteban Cambiasso’s slip, but Julio Cesar saved well from a tight angle.

An audacious attempt from Cruz right before half-time could have sent Inter into the dressing room with renewed hope. The deceptively quick Maicon pulled back to the Argentinean, who delicately back heeled the ball, but only found Reina’s outstretched arms.

Inter gained some momentum after the restart, but this was short-lived as Burdisso saw red after a laughable decision from the referee. Challenging for a high ball with Lucas, the incident looked innocuous, but Tom Henning branded a second yellow card and effectively ended the tie as a contest.

Torres took advantage of the gaps that inevitably appeared as Inter pushed for a goal, scoring with a blistering strike from outside the penalty area after a dazzling swivel. His third goal in six Champions League appearances for Liverpool came from Fabio Aurelio’s floated cross, which Torres controlled expertly before blasting into the bottom left-hand corner.

Inter gave up completely after this, allowing Liverpool to leisurely stroke the ball around with little pressure. This was their sixth straight win, and they go into Friday’s Champions League draw full of confidence that they can reach a third final in four years.

Editors - Live

Editors
Alexandra Palace, London
Wednesday 5th March 2008

Another band runs the Alexandra Palace gauntlet. Editors, having done rather well of late, take the leap from big indie band to proper, your-mum-has-probably-heard-of-them, arena showstoppers. Well, not quite - but they give it a decent go.

Support bands shouldn’t be allowed at this venue. They should just give everyone a few free drinks, or lower the price and have the gig start later. The venue is just so vast, so open, that anything but the most advanced sound equipment is utterly futile. Sons and Daughters may well be a very exciting young band with a captivating front-woman in Adele Bethel, but they sound flat and tinny against the backdrop of uninterested punters and cloudy vibrations. They look like kids in a school play, completely lost at the sheer size of their audience and task. Sadly, those listening are left grasping the sentiment of millions of parents forced to watch said productions - you stay and watch, but that doesn’t mean you enjoy it.

To succeed at Ally Pally you need an enormous, epic quality in the sound, deep, resounding distinction in the vocals, and giddy devotion in the fans. Luckily, this pretty much describes Editors. After the warm, welcoming paranoia of ‘Camera’, they soon throttle any sceptics by crashing into fire-starting, anthem mode. Songs flash past, working by blending big, effect-laden, soaring riffs - you know, that one U2 have been using for the past two decades - with deft, subtle touches. ‘Munich’ is simply deafening, a menacing carousel of intent, while ‘The End Has A Start’ feeds off a crushing drum line that forces blaring energy into the set.

This vitality doesn’t really disperse into the crowd though. It’s a surprisingly old bunch, with less than instant enthusiasm, and the band lacks the spark to turn the gig from an event to an occasion. Every time any momentum builds, a more considered track seems to lose the interest of those less than obsessively committed. While ‘Push Your Head Towards The Air’ is a comfy, plush little number, it gets somewhat lost amongst the blockbusting blaze of ‘Bullets’ and the relentless, purging surge of ‘All Sparks’.

One constant is the capricious, captivating performance of singer Tom Smith. Frustration seeps from each pained movement as he entangles his voice and arms around ’Spiders’, before a mischievous playfulness highlights an accomplished run through The Cure’s ‘Lullaby.’ Rarely has a band’s sound been so clearly expressed through a singer; his every move details each twisting guitar, every bellow betrays an intense longing for affection but distance. He hides the band’s shortcomings and amplifies their talents , and almost - almost - makes this a triumph.

Then the sound system breaks. Returning for encore, halfway through the euphoric hymn of ‘Racing Rats’, somebody throws beer on the mixing desk and that’s that. They return in vain for another try, before finally completing closer ‘Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors.’ This was a valiant attempt to break into the big time. They will before long, but tonight they fall just short.

The Futureheads - Interview

Hello, You Divvies, We’re Back - The Futureheads

Band make great first album. Band get complacent. Band release adventurous second album that sells terribly. Band get dropped. Band split up. It’s a well-worn path, but The Futureheads are refusing to be the next band to walk along it. Having been dropped, they’ve since regrouped, wrote a new album and, apparently, “rediscovered their mojo.” When Gigwise finds an affable, casually dressed Barry Hyde in a London pub, he is brimming with a giddy excitement that has more to do with a reborn zest for life than the lunchtime pin he is sipping. The other band members are milling around, but we can see Hyde has things to get off his chest, and zone in on the chief songwriter. Read on to find out about that Austin Powers reference, how Radiohead are hypocrites and why the record industry is about to change forever.

Let’s start with the single. When did you write it?

It had been kicking around for a while. I generally write them by myself, in front of the telly, and take them to the band when I’m confident. I’m so neurotic about it, I chew on them for months. ‘Beginning of the Twist’ is a song about self-doubt and mental illness, but also it’s a slightly menacing song of hope. It’s about change. Things are dark but I can feel the sunshine is starting to appear.

Talking of change, do you feel this is a whole new period for the band, a departure?

Departure? I don’t really know what that means. A radical departure sounds like something’s gone really bad. We worked with a producer called Youth, and he identified the key elements of what we do, and cut out all the other things. He put the magnifying glass on every song. It’s a good song for us to release first because we’re kind of breaking the door down with it, like: ‘Hello, you divvies, we’re back.”

What have you been listening to?

I don’t know if listening to music influences us anymore. I think we’ve already listened to all of the music that’s gonna influence us, now we just influence ourselves. Though I have been listening to lots of Bollywood funk and African funk. I think the most influential factor into this album is the business side of it - getting dropped.

What happened then?

If anything’s gonna pull a band together or make them split up, it’s that. Like, ‘Right, that’s it. I don’t like you anymore, I don’t like you anymore.’ Or it will be like, ‘Right, we need to pull together.’ Getting dropped made us a lot stronger, and actually reformed us as a band. We’d became disillusioned being on a major label. We lost our creative drive; we lost our mojo. The day that we got dropped was the beginning of the new era.

Did you see getting dropped as a positive straight away?

I was like, ‘Please, drop us, I don’t want to be involved with this anymore. I don’t want to be tied to the mast of a sinking ship. I want out. Go it alone, at least we stand a chance.’ If we’d have stayed on Warners we’d have split up. It was a very dark period, but that was when we were signed to them, not after.

Why were you so glad to get dropped?

We owed them £1 million. We owed them. They spent it, we didn’t. They spent it on adverts and various things, paying people, bribing people probably. We had to pay that money back, until they dropped us. Imagine your in a million pounds worth of debt on Saturday night, on Sunday morning you’re not. All you’ve done is go to sleep and someone else has made the decision to let you off. Who would be angry with that? I thoroughly recommend getting dropped, unless you split up in which case it’s terrible. It’s made us a better band, 100%.

A lot of anger must have come out of it all, will that be apparent in the album?

I think it’s gave us the optimism and the bravado that every band needs. It’s an audacious thing to stand onstage and say ‘Hey, you bunch of people, we’re gonna play for you now and you’re gonna listen to us, ‘cus we’re quite good at this.’ That’s audacious, and that’s essentially what every band feels.

Tell me about recording the album.

We did it in Andalusia, South of Spain. We recorded the album on top of a mountain, in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was tropical, fantastic madness. We recorded 20 songs, and wrote nine of them while we were there. We got it all wrapped up in 16 days, which is very good going.

How did it contrast to your previous efforts?

The second album took thirty days, so we cut it in half nearly, but did twice as many songs. That was all down to Youth producing. He doesn’t fiddle around with your music, he wasn’t fannying around. He’d play with your mind a lot more than he’d play with your songs. He really cracked the whip, it was like being in a trance a lot of the time, very intense. He works with Paul McCartney a lot, who told him The Beatles recorded their early albums in three hours! That was the era of the hard-working musician. But pressure will always sort the weak from the chaff.

Do you think now you’re on your own label you are under more pressure?

No, it’s always been there, from ourselves. Warners never pressurised us, maybe they should have. Now, we’ve got a lot more to gain. If we do well we could be running a successful business. In reality, we can make more money selling 100,000 albums than a band on a major would selling a million. But it shouldn’t affect our music. We’re not part of the machine anymore, we’re kind of vigilantes.

So why do bands still want to sign with majors?

Every time a band signs a deal with a major label they’re putting themselves in a really bad position. They don’t realise it because of the smoke screen, the false smile and the bottle of champagne.

Why did you sign then?

That’s what you had to do then, man. A lot has changed. There wasn’t the infrastructure for indie labels in place when we started. People like Domino have proved that it can be done in a more sympathetic way than ramming it down people’s throats, with a bit more grace. If we can pull this off we’ll be the most audacious band of all time.

Do you think Radiohead brought the while record label situation to a head?

Yeah, obviously they’re in a league of their own. I had years and years of wanting to be Jonny Greenwood: ‘I’m gonna buy a Telecaster, grow my hair like him, dress like him, beat the living shit out of my guitar like he does.’ You do that when you’re a young ‘un - I idolised him for sure. What they did with ‘In Rainbows’ was an outrageous idea, but only they could pull it off. The thing that disappointed us with what they did is that it did really well online, but then they went and licensed it with XL. If they were gonna do that they should have set up their own physical record company. It seemed to me to be a bit hypocritical.

So you have set up your own physical label?

Yes, Nul Records, its for real. We’re embracing the revolution that’s happening within the business. We’re fed up with the way major labels do it. We decide when we wanna do something, there’s no worries, it’s a lot more efficient. What we’re hoping is that this will show a lot of bands that they can do it themselves. They can have full creative control; it’s a fantastic feeling.

You seem to have a renewed enthusiasm for everything. Was that missing on the last album?

It’s all changed, man. We were really heartbroken by the second album, ‘cus we still love it, it just wasn’t the right time. In some respects it backfired, but we were just following our artistic instincts. But if we hadn’t done it, we’d still be signed to them and I guarantee I wouldn’t be doing this interview. It’s a fate thing, absolutely. If we can pull this off we could go down in history.

Do you feel like underdogs this time around?

Yeah, we’ve got that hunger back. Through the success of the first album, we became this top band, and that isn‘t necessarily a good thing. We were dead young, and became a bit complacent. You need hunger, it’s very competitive; you’ve gotta be better than everyone else.

You recently did a tour of small venues, and now you’re off on a bigger tour. Which do you prefer?

I don’t mind. We’re all so happy to have something to play for and someone to play to. All the gigs are our choice. We’re going to go to every country we possibly can and tour like a domestic band would. That’s something Warners would never let us do. How else can we convince people to like us? Going to these obscure places, people will remember you for that. Everyone band goes to Berlin, how many play go to Wiesbaden?

Lots of your songs talk about time, racing against it or running out of it. Is that a conscious theme?

The age we’re at, mid-twenties, is when you discover our own mortality, the invincible child mind disappears - you are actually gonna die. Writing songs about time is therapy. It’s a difficult time to be, you might even be halfway through your life. Our songs get to the point, don’t meander. We wanna get as much done as we can.

So you’re looking to the future?

Yeah, I’ve started to recently. I’m getting married this year. As well as keeping everything going with the band, I want to become a producer. I’ve been asked to produce Dananananakroyd’s album - sorry, that’s a bit sneaky, it’s my fiancé’s band! I don’t think it’s feasible that we’re gonna tour for the next ten years. I’d like to have a family, and raise kids properly, instead of giving them a backpack.

What to the rest of the band think to that?

They’re all chuffed. Nothing much will change. I wrote this album while engaged and think it’s had a really positive affect, like: ‘Get your shit together Barry, what are you doing?’ I don’t think songwriters have much control over what they create; the more control they have, the more contrived it is.

Do you feel like elder statesmen of indie music?

I know, we’re like Pulp! It’s awesome, but we’re still young boys. Whose gonna be better, the band that has played 3 gigs or the ones that has played 300? As long as you keep that drive… The carpenter that has made the most tables is likely to be the best carpenter.

You’ve said your new album is full of defiance, optimism and joy. Defiant at what?

This whole, filthy world that we live in. The obsession with celebrity that is destroying our country. ‘This Is Not The World’ is the title, and we mean it. Everything we see is covering up what is actually the world. We forget that, we think we’re the centre of the universe, let alone the world. The human ego is out of control ,we’re starting to eat ourselves, crawling over every country and shitting everywhere. The fact that we’re making an album, that we’re still together, is sheer defiance. It’s not that easy to get rid of us.