Astronomy For Dogs by The Aliens : Articles : Paperjam

Astronomy For Dogs by The Aliens

Music // Jim // 28th March 2007

Astronomy For Dogs: Cool Album

Went to see The Aliens late last year at the Birmingham Barfly. It was a freezing cold night of drinking, old Irish pissheads, barmaid disappointment and really cool music. We were even lucky enough to have a chat with Gordon Anderson, who was a very nice bloke indeed despite me talking a right old load of drunken bollocks.

So it is a bit of a shame to hear the debut Aliens album and discover that Gordon has had a bit of a shit time with the ladies. Reading between the lines on subtly named tracks like She Don’t Love Me No More there seems to be a seam of rejection and heartache running through Astronomy For Dogs.

This is a really good album, catchy in parts, epic in others and with a wide variety of style without stretching into total experimental madness like I was sort of expecting it to. There is only really the super Glover and closing wig out Caravan where things go a touch trippy.

The influences are all fairly retro and as the bloke in the toilets at the Barfly said to me while I was mid piss, the ghost of the Beatles looms large throughout. With the exception of Rox there are a lot less beats going on than you might think due to the Beta Band lineage involved.

Anyhow, seeing as how this seems to be a bit of a concept album about getting binned-off I have pointlessly invented a way of working out just how bad things should be before you turn to Astronomy For Dogs for a bit of celebratory/cathartic listening…

Introduction to the She Gone Done Me Wrong-O-Meter Method

In order to ascertain exactly which bit of Astronomy For Dogs you should listen to when that woman, she has gone done you wrong, an exacting, measurable scale of rightness/wrongness has been painstakingly constructed. Running from Plus 5 (complete rightness) to Minus 5 (utter wrongness) each track on the album will be plotted on the scale to illustrate the romantic circumstances it most appropriately illustrates. Each mark on the scale is quantified thus.

Plus 5: She takes a second job working in a pub so that you can give up your shit job in order to spend more time watching films and have somewhere to drink for free. All of her female friends are Swedish nursing students, none of whom seem to have a shower at their flat and suffer from an underwear allergy. Her few male friends are all gay. Sells her parents house from under them to fund the development of your long cherished screenplay: “Ticket To Snide”, an edgy thriller about a vigilante traffic warden with a penchant for sarcastic put-downs.

Plus 4: Something that somehow involves ejaculation, watching football and a large gin and tonic.

Plus 3: Comes round to your house, tidies up for you, does a really good job of pretending to like your shonky poetry. Turns out to be a lifelong Coventry City fan.

Plus 2: Wakes up with you and doesn’t force you to sign a legally binding non-disclosure agreement

Plus 1: She buys you several pints

Equilibrium 0: No Rightness or Wrongness

Minus 1: Tells you that she just wants to be mates after all. Sigh.

Minus 2: Fucks with your head and breaks your heart, probably via text message.

Minus 3: Runs off with your best mate, all your cds and the contents of your fridge.

Minus 4: Shags around with most of your relatives and then tells you about it loudly during one of your parent’s funerals

Minus 5: Come home to find her in bed with your boss and that kid who used to bully you at school. They beat you senseless and drug you up on horse tranquilisers. Now completely K-holed, she forces you to watch the video that the three of them have just made. Something hits you hard on the head; you lose four teeth and consciousness.

You wake up to discover that you are in a cargo container on a ship. Sold into the trade in human traffic, you are purchased by a shady eastern European criminal organisation. They put you to work in an abattoir/sex club somewhere in Latvia, each night you are forced to perform complicated sexual acts with a variety of old women and rabid animals while “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt plays on an endless loop. After five years of bad animal sex, daily beatings and surviving on what you manage to scrape off the floor of the club, you are offered your freedom – in exchange for one of your kidneys.

You make it back to the UK by blowing half of the truck drivers in Europe in exchange for lifts. Shivering in a homeless hostel in Stoke-on-Trent you learn from a flickering TV that your former girlfriend sold all your stuff and invested the earnings in lottery tickets. Winning a total of 150 million pounds she has set up a media empire, which includes the hugely popular web site jimisauselesstwat.co.uk and produces the most watched show on TV “A list of all the things that are wrong with Jim”, you catch “Episode 62: Jim’s totally selfish lack of self esteem” during which a panel consisting of Jade Goody, Michael Portillo, Noel Gallagher and Janet Street-Porter nod sagely in agreement while your ex explains just how sad you are. After the programme finishes the other tramps in the shelter decide that you are bringing them down and kick you out into the freezing cold.

After 6 months of feral living, you track her down to a penthouse in Chelsea and manage to approach her while she is walking to her Range Rover one morning. The bodyguard hits you so hard that you lose your remaining teeth, swallowing two of them. You come to strapped to a dentists chair in a white tiled room with a drain embedded in the floor, she enters wearing a leather catsuit pushing a trolley littered with sharp looking surgical equipment and power tools.

Over the course of three days she slowly, systematically tortures and mutilates you. Bolt clippers take off your toes, razor wire slowly severs each finger, she drills your knee-caps and uses a sledgehammer to knock your elbows inside out. Eventually the sound of your screams start to drown out the whirring and grinding noises from the belt sander she is using to take all the skin off your chest. “For God’s sake will you please be quiet”, she snaps. Using every last ounce of strength left, you turn your head to look in her eyes and despite a mouthful of blood and only half a tongue, manage to murmur the first word you have said to her in nearly 8 years: “Sorry”.

“That is just so typical of you!” she screams and plunges a large knife straight between your partially exposed ribs and out through your spine. She runs out of the room crying and you lie there dying slowly. As you listen to the last of your blood dripping off the tip of the knife onto the damp tile floor, you start to wonder whether your friends were right about her all along. You die hoping that she isn’t too upset with you.

Application of the SGDMW-O-M Method to Astronomy For Dogs

Track 1: Setting Sun
Sixties/Hendrix/Beatles start to proceedings with a tale of meeting a girl and, err oh dear getting dumped. Still the song is a belter, goes a bit Paperback Writer at one point. Must remember to never, ever play any of this to Steve.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Minus 2

Track 2: Robot Man
Just cool as fuck, I reckon. Starts out space aged, goes a bit house-y at one point before clicking into indie/Beatles mode at the end. Ace.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Plus 5

Track 3: I Am The Unknown
Shimmering, mystic, epic sounding stuff including big guitar heroics in the middle. If I had a car I’d drive around listening to this far too loudly during the summer months. But I don’t, so that’s out.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Plus 3

Track 4: Tomorrow
Wild-Western soundtrack tale of mild regret. Lots of percussion, harmonica and organ. Seems like Gordon’s been dumped but he’s not all that bothered, or at least he’s putting a brave face on it.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Minus 1

Track 5: Rox
Re-visiting bits of Robot Man in the style of Come Together by Primal Scream, sort-of. Probably the track most obviously reminiscent of The Beta Band so far. Pounding stuff – good ipod music.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Plus 3

Track 6: Only Waiting
The one off the Alienoid Starmonica with the really, really rapid-fire lyrics at the end. I only know one person who can do this and it is a bit weird. Off-kilter guitar pop at its finest. George Harrison style guitar solo exaggerates the Beatles influence once more.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Plus 4

Track 7: She Don’t Love Me No More
Hmm, looks like things are going to get a bit upset. Proper maudlin music for getting in from the pub on a bit of a downer. Sounds strangely like an orchestrated version of the Lick My Love Pump bit from Spinal Tap - but good, honestly. Has a Stairway To Heaven piano and string outro.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Minus 2

Track 8: Glover
Jaunty, catchy effort that mutates through several styles while maintaining the same core genetic material throughout. Probably my favourite thing in the album at the time of writing. It’s not good news for the girls though, got to get them off your mind or they’ll mess you up, what are they good for anyway eh? “They come into your life and then they walk away” is an indicative soundbite. Slightly bitter but with a kazoo solo.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Minus 3

Track 9: Honest Again
Oh dear, this is properly gutted territory now. It’s all gone a bit Enya and Gordon is crying in the rain when he thinks about that girl. Fucking hell, is this all about the same woman? Sounds like he’d been through the mill a bit.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Minus 4

Track 10: The Happy Song
A rock n roll song so cheesey that you could serve it on crackers to French people. Has more that a whiff of novelty to it but yet it is impossible to dislike. By the end you’ll be tapping your foot and feeling glad that things have perked up a bit. “Are you coming on up now?” bit will have you bobbing your head around as well. There is some great dancing in the video.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Plus 3

Track 11: Caravan
Big old jam session at the end that goes all over the shop and contains a bit more lovelorn yearning right at the end “How long will it be ‘til I see you again?” is the last thing we hear.
SGDMW-O-M Score: Minus 2

Results: The She Gone Done Me Wrong-O-Meter Speaks...

Wrong-o-meter: Rightness, wrongness

Seems there is slightly more She Done Me Wrong than She Done Right By Me, which I would have guessed at. My advice is listen to the first half before you go out and the second half when you get in. It’s all good.

Paperjam