The Ephemeric

As the 2016 Presidential election comes to a close, it's time to start looking back at what we have learned over the past several months, about our politics, our government, and indeed ourselves as a nation. The Ephemeric will publish a more in depth final forecast before election night, but for now I'd like to get the ball rolling on this.



Does this false equivalency make me sound cool?
If there is one thing I am sick of hearing, it's people who say things like "what a terrible election, both candidates are horrible!" or asking "they really couldn't find anyone better than Clinton and Trump?", and accordingly deciding that they won't vote this year, or will vote third party.

One of the strangest themes of this election has been how fashionable it has become to speak of Hillary Clinton with the same tones of revulsion as one discusses Donald Trump. This is a woman who had previously been one of the most popular politicians in America with sky high approval ratings. Wife of a very popular former President, a distinguished career in the Senate and as Secretary of State. On paper one of the most qualified candidates of all time, and someone who has dedicated a career to social progress. What has changed?

Clinton is more truthful than most politicians, but voters refuse to believe it
The numbers are pretty clear: Hillary Clinton has a trust problem, with polls consistently showing that voters trust her even less than Donald Trump. Yet it's hard to see how this image has been cultivated. After all, the fact-checkers show Clinton to consistently be one of the most honest politicians in America, with 73% of statements rated true, while her opponent has by far the worst record, with an astonishing 70% rated at least mostly false. Of course, simply being better than Trump doesn't make her good, but for comparison, Clinton's record is more honest than both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, and better than every single Republican who ran for office this year.

So even setting aside her opponent's horrendous record for a second, Hillary Clinton is objectively more honest than just about any politician in America, and yet people don't believe it for some reason. This reputation hardly seems to be supported by the facts, and yet it's proven to be one of those deeply held beliefs that are hard to shake, to the point where I've seen people make some absurd excuses in order to dismiss information that appears to contradict that belief. When news broke this week of actors within the FBI leaking information on ongoing investigations to the Trump campaign, I actually heard someone defend them with "wow, Hillary must have done something really terrible to justify that".

To understand what in the world is happening, I decided to look deeper into why people dislike Hillary Clinton. I've spoken now with people of various backgrounds whose views range from "she's a murderer" or "sex pervert" (somehow) to "she's hiding something" or "she's a liar".

Let's get one thing straight from the off. Hillary Clinton is not a murderer. This website doesn't peddle in baseless conspiracy theories. She hasn't committed anything that could come close to being actions of sexual abuse or perversion. When pressed further on the vague "she's a liar" type statements, invariably the response comes back "something something emails".

Something something emails 
Very few people actually seem to know what Hillary has apparently done wrong with regards to emails. They just know she's done something bad... with emails.

So, a little background: Hillary Clinton was accused of using a private email server to store classified information, something which is in itself not a crime if not done with intent to leak information, but would clearly show poor judgement if true. The FBI decided to look into this, and requested access to her emails. The FBI then ruled that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing, but her accusers have alleged that Clinton deleted a large number of the requested emails, with the implication being that she was trying to 'burn the evidence' as it were. This story has received a huge amount of media scrutiny this election, and indeed it seems to be the genesis of much of Clinton's trust problems.

There's just one problem, it's all nonsense. A complete non-scandal that has been fudged by her political opponents and blown way out of proportion.

Hillary Clinton did have a private email server, but did not store any information on that server which was deemed classified at the time of storage, although some of it was later classified after the fact. Clinton did not delete a whole bunch of emails requested by the police, and no official source has ever alleged as much, rather these were emails that were deleted over the course of her tenure, well before any investigation was ever started. I've deleted several emails today, not to hide anything, but just because that's what any sane person does with an email they don't need.

This most recent revelation that broke the news this week is even less substantive, a notification of new emails that weren't even sent by Clinton, were not stored on her private server, and may not even contain any relevant information.

Ultimately the FBI ruled that there was no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever, and that "no reasonable prosecutor could possibly move forward with a case". No fact-checker or watchdog has ever endorsed these conspiracy theories, and even when these missing emails did leak (from the FBI's servers, ironically), there was ultimately nothing illegal in them. There remains absolutely zero evidence of any wrongdoing, and barely even the suggestion of any particular carelessness. The apparent contradiction of Clinton's accusers suggesting that she risked leaking information from her insecure server, while simultaneously complaining that these emails are hidden and unobtainable as a result of her tight security measures, seems to be lost on these people.

The political party who cried wolf
You might ask, why did the FBI even investigate something which isn't a crime, especially with such scant evidence? The investigation started, unsurprisingly, in the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Hillary Clinton's political opponents, the Republicans. They, who have every incentive to accuse Hillary of wrongdoing, accused her of wrongdoing, and voted to open a full Congressional investigation.

Anyone who has been following politics these past eight years won't have been at all surprised by this. After all, this is the same Republican party that has conjured up frivolous scandal after frivolous scandal, seemingly every other week, to throw at their opponents, most prominently Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Acorn, Solyndra, birth certificates, death panels, Benghazi... The Republicans have spent years, and millions in taxpayer money, pursuing a seemingly endless series of baseless "scandals" against their opponents, and unsurprisingly every single one has proven untrue, and gone nowhere. It's important to remember these things, because the Republicans are counting on you to forget. This is the boy crying wolf for the thousandth time, and yet somehow Americans keep paying attention.

Lesson #1: Voters are apathetic and dependent on the media
This cuts to the real issue in this election. Most people simply aren't switched onto politics. Voter apathy is high, and being interested in politics is not "cool". People only tune in for the Presidential election years. Millions of voters are paying attention for the first time in years to find headlines about Hillary's emails all over the news, but without having the essential context that this is simply the latest in a long series of empty "scandals". For them, this is the first time hearing the boy cry wolf, so they don't appreciate that it's just noise.

Lesson #2: The media is obsessed with false equivalency
The media deserves a fair amount of criticism here. Clinton's emails have received the largest amount of media coverage this election cycle. More coverage than Trump violating federal law to break the Cuba embargo, more coverage than the dozen or so accusations of sexual assault against Trump, which Trump has been recorded on audio admitting that he did, more coverage than Russia's concerted effort to install Trump as a puppet leader, more coverage than Trump embezzling funds out of his charitable foundation, more coverage than Trump calling for his opponent to be jailed, or calling for his opponent to be assassinated. Each one of these are many orders of magnitude more serious than anything Clinton's been accused of.

Perhaps most damning of all, amid all this hyperbole over a Clinton case which doesn't even have enough evidence to go to court, the media has somehow completely ignored the fact that Trump has already been charged with fraud and racketeering, and will be in court defending himself a mere three weeks after the election. You would think the fact that a Presidential candidate is currently awaiting trial for fraud would be newsworthy... but then again something something HILLARY HAS EMAILS??!

It's a problem of false equivalency. If a news network reports a disproportionate number of negative stories about one candidate, they'll be accused of bias, and lose viewers, even if it's completely justified. News networks are therefore incentivised to create this false equivalency where they have a roughly equal amount of positive and negative coverage for each candidate, regardless of the reality.

So you really can't blame apathetic voters for tuning in, seeing both candidates portrayed in an equally negative light, and coming away with a somewhat warped view of the election, ie that both candidates are terrible. In particular, when they only have one negative Hillary scandal to run, but dozens for Trump, it stands to reason that Hillary's one story will get a lot more coverage than any single Trump scandal, so no wonder it's been a bigger issue for more people than Trump's much worse charges.

Of course comparison to Donald Trump does not vindicate Hillary Clinton, the weakness of the case against Clinton, as we have already outlined, does that already.  But still, it needs to be pointed out repeatedly that Trump's scandals and alleged illegality are unprecedented in American politics, and yet the largest share of media coverage has been for a story which only exists due to rank partisanship and abuse of power by the Republicans, where Clinton has already been cleared of all wrongdoing. That is shameful.

Conclusion
The truth is, Hillary Clinton is about as clean a candidate as one will find. The strong fact-check ratings and the fact that this weak email nonsense is the best and only attack line her opponents can come up with after decades of vetting are proof of that. It's frankly a fairly unremarkable "scandal". What she did is nothing even vaguely unusual. President Bush did the same thing, Governor Bush did the same thing, Barack Obama did the same thing, and no doubt many other politicians did the same thing. Donald Trump, ironically, did the very thing of which he has wrongly accused Clinton. Frankly, in any other election this wouldn't even be a newsworthy story. Make no mistake, if this was Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders as the nominee, they'd just have cooked up a different scandal. They'd be harping on about Sanders having had pro-Soviet views in the past, or Biden doing something untoward while Vice President, or god knows what. You're fooling yourself if you pretend otherwise.

If this election teaches us one thing, it's the danger of voter apathy and a media that is incentivised towards sensationalism and false equivalency. When people don't pay attention to politics, they're more dependent on what they see in the news, and the news is increasingly incentivised to present a more "marketable" view of reality, rather than an accurate one. This inherently leads to the high level of misinformed voters that we are seeing this year. A lot of young people seem to think that rejecting both major candidates somehow makes you smart or informed, it doesn't.

Directed by Damien Chazelle
Written by Damien Chazelle
Produced by Fred Berger, Gary Gilbert, Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt
Starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, J K Simmons
Studio Summit Entertainment
Running time 128 minutes

Created by The Duffer Brothers
Network Netflix
Starring Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown
Genre Science Fiction, Horror
Running Time 8 episodes, 45-55 mins each



Those who know me best will know that I am partial to a good TV binge, after all I do go to the effort of drafting The Ephemeric's annual TV Hot List as an advance guide to a year's worth of television.  At the same time, regular readers of this blog will know that in spite of this, I rarely actually post articles on the subject outside of this once a year preview. Today will be the rare exception. Stranger Things is the show that everyone is talking about right now; a series that has come out of nowhere, endured no fewer than fifteen network rejections before being picked up by Netflix, and has gone on to overtake House of Cards and Making a Murderer as the all time most watched original content on Netflix.

The basic premise of Stranger Things is simple: a young child goes missing in small town America, his young school chums go off on a grand adventure to rescue him, while simultaneously he is searched for by his mother and older brother, and, separately, the local chief of police. As the search proceeds it soon becomes clear that something strange, and decidedly supernatural, is afoot.

If this all sounds familiar, it's by design. Stranger Things is very much an homage to 1980s pop culture, with particular reference to the Steven Spielberg brand of kids' adventure movies like The Goonies and ET, and the small town Americana horror of Stephen King. Throw in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a dash of a John Carpenter "creature feature", and a pinch of John Hughes, and you have some idea of where this is coming from tonally. This is a show that is clearly very happy to wear its influences on its sleeve, from the setting and references, to the beautiful synth score, and the eye-searingly gorgeous artwork (see above). This is a show that oozes with nostalgia and fuzzy memories of millennial childhood.

But to summarise the show as merely a nostalgia piece would do it a disservice. Stranger Things contains some of the tightest writing of TV's golden age; a potent and immersive world and characters that are surprisingly complex and addictively easy to which to grow an attachment. Across Season 1's roughly eight hour running time the show never overstays its welcome, never feels like it's dragging things out, or that it's meandering aimlessly. Pitch perfect in tone and pacing, the show is self-aware and light where appropriate, but treats its surreal subject matter with the necessary respect. This is an exceptionally well made piece of television.

I have previously made a point on this website about the fine line of tastefulness that exists between nostalgia and cliché (see as a contrast the new M83 album Junk, which falls on the wrong side of that line). Stranger Things is very much an example of nostalgia done right, evoking the atmosphere and essence of a thing, without ever seeming pandering or forced. Rather than an endless parade of "hey remember this movie?" to drive the plot forward, Stranger Things manages to evolve organically within its own mythology and with a refreshing sincerity. Whether it's the asshole cop who rises to the occasion to become a hero, or the douchebag boyfriend who turns out to be a decent guy, the show celebrates well worn tropes while putting enough of its own spin to avoid feeling obvious or derivative. It's a show which celebrates the simple conceit of its source material while maintaining the modern sensibilities that help the characters and setting ring true in a way that even its greatest sources often failed to do.

Then there is the cast. Winona Ryder takes the top billing as one might expect, but arguably it's the fabulous David Harbour who takes the main plaudits. The child actors themselves are a surprising delight. Child actors can be an annoyance when used poorly, but this astoundingly talented array of young actors never put a foot wrong. Pay particular attention to the name Millie Bobby Brown, who is surely destined for great stardom after this breakthrough performance. These few that I have mentioned are no exception, the casting is spot on right down to the smallest role.

Stranger Things then is a deftly written, brilliantly acted, and impeccably produced few hours of television. But the show's success lies in how all these qualities sum together to form something that's even better than it should be. It's show of which every fiber, every character, every moment is so full of love and care that it will win over even the most skeptical viewer with its high quality, and its sheer sense of fun. Will the Duffer Brothers ever produce something of this magnitude again? It's too early to say, but what they have created here is truly hard to fault, and if you haven't watched it yet, you simply must.

The Rio Olympic games have been enthralling so far. Despite pre-tournament worries of Zika, crime, or terrorism, events have gone ahead mostly as planned, which thankfully allows us to focus on the sport side of things.



Indeed it has been a tournament for breaking records and setting historic milestones, but the subject that I'm hearing people discuss most at the moment is the sensational story of Team GB. How has such a tiny country, one with a generally undistinguished history at the Olympic games until recent years, come out all of a sudden to become such a global sporting powerhouse?

As one can see from the official Team GB website, there has been a clear improvement in the country's performance at the summer games, beginning with 2008 in Beijing, a run of success that has seen Team GB finish fourth, third and so far second in the three summer tournaments since then. In the twenty years preceding those games, 1988-2008, Team GB won an average of 23.4 medals per game. From 2008 onwards, that average increases by 130% to 54 total medals, a number that will certainly increase even further as the Rio games continue to unfold.

Now a note of caution: the summer Olympics only take place every four years; with such a small data set you're bound to get some funky data. But any accusation that 2008 was a fluke, or that 2012 was just down to home advantage must surely have evaporated now given Team GB's showing in 2016, away from home in a hostile climate, and at the time of writing having won more medals than even massive China.

It's perhaps most starkly illustrated when you analyse the data of medals won per capita. On first glance, Great Britain ranking at thirteenth may not seem all that overwhelming, but look closer. All the other major players at the Olympics, USA, China, Russia, all way down the list. Most of the top ranked nations on this list are tiny micronations with a population of a million or fewer that have by some chance won a medal. If you look for larger countries, with population of 25 million or more, Team GB is ranked top. More pertinently if you look at the countries that have won more than just a handful, ten medals or more, GB is top.

So how did they pull it off? Well if you look again at the data, there's another strong correlation, GDP per capita.

Welcome back football fans.  With such a busy summer of sport behind us you may not even have noticed the absence of Premier League football, but the Ephemeric has felt it deeply. The season ahead promises plenty of drama, convoluted narratives that would make Game of Thrones blush, and hopefully some decent football. As per usual the Ephemeric is here to run the rule over every team in the Premier League and render a few inevitably accurate predictions. Read on for the ultimate preview of what awaits us these next nine months.




Premier League 2016/17 Predictions in a nutshell:
Champions: Manchester United
Champions League qualifiers: Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham
Relegated: Hull, Watford, Burnley
Golden Boot winner: Sergio Agüero (Manchester City)
Golden Glove winner: David de Gea (Manchester United)
Player to watch: Paul Pogba (Manchester United)
New signing to watch: Paul Pogba (Manchester United)
Young player to watch: Reece Oxford (West Ham United)
First manager to get the sack: Walter Mazzarri (Watford)
Shock of the season: Paul Pogba is just ok...



ARSENAL

Nickname: The Gunners
Ground: Emirates Stadium
Capacity: 60,000
Position last season: 2nd
Manager: Arsene Wenger

Poor Arsenal, it just never happens for them. Even in a season where all their main rivals fall by the wayside, someone comes out of the blue, just for the purpose of stopping them from winning a first league title in 15 years. On the bright side they finished 2nd, a high point in recent years that breaks the 4th place curse that has become so regular as to have taken on "meme" status, but as a new season dawns they still look a side that is incapable of delivering the big prize.

Typically the problem with Arsenal has been money, not that they don't have it, but that they refuse to spend it. Whether by some misplaced morality, or the simple greed of the club's board, the club has become typified by a lack of ambition. Now with massive recent outlays on transfer spending, including the £50 million deals for Ozil and Sanchez, and this summer nearly £40 million on Granit Xhaka, the club seems finally to have accepted this new reality. Now the question is whether they waited too long and are simply too far off the pace to seriously challenge the big clubs.

But more positive is the return to form of certain key players, most notably Mesut Ozil who in his first few seasons with the club had appeared to be written off as one of the Premier League's big-money flops. Last year he finally showed glimpses of the potential that had made him such a prospect all those years ago, and if he can keep that going this season he'll be one of the league's stars. Meanwhile Xhaka looks to be another smart signing, albeit one for whom Arsenal might have overpaid, but notably the club seems uninterested in strengthening the areas that most need attention, ie a striker, an experienced defender.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Ephemeric's Summer Music Round-Up on this beautiful Saturday afternoon (note: if by the time this post is complete it is no longer a Saturday please disregard that last sentiment).

In Part 2 of our guide to the best music of the summer 2016 we will review three of the hottest albums out right now, with the new LP releases of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Christine and the Queens, and Michael Kiwanuka.


"The Getaway - Red Hot Chili Peppers" Album Review
Genre Rock

At this stage, Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of those venerable rock bands that seem to have been around for ever, and one for which most people have a soft spot tucked away somewhere.

Still there is no denying that they  have been on the wane in the recent years of their career, perhaps most punctuated by the departure of former lead guitarist John Frusciante. Even prior to that, however, their's is definitely a sound in a rut, short on new ideas, increasingly frequently recycling riffs and melodies and sticking to the tried and tested radio-friendly sound that they settled upon around the time of By the Way.

Still with producer Danger Mouse at the helm of newest album The Getaway, I am pleased to say that they have produced their finest effort in some years.

Still heavy on the blended soft-punk and pop-rock, the melodies sound fresher than they have in a while, with more delicate guitar work and fully realised soundscapes smoothed out by excellent production. It's an all together more mature sounding work, a product of finesse, airy enough to let the music flow comfortably without losing its edge. Title track The Getaway is a great song, while Dark Necessities, Sick Love, and Goodbye Angels are also standouts.

A good return to form, and well worth listening to.





"Chaleur Humaine - Christine and the Queens" Album Review
Genre Synthpop


Another of The Ephemeric's successful predictions, Christine and the Queens began the year with high expectations. I had tipped them to make a big splash in 2016 back in this year's Hot List in January, and indeed they are now well on their way to becoming a household name in the European music scene.

Debut album Chaleur Humaine, unusually, was actually originally released in 2014, but only in France. 2016 has seen the wider release in other regions, and the re-recording of several songs in English, and it hasn't taken long for them to catch on.

It's hard to describe just what makes Christine's music work. There's something intricate and meticulously composed about these tracks, which lends them a minimalist sound not entirely dissimilar to other celebrated bands like The xx. But there's also a fascinating combination of sounds, for example in No Harm is Done which blends rap with a light piano backing, or the ethereal Jonathan which comes across as both forceful and vulnerable at the same time. It's expert songwriting.

A critical and commercial success, and a promising start to a career that we will watch with interest.





"Love & Hate - Michael Kiwanuka" Album Review
Genre Folk

When Michael Kiwanuka's debut album Home Again released in 2012 it was something of a revelation. A collection of tracks seemingly out of nowhere that varied from light and playful to darker and more profound. In my view one of the best acoustic albums in many years.

So no pressure to follow up album Love & Hate, which additionally sees the appearance of uber-producer Danger Mouse for the second time on this list.

Fans need not have fretted, Kiwanuka has not lost any of the soul that made his simple arrangements so powerful. Far from it, Love & Hate is full of much deeper and richer compositions, with a greater variety in instrumentalisation from understated acoustic style to fuller and more complex crescendos of jazz and funk.

The sombre title track Love & Hate is the best embodiment of this album, and Kiwanuka's talent as a whole, beautiful soul music that builds into a full soaring cry for help. Really gorgeous. Many songs on the album are worthy of note, from the somewhat peppier One More Night which sounds more reminiscent of Kiwanuka's debut album, to the wonderful construction of I'll Never Love. In my view though the real pinnacle is the heavily introspective Father's Child with it's frantic strings and powerful yearning guitar in the finale.

These are excellent songs, every bit the equal in quality of his first album, and certainly of a more refined production. If there is one criticism of the album it's that it strikes such a continually morose and heavy sound that it can get a bit exhausting by the end, meaning the last few songs might simply pass a listener by on the first hearing, a true shame as the best songs are those at the end. Compare to Home Again which more effectively mixed things up tonally.

This is lush, textured music with a quality of production that lends it a truly timeless quality. It might take a few listens but it is wonderful.

Welcome back to The Ephemeric. I can only apologise for not posting more frequently as of late. Plenty to say, but no time in which to say it. Rather I've been very busy with work, writing, and various other endeavors of greater life importance. Don't let the radio silence and the constant political gloom fool you, there's plenty of awesomeness going around right now, and so this week I am going to give you a rough and tumble summary, the Summer Music Round-Up, which will be split into two parts.

In today's Part 1, we're going with a bit of a theme, reviewing three long awaited albums that have attained near mythical status for their decade-spanning gestation periods and their celebrated predecessors. We will be looking at the new albums from The Avalanches, The Last Shadow Puppets, and Radiohead.


"Wildflower - The Avalanches" Album Review
Genre Plunderphonics

Incredibly it has been sixteen years since The Avalanches released their debut, Since I Left You. A huge success at the time, but it was only in the subsequent years that it attained the truly cult following that it enjoys today, owing as much to the mysterious elusiveness of the band as the album's undeniably high quality music.

The long-discussed follow up album became something of a running joke of the music industry, sort of a "Duke Nukem Forever" of music; perennially teased as being just around the corner, and yet never actually materializing. Indeed here on The Ephemeric I have often gone out on a limb as predicting their return in my yearly previews. Just my luck that the one year I don't mention them is the year they actually do come back.

Well at long last that album, Wildflower, is here in a move that ranks alongside the 2013 returns of Daft Punk and David Bowie as one of the great unexpected musical comebacks. And great it is. While clearly a considerable refinement of the sound of their first album, featuring for the first time collaborators like Father John Misty, Ariel Pink, and Danny Brown, the results will be largely familiar for longtime fans.

As with their debut, there are one or two novelty tracks like lead single Frankie Sinatra and the awful The Noisy Eater which do get pretty annoying, but they are few and far between. For the most part Wildflower simply sounds like a dream, warm and welcoming, straddling genres and combining disparate sources from across the decades in a piece of work so perfectly formed that it is hard to believe it has been pieced together largely from samples. It's an album that in many ways exceeds even the lofty standards set by their debut, and indeed it's a testament to the band's incredible vision than an album that was largely produced so long ago sounds so fresh, not at all dated.

Stunning second single Colours is an instant classic, blending offbeat melodies that sound like a psychedelic record on reverse, but illuminated by a sense of optimism and awe at the world. Harmony follows a similar suit with an unashamedly positive, urban twist on 1960s pop, while Stepkids takes a detour into the grit and soul of country music and elevates it with the strings of a soaring Western soundtrack. Really though, Because I'm Me, If I Was a Folkstar, Saturday Night Inside Out, Kaleidoscopic Lovers, and so many others really deserve a listen. This is one to sit back and listen to from start to finish.

Do yourself a favour and add Wildflower to your music collection. This sun-kissed array of tracks is the perfect summer album, and a triumphant return for the most enigmatic band of the new millennium.





"Everything You've Come to Expect - The Last Shadow Puppets" Album Review
Genre Baroque-Pop

A blast from the past in more ways than one. The Last Shadow Puppets is the side-project of The Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner and Miles Kane, former lead of The Rascals. Their debut album The Age of Understatement was something of a cult classic, an sublime cocktail of the retro baroque-pop stylings the two men have grown up and the seductive trappings of modern indie rock. After eight long years, follow up album Everything You've Come to Expect is here.

Disappointing lead single Bad Habits feels like a bit of a misstep, giving fans cause to worry that the band was heading off in new stylistic direction more driven by Kane's punk roots than Turner's soul. Fortunately we need not have been concerned, the rest of the album is very much more in line with the sensibilities that made TLSP great.

The quality of the music is actually generally more consistent than on their debut album, Miracle Aligner, The Dream Synopsis, and The Bourne Identity all merit listening to, among others, it's a very solid album throughout. Unfortunately what this album lacks is a real stand-out hit. Their first album had a David Bowie cover in In the Heat of the Morning, and two ready-made hits in Standing Next to Me and My Mistakes Were Made for You.

Everything You've Come to Expect is a lovely album with numerous songs worthy of your playlist, but fails to make a knock-out blow with any track that hits as hard as some of their debut LP's singles. Still easy to recommend to all music lovers.





"A Moon Shaped Pool - Radiohead" Album Review
Genre Art-Rock

And our last of the day. Radiohead's new album A Moon Shaped Pool has not endured quite as legendarily protracted a production as the other two in this feature, but five years is a long time, and a new album from Radiohead inevitably comes with great hype.

Fortunately all the things one expects from Radiohead are present, artistic experimentation, inventive meshing of genres and tones, and complex and challenging content. A Moon Shaped Pool hits these notes as well as any album Thom Yorke and his boys have yet produced, and merits listening to for the bold and impressive artistic work that it is.

At the same time, this is a considerably more "poppy" effort than we have seen from Radiohead in many years, starting with the utterly ingenious lead single Burn the Witch with its wonderfully unsettling driving rhythm and psychotic strings. The album additionally consists of some very lovely folk pop tracks with the likes of True Love Waits,  The Numbers and Daydreaming. It's high quality stuff.

A Moon Shaped Pool probably won't convert any Radiohead doubters, but longtime fans and music lovers in general will probably find much to admire with their latest effort.

There is an inherent risk in trying to evaluate any moment of historic import so soon after the fact. Only the passage of time will truly determine the full impact of the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union, but even at this early stage the sheer gravity of the situation is becoming clear: both institutions face a very real existential threat in the coming years.



The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has resigned. The Pound Sterling has fallen to its weakest value in thirty years in the largest single-day drop for decades. The markets have crashed, jobs are already being taken out of London, and the complete break up of one of the world's oldest and most historically significant nations, as well as the most successful supranational entity in all of human history, may be on the cards. This is just the first day after the vote.

Credit outlook downgrades, the Calais Jungle moving to the UK, the Leave campaign admitting it can't follow through on any of its promises? That's day two. The Shadow Cabinet resigning, protests all over the UK and calls for a constitutional crisis? Day three. Yes, it appears all the "scaremongering" predictions that Brexit voters were so keen to ignore are indeed coming to pass. Two days and the country is already in turmoil, unfortunately we're not done yet, not by a long shot. "Project Fear" is starting to look more like "Project Understatement of the Century". It's too late to go back and change that now, all we can do is look at what lies ahead.

The Fall of the European Union
When the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, what's going to happen? The EU needs the economic strength of the UK, and the UK needs access to the single market. The obvious mutually beneficial answer is to strike some kind of a sweetheart deal along the lines of the agreements that currently stand with Switzerland and Norway.

The danger the precedent that this would set in Europe. The UK is not alone in euroscepticism at the moment, and if they manage to withdraw and strike a deal that allows them to retain most of the benefits of membership without the commitment, then why in the world wouldn't the likes of the Netherlands or France try to do the same? A successful Brexit could start a domino effect that in all probability would result in the devolution of several of the EU's most developed nations, a setback from which the Union can not possibly recover. There is no easy answer to this. If the EU gives the UK what they want, the EU will face a serious existential threat. Yet if they make an example of them, the economic consequences for both entities could be dire which might plunge all of Europe into recession. The question is whether a balanced solution can be found.

But even if the EU doesn't completely unravel, which it could well do, the fact still remains that one of its core members has left. Europe is divided again for the first time in decades. Whatever happens from here on out, the dream of a united Europe, that so many have fought for through history, is broken.

The Fall of the United Kingdom
Already calls are being made for a second vote on Scottish Independence. Scotland voted emphatically to stay within the EU. That they are being forced to leave anyway by Westminster confirms all the worst fears of the Scottish Independence movement. I used to be a passionate advocate of Scotland remaining in the UK, but now even I would support their independence. It is not right that a whole nation of people should have so little right to self-determination that so consequential a result as leaving the EU can be forced upon them in spite of near unanimous opposition. This is the opportunity that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have been waiting for, the single greatest chance Scotland will ever have for independence, they will certainly try to take it.

It's the same story with Northern Ireland, who voted resoundingly to stay in the EU, but now face having their will overridden by the English. The Irish situation is even more perilous since leaving the EU will necessitate a hard land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, a move that is certain to provoke old tensions between the two. This is a major problem. Decades of work, of violence and suffering, a hard fought and hard won peace between the Unionists and Republicans, it could all be about to be undone by Brexit. Irish reunification talks are now set to reopen, paving the way for Northern Ireland to leave the UK and join ROI in order to remain a part of the EU.

Might that even not be the end of it? What of Gibraltar, who voted 95% to stay in the EU? There has even been talk of London independence! After all, London essentially props up the rest of the UK with its huge amount of tax revenue, and now as thanks the rest of the UK has voted to trash London's economy, and are forcing that result upon them against the will of 75% of London voters. Why give away all that revenue to a country that clearly doesn't care about London's interests?

This vote has left the UK more divided than it has ever been, as whole regions find themselves being dragged out of the EU against their will. It looks increasingly inevitable that, at a minimum, both Northern Ireland and Scotland will seek independence referenda in the coming years. If this happens, Scotland will almost certainly vote to leave the UK, and it wouldn't surprise anyone if Northern Ireland followed suit. London meanwhile looks set to seek special status to allow separate ties with the EU.

I would simply ask the Brexit supporters this: if Scotland and Northern Ireland break away from your newly "independent" UK, effectively bringing an end to the Kingdom, was it all still worth it?

The End of the UK's economic Golden Age
Even putting aside the very real threat of geopolitical fracturing of the UK, what of the economy? Barely two days later and the markets are crashing, the currency is worthless, jobs are leaving, and our credit outlook has been downgraded. Is this all an overreaction, or is there more still to come?

Unfortunately this is rolling out exactly as predicted by the much maligned "experts". There is nothing irrational about it, the UK is a much less attractive prospect for investment than it was a few days ago, and that will have dire consequences for everyone in this country.

One of the lines most frequently used, ironically, by the Leave campaign, was that the UK is a rising power, a new economic juggernaut at the centre of global commerce. This is all true; London's, and by extension the UK's economic development in recent years has been astonishing, described as an economic Golden Age for the country. What they evidently failed to realise is that this enviable position is a direct result of the UK's unique position as the world's gateway to Europe. English language, stable, secure country, close cultural and political ties to America, and where American money flows, so flows they money from East Asia and the Middle East.

The UK had found itself in the perfect position to be one of the world's centres for business, but without European access that all goes away, along with the UK's new Golden Age. We had the opportunity to place ourselves at the centre of the global market for a generation to come, and now we've just pissed it away.

David Cameron's big gamble
The ridiculous thing? None of this had to happen. The man who called the referendum, David Cameron, didn't even want it to pass, and never for a moment believed that it would. This was a referendum called as an afterthought, a token gesture to a certain demographic.

Flash back to 2015 general election. David Cameron's Conservative party won an outright majority for the first time, having spent the previous five years in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. At the time this came as a huge shock. None of the polls predicted it, conventional wisdom held that a coalition was an inevitable outcome, with Ed Miliband slightly favoured to be the next Prime Minister.

So in a moment of desperation, faced with the prospect of losing power, or at best having to share power with the nationalist UKIP, David Cameron hatched a scheme, as legend has it while eating at the Chicago Pizza Kitchen at Logan Airport, to bring those nationalists (xenophobes) under the Conservative banner. That plan was the EU referendum. Cameron didn't believe in it, and he certainly didn't think there would be any appeal except to a small demographic. It was a low risk gimmick that promised to boost him a few seats in the next election.

In retrospect, this shortsighted, yet seemingly insignificant powerplay would prove to be the end of his career, and a blunder of historic proportions. There is something almost Shakespearean in the way that Cameron's blind power-lust has led to his own ruin. Barely a year later, he had lost the vote and lost his job. Even worse, he effectively wrote his own legacy. No matter what else he has done during his time as Prime Minister, he will be in the history books as the man who broke the European Union, and maybe the man who broke the United Kingdom, a nation that had survived centuries of conflict and change, two world wars, and now has been undone by a greedy, foolish man eating pizza. Think Neville Chamberlain has it rough in the history books? Just wait.

So what now?
This is the million dollar question. The UK doesn't officially withdraw from the EU until it invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, at which point it will have two years to negotiate its exit. The referendum is only advisory, it does not legally bind the country, so that responsibility will fall to Parliament.

Parliament's ratification is considered to be a formality. For a liberal democracy to reject the popular vote of a referendum would be simply unthinkable and lead to a serious constitutional crisis. Technically it is possible for the left wing parties and a small Tory rebellion to block Brexit, but the outcry would be considerable, and few MPs would be willing to go along with it, even those who want to remain the EU.

Still there are hurdles to cross before that Article gets invoked. First, the terms of Cameron's resignation, which states that he will remain in power until October, and only after that point will his successor move forward on leaving the EU. It shouldn't escape notice that previously Cameron had insisted he would pull the trigger instantly. His delaying tactic might just be one last Hail Mary designed to prevent Brexit. Just look at how the economy has struggled in just a few days; by the time October rolls around, the full catastrophic impact of Brexit will be felt, and public opinion might even be turning the other way. Who would be brave enough to go through with this when it's unpopular and tanking the economy?

Then there's the additional complication of a likely early general election, which Boris Johnson has indicated he would call upon being appointed leader of the Conservative party. If an opposition Government takes charge, who's to say they will stick with the result of a referendum they had nothing to do with? Going further, it's likely we will see EU policy take a central roll on manifestos, perhaps even opening the door to an opposition party taking power with a specific mandate to block Brexit.

So in other words no one knows. No one knows what party will be in charge, what platform they will have been elected on, and what the national conditions at the time will be. It's far from certain even that Brexit will happen. We are entering uncharted territory, and the country has perhaps years of crippling uncertainty to look forward to.

Conclusion
So once again, it is clearly problematic to try and evaluate a moment of historic import so soon after the fact. But David Cameron's unnecessary gamble has just broken the EU, and may yet break the UK, with referenda on Scotland and Northern Ireland sure to follow at a minimum.

The UK's new economic Golden Age appears to be dead in the water just as it was beginning, and will certainly lose its status as the centre of global commerce. Europe is divided once again. We are all entering a long period of sustained uncertainty, and no one knows what the political landscape of the country, or indeed the continent will look like once the dust has settled.

It will surely go down as one of history's legendary moments of over-confidence and folly. That's some legacy Mr. Cameron.

On the 23rd of June, the UK will vote on whether to remain a part of the European Union or to leave. It is being described as the political event of the decade, and some would argue this is the most important ballot for a generation of Britons. Now, with the polls on a knife-edge, I am pleased to announce that The Ephemeric proudly and without reserve endorses the Remain campaign.



Introduction
Perhaps the most remarkable part of this whole referendum is the acknowledgement that such a thing would have been simply unimaginable just a few years ago.

Since the formation of the EU, Europe has seen an historically unprecedented era of peace, economic co-operation, and Human development. While the organisation's popularly may have intermittently wavered in the past, the support for our continued participation has not. But now suddenly the toxic cocktail of economic stagnation and the rise of a new wave of Islamic extremism in Europe has created a palpable atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust.

The stage has been set for the most significant revival of reactionary politics since the 1930s; a movement of xenophobes and luddites who thrive on their ability to take advantage of the fearful and vulnerable. Today they are popping up all over the world, Trump in America, Le Pen in France, and now in the Brexit movement at home.

The argument for staying in the EU
Reactionary policy is the political equivalent of trying to get out of a finger trap by pulling harder. For a lot of people it is the natural instinct in a bad situation, but only ends up making things worse. Throughout history it has never been a good idea, and it is no different now. Only the triggers change, in this case the fear of terrorism, economic migration, and eurozone instability. Without regard to the detail of any such issues, for Brexit proponents isolationism simply feels like a shield that will make it all go away. In reality history tells us that it will only exacerbate the situation.

On the other hand the argument for why the UK should remain in the EU is clear and well supported. Most pertinent is the economic benefit that the UK enjoys by being a part of the common market, bolstered by reduced regulation and boundaries to trade, and the completely free movement of workers between member states. This isn't controversial, there is near unanimity among economists that the UK stands to gain more by being a part of the EU. PwC forecasts that leaving the EU would result in years of fewer jobs and reduced household income. Far from scaremongering, this is a conservative estimate, the best case scenario in their forecast.

Now don't get me wrong, you should absolutely not be a sheep and follow what other people say, but even so, when one side (Remain) has Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet, and a long list of nobel prize winners backing it, and the other (Leave) has Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and George Galloway... well that should really set off alarm bells. I hate to be that guy, but if that's the company you're keeping then maybe it's time to re-evaluate.

But don't just take the word of the nobel prize winners and economists for it, the transformation in the UK since joining the EU in the 1970s is readily apparent; from the sick-man of Europe to one of the world's greatest economic powerhouses, directly brought on by the country's new role as a global hub. London in particular has transformed into one of the world's absolutely premier cities, an icon of stability and western ideals, and the world's gateway into the European market. When investment from all over the world, the US, Asia, the Middle East, moves into Europe, it passes through the UK. This has made the British people among the wealthiest on Earth, and turned the country into the world's greatest soft power.

The Brexit campaigners would have you believe this to be some crazy coincidence, they want us to go backwards to the 1970s when Britain was a struggling alsoran; a domestic economy dependent on the chokehold of the unions and bosses, and an utter irrelevance on the world stage. They want the UK to give up it's current position as a global cornerstone of all industry, the envy of any nation in the world, and sell your future short by retreating into our own shell out of fear.

But there's far more than just the economic reason to stay in the EU. The fact is everyone benefits when we combine our knowledge and resources. This has always been the case throughout Human history in just about any area of development.

Europe leads the world in scientific output, greater than the US, greater than Asia, it is Europe that is driving our future. It's obvious why this is the case; increased collaboration, fewer firewalls between researchers, greater alignment in goals and training. Our scientific community is treated as one, rather than divided into several competing groups. The benefits are clear, this creates jobs in the UK and it moves our society forward.

Then there's the national security benefit of collaboration. The Brexit campaign wants to convince you that working together somehow makes us less safe, but the opposite is undoubtedly true. Intelligence sharing and co-ordination of security efforts has prevented atrocoties throughout the decades. Brexit would have us sever our ties with EU security agencies so that if someone they're concerned about enters our country, we simply won't know about it. Don't forget that the Paris attackers were all EU citizens, without cross border co-ordination we would have no way of telling them apart from any other EU citizen. Does that sound safer? I believe that when it comes to national security, ignorance is not bliss.

These are all very high level factors, but even on the personal, individual level there are benefits to EU membership that we all feel on a daily basis. The ability to travel through Europe without a visa is astonishingly taken for granted, to say nothing of the low cost of intra-European movement. Anyone tempted to vote Leave needs to take a moment to think about whether they really want a trip to France to be as expensive and as administratively difficult as a trip outside the continent.

People also always seem to forget just how much of our civil liberty comes from EU law. The Convention of Human Rights. Clean air, product safety, net neutrality, these are all things given to us by EU legislators, many of whom are Britons elected directly by us.

Even little things like cheap phone usage within Europe. On my plan I can do everything on my phone in Europe that I can do at home, for just £2 for 500mb, or 0.4p for each mb. If I visit America it's at least £6 per mb, I can't do a damn thing without it costing an arm and a leg, essentially rendering me disconnected from the world and lacking services that in this day and age are considered basic amenities. Why do you think there is such a differential in cost? Phone data isn't more expensive the farther it has to travel, it's all about the shared market, which has moved to ban roaming charges in any of its member states.

All of this can be summed up by a very simple idea, that people really are better off unified and working together than split up into antagonistic partisan factions. Whatever nation or culture or religion we come from we are all Human and we have far more in common than not. The course of Human progress has followed a clear trend throughout history, small tribes of people gradually unifying into larger settlements, into towns, cities, countries. No amount of reactionary politics or draconian extremism will reverse that trend.

The argument against staying in the EU
Now let's not delude ourselves into thinking that the EU does not have problems. The economic woes of the Eurozone, driven by the collapse of fringe economies like Greece, are well publicised. And then there are the security issues, particularly now with the recent wave of terrorism in Europe. The problem there is not so much the security in developed nations like France, it's that those nations share open land borders with far less developed countries, whose security capability is clearly not at the same level.

This is the key point of the EU's problems, it has expanded way too quickly. An economic and security unification of the most developed European countries makes perfect sense, but when you expand that unity to much poorer countries on the fringe of western society you essentially entrust your security to them, and you treat them as an economic equal to the more developed nations. This is clearly a nonsense. Don't get me wrong, ideally one day it would be great to have unity between all these different countries, but that clearly isn't feasible at the current stage of development. This is not a problem in concept, it's a problem in execution. It's movement in the right direction, but poorly judged timing.

The question before us then, is whether we over-correct for these mistakes and take a massive step backwards, or actually address these issues so that we can keep moving in the right direction. Clearly massive reform will be needed, temporary economic stratification or more centralised co-ordination of EU-wide security, but that effort will pale in comparison to the negative impact of Brexit, and ultimately leave us on the right side of history.

Summary
So the decision we have to make is clear. On the one hand we have the EU, an unprecedented union of nations that has placed the UK at the centre of the economic world, driven forward society from both a scientific and development perspective, and has tangible benefits in our personal lives in terms of free movement, access to information and services abroad, and such easy and affordable access that a trip to the beaches of Barcelona is barely more troublesome than a trip to the countryside.

On the other hand we have scary people doing scary things, who may or may not be able to do even more damage if we leave, and poorer people than us in other countries who require our financial assistance. These are problems to be sure, but to say that abandoning the progress of the past decades along with our modern ideals is an overreaction is putting it very mildly indeed, especially with no reason to believe that it will actually help. And that huge leap of logic comes with more difficult, regulated movement in Europe, extortionately expensive fees, taxes, and phone access, and less demand for British workers who will no longer have access to the shared market.

The fact is there is little, if any benefit to leaving the EU in the short or long term, and the only reason it's gaining such traction all of a sudden is because unscrupulous politicians are taking advantage of you, waving images of dangerous gunman and trying to fool you into believing that leaving the EU will make them go away. To reiterate, the Paris and Brussels attackers were EU citizens, they were not refugees, leaving the EU will do very little to keep them out unless we completely close our borders. This is the 21st Century, you can't just build a wall and shut yourself away from the rest of the World, and quite frankly you wouldn't really want to.

There is nothing new about this movement. There have always been politicians using wedge issues to drive people apart. It turns out it's a very effective way of gaining power; stoke people's fears irrationally to boiling point, then present yourself as the only man who can save them. I am asking you to be smart, to take a step back and see through these games. Don't fall into the same traps that have been tricking ordinary people for generations, rise above that and take self-determination back into your own hands.

Conclusion
As technology and globalisation has continued apace, and human ingenuity shows no sign of reaching a limit, it is increasingly the case that the biggest impediments to progress are the artificial barriers that we erect.

It is not the ultimate goal for us to be divided into squabbling factions, creating artificial hurdles to survival and prosperity. Unity is what has brought us the scientific marvels, the comfort and abundance of the modern age. In the short term, union with Europe has brought us peace, economic prominence, and scientific and social development that far exceeds what could have been achieved had we stayed closed off from the  world. When people are unified they can rise above the conflicts that have mired our civilisation for millennia, and truly solve the fundamental problems.

For all its flaws, the EU is arguably the biggest step mankind has yet taken in that direction, and regardless of how the vote this month goes, there is no doubt that society will continue to progress. A Brexit will merely be a blip in history, the real question we face on the ballot is whether we want to be a part of the generation that said 'yes' and pushed society to take those next steps, or if we want to be consigned to the history books as a temporary setback, the fearful last dregs of a darker time.