Get the most from your post-post rock

A RELIABLE indicator of the confused and overtly self-conscious times we live in is the fact that we are now evidently well into the age of post-post rock. Who'da thunk it.

Sennen, from Norfolk, originally took their cue from the likes of And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but have since bonded over a shared love of Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub, Spacemen 3 and Big Star to the point where they are now described by the NME as "Mogwai if they were fronted by Simon & Garfunkel".

See, the thing is, I'm old enough to remember when "shoegazing" was the coming thing, and to me Sennen sound just like Ride or Slowdive with their smooth, sulky, floppy-fringe vocals, flanged basslines and heavily reverbed guitars tricked out with delay pedals on "broody middle distance" settings.

I like it a lot, actually, in the same way that I liked the occasional track by Ride and Slowdive but would never have considered buying anything by them; not when My Bloody Valentine were about.

Brooklyn-based noiseniks Awesome Color would probably qualify as post rock were it not for the fact that they're far too busy rocking to be detained by anything as pussy-whipped as sub-genres.

Mind you, they've moved on somewhat if second album Electric Aborigines is anything to go by. If the scattershot blast of their self-titled debut was The Stooges, then this one is their Fun House - tight, cyclical, monomaniacal riffing (Step Up) flirting with raga (Come And Dance), urban soul (Outside Tonight) and, most unexpectedly and effectively, jazz rock (awe-inspiring album opener Eyes Of Light).

Still, the bottom line is their fervent, animalistic devotion to The Riff. They're so direct that they make The Ramones seem pretentious and over-reaching, and they could if they so desired spearhead their very own sub-genre: base metal.

Let's go way back now to the days of pre-post rock, when bands were secure in their primitive, knuckle-dragging sexuality and were able to give themselves phallocentric names without anyone sniggering.

Well, nearly. When Whitesnake first emerged in 1978, I remember thinking even then that they were embarrassingly out of touch in a world which was reverberating from the shock of the new (wave). I had been a bit of a David Coverdale fan on the quiet before the punk explosion caused me to sneak out and bury my Deep Purple albums in the night, but in 1978 it just didn't seem acceptable any more to be singing about "mah woman" and making "rock" faces while posing with a mikestand. I mean, what would Patti Smith, The Slits and Poly Styrene have said?

Eight hundred trillion Whitesnake album sales later, it became all too apparent that the whole punk/new wave thing was but a blip on the radar rather than the rosy fingers of a new dawn, and that the world in general still preferred tightly-packaged meat and two veg to nouvelle cuisine.

EMI's 30th Anniversary Collection provides all Whitesnake fanatics to reacquaint themselves with the career highlights of this venerated rock institution, all brought to you with a light dusting of digital remastering and featuring copious sleeve notes by Mick Wall and Coverdale himself.

Here I Go Again, Is This Love, Fool For Your Loving and so much more... Assume rock positions and pout wantonly.