Martin Carr first made a name for himself in the early ’90s as the guitarist/songwriter of the Boo Radleys, whose Everything’s Alright Forever (1992), Giant Steps (1993) and Wake Up! (1995) remain essential listening from the Britpop era. The Boos disbanded in 1999, and Carr began releasing records under the bravecaptain moniker for the better part of a decade before issuing Ye Gods (And Little Fishes) under his own name in 2009. Carr is back with third solo LP New Shapes Of Life (Tapete), a compact, sophisticated and personal pop album inspired in part by the death of David Bowie. Carr will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
Carr: Boyle! Halley! Hooke! Wren! Newton! The Other One! The evolutionary process is such that there are always going to be people who are ahead of everybody else. That don’t feel right in their own century; they tear at the canvas, eager to get to the future. Polymathematical. Christopher Wren worked on muscle functionality, telescopes, microscopes, navigation, light and refraction. He built Hampton Court and St. Paul’s Cathedral and founded the Royal Society. Robert Hooke, the mystery, wrote and illustrated the beautiful Micrographia, was Surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire, deduced the Wave Theory of Light, spoke Latin, Greek and Hebrew and discovered the law of elasticity (Hooke’s Law, duh), which is “Never twang an elastic band at your little sister’s face.” They lived, they loved, they drew, they built, they wrote their names on comets, they did terrible things to dogs, they observed, noted, drank gallons of coffee and they pushed. They pushed with all their might.
