The train tracks are barbecued black, ancient velvet soot.

Bodies always exert their presence, whether pushed against you, colliding, or from afar, where they say "I'm coming that way, get the hell away from me". The outlines of people at the station seem darker against the pallid strip lighting that pools in the arched ceiling. Commotion at the gates sounds like a battle field; clashing shields and armour, rushing, charging, barriers snapping back and forth, clamping and releasing. The air is thick and warm with flavours of oil and mechanical things. It comes at you suddenly in a rush of wind down the tunnel as one train passes (that man-made weather phenomenon). In the tunnels you loose perceptions; distance, up, down, entering a dreamlike experience. Pressed through the tunnels like a hamster, a sign, another sign, suddenly hoisted up.

The back room has many limbs; piles of tangled gear form a monster with eyes and arms and tentacles. The air is moist with a gentle hum of sweat and that warm electrical smell. The various guitar and drum boxes seem to be examining each other, like strangers in a lift, trying to decide what sort of instrument he or she might be. Some proudly wear scars that tell tales of long hard years; scuffs, puncture wounds, crumbling stickers and decades of shredded gaffa tape. The lower creatures live in darkness like the floor of a deep forest. It is peaceful here, with only the faint rumbles from outside speaking of bands and the work to be done.

Fields of water, slush and bright synthetic materials; tents, anoraks, umbrellas, in vivid blue, yellow and red, like a collage of circus performers. The festival goers march; middle class-turned voluntary militia. The smell of cigarettes and mud, sweet man-made toxins against the deep hue of Nature, the bystander. The hive of activity becomes a colony, a self-erecting ant hill that emerges steadily out of chaos. There is the dull thump of hammers on tent pegs, the clatter of polls being cast to the ground, and endless of rustle of coats in the wind.

The gardens stack up and up, glinting green lawns peaking over one another. Bees do not understand fences. They fizz from garden to the next hapless and manic. Summer is a whirring of gentle activity, parents making outdoor jobs for themselves and children making games. Balls bash against fences with a rattle. They are thin and brittle, slopped with lacquer, easily circumvented by a rabbit or any animal with the ability to scrape or push aside a rut here and there. Balls lie in the trench behind our fence and in front of theirs; in the dark behind the flower bed, where balls are forgotten and slowly decay. The sky is impossibly bright and fuzzy. It has a pressure and a purpose, it seems thick with energy, empowering every thing below, and melting others; ice creams, the beads of sweat on the young lad next door mowing the grass. Down the shady path down the side of the house is a cool channel of respite, leading to the front garden where the street opens it mouth and keeps on opening. Ahead are the woods where there are no more fences, and greens things meld into an unfolding carpet.

This is the second instalment of soon-to-be-many playlists designed around certain indie niche genres.

Today - some favourite female indie artists and singers, for when you're fed up with shouty men with weird hair.

Again, you can grab this Spotify playlist to listen to all the tracks mentioned here.

Feist started out as one player of the sprawling musical collective known as Broken Social Scene. 

Back then she was more like a rare treat, taking up vocal duties on certain tracks only, and often up against a wall of noise.

When she launched her solo career in 1999, we got to hear the true melancholy and break-taking fragility of her own sound.

Featured track: I feel it all
 

Considerably more up-tempo, and hailing from my home Brighton, The Pipettes are to my mind the best example of a good indie girl band. Great songwriting and a cool retro sound that makes you go aaah after one too many Girls Alouds.

Interesting fact: the what-appear-to-be backing band known as The Cassettes (they are always behind the three girls on stage, and wearing different costumes) actually features the real songwriter and mastermind of the group, 'Monster' Bobby Barry.

Featured track: Why did you stay?

With the jazzy warmth of a soul diva, Sia makes classic heartbreak tunes that will make you swoon.

Featured track: You have been loved

Definitely fulfilling the 'quirky' criteria, Regina Spektor is a Russian musical protege girl who's songs feature topics such as grave diggers and eating dogs.

Featured track: Hotel song

Also check out: her guest vocal on Ben Folds You don't know me

Now that Gwen Stefani is a celebrity in the general sense with her own fashion label, it's easy to forget that she started out as the punkette singer in the ska band No doubt. Many gems to be found in the back catalogue.

Featured track: Just a girl

Enjoy!

In the mood for moping? Got you covered. You can hear all these tracks on this sad indie music Spotify playlist.

Elliot Smith is, to my mind, the king of bad times. A singer songwriter in the mid-nineties, he tragically ended his own life in 2003.

His gentle and intimate brand of melancholy has been such a huge influence in indie music that he surely deserves credit here. His sound varied from the super lo-fi acoustic albums of his early career (Roman Candle, Either/Or) to grander indie rock (XO). Well and truly troubled, and truly a genius.

Feel sad listening to: Angeles.
 

Ben Folds is perhaps better known for his wit and more up-tempo dealings with the sad times, such as in the immortal breakup anthem Song for the dumped. But he has also penned some brilliantly emotive and lonesome numbers, which began with Brick, the song that first brought them widespread success.

In 2005's Songs For Silverman he touchingly paid tribute to Elliot Smith, who he toured with in his earlier career with Ben Folds Five.

Feel sad listening to: Still fighting it.
 

Modern day emo-ists featuring the oft-imitated vocal stylings of Ben Gibbard, more recently of The Postal Service. 

The 2005 album Plans featured DIY music videos submitted by fans, which led to some genuinely upsetting interpretations of songs, such as What Sarah Said.
 

Feel sad listening to: I will follow you into the dark.
 

Once gravelly-voiced teenager, now grown-up frontman of The Mystic Valley Band, Conor Oberst has always been an amazingly prolific songwriter, and one of the most quotable authors of tales of heartbreak, isolation and teenage binge drinking. His unique style of poetic rambling has been the object of both praise and hatred, but you can't argue with the songwriting mastery, together with the fantastic instrumentation provided by producer / bandmate Mike Mogus.

Feel sad listening to: Land locked blues.

The Get Up Kids were one of the most influential acts in creating the 90s emo scene, who then spent the later career apologising for this and asking not to be associated with the term 'emo'.

The strained vocal sound and desperate lyrics of Matthew Pryor were a major factor in their sound, which still holds up to this day in my opinion.

Feel sad listening to: Valentine.
 

Sometimes Country, sometimes anything, Ryan Adams is another super-prolific singer songwriter famed for his heartfelt songwriting. 

Recently: went mental and started a screamo metal band, seems to have now recovered and is playing solo shows again.
 

Feel sad listening to: I taught myself how to grow old
 

The Mountain Goats is the musical vehicle of lo-fi alternative/acoustic story-telling machine John Darnielle, who seems to make albums in his sleep. This recommended track, from the Get Lonely album, is about the death of a man's wife. Upsetting for real...

Feel sad listening to: Woke up new.

Lets end with this band just because their rediculous name suggests they are, in fact, very very sad. Miserable Glawegians with a penchant for epic, noisy indie rock. Don't bother listening.

My main conversational bore of the past 12 months: how I haven't slept for X/Y hours/days. [insert melodrama].

I've often felt like the blue wale of sleeplessness - no amount of tranquilliser in the world could put me down.

A few weeks ago, I felt a mixture of depressed and impressed with myself as I told some friends how I had: taken my current sleep weapon of choice, laid down, and over the course of the proceeding 12 hours, listened to three hypnotic sleep mediation recordings (Paul Scheele, Paul McKenna and Glenn Harrold - I'm like an über hoarder of sleep therapy CDs and selfhelp manuals, and their empty promises), and I still managed to not sleep for over 24 hours. I thought it both ridiculous and funny, but they seemed genuinely frightened for my sanity.

I imagined myself like Gulliver, surrounded by ant men with tiny nets and darts. There just didn't seem any way that my messed up little sub conscious could be overthrown.

As a side note, and something you might not have encountered if you've never had insomnia (or taken party-related substances), a wierd and interesting thing happens when you haven't slept for a long time. Your senses seem to level out, leaving you in an almost zen-like state. Albeit with severely reduced concentration span. I've noticed that I've been at my most philosophical when sleep deprived... That might almost be a silver-lining. Or maybe I was clutching at straws in the extreme.

Having discussed this many many time with family and close friends, I've often felt the desire to spit at people who say 'I know - just listen to your breathing'. F**K OFF! I must have spent more consecutive hours listening to my breathing than anyone in the south of England.

One night I was talking on the phone to my dad who asked why I don't draw anymore. I spent practically my entire childhood drawing, glued to the kitchen table sketching whatever OCD craze I was in at the time. Then, when I started learning music I just stopped altogether.

I wasn't a child protégé or anything, but it was something I felt deeply connected with.

So, as part of a new self styled regime to beat the insomnia, I decided that I would stop working at 6 every day and pick up my sketch book. Combined with a bit more exercise to follow and .... What do you know, a miracle cure!

I've been at this for about 2 weeks now, and so far - no crazy sleepless nights.

It makes you ponder at the unfathomable workings of the human brain. It's truly a mysterious instrument that no science fiction will ever out do. Because, when it comes to sleep, I think everyone on the planet works slightly different. Everybody's sub conscious is wired in wondrously unique ways. But for me, for time being at least, drawing seems to be the one failsafe way I've found that lets me truly switch off.

Now excuse me while I get by 2B.

Amazingly, it seems, yes.

From about halfway through I thought it was a joke, and by the end I was convinced of it.

Lets begin with the Frenchman. He’s such a brilliant and ridiculous caricature of a zany art man that it’s far too good to be true. Like any good April fool, it starts out plausible and then degenerates into ludicrousness. By the end, you have a one legged frenchman wheeling up and down a row of canvas spray painting.

The monicker ‘Mr Brainwash’ seemed like such an obvious name for a fictional character representing the mad, modern art-buying public. It seems hard to imagine that the irony escaped everyone at MBW's opening exhibition, that there they were being duped into accepting mass produced variations of existing pop art from a man who calls himself Mr Brainwash.

After watching it, the first thing I did was search on Art Republic to see if there really was a Mr Brainwash. And, good God, there here is. At least you really can buy the work you see in the film. All the other characters, who I assumed were actors, likewise are the real life graffiti artists themselves, and both Banksy and Obey have since insisted that nothing about the film was a prank.

The image of Banksy as this hooded figure before a graffitied wall in a dingy apartment seemed too cliched from the outset. I always imagined him as a slightly awkward outsider who didn’t feel too comfortable to be seen in real life.

As others have pointed, the problem with the idea that this was all setup by Banksy himself (including the exhibition and the hundreds of pieces that it sold) as a stunt to laugh at the art buying community, is that the joke the makes Banksy himself looks as foolish as the public.

But of course, this film (like the rest of the Banksy mythology) is always going to be non-conclusive.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Of all the internet-abused celebrities, Morrissey might be important now more than ever...

Recently I saw an amazing Morrissey clip on YouTube. It's the start of a show in some huge arena filled with your typical Morissey-worshiping crowd. In the opening to the first number, someone throws something and it hits the Moz. In his ultimate gentleman-ly way, he bows, says Goodnight, walks off stage, and doesn't return to the gig.

As much as I cringed at the thought of how that audience must have felt, maybe travelling across the country to not see him play even one full song, I couldn't help but admire the pure unwavering mentality of the man.

Ultimately, I think I love people who deeply and truly don't give a shit. 

People who live their life in this way are so rare that they're practically aliens, and I would forgive them many things.

Why should being this way be a good thing? Well it's not, if you don't stand for something positive. But if you can live out your ideals and be completely impervious to any external pressure to conform, well that's a rare and brilliant thing.

And Morrissey does stand for positive things. He's one of the all-time great romantics, he writes and expresses things that move, inspire and give voice to many many people. That's a positive influence in the world.

We love to criticise public figures who we've heard negative things about, but you need to put them in perspective with the countless millions of less-offensive individuals who have absolutely nothing to offer beside not-being-offensive.

All my favourite people are offensive.

Or maybe a good song just makes up for a multitude of sins...

Recently a friend and I were compiling Spotify playlists of favourite music from our childhood and teens.

I realised two things:

Firstly, I have a slightly deluded fondness for the 80s, which I associate with bands such as The Cure and The Smiths, when in reality these were largely crowded out by some of the worst pop music ever made.

Secondly, and far more depressingly: this decade just gone, which will have been the most musically formative era of my life, has to be the least inspired of the past 60 years.

Popular music has been a mixed bag in every era, but one thing that seems very different about the 00s is that it was the first decade that nothing really radical happened for the whole 10 years. At least not on a grand scale.

In the 70s there was Punk. Never has music been so life-or-death. (If you haven't seen it, I wholeheartedly recommend watching The Filth And The Fury).

In the 80s they invented electronic music. Bands like The Smiths and Joy Division were so truly different from anything that had been before, and they stirred people up in a big big way.  

In the 90s I was a schoolboy when overnight Nirvana made every kid I knew want to pick up a guitar. Blur and Oasis made it cool to be a British lout. 

These were bands that got people really excited, divided them, and made them think and act differently. Whether you liked the music or not is beside the point: the fact is that music in all these times has had a far-reaching impact, shaping everything from politics to dress sense.

So who were the main protagonists of the 00s?

According to Wikipedia, Coldplay, The Killers and Amy Whinehouse were some of the big players.

Other than selling a lot of records, did these people change the world that much? Will they be talked about in the same was as The Sex Pistols or Joy Division?

Of course there there was plenty of good stuff. For me, The Libertines were one of the most exciting bands there's ever been. But they were pretty underground compared to The Sex Pistols or Nirvana.

I don't think you can say that any major revolution took place on the scale of previous decades.

So if music didn't excite people any more, what did?

Facebook. X factor. God knows, but social media, and information in general, seems to be far and away the most important factor in people's lives. Especially since a lot of music seems to be an extension of TV programs.

Maybe I was just getting old in the 00s and so less excitable, impressionable or whatever. But I'd be pretty sad if I had kids who didn't have music that they got the same feeling from as I remember having in the 90s.

Come on tweenies, lets see what you can do.