'I used to spend every afternoon. Locked in the confines of my room. My mother told me I never should. Play with the gypsies in the wood...'
Possibly the most Ironic Rock & Roll Album, with a Capital I and in Italics, ever made. Certainly not the most successful. or the most disastrous.by any means. So laid back it threatens to subside in a heap of self-satisfied sniggers at any moment.
If the third album by Orange Juice were a short story it would be one by Donald Barthelme or Richard Brautigan. One far too clever for its own good laughing up its own sleeve. Not for everybody probably. Where you stand on this may depend on your positions on attitudes like wry and fey. 'A wink and a knowng grin' in the words of opener and flop single Lean Period,
The band's moment in the sun had long passed by the time this came out in 1984..The glorious Postcard singles, tours and interviews where they were clearly far and away the coolest kids on the block and also the ones most likely to.for a few seasons After Postcard came a redraft band wise and an actual bona fide with Rip It Up. Top of the Pops appearances and Smash Hits covers.Their brief lived but inevitable destiny.But by the time this came to be recorded the game was clearly up.
By 1984, it seemed their very reason for being seemed somewhat questionable. They were on a major label, Polydor, but not one that seemed to have much faith or belief in them. Essentially they weren't really even a band any more with key members James Kirk, Stephen Daley, David McClymont, (on sone but not all I think). and Malcolm Ross having dropped out of the frame.
This left OJ as the core duo of Edwyn Collins, who has always been the figure you'd most readily associate with the band and drummer Zeke Manyika. Supplemented in the studio by the likes of Dennis Bovell and various session guys. On the surface the record might have come across as an afterthought, a shrugged apology before Orange Juice finally making their apologies at the end of the Pop Party and disappeared off into the night in different directions..
But there's more to Orange Juice than that. And the tecord makes a glorious listen in 2023. Sounds like a Lost Classic to me, 'Let's talk things over. In the Old Rover. Lets drown our sorrow's like there's no more tomorrows' . From Lean Period. Great punning that would never make it onto Top of the Pops or daytime radio.
As well as the most Ironic,this could be the best Punning album ever made. Collins seems twinned belatedly with Oscar Wilde. An Oscar with a fondness for The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, Dub and Dance Music. You can tell Bovell is involved this time.
I could go on about this at length, How it contains What Presence?! Surely the great lost Orange Juice hit single that never was. The Velvet Underground meet Al Green. In Bearsden. But let's face it all Orange Juice singles apart from Rip It Up, (which actually made and stayed in the charts), were great lost single hits. Orange Juice in retrospect didn't put a foot wrong. Even when what they were recording didn't fit in with what NME or Smash Hits were looking to put on their front cover that week. They were truly a band for the ages.
I've listened to this record a number of times in the last couple of days and now I'm viewing to hunt down a vinyl copy for my record player in 2024.It's an album that has an incredible sense of literary drama which foregrounds itself on virtually every moment of the record and seems to demand another listen when the album finishes its run so you can check out again just how good this is as if you can't actually believe your ears.
Like I just said, I'd contest it's one that would benefit from a reassessment in the scheme of things. . Not one that was destined to trouble any actual charts at the time it was released. In the same way as The Velvet Underground, Edwyn's heroes weren't. Many of the best records don't do that well in the actual charts, but wait for thir moment with stoical restraint and after you' grace. for their moment a few decades down the line The charts? How terribly vulgar. Hear this!
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