Thursday, October 31, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 205 The Go Betweens - 16 Lovers Lane
16 Lovers Lane is not always an easy record to listen to. It tells things how they are. That love is not always an easy road. That you have to persevere. Endure.That the heart is a lonely humter.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 55 Steven R. Smith - Olive
An interesting and different start to the week for me. Perched at the end of a hotel bed in Glasgow, preparing for my online lesson later this morning. Listening to an interesting and altogether charming new record too.
Steven R. Smith's Olive. An orchestral and baroque instrunebtal chamber piece. I found it strangely reminiscent of the music to the magical childhood TV programmes I used to watch open jawed back in my youth.Noggin The Nog came to mind. .
.Evocative winding instrumental pieces that allow your mind to explore the vistas the music plots. Verdant winding paths. Seas and valleys. A great start to the working week
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,764 Amon Duul - Yeti
Back in the mists of time. Well 1970. But it feels a bit like it now, A scythe cutting through wheat, Mother's milk for a young Julain Cope gahering strength in Tamworth in the dark days of the early seventies. Classic,.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,902 Florence Clementine
Closing in on 2025. Isnt' today Halloween. I get confused sometimes. In the UK Halloween seems to stretch right the way through November. Drunken vampires, werewolves and zombies stagger across the streets outside my flat in search of the next pint of inroxication and solace,
Florence Clementine' One Mile Upstream have provided inroxication and solace for me in the early hours of this morning. As I prepare for the fitness centre and my online ten o'clock lesson with Dussledorf business students.
Florence is a poetic charmer. Wife of Benjamin and trading in similar artistic conceits, She uses every inch of her stage for half an hour. Prowlng the boards and shapeshifting projecting to the gods. Excellent stuff. Here comes November,
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 204 Laurie Anderson - Big Science
This was an album I bought when it came out because I was broadening my tasyes and interests. I maybe haven't listened to it very often. But I'm very glad I've got it. In some wats ut's not like any other record in my collection.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,765 Grizzly Bear - Painted Ruins
Grizzly Bear seem to navigate the seas of Rock & Roll with a different compass from other mariners. There's a space in their music tht harks back to many of the great American bands of the Sixties and Seventies. Steely Dan. Beach Boys.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 56 The BVs
Augsburg is a very pretty looking city in Bavaria. Chocolate Box. One of Germany's oldest, with everything you'd hope for judging by a rudimentary Google search. It looks like it merits a visit. History, tea shops, bars and walks. Mid table Bundesliga football team.
Today's Song(s) of the Day is dedicated to what may be Augsburg's finest indie band. If there's a better one I need to hear them. Taking Pictures of Taking Pictures The BV's third album is a rare pearl. A quite lovely guitar record underpinned by tried and tested values. I direct you there forewith,
As with all the best albums there's a story behind the record. Studying at university in Cornwall on exchange programmes. Falling in love with the likes of The Bodines, The Railway Children and mid Eighties New Order. Writing and perfecting songs guided by tried and tested Indie guitar values.This reminds me of why I loved The Go Betweens so back in the day. Listening to this is a gradual, discovery of accumulative beauty and craftsmanship. Just like listening to their records used to be back in the day.
On The BV's Spotify homepage the band have posted a number of quite lovely playlists of the kind of records that have inspired them on their journey. It's all there; the Chills, Crystal Stilts, The Mantles, Holiday Ghosts. Independent Rock's forgotten guitar seam, the kind of wonders I return to again and again on It Starts because I love it all so.
I loved Taking Pictures of Taking Pictures on first play and will return to it on a regular basis in the coming weeks and months. It's such a pleasure to chance upon a record with such an innate understanding for unknown pleasures and a gift of forging new pathways for it. Augsburg's finest doesn't do either the band or this fine record justice.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,901 Anna Butterss
Onwatd and upwards. Wednesday morning and I'm sitting at mu desk with a copy of Uncut Magazine open on my desk. Making my ways ahead, with my nine o'clock with business people in Leipzig on my mind.
This is helping me do so with a contrilled and relaxed manner Anna Butterss latest record Mighty Vertebrate, Busy but nt cluttered. Instrumental but expressive. Dreaming towers and stretching vistas..
Jazzy but with Afrobeat leanings. Thank you Uncut Magazine. Thank you Anna Butterss. A great start to the day, Heading towards 4,000. Ar some point in 2025.
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 205 The Wonderstuff - Eight Legged Groove Machine
Excellent Pop album. Often unfairly derided because some don't;like their haor or frontman or clothing or the scene they were associated with. I think it' a wonderful record.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,766 Spoon - Hot Thoughts
A facile and sloppy response. But generally I prefer forks.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 57 Ancient History - Dollar Consolation Prize
One of the great thrills of writing a blog like mine is coming upon records like this. Ones which will never so much as get a mention from Mojo, Uncut or The Guardian but strike me as every bit as special as the ones they cover. More often, because of what they come to mean to me.
This morning a Pittsburgh based musician named Don Ducote, who joins the dots between Lo-Fi and Experimental Indie practice on his magical latest record Dollar Consolation Prize.
A record that made me think of Beirut, Sufjan, Mercury Rev, Joanna Newsom, Dark Tea, The Shins and all those guys at different moments of its spin. Outsiders and dreamers, toiling away on seams of thought through guitars and more unworldly instruments in upstairs bedrooms and reaching for the stars they see twinkling in the night time sky as they stare into the night from behind their net curtains.
Not a record with memorable tunes exactly but certainly one which casts a spell that traces its roots back to The Fugs, The Merry Pranksters, Cassidy, Ginsburg and Kerouac and beyond.
I loved Dollar Consolation Prize almost immediately. It makes its own rules and drifts off from there into the starry night guided by the windpower of its dreams. An enchanting record and journey.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,900 The Clearwater Swimmers
I live rounding up. And I love The Clearwater Swimmers. How could you not with a name like that. Creedence Clearwater Revivals. The Swimming Pool Q's. A name that is steeped in American folk and musical lore that you know this is going to be good before you listen to a single note.
And the record itself. The Clearwater Swimmers epnymous debut album is evn better than that. It's the best record I've heard today. That good. Comparisons are rife. And the record rises and clears the bar at every challenge. A salmon making its way upstream in the Appalachian Mountains.
This is poignant, and moving stuff. Grandaddy's country cousins.This is a vision and chemistry that has been worked on with inbredible love and care. Magical in the way Marquee Moon, Reckoning, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and Software Slump were magical. High praise. I could wite an essay about this album but I'll leave it there. Alchemy
Monday, October 28, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 206 Pylon - Gyrate
My own year zero moment, (sorry to keep banging on about it, but it's true), was discovering R.E.M. on the release of their debut album Murmur in 1983 when I was eighteen. I always think of myself as a late developer music wise, and in other ways too, but that was the Road to Damascus moment for me musically, in many ways personally too.
It was not so much the record, (great though that was in itself), as the way that it led me almost immediately to other things. Almost as if I'd been waiting for it to come to me without knowing it. R.E.M. were always extraordinarily generous in interview, spending as much of their time as they could spreading the word about lesser known American fellow travellers, those they'd learned from and played with during the emergence over the previous three years.
Probably the name most frequently mentioned name was Athens, Georgia contemporaries Pylon. Pylon had made a small splash in British waters upon the release of their debut Gyrate in 1980, no more than that. The record certainly wasn't readily available only three years on. But, besotted with R.E.M. as I was, I was determined to track it down. When my girlfriend of the time went to The States in 1987, my only request was that she get me a copy. When I went myself four years further down the line I bought the band's other album Chomp.
I still play them both, particularly Gyrate, on a regular basis almost thirty years later. Within the confines of its innate primitivism, it's an almost flawless Post Punk statement. Utterly state of the art in terms of its raw wanton youth but also deeply smart. Frankly you could hang it on the wall as a model lesson to future generations as to how to go about creating Art, having learned first of all that technical proficiency is not all.
Pylon was a side project on the Athens college and music scene that took on a life of its own and eventually came to be the defining act of authorship of its four protagonists, vocalist Vanessa Briscoe, guitarist Randy Bewley, bassist Michael Lachowski and drummer Curtis Crowe. In Lachowski's words, 'art students assembling things with sound and instruments.'
Originally conceived as a youthful diversion from studies and career planning it soon became much more than that as Pylon quickly gathered attention on the American underground. A trip to New York to support Gang of Four was a significant bend in the road and they became the second biggest players on the humming Athens scene. R.E.M. were next.
Gyrate's essence and beauty is in its simplicity. Short snappy song titles, clinical, functional lyrics. They learn their lessons from Gang of Four, Wire and Talking Heads primarily but this is quite its own thing. Rhythm driven, taut but fun, something you can dance to but also think about. With all the time Vanessa Briscoe's urgent, strident vocal turns, acting almost as punctuation, a gear stick to speed things up or slow things down as the mood requires.
R.E.M. clearly learned plenty from them and did their best to pay back the favour. Probably a fair proportion of the records Pylon sold from 1983 onward had something to do with R.E.M's approbations. Robert Christgau, who very occasionally gets it just right, wrote this on the record's reissue.
'Where are the songs, some naive young people will cavil, thus permitting the beat-wise hipsters at DFA to riposte, 'What the fuck you think these are?' Plectrists Randy Bewlay and Michael Lachowski's simple lines display untoward rhythm and melody, respectively. Cameron Crowe bangs away so obdurately it's hard to understand why he didn't become rich. Vanessa Briscoe Hay barks and brays whatever incantatory phrases seemed called for. Timeless. Cool.'
Timeless. Cool. There's little more to add. Gyrate seems both spontaneous and utterly thought through. It's an altogether marvelous album an exemplary lesson to choosing and sticking to your road. Turn up the volume!
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,767 Alanis Morissette - Sipposed Former Infatuation Junkie
Isn't it ironic? No, frankly it isn't.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 58 Bevis Frond - Focus On Nature
'Thank you for inviting me into your house like this. I hope you will enjoy this record.' Bevis Frond Heat
I've spent a couple of very enjoyable hours in the company of the latest Bevis Frond album Focus On Nature in the last couple of days. Nick Saloman has been doing this for over forty years now and it's worth sometimes paying attention to things like this and listening to what artists like this do and why they keep on doing it despite lack of general acceptance.
I'm not a fan of everything Focus On Nature does by any means. Sometimes Saloman's guitar squeals in a manner which I've never enjoyed and proceeds to do so for extended periods which aren't enjoyable experiences at all. I screwed up my face at times.Like a kid being told to wolf down his brussel sprouts by a concerned mother who thinks it's good for them.
Sometimes Saloman reminds me of Roger Waters which is never a good idea where I'm concerned. I think I might be allergic to Roger Waters. The guitar solos frequently remind me of Dave Gilmour ones. I think I'm allergic to those too.
For the most part despite the moments which make me cringe I'm kept onside. Saloman is an eccentric with a vision mostly of his own devising. He's absorbed his influences and adapted them for his own purposes. That's all part of a noble English tradition which sets off with early Floyd and Soft Machine most obviously and carried on through Punk and New Wave and on to everything that's come since. Barrett, Wyatt, Davies, Bowie... I'm sure you could add some more.
Saloman draws on early Psychedelia and Punk and the diversified approach he takes to them pays dividends, like an old school spin bowler striding in to the crease, Derek Underwood comes to mind. Serving up a classic over where no ball is quite the same as the last.
It's the ability to mix things up constantly which I appreciate most about the record. It's eighty minutes long and contains nineteen songs which immediately makes you wonder whether it might have benefitted from watchful pruning. But this is essentially what the guy does so he's probably best left to get on with it. The record also has a wonderful cover. Of a stalk of dandelion chaff. The kind you spent happy moments as a child sitting in a field blowing. Such happy moments.
What artists like this offer is a valuable public service. Voices in the wilderness. Old Testament Prophets. Those willing to swim against the prevailing tide. They serve reminders. Of the way we were. And perhaps can be again.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,899 Snow Goose.
Clean cut. A noble tradition in Rock & Roll. Judy Collins, The Four Seasons, The New Seekers, The Partridge Family, The Brady Bunch..
Glaswegians Snow Goose.have been doing this for while and they do it well. They harmonise their way halfway to gentle folk rock heaven on latest album Descendant.
Sunday, October 27, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 207 Violent Femmes - Hallowed Ground
The Violent Femmes on their second album went South, got God. And religion. Dark. But funny
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,768 The Residents - Meet The Residents
Well. It's The Residents. You probably have a vague idea of what it's going to be like. And whether you're going to like it ir not,
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 59 Lamplight
In the sway of a rural breeze, Ian Hatcher -Williams vocals soothe and enchant the listener on his self-titled debut album as Lamplight which recounts his odyssey from a child raised in a Virginia cult to a burnt out tech worker in New York, then back to Virginia, happily married to his childhood friend, Throughout the album Hatcher -Williams explores how identity as it relates to where a person is from and evolves with where they live, and how that facet of self is further compounded by the agency one has over where they call home. To some extent Lamplight is about learning when to take the reins and when to let go - discovering what parts of yourself should be pruned so new branches can grow.'
Everybody it seems is chancing their arm at Rock journalism these days. Sonic cathedrals indeed. This is the Spotify bio for Lamplight by Lamplight and frankly I'm shrugging my shoulders too. The review nevertheless offers insight into one of the most beautiful albums I've heard this year. Enchanting is the right word. This is a record that reminds me of Fleet Foxes, Phosphorescent's Muchacho and Bon Iver's For Emma in terms of its poetic, haunting quality.
This is high praise and elite company indeed, but this is something which casts a spell and none of these are inappropriate points of comparison. This is a magical record barely three months into a year which has issued no end of them already.
I'm first reminded of Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin' by opening track Play. I always like tracks that remind me of Everybody's Talkin'. Lamplight proceeds from here. There are more questions than answers here which is exactly what you want.Best listened to by lamplight early in the morning. A record which amply rewards investment. A special record indeed which I will return to. Soon.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,898 Kelli Schaefer
'Mirroring the expansive noise and incisive shadow of PJ Harvey, with the fearsome abandon of Nick Cave and vocal play of Bjork.' That's an attractive description and hints at a burning inrensity.
Kelli Schaefer's Even Still is a journey of glowing artistic longing. A great record to isten to in the early hours of a dark October Sunday morning. While the alarm of a shop across the road from me flashed in my window and a portly fire engine attives and uniformed men emerge to deal with the emergency.
This is an exceptional record. The songs are sprinkled with creative and originl drive. Chance discoveries like these exemplify why I love wruting this. No plans to give up any time soon. This one flies. The alarm has stopped across the road. In a while the light will gather.
Saturday, October 26, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,769 Aphex Twin - I Care Because You Do
Aphex Twin generally give me a headache pretty quickly.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 208 David Bowie - Let's Dance
Let's Dance doesn't hang around. One, two, three . Modern Love, China Girl, Let's Dance. That's incredibly impressive. It's a divisive Bowie album among diehards. Ian McCulloch who had been reared in him said he wasn't cool when he went to see him at Milton Keynes. In many respect he was right. This is Bowie's Milton Keynes record.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 60 Laetitia Sadler - Rooting For Love
I find it comforting when a new record featuring Laetitia Sadler turns up in the New Release schedules on Fridays. Like spotting the first shoots of primroses in a fresh meadow in Spring. It makes me think of an old friend turning up in town suddenly and suggesting you meet up for a pot of tea and a plate of macaroons in a local tearoom.
Is there anything that resonates so much as sharing a plate of macaroons and swopping confidances in the company of someone whose company you treasure and always enjoy.
Sadler is someone who always brings something new to the table. Even if her records are instantly familiar. Latest album Rooting For Love finds her tending a garden not disimilar from ones she cultivated and cared for with Tim Gane for many records and tours during the Stereolab years. Ye Ye Pop, Motorik rhythms, Situationist Manifestos. A refusal to dumb down to demands of market forces.
To the right of me on my work desk as I write is the populist alternative. A copy of the latest issue of Mojo. With a rather distressing image of Liam Gallagher and John Squires on the front cover, looking like bedraggled refugees from a long forgotten war that was fought on unjustifiable terms in the first place.
I'd rather Sadler was there myself but we must resign ourselves to the ways the world actually is and then try to work out what we can do about it. Rooting For Love is consolation enough for the time being. Inspiration, too. A record that employs ba dee dah melodies and smart responses to the world and puts them to the most functional and comforting purposes. This was a wonderful soundtrack to accompany the rise of Friday's sun, Ne desperez pas. Le printemps est a horizon.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,897 2nd Grade
A fantastic album out of Philadelphia. 2nd Grade's Scheduled Explosions Robert Pollard, dbs, Alex Chilton and Mitch Easter came to mind. 'a heart seeking missive addressed to the past present & future of rock & roll.'
I was hearing wonderful reference points at every turn. Beatles, Soft Boys, early Wilco, Olivia Tremor Control, This felt lie an early Christmas present. And it's nor even November.
This was a thrilling multi faceted record to enjoy. At a ceryain point in every year an Underground American Rock & Roll classic comes out of nowhere to grab my ears and capture my heart,
In previous years there have been Ratboys, Warehouse, Lawn, Dark Tea and Wild Firth. I suspect 2nd Grade are destined for garlands in 2024
None of these songs hang around, twenty three songs in short of forty minutes. Something of a Modern Power Pop classic.
Friday, October 25, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 209 Prefab Sprout - Swoon
An incredible document of nascency, youthm desire and literacy
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,770 Franz Ferdninand - You Could Have Had It So Much Better
I remember buying this with excitement when it came out in Riga Taking it to my local expat bar asking them to put it on and sitting and listening to it with a mate while we drank our beers. It had all become rather formulaic.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 61 Jessica Pratt - Here In The Pitch
I've alwats had slight difficulties in writing about Los Angeles based singer-songwriter.Jessica Pratt on here. In an English context her name sounds strange and slightly unfortunate and there's no real skirting the issue.
Her music though is quite another matter. It's been consistently enchanting and spellbinding down the years. Labelled Retro Pop in some quarters. An appropriate tag in this case. It trasnports you on gossamer wings to yesteryear.She's a talent with rare gifts.
Latest album Here In The Pitchw was awarded on album of the month award in Uncut a coupe of issues back. It deserves such status and notice, It's a record that finds her refining her specific talents to wonderful effect. This is a special one,. She's a special one. One to watch the sun set to.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,896 Humdrum
'You know me I'm acting dumb dumb. You know the the scene is very humdrum. And my favourite song's entitled boredom'.
Humdrum. A lovely word.Every Heaven a lovely album. Predicated on simple values and ingredients. Jangling guitars. Plaintive vocals. Floppy fringers. Forever seventeen.
Thursday, October 24, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,771 Drive By Truckers - The Dirty South
An album that very much dies what it says on the tin. got a bit tired of the 'Sweet Home Alabama' guitars rather quickly.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 62 Peel Dream Machine - Rose Main Reading Room
Peel Dream Machine have been doing variations of what they do for a number of years. The thing they do, being what I would describe at Laetitia Sadler meets Lou Reed in a cafe on the Lower East Side.
Rose Main Reading Room, their record from this year is exquisite. Ultra Vivid Scene's Kurt Ralske and Stuart Murdoch also came to mind at points. A charming, inspired walk through Indie inclinations of yesteryear.
I can think of few better ways of going from seven to eight on a Thursday morning in late October. Christmas to look forward ti.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,895 The Low Field
Self-effacing. Not the worst think to be. The Low Field 'Limerick based. Quiet then loud then quiet again.'Their self titled album just out has hidden depths. Like the ripples a large rock impose on the surfcae of a lake as it descends to the bed.
What I like so mych about The Low Field and their debut album is their and its sincerity. It's a poignant and resonan record whuch I suosct woud reward replay and reinverstment
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 211 Jane Siberry - The Walking
Very very Eighties production .A Canadian singer songwriter a few years younger than me . Slightly sterile and airbrushed for my tastes. But many will embrace the wonder.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,772 Mac Miller - Circles
Thoughtful and affective itriversions from Pittsbutgh.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 63 The Lemon Twigs - A Dream We All Know
Be careful not to over egg the pudding. It strikes me as good advice. Nobody needs relentless eggy pudding. It just wouldn't do.
Not over egging the pudding I supect has never been a problem for The Lemon Twigs. The oddball Long Island D'Addario brothers who seem to actually believe they're living in a Wes Anderson movie.
A Dream We All Know, their latest sounds to me like the ultimate Lemon Twigs record. They've pulled out all the stops on this one. It's the whole Power Pop Beach Boys, Raspeberries Big Stars, Todd Rundgren symphony retro trip in full effect.
Some of the songs here are among the best they've ever written.They clearly have no shame in the ham and cheees departments. Personally I'm pleased. I like ham and I like cheese.
This autumn The Lemon Twigs are coming to my home town in a venue I haven't been to. I'll pop down if I can. In the meantime I have A Dream We All Know a place where it's forever 1973.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,894 American Motors
On the side of my Blog Homepage I've advertised my new favourite Blog Rosy Homedrive. Unfortuntely in response I've got one of those unsightly enormous footprintsthat I' tempted not to endure with it. Becasue it's ugly.
Never mind for the time being though because Rosy Homedrive is triff and seems likely to direct me to excellent blogs on a daily basis.
Today American Motors and their new album Content. Art Damaged Miimalism it says on their Spotify bio. American Motors seem like amiable, slightly ageing American gents who like the open road, guitars and putting the foot on the pedal. The road ahead. Not the view in the Rearviewmirror. All power to theit slacker sneakers
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,773 Idles - Brutalism
Wat back at the start of their steady but remarkable rise, IDLES played in a tiny club, just down the rad from me. I didn't go and see them. I should have done. They're a fine band.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 212 Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel Of Love
This weekend I went to the 70th birthday party of Norman. A great friend of mine in Newcastle. The biggest Bruce Springsteen fan I've ever met. I like Springsteen. Not as much as Norman. If I chose to listen to one of his records iy wouldn't be this one . I'd gofor one of his albums with the E Street band.
But Tunnel of Love is pretty good. It points yo what is great about The boss. The valies he's grounded in. Greatt literate, poetic lyrics. Lovingly played and sincere songs about commtment, love and fellowship.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 64 Nightshift - Homospapien
Nightshift are my kind of band. A Glasgow Indie collective driven by the guiding lights if the early Eighties and thevalues they established. Postcard and Post Punk. But unlike some opportunist chancers, not feeding on the carcasses and eyeing the prospects of a support slot on a festival stage. They're excellent.
, Homospapien, theirlatest album from earlier this year is a small but perfectly formed feast. Eleven songs and hust North of thirty minutes of excellent crafted small joys.Wire and Spinning Coin. Fire Engines and Young Marble Giants. Girls and boys at their best ! Good values. Good work Nightshift !
Song(s) of the Day # 3,893 Hazy Jane
Hazy Jane a lovely name for a band. And a lovely record. Half The Drugstore. An affirmative, positive, and altogether beautiful record. 'Competent, capable powerful women' in the words of the Spotify bio,Not just women either', Like minded men. Working in the spirit of common respect and working towards mutual goals.
You have to assume that the band comes from the inspiration of Nick Drake. A brave and troubled musical genius with a specific and nuanced poetic vision., This is a dappled, ripplimg, and special record that operates as much in the spirit of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young as that of Drake, Dreamers, Staring at the heavens. Watching the sunrise..
Monday, October 21, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 213 Slapp Happy - Acnalbasac Noon
Classic European Bohemianism. Originally recorded in 1973 with Faust. This was re-recorded in 1980 nd re-released. What was Brexit all about. A nation must have gone completely mad.
It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 65 Uranium Club - Infants Under The Bulb
'My mom threw me out 'til I get some pants that fit. She just won't approve of my strange kind of wit...'
Minneapolis Punk Retrobates. Just what you need on a Sunday morning. Latest album Infants Under The Bulb has them ranting at the top of their lungs and doing the straightjacket fit dance in the rubber room at the sorry state of the world and living existence in general for forty well spent minutes.
This all comes in a long and noble tradition. Symbolist French poets, the kind of people who inspired Hell and Verlaine and Pere Ubu to throw angry agitated fits in darkened American clubs in the mid-Seventies and in turn inspire others to go angular, quirky and irritable in the following decades.
Of course this has precedents. This doesn't make Infants Under The Bulb any less exciting and urgent. Verlaine didn't write Venus for nothing. He wanted to inspire. The same goes for Laughner and Thomas and the rest with The Modern Dance and Life Stinks . Early Pere Ubu are what I hear most immediately on this record and its always a pleasure to see this example being followed.
An album I'll be coming back to. Wonderful stuff. Punk insurgency of the kind I've always appreciated. The kind that makes others think and act. Punk if it was truly Punk always needed to say something. That was the most interesting stuff to me. Uranium Club sound like a fascinating bunch of truly disturbed souls and this is a truly special record. You even get short stories worthy of Donald Barthelme or Ray Bradbury on The Wall. What more could you want. Get some pants that fit you.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,892 Plastic Factory
Stuart Carroll is a Professor of Early Modern History at York University. He also steers Plastic Factory, a guitar driven Indie band predicated on BMX style teenage ennui and Byrds guitar. Current album Forgotten Dreams is a sweet, plaintive start to the week on It Starts.One foot in the C-86 Past. One in the here and now. .
These are a bunch of lovely songs which feed on and channel out the pain and wan desire of that first great rites of passage journey. Plastic Factory speak of the value of keeping and open portal to those key emotions and energies.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,774 Foals - Holy Fire
Foals started off as an interesting concern. Trading on the jittery rythms of Post Punk and early Talking Heads in particular. They became less interesting, to me at least with every passing album. A muscled and capable but rather narcissistic atmospheric Rock conceit.
Sunday, October 20, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 214 Felt - Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty
Disclaimer: A review that borders on pretension.
The first Felt album is a small object. I'm listening to it now. It exists in the space that it was made. It means more than it did in terms of influence than it ever did at the time it came out when it was fairly well ignored. It's splendid, and strangely beautiful in the space it occupies but it shakes no foundations in a real sense. It just drew on the records and artists that inspired it, distilled them into something singular and original and put down footprints of its own for others to build on in succeeding decades.
Felt are a band that exist within their influences. Most obviously from Television, where they got their name, from a misheard lyric off Venus, the second track from that band's unachievable debut Marquee Moon. But also from The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed and Bob Dylan and the pure American Dream that the band members bought into as a means of escape from their humdrum Birmingham existence of the late Seventies and early Eighties.
The key facts about Felt are on public record and have been laid out time and time again for those that care. They set out to make ten singles and ten albums for every year of the Eighties and proceeded to do so before splitting. They were the brainchild of a dreamer from the suburbs of Birmingham who shortened his name to Lawrence, established his distance from his parents and the life that was expected of him and had an unshakable idea which he's clung to ever since that he was destined to be a pop star which was never realised despite twenty years of trying, first with Felt and then alone.
Felt were never rated by John Peel which meant they never quite got the leverage in the Indie hinterland which the might have managed given his support. They did befriend his darlings The Fall however, which allowed them a certain initial credibility. They started on Cherry Red and moved to Creation where they put out records for the second half of that decade to a small devoted audience.
The records are melodic, refined objects.
Their first album Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty, is the only one I bought during that period. It has a terrible title and frankly a pretty awful cover but it's a think of beauty nevertheless. It's graced, most obviously, by the guitar of Maurice Deebank, a classically trained musician who Lawrence chanced upon carrying a guitar to a music lesson in the suburb of Birmingham they both grew up in.
The songs on the album sound almost oriental. They're mood pieces and strangely similar to one another. They build around Deebank's winding, clean guitar work, pattering drums, devoid of cymbals, and Lawrence's muttered, incoherent, impressionistic lyrics. They're best heard in daylight, in a sunlit room. It's almost impossible to hear a word throughout the six songs, partly because it seems they have no particular message to impart except for their own beauty and mood.
The songs are quite sexless. Drawing also on Vic Godard, English Punk's initial great non-conformist who was similarly mesmerised by Television's records which offered a departure point for British musicians keen not to tread the most obvious Punk path as laid down by The Pistols, The Clash and The Ramones. There isn't an obvious influence of any Black record in the entire album.
Later records took a different path once Deebank departed and Martin Duffy who later moved to Primal Scream took his place as their guiding musician, thickened and deepened their sound and gave them a warmth, and a jazzy, funky momentum their debut is almost devoid of by comparison.
Ultimately, the guiding influence on the record, along with all of Felt's others was Lawrence himself. He was looked upon by fellow travellers as a visionary, a man waiting for his moment in the sun. Of course this never actually happened, either with Felt themselves, Denim, the band he formed in the Nineties who flirted briefly with mainstream acceptance just before the Britpop period, or GoKart Mozart, virtually a solo project who Lawrence puts intermittent records out with in the here and now.
The records now feel like strangely sad objects despite their own intrinsic merit and value.
It's partly because they themselves sound vaguely unrealised. The product of a dream. Beautiful as they are, they never quite intersect with the harsh commercial realities of the Pop Machine that Lawrence set out to conquer. Jarvis Cocker, a similar underachiever over the course of the Eighties went on during the next decade to seize the crown that Lawrence so much coveted. And I think, on reflection, that this was entirely right. Jarvis had an ability to interact and relate with a broader public beyond his immediate constituency that Lawrence was never quite gifted with.
I saw Lawrence a couple of years back at a Q & A for the screening of a documentary about himself entitled Lawrence of Belgravia staged at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle. He was articulate, self-effacing, generous and entirely honest but still an oddball, at the margins. It seems clear he'll never have the genuine, hit record that he craves.
His legacy however is definite. He's had real influence. Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian particularly never ceases to sing his praises, but it's apparent why that band has managed to integrate Felt's crafted, melodic gifts with their own influences and vision and made a more immediate commercial success of it. Other groups such as The Allah-Las and The Tyde are similarly indebted.
I recommend you cup an ear to Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty at some point along with the band's other records. They're objects of melodic, particular beauty. Not quite muscular enough to achieve recognition beyond those who are committed to such things. Not ever among my own favourite records. But a body of work I keep returning to and am constantly rewarded by. A singular vision