A fond farewell(ish)

Well, I never did think of a pun-based name and now I probably won't. From today all my new writing etc can be found at my new website. There are some revised versions of articles from this site there at the moment but new content will be added shortly, and hopefully more regularly than it was here!

The pun-based name pending site will still be here as an archive and hopefully people will pop by to read stuff from time to time. It's been fun...

...doth suffer a sea-change. Into something rich and strange

Shakespeare wrote the title above, but Michael Moorcock wrote this: Then the earth grew old, its landscapes mellowing and showing signs of age, its ways becoming whimsical and strange in the manner of a man in his last years... And it does seem to be true that the career trajectory in all of the arts follows that kind of a pattern; 'maturity' or success followed by a period of eccentricity or reinvention in the artists ‘autumnal phase’ (or one of its autumnal phases, as we shall see).

Age need not be a factor;  the eccentric period can  come towards the end of a period of collaboration (especially in the case of musicians) or work within a particular style, as the outcome of a kind of creativity-fatigue. All great bands and artists have made an album which breaks a cycle of straightforward good-ness; often these albums are good in a different way, but almost always they are disappointing and thus judged more harshly than their quality warrants: most famously perhaps,  The Beatles (‘The White Album’), which appeared not just at the end of an unparalleled period of inventiveness for the band but also at the end  of the whole flower power phase fashion/culture-wise. It may or may not be a good album padded out with lots of inconsequential fluff, but even if it is (it isn’t) it’s still better than most albums by most bands.

Aaanyway... The Beatles is my favourite Beatles album, and there's a t-shirt design that says You Can Only Trust Yourself And The First Six Black Sabbath Albums, but my favourite Black Sabbath album is the seventh one (okay, joint favourite), hence all this. And because it wasn’t already a flimsy enough thing to be writing about, I have separated two distinct strands, firstly....

The Last Fling...

A band usually consists of a complicated set of relationships, and for most successful bands, the decision to end their activities rarely usually comes one or two albums after their artistic peak. That said, the decline and death rattle of something great is infinitely better than the sound of talentlessness in its prime, so it’s always worth checking out notoriously bad stuff by good people, even though it often is bad... These are good though:

Pixies – Trompe le Monde (1991)

It seemed like the Pixies forgot how to be the Pixies in 1990 with the release of their third album Bossanova, which jettisoned almost everything distinctive about their sound and lyrical/aesthetic approach, while also being definitely still good. Trompe le Monde reinstated the screaming and dissonant elements and a pinch of the lyrical sleaze while still being somehow wrong and un-Pixies-like, an impression cemented by the solo career of Black Francis (as Frank Black), which took Trompe le Monde as its starting point, in terms of artwork as well as sound. Having said all that, Trompe le Monde is, in its noisy, chaotic way, the equal of Bossanova. Some of the best songs, like ‘Letter from Memphis’, ‘Motorway to Roswell’ and the cover of the Jesus & Mary Chain classic ‘Head On’ have an emotional quality different to that of their early work, but no less likeable for that.

Kiss – Unmasked (1980)

Kiss (or more properly, KISS) chickened out on ending their gimmick-laden early image/lineup three times before finally making the leap with 1983’s Lick It Up. Of all the ‘chicken-era’ albums, only ‘82’s Creatures of the Night (on which, significantly, the band admitted to at least one lineup change, while clinging to their makeup) has anything approaching widespread critical acclaim, while Music From “the Elder” (1981) is at least often seen as a brave, but mainly flawed attempt at trying something different. Unmasked, on the other hand, is seen as the chicken-est of them all, a weaker follow-up to the already commercial, compromised (but in fact great) Dynasty (1979). In fact, it’s a collection of mostly excellent power-pop songs, kicking off with a perfect cover of Gerard McMahon’s sleazy ‘Is That You?’ and with Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley writing some of their catchiest songs, highlights being Stanley’s cheesy semi-ballad ‘Shandi’ and feelgood anthem ‘Tomorrow’ and Frehley’s ‘Talk To Me’. Gene Simmons manages one good song, ‘Naked City’, which he sings instead of barking; it’s nice. It’s sad for fans that Peter Criss wasn’t present (except on the cover), but on the other hand Anton Fig’s crisp, new wave-ish drumming suits the material better than Criss’ more rock ‘n’ roll style would have anyway. Recommended if you like The Raspberries, Cheap Trick and of course KISS.

The Bay City Rollers – Strangers in the Wind (1978)

Teen idols probably deserve more sympathy than one ever feels like giving them. Having gone from successful local band to international phenomenon with the recruiting of singer Les McKeown in 1974, Edinburgh’s Bay City Rollers had by ’78 taken over the creative direction of the band themselves, continued to have chart success, played to vast audiences worldwide and been swindled out of lots of money while still being pretty young. From the peak of their success in ’75 though, old audiences were dying away as new ones were emerging and in 1978 the band was in the extremely peculiar position of appearing in a TV show aimed at their youngest fans while trying to make music that they as rock music fans in their 20s might actually want to listen to. Hence Strangers in the Wind; surely one of the most wistfully dour teenybopper albums ever made. Though theoretically very successful (not many British bands get a US TV show), the songs (especially the elegiac, world-weary title track) seem to emanate from the knowledge that fame is fleeting and empty and on those terms it’s a pleasant and strangely comforting piece of work; by this time Faulkner/Wood was a veteran writing partnership, and their material is easily the equal of the well-chosen (but also miserable) covers included here. But apparently the sourness of success wasn’t something the viewers of The Krofft Superstar Hour wanted to hear about. And nor, to all appearances, did Arista Records, who gave the record one of the worst sleeves ever to grace the work of a major artist. Bummer.


The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)

It's often been noted that post-The Queen Is Dead Johnny Marr was feeling constricted by the jangly, guitar-based 'indie rock' idiom that The Smiths had helped to define. That is borne out by the band's last album, which is (to me at least) easily the equal of its The Queen Is Dead, but is very different in its texture, with pianos, strings, horns and (best of all) autoharp setting the band aside from the torrent of wannabe-Smiths that flooded the 80s indie chart. To be fair, Morrissey's debut solo album Viva Hate is just as different, suggesting that he too was perhaps ready for a change, whether he wanted one or not.

The bands above were reaching the end of their definitive periods, but it’s only natural that bands are sometimes reluctant to let their art die with dignity; and in some cases a new beginning is called for. Sometimes these pay off (these successes are not our concern here) and sometimes they don’t...

The Abortive New Beginning

Girlschool – Running Wild (1985)

 

By the mid-80s, the leading ladies of the NWOBHM had already made some of the toughest, least ‘effeminate’ (in the sense people usually mean it; it is of course completely effeminate in a good way) heavy rock of the decade. The momentum couldn’t last however; by ’84 the most exciting metal was coming from the US and, like most of their peers, Girlschool turned their attention “stateside” and like half of their peers, they made the mistake (from a commercial/critical point of view at least) of deciding to Americanise their sound. To this end the band hired a new singer/keyboard player, Jackie Bodimead, who made her only studio appearance on this album. On the title track, Jackie sings “You haven’t seen the best of me yet”, but posterity has begged to differ. To these ears, though, the sound of the erstwhile tough & scruffy NWOBHM girls trying to be commercial and USA/MTV-friendly is highly appealing, they did it with style and heart and deserved to do better (it wasn’t even released in their own country, but it has been now; finally).

 The Rollers – Elevator (1979)

It’s those Edinburgh tearaways again, this time definitively turning their backs on tartan trimmings and memories of Rollermania and attempting to live in the post-punk now of the late 70s. To that end they not only overhauled their wardrobe, but also hired a new singer/guitarist/songwriter in the shape of Duncan Faure of hit (in South Africa) South African pop-rockers Rabbitt. Elevator is and was widely sneered at for its attempts at seedy rock ‘n’ rollness (lyrical references to drugs, transvestism etc etc) but it should be remembered that however wholesome their music (at least their singles) may have been, the (Bay City) Rollers had spent the previous five years or so touring the world as a band, with all that entailed. Anyway; Elevator is in fact a pretty good album, the band sound reinvigorated, the songs are catchy; but it was just too late really.

The Velvet Underground – Loaded (1970)

Extremely uncoolly, Loaded is my favourite Velvet Underground album. Before hearing it I had heard and liked their first three (critically approved) albums, but the only reference I had come across to Loaded was a dismissive mention in either NME or Melody Maker which sneered at Doug Yule, who sings the nicer songs on the album in a voice that sounds like a musical Lou Reed; it’s nice. Therein lies the problem, presumably – Venus In Furs, Heroin et all may be great, but they aren’t nice; presumably in hiring a young guy who could sing and writing more cheerful songs Lou Reed was hoping to revive the band’s commercial fortunes. Didn’t work, but Who Loves The Sun, I Found A Reason and even Sweet Jane are very nice indeed; great early 70s atmosphere, great songs, great album. Shame about the Reed-less follow-up Squeeze though. I wanted to like it.

Black Sabbath – Headless Cross (1989)

The first album with a new singer by an established group is usually awkward, but can be (as with Sabbath’s own Heaven and Hell) a triumphant rebirth. As fans will know, Headless Cross isn’t the first Black Sabbath album to feature singer Tony Martin, but it should have been. Martin (for me the best non-Ozzy singer BS ever had) had turned up to save the day with the okay-ish The Eternal Idol when the late Ray Gillen’s vocals were found wanting, but that album, solid though it is, is a slightly bland rock album with little of Martin’s personality and less of a Black Sabbath feel than any of the band’s previous albums. Headless Cross was written for and with Tony Martin and, as well as delivering some of his best ever performances (indeed, it’s hard to think of a better hard rock performance than he gives on ‘Kill in the Spirit World’. Unfortunately, as far as the world was concerned it was probably too late for Black Sabbath to regain their throne as metal overlords. Not only had the metal world evolved so that the band sounded a little tame and even old-fashioned, but the public had also, within the previous few years, already welcomed the Ronnie James Dio Black Sabbath, gotten excited and then let down by the Ian Gillan version (which however is quite fun in its Spinal Tap way), been made curious by the never-appearing Ray Gillen configuration and then been introduced to Tony Martin with an underwhelming and not-really characteristic album. So when Headless Cross, a strong collection of atmospheric, catchy and only occasionally silly songs (albeit heralded by a cheap-looking video that made the band look kind of foolish), who can blame the world for not being interested. And in the years since then, the return (and sad passing) of Ronnie Dio naturally overshadowed it. But it’s definitely good...





Postscript: A few honourable mentions/exceptions/etc...

It seems odd not to have included anything by David Bowie here, but where to begin or end? The stylistic changes in his work were so frequent and major that it's hard to say what 'normal' or even 'classic' Bowie is. The same is true of The Cure, but on the other hand, a band like AC/DC have weathered changes in fashion and taste and major upheavals like the death of a lead singer/founder member without ever significantly altering their style. The same, barring the tragic element, is true of Parliament-Funkadelic; George Clinton is far from a one-trick pony, and it's not like he doesn't experiment masterfully in different genres, it's just that he makes them all funky; and why not?
In some fields (metal and punk mainly) these kinds of evolutions are endemic; bands that start off extreme usually reach a point where they either become bored with the limitations of their style, or with the lack of its commercial possibilities.





 

 

 

 

 

SUMMER PLAYLIST ROUNDUP

A bit late, but here are some things, old and new, that have been affecting the ears pleasantly this summer...


Valet - Nature (Kranky Records)

This quietly powerful album crept up on me but has ended up being one of my most listened-to new releases this summer. Honey Owens & co make extremely restrained, subtle but immersive music that I grudgingly suppose fits into a shoegaze-ish type of category; beautiful and haunting, fragile but never weak.

David Bowie - Young Americans (RCA)

My favourite Bowie album changes all the time; mostly it has been between Station to Station and Diamond Dogs, but recently it's been Young Americans. Notoriously a 'plastic soul' album, it has far more intense feeling hidden beneath its smooth surface than is usual in his 70s work, and he has arguably never sung better. It's somehow typical that possibly the best song on the album, Who Can I Be Now? is available only as a bonus track on the CD reissue. Possibly it felt too revealing to the wilfully enigmatic and chaotic Bowie of the mid 70s.

Myrkur - M (Relapse records)

Stupidly heralded by a pre-backlash, Myrkur's debut album can easily withstand the criticism (mostly not even music-related) thrown at it by her critics. Ulver-esque black metal, folk and classical influences and superb songwriting skills make for one of the black metal releases of the year. Look; if it's good enough for Garm (who produced it), it should be good enough for you. Unless you just don't like the music of course, which is fair enough.

 

Lee Brown Coye - Where Is Abby and Other Tales (Cadabra Records)

A genuine oddity, this album is a spoken word album of macabre stories by the American artist and writer Lee Brown Coye, whose writings have largely been overshadowed by the weird and expressive artwork he produced for pulp horror magazines. Both of these were only aspects of a large and fascinating talent though; hopefully more people will discover him through this release, which features readings by the great man's son.


Various Artists - Mongol Metal (Mongol Metal)

This compilation brings together the work of three folk-metal bands from Inner Mongolia and makes for an addictively familiar-yet-strange listening experience. The basic ingredients of folk metal - modern, mainly power metal with a pinch of extreme metal (blastbeats/raw vocals) plus elements of traditional folk music, in this case, Mongolian string and wind instruments and throat singing. It works surprisingly well, though, like all folk metal, it has a humorous aspect if not embraced as intended.



Horna - Hengen Tulet (World Terror Committee)

Horna have produced some of the best black metal of the last decade and their latest album is no exception. It hasn't replaced Sanojesi äärelle as my favourite Horna album, but then that is one of the greatest black metal albums ever; this one is still great though.


Alif - Aynama-Rtama (Nawa Recordings)

I didn't necessarily expect to like an album of unclassifiable music by Arabic musicians, but there is an addictive quality to the mix of unfamiliar (to me) sounds, sampling, funkiness, jazz and so forth.


Manierisme - フローリア (self release)

I LOVE Manierisme, but he/it is one those artists/bands who it is impossible to convince people to like. This demo is at once so noisy, so evocative, so extreme and so tuneful that it's kind of disorientating as well as immersive; it doesn't sound like anything else really; or rather it does; it sounds like Edwardian vaudeville music, WW2 broadcasts, martial marching music and extreme black metal all being played at the same time. Jekyll is some kind of genius to make it all work.

Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth (Ipecac Recordings)

Le Butcherettes are always great; primal yet skilful Iggy-Birthday Party-Lunachicks type punk rock, when it works, is hard to beat, and when Le Butcherettes play it it always works; and that isn't all they play. And this time they actually got Iggy to croak along with Teri Gender Bender; what's not to like?

Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Dress For Excess (EMI/Parlophone)

I have no excuses for loving SSS's second album; it's so 1988, so flimsy, Pete Waterman had a hand in it somehow; but I heard it at the time, liked it then and it still sounds like the future to me now. And it has a spurious kind of Blade Runner melancholy alongside all the recycled 50s riffs and pop-punk posing. 
Chris Cornell - Higher Truth (Universal Music)

On the whole, Chris Cornell's solo career has been (to me at least) a patchy, hit & miss and sometimes pretty dull affair thus far. I've only been able to have a few listens but so far I love his new album; it's direct, moving, catchy, not bland and he sounds wide awake; great.

Now for the autumn...






 

Musical Masochism!

Please see the updated and improved version of this article here

Secret Goldfish Syndrome

I have been listening to Jobriath and Creatures of the Street since I bought them over twenty years ago for £1. At that point I didn't really use the internet, which was anyway nothing like as vast as it is now. I first came across Jobriath's name via a dismissive mention in Charles Shaar Murray's GREAT 1977 article Glam Rock Remembered. At the time I was very interested in 70s glam, which I firstly got into through Bowie and Lou Reed and then Roxy Music and the New York Dolls. After that it was a case of wanting to explore the breadth and depth of it; there was a lot of great stuff out there and a lot of crap. It was an amazingly all-pervasive style, from the high street/kid-friendly pop fluff of Hello, Flintlock or (!)Gary Glitter(!), to the serious-band-but-fun-music of Slade and The Sweet to the arty/pretentious Bowie/Roxy and the glittery underbelly of Iggy and Wayne/Jayne County. There was glam for all occasions, as well as the post-glam/pre-punk Beatles-influenced pop of  the Bay City Rollers or Pilot (to this day one of the most underrated of Scottish bands).

But this is not about glam, it's about Secret Goldfish Syndrome. The point is that I loved the Jobriath albums (and still do) and part of that love came from the fact that not only didn't I know anyone else that liked Jobriath, I didn't know anyone else who had heard of him. And I was happy for it to be that way. Secret Goldfish Syndrome applies in all of the arts (and many other spheres too), but I will mainly focus on music because that is more fun to write about. At first glance it seems like the classic music critic attitude that you can't like anything once it's successful, but as we will see, it's more complex than that. In theory, if you like something and don't know anyone else that likes it you should want to evangelise; and sometimes you do. But sometimes you want to keep these things to yourself; like Jobriath. Since then, though, Jobriath has (thanks in part to Morrissey) had some of the respect he is due for those great albums. His work is available again; people write about him and make films about him. I'm glad and it's nice; especially since I can now replace my albums if they get scratched or broken. But it was nice being the only Jobriath fan I knew too.

Jobriath is not an isolated phenomenon; Searching for Sugar Man is a great documentary, and it's nice that, unlike Jobriath's success, it didn't come along too late to improve the life of the artist himself. But I bought Rodriguez's Cold Fact (as it turns out, the South African pressing with the slightly superior sleeve, where the background is black not white) in a charity shop on the strength of the cover and loved it, when the only other person I knew that had heard it was my brother. Cold Fact is just as great as it was then, but now that it isn't a secret goldfish it has taken its place in the pantheon of popular music and belongs to everyone.

Forever Changes by Love was always in the public domain; but I didn't know that when I first heard it in (I think) 1989. I was attracted to it by the psychedelic cover art, expecting something cheesy and hopefully drenched in 'grooviness' and wah-wah, but instead hearing  delicate, summery guitars and  'the snot has caked against my pants/it has turned into crystal'. Something far more strange and addictive and satisfying than mere kitsch; art in fact. Some years later Forever Changes started cropping up in the kind of 'best of the 60s' lists beloved of 90s NME and, like Jobriath a few years later, it became everybody's property.


When your secret goldfish band or artist becomes public property, the work gets a scrutiny that can be uncomfortable; when loving Jobriath's albums as something personal and private, his peculiar Mick Jagger-meets-Elton John vocal style, his extravagant old Hollywood flamboyance/musical arrangements and his assimilation of Bowie/Ziggy-isms in his aesthetic, lyrical and musical approach are all part of what makes him so loveable. In the wider world they can be criticised in an entirely valid way that has nothing to do with one's personal taste.

Anyway; thinking more about the whole phenomenon of secret goldfish it is possible to define various types (with the disclaimer that there is no accounting for taste; someone in the world will no doubt regard Dire Strait's Brothers in Arms as their own personal meaningful discovery; and that's alright).

The mainstream goldfish
The subjective nature of Secret Goldfish Syndrome means that, unlike sometimes-related phemomena such as 'outsider music', commercial success or mainstream recognition of the artist/band doesn't necessarily preclude them from secret goldfish status, although it does make it less likely. For example, probably all of The Beatles albums are probably just too well known, too readily available to be a true secret goldfish album (at a push Magical Mystery Tour maybe?) but some of their songs certainly can be; probably not 'Hey Bulldog' anymore, but certainly oddities like 'Goodnight' (a personal favourite) or 'Mister Moonlight'.


The  (relatively) unsuccessful mainstream goldfish

The key secret goldfish works by major artists are those that are considered lesser works by the critical orthodoxy or that for one reason or another are slightly less well known. It must be hard to feel that say, Thriller or Bad is yours, but possibly Forever, Michael (never heard it) could be.

This category used to include works which have subsequently become acknowledged as nasterpieces  (see Hey Bulldog above) like De La Soul's Buhloon Mindstate, Lou Reed's Berlin and The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, but there are still albums by major artists that could (and possibly do) qualify: Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, The Cure's Japanese Whispers, The Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup, Kiss' Music From The Elder would all be good examples, though the latter really does suck quite a bit. 
Also any album by a well-known band without a key member has secret goldfish potential: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band without Alex, Iron Maiden with Blaze Bayley, Motley Crue with John Corabi, Judas Priest with Tim Owens, Van Halen with Gary Cherone (maybe it's mainly a rock/metal thing?)


The outsider goldfish
So-called 'outsider music', perhaps because of the lack of distancing caused by professionalism/production values etc is a natural place to find music which has a powerful appeal on a personal level. Daniel Johnston is probably the most high profile example that I love, but also artists like Captain Beefheart, Wild Man Fischer, Withered Hand or Venusian Death Cell's David Vora.






The ironic goldfish

This would consist of things one knows are objectively beyond the pale, but which it is possible to love anyway;  I have written about these kinds of things several times; Spin a Magic Tune, Christian rock or metal, but also the kind of 'manufactured' music of the Monkees, 60s/70s bubblegum pop or even  (which I definitely don't love) the 80s Stock, Aiken & Waterman version of bubblegum pop or the present TV talent show related variation.





The possibly-uncool goldfish

It's probably true too that mainstream artists are more likely to be secret goldfish if it isn't the kind of music you usually listen to; the one disco or country album in the collection of a punk or metal fan perhaps, or music you like because your parents played it when you were little. In this sense the secret goldfish can be very close to the so-called 'guilty pleasure' and can include theoretically cool artists like Madonna or Michael Jackson as long as the listener her or himself wouldn't normally consider them cool.



SECRET GOLDFISH RECOMMENDATIONS
Many secret goldfish will naturally remain secret; but here's a short list I don't mind sharing because I have written about elsewhere, because they are famous already or because they seem to be popularity-proof:


New England by New England (1978)

This is getting less obscure all the time, but I love it. NOT cool music, this is late 70s power pop/soft rock produced by Kiss' Paul Stanley; the songs are great









The Whole Enchilada by Trini Lopez (1969)

Trini was of course a huge mainstream/easy listening star in the 60s and is a great, underrated guitar player and a fantastic singer. This late 60s masterpiece was produced by Monkees alumni Boyce & Hart and consists mainly of covers of material by slightly cooler artists (Donovan, Cream, Marvin Gaye), given a soulful treatment. This has on it the only cover of Heard It Through The Grapevine I have ever heard that doesn't melt into insignificance compared with the original.





Not So Old-fashioned by Eartha Kitt (1970)

A similar idea to the Trini album, but with a less psychedelic feel, Eartha performs some great songs (many by Donovan) in her not-quite-imitable style. Highlights include a spooky reading of Wear Your Love Like Heaven and a genuinely lovely Catch the Wind








Loaded by the Velvet Underground

This is a very famous album; for many reasons though it is considered not to be a great VU album. The natural VU goldfish would be Loaded's predecessor, The Velvet Underground but although I love that I have been listening to Loaded without getting bored by it since about 1993 or thereabouts and I think it is absolutely the equal of The Velvet Underground and Nico or anything Lou Reed produced. I love everything about this album, even Doug Yule's voice. I had high hopes for the follow-up Squeeze, but when I finally tracked it down it was blah.





Hot Space by Queen

I am not a very big Queen fan, which is maybe why this (along with Jazz and A Day at the Races) is probably my favourite Queen album; I love the cheesy funkiness of Backchat and Cool Cat and Life is Real is a lyrically great and musically genuinely moving tribute to John Lennon. I love Freddie Mercury's Mister Bad Guy too.






Edge of the World  by Wolf (1984)

A late NWOBHM album, this isn't very heavy really, but is that very early 80s thing, a metal album with a lot of soul (not in the 'soul music' sense). Just a really nice album, if you can say that about a metal record.








On the Boulevard  by Bachelor of Hearts (1984???)

Post-punk glam(ish) rock by a band led by Bay City Roller Ian Mitchell and featuring porn legend Lindsay "Ben Dover" Honey on drums, this is an oddity by any standards. But I love it. Standouts include sleaze anthem Girls in Jeans plus the oddly melancholy Boulevard LA and the gloatingly mean I'm a Winner. Possibly an acquired taste. Oddly, the band seems to have been signed to RCA but all pressings of the LP are either expensive Japanese ones or weird, bendy Romanian ones like mine.





Honey Girl by Venusian Death Cell (2014)

I love all of the VDC albums I've heard (four so far I think), and I chose this one more or less at random. All consist of addictively plaintive, homemade, sincere-sounding, non-catchy, possibly improvised songs by David Vora. His guitar rarely sounds properly in tune but it doesn't really need to be.





In Vmbrarvm Imperii Gloria by Absentia Lunae (2006)

I've written endlessly about this great album and how I think it's one of the best black metal albums ever recorded, so I guess I must have some kind of affinity with it.









Let's end with a pairing of two albums that are different in everything except their theme:

In Your Face by Shout (1989) and The Marshallettes  Trio with Linda Bratton by The Marshallettes Trio (1968)

The Shout album is the second LP by US Christian metal band led by Ken Tamplin. The album is kind of (80s) Whitesnake-like glam-ish hard rock. Tamplin's virtuoso guitar playing and Coverdale-ish vocals would make this just another hair metal LP but for two factors:
1) good songs
2) Christianity. I am not, nor have I ever been a Christian, but the message here undoubtedly gives the record a heartfelt quality that makes it special. This isn't a Christian thing per se; I would say the same about Motley Crue's commitment to their lifestyle on Girls, Girls, Girls. You have to mean it sometimes.
The Marshallettes were three teenage Christians who made an album with their music teacher. It was supposed to be contemporary and girl group-ish, but they were five years too late and irremediably square. But it's kind of beautiful. And so far I've yet to meet anyone else who thinks so.

SPRING PLAYLIST

What's currently (ie this week or so) playing, with whys and wherefores insofar as one can be bothered explaining;

* Odessey & Oracle and the Casiotone Orchestra (Folkwit Records)

'Baroque Pop' is not one of my favourite names for a genre of music, but it's as good a description as any for this masterpiece by French band Odessey & Oracle. The band consists of the core trio of Fanny L'Héitier, Guillaume Médioni and Alice Baudoin, here joined by the Casiotone Orchestra.

Simultaneously futuristic and nostalgic, this is a beautiful and very Gallic album whose music seems equally rooted in 60s psych pop, space rock, (slightly twee) C86-style indie, Stereolab (go-to reference for modern French alternative music) and baroque/classical music.
That sounds like a slightly indigestible mixture, but it isn't; somehow the sound of violas/cellos/flutes etc is complemented perfectly by the analog synths of the Casiotone Orchestra, creating a sound that is wistful and comforting, but never cloying, thanks in part to Fanny L'Héitier's pleasantly cool voice.

The album was available through France's Carton Records but has been picked up by the excellent UK-based label Folkwit Records, who will be releasing it on 1st June this year and is well worth picking up. Check out the band here too.

* Absentia Lunae - Vorwärts (ATMF)

Italy's finest black metal band returned with this sombre and furious album, an authoritative and scathing attack on pretty much everything, informed (but not constrained by) the tenets of Italian Futurism.

The imagery is austere yet grandiose and militaristic, but the music is far from rigid or dead. In comparison to their earlier masterpiece In Umbrarum Imperii Gloria  (one of the most underrated black metal albums ever released),the tone of Vorwärts seems less despairing, more aggressive and dynamic but never simplistic, revealing hidden subtleties with each listen.


* Nippon Girls 2 (Big Beat International)

This second compilation of songs by Japanese beat/pop/rock 'n' roll girls is every bit as great as the first. Covering the period 1965-70, it's a wide-ranging selection, taking in the crazed fuzz-pop of Anne Mari, the Serge Gainsbourg-influenced erotic pop of Chiyo Okumura and the barely musical voice of Kemeko Matsudaira. These sometimes naïve, sometimes sophisticated records preserve the excitement of one of the most revolutionary periods of popular music.

* Oblivionized - Life is a Struggle, Give Up (Secret Law Records)

I've written about this at length elsewhere, so in brief: this is the superbly unpredictable avant grind debut album from one of the best bands in the UK underground extreme scene.

 

 

* Zombi - The Zombi Anthology (Relapse Records)

This great album gathers together all of the early work of Pittsburg's analog synth duo Zombi; superbly creepy and minimalistic John Carpenter-influenced tunes, perfect for when you just want to wallow in horror movie atmosphere.

* Pilot - A's, B's & Rarities (EMI)

A great compilation from terminally underrated Edinburgh post-glam pop-rock icons Pilot. Limited a little by its theme (some of their best songs were album-only tracks) but still more than enough to showcase the band's superb Beatles-esque songwriting skills and inventive musicianship.

 

* Frank Zappa - Over-nite Sensation (DiscReet Records)

At the time critics saw Over-nite Sensation as evidence of Zappa's descent into puerile inconsequentiality, but the accessible, (relatively) commercial songs on the album manage to compress all of the band's amazing musicianship into far more concise forms than is sometimes the case.

*Taran - Taran (Odium Records)

Straightforward, ultra-aggressive but still atmospheric old-school Polish black metal; kind of like classic Immortal but with a more anti-Christian focus. Well worth checking out for fans of second wave BM.

also...

* Green Elder - beautifully atmospheric neofolk from the USA
* Enslaved - In Times: my new favourite Enslaved album
* David Bowie - Young Americans (the expanded reissue from the 90s with Who Can I Be Now - one of Bowie's best songs of that period - on it)
* Délétère - De Ritibus Morbiferis (Sepulchral Productions) Excellent compilation of some of the best Quebec black metal of recent times
* Neil Young - Harvest Not quite as classic as After the Goldrush, but it has its own charm
* Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique. An enduring classic
* The Beatles - The Beatles. People who think the white album would be better slimmed down to a single disc are WRONG. Without even Wild Honey Pie it would be a lesser album.