The first song, Beetlebum, sums up what most of this album is about. Slightly awkward at the first listen, unpredictable, and with a chorus that is a gorgeous melodic triumph if ever there was one. Then, it leaps and bounds all over the place, from abrupt punk, to eerie, odd stuff. Then, after another listen, it begins to grow - it sets its roots and really does grow.
The lyrics are mad and paradoxically irrelevant and relevant at the same time. There are “psycho killers and hooligan gorillas”, “cooking knives and suicides”, Beetlebums and Chinese Bombs - how do you review an album so diverse and bizarre, yet so warm and packed with experiments, melodies, buzzes, clicks, whirrs and utter talent? Well, you can’t; it’s a listening album.
The highlight for me is Essex Dogs. It’s their fifth album ‘This is a Low’ but through a cracked mirror. With its distorted, whispered vocals, Bristol drums, infectious bass, and so much echoed noise going on at the same time, it’s all you can do just to let it wash through you.
But the songs still have an essential ‘Blurness’ about them. There are a couple of tracks that are reminiscent of previous albums, like the gorgeously melodic End of a Century hybrid, ‘Look Inside America’, or the stomping ‘Movin’ On’. But despite changing musical direction, they have kept their own particular sound. The subjects of the songs are different, the style and production are different, but it is unmistakably them.
There’s a complete carefree philosophy oozing from it. Unfamiliar, and slightly awkward at first, it really does get better each time you hear it. Buy it, listen to it, cherish it, drink to it, eat to it, shag to it, but don’t get stressed to it, you can’t get uptight about it. Listen to it and you’ll remember there’s nothing to worry about. As a very sharp and sober Graham said to me last November - “The new album? Well, it’s fucking brilliant”. You can’t argue with the man. You can’t argue with it. It just is.
Apollo 440
Electro Glide In Blue
Stealth Sonic Recordings
The production house that are Apollo 440’s debut album ‘Millennium Fever’ was an unacknowledged classic, turning in ten epic tracks of depth and technical superiority. In-between remixing for the Manic’s and releasing the chart topping ‘Krupa’ Apollo 440 have set to work on ‘that difficult second album’ (©every music journalist in the world). Expectations are high. The result: ‘Electro Glide In Blue’ astounds in places yet fails abysmally in others. One cannot deny Apollo 440’s talent but the over-indulgent wank of tracks such as ‘Pain In Any Language’ sits uneasily beside the instant gratification of the current hit ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Dub’. The cheap comical thrill of Rapid Racer inspired ‘Carrera Rapida’ is contrasted against the subtlety of ‘Vanishing Point’. What should result in diversity merely transpires as incoherency.
Criticisms aside, ‘Electro Glide In Blue’ houses some fine tracks. The title track is a road movie blues track for the nineties that despite some questionable lyrics - ‘Maybe I’m a loveboy who puts on an aphrodisiac’, carries the listener along the journey. ‘Tears Of The Gods’ with its pseudo prog-rock title carries on this gritty blues trend and proves that collaborations between guitars with dance beats need not sound dated. Whilst ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Dub’ is jungle by numbers tainted with glamrock, ‘Vanishing Point’ is near on perfection. Although the beats are not the most innovative, the murmuring diva, minimal electronica, acoustic guitar and aural undertones cannot fail to stir real emotion. Don your zoot suit for the lo-fidelity groove of ‘White Man’s Throat’. Alternatively don your ball gown for the amateur operatics of ‘Stealth Mass In FM’. Ironically the most innovative track is also the most retrospective. The familiar ‘Krupa’ with bouncing kettle drums, booming synth organs and chants generally displays the antipathy of ‘Gene Krupa’s syncopated style’ - what wickedness! Apollo 440’s downfall is also their salvation. Always willing to try something new they make the odd flounder. Fortunately ‘Electro Glide In Blue’ is filled with more bounders than flounders.
The Candyskins
Sunday Morning Fever
Ultimate
For all of you who caught The Candyskins on their recent tour, this album is more of the same, and you have no need for me to tell you that they are gorgeous. Unlike some bands, they are just as musically proficient as they are hummable and, well, just as nice live as they are on disc.
They try not to be, making an attempt to sneer their way through ‘Disco Hell’ but still end up sounding more angelic than Michael Jackson could despite his God complex (not that hard really!) One of the lyrics is even “I’ve got to work so hard to be a waste of space” - they just can’t manage it, they’re too happy, too good and too damn likeable. At most they come across like over-excitable children on 24 Hours ‘(U.S.E.D.)’. Even on the tragic ‘Car Crash’, you get the impression that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and that if the song had turned out badly it wouldn’t have been included. No space for artistic indulgences here.
The whole idea seems to be to do it, to do it well and to do it with a smile, then everything will work out fine. Some might claim that this, on paper at least, adds up to a fairly average band, with no challenges, no edge and no exhilaration, but humour is too often neglected in indie-land, and you simply have to love a band who manage a Tammy Wynette pastiche with ‘D.R.U.N.K.’.
No matter what, this album’s got bounce, it’s got melody, friendship, happiness, the lot! What more could you want? So lighten up and relax. Life doesn’t have to be so hard, you know.
Pavement
Brighten The Corners
Domino
“One of us is a cigar stand/ and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent guillotine/ the edge of creation is blushed and blurred.”
It doesn’t get much better than this. This album is shaping up with each listen to claim the title of best Pavement album so far. And that’s not bad going for the group that produced ‘Slanted and Enchanted’. Where this album excels is in being the first Pavement album to open up a bit. To slow it down, to take its time and then ease it’s way into your heart. The usual angular melodies and inspired twists and turns abound but they are never allowed to overshadow the songs and they are never just odd for oddness sake.
“You’re so beautiful when you cry/ freeze/ don’t move/ you’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life.”
On this album Steve Malkmus has actually allowed himself to occasionally slip out of his overly personal code and signature to actually express something that we come close to understanding. There’s always been moving parts to Pavement’s albums, ‘Here’ on ‘Slanted ..’ and ‘We Dance’ on ‘Wowee ...’, but this is the first album where there’s been a real sense of continuty and flow and you get a real sense of the thougts and feelings that went in to making it.
“Search for a blatant cause/ Blame it on menopause/ or perhaps stress and strain/ credit cards, lumber pain.” However, for all the melancholy and maturity it is still a pop album full of catchy melodies and bizarrely rhyming lines. There are tracks like ‘Date With Ikea’ and ‘Embassy Row’ that still make me grin from ear to ear at how Pavement can manipulate the standard pop ideas and twist them into something so new and sparkling. In the end though this is going to have to go down as the album where Pavement stop pissing about, however entertaining it might be, and produce something that expresses something quite personal and utterly moving.
Swell
Too Many Days Without Thinking
Beggars Banquet
With the common sense that may be expected from a band hailing from the more bohemian territory of San Fransisco, Swell have chosen to abandon all the grunge rock stereotypes. In fact they’ve left them so far in their wake that it makes it impossible for me to attack them with ‘just another American rawk band’ clichés I’ve been saving so diligently. (Don’t you just hate it when that happens?) So, it’s no surprise to find a track here called ‘Fuck Even Flow’. Indeed Pearl Jam can consider themselves well and truly shafted, because Swell make music that does exactly what their name suggests. Each of the tracks perfectly hits the gap that Counting Crows tried so hard to reach, by precariously advancing from a haunting, bluesy melancholia to an open raw-wound of an attack. They take vicious swipes at the everyday insanity of American living, all imbued with a refreshing caustic sarcasm. Somehow there’s never anything nicer than Americans attacking America (Well it saves us the trouble, doesn’t it?).
Swell avoid racous Nirvana plagiarism by indulging heavily in battering drum back-drops, which constantly pound the singer’s eloquently apathatic laments into the ground. “I’ve paid for the finest advise/ I’m happy most of the time” is the best the poor bloke can say for himself in ‘Make You Mine’. The music evolves and distorts in layers of deliberate ambiguity, just as in upcoming single ‘(I Know) The Trip’. There’s even a love song to a dog, and novelty value doesn’t get much better than that. This band should soon be seen making ripples on this side of the pond, simply because they’re swell, I guess.
Built To Spill
Perfect From Now On
City Slang
Instant musical gratification can so often result in disappointment. It compensates real fulfilment and is only momentary. When more is demanded there’s nothing left to give; no surprises to rekindle that initial flourish, and suddenly you’re just another faded has-been, another Evening Session band. Built to Spill are different. Their 1994 album ‘There’s Nothing Wrong With Love’ was fuelled by three-minute blasts of jangly, indie-pop, which toyed with, rather than wrenched the heart strings and was ever so slightly emotionally over-indulgent (if that’s a bad thing).
Now they’re back and they’re angry. ‘Perfect From Now On’ reveals a distinct fixation with mortality and the inevitable possibility that something will be overlooked despite good intentions. Each song is an epic, a carefully arranged masterpiece. Melodies nestle in the memory but with each listen another intricacy is noticed which prevents them from becoming obtrusive. Whether it’s the way ‘I Would Hurt A Fly’ flows effortlessly between the poignancy of slide guitar and cello and soaring crescendos before culminating in a blitz of manic staccato noise, or the almost random progression of ‘Out of Site’, each song is a vast soundscape composed from a limitless palette.
Far from being instantly gratifying, ‘Perfect From Now On’ not so much bares, as offers a brief glimpse to the persevering, the soul of Doug Martsch. Do persevere though because I think the chance is momentary even if they have got a lot more to give.
Let’s get straight to the point - this is an album of fairly catchy tunes. So what’s the problem? Well, I guess that I’ve been led to expect more than just that. This album is squeezed in the gap between albums of his ‘Outside’ trilogy, the first of which we were treated to back in ’95. This is somewhat the problem really. ‘Outside’ was somewhat of a renaissance, and also a heavily overworked album. It worked all the better for that. This is one of those spontaneous, finish a tour and rush in the studio, appearing with an album two weeks later kind-of deal. Not that I’m attacking that method as a whole - of course it gives albums a sense of freshness that they would not otherwise have. But in this particular case it marks the move away from a very successful strategy.
I have no problem with fifty year-olds doing drum’n’bass. You do get criticisms of old stars cashing in on new trends, but if they didn’t you might well hear the same voices criticising them for living in the past. No, my problem here is that I don’t think it works that well. Both ‘Little Wonder’ and ‘Telling Lies’ mix drum programming with old rawk tendencies in such a way that they are not so much bedfellows as kick the other one out of bed each time either gets in. What’s perhaps more worrying is the parading of English identity found in his concern in ‘Battle for Britain’, in ‘I’m Afraid of Americans’, and worst of all in that dreadful cover. I’m sorry, but for me it has the same kind of cultural impact as Elton John’s ‘Made In England’.
To be fair to him, when it’s working at its best, on ‘Seven Years In Tibet’ and ‘Dead Man Walking’, you’ve got some very enjoyable songs. But ultimately, this album fits in with his eighties ‘Let’s Dance’ period as being good, but uninspiring pop music.
Various
This is... Son of Cult Fiction
Virgin
Hmmn. When Mike Flowers 'entertained' us last year with his happy-go-lucky, fun-for-the-kids Easy Listening revival, there was a quick cash in of compilations sating our need for hammond organs and schmaltz. The biggest-selling of these was "This Is... (Ch)Easy", and she was beautiful in a kitsch kind of way, featuring everything from the Pearl & Dean theme tune (30 seconds) to pictures of women reclining on rocks.
Next came "Easy's" siamese twin brothers, "This is... Cult Fiction" and "Return of Cult Fiction". The Grange Hill theme tune was in abundance, and it was all great movie / TV theme-type fun.
However... it would seem incest is not limited to Brookside. These kissing cash-in cousins have shared the bed of sin, a bit like George West, and we are now left to buy their bastard offspring, "This is... Son Of Cult Fiction".
Where to start? There are few people who will buy this album on the strength of "Smoke on the water" by Deep Purple ("from Strongbow Cider"). The same probably goes for Free's semenal "all Right Now". But we're talking about a mixed bag here, so let's delve deeper.
"Son of..." definitely has his dad's nose - there's the A-Team theme, and the themes from Northern Exposure and M*A*S*H. There's some more blatant cashing in by songs from "Quadrophenia" and "Trainspotting" - The Who's "The Real Me" being one of the album's highlights. And, though I may point and laugh at "Son" for being a deformed mess, there are some real bizarre gems here.
Vampyros Sound Inc.'s "The Lions and the Cucumber" comes from a dodgy German porn film called "Vampyros Lesbos" - having heard the soundtrack, I can't wait to see the movie. Warren Zevon (?) contributes the "Minder" theme soundalike "Werewolves of London", which contains the classic quote "Little old lady got mutilated late last night" (say it fast). And so on.
Lists, lists, lists. Virgil (for that, it would seem, is this Son's name) wears all the right clothes, but he really is trying just a bit too hard to fit in. Still, you've got to love him, haven't you?
Basquait Original Soundtrack
Various Artists
Island
The chances are that you haven’t heard of the film Basquait, but you will do; starring a whole load of ‘alternative’ stars including media hoppers Courtney Love and David Bowie, its bound to get its fair share of attention. Jean Michel Basquait was a pop artist who was friends with Andy Warhol. He overdosed and died aged twenty seven. Basquait’s soundtrack is comprised of his favourite ditties and is a fairly eclectic mixture. Basquait also includes, unfortunately, a couple of interludes of film dialogue, which misguidedly ape the worst part of Tarantino soundtracks, and show a scriptwriters egotism at its worst.
The soundtrack’s mood is almost uniformly dark, with the likes of Them and Van Morrison covering the sublime Dylan classic, ‘Its All Over Now Baby Blue’ and Joy Division’s bleakly frenetic ‘These Days’. P.J. Harvey keeps up the bad mood with less success, offering a tedious, half spoken track, ‘Is That All There Is?’. The sulky tone of the album is so rarely lifted I wished that the final track had found John Cale covering ‘Hallelujah’ by his former protégés, the Happy Mondays, rather than ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen.
Occasionally Basquait does go for a funkier approach with Grand Master Flash’s outstanding ‘White Lines’, which approaches the nirvana that all cover versions aspire to, of actually being better than the original, and Tripping Daisy. The rest of the soundtrack’s artists are in their own way predictable. Public Image sound like John Lydon paying a producer more than Johnny Rotten ever could and the resulting ‘Public Image Ltd’ sounds spookily like ‘Pretty Vacant’, but is listenable all the same. The Pogues sound Irish and good, so that’s all right. Generally, the good outweighs the bad on Basquait, making it a decent compilation, although the CD format is recommended.
Mansun
Attack Of The Grey Lantern
Parlophone
Right from the off, I’ve fallen for this album. The opening James Bond strings, which mutate into a classic Charlatans shuffle, demonstrate that Mansun are no ordinary UK guitar band, and this is no ordinary debut album. Its spent a long time gestating in the den of iniquity that Paul Draper calls his mind. By not rushing out with their debut album and filling it with shoulda-been-b-sides as so many bands seem to do these days, Mansun have created something which belies their yob-rock roots and produced what sounds like a 4th album, with a sound which always changes but never deviates from the basic style.
Mansun try plenty of different things, usually musical hybrids. There’s a bit of baggy, a fair dose of epic ‘80s rock and a healthy dance influence alongside echoes of Bowie, T-Rex and...er...Jimmy Osmond. The guitars and vocals are different sides of the same filth encrusted coin, complementing one another in a way that goes whoosh quite a bit (if that’s not to technical for you.) The sound is filled out by synthesiser, which give the Mansun sound a depth lacking in some of their contemporaries. They also use strings to their full effect, using them as the basis for songs rather than just trying to add class to the chorus with a few violins.
There’s a hidden track called ‘Open Letter To The Lyrical Trainspotter”, which originally appeared as a b-side, and claims the songwords are just a “vehicle for a very nice voice.” Though the lyrics aren’t piled high with the convoluted language used by some, they do paint a picture of Mansun’s hometown of Chester which never appears in Hollyoaks. Its the Jarvis trick of peering behind the net-curtains of suburbia, but while Jarvis seldom does more than amuse, Paul Draper’s world is disturbing in its darkness. Jarvis usually lightens the tone with a witty observation, but Draper’s characters are usually more violent and twisted. While Jarvis would have the stripping vicar defrocked, here he dies, gagged and bound as a result of his sexual preferences. That’s the way things work in Mansunworld.
Trans Am
Surrender To The Night
City Slang
Trans Am: The Tortoise with more guitars? The bastard sons of prog rock? Pink Floyd doing instrumentals with drum machines? All of these things and none of them, mate. Quiet bits, window shaking bass rumbles and glowing crescendos make up the 85% cool proportion of this record. The slightly annoying synth warblings and dodgy casio drum sounds are the bits that provide the flaws every art empirical freeform jazz electronica ambient highbrow near genius group needs for balance. Most of that is crammed into the second track ‘Cologne’ which almost undoes the fantastic opener ‘Motr’ which has the best chiming guitar part ever to drive you into instrumental listening mode. Things then thrash around in some kind of minimalist wilderness with oft repeated bass lines until we hit the bombastic crackle that is ‘Rough Justice’ leading into the odd noise groove of ‘Zero Tolerance’. From then on the deliberate cheese is tempered by a more solid direction and this album becomes very cool indeed. By the time we hit the closing beauty of the title track, the heart is slowed and the mood restful with a somehow difficult but worthwhile musical journey completed.
One million years BC. Vast flows of ice cover the surface of the Earth. The temperature falls another couple of degrees, and the very last of the once mighty dinosaurs drops to its knees, its tiny brain incapable of comprehending just what had bought about its downfall...
1996 AD. Rock behemoth Extreme are hard at work on their brand-new long-player when fate inexplicably deigns that a new Ice Age should strike the very recording studio in which they reside. Shivering, huddled together for warmth, singer Gary Cherone and lank-haired axe ‘legend’ Nuno Bettencourt decide to burn the rhythm section to save themselves. They must press on, for they have the fire of Rock burning in their bellies. But its cold... so cold... Cherone, his lips blue, his leather strides encrusted in frost, is the first to crack. “I’m just stepping outside Nuno, I ... I may be gone for some time...” He steps out of the icy studio into the sunshine, looks around furtively, and then legs it off to front the all-new Van Halen line up. And now, Nuno no-mates is cold and alone. No matter, he will complete the album himself! “I was always the talented one,” he whispers, his voice cracking, “my fans have been crying out for a solo album! With lots of guitar solos!” The temperature falls another couple of degrees. Nuno drops to his knees...
Agent Provocateur
Agent Provocateur
Sony
1996 saw new life being breathed into the well-flogged dead horse that is the indie/dance crossover. The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers have dragged rock ‘n’ roll kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and the likes of Space and Beck have managed to fuse musical styles to an extent where you almost forget they used to be kept in different parts of the record shop. Agent Provocateur have come spiralling out of this Brit-Hop, Heavenly Social, guitars-and-breakbeats culture with debut album that proves that if you try hard enough, even the most adventurous of ideas can become mediocre.
The comparison that leaps to mind with every listen to this album is a slightly funkier Garbage. The Goth elements that often lead to accusations of Garbage being nothing more than second-rate Curve copyists are present here as well, as is the tendency to rely too heavily on the guitars and reduce the other elements to mere backing.
And so it goes on. The Shaun Ryder collaboration ‘Agent Damn’ sounds exactly like the rest of what is on offer here, except for the incomprehensible rantings of a tone-deaf pisshead, the only departures being on the countryish cover ‘You’re No Good’ and the vaguely Disposable Heroes-sounding ‘Elvis Economics’. Agent Provocateur’s saving grace is the same as Garbage’s- the realisation that in this day and age nothing is absolute and absolutely nothing is ever finished. Hence, they include 4 remixes on this album by such luminaries as Propellorheads and Monkey Mafia, all of which far outshine the original material.
There’s no doubting that the single, ‘Toxygene’, is a really enjoyable track, directly reminiscent of early tracks like ‘Perpetual Dawn’. It’s this that has prompted talk of ‘a return to form’, after their last two critically-panned albums. Well, yes and no. It certainly is somewhat of a return to their earlier, more accessible form, but their last two albums have on the contrary been their best. So - is this where I get on my high horse and cry sell-out? Well, I just can’t bring myself to do so, because, regardless of the above, this album is a barrel of fun.
Gone are the excesses of twenty minute tracks - this is a tight set of distilled Orb trademarks. Best of all, after Toxygene, is a ‘hidden track’ stuck on the end that best epitomises the disorientating dub distortion on offer here. But it’s an album with no weak links - it might not have the ambitions of the last two albums, but it no doubt succeeds at what it does. It’s one (highly commendable) thing to sample David Thewlis prophesising the end of the human race in Mike Leigh’s excellent ‘Naked’, but it’s made clear that if such a moment comes the Orb are going to go out with a smile on their face.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson
Margaritaville Records
“The sporting editors gave me three hundred dollers in cash most of which was spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car was like a mobile narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, a quart of rum, a case of budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip but once you get locked into a serious drug collection the tendancy is to push it as far as possible.” Imagine this passage spoken by Harry Dean Stanton with The Rolling Stones ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ in the background and that’s about how cool this CD gets. It’s a dramatic adaptation of the Hunter S. Thompson’s book by the same name which is being released as part of a 25th anniversary celebration and, to be brief, if you can fit more humour and sex, drugs and rock and roll into one CD then you’ve got me beat. Stunning.
Bettie Serveert
Dust Bunnies
Beggars Banquet
Many albums are good without being special. Unfortunately, this is one of them. There are many positive elements here. The band is very neat and tight and Herman Burskoeke (surely a baker in generations past?) adds some excellent touches with his bass. The class act is of course, Carol. She is no Beth Gibbons for belting out her bras, yet she sings well using her limitations as points of character. Her lyrics are queerly plain (she does none of the soul purging evident on Lisa germano’s last offering) yet her honesty and clarity, especially ‘Nutshell’ at least puts her on the bus towards special.
However, this album is not great, and I wish it was, as they seem like nice intelligent sorts. This album will excite as few as it offends. Good but not that good.
Irony is what bands hide behind when they are, to put it frankly, completely talentless. Let me take you back to music lessons at my secondary school. We would be put into groups and told to write a song about say, the wind or the sea or something. We would go away to the music room with our Casio keyboard and some bongos, and proceed to spend the rest of the lesson sampling the word ‘bollocks’ and lobbing drumsticks at each other. We really were crayzee funsters, I can tell you. But the time came when we would have to perform our composition to the rest of the class. Having squandered valuable rehearsal time with our high jinks, our only option was to hit the demo button and sing along. It sounded crap, we knew this, but Lawrence from Denim has built a ten-year career on this trick merely by cloaking it in this pathetic notion that he’s doing it in an ironic way and so challenging the very foundations of the music industry. It’s an Emperor’s New Clothes deal, and I am the small boy who’s going to point out that Lawrence is in fact NAKED. Figuratively speaking, of course.
OK, so you might have a bit of a giggle the first time you hear these tunes, you might even whistle along the second time, but the third time you just want to weep. This man has been doing this for so many years now without ever getting a whiff of even the arse-end of the charts you’d think he’d have got it by now, but of course he’s not interested in success, he merely wants to challenge your preconceptions. Nobody’s laughing any more, Lawrence. Ignore him and he just might go away.
Right, so it’s Sunday. It’s about five past twelve and I’ve been putting stuff together for this magazine since Friday morning. I just finish the A.C Acoustics interview when I try to do something fancy on my computer and it crashes losing a good half of the interview. I try and type some reviews up from our contributors and realise that either they can’t write, or sentences need less verbs these days.
I put on the new Low album. The walls fade away and I’m sitting in a sparsely lit room staring out into nothingness. The great existential problems loom up; why? how? who? Finally I can do it. My shoulders ease down from around my ears and I sigh. A long sigh. The light fades back into the room and I feel vaguely human again.
It’s not much, it’s only everything.