Julian Cope isn't one to dwell on the past, but he isn't opposed to re-evaluating it, either. When going through some old tapes, he evidently found enough material to convince him to add one more compilation to the Teardrop Explodes post-breakup catalog. This set is evenly split between demos, early versions, and live tracks. As with any anthology of this kind, the sound quality tends to vary. The earliest songs, a few instrumentals from 1978, sound the roughest, but the majority of the tracks sound excellent. Audio clarity is hardly an issue, though, when legendary lost Teardrop gems like "Log Cabin" and the original "You Disappear From View" are finally unearthed. The latter's stripped-down sound is indescribably better than the cheesy, faux soul version that appeared on Everybody Wants to Shag the Teardrop Explodes. Just more evidence that their unfinished third album would have been another classic had Cope been able to keep David Balfe's synth at bay. While a few of the alternate takes aren't terribly different from the common ones, "Tiny Children" is utterly charming and upbeat, a far cry from the haunting take included on Wilder. Musically speaking, the best version of the group was the one that featured Jeff Hammer on keyboards and Alfie Agius on bass. The sometimes comedic differences these hired hands had with core members Cope and Gary Dwyer are highlighted in Cope's hilarious book, Head-On. But the diversity seems to have worked: this incarnation of the band is featured on exciting live renditions of "The Culture Bunker" and "Sleeping Gas," which both display the band's unique fusion of the sounds of 1967 and 1977. One would assume that the vaults have pretty much been emptied with this disc, even though several complete live broadcasts and many BBC sessions are still in the archives. However, based upon a disclaimer on the cover which states that Zoology is to rhyme with "eulogy," this may be the final word on the group. If that's the case, it's a fine swansong, tidily wrapping up the loose ends for longtime admirers of the highly underrated post-punk band. (There is an unlisted final track which is an interview with several luminaries, including Cope, concerning the fabled Columbia Hotel in London, a favorite hideaway for new wave artists in the early '80s.)
In a certain sense, Lonley Is an Eyesore functions as a time-capsule, a snapshot of Post-Punk circa the mid-Eighties, albeit a snapshot saturated with the particular shades and tinctures of the Goth-informed Dream-Pop of the 4AD stable. As a result, there is an aesthetic cohesiveness to this album that is unusual for a compilation, which stems from that fact that, to some extent, 4AD was pushing a particular (Ivo Watts-Russell produced) sound rather than the bands themselves. This approach was taken a step further with the This Mortal Coil releases, in which various 4AD artists were thrown together in the studio (under the control of Watts-Russell) to record cover songs dressed up in 4AD-style gloom. Despite this overriding emphasis on style over substance, Lonely Is an Eyesore holds up quite well 28 years later because it contains an intriguing mix of the influential (Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Throwing Muses) and the obscure (Dif Juz, The Wolfgang Press, Clan of Xymox), all at the height of their powers.
The compilation was also released in a severely limited edition (try 100, of which only 30 were commercially issued), encased in a wooden box with a VHS supplement and a number of graphic prints.
In 1994, Morrissey told the world that he was retiring from music. After ten albums in ten years, and a life of near-constant touring, the recent deaths of three close colleagues was the final straw. The grand dame of pop music was bowing out. Vauxhall & I was to be Morrissey’s last stand. Of course, it didn’t pan out that way – the man came back with a new album the very next year – but it sure sounds like goodbye. Vauxhall & I is portentious, doom-laden, dripping with pathos and the settling of scores. It’s also the best record Morrissey has ever been involved with.
No other album in the man’s storied career sounds like this; the spry glam rock of its predecessor Your Arsenal is missing in action – no doubt down to the tragic passing of that album’s producer Mick Ronson in 1993. Instead, Vauxhall offers eleven tracks which belie the influences Morrissey always touted, but never actively showed off. It’s a balladeer’s album – there are shades of Dion, Joe Meek and, of course, chansonnier extraordinaire Jacques Brel.
If ever there was a modern-day equivalent to Scott Walker’s peerless first four LPs, this is it.
The first five little words of “Now My Heart Is Full” set the tone: “There’s gonna be some trouble.” Screw the punctured bicycles on the last night of the fair – at the age of 35, Morrissey really meant business. The lights are low, the mood is sombre; a nagging two-note riff drifts eerily underneath proceedings. It’s the sound of autumn at its most tempestuous – the clouds are black, everyone has a storm headache, and it’s only a question of when the heavens will open. Come the chorus, they do. Morrissey’s voice rises out of the murk, and the rain starts lashing down:
“Tell all of my friends…” Of course, from the murk, a smirk – “I don’t have too many…”
From here, it’s a swirl of images, characters, situations; Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock gets a look-in, as do some “loafing oafs in all-night chemists.” Chorus after chorus goes by (the verse, by now, long vanished into the distance), occasionally broken up by some patented Bowie-style jangle-and-chug in the guitars. The drama continues to unfold (personal highlight: “Underact, express depression, aaahhhhhh,” [pause for effect] “But Bunnie, I loved you…”), but all we’re supposed to do is “pass by.” As if that’s going to be possible.
Vauxhall‘s character studies are richer and more mysterious than any he had previously concocted – just what did the child in “Used to Be a Sweet Boy” do that caused his narrating parents to be so in denial? – and the wit and wordplay is deeper still. Take lead single “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get”: three years on, Morrissey’s court woes would get an equally woeful song of their own in “Sorrow Will Come in the End”, but here, they’re dismissed in one wave of the hand – “Beware, I bear more grudges than lonely High Court judges.”
And if at this point, Morrissey’s lyrics were untouchable, his composers-in-chief Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer took the bait and matched them to the best music of his career. Whyte’s delicate touch on the woozy “Hold on to Your Friends” is revelatory, while the wistful acoustics of “Why Don’t You Find Out for Yourself” are astonishing; one of Vauxhall‘s most unassuming numbers, it may just be the finest thing here. Boorer’s contributions are no slouch either, though, and his baroque “Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning” is unlike anything Morrissey had ever done; this is where all of Steven Patrick’s dreams of being Sinatra finally came to fruit. Nowhere else in his discography can you hear Morrissey acting in front of the microphone like this - almost engulfed by Boorer’s clarinet and Steve Lillywhite’s gossamer production, his whispered croon, bordering on the androgynous, is revelatory. “Please don’t worry,” he intones near the song’s end, “there’ll be no fuss - she was…nobody’s nothing,” before being swallowed up in the undertow of shimmering cymbals and his own wordless cries for help.
And then there’s “Speedway”. The savage, violent, brutal “Speedway”, the sound of Morrissey tearing the curtain down, all the scenery and props crashing around him while he petulantly plays to the peanut gallery. The song opens with him literally cutting his critics down with the sampled sound of a chainsaw, laughing at his foes. “You won’t smile,” he sneers just before the song’s thundering final act, “until my loving mouth is shut good and proper…FOREVER.” The music stops dead for a second, Morrissey having seemingly been silenced (for once). But then the ebow of death sneaks back up into the mix, Woodie Taylor’s drums slam down like hammers, and Morrissey continues to deliver his ultimate malediction: “All those lies, written lies, twisted lies - well, they weren’t lies.” Everything somehow continues to get louder and more intense, before the final twist of the knife for anyone who loves him, hates him, or dares to stand in his way - “In my own sick way, I’ve always been true to you.” Taylor nonchalantly clatters the song to its conclusion, seemingly not realising that he’s responsible for the climax to what might just be the greatest album of all time.
Oh, and that bonus live disc? For once, it’s a revelation. In the illustrious setting of London’s Drury Lane, the Vauxhall tracks retain their atmosphere, while also gaining some balls. A rendition of “You’re the One for Me, Fatty” is almost improved by the sound of Moz constantly being groped away from the microphone by adoring stage-invaders, long-time live favourite “Jack the Ripper” is as tender as it is tough, and the segue from the freak-out finale of “The National Front Disco” into a stately version of ‘Moonriver’ is spellbinding. “I wrote that,” Morrissey deadpans at the end of the latter. He commands the song so well, you’d almost be inclined to believe him.
It can’t be coincidence that, twenty years on, Vauxhall is the only album in his catalogue reissue campaign to remain unfuckedwith in any way, shape or form. For once - artwork aside - he knows when to leave well alone. Vauxhall & I is barely an album. It’s a performance, a recital, an audition monologue. It’s the synthesis of everything Steven Patrick Morrissey ever tried, finally succeeding in one glorious forty-minute burst. It’s a rock and roll suicide, and if you don’t understand what I mean, well…if you need anything more from me, I just can’t explain. So I won’t even try to.
1985 was a strange year For music. New wave was dead, and college rock was just getting going. The number of cool artists around was distressingly small, and they seemingly all came from either Minneapolis or Manchester. In amidst the jangle of the Smiths, the buzz of Hüsker Dü, and the synth washes of New Order, Northern England quartet Prefab Sprout’s second album, Steve McQueen, slipped in between the cracks as the elegant record that hipsters could chill out to. Popular, too, it hit #21 on the UK album charts. In the US, those bullies in charge of the estate of deceased actor Steve McQueen made poor Prefab change the album title. The band apparently consulted a caveman and went with Two Wheels Good (okay, now try saying, “mo-tor-cy-cle”). Despite its clunky American name, the disc still managed to crack the Billboard 200.
So, we now know which artists Prefab Sprout don’t sound like. But their music doesn’t exist purely in contrast to other trends of the time. In truth, this album resides pretty snugly between the sophisti-pop of Style Council and the smartly written ditties of Aztec Camera. If you began the day with Café Bleu and slogged through the afternoon thanks to a spin of High Land, Hard Rain, then Steve McQueen would make for a perfect evening’s programming.
Which isn’t to say that the music here is sleepy. Rather, it is daydreamy, creating its own lush little alcove of sound for you to drift into. This atmosphere begins with the soulful voice of leader Paddy McAloon. Even as he’s passionately warning us against the pitfalls that occur “When Loves Breaks Down”, the effect is far from bracing. And, when McAloon breathily croons the line, “Hunger stays ‘til it’s fed”, the outside world slips into a fog. Thomas Dolby’s keyboard flourishes also add greatly to the mood. Among chiming guitars, legato bass lines, and softly crashing cymbals, Dolby’s synth pads infuse the record with an ambience of dusky air pushing through a summer’s window screen.
Steve McQueen is more than a pleasant mood, though. McAloon’s songs are mostly excellent. Along with lead single “When Loves Breaks Down”, the rockabilly-infused opener “Faron Young” is a bouncy, catchy, and complexly arranged number that could almost be mistaken for a cut off Meat Is Murder; “Hallelujah” references George Gershwin in its lyrics and 1970s soul balladry in its breezy sway; and late album beauty “Desire As” is a weary post-breakup wonder (“I’ve got six things on my mind / You’re no longer one of them”).
As a testament to the strength of the songwriting on Steve McQueen, this remastered Legacy Edition comes with a bonus disc of solo acoustic versions of most of the album’s tracks, which McAloon recorded in 2006 specifically for the release. With only a six-string and his own voice, Paddy offers lovely interpretations of his two-decades-old songs.
Underneath their noise and weirdness, the Pixies had a thorough knowledge of rock history, spanning '50s and '60s' surf-rock, '70s punk's menacing energy and '80s college rock's quirkiness. After dismantling the band, Black Francis inverted his name, collaborated with Captain Beefheart / Pere Ubu sideman Eric Drew Feldman and let his inner rock historian loose on Frank Black. Much of the album nods to Black's inspirations, but his own gifts still shine through. The chugging Iggy Pop homage "Ten Percenter" borrows the Stooges' primitive grind, while the arty, dissonant UFO convention tale "Parry the Wind High, Low" recalls Bowie's Berlin era. However, "I Heard Ramona Sing" -- a Ramones tribute -- is an airy, jangly pop number that sounds nothing like its subject; the Beach Boys' "Hang On To Your Ego" gets a new wave makeover with crunchy guitars and shiny keyboards. Despite his efforts to escape the Pixies' sound, many of Frank Black's songs would have fit on Trompe Le Monde. "Los Angeles" builds on that album's spacy, metallic feel; with its thrashy choruses and dreamy coda, it almost caricatures the Pixies' extreme dynamics. However, whimsical vignettes like "Brackish Boy" and "Two Spaces" sound more like They Might Be Giants -- one of Black's favorite groups -- than his old band, while softer songs like "Adda Lee" and "Every Time I Go Around Here" reveal more emotional depth. Frank Black also boasts an unabashedly big, polished sound; keyboards and brass embellish "Places Named After Numbers" and the epic surf-rock instrumental "Tossed." Just a few years later, new wave-inspired punk-pop bands like Weezer, the Rentals and even No Doubt ruled alternative rock, proving that even if his solo career wasn't as influential as his Pixies years, Frank Black was still ahead of his time.
The Sophtware Slump is one of the best albums of the 00s. Released in the first May of the decade, it was up against strong competition commercially (Sonic Youth, Eminem, Pearl Jam) – making its peak of 36 on the UK albums chart impressive indeed. But despite substantial critical praise, the group never broke the mainstream in the manner of similarly concept-heavy alt-rockers like The Flaming Lips and Radiohead. Grandaddy broke up in 2006, their final album Just Like the Fambly Cat an epitaph for a band whose work was singularly styled and frequently stunning.
This is their finest studio set, but far from their most accessible collection. It’s a strange meeting of worlds, buzzing technology butting heads with bucolic retreat, backwoods mentality confounded by modernity. Frontman Jason Lytle produces, as he had on 1997’s debut disc Under the Western Freeway. But while Grandaddy’s first full-length was a bright and bizarre collection of oddball pop and hum-along indie (A.M. 180 is its best-known cut), these 46 minutes are rather more muted, introspective musings on expired alcoholic robots – Jed the Humanoid, and its fuzzy companion Jed’s Other Poem (with the great line, "I try to sing it funny like Beck, but it’s bringing me down") – standing in for eccentric essays on alien landscapes. It’s not without moments of instant-fix delight – The Crystal Lake is a perfect five minutes of songwriting gold – but this can be a heavy-going album for newcomers.
But like so many great, so-called must-have long-players, repeat plays reward the listener with treats aplenty. Underneath the Weeping Willow is a tear-jerker to treasure, a sigh of a lyric desperate for retirement from the racket of the real world tugging on the ducts with a velveteen touch, its spare piano backdrop effortlessly beautiful. Hewlett’s Daughter is a calm, contemplative piece that briefly contorts into a clangourous rocker around the two-minute mark; and Broken Household Appliance National Forest is the greatest song ever written about abandoned fridge-freezers. But it’s the closer, So You’ll Aim Towards the Sky, that leaves the most lasting mark – and the biggest lump in the throat. If you don’t feel the slightest bit moved by the time a voice offers a simple "good luck", check your pulse.
At the time of its original release, a handful of critics claimed that The Sophtware Slump was better than OK Computer. At points, one can hear where they were coming from. It’s certainly an essential of its era that has weathered the years well. The disc of extras included with this deluxe edition is, inevitably, something of a mixed bag. Fans will be pleased to get their ears around material from the band’s 2001 EP, Through a Frosty Plate Glass, as well as rough-edged album demos and B sides; but why is there nothing from the Signal to Snow Ratio four-tracker of 1999? Packaged with the original album in 2000 for a few quid more, it points the way to The Sophtware Slump’s masterful melancholy. A no-brainer for inclusion on paper, somehow it’s missing. Baffling, for sure, but it takes nothing away from the album-proper’s enduring excellence.
The Secret Life of The Waterboys is a collection of previously unreleased studio recordings, radio sessions, live tracks and lost "B-sides" from the years 1981-1985.
A 1985 BBC radio version of "Medicine Bow" opens proceedings with an extra verse and extended instrumental section to differentiate it from the familiar This is the Sea album recording. "That Was the River" is a wildly different, fast version of that album's title track, with Television's Tom Verlaine (no less) supplying some typically inventive, jagged lead guitar.
"A Pagan Place" is a remix of the original master tape and consequently doesn't provide any real surprises. "Billy Sparks" is described by Scott as a raggle-taggle folk rock romp from the Pagan Place sessions presaging the Fisherman's Blues sound by about five years. While there's some validity in that claim (he wrote it after all, so should know what he's talking about!), the song is a slighter thing than any of the tracks on Fisherman's Blues. Rhythmically it's got more in common with the early '80s Ska revival than Irish or British folk music, and the tune is in the same vein as Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine." It's equally toe-tapping however, and is the kind of thing that you find yourself humming round the house in spite of yourself. "Savage Earth Heart" has, as Scott notes, been played in hundreds of different versions. This one was recorded on The Waterboys ' first U.S. tour (in 1984) and features some stupendous drumming from Chris Whitten. The following version of "Don't Bang the Drum" is definitely something special. Here's the booklet notes: "This rearrangement was recorded live in one take for a radio session at the BBC's Golders Green studio, a converted and very atmospheric old theatre. Roddy Lorimer (trumpet) and Anthony Thistlethwaite (saxophone) played in two theatre boxes, high above Mike Scott (piano, vocals) and Steve Wickham (violin.) The lights were turned way down low and this is what happened." It's every bit as magical as you might hope.
"The Ways of Men" is a fine big music Waterboys song, written too late for A Pagan Place and just too early for This Is the Sea. Thistlethwaite blows up the proverbial storm through this one. "Rags" (Second Amendment) is an earlier version with a different, bleaker lyric. "The Earth Only Endures" is a traditional Sioux lyric set to music and sung by Scott, to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar and a thunderstorm.
"Somebody Might Wave Back" is the original, solo demo of the song, recorded by Scott with his acoustic guitar in 1982. Interestingly (for me) this was the first Waterboys song that I heard performed by a busker (who I remember only as Peter). He'd learnt the song from the full band, album version, but unknowingly nailed the song's original form right on the head!
"Going to Paris" is the oldest song on this collection, and it shows. Its interest lies mainly in being an example of the writer's early efforts, in the same way as some of The Beatles Anthology 1. "The Three Day Man" is a storming rocker from another BBC session featuring guest drummer Preston Hayman, who was working with Kate Bush at the time.
"Bury My Heart" was written in an all night burst after reading Dee Brown's book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in late 1981. Having completed the song, Scott recorded the whole thing himself (vocals, guitars, piano, and drums), then inexplicably didn't include it on the first Waterboys album. "Out of Control" is an absolute treasure. The track is credited to Another Pretty Face, Scott's main band before using the name The Waterboys . This recording was played on a BBC radio show by John Peel (legendary and much-loved champion of obscure music and undiscovered talent). Nigel Grainge (of Ensign records) heard this on his car radio and vowed to sign the unknown musicians responsible. Three months later he did.
The closing song, "Love That Kills," was recorded in 1983 under the influence of the writings of W.B. Yeats and Dion Fortune. The vocal performance finds Scott occasionally over-reaching himself (this was recorded during a mammoth session), but is nonetheless a lost Waterboys classic, and provides an insight into just where Scott's muse was already leading him.
The Jesus and Mary Chain's 2008 Rhino four-disc box set The Power of Negative Thinking: B-Sides & Rarities, collects all of the influential Scottish noise-pop band's various B-side singles, cover songs, and sundry demos in one terrific package. Fans of JAMC who already own the band's albums should be pleased to see that none of the original album tracks are included here. For those who don't own them, Rhino's 2006 bonus disc reissues of Psychocandy, Darklands, Automatic, Honey's Dead, and Stoned & Dethroned is the place to start. However, in many ways The Power of Negative Thinking is a more honest portrait of JAMC than even the studio albums reveal. Often mischaracterized as gloomy, goth rock misanthropes -- only partly true -- JAMC were in truth huge fans of '60s sunshine pop, surf rock, and even hip-hop and aspired to a kind of D.I.Y. Phil Spector Wall of Sound aesthetic that found them substituting Spector's strings and horns with walls of feedbacking guitar. These are rough demos meant to capture the Reid brothers' raw creative vision of rock music that -- as guitarist Jim Reid says in the liner notes -- had, "the pop sensibilities of the Shangri-Las, but with the production values of the Birthday Party." In that sense, we get JAMC from their dreamy lo-fi punk roots with the 1983 drum machine-driven demo for "Up Too High" and 1984's sludgy feedback-laden "Upside Down," to their time as '90s alt rock icons on such pristinely polished efforts like shimmering 1992 ballad "Why Do You Want Me?" and the catchy folk-rock of 1994's "Something I Can't Have." We even get one of the few non-Reid entries in bassist Ben Lurie's pop nugget "Rocket." Also enlightening are such giddy cover songs as JAMC's version of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love," Prince's "Alphabet Street," and the Temptations' "My Girl" which purportedly JAMC were so drunk during the recording of they could barely hold their instruments. It's also true that the Reid brothers were big fans of Bob Dylan and that many of these songs were written on acoustic guitar. Not surprisingly, here we get blissfully melodic acoustic versions of "Just Like Honey" and "Taste of Cindy," which actually come fairly close to fulfilling JAMC's Spector-ish aspirations. Ultimately, The Power of Negative Thinking isn't the whole JAMC story, but it's the whole story behind the scenes and A-side singles, and sometimes the B-sides. Even better.
