Talk to anyone who was the right age in the early '80s for both pop radio and the dawn of MTV, and "She Blinded Me with Science" will inevitably come up. The most famous song from the reissued version of the album, it's a defiantly quirky, strange number that mixes its pop hooks with unusual keyboard melodies pitched very low and a recurrent spoken word interjection ("Science!") from guest vocalist/video star Magnus Pike. To Thomas Dolby's credit, the rest of the album isn't simply that song over and over again, making The Golden Age of Wireless an intriguing and often very entertaining curio from the glory days of synth pop. Part of the album's overall appeal is the range of participating musicians, no doubt thanks in part to Dolby's own considerable range of musical work elsewhere. "She Blinded Me with Science" itself features Kevin Armstrong on guitar, Matthew Seligman on bass, mega-producer Robert "Mutt" Lange on backing vocals, and co-production with Tim Friese-Greene. Elsewhere, Andy Partridge contributes harmonica, Mute Records founding genius Daniel Miller adds keyboards, and Lene Lovich adds some vocals of her own. The overall result is still first and foremost Dolby's, with echoes of David Bowie's and Bryan Ferry's elegantly wasted late-'70s personas setting the stage. If anything, The Golden Age of Wireless is the friendlier, peppier flip side of fellow Bowie obsessive Gary Numan's work, where the melancholy is gentle instead of harrowing. Dolby's melodies are sprightly without being annoyingly perky, his singing warm, and his overall performance a pleasant gem. Especially fine numbers include the amusing romp "Europa and the Pirate Twins" and the nostalgia-touched, just mysterious enough "One of Our Submarines.
One of the more prolific bands in the second wave to appear on the seminal U.K. indie pop label Sarah Records, the Sugargliders were two brothers (Josh and Joel Meadows) who hailed from Australia and blanketed the shops with an impressive run of singles. Filled with witty and heartfelt lyrics, catchy minor-key melodies, and Josh’s achingly pure vocals, the duo’s songs fit in perfectly with the Sarah esthetic but also added twists like the occasionally danceable beat and a sometimes very forceful and direct lyrical/vocal delivery. This collection gathers up songs from the six singles they released for Sarah between 1992 and 1994, and adds a few from the singles done for Australian label Summershine in 1990-1991 and the U.K. label Marineville in 1991. While completists may have wished for a double-disc collection that had everything the band put out during this time span, the 20 tracks selected do a fine job of summing up the thoughtful, heart-rending pop charms the duo unfailingly displayed throughout their short career.
Disappeared is the sound of drum'n'bass dissected, blended with a spy movie score, and given the acidic, demonic twist of a carnival sideshow. It's also Spring Heel Jack's best album. It's no surprise that the album draws comparisons to John Barry film scores, as Spring Heel Jack seems to consist of card-carrying members of a 007 fan club, but they pull out all the stops here, producing muscular spy movie music that seems extracted from Hades itself. Devastating, bleak, and intensely powerful melodies wail and storm, jazzy fuzz-box jungle notes twist in the air, and trumpets seem to assert that the forces of darkness have been let loose. Ambient noodlings and screeches cause tension and chills. "Mit Wut" is ominous and fierce big-band electronica. Sci-fi alarms ring out on "Galina." One wonders if the music is meant to be industrial-dance-jazz or meant to conjure a techno-spy-stompfest. Unlike the music of spy aficionado Squarepusher, there's little whimsy in these 11 songs. While big beat leanings occasionally crop up, as on "I Undid Myself," the tone of the album remains relentlessly, compellingly bleak. There are moments when the duo seems to strive for chill-out vibes and when evocative violins inject grace and beauty, but the album never gives up the tinkered madness at its base. "Wolfing" concludes the album perfectly, raging aggressively like a massive steam train headed toward oblivion. Noisy, stark, and brimming with inventive, confused electronics, Disappeared is Spring Heel Jack's masterwork.
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As a debut album, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain), is a kaleidoscopic assemble of emotional nuances, cathartic clear-outs and encriptive scriptures of the soul. As an album, it is hermetically hallucinogenic, which day-trips into a lucid dream, whilst alternating between different realms of consciousness. As a front man, Bramah, epitomises all things mysterious, modest and emotionally driven and through his many incarnations has maintained a compelling mystique. From the unadulterated punk delivery, to the melancholic musings, to the chimerical crooning, Brannah has a voice which resonates and streams a whole spectrum of emotions. A diverse guitarist and accomplished songwriter, it is through his collaborations with Baines that The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) is emotionally enriched and unconventionally pitched. A free-spirit and forward thinking artist, Baines is a keyboard whizz, whose swirls, whirls and neon trails add so much magic and ethereal beauty to this delightfully dark piece of art.
What could be a cosmic cousin of The Monochrome Set, The Stranglers, The Velvet Underground, Television and The Stooges, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) is criminally underrated, but somehow belongs in an esoteric cult or should be kept in a vault with all things sacred or secretly influential. It’s an album which sees the reunion of Bramah and Bains ignite a rebirth, and whose combatant spirit is strengthened through the creative collective of Blue Orchids. It is also an album which resides in its own age of enlightenment, amongst the pagan poets, misfits and new-wave nomads. Where 1982 was a year of defined Indie records, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) was of no fixed abode and whose fluidity of post-punk, neo-psychedelia, garage art-rock, Proto-Punk, ethereal new wave and token industrial rock, created an incandescent, emotionally raw album which was ahead of its time
When Streets tracks first appeared in DJ sets and on garage mix albums circa 2000, they made for an interesting change of pace; instead of hyper-speed ragga chatting or candy-coated divas (or both), listeners heard banging tracks hosted by a strangely conversational bloke with a mock cockney accent and a half-singing, half-rapping delivery. It was Mike Skinner, producer and MC, the half-clued-up, half-clueless voice behind club hits "Has It Come to This?" and "Let's Push Things Forward." Facing an entire full-length of Streets tracks hardly sounded like a pleasant prospect, but Skinner's debut, Original Pirate Material, is an excellent listen -- much better than the heavy-handed hype would make you think. Unlike most garage LPs, it's certainly not a substitute for a night out; it's more a statement on modern-day British youth, complete with all the references to Playstations, Indian takeaway, and copious amounts of cannabis you'd expect. Skinner also has a refreshing way of writing songs, not tracks, that immediately distinguishes him from most in the garage scene. True, describing his delivery as rapping would be giving an undeserved compliment (you surely wouldn't hear any American rappers dropping bombs like this line: "I wholeheartedly agree with your viewpoint"). Still, nearly every song here succeeds wildly, first place (after the hits) going to "The Irony of It All," on which Skinner and a stereotypical British lout go back and forth "debating" the merits of weed and lager, respectively (Skinner's meek, agreeable commentary increasingly, and hilariously, causes "Terry" to go off the edge). The production is also excellent; "Let's Push Things Forward" is all lurching ragga flow, with a one-note organ line and drunken trumpets barely pushing the chorus forward. "Sharp Darts" and "Too Much Brandy" have short, brutal tech lines driving them, and really don't need any more for maximum impact. Though club-phobic listeners may find it difficult placing Skinner as just the latest dot along a line connecting quintessentially British musicians/humorists/social critics Nöel Coward, the Kinks, Ian Dury, the Jam, the Specials, and Happy Mondays, Original Pirate Material is a rare garage album: that is, one with a shelf life beyond six months.
While Richard Thompson's devotees will tell you the man is a triple-threat genius -- passionate vocalist, compelling songwriter, and sterling guitarist -- even his most loyal supporters will concede that the dour nature of his songs and the no-frills production of many of his albums make the bulk of his catalog tough sledding for the uninitiated. Given this, 1991's Rumor and Sigh is arguably the best album for those wanting to sample Thompson's work for the first time. It captures Thompson at the top of his form on all fronts, but also gives his songs just enough polish to make them approachable for the unconverted, and though it's several shades darker than the average adult-contemporary album, it honors Thompson's obsession with romantic despair and the less pleasant quirks of fate without sounding depressing in the process. Producer Mitchell Froom tricked up Thompson's sound a bit, but his approach added to the material rather than interfering with it; the topsy-turvy keyboards and sharp, snapping drum sound on "Gray Walls" and "You Dream Too Much" actually add to their narrative drama, and Froom coaxed some of Thompson's most soulful vocals on "Why Must I Plead" and "I Misunderstood." Thompson actually gets funny on "Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands" and the darkly hilarious "Psycho Street," and Thompson fans who like his work straight with no chaser will be knocked flat by "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," perhaps the best traditional-style number in his songbook, and the harrowing "God Loves A Drunk," an unnerving tale of several kinds of addiction. While Rumor and Sigh is quite slick by Thompson's standards, its clean lines and bright mix serve both the songs and the bandleader quite well, and make Thompson's tunes sound like the radio hits they've always deserved to be.
The Afghan Whigs' sound was growing larger by the release during the days on Sub Pop, so the fact that Gentlemen turned out the way it did wasn't all that surprising as a result ("cinematic" was certainly the word the band was aiming for, what with credits describing the recording process as being "shot on location" at Ardent Studios). While Gentlemen is no monolith, it is very much of a piece at the start. While "If I Were Going" opens things on a slightly moodier tip, it's the crunch of "Gentlemen," "Be Sweet," and "Debonair" that really stands out, each of which features a tightly wound R&B punch that rocks out as much as it grooves, if not more so. Greg Dulli's lyrics immediately set about the task of emotional self-evisceration at the same time, with lines like "Ladies, let me tell you about myself -- I got a dick for a brain" being among the calmer points. The album truly comes into its own with "When We Two Parted," though, as sad countryish guitars chime over a slow crawling rhythm and Dulli's quiet-then-anguished detailing of an exploding relationship. From there on in, things surge from strength to greater strength, sometimes due to the subtlest of touches -- the string arrangement on "Fountain and Fairfax" or the unexpected, resigned lead vocal from Scrawl's Marcy Mays on "My Curse," for instance. Other times, it's all the much more upfront, as "What Jail Is Like," with its heartbroken-and-fierce combination of piano, feedback, and drive building to an explosive chorus. Dulli's blend of utter abnegation and masculine swagger may be a crutch, but when everything connects, as it does more often than not on Gentlemen, both he and his band are unstoppable.
The last album with Rob Dean, Gentlemen Take Polaroids was also unquestionably the album in which Japan truly found its own unique voice and aesthetic approach. The glam influences still hung heavy, particularly from Roxy Music, but now the band found itself starting to affect others in turn. Even the back cover photo says as much -- looking cool in glossy, elegant nightwear, the quintet had a clear impact on Duran Duran, to the point where Nick Rhodes obviously was trying to be Sylvian in appearance. Musically, meanwhile, the swooning, hyper elegant Euro-disco sheen of Quiet Life was polished to an even finer edge throughout, the title track and the obvious descendant of "Quiet Life" itself, "Methods of Dance," in particular sheer standouts. Sylvian's sighing, luscious croon is in full effect on both, and the arrangements are astonishing, Karn's fretless purring between Jansen's crisp, inventive, and varied drumming, Barbieri's icy keyboards filling out the corners. What makes Gentlemen Take Polaroids even more of a success is how the group, having reached such a polished peak, kept driving behind it, transforming their exquisite pop into something even more artistic and unique. "Swing," in particular, is an astounding showcase for the Karn/Jansen team; snaky funk at once dramatic and precisely chilled, brass section blasts adding just enough wry, precise sleaze, Sylvian delivering with focus and intensity while not raising his voice at all. "Nightporter," meanwhile, is a hyper ballad and then some; a slow-paced semi-waltz with Barbieri's piano taking the lead throughout with wonderful results. Further hints of the future come with the album closing "Taking Islands In Africa," which Sylvian co-wrote with future regular collaborator Ryuchi Sakamato, and which wraps up the whole experience with a gliding, supple grace.
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