With individual song comments from McNabb, an appreciative essay, complete discography, and fine artwork, the Icicle Works collection provides an excellent overview of the group's heyday. If not quite as strong as the band's debut album as an experience due to the inclusion of less successful later numbers, all the hit singles and some fine album cuts appear, not to mention an interesting rarity or two. Beginning with the "long version" of the chiming drive of "Hollow Horse" from The Small Price of a Bicycle, this collection fully showcases McNabb's passionate, elegant quaver and driving songwriting, as well as the abilities of the fine Layhe/Sharrock rhythm section. The three biggest hits get pride of place near the start: "Love Is a Wonderful Colour," "Birds Fly" (with wry comments from McNabb on its stateside re-titling as "Whisper to a Scream"), and "Understanding Jane." This last one appears in a 1992 version via remixing and extra overdubs by McNabb, but it's still a perfect blast of just-sly-enough pop/punk. He does a similar remix job with Small Price's gentler "When It All Comes Down," with equally fine results. "High Time," meanwhile, surfaces in its wonderful acoustic version from the "Kiss Off" single, while an otherwise unreleased track, the brooding, dramatic "Firepower," was recorded shortly before the original lineup collapsed.
Half Man Half Biscuit ACD
Half Man Half Biscuit is the sort of band that develops a mythology around it. Some myths are demonstrably false, like leader Nigel Blackwell's insistence that there is a thriving HMHB tribute band called "It Ain't Half Man, Mum!" Some have a kernel of truth, such as the story that the band rejected a prestigious slot on the weekly TV countdown show Top of the Pops because they already had tickets to a Tranmere Rovers game. And some you just hope are true because they're so perfect, such as the story that Blackwell broke up the band in late 1986 because their increasing success was interfering with his daytime television habits. For whatever reason, Half Man Half Biscuit did split up (temporarily) at the end of 1986, releasing a singles-and-strays compilation called Back Again in the D.H.S.S. as a farewell offering. (The double-punning title referenced not only the Beatles pun of their debut album Back in the D.H.S.S., but the fact that the end of the band meant its members were once again unemployed and therefore at the mercy of the government's Department of Health and Social Security, the folks who handed out unemployment checks.) When the band ramped up again three years later, their label Probe Plus released their first CD (hence the title), a slightly rejiggered and greatly expanded version of the vinyl Back Again in the D.H.S.S.. Several changes were made: the 1985 John Peel version of "All I Want for Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit" and the 7" remix of debut single "The Trumpton Riots" were dropped, and the previously unreleased "Carry on Cremating" was added, along with eight live tracks from 1986 including fan favorites like "Architecture and Morality and Ted and Alice," "Time Flies By (When You're the Driver of a Train)" and "Fuckin' 'Ell, It's Fred Titmus." Of the songs common to both vinyl and CD, several are essential HMHB tracks, including both sides of the band's second single, "Dickie Davies Eyes" (a withering attack on those nostalgic for the '70s, with the canonical chorus "All of those people who you romantically like to believe are still alive are dead/So I wipe my snot on the arm of your chair as you put another Roger Dean poster on the wall") and possibly the band's most utterly hilarious song, "The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman," about the horrors of discovering that your real dad is the guy who sang the weedy '70s pop hit "Ariel." Other highlights include "Arthur's Farm," which makes good use of the chorus hook from the Jam's "Eton Rifles" transformed into Simon Blackwell's synth riff, and the jaunty "D'Ye Ken Ted Moult," which mutates the old English ballad "D'Ye Ken John Peel" (from which a certain radio host named John Ravenscroft took his microphone name) into a celebration of a then-current series of TV ads for a brand of double-glazed windows. That level of multi-layered pop culture references and wordplay is exactly what the band's fans love about Half Man Half Biscuit, and the combination of ACD and the expanded CD reissue Back in the DHSS/The Trumpton Riots gives listeners almost everything the original 1984-1986 incarnation ever recorded.
Though they've been accused of being Happy Mondays soundalikes, New Fast Automatic Daffodils create quite an original racket on Pigeonhole. Mute is simply too smart of a label to sign a band of mimics. With a lazy, light dance vibe that can only be called groovy, Pigeonhole unfolds like a party on a platter. Repetitive vocals lines, evoking alternating gruff and laid-back moods, work quite nicely against a Peter Hook-sounding bass guitar. If the lyrics sometimes get a bit odd, as in "Fishes Eyes" with its talk of devils and fish eyes, the album's optimism-in-the-face-of-adversity theme is quite charming amid the catchy, accomplished music. Standout tracks include "Partial," "Big," "Amplfier," and "Partial." In these songs, New Fast Automatic Daffodils posture as if they're filtering the Happy Mondays ethic through Joy Division, the Birthday Party, and the Wedding Present. "Amplifier"'s tribal beats and hoarse vocals mark it as a song that should have been an underground hit. Pigeonhole's distant sound, thanks to smart production by the band and Danny Kelly, sets exactly the right stage for New Fast Automatic Daffodils' baggy vibes. Rolling beats, drugged guitars, and stylized vocals, all in the name of depressed funk, rarely work as well as they do here. Pigeonhole is a true gem in the genre of spacey, laid-back dance-rock.
Recruiting XTC member Dave Gregory to handle production on much of the album, Cud made a much more consistently successful effort on Leggy Mambo, honing their blend of styles into a thoroughly charming romp. Throwing everything from Situationist slogans to intentionally sleazy late-night chat into their mix, the four seem dedicated to the prospect that humor, thrills, and a plain ol' good time can easily coexist without being mindless about the matter. Which they're not -- and when you consider the vast empty nothing most '90s bands dedicated to "good times" like the Spin Doctors and Hootie & the Blowfish created, it makes Cud's efforts all the more appreciable. Motown rave-ups, funk-inspired grooves that avoid sounding anything like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and pop hooks all happily blend together, with William Potter and Steve Goodwin showing a great control over what they do. Mike Dunphy, meanwhile, gets even more creative on this album, his guitar playing and keyboards both setting the moods well, while Carl Puttnam somehow finds himself as the best descendant of Tom Jones around, able to project with skill, dripping with charisma and never missing a step. At once conversational, smart and, when the need arises, smoothly silly, he'd be a find no matter what band he was fronting. Cuts like the pummeling "Not Exactly D.L.E.R.C." show the band taking the quicker, rushed side of its past and turning it into even more memorable fun, while the calmer arrangements of songs like "Love in a Hollow Tree" demonstrate a growing ability to try out more unexpected approaches. "Magic" became the album's best-known track, a seriously groovy number that was seen as a parody of then-rampant Madchester sounds but if anything is an amiable cousin to the freaked work of the New Fast Automatic Daffodils. [Cherry Red's 2008 reissue included six bonus tracks.]
During the first years of its existence, Sarah Records adhered to a strict policy of releasing only vinyl and only 7" singles, so when the label first started compiling those records in digital format via compilations like Shadow Factory and Temple Cloud, it was surprising enough; Air Balloon Road was even more of a shock, however, a 23-cut label best-of that effectively distilled Sarah's history thus far into a single aluminum disc, a concession to contemporary purchasing and listening habits that seemed entirely antithetical to the cloistered, indie-snob mentality at the core of the label's aesthetic. Or perhaps Sarah founders Matt Haynes and Clare Wadd realized that CD compilations like Air Balloon Road gave the label's focus real shape -- only when stacked side by side did the scope of Sarah's singles output become truly obvious, revealing both the uniform melodicism and the subtle gradations of this lovelorn, bookish guitar pop. So if you're new to Sarah and willing to shell out the cash Air Balloon Road now commands in collectors' circles, it's a great place to start -- highlights like Another Sunny Day's "I'm in Love With a Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist," the Field Mice's "Sensitive," and the Sea Urchins' "Pristine Christine" are near-definitive examples of what the label was all about, and they've aged at least as well as any pop music of their era.
Sometimes the sheer scope and brilliance of a label's output becomes truly obvious only after its singles are stacked side by side on a compilation LP -- the music somehow becomes even greater than the sum of its parts, revealing quirks, nuances and intricacies that are otherwise hidden below the surface. While Sarah Records issued only 7" vinyl singles during its infancy, it's now impossible to assess the label's legacy without factoring digital-era collections like Gaol Ferry Bridge into the equation. Both the uniform melodicism and the subtle gradations of Sarah's lovelorn, bookish guitar pop assumed real shape and mass in compilation form, and what was lost in sacrificing the aesthetic pleasures of the 7" format are balanced out by the luxury of hearing these singles sequenced one after another -- a should-have-been-hit parade, if you will. Highlights this time out include East River Pipe's "Helmet On," the Sugargliders' "Reinventing Penicillin" and Heavenly's immortal "P.U.N.K. Girl."
In 2014, Cherry Red compiled the excellent NME C86 box set that reissued NME's seminal cassette compilation released in the fateful year of 1986, adding another 22 songs that helped flesh out what was going on all over the U.K. that year. Two years after the arrival of the NME C86 box, they tackled 1987's guitar pop and noise pop scenes on the equally fine C87 set. It catches up on many of the artists who featured on the NME C86 comp, like the Primitives, the Weather Prophets, and the Dentists, while also spotlighting plenty of exciting new bands that sprang up in C86's mighty wake. The collection features some true indie pop classics like "Pristine Christine" by the Sea Urchins (the first Sarah Records single), "Son of a Gun" by the Vaselines, Talulah Gosh's self-titled single, the Wedding Present's "My Favourite Dress," Miaow's "When It All Comes Down," the Chesterf!elds' buoyant "Ask Johnny Dee," and lots more. It gathers up a few rarities like a flexidisc version of the Darling Buds' "Spin" and the B-side of Kitchens of Distinction's first single, and there are plenty of bands only a true indie pop obsessive would know like the Submarines, Gol Gappa, and the Caretaker Race, some well worth checking out and some notable for the historical perspective they provide. Not content to just do a stellar job selecting tracks by the jangly, happily melodic bands that were springing up like weeds in an abandoned carpark, the compilers make sure to add a dozen or so angular, arty agit-pop tracks by bands like Bog-Shed, the Dog Faced Hermans, and Stump, then do those fans with more gentle constitutions the favor of sticking them all at the beginning of the third disc instead of sprinkling them throughout. Again, these bands are well chosen, as are the tracks selected. It's not an easy job trying to capture a scene, making sure to cover as much of it as possible while still maintaining quality control, but the intrepid duo of John Reed and Neil Taylor really do a brilliant job. Sure, there are minor quibbles that could be voiced and a few notable omissions -- the Close Lobsters' "Let's Make Some Plans" would have been nice to include -- but overall C87 is just about all any fan of late-'80s U.K. underground pop could hope for.
Elbowed out of the Clash, Mick Jones responded forcefully with Big Audio Dynamite, a modernist audio-terrorist outfit whose 1985 debut, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, seemed all the more futuristic when compared to Joe Strummer’s reductionist retro rejiggering of the Clash on Cut the Crap. Strummer may have been intent on shedding every experimental element of the Clash’s prime, but Jones, in collaboration with longtime friend filmmaker Don Letts, picked up where Sandinista! left off, anchoring BAD in dance and rap, building the group’s debut on layers of samples and drum machines. As is often the case, what was once forward-looking seems inextricably tied to its time in retrospect and the clanking electro rhythms, Sergio Leone samples, chicken-scratch guitars, bleating synths, and six-minute songs of This Is Big Audio Dynamite evoke 1985 in a way few other records do. Nevertheless, BAD’s boldness remains impressive, even visionary, pointing toward the cut-n-paste masterpieces of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and since Jones did not abandon his innate gift for hooks -- if anything, he found ways to create rhythmic hooks as well as melodic ones -- it’s quite accessible for an album that is, at its core, avant-rock. [Legacy’s 2010 double-disc expansion of This Is Big Audio Dynamite remasters the original eight-track LP and adds a second 12-track CD. Befitting BAD’s futuristic dance bent, almost all of these are 12" remixes of the album’s singles -- “Medicine Show,” “E=MC2,” and “The Bottom Line” -- including no less than four previously unreleased mixes -- and there’s also the outtake “Electric Vandal,” plus the B-sides “Albert Einstein Meets the Human Beatbox” and “This is Big Audio Dynamite,” with every last one of these 12 songs extending the modernist sampledelia of the album proper.]
