The Go-Betweens - Send Me a Lullaby

Send Me a Lullaby (1981) ***

Imagine a very early Talking Heads reduced to an amateurish power trio attempting the Velvet Underground songbook via the ghosts of (the very much alive) Tom Verlaine and Jonathan Richman, and you're  in the nose of the direction this album is headed.  The sound is very, very bare bones, but not unattractively so; in fact, the sound is what drives this album more than the songwriting, and they had that sparse, angular dry post-punk down cold, fully arrived on their debut.  Which is a curious thing, because the Go-Betweens didn't make their names as a sound band, but as a songwriting duo.  The songs, split more or less evenly between Forster and McLennan, show plenty of promise - promise, not full realization, not just yet.  This is a classic premature debut, the kind of case where a little more woodshedding and demo songwriting before setting out to the recording studio would have been eminently sensible.  As such, it gets despised by the fans, written off by the critics, and disparaged by the band itself as sounding like a practice room session (which, truth be told, it does).  And as often as not in such cases, it's a surprisingly solid debut if entered with underwhelming expectations.  The songs themselves aren't bad, for the most part; they're short and spikey, and demonstrate a craftsmanlike knowledge of the guitar hook, if nothing else.  The trio's arrangements are tastefully and sometimes tastily layered with brisk, crisp drums, meaty and complex bass lines, and jingly guitar strums sprinkled on top.  All in all, it's a pleasant listen, but is there any reason to return to it?  Do any of the songs truly stand out?  McLennan's "One Thing Can Hold Us," thwomps with youthful intensity, and Forster's broodingly lyrical, "Eight Pictures," moodily grips with its tale of incest and adultery.  But even after several listens, it's difficult to tell so many of these songs apart:  the sound is so strong and the songcraft is so (relatively) weak that one song blends into another in samey-same jingle-jangle.  And while the no-wave sax wailing on "People Know," makes that track immediately distinguishable, it's in a highly unpleasant way.  This might not have been so problematic on the original release, which consisted of eight numbers over in a brief 23 minutes; but subsequent issues added four extra songs, and the reissue I have adds a dozen more for a grand total of 24 tracks.  The sheer length, coupled with the fact that nearly all the songs sound the same, make it one of the most difficult albums I've ever tried to listen to for reviewing purposes - try as I might, I just couldn't get ahold of the thing, and eventually I reached the point where I had to ask myself, why bother?  It's not as if the added tracks are a waste - "I Need Two Heads," and the classic B-side of B-sides, the near-wordless gem of sprightly beauty, "World Weary," are essentialistic, and most of the rest of the bonus material is strongly of a piece with the album tracks proper.  It's simply all too much and the effort expended in digging out the memorable gems buried amongst this pile of mostly average-ordinary tunes - well, is it worth it?  If you're already a fan and own several other Go-Betweens albums, then a tentative, "Yes."  If you're unfamiliar with the band - then a definitive, "No."  This not-bad-at-all album (no-not-really, it's kind of enjoyable late at night) should be the very last place anyone should begin investigating the Go-Betweens - even if it is their debut and all.  

The Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace

This Nation's Saving Grace (1985) ****1/2

Another 16 Falltunes, same as the last time, but this one recieves a much higher grade because a) the tunes are much better, and b) the tunes don't all sound the same - this one's got variety.  Variety up the wazoo, in fact; critics often list this as the best LP entry point for neophytes into the wackily wonderful world of the Fall, and to quoth another noted Manchester poet, Morrissey, "they were half right."  The half they got right in that it's as brilliantly inconsistently consistent as any Fall release, Exile on the White Album covering nearly all their sides up to that point and tantalizingly pointing in a few new directions as well (particularly the ace "L.A." which blossoms out the interest in electronica that Mark would pursue so relentlessly in the '90s; "Paint Work," as well shifts the Fall into an interestingly dreamy corner of the pop universe that they'd never before explored).  There's a nagging sense, however, and I may be alone in this (judging by every other review on the net, I probably am), that there's something missing:  there doesn't seem to be any unified sense of purpose or vision as on previous Fall albums, which love it or loathe it, the likes of Hex Enduction Hour certainly had.  What you get instead is a collection of sixteen unrelated Fall songs, randomly distributed throughout the album in terms of quality and style:  this album would flow just as well on random play, which is to say not at all.  This is no doubt due to the fact that, like the last album, the original LP has been padded with A/B-sides from contemporaneous singles thrown on as bonus tracks at random.  But I'm quibbling, aren't I - this consolidation of strengths allows the first-time listener to sample nearly all facets of the Fall in one place, and even if I personally find Dragnet more compelling, it would be sheer perversity for me to not rate this one a smidgen bit higher.  Because this is, after all, technically the most accomplished Fall album, their second definitive album, after the debut (they have three in total, but you'll just have to wait another 18 years before you get to the third definitive Fall LP).

There's precious little punk, but plenty of Fallabilly, Fallpop, Fallvamps, Fallrock, and even a bit of Fallprog ("I Am Damo Suzuki", a tribute that lifts and stitches parts of various Can songs).  The Fallrepetition works well on the irresistably chorus-y "Spoilt Victorian Child," but not so well on the draggy "What You Need," or Brix's annoying, "Vixen."  The James Brown-meets-Led Zeppelin "Gut of the Quantifier," rocks and classic rock riff-monsters "Cruiser's Creek," and "Bombast," pummel the listener into aural submission.  The uproarious "Couldn't Get Ahead," ranks as my favorite (this week), a rollickingly bouncy poetryabilly number in which Mark stumbles around in Armani clothes pretending that he's blind and acting like E.T.  Humor?  The Fall?  I'd say that "Rollin' Danny," is almost as good an example of Mark's wit, only to find that this yet another bouncily rollicking number is a cover.  Well chosen obscurities?  The Fall?  Of course!  It is a weird Fall record in that the most commercial track (and the closest they ever came to an American hit, on MTV at least), "L.A.," is practically verseless, with only the stuttered two-syllable chorus and a few unintelligible mutters in the background as the sole words.  You do get to hear Brix saying, "It's my happening and it's freaking me out," as the tune fades out, however.  It's a total departure from their sound and no less welcome for it.  For years this and most other Fall albums were difficult to find outside of Greater Manchester, but now in this digital age we're all spoilt Victorian children and every Fall album is a click and a hop away on MP3 blogs.  If you're curious about the band, this is finemighty entry point.

 

The Fall - The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall

The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall (1984) ***1/2

Studio album #8 (I think, but at this point who's counting?) tackles another genre and runs it mercilessly through the Fall meatgrinder: this is pop! as another quirky post-punk band once put it, but only it's not pop, it's Fallpop.  Which apparently means nursery rhyme melodies stuffed with one big, fat, bright pop hook and run with Fallrepetition for three to four minutes while Mark E. chants and the guitars choogle on, but not aggressively guitar-choogling, which separates Fallpop from Fallrock.  Brix the newly Mrs. E. Smith co-wrote most of the songs and so surely it was her more feminine touch that pushed the Fall into this softer, more accessible direction; it's not as if they'd never visited such shimmery guitar-pop territory before ("That Man," "Leave the Capitol"), just never devoted an entire album to such fare.  Oh, it's not as if it's a drastic departure, as there are still plenty of jagged guitars and tribal rhythms and you can't get away from the patented Mark E. vocals, it's just more than a wee bit cozier and brighter in the land of the Fall.  This is the first Fall album that goes down easy, if not memorably:  I found this actually one of the more difficult Fall albums to digest, for two reasons.  First, the length:  the original album was 9 tracks long, but no one bought that (who bought Fall albums in 1984), or has ever seen it, and doubts are alleged to its actual existence.  Normal people all own the CD issue which appends 7 extra bonus tracks culled from singles, EPs, B-sides, what have you.  Apparently these 7 tracks were stuck in the running order at random or something, I'm not going to keep track and make sense of it, I'm just going to treat the bonus tracks as part of the original album and review the 16 track issue as such. 

So you see the initial problem - 16 tracks are hard to digest, and the overload makes it take forever to get into this album.  Now the second problem is related to the first:  there just aren't any truly great standouts that I can hear during this hour-plus of Fallmusic.  It's quite consistently OK and average, without any great highs or lows, which as seasoned album listeners know can make a lengthy album more intolerable than a lengthy album of good song/sucky song/good song/sucky song peaks and valleys.  "Bug Day," seems to be the only total waste, a more polished Room to Live-esque Diddleyvamp, and some jerk borrowed from the Virgin Prunes (a real band) adds some wretched strangled-cat-Johnny-Rotten backup vocals that almost but not quite ruin "Copped It," and "Stephen Song."  "Lay of the Land," opens the album memorably with its strongest cut, with some ominous medieval chanting before seguing into the meat of the song with some train-chugging jingle-junkle.  "2X4" follows with some surfy rockabilly and from then on out it would be silly (and boring) for me to review this platter tamale by tamale.  I adore the ascending bassline in "God Box," and "Elves," is a cool bit of drug-induced paranoia in which Mark hallucinates that the little people are haunting him.  "C.R.E.E.P.," may or may not be about Richard Nixon and while it's not exactly my favorite tune, the peppy pom-pom chorus Brix delivers is annoying difficult to dislodge from the cerebellum.  I'll mention one last song before signing off, the chiming dream-pop of "Disney's Dream Debased," which according to FallLore was inspired by Mark E. and Brix's trip to Disney Land, where one of the costumed workers was accidentally decapitated by the blades of a whirling ride and co-workers in Mickey Mouse and Goofy costumes ran around frantically trying to calm the onlookers down until the ambulance arrived.   

The Only Ones - Baby's Got a Gun

Baby's Got a Gun (1980) ***1/2

Overproduced and containing a sickening country duet ("Fools") in a belated, half-hearted attempt at pop crossover success, the third and final Only Ones album is clearly their weakest, but the step down isn't that drastic:  it captures a band hewing to the same formula the third time in a row with predictably diminishing returns, yet the formula has yet to grow stale.  No doubt that if the Only Ones had carried on into the '80s the albums would have bread-molded staler and staler, as their conventional hard rock/power pop could by derivative definition progress no further - so this is an effective and appropriate a swansong:  a band quitting not on top, but just on the downcurve, so fans aren't likely to be left with bitter regrets of what-could've-beens.  The Only Ones were exhausted as a band and Peter Perrett was dredging the last good tunes from his songwriting well.  But by no means is this a bad album - fans of the first two will find plenty to enjoy here, as the differences aren't that great.  It's simply not a great album.  Not that the Only Ones could have crossed over to the mainstream with this album, either:  when the catchiest song rings around the chorus, "Why don't you kill yourself / You ain't no good to no one else," radios aren't spinning in motion.  "Big Sleep," may in fact be Perrett's most successfully realized creepster ballad; "Me and My Shadow," effectively thuds rockingly along to a Bo Diddley thump; and the closer, "My Way Out of Here," lilts a lovely melody-chorus refrain.  Truth told, aside from "Fools" (yech!) and the useless Bad Company-ish plodder, "Re Union," there's little to dislike on this set.  There's not a whole lot to jump up and get excited about, either, but on the whole it is solidly pleasing.  Let me put it less ambivalently:  did you like the first two Only Ones albums?  Then you'll like this one, too.  Only not as much.

The Only Ones - Even Serpents Shine

Even Serpents Shine (1979) ****

Without a standout "hit" like "Another Girl, Another Planet," the second Only Ones album doesn't catch you with a hook that's going to blow you away, but if anything it's more consistently good than the debut and that means it's pretty great - ten solidly rocking, emotionally wreaked tunes plus one instrumental that is titled, appropriately "Instrumental".  Peter Perrett reminds me of Steve Harley (remember him?  Anyone?  Anyone?) in the way that he combines several bog-standard mid-'70s elements and just does his job by delivering some good music:  nothing special, nothing fancy, just some great rock'n'roll.  A slapdash of Dylan in the croaky vocals, a bit of Ray Davies nonchalance Englishness, slubby NY Dolls/Crazy Horse garage hard rock, a Lou Reed-ish attraction to the seamy side of drugs & sleaze, some Who-ish power pop and Television-esque guitar soloing - if you're going to whip up a formula, get the derivatives right.  Anyway, Perrett's tortured romantic whiner personality is entirely his own, and that's what matters.  The highlight for me is "Out There In The Night," an emotionally devastated slab of melodically uplifting/anthemic power-pop bliss that on first listen appears to be about a one night stand that Perrett wishes had blossomed into a relationship, but on closer listen turns out to be about his lost pet cat.  Well, hey, haven't we all been emotionally devastated by the disappearance of a beloved pet running away?  It's about damn time somebody wrote a deeply heartbroken lyric about the subject.  "Miles From Nowhere," inexplicably buried on side two near the end, might be even better and is even more emotionally pained.  As someone born in the provincial hinterlands, to say that I can identify with the lyric, "I want to die in the same place I was born / Miles from nowhere / I used to reach for the stars but now I've reformed," is understatement.  And it contains some of John Perry's most expressive soloing.  I find "Curtains For You," a bit plodding in its hard rock paces and "In Betweens," is a rewrite of the first album's "The Beast," and that's it for the low-ish points; elsewhere Perrett issues ballads bitter ("You've Got to Pay") and tender ("Someone Who Cares"), the band gets mildly punky ("No Solution," "Programme"), and shine their brightest in mid-tempo ("From Here To Eternity," "Flaming Torch").  Don't judge a band by its hideous cover, listen to the music inside, it's great, it's brill, it's pleasing to the ear, it stands the test of time.

Slackening the pace for a while....

50 reviews in one month is taxing for even the most hardy of mortals, especially if that month is February, and so I'll be taking a breather in March, for two reasons.  First, I have some grad school obligations that include writing a pair of hefty academic papers (one on Yukio Mishima & Theravada Buddhism, and the other on Tamerlane the Great, in case you're curious), plus a hefty reading list for examinations that has me reading at least a couple of novels per week + a few plays and essays and poems that I cram in on the side.  Secondly, reviewing music is a two-part process:  listening and writing.  I'm not the type of reviewer who can listen to an album three times in a row and then compose a review the next day.  I like to give music more of a time to sink in.  Some albums you can write off or proclaim masterpieces after only two or three listens, but as most music falls somewhere in the vast grey between genius and garbage, it can take some time to evaluate a fair opinion.  I started a page for the Go-Betweens, a band whose music is a perfect example of this - if you've read my introduction to that page, hopefully I've explained why throwing on one of their discs and then writing a review the next day is problematic.  Plus, all of the reissues have an insane amount of high-quality bonus tracks - I haven't come close to absorbing the entire 24 tracks on Send Me a Lullaby, and I'd like to review the bands I cover chronologically (ideally; my Cure, Genesis, Hall & Oates, and King Crimson pages are a bit messy at this point).  So I'm going to spend the rest of the month doing a lot more listening than reviewing, in other words.  Not that I'm going to go on hiatus - it's going to be more like an album or two per week, rather than an album or two per day.

And yes, I do plan on eventually reviewing every STUDIO album by the Fall, every which one.  Perhaps completed by 2012, by which time Mark E. should have a couple of new albums out, unless the Mayan sky-gods come back to wreak their vengeance on humanity as the soothsayers predict. 

 

Television Personalities - ...and Don't the Kids Just Love It

...and Don't the Kids Just Love It (1981) ***1/2

Lo-fi, amateurish, and shambolic, but it's not punk, it's pop, and thus we witness the beginnings of twee indie-pop: this may or may not be the album that launched a thousand bands from Beat Happening to Belle & Sebastian to Apples in Stereo to whatever flavour-of-the-month Huggy Minus the Be(a)er is getting raved about in the hipster blogosphere, because who knows whether any of those bands actually heard the Television Personalities?  Like the Ramones a half decade before, the TV P's showed youths starting bands that you didn't need traditional musical expertise to make good music.  The songs employ efficient one-hook construction and winsome nursery cryme/pub sing-a-long melodies, as the band shambles along on charmingly sloppily strummed acoustic guitars and thumpy little bass line hooks and trapkit drums.  The Personalities aim at mid-'60s scooter-mod pop for the post-punk age (just look at the Avengers cover!  Retro, 'tis) succeeds with surf-spy guitar hooks and a Village Green-Kinks/softer-folkier side of early Genesis sound, if not entirely spirit (much too self-conscious and post-modernistically ironic).  That is, the TV Personalities aren't just wimps, they are self-aware wimps self-knowledgable to use their average-schmuck wimpiness to play to the advantages of wimpiness.  Thus the fey, laconically sung vocals, absence of macho rockist aggression, and a rewrite of "David Watts," in "Geoffrey Ingham".

If anything lets the album down, it's the songs, which even at their best reek too much of slightness, which is to say that there are an awful lot of good to average songs on their first longplayer (14, in sum) and not a single what I'd call classic.  The most famous track here is "I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives," which is kinda lovely and all, but also kinda gonowhere, and let's face it, really only famous because of the novelty of its subject matter and title.  Yes, it's nice to know that leader Dan Treacy (writes all the songs, you see) sips tea with Syd in Cambridge under the willow-in-the-wind trees, but if you're going to write a title like that, I'd expect something a bit more relevatory the name of Syd's pet.  Anyway, it's one of the weaker tracks, for all its fame:  "Jackanory Stories," "Look Back in Anger," (which isn't very convincingly angry), "Silly Girl," "Glittering Prizes," and maybe a couple of others, are much better, and they're all bouncy, bright, simple, and one-hookily memorable.  That's the most I can say of'em; I mean, I could say more, but the effort expended on analyzing and then explicating these slight, throwaway-ish tunes seems an inefficient expenditure of mental energy.  In toto, an utterly wonderful album with a delightfully enjoyable sound that's piffle-weight meaningless, and not just English but "soft Southern fairies" English as those hard northern Englishmen put it.