Peggy Russell/Merle Haggard - Sing Me Back Home

You won't see too many classic country (or blues) record reviews on this site, not because I'm a non-fan, but due to the fact (IMAO) that it's primarily a song, not album, medium. Even the best of your classic country-western LPs (and I have heard every Hag LP he cut from his '60s/'70s prime) rolled off the Nashville/Bakersfield assembly line full of, if not quite "filler", certainly a good chunk of formulaic ready-mades.  And I'm not fool enough to go down every highway exploring all 50+ of Merle's regular-issue albums that he's released in his lifetime.  That all said, Haggard stands as not just a giant in the realm of country music, but one of the finest songwriters (and singers) in 20th century American music, period, with a back catalogue as rich and rewarding as Dylan or Cash or, frankly, anyone's.  His persona was darker and more threatening than Cash's (Johnny only sang about life in prison; Merle lived it for several years) yet somehow more empathetic and even gentle.  He's also the anti-Dylan in certain ways.  I'm speaking not merely of his right-wing, anti-hippie political sentiments (which were so cartoonish at points that I'm still not sure how much of a joke "Okie From Muskogee" actually is - if at all), but the nature of his songwriting.  There is nothing obscure about the messages or words of any of Haggard's lyrics, and rarely does he engage in much of the clever, punny wordplay so common in factory-line Nashville country.  There is little to no doubt of the sincerity behind the sentiments of Haggard's best songs; he may wear his heart on his sleeve, but his persona is so lived-in and world-experienced that his innate tough/rough edges keep mawkish sentimentality at bay.  (Well, most of the time.  See my point about country LP filler.).  If songs like "Hungry Eyes" or "Sing Me Back Home" or "Sidewalks of Chicago" leave you completely dry-eyed - well, one wonders how it must feel to have no functioning heart.  Lastly, unlike a great many of the members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, songs about love and relationships aren't necessarily his prime forte.  It's not as if he doesn't have plenty of those - "I Can't Be Myself", for instance, is the only example I I am aware of, of a song concerning religious differences causing marital friction.  A bit odd if you think about it, as that does sometimes happen to be an issue between interfaith (or even shared faith) couples.  Which brings me back to my main point - when I cherry-pick his most memorable songs, I think of songs about homelessness (the aforementioned "Chicago"), hobos ("I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am"), drinking (OK, this is country music), unemployment ("If We Make It Through December"), the Great Depression ("Hungry Eyes"), the Great Recession of the 1970s ("A Working Man Can't Get Nowhere Today"), rabid right-wing jingoism ("The Fightin' Side of Me"), jail and the tribulations of an ex-con ("Branded Man" and others far too numerous to mention).

It's that last bit of subject matter that informs a great deal of the material in this book, in which Merle (who really did turn 21 in prison, albeit certainly not doing life without parole) seems to have lived more wild hellraising by the time he reached legal drinking age than most people experience in their entire lifetimes.  Hell, he committed more crimes by the age of 14 than I've committed by the age of -- well, never you mind my age.  The story begins with a scene of Merle holding his aching head in solitary confinement, hungover after a foolish experiment moonshining pruno in the joint, and the ride only spins it wheels wilder from there.  I'm not sure just how much of his life story he's laying out - maybe he's skipping over some of his truly nasty episodes - but what he does decide to share feels as honest and straightforward as his songs:  he's just too blunt and deceptively artless to not come across as implicitly trustworthy. (Unlike his polar opposite, Zimmerman the anti-Hag.)  Almost to a fault:  several of the episodes in his life as a dumb, mean, angry redneck who certainly did deserve to get thrown in a cage where he belonged, if only temporarily (sorry, Merle, if you're going to tell it like it is, so will I) are downright cringe-inducing.  One in particular should illustrate the point adequately:  Haggard describes waylaying a retarded kid he knew from around town, viciously beating and robbing him.  In Hag's defense, he claims that it was probably the worst thing he's ever done and that he still feels guilty about it after all these years, but still - yeah, maybe a couple of years in the joint weren't such a bad idea to cool off the young Merle.  Recounting all the wild times that the Hag recalls from his misspent youth (misspent?  He did mine a lot of writing material from it.) would take up too much space for this review, so let me just conclude that the yarns he spins are rollicking and rarely less than riveting.  In fact, I might go so far as to say that this was one of the most enthralling first-person music bios I've ever read - it reads like a gripping coming-of-age novel.

For music fans, the only true disappointment may be how little Haggard actually touches upon music and music-making.  This may or may not be all for the better, as his non-musical career as a petty criminal is, indeed, so much more fascinating.  The book does take a noticeable drop in interest when he abandons crime to focus on his music career.  And the passages where he goes into detail about his relationships with women - well, there is the trademark blunt, almost clumsy Okie honesty of Hag.  He unapologetically and unsentimentally describes the scene in which, coming home to his wife after a tour that lasted a mite longer than nine months, and presented with a newborn - he turns his head, hugs his other children, but struggles for years to accept into his family a child that he knows for damn sure isn't his.  He is equally - disarmingly so, especially by modern standards (this book was published in 1981) - frank about the period in the '70s when he was so enamored of Dolly Parton that he stalked her to the point of frightening her.  Which does set up the backdrop for one of the funnier episodes in the autobiography, in which a stoned Haggard calls up Dolly at 2 in the morning and attempts to play a song he'd been sitting up all night writing for her, over the phone.  She hangs up.  (Did you expect any other response?)  "A missed connection," Merle philosophically muses upon him and Parton's non-relationship.  As a writer, sometimes I wish I had the courage to write as brutally honestly as Haggard about some of the relationships I've had in the past and failed at or been burned on, but - nah.  Not just that spilling your heart out can be embarrassing after you've purged what you needed to say to somebody, but also that there's always more than one person in a relationship, and my perspective is - well, my perspective, only half the story (or sometimes even less), so it really wouldn't seem fair to monopolize the retelling of emotions and events.  Well, Merle certainly spills it all from his perspective, and it may even reasonably approximate the truth, which is the best you can expect out of a ghost-written autobiography.

Rubber Soul vs. Blonde on Blonde

VS.

By all rights, the matchup should be between Rubber Soul and Highway 61 Revisited, and not simply because they were released in the same year (Blonde on Blonde was released a year later, in 1966).  If Highway 61 Revisited was Dylan's first all-out electric, rock'n'roll LP (Bringing It All Back Home was only half-electric, on the first side), then Rubber Soul was the first Beatles album to demonstrate the clear influence of Dylan (and the Byrds).  But the numbers simply didn't add up - 11 songs vs. 14 songs.  So BoB will have to do: 14 songs here from their generation's most significant folk singer to match up with the 14 on the Beatles' greatest folk-rock LP.  You may object that the pieces still don't quite fit, as Dylan's set consists mostly of lengthy tracks (one exceeding 11 minutes) to pad out what was one of rock's first double (that's 4 sides of vinyl, kids) LPs, while the Beatles' LP is filled with short, snappy 3 minute pop ditties.  Well, I wanted some sort of showdown between Bob and the Fabs at some point, and this was the best compromise I could do.  This should be interesting, at the very least.

P.S. I'm using the original U.K. track listing for the Beatles LP, not the shuffle-butchered U.S. track order.

1. "Drive My Car" vs. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" - "Everybody must get stoned!" vs. "beep beep beep!"  Each album leads with its stupidest and most childish song, and while my attitude towards the Dylan tune has softened over the years (due in great part to my ears' extended hiatus from Classic Rock Radio, where for obvious fratboy reasons this was the sole Dylan song to be ground into the dirt via overplay), I still don't enjoy it very much.  Forced fun never works as well as musicians assume it will when the listener is not drunk, and in the light of sobriety, it's just annoying.  But the Beatles tune isn't even fun as a drunken singalong.  It's Paul's idea of '50s rock'n'roll for 4th graders.  Plus, the 'boozy-woozy dirty carnival' sound of "Rainy Day" is rather unique.  So score 1 point for Bob, even if I truly like neither.

2.  "Norwegian Wood" vs. "Pledging My Time" - Did I hallucinate this or don't CD editions start off with "Norwegian Wood"?  I must have mis-remembered.  Anyway, this is no contest by a Scandinavian mile - John's bittersweet, deceptively offhand tale of a failed one-night stand burns down Bob's homage to John Lee Hooker-style Chicago blues.  There are ten thousand bands writing and playing songs like "Pledging My Time" as we speak.  Not many writing Lennon-ish sitar-folk tunes, and it ain't for lack of trying.  Score is now tied.

3.  "You Won't See Me" vs. "Visions of Johanna" - The ghosts of throwaway pop ditties howl in her face like infinity on trial, and if you have no idea what that means, neither do I, or most likely Bob himself.  I knew in advance without looking at the track listing that any Beatles song wouldn't stand a chance against "Johanna", my personal favorite of Dylan's 7+ minute epics (and he's had, oh - a few).  Fine as Paul's tune is, it's like pitting a Seinfeld episode up against The Seven Samurai.  Dylan 2, Beatles 1.

4.  "Nowhere Man" vs. "One of Must Know (Sooner or Later)" - Oh dear, this is the first serious dilemma of this contest.  I'm attracted to both equally for different reasons and find myself humming the choruses to each from time to time -- the lyrical subject matter of both have seemed to speak to my life at different times for different (if not entirely unrelated) reasons.  So which should I choose, the blonde or the moptop?  (Weren't the Beatles all brunettes?)  On the other hand, I adore the Byrds, and this is as close as the Beatles ever got to a straight-up homage to McGuinn & Co., so now the score is tied again.

5.  "Think For Yourself" vs. "I Want You" - In Beatles evolutionary terms, this is the finest George song yet.  But he'd improve considerably in short time.  With its almost Appalachian swirl of Nashville fiddles, the Dylan tune is the most conventionally 'musical' and perhaps interesting on BoB, and precipitates the sound of Desire a decade ahead of schedule.  So now Bob takes the lead again, 3 - 2.

6. "The Word" vs. "Stuck in Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" - Sorry, but lyrics do matter, and those have always been the Fabs' Achilles heel.  Catchy as it is in ways that Bob couldn't even begin to attempt, the sentiments are trite hippie rubbish.  Bob's down'n'out ruminations on dead grandfathers, French girls palling around with Shakespeare, railroad men smoking eyelids and drinking blood like wine, bad drinking experiences brought on by mixing Texas medicine and railroad gin, seductive burlesque dancers who know what you need but give you what you want -- this one's easy-pleasy.  Dylan 4, Beatles 2.

7.  "Michelle" vs. "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" - Another pair of songs that do even less for me than the opening cuts of their respective LPs.  One's just another unimaginative Chicago blues foot-stomper, and the Paul tune sung partially in French is goofball MOR rubbish.  So, yeah, give me an authentic take on Chicago blues over fake Jacques Brel any day.  I'm American that way.  Besides, the line about how the hat balances as well as a wine bottle on a mattress is genuinely funny.  Dylan 5, Beatles 2.

8.  "What Goes On" vs. "Just Like a Woman" - Well, it's a Ringo sung tune, and John/Paul rarely tossed him the first-rate.  But it's alright, ma, he's only talk-singing in a flat monotone because that's the best he can do without a little help from his friends.  As for the Dylan song (he's already won again, 6-2, no surprise there), the lyrics are in general a bit below his usual standards, even if melodically and hookily the tune is a bit above Bob's usual standards.  "She fakes just like a woman" could almost be a line of dialogue from a porno - dunno, always sounded a bit icky to my ears.  Not too deep or subtle of a chorus, but the verses in general make up for the overall air of callowness.

9. "Girl" vs. "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" - Ah, misogyny.  Bob's kissoff to Joan Baez or whoever he'd broken up with in the past (if any specific woman at all) advances the sleazy carnival sound of "Rainy Day Women" with a considerably darker-hued tune in terms of both atmosphere and lyrical attitude.  Interesting musically speaking, but not all that memorable of a song - the chorus isn't particularly strong.  Lennon's bitter (not particularly sweet, just bitter) folk-pop sigh of exasperation and exhalation is one of the strongest on Soul.  And the 'drag on a cigarette' vocal hook is pleasantly novel.  Dylan 6, Beatles 3.

10. "I'm Looking Through You" vs. "Temporary Like Achilles" - One of Paul's stronger tunes on this particular Beatles LP, its strummy bounce makes for a snotty kiss-off anti-love-note almost as worthy of anything Dylan ever wrote (or Lennon, for that matter).  "....Achilles" is, well - sigh, just another generic electric blues number, except only weaker this time: a sloth-y stroll-paced slow blues that lacks energy, hooks, focus.  Easily the worst song on Bob's double LP.  Dylan 6, Beatles 4.

11.  "In My Life" vs. "Absolutely Sweet Marie" - The Dylan track picks up some of the energy dissipated by "Achilles" and sets matters aright again, and "to live outside the law, you must be honest" is one of Zimmy's most quotable lines.  "In My Life", on the other hand, is the one Beatles song that you'd like played at your funeral.  And I bet you didn't realize that until I just mentioned it now.  Dylan 6, Beatles 5.

12. "Wait" vs. "4th Time Around" - Despite the line "gallantly I handed her my last piece of gum", this is minor Dylan -- not quite a throwaway, and the Spanish guitar pleasantly flows along with gallant troubadour flamenco flair, but after the tune ends, all that is solid melts into air.  The Beatles tune itself is such a throwaway that I can't even tell quite for sure if it's a John or Paul written song (probably Paul's), but the jagged proto-Revolver guitar hook and tension-build dynamic in the chorus make it much more memorable.  6-6 - it's a tie again.

13. "If I Needed Someone" vs. "Obviously 5 Believers" - I don't mind fast rockabilly, but like the Chicago blues, it does have the tendency towards the perilously generic as a genre, and bands usually cut numbers like this when they want to rock out but are bereft of ideas.  The Harrison tune is no Lennon/McCartney but the kid's improving all the time.  Beatles take the lead for the first time, 7-6.

14. "Run For Your Life" vs. "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" - Once again, I knew without even glancing at the track listing that this was a foregone conclusion.  As much wholesome fun as a bit of homicidal Elvis-inspired misogyny may be if you're in the mood for that sort of thing, Lennon himself said that he didn't much care for the tune.  "Sara Lownds" (it doesn't even work as an anagram, Bob!) is - well, what exactly is the precise term for anti-misogynistic?  And no, "love song" just won't do, and neither will "putting her on a pedestal" - those cliches don't quite do justice to this eleven and a half minute ode to joy, a religious hymn to the sensation of falling in love in your mid-20s with the (first) woman you intend to marry.  It drones on and on, hypnotic if you're in the mood (or in a similarly smitten emotional situation as Bob was), and just droney and repetitive if you ain't.  An easy knockout for Dylan.  7-7

Well, that was exhausting.  Took me an entire listen of Blonde on Blonde to type the whole thing (like most normal people, I have all of the Beatles songs memorized by heart, so no need to replay Rubber Soul for research purposes).  A tie seems fair enough, and not particularly surprising.  As an overall album experience, however - well, it's still a tie, on reflection.  The Beatles work with a broader and more varied musical palette, with Dylan hemmed in by technical limitations (in both musicianship and songwriting) to 12-bar blues, generic '50s rock'n'roll, and traditional folk music forms.  Yet within those narrow (relative to the Beatles' eclecticism) parameters, Zimmerman creates his own, unique universe.  And Dylan cuts deeper, both lyrically and emotionally,  This is adult music for adults, not adolescent kiddy stuff.  The Beatles could, as I said, sometimes be a bit shallow.

The Smiths - Meat Is Murder

Meat is Murder (1985) **1/2

The temptation to violate Godwin's Law and take the cheap "Hitler was a vegetarian" shot grows strong within this one.  (It's an urban myth, anyway.)  That trite volley fired, I should say that it's actually an improvement over the debut in terms of sound (new producer Stephen Street, who would prove to be their George Martin for the rest of their short career, actually knows what he's doing), and isn't that bad of a listen.  The problem lies within the songwriting - it's far too threadbare.  I count two classics for the M & M canon "I Want the One I Can't Have" showcases a surgingly power-pop tune with strikingly conventional chorus sentiments that verge on the almost banal, but several of the verses slap the tune onto shore ("On the day that your mentality decides to try and catch up with your biology").  The second we have already met before - "How Soon Is Now?"  And as I already have that latter on Hatful, should I as a consumer purchase this propaganda broadsheet for one great song?  Oh, "The Headmaster Ritual" starts the album energetically and atmospherically enough, with M's lyrical recounting of mean'ol schoolteachers subjecting schoolchildren to the same stale jokes and fashion sense of 1902, and the other M's jangly arpeggios, giving the fillip an epic feel.  A fine way to start off the record, if more epic atmosphere than possessing much in terms of actual hooks.  I also might grudgingly concede that "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" should sit on comfortably on the bookshelf of Mopey Morrissey Ballads - OK, it's fine for what it is and probably a "classic", it's just that I've never been a huge fan of Morrissey in draggy, whiny balladry mode.  And there's not much of a hook there, either, aside from the "I've seen this happen in other people's lives" vocal melody in the chorus.  Which cuts to the heart of the matter:  these tunes are simply too stiff and hookless.  Not tuneless, or lacking in lyrical wit, or lush yet crisp atmospherics, or sharp band dynamics - but hooks?  Several of these tracks are little more than rockabilly readymades that suggest a band simply circling round the motions. So I lay blame entirely on Marr - his well of riffs had apparently encountered a dry spell for a brief period.

Or maybe not entirely.  The final two tracks push my relative indifference to most of this album into the realm of active dislike.  "Barbarism Begins At Home" isn't that terribly offensive - in fact, not offensive at all - but it is the weakest cut yet, as these Mancunians unwisely venture into funk.  Doesn't work, doesn't work at all, despite some decent bass work.  The title track that closes the album, though - hell yeah I'm offended.  And it's not primarily because of the PETA political stance, overwrought and absurd as it is.  It's the fact that it drags on for over 6 minutes, droning with little of musical merit to engage the listener, while Morrissey insistently howls, "It is murder!  It is murder!"  Have a bacon sarnie, Moz.  Appropriately enough, the LP ends with the mooing of cattle as a crowd cheers in a slaughterhouse.

I'm assuming that Moz's commitment to Jainism is about as sincere and consistent as his commitment to celibacy.

The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow

Hatful of Hollow (1984) *****

A compilation of alternate-version BBC recordings from their debut LP, with a pair of A/B-sides tossed in the jambalaya (or mince pie, or whatever is the pasty limey equivalent) is, as a general rule of thumb, not the best place to start with most bands, much less their definitive statement and the one place to go if you need your fix of mope and mockery.  But Morrissey & Marr have always been an eccentric odd couple, and it's the brave combo of a fey acolyte of Oscar Wilde fronting a rock-steady band of Manchester-muck blokes that (partially, only partially) makes the Smiths so special.  All but a handful of the tracks from the debut are present here in slightly different but somehow infinitely superior form (the production!  the production!), slightly rawer and thinner and more vital.  Less stiff and prematurely ossified, too.  And, as I noted in my previous review, none of the missing five songs are any great shakes, so the debut is now made superfluously redundant and unequivocally unnecessary.  The title may be slang for a batch of emptiness (which the band may have felt a quickie rip-off of radio sessions was - fair warning to fans clever enough to grok the pun, during those o-heady days of Morrisseymania in dear Old Blightey), but never you mind.  This is the only Smiths longplayer I can safely slip on and enjoy from start to finish - the other ones I just cherry pick the selected tunes I actually like and ignore the rest.

I know, you say it's gruesome that someone so handsome should care, so I shall attend to the material not already presented a few months earlier on the debut.  "William, It Was Really Nothing" sprightly springs us into this silver platter with a typical Marr jingle-shimmer, his high-end-note guitar bouncily slicing like slivers of sweet sunlight through the blinds, while Morrissey spins a tale of hum-drum towns where fat girls offer hands in marriage and are even so presumptuous as to purchase the ring.  Of its pair of B-sides, "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" (almost could be a James Brown title) is a pleasant, slightly hush-haunting acoustic ballad; but how did the classic indie-groove mid-tempo shuffle of tremolo & trepidation, "How Soon Is Now?" originally see existence as a B-side?  John Peel program listeners all over Britain may have choked back the explicable urge to smack Morrissey on the ear, with his "I am human and I need to be loved!" wobbly warbling (he's not wearing his heart on his sleeve, he's wiping his sobbing tear-stained snot on his sleeve), but were mollified as Marr's heavily tremoloed guitar groove won out in the end.

Both "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" and its B-side, "Girl Afraid" showcase Morrissey at his lyrical peak, with the former making a strong case for him as one of the wittiest gay English songwriters since Noel Coward, and the latter moodily dissecting the mating dance between those of us unfortunate to be born heterosexual.  Happy in the haze of a drunken hour, the self-help bromides "You've Got Everything Now" so "Accept Yourself" jump'n'thud in jolly contrast to the snootful of jaded lyricism (others conquered love but I ran, no I've never had a job because I'm too shy).  And to round this review off, there's "This Night Has Opened My Eyes", a tender '50s-style ballad concerning infanticide, which oddly enough was the only song that was not re-recorded for another release.  This is your only regular-release LP to find it on, completists.  Fine though this drowned baby may be, she's not worth the price of admission all by her lonesome self, but if you would like the debut shorn of its duller songs, and with the good songs vastly improved, and several singles thrown into the mix, this is one-stop shopping for a taste of the early Smiths.

Oh, and Peanuts comics set to Smiths lyrics!

The Smiths - s/t

The Smiths (1984) ***

The Schmidts’ legacy is that of the finest U.K. singles band of their decade, while concurrently releasing rather mediocre albums. Perhaps it boils down to Morrissey & Co. being easier to take in the concentrated form of 1-2 punch 3 minute singles as opposed to an entire LP’s stretch of warbling and moaning. On reflection, I disagree with that theory, as Hatful of Hollow is one of my favorite albums, and that’s the problem with their studio debut: I was initially familiar with half of these songs from the BBC sessions on Hatful, and in comparison these slickly produced versions feel so lifeless that they’re borderline unlistenable. And as I can’t honestly number any of the five songs here not duplicated on Hatful as truly essential (pleasant and sometimes intriguing they may be), this renders this disc mostly of interest for Smiths diehards. Which, if you are a Smiths fan, most likely means that you are a diehard, so….

Quick band intro for those in the back of the queue: a mid-‘80s Manchester outfit co-lead by guitarist Johnny Marr, whose jangly hi-end tone made him the finest rhythm guitarist of his generation and possibly in all jangle-pop, period, and a warbling singer/lyricist of self-consciously indeterminate sexuality and mordant wit, Morrissey. While Marr’s musical backdrops are in general unassailably tasteful and often tasty as well, Morrissey’s persona is the deal-breaker for many: casually shocking and self-consciously (there’s that word again) gloomy, you either learn to laugh along with or at Morrissey’s tongue-in-Oscar-Wilde’s-cheek bon mots, or dismiss him as a fey, self-absorbed limey twat. Or take him at face value, which only means that you’re an idiot. Oh, and they had a rhythm section, too, and a quite good one, but nobody ever talks about them.

The songs on this debut set the basic template for the Smiths formula, from which they rarely ventured far from: spiritually descended from the teen angst melodrama of early ‘60s pop (girl groups, Roy Orbison) with the morbidity if not the melodramatics notched up to Spinal Tap’s 11, and built on the bedrock of Marr’s Byrds-descended rhythmic jangle, at once more sharply biting and abstractly ethereal than his ‘60s predecessors. The lyrics concern such cheery fare as child abuse (“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”), murder, misogyny (“Pretty Girls Make Graves” which may or may not be sung from the perspective of an in-the-closet gay serial killer, contains both), sadomasochism (“Reel Around the Fountain”), homosexuality (“Hand in Glove” – “the sun shines out of our behinds”), impotence (at least that’s what I think “What Difference Does It Make?” is about – “I know I’m the most inept that ever slept”, Your interpretation may vary), the generalized misanthropy of the perpetually unemployed (“Still Ill”), the casual cruelty of the handsome to fat girls overeager to marry (“This Charming Man”) – etc., etc., etc.! Note that I haven’t spoken much of the individual musical merits of the songs such lyrics are set to (except to pause to opine that the falsetto warbling that closes out “Miserable Lie” is the musical low-point of the Smiths’ entire career – who does Morrissey think he is, Ian Gillan screeching “Child in Time”? There, that’s probably the first and possibly last Deep Purple/Smiths comparison any rock critic has ever made.). Reason being that I’m not enough of a musicologist to adequately detail the differing nuances of these stylistically similar ten tracks, and you’d be bored if I did. But I’m still fond of you, a hey ho.

Orange Juice - Rip It Up

Rip It Up (1982) **1/2

A key line-up change renders the Apple Cider of autumn ’82 half the band they were the fresh spring of ’82. As a vital collaborator and second-in-command to Edwyn Collins, guitarist James Kirk has departed and replaced by South African percussionist Zeke Manyika. In other words, the band has evolved from gawky proto-Smiths Scots-jangle to gawky neo-soul post-Talking Heads jangle with Afro-beat pretensions. Manyika’s vocal spotlights, “Hokoyo” and “A Million Pleading Faces” are straight-up Afro-pop that stick out like two black thumbs – not unpleasant tracks that simply don’t fit in with the rest of the album at all. The stink of blatant tokenism may have inspired the Fall’s infamous lyric from the concurrent “The Classical” sneering at directors needing to insert “obligatory n*****s” in their rock videos or rhythmic line-ups. The rest of album capitalizes on a direction hinted at on the debut – Motown-inspired white soul. The title track, a minor hit, hits the mark sweetly, jubilantly, and mockingly: building a chorus around the playful taunt, “I hope to god you’re not as dumb as you make out,” is impossible to miss, but I bet millions of pop listeners were dumb enough to do so anyway. It’s one of 1982’s most stellar singles and possibly the band’s career highlight (and not just because it provided the title for a Simon Reynolds tome about post-punk, reviewed otherwhere on this site). Unfortunately it’s also by far the best song here, and even then it’s better heard in its single version – this LP version extends the length to five minutes with a superfluous coda. As a blue-eyed crooner, Collins’ vocal limitations are more apparent than they were as a charmingly awkward indie-pop teenster. The music goes down smoother and more accessibly than on the debut, but in the process scrubs a good deal of the band’s personality: what distinguishes this cruise carnival neo-funk/soul from the New Romantic likes of Haircut 100 or the Culture Club? “Louise Louise” sounds like an outtake from the debut, and “Mud in Your Eye” is a fine Al Green-esque smoothy, but overall the material is rather thin and simply not up to snuff. “I Can’t Help Myself” cloyingly homages the Four Tops, while the soggy reggae “Breakfast Time” stands out as the nadir: Collins uses the day’s first meal as a clumsy metaphor for morning sex, or something. I hate half-spoken word songs with trotting non-melodies. And when are guys in their early 20s ever going to stop bemoaning about how they wish they were young again?!

The Stone Roses - s/t

The Stone Roses (1989) ***



The quintessential overhyped U.K. debut, on first (and third, fourth, even fifth….your mileage may vary) listen comes across as a wave of undistinguished and indistinguishable sonic mush. The hooks are as rotely generic as the sing-song post-Hollies melodies; what distinguishes this mish-mash of generic Brit-pop from Biff Bang Pow or the Primitives or Felt or a hundred other retro-‘60s British bands jingling and jangling their tambourines across that fair isle in the ‘80s, I fail to discern. However, as is sometimes the case, repeated listens reveal this album's minor merits and I can even begin to distinguish one track from another. Which is problem numero uno: the band has its formula and sticks to it (excepting those dreary pseudo-funk excursions toward the end), making this one hella monotonous long-player. And long-player it is: the band’s slight tunes would work dandy as 2 1/2 minute bubblegum ditties, but are pompously bloated with misguided self-importance to an average running length of 5 minutes each. Excepting the one minute fragment “Elizabeth My Dear", which merely sets the traditional folk melody of “Scarborough Fair” to a new set of lyrics advocating regicide. It’s pleasant enough and a nice break from the monotony. The other two exceptions are “I am the Resurrection” (yes, the lyric is ludicrously self-deluded, and like a snotty, clueless kid brother to U2, they’re bleeding serious) a fine 3 1/2 pop anthem that shifts into a garage-funk jam for the remaining 5 minutes; and the even more tedious “Fools Gold” which overabuses its one hook – an overflanged Shaft wah-wah funk-guitar riff – repetitively for ten minutes. There’s a fine line between groovy hypnosis and a mindless rut of groove, and this clearly falls into “Sister Ray” territory. That this sort of thing was considered a groundbreaking dance track speaks of how desperate U.K. music journalists were for passable grooves performed by pale skinny English lads.

The band are technically accomplished and even interesting players (you knew I’d get to the positives eventually, given my lukewarm grade – it’s not at all a bad album, merely an innocuous and a bit boring of one). John Squire gets a lot of press for his chiming guitar licks, so enough about that Johnny Marr acolyte; the real secret weapon is bassist Mani – he’s fluid and meaty at the same time, carrying the weight and foundation of the tunes more often than not (if you bother to notice; like a lot of bass players, he can be easy to overlook in the mix). Would have made for a great rhythm section if the drummer was up to snuff, but the beats, while facile and painterly, are too lightweightly applied to achieve rhythmic propulsion and liftoff. The mix is simply too thin, way too thin – this album could sorely use some oomph, power, and sonic depth to ,it; maybe they were going for a dreamy, fluffy-as-clouds affect, but it’s all too amorphous and gormless. Ian Brown is the other weak link; he achieves an admirably angelic-snotty choirboy vox, but displays a distressing lack of range, which in the end results in the band fronted by a bland, colorless singer. Brown lacks all charisma, a crucial ingredient for any frontman. Plus, he looks like a monkey.


Which isn’t to say that pseudo-gothy, bass-driven opener “I Wanna Be Adored” isn’t a fantastic tune, containing Brown’s most arresting lyric: “I don’t need to sell my soul / He’s already in me”. Or that “She Bangs the Drums” and “Bye Bye Badman” don’t boast quite catchy choruses. Or that running “Waterfall” backwards and rewriting it as “Don’t Stop” isn’t a cute neo-psychedelic trick. Or that “Made of Stone” burns with desolate intensity as my favorite track. The band did have tunes, you must admit. Did their small clutch of winsome tunes warrant the hubris and hype? I’ve already answered that question.