I ain’t no mariner. Approaching ancient maybe, but these legs work best when firmly planted on dry land. I don’t need the stars to guide me (I wouldn’t know where to start), yet without even the use of an iPhone app, I know my norths and souths. If I stand on Irvine beach with Arran to the left of me, I’m facing north. To Troon and Prestwick behind me is the beautiful south. Everywhere inland is east. The old Sleeping Warrior 20 miles out into the Firth of Clyde is west. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That’s easy. Schoolboy stuff. Everybody knows that. At the right time of year, our corner of the world is flooded in golden light as the blazing sun rolls its way lazily behind the far tip of Arran and under the sea. It’s one of the pleasures of living by the coast in Ayrshire.
I thought it was also a given fact that as winter approaches, the geese fly south; to warmer climes, to mate, to hang out in the southern hemisphere, to barbecue and party and do whatever it is the geese do at this time of year.
Recently, the skies above Ayrshire have been full of noisily honking geese, wings beating simultaneously in tandem, flying purposefully in that efficient, energy-conserving V-formation that they’re famous for. I saw them on Friday. And yesterday. And again today. Maybe it was the same flock, cos on Friday they were most definitely not flying south. Yesterday they were heading in the same direction as the day before – which was roughly in the direction of Glasgow Airport, a short half hour’s drive north east from here. This afternoon though, they’d about-turned and it looked like their internal sat-navs had finally aligned to point them in the right direction. Or maybe they’d simply diverted and picked up a few Glaswegian pals who fancied coming along for the ride. ‘Can we no’ swing past Davie’s hoose, skipper? He’s only 20 miles up the road from here…that’s nuthin’ when yer aboot tae fly a thousand miles or so tae the sun.’
So, yeah. I’m not sure the geese are always flying south, but I do think eventually they do. Who’d want to spend the next few weeks flying 1000+ miles to end up spending six months in Greenland when you can point yourself in the opposite direction and, by flying the same distance, end up in the more favourable temperate climes of northern Africa. Geese might not always find south first time, but they ain’t that daft. The heat, the sun, the laid back way of life, not to mention the plentiful food brought on by the warmer climate wins out every time.
Geese, the band, are a bit of an enigma to me too. I want to like them. I kinda do. But equally, I’m kinda annoyed by them. The singer’s voice takes a bit of getting used to, mainly, but I like their off-kilter approach and experimental noise approach, especially as they bring everything back to the essence of song. It might have a tricky polyrhythm welded to a guitar forever on the verge of being in tune. It might have a noodling bassline and a vocal that sounds like it’s been sung by a drunk yodeller from inside a cardboard box, but it’ll still have a verse and a chorus and a hookline and a pile-on of discordant piano and ooh-ing and ah-ing backing vocals that’ll carry it to its momentous and car-crashing finale. Even if this ancient mariner is late to them, the young ones tell me they’re great, daddy-o.
Geese – Au Pays du Cocaine
Chiming and fragile, with a mid-period Beach Boys bass line thunking through the length of it, Au Pays du Cocaine is literate, cultured and suitably arty. Not for Geese the easy and shallow option of singing of last night’s shenanigans. The Brooklynites have taken note of Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel and his depiction of excess Au Pays du Cockagne (The Land of Plenty.
Painted over 450 years ago in 1567, Bruegel’s painting shows three main characters laid out after feasting like pigs for an afternoon. Indeed, a skewered pig wanders around, unable to do anything other than await the inevitable. Knives, forks, half-eaten eggs, the detritus of a meal are scattered around, the men’s work (a ledger, ink and pen, a lance) lie unused beside them. From underneath a roof covered in pies peeks a soldier, his mouth open in expectation of a soon to come meal. You can find all sorts of metaphorical theories with a quick Google search, should 16th century art be of particular interest, or you can draw parallels to Geese the band’s own suggestion that we in the 21st century are on a fast-track to excess and self-destruction.
‘Like a sailor in a big green boat,’ they sing, ‘You can be free and still come home.’ A bit like those south-bound, V-flying Ayrshire geese, as it turns out.
Next time you’re having a wee night in – just you, a bottle of whatever and a pile of 7″ singles – make sure you take the time to flip Dexys’ Geno over (we’ve all got it, right?) to its b-side. There, you’ll find a real breakneck run-through of The Bandwagon‘s Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache that’ll be sure to have you returning the needle right back to the start again before your feet have stopped moving, even if you don’t quite remember when they started.
But first, the history.
The Bandwagon – Breakin’ Down The Walls Of Heartache
I had it my head that Breakin’ Down The Walls Of Heartache was an obscure curio from the northern soul scene, a cover-up record that eluded every ace face from Wigan Casino to the Twisted Wheel, but I couldn’t be more wrong. Breakin’ Down the Walls… was a number 4 hit for The Bandwagon…or Johnny Johnson and The Bandwagon…or Johnny and The Bandwagon, depending on which label you’re reading the info from.
1968, lest you need reminded, was chock-full of massive-selling singles, singles that are, thanks to their ubiquity and staying power, instantly whistleable all these years later. Delilah. Hey Jude. Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Everlasting Love. Those Were The Days. Young Girl. It’s a varied and familiar list, and somewhere on it – lower down, but still notably present – is Breakin’ Down The Walls Of Heartache. You had to sell an awful lot of records back then to even dent the lower reaches of the charts, yet Breakin’ Down The Walls… is officially a silver record, with sales of over a quarter of a million in the UK. A trainspotter’s delight with added snob appeal this ain’t.
It’s a brilliant record.
A poundin’ pianer, a wet slap of guitar, an ellipsis of brass, a solid four to the floor beat. All that within the first few seconds would have it marked ‘banger’ these days. Add in Johnson’s requisite soulful vocal; pain, tears, the sound of gargled gravel, and the coo-ing and whoo-ing backing vocals and really, you’ve all you need.
I like that the vocals on the chorus drop rather than rise. Makes you listen. Draws you in. Makes you feel the protagonist’s undeniable pain. He’s a carpenter of love and affection, baby, wanting to build you a house of love. Oh yeah.
Extra points for the squeaky keyboard break that leads into the refrain. Over and out in two and a half, talc-dusted, Oxford-bagged minutes. Popular chart hit asides, I bet they loved this down the Twisted Wheel.
Wisely, Dexys take a reverent, if speedy, approach to their version:
Dexys Midnight Runners – Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache
Why mess with the recipe? It’s tailor-made for the Dexys of 1980 – pun entirely intended. Kevin Rowland tumbles himself straight outta the nothern soul scene and, still hopped up on last night’s Purple Hearts or Black Bombers or, indeed, Dexies, records a faithful remake, all nasally, hiccupping vocals hotwired to an electric, amphetamine rush.
The backing vocals sing in high-high falsetto. The drummer sprints to the finish like it’s his last stand. The brass section, the poor, asthmatic wheezers, break into a slick, fevered sweat just to keep up with it all, half a beat behind or half a beat in front of the rest of the group, double-guessing the changes, never quite sure of where to go next, catching breath briefly on the long trombone slides before blowing hard to the finish in a brassy rush of temple-bursting giddiness.
A beauty, eh?
Just one thing, though, Kevin. For a man obsessed with detail, it’s unforgiveable that you dropped the apostrophe on Breakin’ for the far more conformist and squarer Breaking. A minor point, but an important one, I feel.
Wire‘s Pink Flag is, as you know, essential listening. Twenty one tracks in little over half an hour trip over themselves in a rush to the finish line, skinny-waisted, free of flab, fighting fit at flyweight…or I Am The Flyweight, if y’prefer. Drums, bass, guitar and vocals meld as one; shouty in parts, pseudo-menacing in others, the group sounding fragile one moment then like the apocalyptic big bang of post-punk the next. There’s no fancy gimmickry, no keyboard parts, no horns, nothing added that can’t be played on a stage between the four of them. A double-tracked vocal? Forget it. They’ll all sing together when volume and texture are required. Overdubbed solos? No chance. Actually…solos? Not really. That’d be muso and the Wire manifesto suggests that muso = bloated fatness. There’s neither a blues-inflected up-the-frets wig-out or a slightly-bent B or G string anywhere on the record. Where their peers unselfconsciously slipped into the sort of riffage Chuck Berry might’ve spat out had he been pointed in the direction of a Marshall stack, Wire eschew that particular boring old rule book and rewrite their own. Guitars will be loud. Incessant. Slamming like a downpour of anvils from a heavy iron sky…and it’ll all sound fantastic. The skill of Wire is that they can say all they want with just some carefully considered words and a rammy of guitars. Often, they can get their point over in well under a minute.
Saying that, half way through the second side you’ll find Strange.
Wire – Strange
Strange is just one of three tracks that breaks the 3-minute barrier on the record. Indeed, had they sustained a tiny hint of cymbal splash at the end, it would’ve passed the dizzying, nose-bleeding 4-minute mark. As it is, it’s the longest track on Pink Flag and one of the more conventional songs at that.
Here, Wire are economical and taut, sludge-rock without the pantomime of Sabbath or the self-masochism of Iggy and the Stooges. Guitars and bass military two-step their way through an electric crackle of distortion. The drums thunk their way in 4/4 time, the hi-hat crisp and clear and opening and closing with total robotic precision. Colin Newman’s sneery Thames Estuary vocals are at odds with the duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh-dumb vocals in the background; neanderthal and thick and totally rock, something, you have to think, that Wire would be horrified at the thought of.
Block chords slide a couple of frets up for a brief key change. ‘Refrain! Refrain!‘ comes the shout. Where they might’ve naturally ended things, the song picks up again. Crunch, crunch, crunch goes that G to C chord change. Hiss, hiss, hiss goes the hi-hat. Slam, slam, slam, they all go as one. The tempo never wavers, hovering as it does somewhere around resting heartbeat level, impressively marginally slower than you feel the band wants to play. Takes discipline, that. Lesser bands would’ve sped up and thrashed their way to an undignified and calamitous ending by now. Wire march on, keeping the tempo steady but weaving ambient and atmospheric guitar noise to flavour the stew. A bit of feedback. Wacky high notes. Strings that are hit and abused rather than plucked. Beautiful art rock from start to finish.
A version of Strange pops up on REM‘s Document album. But you knew that already. I lent my record to a pal many years ago and after he died I felt I couldn’t ask anyone for it back. Thanks to a clueless Vinted seller (£3, ya dancer!), it’s only in recent years that I’ve owned it again. Listening on Saturday morning, on the same day my social media was filled with Oasis fans sharing their happy news of securing tickets for the cash-grab shows next year, a line in the record’s imperious King Of Birds leapt right out at me. ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold,’ goes Michael Stipe, ten years ahead of the critics.
But back to Strange.
Strange positively bounces right off of Document‘s grooves.
REM – Strange
It’s faster than the original by half a minute, and, ach, there’s no ‘Refrain! Refrain!‘ part either, but then, Wire never thought to add a rollicking barrelhoue piano trill at the beginning of theirs. Michael affects a Georgian version of the Newman sneer and changes the original’s ‘Joey‘ line to sing of himself in third person, which is very Stipe. Mike Mills hits those high high high notes that he’s totally made his own as REM’s secret weapon on backing vocals. Even the duh-duh backing vocals sound effervescent and life-affirming. Peter Buck’s guitar is almost twanging with joy. ‘Thanks, Pete,’ it goes, ‘for dropping the open-stringed jangle just this once and letting me power chord my way to the end. I can’t, however, let this moment pass without a wee, mangled solo half way through. You don’t mind, do you?‘
REM’s band-in-the-backroom-of-a-midwest-bar version of Strange was the first version I heard. It was quite something when I finally caught up with the original. I love them both. Sometimes you want disciplined art rock. Other times you need hot-wired, countrified rockin’. But at any time, Strange will more than suffice.
Our first house was a two up, two down, easy to keep semi in a quietish part of Ayrshire. We decorated as we went, wallpapering here, painting there. We did up the kitchen, sorted out the bathroom, replaced the front door and got a professional carpet cleaner in, watching in mock coolness – “Ach, it’s fine…it’s fine!” as Derek Reid, who was round to fit the new door, spilled his coffee all over the freshly-rinsed carpet before the cleaning guy was even in third gear and out our street. It was a great wee house and we have many happy memories of the place.
I used to pay close attention to the B&Q laminate flooring, taking great pride in washing it once a week, whether it needed it or not. Once washed, we had an indoor skating rink for a wee while, the pine-fresh flooring buffed up to mirror-giving qualities providing a new and thrilling household pursuit. It was the late ’90s, OK? We still had dial-up internet. We wouldn’t entertain Sky TV’s prices. We were easy pleased.
To enjoy the thrill of the slippy flooring in all its bone-worrying glory, I used to pull on a pair of thick, green socks. They provided just the right amount of friction between foot and floor and I could happily skite about for five thrilling minutes before the reality of what I was doing kicked in. Grow up, man, I’d think. You’re a homeowner now.
Our friend John is a car freak. He’s nuts about them. The sleeker, the sexier, the faster, the better. He’s less inclined to do so nowadays, but back then he was always changing cars. He had an Audi TT at one point. A Porsche too, if I remember. Somewhere in time he’d ordered an Aston Martin, and while he waited impatiently for them to build it to his demanding and exacting specifications, he looked for another car as a stop-gap. Really, he did.
He turned up one day just as I’d washed the floor. As I swished my way through the living room in my green socks, there he was, pulling up outside our house in a low-riding silver Mercedes of some sort. You can picture the scene – top down, spokes glittering in the North Ayrshire sun, music doof-doof-doofing the fuck out of the peace and quiet.
“Hoi! Jump in!” he shouts above the din.
“Gimme a minute ’til I find my trainers,” I shout back.
“C’mon, man! Get in! We’ll go for a wee spin!” (rev, rev)
He’s a very persuasive friend is John, so before I knew it, I was sitting in the leather-upholstered passenger seat of this cool, wee Mercedes sports car, belt on, but minus shoes.
“I’m test driving it,” says John. “I’m thinkin’ of gettin’ it ’til the Aston’s ready. It fair shifts. I’ll take it out to the country roads and show you what it can really do.”
We pulled out of my street. I’m feeling self-conscious. The top’s down, so you’re fair game for a slagging should anyone you know see you. The music is doof-doof-doofing away and it’s not music I’d ever be caught playing or consciously listening to, so there’s that too. You’re really drawing attention to yourself in a car like this at the best of times, let alone one with the top down…in Kilwinning…on a dull day…playing music that’s far too loud and attention-seeking. Plus, I’m not wearing any shoes. This bothers me constantly as we make our way through the suburban streets towards the open roads of North Ayrshire.
A Fiat Panda pulls out ahead of John and he falls in behind it. He’s tailgating it, really, which I’m hyper-aware of, but you can tell that John has the bit between his teeth and he just can’t wait to put that, eh, pedal to the metal. Only one road snakes its way through Kilwinning town centre. Recently it was made a 20 limit. Back then it was a breakneck 30. Unless you were John. But he couldn’t overtake the Panda in front. Every time he pulled out, an oncoming car would force him back into lane, tucked in behind the limit-observing citizen in front, getting more and more impatient as each lamp post rolled amiably past. He’d chance it at a blind spot then swerve straight back in. He’d try and force the Panda in front to pick up the pace but, no, the driver was (rightly) observing the rules of the road. John was getting irritated as we edged towards the, eh, city limits of our town. And then…a chance! A straight road! No oncoming traffic! John went for it.
He dropped a gear. Raised the revs. Glided into the oncoming lane with a swoosh. Even I got a minor thrill at that, the car’s sudden G-force sucking me back into the soft, leather seat. John turned to me smiling an evil smile and really put the foot down…
…just as a speed gun totin’ traffic cop popped up in the middle of the road from absolutely nowhere. Honestly, it was like he was lying flat on the road, spring loaded and ready for action should a car exceeding the speed limit trigger him. Which, of course, John was.
“Shiiiiiteee!” he screams, hitting the brakes hard and immediately.
Der-der-derderder-der-der-der… went the ABS system on the Mercedes.
I was expecting to see the traffic cop land with a mangled thud on the car’s sleek and silvery bonnet, but, no, there he still was, less than 5 metres from us now, still pointing his speed gun directly at John. His was the second evil grin I’d seen in less than six seconds.
“John, man. If he asks us to get out of the car…I’ve got no shoes on.”
“Craig, mate. I was doing 65 in a 30 limit. I don’t give a flying fuck about your shoes.”
The cop comes over. He doesn’t need to get John to roll the window down, like you see in the movies, because we have the top down, remember?
“Good afternoon, sir,” he says, all sweetness and light.
“Would you mind stepping out of the car?”
(Ah shite, I think, and undo the belt.)
“Just you,” says the cop, pointing to John.
My heart begins beating again, although much faster than it was twenty seconds ago.
A second traffic cop appears. They go through a whole good cop/bad cop routine, John doing his best to butter them up.
“How quickly d’you get to 60 in that car of yours?” he asks, pointing to the long and sleek BMW police car that was parked just out of view of the main road.
“Quicker than that car of yours,” comes the reply from good cop.
“…If it really is your car,” insinuates bad cop.
“I’m just out for a test drive” says the jovial John. “Nice car, innit?!”
“Are you getting it?” asks good cop.
“…cos you’re getting this…” says bad cop.
I’m assuming it was a speeding ticket or worse, but an ashen-faced John wouldn’t tell me. We drove, sensibly and safely, back to my house, me and my green socks skipping back onto my still-slippy floor.
We never spoke of this again.
I noticed McAlmont and Butler had reissued ‘The Sound Of…‘ recently. I think I’m right in saying it’s the first time that the stomping, stupendous Yes has made it to vinyl. That alone would make it worth getting, I’d think.
Lesser-heard, but every bit as good is Speed, a song recorded for the duo’s ultimately abandoned third album.
McAlmont and Butler – Speed
Making a fleeting appearance on a Rough Trade 7″ and digital download only, it barely registered anywhere. If you didn’t know the charts went beyond a Top 100, you might not know that this song made it all the way to 196. So, yes, you’re forgiven if you don’t know the track…just be thankful it’s here for you now. It’s got it all; McAlmont’s octave surfing vocals, Butler’s keening, twanging electric guitar, an ice shimmer of strings, full-on Phil Spector drums, hysterical backing vocals and a thumping, reverb-soaked kitchen sink production worthy any Scott Walker record on the Philips label. It is, as they say, a cracker.
‘Faster than the bullet train in the east,’ it goes. Which, according to the reading on that traffic cop’s gun, is only marginally slower than a speeding Mercedes on the outskirts of a small Ayrshire town.
See if you’re going to crawl around on top of a slag heap in yr birthday suit, with only a giant turtle shell on top of your back to protect you from the elements, you don’t really need to signpost your everyday state of mind to the uninitiated. For emphasis though, you might, should a camera appear, ignore the allure of the lens and hone your focus solely on a once-scarlet Tonka truck with missing tyres. You might call your album Fried. You might even, for added emphasis, stick the name of the album to the side of the wonky Tonka the way Eddie Stobbart might splash his livery across his fleet of motorway mile guzzlers. Julian Cope is Fried, says the picture in not so many words. Well, duh, points out the audience.
Fried was Cope’s second solo record. Following World Shut Your Mouth and his earlier work in the Teardrop Explodes, he continues to channel his undeniable pop chops; the knack of knowing where to stick a hookline in a simple three or four chord progression, the understanding that an understated brass section can elevate everything to Beatles-great levels of enjoyment, the tightrope drama of an acid-drenched guitar – too much and the pop has gone out of it, too little and the acid heads think you’ve lost your fizz. Cope has that balancing act down to perfection.
Check out Sunspots, the only single that would be grudgingly released by an amazingly stupid record company to promote Fried.
Julian Cope – Sunspots
Simple four chord progression? You betcha. Oom-pa-pahing Beatle-ish brass that stomps all under the verses like a drunk elephant? By golly, aye. A hooky yeeeoooow vocal line in all the right places? Wow. Yeah…right on, as the vocalist himself might’ve said during its first play back.
Sunspots is terrific. Forty years later, it’s lost none of its potency in the slightest. From its sharp, lysergic guitar intro onwards, it’s pure, hazy psychedelia for Gen Xers with a penchant for Nuggets and the outer fringes of the sixties counter culture. The organ (Farfisa? Vox?) stabs ‘n sustains ‘n swirls in all the right places. Glassy twelve string guitars pop in and out of the mix. There’s even a reedy Wild Thing-aping ocarina solo should you need to place it in context. And the dopey, walking bassline? It plays the part of trip sitter, holding the tuba player’s hand until it all wears off.
Cope is on very good form, overlapping his vocals to great effect -‘Way! Waaay! Way! Wuh-ay!‘ – singing about his very best friend…he’s in love with his very best friend, dontchaknow. Whether he’s singing about his actual best friend or whether he’s metaphorically alluding to, y’know, drugs, is anyone’s guess, but I know where I’d be sticking my money if it was an option with Paddy Power.
The outro too – all 90-odd seconds of it – is slow burning sunshine in a jar. Is that a xylophone towards the end there, just between the elephant stomps and the kitchen sink? I think it is, y’know. A fitting way to end a single that would peak at number 76. We’ve been here before, but really, what is wrong with people?
Sunspots‘ parent album fared even worse, limping itself to number 87 with a bullet. A bullet might’ve been kinder. Mercury Records decided enough was enough, and Cope’s time at the label was, eh, Fried.
“Julian Cope? The difference between me and him is I’m a character from Shakespeare and he’s a cartoon out of the Beano.”
That’s a quote attributed to Ian McCulloch in 1985.
The fact it’s taken directly from Cope’s ‘Repossessed‘ memoir would suggest that Julian kinda likes it. Can you imagine your image-conscious guitar-totin’ popstars saying that about one another nowadays? That lad from Fontaines DC getting hardcore bitchy about the singer in Westside Cowboy? Nathan Shepherd would probably get a three-part 6 Music podcast from the fallout.
But back to Cope.
I’m sorry Mac the Mouth, but given the choice of Shakespeare or the Beano, I’d take Minnie the Minx every day of the week. As great a singer as McCulloch is was, Julian Cope is just far more interesting.
The uncracked, ochre-washed spine of a book leapt out at me from the shelf of an Irvine charity shop recently, followed immediately by a shuddering Proustian rush of deja vu. The offending novel, David Coventry’s The Invisible Mile was something I’d tackled – slowly and painfully – a decade or so ago. Based on a true story, it’s set in the very early years of the Tour de France and follows the fortunes of an Antipodean rider as he winds his way up and down and all the way around France, breaking sweat and breaking his bike and finally reaching breaking point itself. As synopses go, I’m sure there are a few of you here who’d take a chance on a novel like that.
Far from me to be critical of another writer, but the prose in the book was so heavy, so unbreachable, so smart-arsed in its smug use of a metaphor or unnecessarily long prose that it was a properly punishing read, a totally gruelling slog from beginning to end; a bit like the Tour itself. And then, when I got to the end – because, like those riders, I was damned if I was giving up – I was left none the wiser. There was no true conclusion. The protagonist didn’t win. He wasn’t last. He was just one of many who’d made it to the end, bruised and confused and absolutely certain that this was something he’d never want to do again; a bit like reading the book, as it happens. It wasn’t a surprise to find the book in such a Waterstones-friendly condition. I can’t ever bring myself to stop a book early, but chapeau to the reader who got one page in and had the foresight to bail out.
I’ve always had a thing for Kraftwerk‘s Tour de France. Like listening to The Beatles in mono, the only way to fully appreciate any Kraftwerk is via the full-length German-language version.
Kraftwerk – Tour de France (German version)
Written by the group’s resident cycling enthusiast, Ralf Hutter, it was recorded and released back in 1983 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Le Tour. It’s a properly great approximation of cycling set to music.
Tour de France falls in on a rhythm of panting, peloton-pacing voice, the pitter-patter of instrumentation sounding just like a well-oiled chain running through greased and grit-free sprockets, the track propulsive and forward-moving. The keyboard motif brings to mind those parts of a cycling trip when you allow your mind to wander and the countryside and scenery by the roadside sweeps past in a blur of lovely greenery and nature. The robot voice pulls you back to the present, with its uphills and granny gears, the thigh burns and tiny tears. Then the heavy panting again. And more smooth, mechanical synthetic percussion, the clean, wind-at-your-back soundtrack carrying you home, pure German precision, chromium-clean and vacuum-sealed for science lab freshness, Kraftwerk pedalling effortlessly in top gear. There is not one misplaced or irrelevant part to this record. It is perfect.
The first time we were in New York, we went, as everyone does, to Manhattan’s Staten Island ferry port. The trip to Staten Island is a great way of seeing Manhattan from the East River, especially if you time it to travel back from Staten at golden-hour sunset. Perhaps even more impressively, the round-trip is absolutely free of charge – about the only thing in the whole of New York that is both entertaining and entirely free. Anyway. Outside the ferry port, a wee posse of breakdancers had set up; properly uniformed-up in matching Adidas tracksuits and shell toes, outdoing one another with a series of headspins and handsprings and robotic jerks. They had with them a massive ghetto blaster (of course). Their breaking tune of choice? Tour de France. Nearly 17 years later, I’m still able to play it in my mind’s eye, recalled from the section of my brain marked ‘random trivial shit.’ Which, of course, it ain’t.
“Bill! BILL!!! Stop! STOP!!! The bassline, man… What you playin’ at? Disco’s been over for six whole months. Get your mind off the 13-year olds in Tramp and focus on the task in hand, man!”
“Mick…Mick! It ain’t disco…it’s John Taylor, innit?”
1983 was a strange year for your chart-friendly heritage rock acts.
Paul McCartney was zigzagging between writing duets with Michael Jackson and rewriting his own songbook for 1984’s roundly-battered Give My Regards To Broad Street project.
Rod Stewart was delighted that the musical world had finally caught on to his mullety, spiky, teased and coiffured bonce, but was dressing in the same sort of shiny red leather ‘n shoulder padded blouson-with-matching-pants outfit that Eddie Murphy was garnering all those laughs in. And only some of those laughs were for the jokes, let me tell ya. It’s been scientifically proven that Rod’s musical output of the era – the synth-laden Body Wishes – is absolutely no-one’s favourite Rod record at all.
The Rolling Stones were in a similar position. They hadn’t been relevant for a decade. Not really since 1972’s Exile On Main Street had they been at the forefront of things. The musical world they lorded over – they were the self-confessed Greatest Rock ‘N Roll Band In The World, lest we forget – had since birthed glam and disco and punk and post-punk (or New Wave as Jagger would call it) and the Stones had wilfully ploughed on, with a nod to punk here (Some Girls‘ Respectable) and a tasteful tip of the trilby to disco on the same album (Miss You) and a feeble gesture to post-punky new wave there (at a push, Emotional Rescue‘s She’s So Cold) and now they were in the middle of a synth revolution.
Where exactly did a group of has-been rock ‘n rollers continually out of step with the musical fashions of the era fit in in 1983?
Keith was happy to remain a blues-rocker. Mick though wanted to look outwards. He looked to his left. ‘Indie’ was about to go overground, blown in on a breeze of harmonica wheeze with The Smiths’ Hand In Glove. Pffft. This tinny, wimpy music was an irrelevance to the Stones, a bug on the sole of their stack-heeled shoe that they could squish at will. Mick looked to his right, to the pop charts and the new wave (not New Wave) of British acts currently whipping it up in the States. And right at the forefront of that invasion, in their blousy powder blue and pastel pink suits, their Lady Di haircuts and cocaine-powered self-importance was Duran Duran.
Perhaps, with their penchant for models and yachts and sunnier climes and front page splashes, Duran Duran were the natural successors to the Rolling Stones. Perhaps not, though. Park that thought. Let’s not get too silly and carried away.
Either way, the 1983 model of the Stones was a barely-functioning shadow of its former multinational corporate-self. That age-old cliche musical differences meant that Mick ‘n Keef, its two managing directors weren’t speaking. Mick recorded during the day. Night owl Keith worked under cover of darkness. If they found themselves together, they were nasty, spiteful and downright hostile to one another. “Jagger started to become unbearable,” said Keith in his autobiography, Life.
Sly and Robbie, the great Jamaican rhythm section, were brought in as de facto mediators, massaging the egos of both leaders whilst softening the need to include the other’s work on the record. The resultant album – Undercover (Of the Night) – was a largely forgettable and irrelevant record of the times…but its eponymous lead single was an absolute triumph. Pompous? Yes. Over-produced? Very likely. But essential and terrific? Indeed it was. I should know – I played the copy I bought in Irvine Library’s sale of old records for 25p over and over and over again. I had no idea what was cool and what was not…only that Undercover was such a great track from a band well past their sell-by date.
Rolling Stones – Undercover (Of the Night)
It’s the drums that hit you first. Great production. Live, reverby, in the room. Charlie – I’m really hoping it’s Charlie and not Sly Dunbar – sounds awesome; loud, metronomic, tribal…the bedrock upon which the Stones’ aural madness is allowed to unspool.
It’s the bass that gets you next. Bill – and I’m really hoping it’s Bill and not Robbie Shakespeare – pulls of a juggernauting rubberised riff that thumps and pops in the spaces left by Charlie (or Sly). It’s disco, but it’s not disco. It’s funky but it’s not funk. It’s straight-up pinched from John Taylor, that’s what it is. Listen to Planet Earth and tell me Bill Wyman wasn’t impressed enough to spot something worth stealing. Either way, between them the rhythm section maintain their position as the driving force in the Stones as an R ‘n B dance band. Charlie and Bill really cook on Undercover.
Which leaves Mick ‘n Ronnie ‘n Keith. The guitars come in; metallic and to the fore, phased, flanged and boomeranging around the room with absolutely no subtlety or finesse at all. Reverberating, disappearing, returning twice as loud, a knuckle-dragging twin axe attack of stiletto-edged slashed riffing, it’s fantastic. This ain’t linear, twelve bar rock ‘n roll like Brown Sugar or Tumbling Dice, this is Keith the Human Riff going Godzilla for four and a half zany minutes.
Mick camps it up in the vocals, going pseudo-political about the hundred disparus lost in the jails of South America. C’mon Mick! Lighten up! You’re no Billy Bragg. You’re a silly, double-jointed, hand-on-hip, rubber-lipped rock ‘n roll song ‘n dance man in a purple silk suit and yellow sweatbands. Let’s dance, you fool. Little Mick needs no encouragement. Listen out for the bit when he double tracks himself with Keith’s ‘do do-do do-do-do’ guitar refrain and try not to see him wiggling his 26″ waist to Bill ‘n Charlie’s unstoppable groove. Great track, isn’t it?
If it’s extended pops ‘n bangs ‘n whooshes ‘n ech-ech-echoing guitars yr after, look no further than the extended and absolutely epoch-defining 12″ version.
Rolling Stones – Undercover (Of the Night) Extended Cheeky Mix
Like all the acts of the time, it was absolutely de riguer to produce an extended, adult-themed and ultimately banned video to promote the single. Guns…masks…kidnappings…casual misogyny…violence in the streets…shoot-outs in the chapel… Proof, if it were needed, that bands with too much money love to flaunt their wealth in the silliest of ways.
The full 15-minute Undercover promo made it to the cinema for a brief run, opening as the supporting film for Scarface, believe it or not. Whoever thought that a gangster film about white-suit wearing cocaine fiends was a good fit with a gun-totin’ Rolling Stones promo was absolutely right on the mark. Well done that man.
This piece was originally written a month, maybe even six weeks ago, but I was waiting on permission from various sides to post it. In the interim, the Trashcans suddenly, unexpectedly and shockingly lost John Douglas, their glue and calming balm, and so any queries for permission to use it were quite rightly forgotten. Lest I’m accused of saturation, It’ll very likely be the last TCS-related piece on here for a while, but with permission now granted, it’s a fine way to draw a line under the most intense period in the Trashcans’ forty years’ history. Read on or scroll on, I’m not offended.
There’s a new Trashcan Sinatras record out just now. Released on Friday 31st July, Ever The Optimist is the group’s first in ten years. If you were a lazy, cliched critic, you might call it a return to form, but that would suggest they had somehow lost their golden touch at some point. To their dedicated listenership, it zings and sings – like their six other albums – with unravelling melodies and subtly brilliant musicianship; a million, kaleidoscopic ideas packed into its 11 songs. Initial response has been very encouraging to the point of fevered hyperbole. ‘Their best album ever‘, sort of stuff. It’s certainly, without question, one of their best. But you knew that already.
I’ve been working most of the first half of this year on a project that’ll see the story of the new record being told in print. A couple of months ago, in a deadline-looming fit of panic, the group asked if I could pull some of our interview quotes and create a short song-by-song commentary on the album specifically for press in foreign territories. Cool! Over a midnight shift and crossed fingers, I pulled together an article that, I hoped, would cut the mustard.
Reading back again the whole article that I’d written, the record spinning in the background, it seemed too good, too informative, too important even, not to share more parochially, so with the go-ahead from all concerned, I’ve put it below. Think of it as a very, very, very abridged version of what will be published at some point down the line. An amuse-bouche, if y’like.
Trashcan Sinatras – ‘Ever The Optimist’
It’s been over a decade since the last Trashcan Sinatras album, but the group has been anything but idle. In the intervening years, the Trashcans have been quietly going about their business of writing and refining and finding ‘the ‘hing’ that will, as ever, make your heart swell and swoon like it did when you first heard Cake or I’ve Seen Everything or Weightlifting or any of their half dozen previous classic albums.
‘Ever The Optimist’ is a record that hums and thrums with the Trashcans’ signature melodic touch and unmatched gift for lyrical punch. It’s a collection of eleven songs (or a round dozen if you’re lucky to be in Japan), all of which will thrill the group’s dedicated, pan-global fanbase and should, if those algorithms play the game properly, garner a new set of devotees into the bargain.
‘Ever The Optimist’ is, as is the TCS way, a record comprised of songs stewed slowly and over time before being reshaped by the constituent members of the group and Trashcanified into the sort of ear-friendly shapes that have garnered critical acclaim for the entirety of the group’s thirty-five year career as recording artists. Songs that began life as woozy mountain cabin sketches. Songs that have their roots in late-night poker sessions. Songs that are born from walking the dog. They all coalesce into one ebbing and flowing labour of love that may just be one of 2026’s very best albums.
SIDE ONE
Ever The Optimist
Less careerist and more careering, the Trashcans find themselves contemplating their position in the world. ‘We’re all gambling, trying to hold it together,’ sings Francis, a reference to both the smoky poker nights of yore and life’s cruel optimism:loss ratio. Beginning life as a breezy acoustic tune, it was reworked into a stomping, piano-driven thumper and is a real clarion call to listeners of the long-player. Listen out for the Pop Art Poem-aping ‘mmmmaybee’ and ‘fii-iire!’ in the first verse and the great nagging guitar part around the 1.46 mark. Like its title itself, this song hints at a great set of songs to follow.
John: We used to go to poker nights, smoking and drinking. I wrote a song about it called ‘Gambling’ and the finished version of ‘Ever The Optimist’ came from that. Some of the characters that sat around the poker table ended up in the song.
Paul: The finished song arrived easily. It all came together, this sophisticated pop song, in no time at all. Nothing was over rehearsed, so it all sounds fresh.
Games For the ZX Spectrum
‘It doesn’t matter what I did before, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.’
With its see-sawing melody and call and response chorus, this will be, we predict, an immediate favourite. Written right at the tail end of the album sessions – ‘contrary to appearances, we move pretty fast,’ points out Francis – it owes its idiosyncratic title to the small group of retrophiles who continue, even in 2026, to write games for the unfashionable ZX Spectrum, the Trashcans drawing clear parallels between those dedicated furrow-ploughers and themselves.
Paul: You know how you get these retrophile guys nowadays who write games for the outmoded ZX Spectrum because it reminds them of their youth?
I was trying to draw a line between those guys and us making a Trashcans album. You know, we’re also making a thing that’s just for kicks, and it’s filtered through the eyes of the past – it was fun when we were young, but nobody’s really interested anymore, except for maybe a very small group of dedicated people.
Francis: I like this a lot. We had the album finished, and I’d promised Paul Savage (producer) that that was all the songs, there’d be no more on the record, then Paul Livingston said, ‘Oh, here’s a tape.’
He’d called it Games For the ZX Spectrum but he could just as easily have called it ‘Chocolate Teapot’. What’s the relevance of my songwriting? Why am I doing this? For what reason? It was a really great song, so it made it onto the album.
Bad Husband
Featuring Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell on co-vocals, Bad Husband is an upbeat and fresh duet that belies the song’s subject matter, with two unique voices from Scot-pop’s outer fringes melding together quite beautifully. Tracyanne’s vocal dips and swoops around the melody as Frank sings about poor judgements, bad feelings and storms coming. ‘Hey! This isn’t working!’ they both admit far too joyfully. Never has separation sounded so upbeat – ‘like the best party in a 1970’s Castlepark living room,’ to quote fellow Irvine alumnus John Niven.
John: Bad Husband had been brewing for a while. Some of the rhythm was from an old musical vignette created by Simon Dine. He’s always sending us his musical collages; the same thing over and over for five minutes. It’s a sonic thing…a feel…a groove… and sometimes, like with Bad Husband, the little collage inspires something really great.
Francis: I had this idea that Tracyanne Campbell should duet on it. This would be our very own Islands In The Stream! Tracyanne’s vocal was instantly magic, you know. I sent it to the rest of the group; ‘Guys! What d’you think of THIS?!?’
Stephen: Tracyanne’s vocals are terrific. The track worked well before we had her on there, but her singing just elevated it above and beyond. Her and Frank’s vocals really blend and hit off one another. I like that she’s almost speaking at points and at other times she’s swooping around the melody. Terrific stuff.
The Bitter End
‘When you’re lost and lonely, you can phone me on the way home.’
Already a radio staple thanks to Billy Sloan’s enthusiastic rotation and curation on his late-night Radio Scotland show, The Bitter End is a proper foot-down-and-drive rush. From its first metallic guitar K.O. to the final cymbal splash, The Bitter End leaps from the speakers like a box-fresh band jam. It may surprise listeners to note that the track began life 20 years ago, the product of a fuggy and foggy wee hours recording session on an eight-track machine that Frank had somehow rehomed in his Glasgow flat. ‘Did I really get up in the middle of the night and record something?’ wondered Paul in the morning. ‘I pressed play and heard this Rockpile-ish rocker.’ With Frank finishing off most of the words, The Bitter End sat patiently in the drawer marked ‘someday’ and waited for its time to shine. Its time, evidently, is now.
Paul: In the run up to choosing songs to record for this album, we put together a playlist of about 40 demos, including things we’d written from years ago that we didn’t care about, everything we had really, and Davy put The Bitter End on it. And everybody was like, ‘Hey! Bitter End sounds great!’
Davy: With Paul Savage in Chem 19, we gave it a bash, pretty much replicating the original demo – even the lyrics stayed as they were, which is unusual for us – and it all kinda clicked. Everyone was into it, so we worked it up into the recorded version that became the taster for the record.
Stephen: There’s, like, ten million guitars on this track, loud and brash, it’s got a great bouncing riff, and it all sounds instant and fantastic.
A View From Nowhere
Long-time Trashcans fans will be delighted to hear the return of the major 7ths on this track, a Davy-birthed strumalong that tips its jaunty hat to the unspooling melodies of Bacharach and David as arranged by John Douglas. Davy returned with its completed lyric after an inspirational walk with the dog. A View From Nowhere features terrific vapour-trailing harmonies from Frank atop a fuzzy, sustained guitar/synth break midway through. Many lesser bands will simply throw in the towel when it dawns on them that they won’t ever be able to write a song as lush and poppy as this.
John: This was one of Davy’s that had a charm, a real nice mood about it. Everyone straight away said this should be in the frame for the record.
Davy: I can’t remember when I wrote this. It wasn’t that long ago, maybe five years ago. It was written fairly quickly, a wee three chord thing that I’d recorded on my phone.
Stephen: Paul Savage is a great producer and arranger. He helped shape this track. ‘Try the bass like this, Davy,’ ‘Play that instead, Stephen.’
I love the sleepy quality that Paul got from the bridge. The whole thing is almost soft rock, no harsh sounds. It’s all just muted and soft. It’s a great wee mellow pop song.
Hold On To Today
The evergreen Green Gartside, a septuagenarian, you may be surprised to learn, heard enough promise in our rough and crappy-sounding demo and was ‘keen to try some singing on your lovely, little song.’ The result is fairly astonishing. The centrepiece of the album, Hold On To Today is subtle and lightly pulsing, a ballad with the beating heart of Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross recast as a gentle Brian Wilson tearjerker. Tinkling music boxes, lightly picked acoustics, ping-ponging electrics, stacked harmonies, sudden stops, unexpected changes and an exquisite outro … Hold On To Today closes side one of the album and will leave you breathless, frozen in wonder and momentarily unable to flip the record. Music is a powerful thing.
John: When Davy initially played us this, it was far less arranged than it ended up. The structure of it was really different to how it now sounds. But it had something. Davy wasn’t quite yet there with it, but the rest of us knew there was enough there to persevere with.
Francis: I changed the key a wee bit, we all played around with the arrangement, John made it a bit spacier…and then Davy somehow got Green Gartside to sing on it.
Davy: We gave Green the freedom to sing what he wanted, and what he gave us was fantastic.
Paul: It’s a beauty, It’s a good wee song, that. And it has a false ending. It’s the perfect song to close side one of the record.
TCS June 2026 by Stephanie Gibson
SIDE TWO
The Associated Funk
A post-punk thrash that brings to mind, in feeling rather if not sonics, A Happy Pocket’s ‘The Genius I Was’. The Associated Funk is linear, propulsive and purposeful, the soundtrack of a life unravelling messily to the regimented sound of sequencers and a motorik disco beat. TCS fans will immediately spot the lyrical lift from Wild Pendulum’s ‘Let Me Inside (Or Let Me Out)’, Paul recycling an old line to furnish his new song. ‘It was written in a mountain cabin and filmed for a Patreon vlog,’ explains the writer. ‘I was expecting something bucolic, folky and mountain cabin-y, not this A-ha/Tubeway Army stramash!’
Paul: ‘Okay, I’m gonnae book a cabin for three days, and I’m gonnae buy a bunch of weed, I’m gonnae take all my stuff up there and see if I can write and record a song from scratch.’
Davy: I liked Paul’s demo straightway. It was a total stramash, very chaotic and thrashy, but I got a New Order-y vibe from it. I knew it would work. In the group’s hands it didn’t really change much. The album version is pretty much a carbon copy of the demo that Paul had made.
Francis: Paul’s really good at finding new and interesting ways to write. And on The Associated Funk, with its synths and clangs and the electronic-ness of it all, there’s a great tune in there. It has a really bright melody.
Stephen: The riff is very good, it’s very metronomic.
Rome
Reggae James Bond. A dubby trip. A scraping, jangling, sixties TV theme with John Barry harpsichords, descending, twirling strings, bone-rattling percussion and the sticky, sonic fingerprints of Simon Dine all over its claustrophobic and eerie arrangement. John and Francis duet in the verses, double dare one another in the choruses and soar in the post guitar break, a wheezing and sliding, Gilmourish, Frippish racket. For clarity, it’s a song about friends who really shouldn’t hang out with each other. Also for clarity, it’s a beauty.
Paul: From Simon’s sound snippet, this one was instantly great. What the fuck was it? Weird-sounding reggae, in 3 / 4 time, that’s what it was. The descending strings were already there, the reggae bassline too, so I put chords on it. And made a chorus and a verse. And then I put some words to it.
Stephen: Frank and John do a great job, trading lines, coming in and out. It’s got a very good vocal on it. I love the chorus and the way it soars out of the verses.
John: It’s moody noir. I think the bass is brilliant on it. I think it’s got a vibe. And it’s kind of dictated by the bass and the kit. The star of the show here is the rhythm section.
Melodramatic
‘If you don’t leave it alone, it will never get better.’
With the band having just laid down The Bitter End and with the studio still set up for maximum guitars, bass and drums, Melodramatic was thrashed out in the time it takes to listen to. ‘Maybe it’s mind over matter’ goes the chorus, its stack of overlapping vocals and driving rhythm clearly on more than nodding terms with any number of those melody and tune-obsessed west of Scotland guitar bands you might mention in passing.
Paul: This is from about the same time as The Bitter End. I was playing about with this 4-track thing in my bedroom, and Frank was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing in there, but it sounds great!’ So I finished it off.
Davy: I like that, once the singing starts, it doesn’t really stop. Frank just keeps going verse after verse, chorus after chorus, from beginning to end.
Birds I Couldn’t Identify
‘If there’s one thing The White Album has taught me, it’s that you can write a song about anything!’
A great title with an allegorical aptness, Birds I Couldn’t Identify tells the story of Paul’s trip to Rishikesh, where he spent time meditating in the foothills of the Himalayas. ‘It was all quite beautiful and bizarre,’ recalls Paul. ‘We chanted a mantra for two hours every night and meditated in different places during the day, ate amazing food. I felt wonderful!Of course I went to the Beatles Ashram (in awe), then wrote this a couple of days later.’
Trashcans fans of old will delight in the climbing chord sequence and ad-libbed, high and breathy ‘yeahs’ that Francis does at the beginning. The melody that he wrings from Paul’s words is really quite something, long and floaty and, I suppose, meditative in its own way. It’d be interesting to poll listeners after they’ve lived with this album for a few months – I reckon Birds I Couldn’t Identify will be one of the favourites.
Paul: This song’s got a really natural melody that’s very good, a bit weird, but very good. I wrote the lyrics and stuff in India, in Rishikesh.
John: Straight away, when Paul played it to us, I was thinking, ‘This is a really good one.’ It was an instant hit. I fell in love with it straight away.
Stephen: This is a cracker. It’s fantastic.
Learning To Love Your Ghost
A shimmering, slow and stately album closer that builds to a tasteful crescendo of rifling drums and long-noted synths, Learning To Love Your Ghost is, as that old cliché goes, a bit of a grower. A handful of plays will have you fully appreciating its windswept drama and the way it’s carried along on the same sort of major to minor chord changes that make Wild Pendulum’s ‘Autumn’ so enduring. Learning To Love Your Ghost is, as the group cryptically puts it, about ‘inner orbits and outer space.’ As a welcome bonus, once it’s finished, it’ll have you reaching for the record to turn it over and start from side one again.
Davy: There’s an old demo I did years ago, just ideas really, not a song. And it had this bit and this bit and that bit, y’know, parts that the others might take inspiration from, maybe turn it into something, and I had the ‘Death Star split the atom’ line in there, and Paul jumped on that.
Paul: It was this two-minute epic that Davy had written that didn’t really make any sense musically or lyrically, and I just loved it. But it needed a verse.
John: I’d been through my illness, and I just wrote about that. My central station, my inner thing was invaded. We got a great song from a difficult situation.
‘Ever The Optimist’ is an album by the Trashcan Sinatras. Play it once, you’ll play it often.
I’m a sucker for a well-sung harmony. You know the sort of thing, a radiant Gibb brothers burst of aural sunshine, a California-coated Mamas and Papas heart melter, a slow-ooze of Bellshill Beach Boys triple-stacked greatness from the three original Teenage Fanclubbers out front with the mics and the guitars and the great, great tunes. A handful of voices, melding as one. Beautiful.
There is, in the Venn Diagram of harmony singing, a sweet spot that never fails to stop my world and send me momentarily dizzy. Voice A sings this note. Voice B sings that note. Voice C sings another note…and what comes out is a brand new note, pure and smooth and honeyed, entirely unattainable by one voice alone. Gasp. Swoon. Melt. And back to emptying the bins.
You’ll recognise that very sweet spot on the chorus of The Band‘s The Weight, when the group come in one by one – “a-a-aaand…you put the load right on me,’ – creating a vocal swell that sets the seratonin flyin’. It’s probably now playing in your head as you read. Sorry. Not sorry.
You’ll recognise it in the gently lilting Flightless Bird, American Mouth, a slow-burning waltz-time beauty from Iron And Wine that should be far greater appreciated than it appears to be. Three plays in and it’ll be your new favourite song. Seek it out.
And you’ll know it from The Beatles‘ Because, a track I daresay you’ll know inside out and back to front. From its opening, elongated ‘aaaaahs’ via its ‘high-igh-igh-igh‘ mid section to its golden glazed ‘ah-ah-ahs and goosebump inducing woo-oo-oo-oos” that float above the stew of harpsichord and Moog, Because is harmony in a can, a sort of medieval soundtracked stoned soul picnic for the mass market. Ain’t no-one better than The Beatles at creating such legal highs, and that’s the truth.
Elliott Smith was something of a master of the stacked harmony. Being a one-man band, this wasn’t something he could attempt in the live setting, but on record he really went for it, Fabs-style, overlapping and multi-tracking his voice to infinity in his quest to create an art that will prove to be ever-lasting.
Elliott Smith – Sweet Adeline
Sweet Adeline opens XO. Some would argue it’s his best album. You might come to blows with another arguing the merits of the more indie and lo-fi Either Or. Or XO‘s full-blown follow-up, Figure 8. The correct answer though is indeed XO. But you knew that already.
Sweet Adeline squeaks and skates its way in on the sort of scratchy fingerpicked rundown that Paul Simon built his early career on. It’s just Elliott and his guitar, close-miked and singing in your ear, a one note organ adding texture in the background. Those bedroom miserabilists who’d been with him since the early days would’ve been unsurprised by this, and unsuspecting of what was just around the corner. I know I was. For anyone else, especially those of you with a background in raving and dance music, you’ll spot the drop just before it arrives.
Your keen-eared senses will tingle and twitch, picking up on the subtle fade in just before the drum crash and the jangling, barroom piano and the WHAM! of sound as the metaphorical curtains are thrown wide open and mid July aural sunshine floods the room. Elliott’s voice is all over it here, harmonising with himself, oooooing and aaaaahing and turning his initial charcoal grey pencil sketch into something of a Renaissance masterpiece. I must’ve played this track at least 300 times (that’s over 10 times a year since its release – seems conservative, but let’s not get carried away) and it never fails to fleetingly floor me.
Elliott Smith – Pretty (Ugly Before)
Elliott loved the John Lennon method of double-tracking every vocal take to smooth out the wrinkles and create something unique and widescreen in the process. Pretty (Ugly Before) is real late-era Elliott, recorded in a decent studio at his major label’s approval…a far cry from the lo-fi and hissy stuff that got his name out there in the first place.
Seizing his chance, he goes full-on Beatles; woozy background noises that bleed in at the start, clean and chiming ‘George’ guitar, a twangin’ twelve string riff between lines…and some terrifically heart-stopping harmonies. They take a while to emerge but when they do, around the three minute mark…wow!
‘Sunshine…been keepin’ me up for days,‘ he goes, and long-time listeners’ hearts sink as they realise their boy is back on the hard drugs again. Yet… Elliott can apparently function on the stuff. By the time we’re half way through, there are two distinct vocal lines, one linear and direct, the other swooping above and below the basic melody, curling around the edges, twisting back into shape then out again as Elliott slips into a refrain that’s Fab-heavy in backwards guitar and woozy mellotron. Listen too for the slow-motion ‘Ug-lee-bih-fore’ backing vocals that he stretches out like Play-Doh in the hands of a toddler. It’s all quite fantastic.
* Bonus Track!
Here’s Elliott’s sweet take on an early Beatles number where he joyfully and unselfconsciously harmonises with himself throughout, all the way from counted-in start to spoken-word fanboy end. Found and downloaded in the good old early ’00s day when such treasures were but a dial-up click away, it’s an enduring and faithful version.
I’ve been asked a few times the past week where folk can pick up copies of my Trashcan Sinatras books. The Perfect Reminder was initially available through Last Night From Glasgow, but it seems they have no stock left. If you’re so inclined, you’ll find the last dozen copies at that most obvious of retailers. It’s having a wee bit of a second wind these days since the sudden death of John Douglas, which is bittersweet to say the least.
A Full Pocket, the second bit of writing I did around the Trashcans is now out of print. There was a brief discussion a couple of years ago about doing a reprint for the American market – that’ll be the group’s American market and most definitely not mine – but, like many things associated with the Trashcans, it was an idea that never quite made it to fruition. If you’ve never read it, I’d love to help you there, but I’m not sure how I can really.
In the meantime, I’ve been to the manuscript and copied a chunk of text around John’s song The Safecracker. It’s a perennial Trashcans favourite, played in concert before even appearing on record and a staple at their live shows ever since…although a quick glance at the set list for the Irvine show in June suggests that it wasn’t played that night. I could’ve sworn it was, too.
In typical Trashcans fashion, after writing, proofreading and eventually publishing A Full Pocket, I found out a brilliant snippet of trivia around The Safecracker; that the esteemed Paul Weller was so taken with John’s song that he cornered him at some Go! Discs shindig or other and asked John to write the words and chords out for him. Does it get better than that? (Maybe if Weller had recorded it and taken it to number one, yeah, but as a songwriter, to have Paul Weller tip his hat in your direction must feel pretty vindicating I’d have thought.) Wish I’d known at the time and I’ve chased him for a quote or two…
So here’s the Weller-endorsed The Safecracker. And below that is the original text from A Full Pocket. I hadn’t really noticed until now, but TCS guitarist Paul Livingston is noticeable by his total absence in the interviews here. There was probably a perfectly valid reason at the time.
The Trashcan Sinatras – The Safecracker
The Safecracker is a masterpiece in lyric writing and uplifting lugubriousness. It tells the story of a crook caught out by a combination of the moon, misplaced nails and general bad luck. It’s the melody attached to the brilliant lyric though
that elevates a simple story song into the dizzy heights of greatness.
“As fly to tarantula, as jugular to Dracula…to me and my Ford Spectacular, you’ll be drawn.”
That’s a line that might’ve crept from Lux Interior’s unused lyric book, that is.
Musically, it features the classic TCS signature thing of John’s acoustic guitar carrying the tune while Paul’s electric adds the light and shade, the dynamics to it. The dulcimer is once again all over this track, adding atmosphere and a mystery entirely in keeping with the song’s subject matter.
One of the finest songs in the band’s back catalogue, The Safecracker has long been a staple of live shows. The extended second verse – “they call me thrifty…I count out £2.50…” – when it builds and builds before dropping once more to the chorus is always sublime, even if the chorus steals just a fraction of the melody from Carole King’s You’ve Got A Friend. What’s the world coming to though if a song about stealing can’t purloin the odd decent melody here and there, eh?
A final observation:
‘…when her Walkman started to melt…’
‘…keeps a ten-bob note up his nose…’
‘…there’s not a single episode of ‘Dallas’ that I didn’t see…’
Lyrics can often date a song and The Safecracker is no different to that triptych of Trashcans’ favourites. A gallon of petrol would very probably get you from Irvine to Paisley, maybe even from Kilmarnock if it was downhill most of the way, but not at the recession-friendly prices mentioned in the song. As we go to print, the cost of a gallon is about 250% dearer than John’s suggested 1996 price. A song about robbery indeed.
Davy: This was one of the first songs written for the album. I remember playing it during the I’ve Seen Everything tour. The Safecracker seems to be a fans’ favourite. It’s well-arranged.
John: This is another of mine which, after some encouragement from Frank, was more or less complete by the time I’d presented it to the others. I’ve been told The Safecracker sounds like Father And Son by Cat Stevens. Carole King? That’s a new one to me, but I can sort of see that.
I’ll tell you what I did rip off for the song – well, not rip off – what did inspire the song – and I hope my memory isn’t playing tricks on me here – was the radio. One thing I’d do when I was writing and looking for inspiration was to turn on the radio and whatever song was playing, that’d be the tempo I’d use on my own song. Gene Pitney and Marc Almond had a big hit at the time with Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart and I latched onto the big drum fill at the end. ‘Right,’ I thought. ‘If I did that, but not as dramatic, and with major 7ths, I might have something.’
And I started to play the verse intro. Suddenly, from nothing, I was off. The whole thing arrived from that. So, I wouldn’t call
it a rip-off, but it was certainly a motivating factor in the tune arriving.
Frank (singing): Duh Duh Duh-Duh Du Duuuuh! Oh yeah – I can hear that! I never knew that! Love it, John! That’s fantastic! This was the first song written for the album. We’d been playing it on that tour of America, so it was an established song by the time we came to record it.
Davy: John’s not feart of borrowing from other songs and making them his own. I didn’t know that about the Marc Almond/Gene Pitney steal. That was quite subtle! It’s got those major 7ths that you’ll hear in other songs. There’s a bit of Brel’s Amsterdam in there too, if you tune your ears in, David Bowie’s version obviously. That’s a magic version.
John: I remember shouting Frank through into the room I had in our flat in Kilmarnock, saying, ‘Listen, I’ve got this thing, but I don’t know if it’s any good,’ and playing it for him. Frank was instantly enthusiastic and encouraging about it, so that spurred me on.
Stephen: The Safecracker is another instantly appealing classic from John. The original demo of it had a more upbeat, soul band vibe which worked but was a bit too typical. We took the drums out of the verses, and it all became much more intimate. We knew then we had caught the essence of the song; the music just floated there and gave the vocals plenty of room.
Frank: It’s a cracker of a song, the centrepiece of the album. And everyone loves it when we play it live. Where I’ll Get Them In is linear, this has peaks and troughs. It’s a really great arrangement. We had other versions. There was a wee bouncy one, with Stephen using sticks instead of brushes. The album version though, with those little pauses before the choruses,
was the best. There’s a nice wooden sound to it. Lots of lovely dulcimer again. And loads of singing, weird harmonies by John in full-on Jake Thackray baritone, lots of people just warbling away in the background. Safecracker is a good one. It’s one of my favourite Trashcans’ songs.
Stephen: Frank’s vocal is really great on it. There’s some delicious guitar interplay between John and Paul the supportive stuff and just tried to keep out of the way.
John: I tend to fall in and out of love with it. Melodically I think it’s great. Lyrically, sometimes I don’t know. I remember being very under-confident about it. I had the verses and the chorus, I knew it had something because the second verse had a different chord change that worked, so it was worth persevering with. But I was never totally sure about it. It was a big thing for us back then to try and get words that wouldn’t normally rhyme or appear in song together, rhymes that would make people go, ‘Whit?!’ Sometimes to the detriment of the song, I should add. But not in this case.
The ‘Dracula/ Spectacular’ line came out of that mindset. Ian Dury – again – used to do that too. Reasons To Be Cheerful has a wonderful lyric. I bet he was like a wee boy in a toyshop writing that. His New Boots And Panties album was a real influence on me as a songwriter. When it came out, I’d sit and listen to it over and over. There are bits that were unclear
at first – the shouting and his accent in places – but it’s packed full of brilliant little lyrical observations. He’s been a big influence on me.
Craig McAllister: Allison Thomson (trumpet, I’ve Seen Everything) is convinced that the Ford Spectacular in the song is her wee Ford Fiesta that she drove at the time.
John: Ha! Well, I don’t remember that but it’s certainly very possible. It’s a good rhyme though!
Frank: Hugh Jones (producer) was really intrigued by a couple of the lyrics. The ‘tradesmen’s entrance’ line was one he cottoned on to and asked about more than once.
“So, boys…I was wondering…This ‘tradesmen’s entrance’. Is it…you know…?”
And we’d all look at one another. And also the Paisley line. We’d told him about the ‘getting aff at Paisley’ phrase that was well-used in Ayrshire. (Paisley is the last stop on the Ayr-Glasgow rail line and was often used when describing how to avoid
unwanted pregnancy, if y’catch the drift…)
“So…uhm, yes…er…”
It’s the bane of my life that I never get to sing it live in the key in which it was recorded. Because of that open G/Bm chord it can’t be transposed. We tuned down half a step for the record to allow me to get to the high notes in the ‘nifty/two-fifty’ section, but every time we play it live, it’s an extra semitone up and it’s a bit of a struggle to get there. Some people want a pile of money, or a fancy house and a dolly bird, but my ambition in life, really, is to have a handful of guitars all tuned differently, so that I can sing Safecracker properly in concert.
Even at the Aye Write book festival show, it was just Davy and John and myself and I was like, “Right guys. Can we detune the guitars for this?” And they were like, “Just get to work, Frank.”
“They call me neee-ifff-ty…!!”
Jeez! It was so high! I’m getting old. It’s no’ fair!
A Full Pocket was expertly typeset and put together by Colin Cassells, the mild-mannered genius behind Five Hungry Joes, the internet’s best Trashcan Sinatras archive. If it’s Japanese liner notes, Australian tour posters or obscure promo sleeves you seek, you’ll find ’em all there.
