It’s fairly easy to join the dots from Prince‘s records to their source; a Sly-inflected baritone vocal here, a sky-scraping, lightnin’ fast Hendrix solo there, a band whipped into shape with an iron rod-discipline that James Brown might’ve considered ‘a bit much’… Since his passing, there has been a dribbling of Prince-inflected records making their way into public conscience – records that continue where Prince’s incredible run abruptly ran out. Certainly, there won’t ever be another Prince but that leaves the door wide open for any artists brave enough to attempt to fill the void.
Superbowl
Like Harriet Brown. His track Paper is currently finding its way onto the lower reaches of the 6 Music playlists and it’s all but Prince in name; skeletal electro funk, multi-tracked, self-duetting vocals, a Wendy and Lisa-style female backing that might actually be Brown himself, everything, in fact, save the processed, squealing Hendrix-aping solo.
I really love this track. Its itchy, claustrophobic, paranoid funk manages to be both west coast LA cool yet sounds like something a musically-gifted bedroom boffin cooked up on his laptop. Having had a quick run through his Bandcamp page, I don’t imagine the rest of his album will be my kinda thing, but Paper most definitely is. I think I wanna dance now…
Those looking for more Prince-indebted music could do worse than seek out Janelle Monae‘s Dirty Computer album. Released almost a year ago, it’s covered in dollops of Prince-infused funk. Lead single Make Me Feel was essentially Kiss updated for the Spotify generation (and there’s nowt wrong with that of course) but dig deeper and you’ll find all sorts of pervy, sweary stuff, filthy funk that manages to mess with the mind while moving the feet.
Some songs can transcend time and place to the point where, without fuss or fanfare, they turn up nestling in the canon of the great popular songbook, having you believe they’ve always been there. Back To Black, the title track of Amy Winehouse’s second, final album is such a song.
Amy Winehouse – Back To Black
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like the song. I’m assuming it’s your kinda thing too.
Its measured, metronomic, minor to major and back again four chord progression is perfect. Bathed in pathos and regret, it harks back to the sound of those great girl groups of the sixties; spectral (and Spector-al) multi-tracked ooohs and aaahs, four to the floor tambourine percussion, gently sweeping strings, subtly stinging guitar, finger clicks, band drop-outs and a fantastic vocal around which everything loops and repeats. It’s the entire contents of the melodramatic songwriter’s handbook committed to tape, but clever rather than cliched.
Part of the cleverness lies in the lyrics delivered in the vocal. More than just a ‘can’t-live-with-him, can’t-live-without-him’ teen angst throwaway pop song, Back To Black is the sound of Amy Winehouse’s relationship with long-term beau Blake Fielder-Civil unravelling messily on record. He’s left her for an old girlfriend and a bitter but proud Amy – head high, tears dry – can’t cope.
Full of finger-pointing and philandering, it’s brutally honest; he’s getting more of what he needs with the ex while she’s a mess, developing an ever-increasing dependency on the stuff that would prove her undoing. Those words Back To Black might metaphorically suggest a return to dark days, but it’s no coincidence that black is also a street name for heroin. Boyfriend Blake is hardly a stranger to drugs either, the synonymical ‘you love blow and I love puff’ outlining exactly that. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lyrics arrived quickly to Amy. What you hear is word for word what she wrote at the song’s conception, a love letter to the death of a relationship. In the video, she even went as far as having a funeral for it.
There was a great documentary on the making of the album on BBC4 last week, where a combination of old home movies of Amy in the sound-booth and clips of producer Mark Ronson playing early takes tracked the development of the song. He really managed to work it up from its jazz beginnings, where Amy’s phrasing of the vocals fluttered and flitted between the notes, the words elongated, rhythm and meter stretched like rubber bands to snapping point.
Roping in the Dap Kings was Ronson’s masterstroke. A modern-day take on the Stax house band, it was they who came up with the track’s definitive boom b’-boom chick finger clickin’ rhythm and helped the song’s metamorphosis from troubled torch ballad to Shangri-La shimmy.
God bless you, Amy. You left us with many good songs and a handful of great. Back To Back is your greatest of all.
Y’can keep yer Jonis ‘n Pattis ‘n Debbies ‘n Kates ‘n Amys ‘n ‘rethas ‘n what have ye. If I were to pick just one woman to soundtrack International Women’s Day, it’d be PJ Harvey. Strong, powerful and always in charge, she’s the perfect role model for right-thinking people of all sexes. There’s no better time than now to share something I wrote originally for the Vinyl Villain blog a couple of years ago. James (the VV himself) runs a regular imaginary compilation feature where a guest contributor will open his and perchance his readers’ minds to new, previously unheard music. I chose to write about PJ.
Following a recent post on Plain Or Pan, JC wrote me a lovely and flattering begging letter, asking if I’d contribute a piece on PJ Harvey for The Vinyl Villain. Now, just to qualify, I’m no expert on Polly Jean. I’m a huge fan and I have most of her back catalogue (the odd collaborative effort aside) and while there are other artists that I obsess far more over and go to first when choosing something to play on the rare occasion I have the house to myself, PJ is always somewhere in the background, shuffling up unannounced but always welcome on my iPod during the commute to work, or peeking out at me in-between my George Harrison and Richard Hawley albums. The bulk of her music still thrills and amazes and stands up to repeated listens long after the time of release, which is surely the mark of a true artist.
It’s incredible to think that PJ Harvey has been making records for nigh on a quarter of a century. From the lo-fi scuzz of Dry via the Patti Smith-isms of Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea and the stark, piano-only White Chalk right up to her most recent collection of WW1-themed songs on Let England Shake (not forgettting the one-off single in support of Guantanamo Bay prisoner Shaker Aamer), she’s one of our most consistent musicians. Daring, unpredictable and true to herself, she’s right up there with the best of ’em.
Excitingly, she has a new LP in the offing. April, I believe (it was – 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project). The first fruits are spinning heavily on BBC 6Music every day just now, and they’re sounding terrific. As a primer, JC asked me to collate a compilation for the uninitiated, put together any way I saw fit.
I begin with the caveat that the tracks I’ve chosen today might not necessarily be the ones I’d chose tomorrow, but I’ve chosen one track from each of her 8 studio LPs (excluding the 4 Track Demos stop-gap LP or those collaborative efforts mentioned earlier). Some of the tracks were singles, some were hidden away in the darkest corners of the album from whence they came. All are classic PJH; garagey, bluesy and occasionally down right dirty. There’s the odd bit of cello and throw-away sweary word. But there’s always the voice, her primal moans sexy as hell one moment, skyscrapingly stratospheric the next.
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Sheela Na Gig
Sheela Na Gig was PJ’s second single and also appeared on Dry, her debut LP. She sets her stall out early here, singing about ‘child bearing hips‘ and ‘ruby red lips’. Hearing this for the first time as a 21 year old, I had no idea what a Sheela Na Gig was (Google it), so I listened to this thinking “Oh! Aye!” From then on I always harboured faint hopes that she might take a mutual shine to me, should our paths ever cross. S’too late now though, Peej. Sorry.
50ft Queenie
50 ft Queenie was the lead single from 2nd album Rid Of Me. Rid Of Me is such a quiet record, which has always irked me. For an artist who apparently revels in creating a whirlwind of chaotic noise, the album seemed so quiet and tame by comparison. I’m sure there must be some sort of audiophile reason for it, subsonic frequencies and the likes, but who knows? When you play it next to something like, oh, I dunno, Definitely Maybe (like comparing jam with cheese, I know), PJ’s album sounds limp and flimsy next to the sonic boom of the monobrowed magpies.
Anyway. 50ft Queenie. The drum track sounds like the Eastenders theme falling down the stairs, a right royal ramalama of tumbling toms and clattering cymbals all underpinned with a bluesy riff and topped off with those sexy/skyscraping moans and screams. “You bend ovah, Casa-nova…” Indeed. Great one note guitar solo too.
I have a clear memory of seeing her perform this in the Barrowlands, wearing a pink feather boa, knee high boots of shiny, shiny leather, a Gretsch Country Gentleman and not much more. A spectacular sight and sound. If you’ve never heard this before, make sure you strap yourself in first.
Come On Billy
Come On Billy can be found on the Mercury-nominated To Bring You My Love LP. Featuring some frantically scrubbed acoustic guitar and see-sawing cello, it’s PJ’s Nick Cave (aye, him again) moment. There’s a terrific, understated string section playing below the whole way through, the first evidence that PJ had more to her arsenal than bent blues notes screaming through a tower of Marshall stacks. I’ve always liked how she hiccups her way through the adlibbed chorus at the end.
The Wind
The Wind (from the Is This Desire? LP) is a slow-burning cracker. For such a slight ‘n skinny woman, PJ’s tune packs more muscle than it has any right to. It‘s her Barry Adamson moment; filmic, bass-heavy and full of brooding menace.
It fades in on a ripple of marimba and a stutter of just-plugged-in guitar, with PJ’s vocal quickly taking centrestage. Whisper-in-your-ear sultriness one moment, understated falsetto the next, it tells the story of St Catherine of Abbotsbury who built a chapel high on a hill near to where PJ lives.
The whole track is carried along by the bassline. When it comes in, after that second ‘noises like the whales’ line, it brings to mind some New York street punk, hands deep in the pockets of his leather bomber jacket, docker’s hat pulled hard and low over his forehead, eyes shifting from left to right and back again, looking to start trouble, looking to avoid trouble, but, looking for trouble.
It’s produced masterfully by Flood who brings an electro wash to the finished result. In fact, it wouldn’t sound out of place on any given recording by Harvey’s fellow West Country contemporaries Tricky and Massive Attack. There’s subtle tingaling percussion, quietly scraping cello and layers of synthetic noise. When the vocals begin their counter-melodies in the chorus, it’s pure Bjork.
Kamikaze
Kamikaze is taken from Stories From the City, Stories From The Sea, PJ’s second Mercury-nominated LP. Her most straightforward pop/rock album, most of the tracks had the knack of sounding like Patti Smith on steroids.
Kamikaze is terrific, a down-the-hill-with-no-brakes-on, headlong rush of close-mic’d guitars, polyrhythmic drums and yet more skyscraping hysterics. It’s a close cousin of 50ft Queenie, only with far better production and mastering.
If you’re new to PJ and any of these tracks have so far piqued your curiosity, I’d start with this track’s parent album and take things from there.
Who The Fuck?
Now we’re talking! PJ’s angry. Someone’s pissed her off and she can’t wait to tell us. Coming across like a demented Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, WTF? kicks like an angry mule, a fuzztoned, vocally distorted, brilliant mess of a record.
It’s a sloppy, stroppy, brilliantly sweary track. If you took ten wasps in a jar and stuck them in a food blender with the short-lived RRRRRiot Grrrrrrl movement, it would sound something like this.
The Devil
The White Chalk LP is a difficult listen. Very difficult. I listened to it once then filed it away. For the purposes of this article I dug it out again and spent one dreary afternoon (it’s only about 35 mins long, but honestly, I’d rather stick pencils in my eye than have to listen to it again) waiting patiently until I ‘got it’. I still don’t.
I chose The Devil as it’s the lead track, and from experience, the lead track is usually a statement of intent from the artist. Well, PJ sets her stall out early with this one. The whole album is funereal in pace, delicate, flimsy and abso-fucking-lutely boring. PJ coos and woos and plays her piano with all the deftness of a concert pianist, but damn, there’s nothing there that grabs. No balls-out rockers, no dirty, sweary, innuendo-filled garage band fizzers. Nothing. For all its gossamer-thin lightness, it’s an extremely heavy listen. Maybe you think differently. For me, it’s the one clunker in a stellar back catalogue. And every artist is allowed the occasional clunker, aye?
The Glorious Land
Following the stark, piano-led White Chalk, Let England Shake was PJ’s triumphant return to the guitar. Much of the album is loosely concept, relating to the atrocities of WW1. If this seems a bit heavy, the music therein was often light and airy; gone for the most part were the blooze blunderbuss guitars, replaced with lightly chiming 6 strings, clean and pleasant on the ear. Radio 2 music, even.
The Glorious Land begins with such a guitar, playing atop a rallying military bugle. Without getting too ‘muso’ about it, the chord changes are sublime and the vocals are always to the fore. There’s almost a male/female duet in the verses, between PJ and (I think) a moonlighting Mick Harvey, which comes across like a 21st century Lee ‘n Nancy on helium, while PJ duets gloriously with herself in the chorus and outro. You might want to discover the rest of this album for yourself. It’s one of her best.
And there you have it, 8 tracks o’ PJ. A cross-album introduction I’d be happy to pass on to anyone with a PJ curiosity.
It’s oft suggested that our other national drink here in Scotland is Irn-Bru, the mysteriously-flavoured bright orange beverage brewed by Barr’s. I’d like to argue the case for Red Kola though.
The crimson ‘sparkling fruit juice’ was concocted years ago by Curries of Auchinleck in deepest East Ayrshire. With a similarly closely-guarded secret recipe, and marketed as ‘Special Cola’, Red Kola has in recent times, I suspect, also undergone a slight recipe redesign. Unlike the hoo-ha created when Barr’s bowed to the combined pressures of the sugar tax and healthy eating campaigns by lowering the sugar in Irn-Bru (reducing both its flavour (bad thing) and waiting times in dentists across most of Scotland (good thing)), Red Kola’s subtle shift in taste seemed to bypass even the most sugar-fuelled soft drinkers. And unlike the Facebook racketeers and profiteers who advertise ‘original’ glass bottles of Irn-Bru at prices not too dissimilar to what you’d pay for a decent Jura malt, no one (as yet) has found a stockpile of Curries ‘Special Kola’ at the back of the cupboard just waiting to be ‘Pepsi Challenged’ against a just-off-the-shelf plastic-bottled Red Kola from the Spar. Trust me though, as the bottle I’m currently guzzling – for research purposes of course – proves, as with Irn-Bru, it’s still the same drink….just different.
Red Kola has been championed in song by another of East Ayrshire’s best-kept secrets, Nyah Fearties. Brothers Stephen and Davy Wiseman have a rare way with an arrangement; take an acoustic guitar and batter it furiously until it sounds like it’s being assaulted by a Brillo Pad then weld it on top of a backbeat held together with clanging pipes, hob nailed stomps and a wing and a prayer and play at 100 miles an hour until out of breath. The regularly likened-to Pogues might’ve had flowing Streams Of Whiskey but the ‘Fearties noisily and beautifully romanticised Red Kola.
Nyah Fearties – Red Kola
(Oor) guts are dyed wi’ Rid Kola.
That’s a line the equal of Burns, that is.
Nyah Fearties debut album, A Tasty Heidfu‘, was re-released after 30-odd years to little fanfare at the tail end of 2018. A clattering, caterwauling sound clash it is, like our national drink(s) an acquired taste. It’s also something that gets under your skin and flows through your veins, the very nectar of life itself. You should head here toute de suite and give them your hard-earned.
Horace Andy‘s Skylarking is, hands down, the finest song written about horseplay and high jinx. An old 17th century term, a skylarker was someone who preferred low-level carrying on and procrastination to the actual completion of a work-related task. Yer commonly-used verb ‘to lark about’ comes from it, dontcha know. Had the song been written by a Scotsman it may well have been called Cairryin’ Oan or Fannyin’ Aboot, but then it’s unlikely the recorded item would have been the quietly lilting, sqeaky-organed, roots reggae track that it is. That one and two and three and four rhythm could bring even the most diligent of workers to a wasteful half hour on the company’s time.
Horace Andy – Skylarking
Horace Andy outside Rough Trade Records London 1985
From Kingston, Jamaica, Andy carved out a solo career to varying degrees of success. Skylarking harks back to 1972. Released on the ubiquitous Studio One label, it found the singer in fine form. The album is an ever-present in those ‘Greatest Reggae Albums You Should Hear’ lists and, yes, you really should try to have a listen.
For many, certainly this writer and no doubt some of you reading, Horace Andy first came to prominence via the work of Massive Attack, his distinctive, reedy vocals enhancing both Blue Line‘s One Love and Angel from Mezzanine, to name but two.
Confusingly, an album also called Skylarking was released in 1996. Building on his popularity and new-found fame as a member of the extended Massive Attack family, Virgin released a catch-all compilation of hits, misses and everything in-between. If you buy one album called Skylarking though, you’re best tracking down that superb debut from ’72.
Right. (stretches…..yawns…..eases himself out of his chair….) Where did I put that report for work?
A couple or so years ago I found myself wading through the flotsam and jetsam of virtual music that lies like a nasty trip hazard on the Plain Or Pan doormat. All manner of Scandinavian thrash, whispering, sensitive acoustic troubadours, bedroom techno wizards, anarcho ska punk and identikit Oasis-lite tribute acts, heavy on attitude but not so much on actual songs were there, just waiting to trip me up. It’s great getting free music sent, but it’s even better when the music sent is exactly the kinda music you’d buy. One of the acts who escaped the recycle bin that day was WH Lung, a rather mysterious Manchester-based group of musicians who came out of the traps sounding like one of those mid 70s German bands that yer hip reviewers get themselves all in a lather over. Their track Inspiration ticked a lot of boxes and found its way onto here as a result.
WH Lung – Inspiration
Played a gazillion times then filed away for future reference, I promptly lost sight of WH Lung and forgot all about them. Such is the way of things.
As if by magic, an email arrived last week heralding the return (for me) of the band. Headed ‘London Oslo Hackney‘, their press release was keen to point out the slow, considered, gestation period for their forthcoming album. Unlike other acts who receive a bit of favourable early press and rush-release their music as a result, WH Lung has taken the longer route, allowing the music to simmer and stew and flavour and ferment for the past 24 months. A tweak here, a re-touch there. The finished results are staggering.
Lead-off single (and free download, freeloaders!) Simpatico People continues the propulsive, linear, motoric groove that made such an impression back then.
10 minutes of whooshing synths and clean chiming guitars zooms past, the sound of Public Service Broadcasting going 15 rounds with LCD Soundsystem. When the vocals arrive, David Byrne and Reflektor-era Arcade Fire pops into the mix. This is proper joyous, hands-in-the-air celebratory music. The band may be out and about in the more intimate venues of the British Isles come May, but really, this is Saturday night on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury music.
The album that follows is just as forward-thinking, just as widescreen and just as good. When it escapes into the ether on 5th April, Incidental Music should by rights be a shoe-in as one of the albums of the year. Keyboard washes and sequenced synths conjure up Power, Corruption & Lies-era New Order. Guitars chime heavenwards. Tracks bleed into one another and the whole thing ebbs and flows and twists and turns. It’d make great cycling music. When the better weather comes in it’ll be soundtracking my gasping wheeze along the cycle-friendly routes of Ayrshire, that’s for sure. The beat is omni-present and relentless, perfect for pushing yourself to the limits. Extremely disciplined, there are no flash solos, no flourishes across the keys. It’s a heads-down and boogie album, no nonsense stuff from a band who are locked into one another’s groove. Classic stuff, in other words.
WH Lung are out and about in May;
11th May—Liverpool, The Shipping Forecast
13th May—Glasgow, The Garage (Attic Bar)
14th May—Nottingham, The Bodega
15th May—Brighton, Green Door Store
16th May—Bristol, The Louisiana
17th May—Southampton, Heartbreakers
The debut album – Incidental Music – follows on 5th April.
For what it’s worth, I reckon you’d like it a lot.
I’ve been re-reading Luke Haines’ very entertaining Bad Vibes: Britpop, And My Part In Its Downfall – a memoir? an autobiography? a study of a time and place? – and despite having read it at least twice since it was published a decade or so ago, it’s still fantastic reading.
Haines was the driving force behind The Auteurs, a band forever on the fringe of things but never quite the epicentre of musical movement. In filmspeak, the auteur is someone who stamps their identity across a project and demands complete control. Given that he led The Auteurs with a controlling hand and twisted, narcissistic mind, Haines named his band well. Equal parts spiteful and insightful, the book charts the rise and fall of the band from their early days vying for top dog status with Suede (the very early days, then) to the famous Select magazine cover that first coined the term ‘Britpop’ (coined being the operative word), multiple awards ceremonies, Japanese sex cults, the end of The Auteurs, the one man and a dog shows in the American mid-west and his reinvigoration with the music he made as Black Box Recorder and Baader Meinhof.
Lumped in with the Britpop lot on account of a lazy music press’s perceived meaning behind The Auteurs’ track American Guitars, Haines’ uncompromising nature and unhealthy obsession with rival bands keeps you reading. He feigns indifference but really, read between the lines and you can see that Haines craves success. He detests fellow Londoners and fellow ‘promising new act’ Suede in their relentless and Panzer-like march on the charts, taking the huff when they are seated centre-stage before winning the Mercury Prize and referring to Brett Anderson and his ‘bumboy androgyny that’s more Grange Hill than Bowie.’ Every other page is littered with such bitchy comments. It’s unpleasant, but boy, it’s a great read!
Obsessed with midweek chart placings, column inches and magazine covers, Haines realises he’s losing at a game that, much to his own disgust, he so desperately wants to win, but only on his own terms. Haines hates the music industry; from the leech-like managers and their draconian contracts to the hippies who run the record label, he barely has a good word to say about anyone. His own band can’t even escape his disdain. Old school friends and drummers are one and the same and they come and go once it’s apparent they’re not up to the task. Bass player Alice comes in for occasional sniffy criticism, despite being Haines’ girlfriend.
His seething vitriol is saved for the band’s ‘unique selling point’; the cello player. Throughout the book that unfortunate musician is only ever referred to as ‘The Cellist’. Haines despises *him/her and their perceived desperation for grabbing a slice of the fame pie – and at a time when no-mark, one-word acts like Powder, SMASH and Marion were making the most of their 15 seconds in the spotlight, you can almost sympathise with the poor string player, but yet we never learn their name.
At one point, Haines gleefully employs a second guitarist, an Adidas tracksuited cast-off from perennial bottom-of-the-billers Spitfire and he purrs at how much the cellist hates the oikish mockneyisms of the interloper. The cellist is unique to the sound of Haines’ band though, so they are an ever-present, much maligned presence for most of the book.
*(Don’t want to ruin the narrative, but he’s James Banbury, below)
And what of the ‘sound’? The Auteurs’ first album, New Wave, was nominated for the Mercury Prize. A heady swirl of posh-boy vocals, mournful cello and melodies from old Monkees records, it didn’t win and didn’t really benefit from any exposure following the Mercury nomination but taken on its own terms New Wave is a fine record. I’ve always liked Showgirl, a track that for some reason reminded me of a long-lost George Harrison single. There’s a great bit of dead air immediately after the first line is sung, put there by Haines purely to mess with radio play.
The Auteurs – Showgirl
And I’ve always really liked second album lead single Lenny Valentino, with its choppy rhythm and saw-saw-sawing cello, a Home Counties Pixies in an era of cor blimey guv Mod-lite nonsense.
The Auteurs – Lenny Valentino
He’s a real snob, is Haines. He absolutely hates anywhere north of Watford. Actually, he has no time for anyone or anyplace anywhere. He’ll have you believe he’s so far ahead of the curve it’s next week already. When will the record-buying public realise? may well have been the subtitle to the book. Pretentious, portentous and prodigious in his own mind at least, Luke Haines has little time for anyone save himself. It’s a ridiculous way to carry yourself and perhaps goes some way to explaining Haines’ relatively short career as a chart-bothering artist. As far as music books go though, it’s up there with the very best. Read it or read it again.
Extra Bit
Those Black Box Recorder and Baader Meinhoff records are really good. Totally at odds with what was fashionable at the time, they are in their own way ahead of the curve. Don’t tell Haines that though. A future post for sure.
The mixed bag of unsolicited – but very welcome – mp3s that currently clutter my inbox contain a couple of bona fide right here right now, on the pulse indie rock ‘records’, the kinda tracks that in a pre-internet era I might’ve spent aeons tracking down. Last week, the Working Men’s Club single was the track to rock my (in)box. This week it’s the sound of The Stroppies.
A confession: The Stroppies’ label sent me a press bio and a link to current single Cellophane Car about 3 weeks ago. One look at the band’s name and I thought, nah, I’m not having that. Who names their band The Stroppies? It’s the twee-est, most cutesy-cute, indie-ish name going, is it not? I remember reading an interview with Michael Stipe where he said that you had to imagine your band’s name in lights above the door of the biggest venue you knew. Only then could you consider what you might be called.
Anyway. A track popped up on 6 Music last week on the commute to work and frustratingly the station ID listed it as ‘Deep Blue Day’ by Brian Eno, when it clearly wasn’t. Fast forward to yesterday and it was played again. The Stroppies. Cellophane Car. The Stroppies?!? Where do I know that name from? And then earlier tonight, Marc Riley opened his show with them. They’re a hot thing, these Stroppies. Riding the crest of some zeitgeist or other. Daft name though, but great tunes.
Cellophane Car has all the right reference points you could wish for; an underlying Felt-like feyness, jangling 12 strings, a forever-on-the-verge of being out of tune one chord Velvets riff, wobbly Antipodean male/female vocals last heard on any number of Go-Betweens records and an arch, eyebrow aloft nod to Jonathan Richman. You can practically sing Roadrunner over the top of it.
Nowt wrong with that, of course. On Cellophane Car, the band are stretched to their very limits. There are no flash solos or tumbling toms in the middle eight. The music is lean, pared back and designed to run and run. Where most bands would finish on a crashing oomph or a squeal of feedback, The Stroppies lure you in with a false ending before the parping Farfisa and swirling keys lead the track on an extended slightlydelic coda.
The best guitar music, from, oh, I dunno, Orange Juice to Jellyfish is made when bands step out of their comfort zones. At any minute things might unravel. Band members eyeball one another between swift glances at the frets, shonky nods are aimed in the direction of the beat keeper at the back. Those Stroppies are forever on the verge of unravel.
Coming hot on the heels of fellow hot-hitting Australian Courtney Barnett, The Stroppies have an album – Whoosh – due for release in March, after which they’ll be zig-zagging their way around the less-than-glorious venues of our cities in July; you’ll find them in Glasgow, York and Brighton amongst others. You should probably go.
Follow The Stroppies on all the usual forums (apart from Twitter, it would seem) or visit here for tour dates, music and more.
The new 6 Music schedule has taken a fair bit of bashing since the turn of the year. I used to enjoy my morning commute to the languid sighs of Shaun Keaveny and was mildly irked when he was shunted to an afternoon slot that I rarely have the chance to listen to, but I must admit to a growing fondness for Lauren Laverne’s replacement show. She has a great morning radio voice and while initially her playlist was a bit beige – a never-ending conveyor belt of close-miked singer-songwriters and glossy electro-infused indie from the moment I started the car until I pulled up at work, the past couple of weeks has seen some more interesting stuff creep in.
She played a track on Friday morning though that made my heart sink to depths last felt around the second week in January. The Specials’ new LP was the Album of the Day and Lauren played their version of The Equals’ Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys, a terrific early 70s stomper and lyrically, right up The Specials’ street.
By comparison, The Specials’ version was too polite, too lite and sounded like a graduate from the Glen Ponder school of insignificant incidental music. It’s always a nail-biting time when old bands fanfare a return with a slightly altered line-up and brand new album and most of the time you’re left feeling nothing other than disappointed (see also The Clash or REM) and on this evidence, I fear one of our most important bands has taken a bit of a tumble. A mere blip, I hope.
That Equals’ version though kicks like a mule, an aggressive and confrontational record that’s equal (arf) parts Slade and Led Zeppelin fed through a Brixton blender and left to run like a feral delinquent. The ‘solo’ alone is almost avant garde in execution. . Listen up now people….
The Equals –Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys
Recorded in 1970, its fist-pumping socio-political message was at odds with the band’s previous hits – you’ll be familiar with Baby Come Back – and is miles away from guitarist Eddy Grant’s future hits – and is all the better for it.
Dressed like Sly & The Family Stone and employing a set of vintage guitars that would have Orange Juice frothing with jealousy, Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys sets the tone for the sound of the seventies; a toughed-up, roughed-up riffing groove, egged on by the hardest kicking of kick drums.
Those Specials really should have paid more attention.
Try googling Working Men’s Club. Go on. I’ll wait for you.
Chances are you didn’t land on the band of the same name, which is bad planning on their part because had you alighted on the northern English act you’d have been pleasantly surprised by what you’d hear. I imagine other acts will have equally Google-unfriendly names, but then I can’t name any as I haven’t found them yet(!) Thankfully, the good folk at Melodic Records in Manchester saw fit to point the band in my direction.
From the Calder Valley area, a belt of old industrial mill towns located somewhere between the white and red roses of Leeds and Manchester, Working Men’s Club are named after the clubs they once sneaked into as underage drinkers. Pleasingly, they’ve eschewed the normal Oasis-by-numbers rentarock that many young bands fall into.
Theirs is a twisted take on the angular scratches of post punk; a bit of Wire here, a stroppy Fall vocal there, a Gang Of Four thunk in the chorus…..bitter old cynics will easily trace the lineage from there to the Manics at their angriest or The Futureheads at their most obtuse, but taken at face value, Working Men’s Club are worth further investigation. My favourite album of last year came from Parquet Courts and a track like Bad Blood could sit happily in the grooves within that record.
Regular touring partners with the excellent Orielles, the next few months will see Working Men’s Club play a handful of shows across the Manchester area as guests of both Pip Blom and The Limananas, as well as striking out for headline shows of their own.
I’m keen to see if they make it further north and across the border into this fine and pleasant land. If and when they make it to Glasgow there’s a good chance I’ll be first in the queue for tickets and *down the front come showtime. I fully expect too that someone with a finger on the pulse of what’s a-happenin’ – a Marc Riley, perhaps – will afford them the opportunity of a session, so if they don’t fancy their chances of (cough) foreign travel in this era of pre-Brexit uncertainty, there’s a good chance I’ll get to hear them live, if not see them live.
*at the side, bobbing my head slightly whilst taking mental notes and hoping I don’t miss the last train home.
Plain Or Pan 