BEST BEFORE DATE - 1987 - Age Of Chance - Kiss

 

I left Art School 1980 and ended up, as a graduate in graphic design working in London. Seven years later I'd forsaken design work and found work in Art Shop retailing to make ends meet. I continued to keep an enthusiasts interested eye on the music scene. When this band Age of Chance came up on my radar, I recognised the drummer, Jan Perry who was at Art College in Leeds the same time as me. Her personal image at that time had been like your classic Hilda Ogden charlady, paisley wrap around pinny and her hair held up under a headband scarf. So I was intrigued by this pivot into music .

The band was already beginning to make a name for themselves with a really hard hitting crunch of a sound. They recorded their version of Prince's Kiss, even though Prince's original had only recently charted. Age of Chance's reinterpretation of Kiss is like being hit with a sledgehammer at close quarters. The guitars sound like it could pulverise holes through concrete floors. This is pop but passed through an heavy Industrial filter. It is one of those very rare occasions when a Prince cover matches the original version, and without slavishly copying its style, makes it all their own. The grunge of this is all Age of Chance, with not a whiff of the minimalist funky Prince here. 

Though Age of Chance were music biz journalist favourites for a while, their version of Kiss only reached no 50. They never had a major hit in the UK. Changes in lead singer, eventually left Jan Perry on vocals,  until the band finally called it a day in 1990. Age of Chance had a very strong sense of its own music aesthetic - part punk part disco. Equally matched with a sharp stylistic appearance - All pure colours, American style college jackets. skinny jeans. But with two former art students in the band, what did you expect.

MY MOST LOVED ALBUMS - Lambertland by Tasavalan Presidenti - 1973

Its 1973, glam rock was in full pomp. Progressive Rock music has emerged energised out of the remnants of late sixties hippedom. With the rise of Krautrock, the UK finally wakens up to the fact that there is some particularly innovative wacky music going on in Europe. The music papers send their writers out chasing around Europe trying to be the first to discover and champion a new fabulous European band, and their explorations reach as far as Finland, and Tasavallan Presidenti. 

At the time I'm heavily into Hawkwind and Deep Purple. So when I read about Tasavallan Presidenti and their supposedly brilliant guitarist Jukka Tolanan, I am intrgued enough to buy their first album Lambertland. Now Lambertland is a very strange beast of an album, and was so even at the time. Musically its the wildest amalgam of a huge range of stylistic influences. Yes, you could catagorise it as 'progressive' rock fusion, but also it is incredibly jazzy, and has a strongly inflected undertow of folk infused flute and drum rhythms. Plus the lead singer has this really unusual intensity to him, as he sings the quite often surreal lyrics. Lets just say he's not your classic heavy progressive singer, with more jazz timing, suggestions of folk singing, and a dash of scat.

There are a lot of tracks that move time signatures not once, but quite a lot more than once, as the mood of it shifts up and down gears. Its clever, dexterous, cerebral, but its also really passionate and the band's playing is so incredibly tight. This material has been well honed through a lot of performances. Their follow up album Milky Way Moses was a disappointment. Tasvavallan Presidenti underwent some changes in band members just after Lambertland was completed, losing the singer for one. And you can tell because Milky Way Moses had very little of whatever they possessed when they recorded Lambertland. Tasavallan Presidenti existed from 1969 -74, reforming briefly in the 80's and again in the 90's, and are currently still active.  

I have loved and replayed this album for many years. It miraculously survived my punk purges, the new wave, 80's electronica, world music phases, because it remains so unique and captivating I simply love it every time I put it on to hear. Like all - My Most Loved Albums, its been bought in vinyl, then tape, CD and download formats. That's hopeless devotion for you.

 

VEINS OF INFLUENCE - A Certain Ratio

Nothing ever comes unpredictably out of nowhere. In popular music I enjoy seeing if you can detect traces of where a bands influences came from, and by turn see where that band also had an influence on what was to follow. For the purposes of this demonstration I've chosen a starting point of  A Certain Ratio. Click on the links to hear the influences.

Essentially their origins kicked off in Post Punk, but let us not overlook musicians who preceded that. One name in particular springs to mind. In the context of A Certain Ratio's eventual musical trajectory I don't think the influence of Bowie's Blue Eyed Soul Funk period on them can be underestimated. From Young Americans 1974, and even through to the 'Berlin Trilogy of Low 1979 you can see a multiplicity of musical cross overs into A Certain Ratio's future of ethereal salsa inflected funk..  

A Certain Ratio named themselves after a line from Brian Eno's 1974 album Taking Tiger By Mountain By Strategy. This album is Eno at his most playful, lyrically it is associative surreal nonsense and musically eccentric mixes of waltz and reggae rhythms, as on Back In Judy's Jungle. One track, Third Uncle was even at the time seen as something of a precursor for punk. But its the track The True Wheel  where we find the line - 'Looking for a certain ratio, someone must have left it underneath the carpet'. Though starting off with a plodding Roxy Music like key board rhythm, it goes through dramatic musical transitions, Portsmouth Symphonia strings played forwards over backwards and ends on a drumming gallop that reminded me of earlier tracks by A Certain Ratio.  

Eno collaborations with Bowie are well known, both were heavily influenced by The Velvet Underground. With the long grinding urban grooves like on Sister Ray, informing the direction of many a future post punk band. For it wasn't until post punk arrived that bands truly picked up the VU mantel of arty noise experimentation. The late 70's Manchester punk scene, as folk lore tells us, burst into life after the performance of The Sex Pistols at Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976. A Certain Ratio arose out of that, forming in 1977. The Pop Group from Bristol share a similar timeline to ACR also coming together in 1977. It is in them that you can best see where ACR's arty jagged jerky guitar sound morphed from. The Pop Group, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle all sound very much like ARC's rather more anarchic blood brother contemporaries.

Joy Division and A Certain Ratio were both signed by Tony Wilson to his fledgling record label Factory. Though ACR were first off the block in getting a single released, once Joy Divisions debut album Unknown Pleasures was out in 1979 ACR seemed increasingly to be forgotten and overshadowed by their stablemates burgeoning fame. They themselves blamed their producer Martin Hannett for making them sound like pale imitators of Ian Curtis. But the style of vocal delivery at this time does often veer into the same dour sounding territory, of urban morose.

Whilst Joy Division turned out to be the more famous of the two bands, hugely amplified by the tragic early death of Curtis. There was something about the sound world of Joy Division that was unrepeatable, nor to be borrowed from, it was all too inimitable. So it is ACR who I'd say have turned out to be the more influential of the two bands. Their official debut album To Each in 1981 appears to have had an difficult gestation period. By which time their punk origins had already matured into what could be described as hallucinogenic industrial post punk funk. The best example of which is the albums concluding twelve minute plus opus Winter Hill.  This was an early signpost for what was to become Post Rock. Its a shame that ACR never followed up the experimental potential of this.

In 1979 ACR were the support act on a US tour with Talking Heads headlining. You could see why they'd be a good fit together, sharing a similar musical counter point of jerky odd unpredictability. Legend says touring with ACR is what prompted Bynre and Co to consider taking their own journey into funk, tentatively beginning on Fear of Music in 1979 and fully blossoming on Remain In Light in 1980. Interestingly House In Motion was later covered by ACR. By the time To Each finally came out in 1981 it was ACR who looked like they were following a trend, rather than being the trend setters they really were.

ACR took an increasing interest in world music rhythms, Caribbean and Brazilian in particular. And this set the scene for a short lived movement for salsa and jazz lite influenced bands in the mid 80's such as Blue Rondo A La Turk.  ACR have over the decades turned themselves into a slick musically more conventional band, shedding most of the hallucinogenic industrial side of their earlier work. Yet it is to this earlier period in their career that they owe their most enduring influence. You saw it early on in the London collective 23 Skidoo and Sheffield's Chakk, then later in Test Department, and I'd say that you could at a stretch include Post Rock, with bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor in their use of found voices and the painting of vast slabs of soundscape.

LISTENING TO - Catch These Fists by Wet Leg

I, like many, listened with great glee to the addictive ironic mischief of Wet Leg's big hit Chaise Longue. It went internationally viral, though it bore all the hallmarks of the novelty one hit wonder. Follow that if you can. And the album which did follow was a fine offering, but little could match the magic trick of that one hit song.

Lyrically Chaise Longue was quietly subversive and pokey, and that appears to be one of Wet Leg's enduring and distinctive features. They have moved on considerably and are much more knowing about what their strengths and band identity are. A second album Moisturiser is due shortly. On the first track released Catch These Fists, they appear to be channeling the urban New York swagger of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's through the rustic vibes of the Isle of Wight. To great effect I must add. This hits hard and has got real ball breaking potential.

Once they ran along roads dressed in Laura Ashley dresses and straw hats. Now they run along roads dressed in flannel underwear embroidered with words like Holy Spirit on the crotch. And the tongue in cheek insouciance has got a whole deal more stroppy. Though they continue to have an idiosyncratic way with a catchy guitar lick. Catch These Fists has a beautifully off kilter riff that tumbles around behind the song propelling it unstably onward. Whilst Rhian Teasdale deadpan half talks the lyrics.

Can you catch a medicine ball?
Can you catch yourself when you fall?
You should be careful, do you catch my drift?
'Cause what I really want to know is can you catch these fists?

Man down
Level up!
I know all too well just what you're like
I don't want your love, I just wanna fight

We're on our way to the club
Stupid is, stupid does
Limousine, racking up
Ketamine, giddy up

Man down
Level up!
I know all too well just what you're like
I don't want your love, I just wanna fight

He don't get puss, he get the boot
I saw him sipping on dark fruit
This always happens late at night
Some guy comes up, says I'm his type
I just threw up in my mouth
When he just tried to ask me out
Yeah, don't approach me
I just wanna dance with my friends

Man down
Level up!
I know all too well just what you're like
I don't want your love, I just wanna fight
I know all too well just what you're like

I don't want your love, I just wanna fight

Fight, fight, fight, fight
Fight, fight
Man down

Written by Wet Leg

RECORD REVIEW - Endless Rain by One True Pairing

Tom Fleming, was once a co-vocalist with Wild Beasts for several years. This is his second solo album under the moniker of One True Pairing. On this he has reconnected with the sonic adventurousness  and subject matter that made his former band such a captivating joy.

Post the demise of the Wild Beasts, Fleming has had to face a few personal demons. His very fine first album garnered a few critical plaudits, but didn't get much airplay nor wider attention. The crisis of confidence in himself as a musician that followed threatened to end his solo career before it had even begun. Thankfully he's stuck it out.

This experience has fed into songs on this album, which have a strong confessional edge to them. It was a good move on his record companies part to team him up with John 'Spud' Murphy. The music production auteur of the moment. Standout tracks of this album have a distinctive fizz in their soundscape as a result.  

As Fast As I Can Go, is hard to beat as an album opener. The kinetic movement powering this song along, is somewhere between a horse drawn carriage and a motorway. It's quickly turned into my favourite track of the year. Along with Doubt, Tunnelling, Endless Rain and Prince of Darkness it possess an expansive, cinematic quality of painting a mood or picture. Into which Fleming's rich resonant vocals flicker. On the other hand tracks like Landlords Death, Be Strong, Mid Life Crisis can somehow feel too heavily weighted down by the lumpen earnestness of their subject matter. Whilst Frozen Food Centre stands alone as one beaut of a song, about a mother trapped in straightened circumstances. The stronger semi-autobiographical nature of it making this all the more deeply affecting.

Fleming is not your typical singer songwriter, which must make his record label unsure how best to promote him. There are the soul bearing songs, but there's also the desire to musically push beyond the starkness of just his beautiful voice and a guitar standing alone. There are a broad range of production approaches on show here, of the many ways to embellish a song. Perhaps too many. If I were to have any criticism of the album, it's that it falls short of creating a completely cohesive overall soundscape. Instead it eclectically and energetically dashes all over the territory available, which does give it its own enervating, if slightly uneven, quality. As it stands three quarters of this album remains an absolute corker.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

LISTENING TO - As Fast As I Can Go by One True Pairing

Its a rare release that captures your imagination as much as this one has done mine. Tom Fleming aka One True Pairing has, it must be said had a bit of a personal struggle going on in recent years. That he has filtered and processed through his music. Still in possession of that beautiful silky husk of a deep toned voice that made him so compelling to listen to when he was in the Wild Beasts.

As soon as I heard this track As Fast As I Can Go, I was won over. Produced by John'Spud'Murphy who has garnered many accolades, producing in recent years Lankum, Oxn and Black Midi. So he has a pedigree amongst cutting edge folk and indie, and its a brilliant one. Plus Tom Fleming has a talented range of musicians working with him such as members of Lankum.and Percolator. The opening of the song is all banging sticks and struck bits of metal and bells, that then builds to a propulsive drum rhythm, which I for one find completely intoxicating and a thrill to listen to. Who would have guessed so near to the end of 2024 I'd find one of my favouite tracks of the year. 

RECORD REVIEW - Wild God by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Increasingly, Nick Cave albums, are not music you can just let drift around half listened to in the background. From Skeletal Tree onwards you've had to give them the whole of your attention, or you really would not grasp their quality or mood properly.

So it is with Wild God. On a half attentive run through of the songs they felt to be quite frail things, hung tentatively on a grumbled vocal line and choral verses. But then I thought on reflection, that Ghosteen was rarely about the well written song. The odd melodic line sprang out at you, lyrics caught you as they emotionally hit home. It was an album that had resonance. Similarly Wild God's melodic fragility can be deceptive, these are not insubstantial songs, far from it. There is gravitas, there is a spiritual purpose here.

The themes of grief and loss though no longer placed front and centre, linger in the back of the horizon in the odd lyric reference to a darling son. It's no longer just the deaths of his sons, but also of his friends and peers Shane McGowan and Anita Lane, that he's had to say goodbye to in recent years. Whilst Cave may have found a renewed enthusiasm for life, this has emerged phoenix like out of the embers of grief.

A number of songs begin with Cave intoning expressively over meandering piano phrases that erupt into an uplifting lilting choral refrain over which he vocalises in impassioned and exalted style, reminiscent of evangelical pastors. There is an air of the charismatic preacher bequeathed to Cave, exuberantly uplifting his flock as the climax to a song is reached. Music's power to transcend boundaries clinches a new deal

On the track Conversion he bellows encouragingly over a cacophony of background vocals and rousing music - you're beautiful, you're beautiful, beautiful again stop, stop, stop, stop, your'e beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful - I could imagine this track introducing a fever of healing into an audience. It could be a showstopper. Undoubtedly the finest track of many present here. 

The album opens and closes with tracks that utilise watery imagery - Song of the Lake - As the Waters Cover the Sea. The latter finally letting rip with the full-blooded gospel choir of cliche. As if this album could not reach any higher without them. And The Bad Seeds? Well undoubtedly they contribute, but this appears to be becoming more muted with every successive album. Or was the name all along referring to the ones once inhabiting Cave's imagination.

Nick Cave has never been shy of religious forms, references and imagery. On Wild God it is at its most explicit and undisguised as being faith driven, rather than the fond stylistic affectation of yore. In the past he's been adept at flirting with Bible Belt intonations and expressions and making them serve the narrative he's telling or seeming to be expressions of his love for the divinity of a girlfriend. I think here we are getting closer to what he actually feels and genuinely believes, unfiltered through artifice.

The cloak of the arche storyteller dropped away quite a while ago, and here the practiced poet of darkened souls and murderous shadows, has seemingly, through loss and grief, actually found a kind of transcendent joy. When you look back to that feral singer that was Nick Cave in the drug induced extremity of The Birthday Party, as a transformation, this is quite a startling one.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

LISTENING TO - Monkey by Low

With Mimi Parker's demise from cancer last year, one of the most long running creative partnerships in American Indie music,was brought tragically to an end. Alan Sparhawk is just about to release a new album of material, the first on his own. In the interview I read, he is still grieving for his life partner, which was really sad to hear, as he was a man whose previously had struggles with depression. There was something about their musical relationship, that appeared to greatly transcended them, and their talents as individuals. Their thirty years of recording had its many peaks and troughs. Times when you wondered whether they'd run out of steam as a band. Only to find they'd break the mold with their next release.

So I was surprised when I got addicted anew, to this track from 2005 from The Great Destroyer album called Monkey. Its becoming quite an ear worm. From its punchy pounding drum rythym, like an American Indian pow wow circle dance, with raw jangling buzz saw guitar sound, over which Sparhawk and Parker harmonise as though they are angels bringing the word of God into the hell realms. Its one perfect little gem. 

LISTENING TO - Arab Strap - I'm totally fine with it 👍don't give a fuck anymore👍

If ever an album opener told you what to expect from the rest of it - Allatonceness does it in spades. The guitars set a blaring declamatory raunch, the drums hard edged as bullets, whilst Aidan Moffat intones over it all with his recognisable drawl, about the many types of characters who inhabit the internet these days. Reprehensible and otherwise. These have all got our attention.

They've got your attention, the fat and the furious, and your atrophied legs can't run.

They've got your attention, the juvenile jilted, derailing all discourse for fun.

They've got your attention, the slapstick insurgents, with giggles and shits and grenades.

And so he goes on, about the ones who've 

'all done their own research' 'whilst Nazis and rapists sell merch' 

but concludes he has to admit 

'they've got my attention' 'And I think I love it'

I'm totally fine with it👍don't give a fuck anymore👍continues in this analytical vein, exploring the pros and cons of our online presence, and its associated neuroses. The increasing isolation described on Bliss. Where a woman's only way to be herself in the city, is to hide behind an aural defence barrier, whilst out walking wearing ear buds. Bliss has this electronic insistent beat of alarm behind it, with a guitar phrase entering in like a notification alert. 

Arab Strap's recent renaissance, after a sixteen year album hiatus, with 2016's  As Days Get Dark. Is showing no sign of being a one off. I'm totally fine with it👍 don't give a fuck anymore👍 is an excellent follow up. Building on the style As Days Get Dark introduced, whilst remaining close to the urban vampire vibe of its videos on Strawberry Moon.

What makes Arab Strap distinctive.primarily centres around Moffats impressively eviserating eloquence with words. But one must nevrr forget Malcolm Middleton, and the music he generates, the bleak settings and carefully composed contexts in which those poetic visionary nightmares are taking place. These are resolutely urban landscapes created for them to inhabit. There is something of the confessional dark night of the soul about them. What goes on in cemeteries, in the nightclubs in cellars, in the underpasses and subways between two worlds, of one chasing the other? It all takes place neath sulphurous street lights.

The character of some online realms is their discreet non relational nature. They exist outside of the norm, and refuse to come in to be a part of our real tangible world. To keep in touch with terra firma. So the darker and more nefarious impulses thrive there, like fungi growing in the darkened dank places hidden underneath the floorboards. Everything about the work Arab Strap are currently doing digs deeper into this fetid self concealing realm. It's both discomforting and yet all too familiar.

CARROT REVIEW  - 6/8

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1982 - Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo

 

The early 1980's, in the wide ranging movement that was post punk, there was one musical vein of exploration that eventually formed its own sub genre 'industrial.' The bastard off spring of many dissonant unclassifiable bands that clattered around the cataclysmic fringes of the punk phenomena. Of whom were - Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, A Certain Ratio, The Pop Group and This Heat. The second wave of bands that owed something in their origins to these bands -Test Department - Chaak - 23 Skidoo all beat out a singular path, one that was all their own.

23 Skidoo formed in 1979, with a much subtler and broader sweep of soundscapes than any of the bands that preceded them. Yes, there were shafts of avant garde jazz and funk in there, but also tribal styled percussion, dub, found sounds and voice recordings, over amplified slabs of sound coming down on you like crashing walls. The cumulative effect often creating a tone of total unease. 

23 Skidoo were probably one of the first bands that ventured into areas that 'post'rock' formats would develop and expand on in the early 1990's. Strong on mood, atmosphere and happy to shift time signatures abruptly, often veering off into an all out jam. Identifiable sources are few for what 23 Skidoo released in the early 1980's. 

Seven Songs was their 1982 debut album, which along with the earlier ten minute opus of The Gospel Comes To New Guinea and an EP Tearing Up The Plans, showed a band almost too assured in its adventurousness to survive for long. The most recent re-release of Seven Songs includes these EP's in their track listings. With The Culling Is Coming album, released the following year, the experimental, sonic abstraction side of the bands output took over precedence. An uneven release, part modern Gamelan style workout on one side and a live improvised recording on the other. The band fractured apart after this, and what was left made the altogether more accessible, but less challenging Urban Gamelan album in 1984. And though there have been brief bits of activity by former band members, and compilations, since then, the band as heard on Seven Songs was essentially never heard of again.

To give you a flavour of the spectrum of music they cover, here are three tracks by them. Kundalini opens the album, with a despairing squeal of a trumpet sound, before a galloping drum rhythm cranks up. Interspersed as it is by slashes of cross cutting sounds, this has a sparse groove, but a distinctly unnerving one filled with foreboding.

Opening with the thwack of an echoing bass, Porto Base has sounds and voices fade in and out of it. Mainly an older woman, sounding like it maybe one of the Mitford sisters, getting increasingly irate about the deleterious effects of effeminate hand gestures, which leads her to mention Hitler.

The track Gregouka, opens with the moaning of ephemeral chanting, over which a hard edged drum rhythm and a sour clarinet sound play in and out of each other. It possesses an other worldly character, alien, alluring and altogether unsettling.

Seven Songs is one of those albums. once heard, lives on in your imagination. A much over looked classic of the 1980's.

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1981 & 1983 - Homosapian & Telephone Operator by Pete Shelley

With the disbanding of The Buzzcocks Pete Shelley struck off in an entirely new direction. His first single as a solo artist was Homosapian. Largely electronic, which was still thought radical even in 1981, his approach also became more personal. 

Homosapian strongly made the case for love being the same whether it was within a heterosexual or homosexual relationship. Shelley was bi-sexual. and was taking a brave step in being so publicly frank about his feelings in song. This was pioneering at the time. Predating Bronski Beat by three years, in releasing a campaigning song defending queer love and relationships.

And it is a danceable addictive song too. One of Shelley's best, delivered with huge passion and gusto. Despite all this it never reached the UK Chart. The BBC reputedly discouraged it being played, without actually banning it, because of an allusion to gay sex in its lyric. But it did chart in the US, Canada and Australia, and became a huge dancefloor filler in nightclubs, gay and otherwise, across the world.

Two years on, and the single Telephone Operator, is another electronic driven love song. This time its a guy who thinks he's in love with a telephone operator. So he phones them over and over again. It's a really offkilter song, with overtones of stalking to modern ears. But that was very much Shelley's compositional style to place love in an less sympathetic, even discomforting context. It also contains one of Shelley's finest vocal perfomances.

Telephone Operator didn't chart either, only reaching No 66. Though often gaining critical praise for his recorded work, this was not transfering into sufficient sales to sustain a solo career. There was in his appearance, that constant staring directly into camera, there was always something sneery and provoking about it. Shelley, though small in stature, was not remotely cuddly, and would never have been, nor would have wanted to be, the archetypal pop star. At the end of the eighties The Buzzcocks reformed, but this was strictly for fans only. Further commercial success continued to evade them.

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1978 - The Light Pours Out of Me by Magazine

Meanwhile, post leaving the Buzzcocks, in an entirely other realm of 1978. Howard Devoto, having had the briefest sojourn away from the limelight, reveals the first fruits of his distinctly peculiar vision.

Magazine, formed in 1977 were one of the first bands whom you might call Post Punk. There was the sense that Devoto just wasn't going to wait for the punk bubble to burst as it inevitably would, he'd puncture it first himself. Releasing Shot by Both Sides in January of 1978 which reached 41 in the charts. Perhaps encapsulating in song the furore that greeted his leaving the Buzzcocks.

There was always a feeling that Magazine were really the then unfashionable thing - an albums band. So it was not til the LP Real Life that you got a fuller more rounded sense of what they were really about. This album contained a cache of songs that Devoto had originally written with Pete Shelley before he'd even left the Buzzcocks.

The stand out track is The Light Pours Out Of Me. It has the most recognisible and instantly captivating openings of any song. The pounding opening drum, the rumbling thrum of its bass and the magisterial guitar that proudly rings out the architecture of its riff. As though declaring the entrance of some beast, emporer, or nascent thing of importance. Its also as moody as hell. There's the expectant build up, then enters the hammy theatricality of Devoto's proto goth vocal intonations. Bleakly menacing as though the living dead were given voice - Time flies, Time Crawls, Like an insect, Up and down the walls - The light pours out of me. 

As with many Devoto songs there's an existential dilemma being worked out through imagery in song form. The tune is addictive listening, but it's lyrical opacity is so deliberate. Evocative but not allowing you to perceive its true meaning - Is this person deluded, a danger? Who on earth do they think they are? Some sort of Magus, a demon, a godlike figure? What drug are they being consumed by?

Devoto's visual style of performance possesses no charm, a nerdy creep, rather than creepy.. He was fortunate to have assembled behind him a band of hugely talented musicians, containing the inestimable Barry Adamson and John McGeogh within it. The Light Pours Out of Me has just one of McGeogh's guitar riffs and its a classy corker. It's not for nothing he is rated by his contemporaries as The Guitarist of his generation. But his contribution to Magazine was not to last long. McGeogh left in 1980 to ornament the golden years of Siouxsie & the Banshees, and Magazine entirely folded the following year.

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1978 - Love You More by The Buzzcocks

Having survived Devoto's abrupt departure. The Buzzcocks needed to capitalise on the momentum their Spiral Scratch EP had created. Their next single, released in November 1977 was deemed so controversial, it was banned 

Orgasm Addict, was a peon to masturbation, including a mock ejaculatory outcry. It was still part of the zeitgeist to provocatively offend. What Pete Shelley did subsequently was to refine, then entirely alter the future mood music of punk. Evolving it into the New Wave. This still had the propulsive speed and energy of punk, but allied it to broken hearted love songs with melodies.

Two singles later, the Buzzcocks songs were mellowing, yet still hovered outside the top thirty.  Love You More was the simplest of love songs. It got a tiny bit closer to the main chart, at number 32. Its protagonist is worried about how long his new love will last - I don't want to end up like a nine day wonder -  he opines. Was the lack of longevity in relationships linked to him not loving someone enough?  Otherwise it will last until - the razor cuts - and then the song abruptly ends. Doesn't sound healthy does it? Shelley knew how to bring the suggestion of an edge to even the most conventional sounding love song.

After Love You More, a series of propulsively driven love songs, with catchy lyrical hooks and Pete Shelley's whining vocal style were released. Ever Fallen In Love With Somone You Shouldn't Have Fallen in Love With? finally broke into the top twenty peaking at No 12. Two other top twenty hits followed. The next single ended just outside the top thirty again. At which point the band split due to difficulties with their record company. But in truth, they had already wrung the life out of their current musical style by then.

LISTENING TO - Working Men's Club

Hailing from West Yorkshire this band is the conception of its lead vocalist and songwriter Sydney- Minsky-Sargent. One of those bands who came to wider attention during the pandemic. They've been through a few line up changes, and style shifts, since its founding. Each time abandoning, then further expanding, the number of band members. Currently it is a four piece. This is still young Syd's creation. Though there are rumours he might be a trifle exacting control freak. Who would have thunk it?

Their sound draws on a wide gamut of influences, a heftly wadge of post punk, with a mish mash of electro, acid house and techno stylings. Plus the monotone dreary drawl of vocal from Syd, cut straight from the veins of Ian Curtis, Jarvis Cocker or Mark E Smith. Throw in a discordent jangle or two borrowed from the second incarnation Caberet Voltaire, and you have quite a northern pedigree. And though far from your usual club fare, this is really danceable too.

Syd, lyrically, comes across as a bit of a laconic wit. Who would never break a smile on camera. Though he certainly has a vision for what he's doing, however miserables and bleak it is. The musical blend is both retro yet contemporary. They could unfairly be likened to New Order, but they were rarely this characterful, hard and physical. What is presented here on the track Valleys, is the misery of modern day teen life in a Pennine town.

'Trapped inside a town

Inside my mind

Stuck with no ideas

I'm running out of time

There's no quick escape

So many mistakes

I'll play the long game

Winter is a curse

And this valley is hearse

When will it take me to my grave?

Here we also have an honourable salute to the Bard of Salford, with one or two borrowed lines from JCC. And then follow that with the track Teeth, which is far more sharply cut, the beats hit Pennine granite. Its an uncompromising jagged edged boot stomp. Working Men's Club don't attempt to make this one remotely daytime radio friendly. 

Already two albums into their career, there seems still a lot of mileage and potential yet to evolve here. Just keep an eye out for them. They may quickly flip from indie outliers to mainstream players, or vanish into the mist of a Pennine moor.

LISTENING TO - O Monolith by Squid

It took me a couple of years to really appreciate how good Squid's debut album Bright Green Fields was. Densely woven, complex rhythmically, with tracks suddenly and dramatically veering off at extreme oblique tangents. It was exhilarating to listen to, yet at the same time demanding to keep up with. It was music you definitely needed to devote time to. This was not remotely casual listening, or something you'd have on ambient in the background. Drummer and singer Ollie Judge still remains central to their sound. His rough hewn vocal style, part shout, part rough falling cliff face, was in your face a lot on the debut. It is an acquired taste. Though here on O Monolith it has moments that feel softer and more modulated, less abrasive, reflective even.

The Squid style at its most fluid and refined is present on O Monolith, on (Swing) In A Dream and Undergrowth. Post punk, musically exploratory and experimental, its hard to discern exactly what any of this is about lyrically. If anything. I'm not sure their lyrics are that message driven, they seem too imaginatively oblique for that. There is a palpable feeling on O Monolith of a band wanting to flex n stretch its boundaries outside the confines of those recognisable Squid-like musical structures. At times they sound less post punk and more 'progressive' rock. Then, as on The Blades, they have moments of Post Rock and ape the simple grandiosity of Godspeed You Black Emperor. Do an abrupt about face and its off somewhere else, and we are left once again playing catch up.

Not everything on O Monolith strikes me as successful. Devils Den reminds me of a seventies Italian Prog Rock band PFM I was into in my teens. And there is a little too much on this album that does have a similar style of over-straining musical cleverness and showing off, that can be a wee bit tiresome. Goodness, though, they are a tight tight band now, almost completely arse clenched, but impressively so. Either their third album will definitively nail the whole thing, or they'll descend into completely abstract noodling, or decide they've already done enough, reached a dead end, then split. O Monolith has the aura of an album that falls unsatisfactorily between two stools, moving away from one style toward an as yet not fully formed evolution. In the process not convincing anyone fully. It has moments of sheer joy followed by a rather flatulent let down.  This is just half of a great album.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8 ( currently )

LISTENING TO - The Trench Coat Museum by Yard Act

After that fine debut album The Overload in 2022. it was difficult to discern where Yard Act could go too next. Their sound seem to emerge so fully rounded and polished. Quick witted and satirical with it's own cast of characters acting as foils and barbs in their snapshots from a northern melodrama.

Well, here we are with a track from a 'something' that might be referred to as a  'forth coming'. This is an eight minute epic about the sartorial history of the trenchcoat. It is also a wonderful melange of words, sound and groove. And what a joyous guitar grind it is, one to set the dance halls ablaze I think.

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1978 - She Is Beyond Good & Evil by The Pop Group

Barely at times a band, let alone a pop group. The song She Is Beyond Good & Evil has a shambolic slack quality to it, as though something monstrous is forming right before your eyes, made up on the spare of the moment. Huge success evaded them, or more likely was unconsciously evaded by there own instinctive actions. The Pop Group were formed in Bristol by the late Mark Stewart in 1977. Like many post punk bands they picked eclectically from a wide range of musical influences and sources - dub, free form jazz, avante funk and welded themselves this massive yet fragile sound, always teetering on the edge of falling completely apart. Unsurprisingly none of their output even brushed the outer edges of any national chart. Because this may be pop, but with a disconcerting integrity and menacing grist.

They did, however, prove hugely influential and an inspiration on countless bands, Nick Cave for one being deeply impressed with their uncompromising bravado, how they stuck to their guns. Former band members went on to form Pigbag (Simon Underwood)and Rip Rig & Panic (Gareth Sager). The latter's stylistic borrowings from The Pop Group taken one step further into almost a stream of consciousness type of free improvisations. 

The Pop Group set the template for what any post punk band should be. Punk had all too quickly fossilised into a formulaic genre. Post Punk, picked up and carried the anarchic flag forward, furiously uncompromising, musically adventures, independently minded, strident in the politics they espoused, highly critical of society and contemporary culture. The Pop Group's first iteration from 1977-1981 produced two albums and three singles. They reformed in 2010 and were still active up until Stewart's untimely demise, producing two more albums and four singles.

She Is Beyond Good & Evil, is a quintessential track by The Pop Group from their first period of activity. The snappy dub infused snare drum, rumble bass and choppy funk guitar, over which Mark Stewart moans, intones and decries with an atypical discomforting intensity. Was this man entirely sane?  Accompanied by a video composed of filmed live performances, which at times may or may not be of them performing this song. Its representative of their visual style, all cut up and collage like, sound and visuals out of sync, with a super 8 type unfocused quality, rough hewn,fuzzy edged imagery. It makes a suitable companion as an extension of the music's own improvised haphazardly thrown together modus operandi.

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1980 - The Friend Catcher by The Birthday Party

I appear to be mining my love for heavily feedbacked guitar with some recent posts in this series. Here is another one, this time from The Birthday Party's debut album - Hee Haw. Though the Birthday Party came to prominence in the post punk era, they were only loosely related to that. They certainly took some of its desire to explore the boundless musical extremities, similar to The Pop Group. Despite Nick Cave's youthful exploration of dissolute histrionics, he is also exploring the quirks of a number of his own literary interests. His liking for drawing dark, twisted folklorish characters in his songs is exemplified here in The Friend Catcher. Musically The Birthday Party had few references to traditional rock, preferring to amplify a perverted mix of fairground, music hall and nursery rhymes. Everything turned up to a high volume of unsettling weirdness.

You can see the stylistic trajectory of Nick Cave's early career stretching out from this one track. Blessed as he was with a talented band of fellow musical brothers on the fringes. Tracy Pew on bass, given to consuming alcohol and drugs to the excess, who would to die six years on from this moment. There is Roland S Howard owner of the wild despairing guitar sound. Leaving the band before they morphed into the Bad Seeds. Died at the age of 50 from chronic Hepatitis C. Leaving only Cave and Mick Harvey from that band. Cave appears always to need a close musical collaborator and Harvey provided that for a long time. Caves dominant creative urgency and drive is, I imagine, a satisfying wave to ride with for a while. Aligning your own momentum to it. But it might also cramp or suffocate one's own.

She, by my chinny chin.chin.
Eee-oh Eee-oh
Like a zippo smokes the way
Hope, around
You and your lungs and your wrists
They throb like trains
Choo choo choose
It's a prison of sound
I poke around...

Whatever this is all about, it doesn't come across as remotely healthy. Painting a heightened picture of the darker side of humanity. A malign gothic gremlin emerging from the shadow side of our murky collective psyche.

 

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1984 - To Hell With Poverty by Gang of Four

I saw the Gang of Four when I was a student in Leeds, in a club space above the Merrion Centre on a double bill with The Mekons. They were at this point still borrowing The Mekon's drummer to complete their line up. Both bands had attitude, though a little shambolic Gang of Four had a stridency which put them a cut above the rest. Word was getting around about them in Leeds as a band to watch out for. 

Unapologetically political they managed to meld radical uncompromising music to match it. All without it getting too worthy or preachy. They had two things in their favour, an unerring ear for a catchy riff or song and the wailing noise guitar playing style of Andy Gill. Both of these evident on To Hell With Poverty.

Five years on from their debut album Entertainment, To Hell with Poverty launched a move away from the stripped back post punk they'd been known for since they'd formed in 1976. Andy Gill is still the fulcrum of cacophony at its centre with his chainsaw guitar announcing a ferocious explosion of controlled feedback from the very beginning, which, as ever, is broken into by this thumping great rhythm, which has been poorly described as disco punk. But there was in this new direction still an avante guarde abrasiveness, politically punchy, with a danceable quality they'd not previously been known for before. There is a dissolute feeling for when there is nothing left of value, all there is to do is 'get drunk on cheap wine'  Yep, I've known that feeling.

 

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1979 - Love Like Anthrax by Gang of Four

With their 1979 debut Entertainment Gang of Four released an album of material they'd honed and polished from years of pub gigs in the backstreets of Leeds and beyond. If any band captured the Zeitgeist of post punk's political activism Gang of Four were it. In Thatcher's Britain the lack of any effective political opposition ( remind you of anything| now) meant progressive activism moved outside parliament and fell on the shoulders of contemporary music culture. Gang of Four were the most clearly left wing of the lot, flying the red flag for socialism high. I can't imagine few bands would do so these days. But one has to remember the collapse of the USSR was still over ten years away and such idealistic political puritanism was still possible in the late 70's. Their stridency in this regard produces on Entertainment a clear and consistent musical statement. It is quite rightly still rated as one of the best releases of the post punk era. 

The sound stripped back and sparse, is built around the axe slaying of the late great Andy Gill. Love Like Anthrax concludes Entertainment with such a cool insouciance. A type of dry minimalism permeates it that utterly captures ones attention from the start. The highly amped nature of Gill's guitar playing means it forever teeters on the edge of surrendering itself up to the most glorious of feedback noise. Love Like Anthrax begins, as many of Gang of Four's best tracks do, with the electric buzz and crackling of Gill's guitar into which the drums later pound in, imposing structural discipline. That all this sonic free form sturm und drang is going to be put to good use. But having woken us up with this wall of despairing racket, we then get deadpan vocals and an echoing voice running at cross purposes with each other. Interspersed with cultural analysis, this is that rare species the anti- love song with a commentary running through it.

Woke up , desperation AM,
(Love crops up a lot as something to sing about, because most groups)
What I've been saying won't say them again,
(make most of their songs about falling in love,or how happy they are)
My heads not empty its full with my brain
( to be in love - you occasionally wonder why these groups)
The thoughts I 'm thinking, like piss down a drain
(do sing about it all the time, piss down the drain)

As you can imagine, though Gang of Four were more than capable of being catchy songwriters, this clever juxtaposition of song with reflexive contextual analysis was not to everyone's cuppa tea. Combined with their consistently abrasive approach to music making, this meant their singles never broke into the top 50 and their highest album chart position was with Entertainment at number 45. But Love Like Anthrax remains this beautiful well mounted pearl of a thing to listen to.