Month: March 2013

Had illness not prevented my attendance at the previous round, this would have been my selection for that week. However, the motivation on that occasion would have been more around, “get one in by this lot, before anyone else does”.

When Nick set his ‘turning point’ theme, I looked around for records which marked a moment of  personal or listening significance and found a few turning points that led to equivalent of “no through roads”, as far as DRC is concerned. For example, the moment when you realise that it is probably a good idea to dispense with listening to prog rock, would mean all sorts of horrors could have been inflicted on fellow members.

But as turning points go, this revelation was more  like the slow turning circle of a ocean going super tanker, as it took me well over a year from release until I began to embrace the Smiths and their music. As some of the offerings detailed on this site show, at 18, I considered myself fairly eclectic in my choices and hadn’t yet tired of U2, enjoyed the acerbic prettiness of the Bunnymen, felt I was being ‘edgy’ by listening to R.E.M., and still managed to sneak along to see Marillion.

I wasn’t prepared to submit to the cultish observance to the Smiths which I saw around me. Neither was I prepared to listen to a music press touting them as the most important thing to have happened that decade. I constructed arguments  around why it was important to ignore them because of references (very misunderstood) to the Moors murders and a lead singer who seemed both too weird and cannot sing (‘…..but you should hear him play piano!’. Apologies, but could not resist).

Time is a great healer and by the end of 1985 a string of fantastic singles by the band had worn me down and I finally reached for my polo neck jumper and knelt at the temple of Mozza and Marr. The introspective and insecure subject matter of the lyrics began to fascinate me and I quickly discovered that the Smiths had some of the catchiest and most beautiful guitar based indie/pop rock that I had ever heard. My delay in submission simply allowed me to gorge on the subsequent compilations and singles I had ignored for over a year.

As for the album itself, I am so familiar with it, a judgement on how it sounds today is difficult to arrive at. ‘Reel Around the Fountain’, ‘The Hand that Rocks the Cradle’ and ‘Suffer Little Children’ still haunt with the combination of subversive lyrics and fantastic melodies. Quirkiness and energy still pours from ‘You’ve Got Everything Now’ and ‘Miserable Lie’. If you can’t sing along to all the words of ‘Hand in Glove’ or ‘What Difference Does it Make’, then you haven’t explored the treasures the ‘The Smiths’ has to offer and certainly never went to a student disco in the 1980’s.

Tom Listened: I have a theory, of which I am ever more certain with each passing meeting of the Record Club, that a predisposition (or not) towards a certain type of music or band is almost wholly contextual. Sure there is some music that is just plain awful (Black Lace, Pink Floyd) but for most bands that have released an album or two that have come to be considered as ‘classics’ it’s rare, if the volume is turned up and prejudices are put to one side, that the true quality of the work doesn’t begin to shine on through.

I have to thank Graham for enlightening me to The Smiths in general and their first album in particular. As a teenager desperate to avoid the cliques in the sixth form common room, I dismissed The Smiths as mopey and dull and way too affected – just like my ‘friends’ who listened to them. When my tastes in music began to broaden at university I listened to the eponymous first album a couple of times but I didn’t really want to like it and was almost relieved to find it mopey, dull and too affected. Although only removed by a few years, the ‘thin trebly jangle pop’ of The Smiths seemed a million miles away from the thrillingly visceral music I was exploring at the time – MBV, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Dino Jr etc and I was happy to hand back the cassette I had borrowed and say ‘thanks, but no thanks’.

But, as is so often the case, fast forward 20 years, let much water pass under the bridge and listen again, carefully and with an open mind and, sure it is still as trebly, jangly and affected as ever but there is also so much to enjoy here – Morrisey’s singing and lyrics are quite astonishing, Marr’s guitar work accomplished and innovative and the rhythm section is surely one of the most underappreciated bass and drum pairings in popular music.

I have subsequently dug out my CD of the Queen is Dead that has barely been listened to since I picked it up in a sale 10 years ago and it’s just great…as it’s supposed to be…and now I’ve allowed myself to like it, it’s as though my music collection has just gained another album! Silly me.

Nick listened: The Smiths aren’t my band, the way that some other bands are. I feel no sense of ownership or kinship or belonging to their cult, particularly. I’m too young to have caught them in their (brief, prolific) heyday, and by the time I was a teenager exploring music they were a relic, something my older brother had listened to and that, thus, I would ignore, because who wants to follow the path already trodden? So I consigned them to a mental dustbin, labelled “miserablist parody”, and carried on with other music.

I eventually bought The Queen Is Dead when I was at university, treated it almost like a coursework assignment, and, like Adorno or Debord or Barthes, admired it and absorbed its ideas and structures, but never considered that I could fall in love with it. I only explored Meat Is Murder beyond that, because the old CD version had “How Soon Is Now?” on it, which I really liked, but I didn’t really bother absorbing the rest of the record.

Until about 18 months ago when the remastered box set, which collects all four studio albums and the four early compilations together, was ludicrously cheap – like £25. So other than the big singles and such, I only really heard The Smiths outside of The Queen Is Dead very recently. My feelings for them haven’t changed much, though; I still admire them more than care for them, as much as I may enjoy the way Morrissey writes lyrics and twists melodies and song structures over Marr & co’s instrumental backing as if he’d never heard a song by another rock band before. I think, from “This Charming Man” and all the daffodil-waving and fey-ness, that I’d expected their debut album to be limp, brief, and easily blown away in a gust of wind, but actually, like The Queen Is Dead, it’s surprisingly muscular and powerful beneath the surface. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Buffalo Tom were the grunge era’s nearly men; seemingly always on the verge of breaking through into the big time but destined to be forever looking on from the sidelines (like the everymen they so blatantly were) whilst the demi-gods – Cobain, Vedder, Dando, Corgan – strutted their charismatic stuff through the pages of NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and Spin and on to the day glow X-factor hit machine of its time that was MTV. I love the band photo of Buffalo Tom on the back of Let Me Come Over – Bill, Chris and the eponymous Tom sat around an anonymous table in some anonymous diner, looking slightly apprehensive yet vaguely excited like three young Dads about to go and see their children in their first Xmas panto. It’s a brilliantly mundane photo of a brilliantly ordinary band (that’s not meant to sound pejorative at all) and it wholeheartedly captures the reason why I like them so much…and why they could never mix it with the big boys – they were just three great blokes singing great songs without an iota of pretense or showmanship.

And that’s why, of all the records I immersed myself in the Spring of 1992 (one of the key turning points in my life) this is the one with the greatest power to evoke personal (rather than scene based) nostalgia. You see, when I listen to Nevermind or Blue Lines or Slanted & Enchanted all records that, in their own way, broke a mould and set a new agenda, and all records that I love or have loved, I do get a sense of nostalgia but they don’t take me back to myself, sat in my bedroom in my parents’ house counting the days before I would leave to go on my trip of a lifetime to Australia. No. I am reminded of Grunge and Trip-Hop and Lo-Fi and the music scene in general at the start of the 90s. These records are so connected to what came next, so steeped in the scene they spawned that, for me, the memories they evoke are forever blurred, tarnished even, so that I can’t even tell whether those memories are true or illusionary. But seeing as it was one of the most exciting times of my life, full to overflowing with the thrill of anticipation, it’s great to head back to those feelings every now and again…and that’s where Let Me Come Over comes in.

Buffalo Tom existed in a vacuum really. They had no angle, no ‘USP’ as Nick puts it. They just wrote really good songs…well, I liked them anyway! Admittedly some of their work was patchy and, for me, their five albums go: good, not so good, great, not so good, good. But I may be wrong as I haven’t listened to albums 1, 2 or 4 for some time now (and there are a few other albums but I don’t know them). But I am pretty sure that album number 3, Let Me Come Over, is the one where the stars aligned and there can be but a few albums of straight ahead US alterna-rock with a hint of grunginess that set the bar so consistently high through 12 tracks. There are no weak links here, no filler, no mis-steps and revisiting Let Me Come Over is like spending time with a long-lost, very dear and completely trustworthy friend. There’s no danger, no unpredictable mood swings or ghosts in the closet, just warmth, pathos and 12 sweet melodies – from the noisy opener of Staple to the noisier closer Saving Grace, through moments of calm (Frozen Lake), poignancy (Mineral, Porchlight) to anthemic sing-alongs like Taillights Fade and the unimpeachable Larry – that make me feel good about life. And what’s wrong with that?

Rob listened: I loved Buffalo Tom and I fully endorse Tom’s assessment of their place just below and to the right of the pantheon. Although a couple of their songs, ‘Sunflower Suit’ and ‘Crawl’, had as much impact one me and held the same addictive pull on me as anything Nirvana or Pixies ever released, it seems broadly fine for them to stand as workmen. The work they did was great and they made me very happy by doing it. ‘Birdbrain’ probably has more resonance for me, soundtracking the Summer between my first and second year at university, but it was great to hear ‘Let Me Come Over’ again after so many years. It may be off in the distance now, but its taillights have yet to completely fade.

Nick listened: My brother, who’s about the same age as Rob and Tom, professes to only like 3-minute-power-punk-pop. I have noticed that he has a Buffalo Tom album or albums on his shelves. Which is not surprising. Despite being aware of them for ever, seemingly, I’ve never actually listened to them knowingly. As such, I’ve got none of the attachment to them that Rob, Tom, and presumably my brother might do. This was very pleasantly workmanlike, as it were, but I definitely got the sense that it lacked that certain je ne sais quoi or creativity or charisma or insanity that the likes of Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins had which made them explode out of the scenes from which they emerged. But Buffalo Tom don’t seem to be all that bothered about not exploding, which is fair enough.

Graham listened: Another band I always knew were there and deserved investigation, but never got around to it. I thought this was really great and after borrowing the album and listening to some others, I would agree it sounds their best. Strangely it sounds as if the ‘…Tom’s did it for Tom, in the same ways the Screaming Trees, did it for me around the same time. As no-one is  still reading this far down a review, its probably safe to reveal I currently don’t, and have never have owned, Nevermind. Phew, think I got away with it!

Subconsciously pandering once again to the boss’ surname, I found myself selecting another ‘Mitchell’ record to follow on from round 24’s ‘Mitchell record of the Anais variety’. Funnily enough the two records are pretty happy bedfellows as they both work as song cycles that are played out in the rural hinterland (in Anais’ case ‘Wilderland’) of the USA. And both give the impression of being laboured over, refined and revised coming as close as can be to realising the vision of the artist who made them. Lyrically rich and musically sumptuous, these two records stand out amongst those I have brought to Record Club of being works of great artistic accomplishment and skill and what they lack in spontaneity and raw edge they gain in depth – they are records that reward repeated listens and close attention. Rob must be a proud Mitchell indeed; surely it’s time the male members (unfortunate terminology admittedly) of the clan stepped up to the plate!

Of all the Joni albums I own (Blue through to Hejira), this one has always been the one I have been predisposed to, the one I regularly pull off the shelf, the one I am intrigued by. It’s not an easy listen; the songs are long and wordy and lack conventional melody; Joni’s voice throughout is exquisite but conversational in style and so the hooks that exist (and they do exist) are to be found elsewhere. Perhaps in the words she sings – current faves: ‘He sees cars as sets of waves’, ‘While the boarders were snoring under crisp white sheets of curfew’, ‘As snow gathers like bolts of lace waltzing on a ballroom girl’, ‘I dreamed of 747s over geometric farms’. To my untrained ears, these sound like the closest thing in my record collection to being poems set to music.

If the words don’t do it for you, perhaps the bass will as it is just about the only instrument on the entire album providing variety within the songs. And the playing is wonderful throughout, whether by Jaco Pastorius or Max Bennett, the bass draws you in and keeps you guessing right from the word go – in fact I reckon I could happily listen to the bass on album opener Coyote with no accompaniment on an infinite loop.

Having recently had a bit of a breakthrough with Hejira’s forebear, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, it has become ever clearer that the differences between the two albums is incredible. THOSL’s songs are the exact opposite of Hejira’s; complex structures that writhe out of of your grasp just as you think you’re getting to grips with them. Hejira is a much more subtle listen – it requires patience and a willingness to get to know it, not so that it no longer jars (as with THOSL) but so that those miniscule variations in arrangements and motifs can be recognised and enjoyed and if you ever worry that you’re going to have got them all worked out and have nothing left to unearth (you won’t!) you can always just kick back and spend an hour with one of the finest wordsmiths modern popular music has yet produced.

Nick listened: I’ve only ever listened to Blue by Joni, even though she’s an artist who seems to get name-checked by a huge amount of musicians I love (Tom began his intro on the night by saying how much Patrick Wolf loves this album). I’m aware that some of her later work is very jazz-influenced/derived, and have been curious to investigate The Hissing of Summer Lawns for a while. Hejira wasn’t really on my radar though, and on one listen wasn’t quite jazzy in the way I’d have liked – though from what Tom said I suspect Hissing… might be. It was still lovely though, and the lyrics are so dense and literary (note: I’m not putting ‘literary’ or ‘poetic’ lyrics on any higher artistic level than wordless guide vocals) that they’d take far more attention (and time) to unpack than a DRC session can facilitate. Awesome bass playing. A lovely and compelling sound.

Rob Listened: I’ve never knowingly listened to a Joni Mitchell album. I carried some ill-formed impression of what they’re like – drippy James Taylor-esque acoustic cooing – which i’m sure formed back when my musical planet was cooling from the molten heat of post-punk, pre-rave Manchester. It doesn’t help that her heyday sits squarely in my mid-70s blind spot.

Hejira was great. Fluid of motion, pure of sound. It fleetingly recalled lots of stuff I really did fall in love with and to, but remained resolutely other. I loved its flowing construction, clearly very deliberate, but seemingly unfolding casually, constantly, like a dreamy meander through the wilderness.

I’ve never knowingly listened to a James Taylor album.