Author: grahampk

The  choices were limited in my collection with the countries remaining, however an impromptu rendition of Catatonia’s Road Rage by a fellow member at the weekend inspired me to reconsider Wales.

I began my introduction to the album with a query over whether I would be playing this to, or inflicting it upon, fellow members. The album cover and track titles indicate that it may not be a “lightweight”, but is it empty pomposity?

Anyway, I admit to being confused about the Manic’s at their beginning, not knowing whether they were glam/punk/post-punk/hard rock. Certainly their apparent self-importance irritated many in the press and kept me from taking them too seriously. However the singles from the first 2 albums and the more favourable reviews of this album caught my attention and I invested.

Leaving aside a couple of the more radio friendly tracks (Yes, Faster – and even they remain interesting) this is a dark experience, with styles being explored which I never expected from a band who while political, seemed to me to be on the road to “rockin-out”.

It takes a good few listens to fully set aside some of the preconceptions expected from the first 2 albums but it’s a worthwhile experience. The chaos of Richey Edward’s life and health are well documented and the lyrics he contributes reflect this. There are delicate moments where you might least expect (listen to 4st 7lbs).

What makes this album more interesting to me is the leap from here to the more educated anthemic sound of Everything Must Go. There are some hints on this record with some guitar riffs and solos that briefly begin to head in that direction. In fact if some of the tracks would be enhanced by less solo twiddling and more development of the sound-scapes (is that a word?) that were created. Dark, moody, gritty and aggressive are the best words I can find to describe the feel of the album and anything more sophisticated in descriptive terms would seem superfluous. I can only point to influences (maybe darker moments of the Skids/Clash/Joy Division from my collection) and can’t really identify a “this sounds like”, from the same time period.

I’m not sure how much “welshness” is communicated by this album as anorexia, fascism, Marxism, class war, ethnic cleansing etc., etc….. seemed to transcend national borders the last time I checked. A quick check on the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Bible_(album), does confirm my suspicions that the performance of Faster on TOTP (Top of the Pops for young-uns) did lead to a record number of viewer complaints as a result of Bradfield’s black balaclava. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hMqpR9AogI . Surely that alone deserves the album being given an open minded listen?

Rob listened: I’m afraid an open-minded listen wasn’t possible for me. I spent much of the length of this record trying, and largely failing, to express my once lurid but now fading disdain for the Manic Street Preachers. I won’t try to crystallise it here as I couldn’t manage it in 50 minutes on the night. Suffice to say I hated their empty spray-paint posturing when they started out, I never liked any of their records, progressing from bland punk-u-like to bland anthem-rock, and I could never understand why so many people seemed to think they were worth spending time on, although as it happens, it seems like Nicky Wire is probably a nice chap to spend an evening down the pub with. But that’s the point of this Club. I know this is a well-regarded record and I would never have heard it had Graham not brought it along and had the good grace to explain why he liked it whilst I whined without focus. I’m glad he did. I still didn’t like it. I’ve been mentally boycotting them since the early 90s and my mind has been determinedly closed to them ever since.

Tom Listened: Unlike Rob I am pretty ambivalent about The Manics; having really disliked their early posturing and empty rhetoric, I slowly came round to them and on a trip to the French Alps with some of my students in 1996 I warmed enough to the powerful, if somewhat unsubtle, sloganeering of Everything Must Go that I purchased it on my return, listened to it a lot that Summer and have barely played it since. Interestingly for me, the bits of The Holy Bible I liked least were the bits that sounded most like A Design For Life…the straightforwardness of EMG may have contributed to its (relatively) huge success, but makes for a much less interesting record than The Holy Bible and it felt a shame that some of the songs on THB often seemed to lead into a disappointingly predictable chorus or middle eight just as they were developing into something really interesting. At times the album sounded not unlike some of Rob’s more ‘out there’ offerings, I just wish the Manics had had the bottle to produce the consistently radical record that The Holy Bible so frequently suggests was there for the taking.

Nick listened: I’m also pretty ambivalent regarding the Manics; many of my friends adored them when I was 14/15/16, which is around the time of this album’s release and Richey’s subsequent vanishing, so I heard The Holy Bible, and was eulogised to about its intensity, trauma, and really deep and meaningful lyrics, man, at great length. And I quite liked it; not enough to ever buy it or invest in the philosophy and aesthetic offered up by its creators, but enough to think of Yes and Faster as great songs (if not quite as good, perhaps, as the sublime Motorcycle Emptiness and La Tristessa Durerra from their previous records), and the album as being a worthy whole. Their subsequent career has held little or no interest for me, and, as I said on the night, I think this is largely down to James Dean Bradfield’s identikit rock guitarist style and rock vocalist voice – songs on THB threaten to go down fascinating, dark alleys only to suddenly u-turn into brief foot-on-the-monitor moments of stadium rock celebration. It’s a really interesting trick, but not one that holds all that much appeal for me – it’s almost like the opposite manoeuvre to that pulled by The Boo Radleys or Super Furry Animals, who threaten cheesey pop gratification only to go weird on you at the last minute. Still, I’ve not heard this in probably 15 years, and it was a worthwhile revisit.

Will keep it brief as it is so late as a result of a little technical difficulty and a lot of laziness!

Initiation ceremony over, I humbly unveiled my first offerings to veteran members. Having been drawn to the Bunnymen by the successful singles from their 3rd album, “Porcupine”, I invested in “Ocean Rain”.

At the time it received many plays, though I’m not sure it was truly appreciated until many years later. Compared to the offerings from similar bands on the verge of “big time”, this was not what I was expecting.

As for the band’s own claims at the time that it was the “greatest album ever”, this probably did more to lead to the album not being given the full credit it deserved. However, aside from a few “Doorsish” departures on “Thorn of Crowns” and “Yo-Yo Man”, it still sounds fresh, interesting and highly original to me. A combination of “pop”, drama and lush playing and lyrics fills the majority of the album. “My ship’s a sail, can you hear its tender frame, screaming from beneath the waves?”, being a personal favourite from “Seven Seas”.

The album is again being toured in its entirety some 27 years later, so maybe it is finally receiving a more rounded level of appreciation as Ian McCulloch’s witticisms mellow (very slowly) with age. On that note, my follow up track, some 26 years later, was “the idolness of Gods”, from 2011’s “The Fountain”.

This album was remarkably bright, breezy and “poppy” for a band in their early fifties, much to do with the production from John McLaughlin (see Busted, 911, Five etc!). Nestling at the end of the album was this track which harks back to earlier days. But with the title of the track you could imagine that “Mac the Mouth”, is sending a message out to young pretenders to his crown!

Enjoyed both Spoon and Arab Strap, and inclined to listen again to more of their output. Apologies to Tom, however Pere Ubu still leaves me a little cold. I tried hard to like them when the NME was telling me to back in the 80’s, but I’m yet to get on board.

Tom Listened:  Back in the day I railed against most of the music my peers were listening to often, admittedly, without giving the music a chance. At the time I was determined to dislike The Smiths, Bruce Springsteen, Prince and The Dead Kennedys simply on the grounds that they were commonly played on the 6th form Common Room stereo by OTHER people (Half-Man Half-Biscuit were the exception…EVERYONE liked them!). Sometimes disliking these bands took real effort as, despite myself, I found myself enjoying some of their songs (although, obviously, never admitting it to anyone else). However, I was always relieved that my dislike of U2 and Echo and the Bunnymen was never seriously tested. Even if they had produced the most amazing music I’d ever heard (‘the greatest album ever made’!?!), Bono and McCulloch’s huge egos and seemingly bottomless reserves of self-importance ensured that my resolve was never remotely tested. They were just so easy to dislike.

Perhaps this was my loss. New Year 2011. I put together a music quiz to bore/terrorise my friends with and whilst looking for suitable fodder from the Pitchfork 500 collection, I’ll be damned, The Killing Moon sounded incredible. Sharp and clear on modern, expensive equipment, melodic and timeless, it revealed itself to me at last for what it really was – a fine example of 80s pop, all the better, perhaps, for being freed from its context and distanced from its creator’s bleatings. So I was keen to hear Ocean Rain by the time Graham announced his choice to us.

The album, to me, hasn’t fared as well as The Killing Moon. I sensed that it was a grower and that it would take more than one listen to be able to judge it properly, but some of the tracks seemed on first listen to be a little dated and, unsurprisingly, pretentious. That said, I would certainly welcome the chance to get to know it better and see whether my middle aged self is able to see past what my teenage self couldn’t!

Nick listened: I know Ocean Rain well and like it a lot; I’ve been down in the Cornish cave where the sleeve photo was taken, holding a piece of string tethered to a rickety dinghy in that subterranean pool, the guitarist of a band perched, petrified, in the dinghy, camera pointed at him and being asked questions. Daft. So is the record; c-c-c-cumber, c-c-c-cauliflower, etc etc. It’s the daftness, allied with the grace and delicacy, that makes McCulloch’s rampant twatness stomach-able on this record, but not really on any others. Because whilst I like little bits and bobs of other Bunnymen records, the occasional song or two, none of them approach this; at times magisterial, grand, and ornery, but also aware of its own silliness.

The more modern single I didn’t like one bit, though, I’m afraid; it seemed the type of stodgy, staid, unimaginative post-Coldplay dadrock that I feared the Bunnymen would be making in 2009, with none of the sparkle, space, or strangeness of Ocean Rain.