Sunday, 27 November 2011
70 Actually - Pet Shop Boys
Purchased : 17 October 1987
Tracks : One More Chance / What Have I Done To Deserve This ? / Shopping / Rent / Hit Music / It Couldn't Happen Here / It's A Sin / I Want To Wake Up / Heart / King's Cross
This one was purchased on a Saturday morning trip into Manchester.
There are some critics aforementioned on this blog for whom the Pet Shop Boys can do wrong. I'm not one of them ; I like the band rather than love them. I'm not completely sure of the reason for that reservation. Certainly they were the best British band of the post-Smiths eighties but that's damning with faint praise. I was beginning to tire of synth-pop around this time ( and forthcoming posts will reveal where that ennui led me ) but that's not the whole story. Neil Tennant's voice may be relevant, the limiting factor that often prevents their music soaring to its full potential. I also don't love them as people. I see Tennant as the embodiment of Pete Wylie's ideal of the anti-rock star, the role he didn't have the chops to assume. Tennant's arrogant disdain for U2 or The Police was straight out of the Wylie manual and the consciousness of "canon" that led him to strenuously deny any influence by the likes of Al Stewart or Sparks was alienating. And Chris Lowe is quite possibly the most charmless man in music.
But for all that they had a good run of singles under their belt which made this album a desirable purchase. Unlike the previous entry this LP doesn't get off to a good start. "One More Chance" is a re-recording of the B-side of the original "West End Girls" single from 1984 co-written with disco producer Bobby Orlando. It's reappearance here after not being included on the debut LP "Please" immediately suggests a shortage of material. The song itself is very slight with Tennant muttering in his usual deadpan fashion about a late night urban stroll in the manner of Flash and the Pan's Walking In The Rain ; doubtless Tennant would deny that connection but the title is actually referenced in the lyrics. The music is a generic Hi-NRG rhythm track with some Lovin Spoonful - style urban sound effects and there's no bridge to the very boring chorus at all.
Next is "What Have I Done To Deserve This ? " the well-trailed collaboration with Dusty Springfield which some regard as a classic but I think is one of their weaker singles. Co-written with American songwriter Allee Wills and conceived as a sort of Don't You Want Me mini-soap where a man ends up working for his ex-lover, it doesn't work for me. The synthesised brass refrain in the intro is promising but the song itself is over-complex with neither a clear separation of the actors' voices or enough melody to make the effort of unpicking it worthwhile. Nor is the duetting successful; Tennant sounds more bored than usual while Springfield sounds strangely muffled. Whether that was necessary to disguise the decline in the 48-year old's voice or to prevent her overpowering Tennant it only heightens the sense of anti-climax that hangs around the whole thing.
Matters then improve with "Shopping", the most overt of several attempts on this LP to capture the zeitgeist of 1987 and the implications of Thatcher's third election triumph. Lyrically the song was inspired by the sell-offs of the nationalised industries and share trading generally while musically the influence is definitely Kraftwerk particularly The Robots. The analysis isn't particularly deep but Tennant nails the feeling of progressive despair on the line - "I heard it in the House of Commons, everything's for sale ". Of course the world it describes experienced an abrupt convulsion just two days after I bought the LP and it's not the only prescient song here.
"Rent" is another minor-key song about the times but much more subtle. Here we have a relationship based on financial security with Tennant singing from the point of view of the "kept" person so his wheedling tones are absolutely perfect. The music is again heavily indebted to Kraftwerk with Andy Richards's Fairlight trumpet adding appropriate chilliness particularly if you interpret the title to mean this is a young boy groomed for the pleasure of a paedophile. Shockingly this was by far the smallest hit of the four singles, turning tail at number 8 after only two weeks in the chart. Clearly some of their audience didn't want to know about their darker side.
"Hit Music" relies on a facsimile of the Peter Gunn riff for its propulsion and on the surface seems relatively slight but there are fatalistic references to AIDS in the verses - "Live and die it's all that we know, I need a friend at the journey's end" emphasised by brief but telling Fairlight string interventions and Tennant's double-tracked vocal. I'm not sure the chilled-out coda really adds anything to the track.
"It Couldn't Happen Here " is another touted collaboration this time with Ennio Morricone and yet again the results are disappointing ; if nothing else this LP proved that Tennant and Lowe were best, ahem. left to their own devices. The former was very proud of the song describing it in Smash Hits as "the highlight of the album" but he's well wrong there. Apparently an attack on complacency the lyric is too oblique and personal to make much sense to an outsider and musically it's a bit of a dirge, the Fairlight on the chorus conjuring up not so much a spaghetti western as a Hovis commercial.
"It's A Sin" follows next , their second number one from earlier in the year. The guys pull out all the stops here with thunder cracks for emphasis and a Latin recitation of the Act of Confession on Tennant's autobiographical tale of Catholic guilt ; it's significant that in the video Tennant is a passionate participant rather than his usual laconic observer. It's triumph was sullied by Jonathan King who, following his pathological anti-patriotic urge to undermine any British success story , accused them of plaigiarising Cat Stevens' Wild World in his column for The Sun. Although the duo sued and won the similarity in the main melody line is undeniable and takes the gloss off a very good song.
"I Want To Wake Up" is a fairly routine Fairlight chugger ( although Adamski was obviously listening to some of the bleeping noises ) with Tennant expressing his ambivalence about love. It's never a good idea to resort to namechecking other songs (here , Tainted Love and Love Is Strange ) to make your point and it's not one of their better efforts.
"Heart" became their fourth and to date final number one in March 1988 , a rare triumph for a fourth single release from an album. It's a better attempt at a simple love song and was originally intended for Hazell Dean. The earworm is that staccato synth hook ; otherwise the backing track is a bit too close to Stock, Aitken and Waterman for comfort. Tennant sings it so sweetly he could almost be Green Gartside.
I'm always inclined to mark up an album which saves its best song until last and "King's Cross" is probably my favourite PSB track of all. It's a lament for the runaways picked up at the titular station and exploited , the same nightmare world depicted in the third and best of the Prime Suspect series. The meaning of the line "Dead and wounded on either side / You know it's only a matter of time" is only too clear. There are no walloping dancebeats here just a discreetly buzzing bass line to move things along while the choral synths weep for the doomed youngsters and trains go by packed with commuters ignoring what's going on right before their eyes. A couple of months later the King's Cross fire took place and The Sun pressurised them to release it as a charity single. Given that the same newspaper had given King a platform for his bile and had just been running a very nasty smear campaign against Elton John it's not surprising that their suggestion was ignored.
So it's a pretty good album that represents the group at their commercial peak before their ubiquity became too exhausting for a mass audience to keep pace with and enough fell off to prevent them having any more number one singles ( ther only number one LP came in 1993 and sold far less than this one which peaked at 2 ) .
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
69 Wonderful Life - Black
Purchased : 8th October 1987
Tracks : Wonderful Life / Everything's Coming Up Roses / Sometimes For The Asking / Finder / Paradise / Sixteens / I'm Not Afraid / I Just Grew Tired / Blue / Ravel In The Rain / Just Making Memories / Sweetest Smile
This was purchased from Lewis's in Manchester having failed to find it at a discounted price in any of the more obvious record stores despite it being in the charts at the time. That didn't improve my mood ; after a week at Liverpool I needed cheering up ( although in hindsight I had picked up a good friend ) . I got the cassette version because it had two extra tracks.
Black had featured on the night time shows for most of the eighties but seemed just another Liverpudlian indie outfit in thrall to Bowie and Scott Walker until the single "Wonderful Life" came out in the latter half of 1986 and tickled the lower end of the charts. This got Black ( now revealed as essentially a nom de plume for singer-songwriter Colin Vearnacombe ) a deal with A & M and chart success ensued the following year.
The album starts brilliantly with the re-recorded version of "Wonderful Life" . From the opening with the main melody line picked out on a synth you're hooked. The song floats over a lush bed of synthesised Carribbean steel drums and Sade-esque percussion with Vearnacombe's lugubrious ( and not entirely in key ) vocals and bitter-sweet lyrics rubbing against the gorgeous melody and payoff line. It's up there with anything Morrissey's written about failing to share in the happiness of others around one. By the time of this album's release it had acquired a new political context in the wake of Thatcher's third election victory , the zenith of yuppiedom - "you know it seems unfair there's magic everywhere". It would be interesting to know how many times this song got played at dinner parties in the Docklands. Since then of course it's been used in numerous advertising campaigns keeping Vearnacombe off the breadline and reminding us of one of the very few British pop classics the late eighties produced.
The next track is nearly as good.. "Everything's Coming Up Roses" was actually the first Black single on A & M but didn't chart , radio programmers steering clear of the possible political connotations of the title with a General Election looming. The only real rock song on the album with stabbing guitar licks and Jimmy Sangster's buzzing bassline, it's thematically similar to "Life" with Vearnacombe ruefully admitting to self-deception - " there's a kind of magic to be had from your lies". The song construction is excellent with a rising swell to the chorus where Vearnacombe is ably abetted by The Creamy Whirls duo and an unexpected lengthy guitar solo before the final chorus. Definitely one that got away.
Unfortunately the LP can't maintain that standard. Sylvia Patterson in Smash Hits nailed it; much of the album " is spiky, sparse, void of a nice tune and ruffled by flimsily demented backing singers". "Sometimes For The Asking" ( actually one of her exceptions along with the preceding tracks) begins well with an utterly misleading descending guitar figure before settling into an Everybody Wants To Rule The World loping groove which goes nowhere. The first " chorus" goes by unnoticed and Vearnacombe's lyrics are vague and vacuous, faults exacerbated by a typically 80s over-production, crashing piano chords from the Anne Dudley manual, gospel-y backing vocals, a mini sax break and some fretless bass wobbling before the pointlessly sudden ending.
"Finder" again promises much with its pleasant keyboard intro but the main part of the song is set to a lumpy, dated electrodance rhythm and Vearnacombe never sounds comfortable in the setting. He gets off one or two good lines about relationship games but the chorus is really contrived with its awkward " finder/ find her" rhyme and he's all too obviously relying on the girls to carry the melody.
"Paradise" , a minor hit in early 1988, at least places him in a sympathetic context with a light jazzy backdrop that could have been lifted from any of Bryan Ferry's post-Avalon solo albums. Unfortunately Vearnacombe can't hold a tune like Bryan and warbles off key throughout the song. The Creamy Whirls try hard but can't quite rescue the optimistic chorus with his wordless wail accompanying them.
The side concludes with one of the cassette-only tracks, the ugly, tuneless "Sixteens" which plods along on a synth rhythm track borrowed from Donna Summer's State Of Independence with Vearnacombe manifestly failing to inject any sex into the vaguely suggestive lyric. Abrasive guitar blasts only compound the misery ; those lucky vinyl-buyers weren't missing anything here.
Side Two opens with "I'm Not Afraid" the disastrous choice for a follow-up single to "Wonderful Life" . It didn't even make the Top 75 proving that Vearnacombe had failed to seal the deal with the public despite consecutive top tenners. It isn't difficult to pick out reasons for the catastrophe. Instead of another lush romantic ballad his audience were presented with brittle white funk and Vearnacombe , far too high in the mix, wailing tunelessly about the experience of the Southern bluesman ( including the mysterious second appearance of the word "pats" in his repertoire ). The chorus is a graceless bludgeoning chant of the title . The jazz trumpet solo is nifty but otherwise the song stands as one of the great commercial mis-steps of the decade.
" I Just Grew Tired " isn't as painful but not very interesting either. The lyric ventures into Morrissey territory with hints at the allure of suicide - "And dying's easy ? I think I'll try it out today" - but the woozy backing track and Vearnacombe's ventures into falsetto bring to mind Paul Young's Wherever I Lay My Hat. In fact there's one bit of scat which seems like a direct lift from that 1983 hit. The suspicion arises that some of these songs have been over-gestated given Black's protracted journey towards an album-financing deal.
"Blue" begins promisingly with an inventive and naggingly insistent xylophone riff and the first couple of lines approximate the prowling menace of Talk Talk's It's You but the chorus is drearily anti-climactic and the lyrics deteriorate into vague cliches of defiance - "hold back the night, keep me up from the fire". The final verse throws in Antmusic gutteral exclamations and then mariachi trumpets to try and hide the evaporation of the song but it's a lost cause.
"Ravel In The Rain" is the other extra track and was the B-side to "Wonderful Life". It's slow, sparse and jazzy recounting a dream about meeting the French composer in New Orleans. It sounds like a David Sylvian track with an inferior vocal and isn't my cup of tea but it has aged better than some of the other tracks.
"Just Making Memories" is the pick of the non-singles. It has some of the drive of ",,,Roses" and a reasonable tune but the lyric is unfocussed and clumsy. The chorus is ordinary notable only for the odd similarity of the Creamy Whirls' response line to the one in the third verse of ELO's Livin' Thing.
That just leaves his other, near-eclipsed, Top 10 hit "Sweetest Smile" . A highly effective mood piece rather than a great song , Vearnacombe's lugubrious vocal for once works with the music and the backing vocalists don't need to be so intrusive. The soft pulse of the stand-up bass , insinuating clarinet and lush synth washes again recall Bryan Ferry but Vearnacombe makes it his own particularly with that famously awful line about melting "the pats in the butter dish".
And then, in more than one way, he's gone. After this disappointment Black don't reappear in this tale. I've never felt inclined to investigate his subsequent albums for A & M and not many others did either. Without radio support for the singles ( Janice Long's departure from Radio One was a bg blow) which thus fell short of the Top 40, they charted in low positions then disappeared. Perhaps looking like the product of an unholy union between Rick Astley and Billy Bragg didn't help his cause either. By 1993 he was recording on his own label. Kept afloat by perennial royalties from "Wonderful Life" he remains an active recording artist but well outside the mainstream. Perhaps he deserved better, two great songs is two more than contemporaries like Climie Fisher and Transvision Vamp managed so we'll part on good terms.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
68 Music For The Masses - Depeche Mode
Purchased : 3rd October 1987
Tracks : Never Let Me Down Again / The Things You Said / Strangelove / Sacred / Little 15 / Behind The Wheel / I Want You Now / To Have And To Hold / Nothing / Pimpf
This was bought on a Saturday, the last weekend before starting the 4-month Graduate Conversion Course required before beginning my accounting studies proper. I wasn't looking forward to it to say the least. Not only was it going to be intense , covering subjects that (with the partial exception of Law) I had no real interest in but it would entail a wearying daily commute to Liverpool, not my favourite city by any means. I did have the option of staying there during the week but that was even less appealing. So I had something of a condemned man feeling that weekend and was hoping the 'Mode would cheer me up.
This was Depeche Mode's sixth album and a pivotal one in their career, moving them into a different league in terms of both sales and critical respect. However I agree with Tom Ewing's view that this was when their output started to decline. The album contains probably their greatest single but also some seriously substandard material particularly on the second side.
It begins brilliantly with their masterpiece "Never Let Me Down Again" ( which rang some commercial alarm bells by peaking at 21 as a single ) . The rumbling groove and stark piano owe something to Talk Talk's Life's What You Make It but this is the superior song. It's magnificent in its ambiguity with Dave Gahan singing of a euphoric journey - "never want to come down never want to put my feet back down on the ground " - and the music suggesting it's a one-way ticket to somewhere very nasty. Gore throws some rock guitar into the mix to give the menace added muscle and the whole thing builds to a terrific climax with Gore singing an alternative chorus behind Gahan's despairing pleas and Alan Wilder's Gothic keyboard chords.
There's an immediate comedown with the muted "The Things You Said" a lament for betrayal sung plaintively by Gore over a soft synth pulse with no percussion until the final third of the song. There's a typically DM simple keyboard melody line for a chorus but the second melody line is a bit too close to OMD's Almost for comfort.
A re-recorded version of "Strangelove" , the lead single comes next. A slower, sparser take tied to a remorseless backbeat it's a good illustration of the band's desire to move away from instantly accessible pop . The song remains a fairly routine Gore confession of dark sexual intent, a theme pursued to wearisome length on this LP.
"Sacred" equates Love and God beginning with some medieval chanting behind the synth drone. Gore's lyric avoids the gaucherie that marred some of his earlier romatic treatises but musically it's a bit too similar to "Stories Of Old" from two albums back and for the first time the band sound like they're treading water.
"Little 15" takes a step nearer the paedophilic cliff edge than "A Question Of Time" from the previous LP. This time Gore uses the second person ( possibly at Gahan's insistence ) to deflect the inference. Whatever the intent it does work quite well as a piece of sinister chamber-pop with Philip Glass influences and nearly made the charts as an import single the following year.
Side Two begins with third single "Behind The Wheel" which nods to current dance trends with its relentless house beat. The song, jointly sung by Gahan and Gore is about abject surrender - "Do what you want , I'm going cheap" - to another "little girl". Unfortunately it has the most boring melody on the album, no chorus and ironically, given the driving metaphor doesn't really go anywhere.
"I Want You Now" is better making good use of looped vocal noises (including the urgh-ahh effect suggestive of bonking also used that year on Fleetwood Mac's Big Love ) to create a suitably Gothic frame for Gore's song of wanton lust. Gore takes the lead vocal on this slow and solemn tune.
It ends with a spoken passage (in German I think) which segues straight into "To Have And To Hold" an industrial grind again without much of a tune and Gahan going as low as he can to deliver another self-abasing lyric. With its protracted intro it seems to end before it's really got going.
And then they pull out another corker, "Nothing" , probably the most utterly nihilistic track in my collection. A down and dirty basline kicks it off before Gahan's suitably enervated vocal comes in ; his drawled delivery of the word "Life" at the beginning of the second verse is terrifying . He rouses himself for the pounding chorus ( a trick they've used before on "People Are People" and "New Dress" but it works again here) which actually compounds the misery by acknowledging there's nothing new to say about the human condition. For a band that scored its first hit with the surging optimism of "New Life" this is astounding and they haven't come up with anything better since.
The album closes with the Wagnerian instrumental "Pimpf" ( a German word meaning young acolyte) based around Alan Wilder's circular piano riff which runs throughout the song. It builds well enough with the entrance of gotterdammerung chants and church bells but they don't quite pull it off.
As hinted at earlier this disappointingly patchy album proved to be a major turning point in their fortunes. Although it seemed to herald commercial decline in the UK with only one single breaching the Top 20 and the album quickly departing the charts it maintained their upward momentum in Europe and crucially the USA where their 1988 tour crowned their adoption by the nascent alt.rock culture. It also helped that Detroit's hip house DJs started naming them as a major influence. Their next LP of new material was three years later and benefitted from the break.
Tracks : Never Let Me Down Again / The Things You Said / Strangelove / Sacred / Little 15 / Behind The Wheel / I Want You Now / To Have And To Hold / Nothing / Pimpf
This was bought on a Saturday, the last weekend before starting the 4-month Graduate Conversion Course required before beginning my accounting studies proper. I wasn't looking forward to it to say the least. Not only was it going to be intense , covering subjects that (with the partial exception of Law) I had no real interest in but it would entail a wearying daily commute to Liverpool, not my favourite city by any means. I did have the option of staying there during the week but that was even less appealing. So I had something of a condemned man feeling that weekend and was hoping the 'Mode would cheer me up.
This was Depeche Mode's sixth album and a pivotal one in their career, moving them into a different league in terms of both sales and critical respect. However I agree with Tom Ewing's view that this was when their output started to decline. The album contains probably their greatest single but also some seriously substandard material particularly on the second side.
It begins brilliantly with their masterpiece "Never Let Me Down Again" ( which rang some commercial alarm bells by peaking at 21 as a single ) . The rumbling groove and stark piano owe something to Talk Talk's Life's What You Make It but this is the superior song. It's magnificent in its ambiguity with Dave Gahan singing of a euphoric journey - "never want to come down never want to put my feet back down on the ground " - and the music suggesting it's a one-way ticket to somewhere very nasty. Gore throws some rock guitar into the mix to give the menace added muscle and the whole thing builds to a terrific climax with Gore singing an alternative chorus behind Gahan's despairing pleas and Alan Wilder's Gothic keyboard chords.
There's an immediate comedown with the muted "The Things You Said" a lament for betrayal sung plaintively by Gore over a soft synth pulse with no percussion until the final third of the song. There's a typically DM simple keyboard melody line for a chorus but the second melody line is a bit too close to OMD's Almost for comfort.
A re-recorded version of "Strangelove" , the lead single comes next. A slower, sparser take tied to a remorseless backbeat it's a good illustration of the band's desire to move away from instantly accessible pop . The song remains a fairly routine Gore confession of dark sexual intent, a theme pursued to wearisome length on this LP.
"Sacred" equates Love and God beginning with some medieval chanting behind the synth drone. Gore's lyric avoids the gaucherie that marred some of his earlier romatic treatises but musically it's a bit too similar to "Stories Of Old" from two albums back and for the first time the band sound like they're treading water.
"Little 15" takes a step nearer the paedophilic cliff edge than "A Question Of Time" from the previous LP. This time Gore uses the second person ( possibly at Gahan's insistence ) to deflect the inference. Whatever the intent it does work quite well as a piece of sinister chamber-pop with Philip Glass influences and nearly made the charts as an import single the following year.
Side Two begins with third single "Behind The Wheel" which nods to current dance trends with its relentless house beat. The song, jointly sung by Gahan and Gore is about abject surrender - "Do what you want , I'm going cheap" - to another "little girl". Unfortunately it has the most boring melody on the album, no chorus and ironically, given the driving metaphor doesn't really go anywhere.
"I Want You Now" is better making good use of looped vocal noises (including the urgh-ahh effect suggestive of bonking also used that year on Fleetwood Mac's Big Love ) to create a suitably Gothic frame for Gore's song of wanton lust. Gore takes the lead vocal on this slow and solemn tune.
It ends with a spoken passage (in German I think) which segues straight into "To Have And To Hold" an industrial grind again without much of a tune and Gahan going as low as he can to deliver another self-abasing lyric. With its protracted intro it seems to end before it's really got going.
And then they pull out another corker, "Nothing" , probably the most utterly nihilistic track in my collection. A down and dirty basline kicks it off before Gahan's suitably enervated vocal comes in ; his drawled delivery of the word "Life" at the beginning of the second verse is terrifying . He rouses himself for the pounding chorus ( a trick they've used before on "People Are People" and "New Dress" but it works again here) which actually compounds the misery by acknowledging there's nothing new to say about the human condition. For a band that scored its first hit with the surging optimism of "New Life" this is astounding and they haven't come up with anything better since.
The album closes with the Wagnerian instrumental "Pimpf" ( a German word meaning young acolyte) based around Alan Wilder's circular piano riff which runs throughout the song. It builds well enough with the entrance of gotterdammerung chants and church bells but they don't quite pull it off.
As hinted at earlier this disappointingly patchy album proved to be a major turning point in their fortunes. Although it seemed to herald commercial decline in the UK with only one single breaching the Top 20 and the album quickly departing the charts it maintained their upward momentum in Europe and crucially the USA where their 1988 tour crowned their adoption by the nascent alt.rock culture. It also helped that Detroit's hip house DJs started naming them as a major influence. Their next LP of new material was three years later and benefitted from the break.
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