Dickies - Dawn of the Dickies (1979)

I find it strange to think that I bought this, one of my all-time favourite albums, almost by accident. Pete had just discovered his new bestest band ever, probably Echo & the Bunnymen or something similarly floppy, and so he was selling his recently purchased Dawn of the Dickies. I wasn't really that much of a fan, but Nights in White Satin was okay and I figured I probably needed some representative Dickies material in my collection, and Pete only wanted three quid which would save having to pay more at some later date. I coughed up the money, took the album home, salivated over the blue vinyl, played it once or twice, and then dutifully added it to the collection between Devo and Fad Gadget. I only truly realised what I'd bought a couple of years later when I played it out of curiosity, having noticed that, excepting the singles, I couldn't remember what it sounded like.

I don't recall seeing the Dickies noted as anything special in any of the four million true history of punk things I've read, and they don't seem to be remembered as anything much more than having existed and briefly flogging a shitload of novelty records to people like me, or at least like Pete. Whenever Kenny Everett or some other late seventies comedian took the piss out of punk, ignoring the bright green comedy mohican and the hilarious safety pin through the head gag, it usually sounded like the Dickies - ninety miles an hour, whiny, and with a shitload of jumping around. In more earnest circles, their stock seemed forever undervalued through being American and having supposedly missed the point - at least according to Gene October - and, well - for all the implied chaos, those records seemed suspiciously well played.

The Dickies formed after a couple of them went to see the Damned on their first American tour - which makes one hell of a lot of sense when you think about it; and the rest of their crimes come down to having failed to hang out with the usual set of New York wankers in the early days, aside from supporting the Ramones - which also makes one hell of a lot of sense when you think about it; but what surely matters is the music, and the music is fucking astonishing, particularly this album.

The singles were funny, better than they probably should have been, and The Incredible Shrinking Dickies was a decent debut, if not necessarily a life-changing one, but here's where it all came together. Essentially they were, or probably are, a more complicated Ramones, at least technically with the middle eights and saxophone solos, but with that same cartoon aspect, albeit a west coast version trying to watch Saturday morning kid's shows but unable to keep still for the corn syrup jitters; and the reason it works is that they never even seemed to acknowledge the gag, powering through their own ninety mile an hour odes to disposable culture with the same ferocity as any of the more obviously ludicrous covers, cheerily embracing everything with the delirious enthusiasm of Zippy the Pinhead. I actually bothered to check the credits for Manny, Moe and Jack just to be sure it isn't a cover of some long lost commercial for Pep Boys automotive supplies, and it isn't, but it really could have been.

The thing which makes Dawn of the Dickies greater than the sum of its parts, and more than just some novelty record, is the expertise with which all of those parts are joined together, so bubble gum melody is never sacrificed to mere velocity or even to volume, and Leonard Graves Philips' absurd nasal vocal starts to sound kind of poignant after a while, even soulful; and so, regardless of subject, cuts like Fan Mail or Attack of the Mole Men have an epic quality, as though some timeless truth is revealed as we learn how they climb up on ground and then attack. Great wisdom is seldom found in the places you would most likely expect to find it, and even if Dawn constitutes great stupidity, it carries itself with enough dignity to fool the best of us.

Pixies - Beneath the Eyrie (2019)

It's a couple of years down the line and I'm still reeling from the Pixies having reformed without sounding like their own remember the eighties tribute act. I suppose it will eventually sink in, and Beneath the Eyrie may go some way towards dulling the novelty. It's nothing shocking, and it sounds like the Pixies, which in itself seems pretty special - at least compared to Indie Cindy which felt a little closer to a Pixies impersonation that didn't quite pan out.

The element that's different this time, the new thing brought to the table, or at least that I've only really noticed with Beneath the Eyrie, is how the Pixies really are a very traditional rock band. Of course, I knew this from the start, part of their appeal being in the contrast of the homespun with the weirder stuff. Here it seems particularly pronounced, although I still can't tell whether this is the record or simply something I've only just noticed. It's not that they're actually a marginally spikier Small Faces or anything so obvious. It isn't even the occasional instance of country twang or Tejano, or the boogie of St. Nazaire. Some of these songs, once you subtract the volume, wouldn't have been out of place Beatling away in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. They remind us of what rock music is supposed to do, shimmering as though it's the first time we've heard it - and I mean rock music generally, not just this record.

It seems like one hell of a feat, using these ingredients to come up with something so breezy, so free of stodge, so unlike anything recorded by fat old cunts in mirror shades wishing they were smoking weed in seventies California; so I suppose that would be the customary teaspoon of weirdy supernatural piss and acid added for flavour, to throw everything into stark high definition contrast. It's like the Wire you can play to your dad without having him pull funny faces, or something. Beneath the Eyrie is yet another slab of genius routinely and apparently effortlessly turded out by one of the greatest rock bands of all time, all of which will probably sound like hyperbole, at least until you come to Silver Bullet at the end of side one.

Bernadette Cremin & Paul Mex - Mutual Territory (2018)

Poetry still makes me anxious godammit, but I'm trying, and I'm not actually having to try too hard with this one because it's excellent. As before, Mex effortlessly soundtracks Bernadette Cremin's words with jazzy, bluesy touches which hint at familiar forms without simply duplicating or impersonating, and the whole reminds me, of all things, of Clock DVA's Advantage album - hard stories told with a collar turned up against bitter winds howling down rain soaked streets, but with a whole lot of soul.

What differentiates Mutual Territory from what I may appear to have described, or tried to describe, is that whilst the music and images form a near seamless, moody whole, a perfect synthesis of atmosphere and narrative, I suspect the parts would work as well alone - as witnessed by the closing instrumental - because Cremin's testimony is shocking, chilling and yet powerfully familiar, and her words - softly spoken and measured - are delivered with the sort of gravity that silences a room. Cremin captures and dissects tiny instances of daily life, the prosaic and the painful, working at each one until it's as sharp as the point upon which someone's entire existence might change, hopefully for the better but there's a lot of room for ambiguity. It can be tough to listen to in the same way that Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth is tough to watch, albeit possibly not quite so dark or relentless, but similarly it draws you in.

Mutual Territory has some of the intensity usually credited to records by Nick Cave - which I can never quite see, personally speaking. It hurts a bit but is not without redemptive qualities, and musically, it could be one of the best things Mex has ever had a hand in. My only complaint is that the musical setting of Hipsway Cabaret emulates that Venga Boys Eurothrob a bit too faithfully for comfort, although maybe that's the point given that this is hardly cosy listening.

Get it here.

Cabaret Voltaire - 1974-76 (2019)

I realise this one has been around for yonks but I've only just heard it. I missed out on the Industrial Records version by a couple of months, and was never tempted by any of the CD reissues because they all seem to have been reissued at the same time as five million other things, representing a tidal wave of rarities, and I didn't feel like taking a second job just for the sake of keeping up with all that Grey Area stuff. Now, however, it's been issued on vinyl as is only right and proper, so here we are.

Pleasingly, this material is somewhat less rudimentary than I imagined it would be, based on Is That Me (Finding Someone at the Door Again?), the b-side of Nag Nag Nag dating from the same era. Nevertheless, the music is fairly rudimentary, recorded on a domestic reel to reel - it says here - therefore possibly not even a four track; electronic rhythm is provided by one of those lounge boxes with five or six settings, samba, bossanova and so on; instrumentation is sparse, everything on the cheap, with a few rudimentary effects filling in. In other words, they did as much as they could with whatever was available, so it's somewhat noodly, like very early Gristle without the arts council funding - swooping sine waves, clangs, bleeps, and farts - but it's very atmospheric, and pretty impressive for something recorded around the same time as Diamond Dogs. Most peculiar of all is that 1974-76 seems more like a forerunner to the moods and loops of The Voice of America than to the velvet distortion of Mix-Up, their first album proper.

Oddities of particular interest include Do the Snake and She Loves You. Snake is what you used to get when suburban whitey rendered his low-fi interpretation of disco music safe in the knowledge that no-one outside the band would ever hear the thing, stilted and self-conscious exhortations to get on down and so on - we've all been there, I'm sure; and if you listen closely you will notice that She Loves You is actually a cover of the Beatles song, with all of its moptopped screamarama pared down to something weird and paranoid which sounds as though it was recorded inside a cupboard, which may well have been the case. Elsewhere on these two discs, you will find nothing obvious or overstated - as has generally been true of Cabaret Voltaire's work - and neither is there any padding, anything which could have been shed for the sake of brevity. As always, the strength of this band are elements which emerge and which remain difficult to pin down, never anything flung directly in your face; and even if it's a little basic in places, this collection holds its own in relation to the likes of Voice of America, Red Mecca, Microphonies or any of the others.