The Cravats - Hoorahland (2020)

I didn't really expect another one to come along quite so soon after 2017's Dustbin of Sound, but it's massively exciting that it has and in doing so has proven that this version of the Cravats is neither a happy accident nor its own tribute band. As with Dustbin, there are a couple of numbers you may recall from Grimetime, but numbers which, let's face it, more than deserved a second crack at the walnut whip. Otherwise, Hoorahland segues effortlessly into the extended timeline of the jazz-punk colossals we all remember from the good old days, back when everything was better than it is now, excepting the Cravats who have somehow retained equivalent value, hinting at the possibility of a really shit band trapped in Oscar Wilde's attic, sort of like Racey covering Frank Zappa, or possibly the other way round.

Here we have something which manages to amount to more of the same whilst being something new, a slight shift of focus, and a further mapping of some fairly peculiar territory. Goody Goody Gum Drops firmly replants the Dadaist flag in 2020 in muscular fashion, like Vivian Stanshall as one of those telly wrestlers who growls at the camera while climbing into the ring dressed as a dinosaur; and Now the Magic Has Gone pairs the Shend with Jello Biafra to teach us what Disney looks like when it really goes wrong - talking medication and buckles here rather than Tim Burton pulling a spooky face and holding up a drawing of a spider.

Having now thought about it, I realise that both the Cravats and Very Things felt as though formed from the push and pull of the Shend's disarmingly well-mannered wrestling holds with Robin Dalloway's longing for Motown; but I realise the idea is bollocks, and Hoorahland - entirely post-Dalloway - is actually fully soulful, and at least as much so as Motortown and the rest - think early Clock DVA but with a lot more oomph, as music theoreticians call it: white souls, black suits - not sure about the hats, possibly chartreuse. I'd say it's Svor Naan's sax which makes the difference given that it may actually be unique within general rock history, but I don't think it's any one element so much as how all of these absurdly disparate parts blend into such a perfectly formed whole. If I were to call it a comeback, which I'd rather not, I don't think any other band has ever come back in such convincing fashion as this, and I literally can't wait to see where they go next.

Also, if you look closely at the cover you will notice that someone has, at some point, caught our man right in the face with a chocolate milkshake, which could be taken as a metaphor for pretty much everything at the moment.

Nigel Ayers - Painted by Spirits (2019)

Nigel, as you will most likely know, has been recording as Nocturnal Emissions for several decades now. I'm not sure it's technically possible for a member of a one-man band to release a solo album, but here it is anyway. Of course, this is hardly the first work he's issued under the name to which his council tax bill is addressed; and for what it may be worth, I seem to recall a period during which Mr. Ayers expressed a certain weariness at having saddled himself with the name Nocturnal Emissions and the presumably industrial associations which tend to result from potential listeners failing to have read the memo; and I'm not sure whether this has any bearing on anything, or whether Painted by Spirits should be viewed as distinct from the Nocturnal Emissions back catalogue. My guess would be that a name such as is Nocturnal Emissions might be a bit limiting when attempting to extend one's reach beyond the usual audience.

Nevertheless, here's more of the quality work you've probably come to expect - distinctively identifiable as Nigel Ayers without simply pressing the same buttons out of habit. It's sort of ambient, but not quite, exhibiting that quality common to his more atmospheric works where the washes of sound never truly fade into the background, instead holding one's attention. Here the sounds seem to be derived from mostly conventional instruments and have kept most of their tonal qualities intact whilst being otherwise repurposed, so Painted by Spirits has more of a classical feel than previous releases and could probably be reproduced by a string quartet, albeit a patient string quartet. It's been a while since I listened to Henryk Górecki's third symphony, and too long to say whether there's any actual resemblance, but it at least reminds me of listening to Henryk Górecki's third symphony if that helps. As ever, and as is suggested by the title, Ayers channels rather than plays or composes in the traditional sense, so all of these assorted strings and blowy things have the rhythm of the natural world, calls heard in a forest, the metronomic creak of wood as it dries or stones cooling as the storm breaks. Considering how so much of his work tends to be of a certain type, at least since The World is My Womb, it's impressive how Mr. Ayers never quite repeats himself.

Available here.

Severed Heads - Clean (1981)

I'd heard of the Severed Heads, but they were mostly just an amusing name until I chanced upon a copy of Rotund for Success for mere quids at Greenwich Market. I took it home, played it, and by the end of the week had tracked down every last Severed Heads record I was able to find, then spent the next year playing them all to death. I'm not sure there was ever another band for which I fell quite so hard, so suddenly, and those records don't seem to have lost any of their power. Listening to Come Visit the Big Bigot now, thirty years later, still gives me a bit of a funny turn. Yet weirdly, I was somehow unaware of their having released anything much before Since the Accident and had always assumed Blubberknife to be the only thing of note. In fact, up until a couple of weeks ago I hadn't realised that Since the Accident wasn't even their first album; and it turns out that neither was Clean, it being the second. Thank fuck for reissues.

I had reservations, believing the earlier Heads to be mostly the stuff with the tape loops, as heard on Clifford Darling, Please Don't Live in the Past and the aforementioned Blubberknife; and the looped material is certainly interesting, even powerful, but for me, it was always the tunes. Clean has therefore been a bit of a revelation given that I expected noise, or at least something of a racket. Actually it is something of a racket, but a racket with drum machines, rhythm, mood, and those twinkly sequenced melodies which no-one ever did quite like Tom Ellard. Another revelation, one which came to me just this morning, has been that everything I ever liked about the music of the Severed Heads is shared by, of all things, John Barry's Persuaders theme; so if you somehow never heard them, even though we're now two decades into the next century along, the Severed Heads are the Persuaders theme in the mind of an eighties computer, or possibly a watercolour impression of the same, images blurring as the rain begins to fall and a lovely lady artist in a floppy hat enjoys her Cadbury's Flake which, I rather think you'll find, tastes like no chocolate ever tasted before.

That last sentence exists because it's otherwise difficult to describe the full emotional impact of Tom Ellard's greatest work - and actually most of it is great.

Clean - which is now expanded to a double with a shitload of bonus material, because that's how it tends to work these days - is a formative, rudimentary, slightly raw sounding version of that greatness dating from before our man built up the confidence to vocalise, and before these things began to sound like songs or lullabies or anthems. At this point, Severed Heads were approximately the antipodean Cabaret Voltaire, spreading their invocations of the sublime across extended grooves formed from elements which hadn't always started life as music. It's a little like Since the Accident on a reduced budget, except without my implication of it necessarily lacking anything which it needed to work. It wasn't the full ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which was to come, but we were very much heading in that direction.

Revbjelde - Hooha Hubbub (2020)

I have no idea how you pronounce it, but this is apparently their second album and the one for which Peter Hope vocalises, which is what initially caught my attention. It's sort of jazzy-bluesy with a fantastically tense live sound and is as such well suited to Hope's vocals, and probably would have been called acid jazz had it appeared three decades back, or downtempo around the turn of the century, but such labels are only ever useful up to a point, and you could probably call it krautrock if you really felt the need to do so. You will have heard this instrumentation doing this sort of thing before, or something related, but it still works, and in fact sounds more powerful and moody than ever on Hooha Hubbub - punchy soundtracks to films which were never made - including at least one spy thriller - a momentarily incongruous glam stomp here, grinding synth there, an apparent homage to Suicide concluding the bonus disc, even a flute wistfully parping away on a couple of tracks as it becomes clear this represents exploration rather than mere invocation. For something which walks such a seemingly familiar walk, it's surprising how difficult it can be to really find a comparison. What music I own which describes itself as downtempo frankly sounds like sixties game show theme tunes when stood next to this much purer strain of whatever Revbjelde have been channelling. Hell - this sounds like actual voodoo compared to most other things right now.