Morrissey - Vauxhall and I (1994)

I've honestly never been convinced by Morrissey. The Smiths were interviewed in Sounds before I'd heard anything, and I mainly recall the implication that we could all breathe a sigh of relief because it was okay to listen to proper music played on guitars once more - as distinct from all the gay synthesiser tunes which had apparently been ruining everything - and the Smiths, so their singer proclaimed, only wanted handsome fans in attendance at their shows. This Charming Man turned up on Top of the Pops. I thought it was weak and still do, with a guitar line that seems to crochet a doily for your nan's sideboard. What Difference Does It Make? obliged me to reassess my initial impression, at least of the music, and I was more or less on board from thereon despite his stupid fucking fans.

'What is he like!?' they gurgle indulgently, shiny-eyed and batting a hand as though to waft away the aura of his latest keraaazy yet nevertheless inspired antics. It works if you buy into the idea of Morrissey as a genius comparable to James Joyce or whoever, but is otherwise redolent of a cult; as it always has been, even back when you too thought he was the voice of a generation, you fucking plum.

I didn't mind the solo material, although for me it's always had a certain vaguely stewed quality and mostly, if not always, lacks the breezy spontaneity of the Smiths. It probably doesn't help that he's been making the same record over and over to the point of it almost sounding like parody, so lucky that it's decent record, at least by his own standards. My girlfriend had this album in the nineties and played it a lot, and it stood out as more convincing than Viva Hate, even containing a couple of numbers I'd rate among the best he's ever recorded - Now My Heart is Full, Billy Budd, Spring-Heeled Jim and Speedway, with only the wistful three-minute sigh of The Lazy Sunbathers letting the album down. It's anyone's guess what he's singing about and I suspect that's the point - the bittersweet melancholia with an occasional suggestion of something unpleasant. It's always been music for people who feel like outsiders, a sort of sonic blank slate onto which one projects oneself, but the unease seems particularly pronounced on this album because, maybe it doesn't have anything reassuring to tell you, and maybe it doesn't want to be your friend.

All of the rumours keeping me grounded,
I never said…
I never said that they were completely unfounded.

This could be a sneaky confession bordering on a challenge in reference to what you're probably hearing if you're unable to separate the art from the artist; which is why I enjoy it, because fuck 'em. The notion of Morrissey having suddenly swung to the right in recent years because he expresses opinions with which we disagree seems comical given that he's never been afraid to let fly with the worst sort of parochial bollocks. The only difference is that the legions of the gullible once thought his brain-farts cute, like a character on Coronation Street. His songs are parochial. His entire body of work is about the shunned, the outsiders, the losers, those scared to venture beyond the end of their own street - which is why the risible Bengali in Platforms is as it is, and why the idea of The National Front Disco being some kind of dog whistle is patently ridiculous to anyone with ears and a brain.

He's one of the very last people with whom I'd happily share an elevator stuck between floors, and he talks a lot of bollocks, but if the point of art was the ethics of the artist we'd be left with empty galleries and nothing to read or listen to; and there's a tremendous power in Morrissey's poetic melancholia, to which the more ambiguous and discomfiting themes are possibly integral. It's really up to you whether that's sufficient, but it works for me, at least on this record.

Severed Heads - Ear Bitten (1980)

Here's one those reissues of something which didn't quite exist first time around, at least not in this form. Ear Bitten, the Severed Heads debut album was one side of a split release, with someone called the Rhythmyx Chymyx providing the music on the flip. The two bands shared costs, then a substantial number of those copies pressed were destroyed in a house fire further limiting the potential audience for this material. The Severed Heads also issued a cassette called Side 2 purportedly of music you would have heard on the reverse of Ear Bitten had there been no Rhythmyx Chymyx; and now the ever wonderful Dark Entries label have reissued this album, or these albums, pairing Side 2 with its notional other half for the first time and throwing in a second disc of unreleased material from the same era. It's honestly one fuck of a lot to digest in a single sitting, not least due to this being the Severed Heads at their earliest, arguably weirdest and most awkward - a good few years before the technopop. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about reissues with newly excavated material, because there's usually a fairly good reason for your not having heard those other tracks, and I've never been keen on director's cuts or remixes. Just give me whatever you think is the best version and I'll listen to that, okay?

Still, considering that I was otherwise never going to get to hear this one, I have no grounds for complaint, not least because the quality remains consistent across all four discs. Much of this music was recorded, or at least started off, on cassette recorders and the  sound is endearingly basic, so what I mean by quality is that it's all good stuff, more or less, with nothing sounding like material which should have been left in the cupboard.

Ear Bitten is mostly loops, sound collages, and distorted primitive electronics with an occasional heavily processed rhythm or melody derived from something which was probably bright pink with cartoon animals printed on the casing. Yet somehow, it's immediately recognisable as the Severed Heads in larval form; and whatever it is they did that made their music so addictive, they were already doing it here with this racket. Both the original single side of Ear Bitten and the material from Side 2 work very well as short albums in their own right, or played sequentially as halves of the same concept with each track complementing its predecessor much (or at least a tiny bit) like Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, albeit with weird fucking pictures made from torn photocopies vandalised by magic marker. In fact, all four sides work as a continuous piece if you want them to.

Having been recorded more than forty years ago, it's inevitable that I've heard many things - mostly through the weirdy music tape network - which remind me of this, even though Ear Bitten was earlier and, I would imagine, more startling at the time; but although the tape hiss and the boom of television sets recorded on a condensing microphone are familiar, the record still sounds fresh, benefiting from that elusive Severed Heads sparkle which no-one else quite managed to capture.

British Murder Boys - Active Agents and House Boys (2024)

I still don't know a whole lot about this pair. They turned up in Wesley Doyle's book about the Some Bizarre label with some frequency yet without actually having been on the label so far as I could tell, and that seemed like a recommendation. They're from Birmingham and what physical records they release tend to sell out before you're even aware of them - so I've been lucky on this occasion.

It's old school acid or possibly techno in so much as that you could slip any one of these tracks onto a compilation in between Maurice Joshua and Lidell Townsell and I doubt anyone would notice; which is because, aside from the obvious Rolandisms, this music, like that of the acid pioneers, resists the formula which eventually took over, instead building a similar intense mood - not one which immediately suggests smiley tees and glo-sticks, it has to be said. The clue is probably in the name.

British Murder Boys, at least on the strength of this one, are distinguished by pounding overdriven tom and the tempo wacked up just a few notches beyond what is probably healthy, creating a sort of euphoric coronary effect. It's just a bit too fast, just a little too dark and claustrophobic, and that's why it's great. Sequences buzz away behind the pounding, with half-heard howls echoing into an endless decay which seems to fulfil the promise that Cabaret Voltaire failed to deliver when they turned smooth house around the time of Hypnotised. Very tasty.

The Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace (1985)

Some journalist - don't remember who - once described the Fall as sounding like tossers rummaging around in a broom cupboard, which I love because they do - or I suppose did - and it's funny, both accurate and way off the mark at the same time; and ultimately it doesn't matter because the Fall were fucking magnificent, and insults just seem to slide off into irrelevance. I don't know if this was the best album but it's the one I like most, and the first one I caved in and bought. Years later I had a conversation with Larry Peterson during which I offered the Fall as an example of how bands can sound decent without rehearsing the life out of their material. He pointed out that, contrary to the tossers rummaging around in a broom cupboard hypothesis, the Fall were actually tight as fuck and hence extremely oiled and well rehearsed, figuratively speaking. Of course, he was right. What I'd lazily taken for a loose, almost ramshackle quality was nothing of the sort.

I'm still not exactly sure what the quality is, that thing which sounds like the Fall and only the Fall and no other band ever - apart from the Kevin Staples Band* I suppose. Possibly it's simply what music sounds like without the bullshit you don't really need, practically translating to a lack of artificial embellishment - something akin to what Steve Albini was always trying to achieve. The result is usually what tends to sound like a ruthlessly well practiced live band, so it's the sound of human beings twanging, thumping and howling away in real time, doing what it needs to do musically- according to Smith's vision - to the very best of its abilities rather than chasing virtuosity or ostentation for their own sake. The vision itself always remained faithful to the basics of rock and roll as something derived from the blues, but without feeling the need to repeat or impersonate unless there was some specific point in doing so, and experimentation was always part of it; which is why they sounded like that, I guess.

This one is particularly cinematic in places, with touches of krautrock and the usual elements which seem to wilfully work against whatever else the track is doing - the distorted or otherwise loosely detuned vocal, or the drums on the Damo Suzuki song doing their own thing; or that passage on Paintwork where we're invited to pretend the twenty-four track studio is a mono portable cassette recorder and someone has accidentally taped the sound of the telly over the rhythm section; and while none of these elements were unique to the Fall, only the Fall ended up with rock and roll songs which felt as though they could be discussed as novels alongside Burroughs, James Joyce, or whoever else you care to mention from the last century. Each track is its own self-contained world, even when the literally narrative element is so minimal as it is on LA. It's surreal, funny, grim, witty, grounded, bloody awkward, and mind-boggling all at the same time. They were truly unique.

*: Two admittedly listenable tracks on Another Thing from the Crypt (1984) on the Dead Hedgehog label sounding so much like a Stars In Their Eyes tribute to the Fall that it's hard to work out why they bothered, and apparently they didn't after that.

Busdriver - Fear of a Black Tangent (2005)

I heard somewhere that Busdriver was what the kids on the streets are listening to—excuse me, what the kids on the streets are checking for these days; and while most things associated with today's young people tend to be pure fucking garbage, I like to keep an open mind because I know it can't all be rainbow haired foetuses named after forms of anxiety medication. However, it turns out that Fear of a Black Tangent came out in 2005, meaning it probably counts as old school by now, although this may also be why it's worth a listen; so swings and roundabouts or summink…

Should I ever have given the impression, I'm not actually down on backpack rap - or underground, which is maybe a less annoying tag - just the stuff which sticks to the self-important formula while sneering at everyone else - the funky puritans who want you to expand your mind with a game of chess prior to making sweet lurve to your woman partner. Busdriver probably counts as underground, beyond which he's more or less his own genre - intelligent, and I mean real intelligence here, not just some bore aspiring to be your social worker. He's in the same ballpark as E-40 in terms of sonics and mood, also massively witty, which may not be obvious from the first few spins with that verbal firehose blasting away for an hour or more. But sense comes with familiarity, and the gags - delivered with deadpan earnest - are gutbusting once they emerge.

I replied to the wuss with a yo' mama's joke,
When he said how much he pushed the envelope.
A group of sexually ambivalent nihilst, crying from an ovarian cyst,
Picking at a vegetarian dish,
Idolising a German band who barely exist,
But me, my name's never on the full-colour flyer.
I'm just the dull Busdriver,
Thinking 'til my head is a bowl of dust fibers.

Musically, it's as distinct as it is lyrically, and I was surprised to see a full cast of producers listed, having assumed it could only be the work of himself, so beautifully formed is the vision as a whole. The sound leans towards actual instruments, as distinct from bleeps, glitches, and other elements not found in nature; but the way it's all put together is incredible - highly tuneful, and gently psychedelic in the sense of the Bonzos rather than the Legendary Pink Dots - although their name also came to mind. It would be pleasant if unremarkable but for the explosive energy somehow pinning all the notes to the beat, like it's threatening to go drum and bass without ever quite getting there, or if not drum and bass, then maybe one of the more manic Bugs Bunny cartoons run through the projector at four or five times normal speed.

...and by the point at which you believe you've figured all this out, you're now listening so fast that you can actually digest the import of Lefty's Lament, and so realise you've been listening to Public Enemy all along, or a tangent thereof; so I guess that's where the title came from.

The Very Things - Mr. Arc-Eye (Under a Cellophane Sky) (2024)

 

With hindsight it's difficult to miss that the Very Things really were the absolute pinnacle of something or other and surely deserved a  more strident crack of the whip, having very clearly defined themselves as distinct from the Cravats despite being more or less the same band. We had some great singles, two cracking albums - or one and a half depending on your mileage - then a sudden frosty silence broken only by the sound of One Little Indian shovelling every last penny into the chuffing Sugarcubes - regarding which I'm still feeling short-changed to this day. The posthumous missing album was interesting but didn't really feel like a missing album so much as some stuff that happened to be laying around. I was long resigned to that being our lot, and then this monster appears.

I'm not sure quite where Mr. Arc-Eye sits in the canon, or would have sat, and my first guess was that it followed fairly closely on the heels of Motortown in terms of recording. Recent smoke signals seem to suggest it's actually an entirely new album, which seems just as likely for, while consistent as what they did next, it also has a distinctly timeless sound. It's as sharply dressed as Let's Go Out with one meticulously glossy shoe still in the jazz dive - two in the morning by the sound of it - smoke everywhere. The horn section and driving bass invoke Motown without sounding like nostalgia, specifically the dark, dirty, raw Motown of the sixties when the label set vocal groups to the sort of instrumentation that gave the Stooges a run for their money. This may even be what Clock DVA were aiming for on Advantage, so maybe imagine a more muscular, more effortless Clock DVA if they all had jobs - down a coalmine, most likely. The most unexpected aspect of this record is how it blends the two very different strands revealed when Rob and the Shend went their separate ways - the driving soul of Hit the Roof or Vivarama with the growling motorbike beat of GrimeTime. It probably shouldn't have come together with quite such grace, but these men knew what they were doing.

I'm possibly lost in the moment here, but this may even be the greatest work by any of those involved, which is quite a boast considering the back catalogue in its entirety; and certainly Mr. Arc-Eye contains some of the Shend's most powerful vocal performances. I realise there's not much point harbouring a grudge thirty years after the fact, but I really would have appreciated something like this more than the oh so fucking quiet song.

VX - Minutes to Go-Go (2024)

I'm only familiar with VX as Peter Hope's pianist - figuratively speaking, the man who tickled the ivories on the excellent Kilo Price for Dead Shapes which you may possibly remember from here. His own, mostly instrumental, material - overlooking the possible absence of sounds deriving from anything much that might count as an instrument - while similarly raw and initially abrasive, is a whole different kettle of fish. It's noise in so much as there's little common ground shared with Herman's Hermits, but while my closest point of reference is probably the work of +DOG+, Minutes to Go-Go feels intensively sculptured, even structured without quite turning into an Art of Noise record. Amongst the electronic crunches, overdriven circuits, gated slabs of feedback and the like, we find remnants of what may once have been vocals, percussion instruments, and other sound sources warped and looped into shapes which seem to emerge and gain greater prominence with each listen, until you no longer notice quite what a racket it is, instead hearing something that might almost be - I don't know - a film soundtrack perhaps. It seems different to the involuntary admiration of fire extinguishers we sometimes experience at the end of an afternoon trudging around some gallery, because I don't think there's such a pronounced random element here. These patterns are surely more than shapes perceived in the ear of the beholder. Listen enough times and you'll find yourself transported to filthy truck stops in cyberspace, the medina in Marrakech, the inside of your own head, and other alien territories. Minutes to Go-Go is one hell of a trip.

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