Girl Guided Missiles (2021)

You can probably be forgiven for having missed the Girl Guided Missiles first time around. They released one single - now worth a fortune if you can find a copy - and made enough of a rumpus on the local live circuit for a guy I hadn't seen since school to remember having seen them in some pub roughly forty years ago. I only know them because I've known Martin de Sey since the eighties, Martin being the Girl Guided Missiles' guitarist, occasional vocalist, and apparently the only member to have troubled his local barber shop while they were together as a group. Knowing Martin as I do, this is unlikely to be the most impartial review you'll ever read but you're free to stop reading at no additional charge.

The Girl Guided Missiles may be one of the few bands who ever formed due to musical differences, as the cover notes report, which actually makes a lot more sense than you might expect once you listen to the disc. In essence they seem to have comprised one ex-Cravat turned sharp suited mod and three denim clad hairies, and the sounds they made were a similarly incongruent musical Frankenstein monster which somehow pulled together and worked through the raw enthusiasm of the enterprise. I'd hesitate to guess at potential influences but I can hear traces of T-Rex, Buddy Holly, the Pistols, Status Quo, Suzy Quatro, and possibly even Kiss - or at least there are comparisons to be made with Paul Stanley's pseudo-operatic falsetto; and yet a couple of the tracks made me think of a biker version of the Moody Blues, while Games's Up and Trendy Wendy don't fall far short of channelling the Undertones. I should probably also mention that Further Education is an absolutely classic punk single (or should have been) of the kind which might have seen the light of day through the Step Forward label in an alternate universe; so I've described what probably sounds like a compilation album even without mentioning the cowpunk of Josalea, despite which, it's all quite clearly the work of one band with a very clear idea of what they were doing.

Having known one of the lads since we were kittens, I'm familiar with about half of the songs here, which qualifies me to add that I'm impressed by how great they still sound; also that I'm genuinely surprised to recognise the noodley middle eight - or whatever you call it - from Drinker with such a powerful hit of memory sherbert. Had you played it to me in isolation I would have assumed it to be some half remembered passage from something by Steppenwolf or Led Zeppelin. The other songs are new to me, but it already feels as though they're old favourites.

The Girl Guided Missiles were one of those rare bands which shouldn't have worked but somehow managed to sound effortlessly great despite the odds and so briefly carved their own unique furrow, at least in my tape collection, as well as at a succession of drinking establishments in the vicinity of Studley. This posthumous collection beautifully rescues their studio recordings from the tape hiss to which I've become accustomed, and should probably be snapped up by one of those punky boutique labels of which there seem to be so many at the moment.

Pearl Jam - Ten (1991)

Pearl Jam probably mark the point at which I lost touch with the kids on the street and what was going down, having given up on mainstream music papers, radio, and bothering to go to gigs unless forced to do so. My girlfriend's younger sister had just moved in with us in hope of finding work in that London, and being younger she was still very much in touch with the kids on the street and what was going down, and she had this album by Pearl Jam who were massive even though I'd never heard of them. Each day as I sat waiting for Countdown to come on the telly whilst filling in my pension forms and having a nice cup of tea with some custard creams, Ten would be playing somewhere in the background, over and over until I began to appreciate it. So I bought this just because I remember Even Flow and Alive being pretty darned great.

Twenty-five years later, the record initially sounds so unfamiliar as to come as a bit of a shock, particularly having since picked up admittedly spurious associations with other, much heavier bands of Seattle heritage. In fact on first listen it sounds like Simple Minds, and not the good Simple Minds - the good Simple Minds meaning everything prior to but not necessarily including Live in the City of Light. It sounds like REO Speedwagon in a checked shirt with a bit more stubble than usual - big, fat stadium rock fronted by a man singing through a mouth full of Sugar Puffs.

Anyway, I persisted because Even Flow and Alive still sounded as good as I recalled, just about, and it once took me fifteen years to fully appreciate a Soundgarden album due to the fact that I played it once and then didn't bother after that. Thankfully, persistence paid off, and Ten began to work after three or four spins, even losing some of the stadium rock sheen.

I think the problem is that Pearl Jam are actually a sort of wholefood biker band - grizzled, leathery and existing on a diet of chicken and grits just like Steppenwolf and all of those guys, but thankfully minus all the back door woman, you set my soul on faaah crap. The songs are mostly folksy introspection for truckers - or at least people who don't necessarily have anything against truckers - sort of like how Nirvana might have sounded had they held back from writing songs about how they only want cool people listening to their music. Accordingly Ten really needed a bluesier producer, Albini or Jack Endino or one of those guys, just someone with an approach other than how much more reverb would you like? These songs don't really need to sound like the drummer is located at two miles distance from the guitarist because the scale is inherent to the material, which is surprisingly understated for having one of those gruff ol' teddy bear of rock guys on the microphone.

Very good, and better than I remember despite that initial bout of hiccups.