Caution Magnetic - Fairground In My Head (2024)

 

It always feels a bit weird writing about the work of someone you know, though I try to limit myself to just that which actively inspires me to write something, as does this. I've known Eddy, the man behind Caution Magnetic for at least three decades and have always enjoyed his music to a greater or lesser extent, and there's a possibility that this may be his best work - at least that I've heard - so here we are. That said, I had an initial problem in being more familiar with Eddy honking away on the sousaphone somewhere to the left of a vocalist, so it took me about a week to hear beyond a voice to which I'm mostly accustomed as a vehicle for raucous observations from the other side of a pub table.

Anyway, having realised Fairground needs to be heard over speakers rather than headphones, I got there. Fairground comprises twelve songs, possibly recorded on a computer but not sounding like it, and with influences so broad that it's difficult to really pin it down to a style beyond that it reminds me of living in London. The opening track, In Heaven, starts on a sort of Belgian New Beat footing before turning Duane Eddy, and each track brings something new to the table, soulful horns and all sorts, before rallying around a general sound - bits of twang, driving beats, and even touches of dub, meaning the kind you used to hear all the time in the eighties. Once the bass takes to doing that thing against a backdrop of guitars echoing away into a distant noise, I suddenly realise I'm thinking of Jah Wobble more than anyone else, although Fairground is rockier than most of his stuff; which in turn gives me a handle on Eddy's voice which, if not quite in the Roger Daltrey mode, is perhaps comparable to Wobble with a bit more oomph, and certainly more range.

I'm not going to take a guess as to what any of the songs are about as it would feel a bit cheeky, but it's a ponderous blend of happy, sad, breezy, and all those other emotions, often at the same time which, backed by music recorded with proper welly (if that's what I mean) leaves one with an impression amounting to The The if they spent more time in the pub, less in the library. I think that's what I meant to say. It's honestly fucking good anyway, beautifully crafted and without anything obliging me to wear a smile that hurts in the name of diplomacy.

The The - Ensoulment (2024)

I have a sort of knee-jerk suspicion of artists I enjoyed in my early twenties getting back in the booth all these years later, but, leaving aside that no-one wants a Flock of Seagulls reunion album, I should probably be suspicious of my suspicion as a hang-on from the punk rock programming which, for example, dictated that the Rolling Stones were fit for the knacker's yard by 1977; and while there was much fun to be had in upsetting the older generation, Miss You was unfortunately a fucking great record. In fact, even Emotional Rescue was a cracker and the revisionism now seems quaint given that they'd only been going a couple of decades; and Matt Johnson's The The are now cautiously approaching their half-century.

More crucially, The The sound as vital as ever - keeping in mind that even their early records had the quality of an extended world weary sigh set to a pounding bass drum. No-one, so far as I'm aware, ever complained about Johnny Cash or B.B. King failing to retire, and The The was never about upsetting the older generation. If it was about upsetting anyone, it was Johnson's own generation, and his focus has remained fixed even if the man himself has clocked up a few more years; and given the current state of the societal shitshow, it's amusing that you could probably characterise Ensoulment as upsetting the younger generation, at least based on the garbage to which so many of them are seen to subscribe on social media. Lyrically, Ensoulment is on target and at least as caustic as Fatima Mansions at their most blistering. Musically, it's the familiar organic blend of rock, soul, jazz, blues, country, and all the rest without fully sounding like any of them, or like the sort of worthy soundtrack to which spritely eldsters beatifically nod their heads in television commercials for prescription medication. It's pleasant but innocuous on first spin, and by the third or fourth, you can't stop playing the thing and your wife comes in from the other room to ask what you're listening to, and possibly to remind you to take your pill.

Did we ever suspect any of these people would be doing anything this good in the distant future, a quarter of the way into the next century? I had no idea myself.

Zeke Manyika - Mastercrime (1989)

I assume my finger must have been well and truly off the musical pulse by the end of the eighties, which - admittedly - I recall as being mostly about who was drawing the X-Men comics at the time. I wasn't actually aware of this ever having existed until about a year ago, and it's only during the last hour that I've discovered it wasn't even his first. Obviously I remember Zeke from Orange Juice, The The, and some sort of vague association with Foetus, and Mastercrime reveals him to be very much a musical force in his own right, or at least it did thirty years ago back when I was busily agonising over whether the refugee X-Men would ever return to their School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester County.

First impression, which I suppose I may as well go with because why not, is that you can hear how he was such a good fit for The The, and particularly Soul Mining, although I may actually be hearing Manyika's aural footprint on Johnson's record, for what it's worth. The gospel element is more pronounced with an added afropop sensibility which reminds me of Young Fathers, most likely due to my extensive ignorance of the form, and it inhabits the same cinematic Savannah of the soul as The The - if you'll pardon the sheer ballsache of such a cliched description, which in all fairness you probably shouldn't. I knew what I was doing.

I have a vague idea that Some Bizarre had taken a lower profile by this point - unless it really was the case that I missed everything - but it seems a great shame that Mastercrime should seemingly represent some kind of half forgotten afterthought given that it's at least as good as any of the label's other top tier releases.

I probably need to track down a copy of that first album now.

Stex - Spiritual Dance (1992)

There was a point about halfway through the eighties at which it seemed like Some Bizarre were the only label of substance and I'd never need to bother with anyone else's records ever again. It seemed as though pop music had stopped being a wanker, or was at least doing something kind of interesting; and then the Smiths came along to restore order, to calm the fears of those who foresaw the extinction of proper music made by white blokes with guitars and a love of the jangly sixties, like we knew before all those - well, you know, can't say no names or nuffink but name me one good reggae song, yeah?

Then Cabaret Voltaire were suddenly on Parlophone, The The were similarly elsewhere, Psychic TV failed to be anything like as interesting as promised, and Stevo's thing had seemingly vanished off the map. Excepting a vaguely recalled clip of something trading as Blowzabella on some youth TV show, it had all gone quiet. I suppose it may be significant that this apparent disappearance probably coincided with my giving up on music papers, but I don't know, and the subsequent history of Some Bizarre is a strange and obscure tale populated by artists you've never heard of - Monkey Farm Frankenstein and others.

That said, I'm not sure I'd actually heard of Stex, but Johnny Marr of the aforementioned Smiths plays on this record so I assume it will have been paid at least some attention, even if I was looking in the wrong direction at the time; and I assume from the scarcity of posthumous information on the internet (a realm wherein one may learn even the birth dates and respective shoe sizes of all three members of Naffi Sandwich if you look hard enough) that they're probably still owed at least fourteen of their allotted fifteen minutes.

I say they're but, so far as I can tell, Stex was he, and specifically a he of Lewisham - which is actually where I was living in 1992, but never mind. Stex seems to have been something to do with the developing garage scene, and I gather that, aside from Johnny Marr twanging away on a couple of numbers, we also have the involvement of an Altered Images dude, with Dave Ball possibly twiddling something or other. Spiritual Dance is uptempo bluesy soul of a kind which was admittedly fairly common in 1992, but done with the sort of feeling which connects it firmly to its roots, and which therefore distinguishes it from the formless, generic pish gratuitously emoted by all of those Alexander O'Neal types. Guitars chop and chunk like Nile Rodgers, and the computer bass squelches with a warmth I hadn't even realised I'd missed, and the mood is uplifting without getting stupid, whilst smouldering like Imagination's New Dimension, or the broody opening bars of Diana Ross's Love Hangover; and really it's just a fucking tremendous soul album, a lost gem in every sense. Stex may have seemed an odd labelmate for Einstürzende Neubauten, but if you listen close it becomes difficult to miss the kinship with The The and even Cabaret Voltaire's funkier material.

What the hell happened, Stex? You should have been fucking massive.

Matt Johnson - Burning Blue Soul (1981)

Chris Morris having just been vanned to the fens by a crime git.

I initially regarded The The as a sort of baby Cabaret Voltaire in the same way that Yello were proposed to be baby Residents by the Ralph Records publicity dynamo. I based this assumption on the nameless track they contributed to the Some Bizzare Album back when The The were they rather than just Matt Johnson plus some pals. When Soul Mining came out they - for the sake of argument rather than he because it reads better - seemed more like they were going for the perfect pop-soul championship, a title which I suppose eventually went to ABC if anyone. Of course, there was also Burning Blue Soul, an album which I recently noticed I'd never actually got around to hearing or buying.

For the sake of argument Burning Blue Soul was, I suppose, the first The The album, and certainly it's unmistakably the work of the same guy. That said, I'm surprised at how close I came with my baby Cabaret Voltaire comparison. This incarnation of The The was arguably more traditionally musical than Cabaret Voltaire ever were, tracks being laced with harmonious vocals and vaguely bluesy guitar licks; and for all the Sheffield lads' greatness, no-one ever sat you down with a Martini whilst approaching the record player with a copy of Mix-Up promising man, wait 'til you here the chops on these cats - there's some really outtasite playing on this baby, lemme tell ya.

Anyway, here we find that characteristic Matt Johnson songcraft somehow blending seamlessly with howling walls of sound, treated vocals and hybridised tribal rhythms of a kind that wouldn't have sounded entirely out of place on Red Mecca. It's produced by a couple of Wire bods and you can sort of tell in the glacial edge it seems to share with maybe Chairs Missing. It's perhaps not so satisfying as Soul Mining or Dusk, but then I've only just bought the thing and his albums tend to grow and blossom the more you listen to them, at least in my experience. It's nice to know that something which came out thirty-five years ago can nevertheless turn out to be as full of surprises as it most likely would have been had I bought it at the time; and Lordy - what I'd give to hear The Pornography of Despair given that it was probably not unlike this one.

Spiro - Pole Star (1997)

Back in the days of me yoot when I was just a boy pushing me bike up the hills of Shipston on me way to buy us a Hovis, I responded to an advertisement in WHY, the local listings rag. I'd been recording my own music, or at least my own noises, and some guy was selling a four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder from what I could tell, one of the proper TEAC jobs. Weirdly, the seller turned out to be someone living in Shipston, and weirder still the address was a house to which I delivered a daily newspaper on my paper round. The person selling the tape recorder, whom I hadn't actually met despite delivering his newspaper each morning, was Jon Hunt, a boy a couple of years older than myself. I later realised he was probably the closest thing Shipston had to celebrity*, being the man behind the Ideal Husbands, a local band which had released a single called Town Planning. I think it had been played on Peel's show, possibly.

Anyway, I wasn't aware of any of this as Jon showed me the tape recorder and I realised I would need to save my combined pocket money and paper round wages for about a billion weeks in order to afford it. I told him as much and so instead he sold me a cassette tape of his songs, not the Ideal Husbands but a solo work entitled Who is the Captain of this Ship?

I was initially phased by the tape including a cover of a certain song from a popular musical, and not even an amusingly punky cover with sneering and references to doing a poo down the chimney stack but not really caring about it. In fact the music was quite unlike almost everything else I was listening to in whichever year that was, being both gentle and generous in spirit, well played, and it didn't seem like it had anything to prove. I might have likened it to a less angst-ridden The The had I known of Matt Johnson at the time.

A year or two later Jon had Who is the Captain of this Ship? pressed up as a vinyl album, opting to hand produce the sleeve by means of silk screen for whatever reason. The design had seven colours, each of which had to be printed individually on every cover before we could add the next colour; and I can't remember exactly how many copies he'd had pressed, but it wasn't less than five-hundred. It was a lot of work. He drafted five or six of us in to help, and so we spent a couple of days as a human production line at the local art college turning out cover after cover. Annoyingly this was at the end of the college year, so I somehow never got my complimentary copy of the finished record with the hand-printed sleeve; then against all odds I found one a couple of years later in a junk shop in a village way over on the other side of the country.

To at last get to the point, I always wondered what became of Jon Hunt. Given the quality of his album and the fact that it really didn't sound like the work of someone who was just pissing about, it didn't really seem too likely that he would have packed it all in to become a floorlayer; and my unvoiced question found an answer when somebody invented the internet. He moved to Bristol and joined this bunch, and this was their first album as Spiro.

I would say it's folk music, except the more I listen, the less such labels seem to fit; which I suppose is handy because I've never been quite sure where I stand with folk music. Certainly I dislike anything overly twee, or in which chartered accountants pretend to be eighteenth century crofters and tailor their speech patterns accordingly so as to encompass sentences such as I did see a maiden fair, because the verb to see had no past tense until Nikola Tesla invented the word saw in 1941; and I've never really given much of a shit about real ale; and I might read The Lord of the Rings again at some point, but it's by no means certain; and neofolk can folk right off and take its limited slipcase edition of Mein Kampf with it, so far as I'm concerned.

From what I can tell of the artwork and website, this band of four look very much like a democracy, and yet repeated play of Pole Star leaves me in no doubt as to the involvement of the guy who recorded Who is the Captain of this Ship?, so I'll assume the distinctively fine balance struck between the bitter and the sweet is either his doing, or else he's been lucky enough to hook up with some seriously kindred spirits. The instrumentation is acoustic - guitar, accordion, mandolin, and violin, and somehow it manages to sound just as you might anticipate from that line-up whilst remaining astonishingly fresh, as though this is the first time you've heard anything of this kind. In fact the mood is such as to evoke the notion of hearing music itself for the very first time. It's somewhere between the instrumental simplicity, the ornate melody, and an apparent reluctance to just trot out anything too familiar or obvious for the sake of tradition, but there's something very fundamental about the sound of this group, primal without the primitive. There's no trickery or pissing about, and yet the entire disc sparkles.

So this is what Jon Hunt did next, and nosing around on the band's website it's pleasing to note that Spiro seem pretty popular in certain circles and have played this stuff to audiences all over the world. So it's not just me.

...and you can probably buy it here.

*: Possibly excepting Frank Spencer's wife from the telly.

The The - Naked Self (2000)

Today's weird little nugget of synchronicity is my listening to this album whilst out on the bike, then stopping off at the supermarket on the way home to hear This Is the Day piped over HEB's public address system - weird because I was bonkers for This Is the Day when it came out in 1983, back when I was a spotty English teenager who hadn't quite worked out how to use a comb; and that was what got me into The The in the first place; and because it's strange to be in a supermarket in Texas thirty years later hearing the same song as opposed to - I dunno - Willie Nelson or something...

Okay. Maybe it isn't that strange, or no more so than any of the tunes to which the Anglophile cashiers of San Antonio apparently like to listen as they work, most of which seem to have been playlisted by myself when I was seventeen. I haven't yet heard anything by Alternative TV, Throbbing Gristle, or Domestic Bliss whilst buying  my grits, chitlins, collard greens, ammunition, or BBQ supplies, but I expect it's only a matter of time.

I assumed this to be the new album when I picked it up and was a bit embarrassed to realise it's thirteen years old, embarrassed because Matt Johnson is clearly a genius approaching Thirlwell proportions and deserving of support. When he first began recording, or specifically recording albums that were sold in the shops to which I had access, I was convinced that the future of music lay with the multi-instrumentalist one man band, or at least the one man plus singer band. This prophecy was deduced from the general excellence of Soft Cell, Foetus and others who, like Brian Eno before them, recorded music as they saw fit, unfettered by the obligations that come with membership of a full band - every song being required to feature a part for the euphonium just so that Bingo won't feel left out. On the strength of Nine Inch Nails, I'd say it wasn't too bad as a prediction, leaving aside the obvious futility of ever predicting that any one thing will be the future of anything.

Even with other musicians drafted in, The The still feels very much like a personal vision on Naked Self, which is probably why the guy has always been such a great communicator, namely that we all know how a personal vision feels. For my money this quality became sidelined during the years of The The as a full band, and whilst Johnny Marr's guitar playing was undeniably great, that material still carried a tang of compromise in comparison to this.

I bought Naked Self fully expecting a huge disappointment, the continued stumbling efforts of someone who really should have jacked it in some time ago to concentrate on his hotel portering, but it could quite easily have been recorded immediately following Soul Mining. This isn't to suggest it sounds necessarily dated, for Matt's music has always had a timeless, somewhat universal quality for all its being sprung from the aforementioned personal vision. Weirdly, this might even be the best album he's done, allowing for the possibility that he's probably squeezed out a few more since; and Shrunken Man is a cracker.