SATURDAY SUN

This Saturday just past was one of those miraculously near-perfect days for someone like me who likes nothing better than to spend an idle day roaming freely and semi-randomly around London; although it was extremely cold (well it is winter, and more snow is expected round these parts before we’re out of it), the sky was a flawless blue and the sun fulsomely bright – it felt like the first day of spring. This is not unreasonable, since my life in general at the moment feels like the first day of spring (oh, for summer to wing her way across to me and make it wholly – and holy - perfect!).

Breakfast at South Kensington, for a change; Picasso’s is splendid, but sometimes it gets a little too crowded and I yearn for a little more space, so sometimes I venture to its sister restaurant/café five minutes’ walk to the north for my full English. It was nearly deserted, which suited me fine; observing that auburn glow of the sun and leaves falling against and kissing the lower edges of Harrington Road. Then to Knightsbridge, on foot, down through Pelham Street, the boutiques, dry cleaners and croissant shops tending their mid-morning opening; then onto Walton Street, which temporarily makes me forget I’m in London and instead transports me to never-forgotten Sundays in Stamford or Knaresborough; leafy dappled walls, shops whose modest fronts betray their immodest prices. Eventually, just before reaching Harrods, I swerve to the left, cross Knightsbridge proper and enter another maze of haphazardly formal, small, moneyed streets; I emerge from Trevor Place on the opposite side of the road from Knightsbridge Barracks, at the spot where, in October 1998, the accident occurred. However, on this occasion, I use the zebra crossing (as I should have done then) and the 52 bus bearing down on me, this time stops to let me across. This westerly part of central London is still largely vacant of people, or traffic.

Onwards, by bus and foot, thereafter, variously to Highgate, Kentish Town, Camden, the Fulham end of the King’s Road (disappearing benignly into Putney Bridge, and looking in this sunlight almost Barcelonean) and Putney itself (completing my own lopsided geographic circle) before heading back home just as the sun begins to recede; already revelling in the day retrospectively, thinking passionately of such future days where I will not be alone, about the deeper joys which await their gain.

Inevitably, certain songs and music wended their way into and through (though not out of) my mind during Saturday (not least, Nick Drake’s “Saturday Sun,” proposing a nicer future than its author was to receive), and here are some of the most prominent:

ANDREW GOLD: “Looking For My Love”
Buried deep within Gold’s third album, All This And Heaven Too (1978), are many strange and wonderful things awaiting discovery for those who choose to go beyond the hits – three on this particular album: “Thank You For Being A Friend,” “How Can This Be Love?” and the superlative “Never Let Her Slip Away” – and this is one of them; a strange and unsettled ballad set to becalmed Fender Rhodes piano, occasional abrupt guitar, tympani and harmonium (all played by Gold), which never quite resolves into a steady chord sequence; always diverting into other uncertainties. The harmonium summons up the way in which the landscape on either side of Putney Bridge makes you think of the seaside; the general tenor of the song is immediately comparable with Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Miss My Love Today” from the same year, and maybe also with early David Ackles. I don’t suppose that I need to empathise with the song’s sentiments that deeply – given that I’ve found “my love” – but it’s handy to keep in mind, as with the consideration of what was lurking behind Chris Rea’s garden walls.

BARRY GUY and The LONDON JAZZ COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA: “Stringer Part II”
I was very pleased to discover on Saturday that 1980’s Stringer has finally been made available on CD; certainly its tighter connections with “jazz” curiously seem to serve Guy’s composer mode better than the indeterminate ramblings of later LJCO pieces. Though given the painterly connections which Guy made a point of mentioning in relation to his compositional structures, it’s unsurprising that “Stringer Part II” summons the spectre of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition, though the formality is here defined by a steadily rising and ebbing circular line of whole tones and half-tones – not that far away in design from something like Harry Miller’s “Traumatic Experience” – over which the trumpet of the featured soloist, Kenny Wheeler, forms a proud and noble arch of lyricism. Hearing it was like glimpsing, through an orchard-blessed avenue just behind Pelham Street, the imposing front entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum; still a startling sight, even though I have known every square inch within that establishment for nearly a quarter of a century. On Saturday at about eleven in the morning, it simply felt right. Also, given that the remaining three parts of Stringer in various ways fall prey to the trap of trying to cram too many soloists and sub-groupings into a limited timeframe, the quietude and stead of Part II, in which there is but one soloist, is refreshing, like an unexpectedly juicy slice of melon purchased somewhere in Kensington Gardens.

BOB DYLAN: Not Dark Yet
None of these is an especially merry piece of music, thus far, and yet the defiantly weary ball-and-chain dragging of Dylan’s voice astride – glued to - the dual shuffling, rattling percussion of Brian Blades and Jim Keltner (“It’s not dark yet…but it’s gettin’ there”) and the phantom murmurs of Daniel Lanois’ paraphernalia make me anticipate the forthcoming summer far more eagerly than…well, whatever the 2006 equivalent of “Don’t Worry Be Happy” turns out to be (probably Corinne Bailey Rae, this year’s true recipient of the mass JESUS DO WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN scream. Whatever “people” say about her, truly that’s what she’s not).

NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS: Big
Presenting itself in my subconscious for easily the first time in 15 years is this Madchester cut-off from the dawn of the ‘90s (sigh, what misplaced optimism). I wonder if anyone could get away with this now (among other things it helped invent the Beta Band) – five minutes of skeletal but vital drumming, a “White Lines” bassline, 1981 New Romantic funk guitar, a rudimentary sax chorale, and a doleful Northern vocal repeating a few biological non-sequiturs (“The desert grows three miles a year/It just grows/Let’s call it a garden/It just happens”). And the record, as it will be, just happens, wonderfully. I’ll be resuscitating the Paris Angels next.

KONONO NO 1: Kule Kule
Not that far away from the New FADs, really, but in other ways about as far away as you could get; an absolutely thrilling foray of hypnotic multiple drums and multiple thumb pianos which could virtually place this – and its parent album, Congotronics – as the missing link between the Miles of In A Silent Way and the Davis of Pangaea. Can’t wait to hear how this will sound in the summer (ditto the second CD of Aerial).

THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS: I Live To Fall Asleep
Not many people took notice of 2004’s Lifeblood, but I have found it to be a very wise and extremely moving piece of work, with one of its peaks being this mutant ‘70s AoR offering (not that far from Andrew Gold, either in melodic structure or lyrical subtext). But again, as the closing “Cardiff Afterlife” sorely underlines, eventually you have to leave all this sadness behind, lest you fall asleep and miss the future, smiling serenely at you through your own forgetful mists.

FUNKY MONKEY: Peaceman
There is an indestructible memory in my heart; one of walking up towards Magdalen Bridge at ten to five in the morning of May Day, 1999, listening to the Monkey Mafia’s take on Fogarty’s “Long As I Can See The Light.” In truth it was pretty ropey – as was its parent album, even though I never got rid of it – but at that precise moment it felt absolutely apt and riotously right. Beneficent, in the most productive of ways. The other piece of Big Beat-ish music which has lodged in my mind from that era is this one. I don’t know what became of Funky Monkey – they had a couple of albums out, then a strange compilation of the two with additional new tracks – but they were great in a Screamadelica comedown kind of a way, and this ten-minute epic, with Denise Johnson on vocals, slowly builds up to a gorgeous and heartbreaking major/minor melody over a beat which, if not exactly floor-filling, fills important spaces in my former dark night with blessed flashes of life-justifying light.

BILL EVANS: Peace Piece
“It’s a great piece of music,” said my dad about this, “but it’s not jazz.” Nor does it need to be. Evans, alone in the studio, working up an intro to a reading of the Leonard Bernstein show tune “Some Other Time,” gradually easing into bitonality and atonality and then final resolution over an unaltering left-hand piano motif. And it still feels, 34 years after I first heard it, like being resuscitated with kisses bestowed by the kindest of angels.

CAT POWER: Where Is My Love?
I’d meant to write about the new Cat Power record, The Greatest, long before now, but you know how it goes; there’s just so much to write about, to take into account, at the moment, and that can’t be a bad thing (and Broken Social Scene, who demand to be written about in a new and enticing way, and I’m busy working on that). Recorded in Ardent Studios, Memphis, just like Sister Lovers; and just like Sister Lovers it’s a “soul” record, not in terms of gratuitously and snidely ripping off tired memes (did someone mention Corinne Bailey Rae again?), but a record of the artist’s soul. Certainly there is discreet accompaniment from various distinguished Memphis players, but to term it “Chan Marshall goes R&B” is missing several points (and also demonstrates how some critics cannot tear themselves away from rephrasing misleading press releases). The careful, hymnal Salem Sunday School clunk of Marshall’s piano is evident from second one of track one – the title track – as is the fact that she is singing about not being “the greatest”; the silence which greets the key line “Stars of night turned deep to dust” is eerily similar to that which comes at the equivalent point in Aerial.

While lyrically The Greatest trawls the same abyss of uncertainty about life which defined 2003’s You Are Free, musically it is more expansive – but only up to a point. All the signifiers which appear on the record, be they Nashville fiddles or pedal steels, or Tadd Dameron churches of brass, or the bizarre doo wop-derived backing vocal fills on “Willie,” all materialise at a distance, as though on the other side of a gauze screen; and yet, as with the more considered Mazzy Star, the arrangements are in absolute concordance with the emotions Marshall strives to convey.

And even through all this despair, Marshall’s is a voice which reassures and comforts. Listening to her plead for the return of her “sailor” on “Islands” or defining herself against the buoyant, but unreachable, whistling on “After It All” (“With your back to me against the wall/And make demands with your angry hands”) I hear not an urge to die – for, on the solo “Hate,” she counterparts the “I hate myself and I want to die” motif with the aside “Can you believe she repeated that?” – but a lagoon of a voice waiting for me to dive into it, to swim in it, to absorb its waters of love, to catch the welcome under the pauses in her breath and stay in that dwelling evermore.

Eventually she comes through on the side of life, on the admirably ferocious closer “Love & Communication” which mixes Peter Buck guitar and Badly Drawn Boy electric piano with an unstoppable, ascending (half-tone by half-tone) staccato string arrangement and reaches the conclusion “Love and communication you were here for me/At this very moment cuz I found you on the phone/You called me/And you were not hunting me.”

But the most miraculous moment of The Greatest is its epicentre, “Where Is My Love?” – such a simple song, played on an elementary piano and underscoring synthesisers, such complex passions, such yearning and such fulfilled hope.

“Horses running free/Carrying you and me…/Safe and warm/So close to me/In my arms/Finally/There is my love…” And you can feel the smile forming on her lips as she sings the word “There,” so close upon the sigh of exhausted contentment with which she pronounces the word “Finally.” I know that others have commented on the mothering qualities inherent in Chan Marshall’s voice, and that’s what I feel too; her voice promises, flows with streams of, nurturing and healing; and somehow this is what last Saturday intangibly communicated to me, in ways only one other Reader could truly understand – the pain is done, the penance has long since been paid; now open up joyfully and let her come to you, and into you, and you into her, and allow both souls a further lifetime of happiness.

posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink

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NEIL DIAMOND – CAN YOU BELIEVE HIM?

Is it only me who feels a little nauseated at the alacrity with which Leo Sayer is currently chasing his own ambulance? There is a record entitled “Thunder In My Heart Again” at the top of the charts, but it is credited to Meck, the hapless DJ who actually put the thing together; and while it is good that Meck should see the potential of what was already a great record, and while you wonder where he conceivably could have got the idea from, it is unbecoming of Sayer to grasp this “success” with claws newly sharpened, and worse, to use it as a pretext to become a spokesman for something called The Campaign For Real Music, the man who owes his comeback to a track based on a radically rejigged sample of a 29-year-old song now absurdly crying for Real Music Played On Real Instruments With Real Spirit And Real Soul. Especially since the same man, when younger, delivered one of the bitterest diatribes against looking back as a substitute for living in 1973 – go past the hits and check out his debut album Silverbird if you doubt me.

So everybody gets older, but some have more sophisticated strategies to deal with it than others; even if, like Neil Diamond, you’ve constantly been denied credibility because of a very Sayer-ish shotgun marriage between naffness of dress and unquenchable sincerity of spirit, based in stupidity or in wisdom – it’s your shout. But then the best of Diamond’s songs – the escalating tubular bells which cascade into ecstasy “Cracklin’ Rosie”’s ode of undying love to a cheap bottle of wine, the genuinely uneasy truce between anguish and menace that is “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon,” the simple but telling emotional architecture of “Sweet Caroline” – are in my view every bit the equal of the best songs by Jimmy Webb, or Lee Hazlewood (indeed, “Song Sung Blue” might have been the work of an unusually happy Hazlewood – that same damn-you baritone razor drawl) but lose out on credibility because they are seldom anything other than optimistic or happy. Happiness is cheap to barter in the elevated pop-rock canon. Especially when mixed with that sincerity, and even more particularly when the sincerity is drenched in faith. Consider Diamond’s first big hit as a writer, “I’m A Believer”…

MONKEES INTERLUDE

To paraphrase Larkin, by 1967 the Beatles had won the world but lost the typists and the cloakroom girls in the Cavern. For everyone who thought that the Beatles were pushing envelopes as fast as they could be manufactured, there was at least someone else lamenting the loss of the cuddly, funny old Beatles, the ones you could sing along to and scream at on stage, as opposed to the crusty, unfunny new Beatles, the ones whose songs weren’t so easy to sing these days and don’t even bother touring any more, and if you ask me they’re getting a bit up themselves…and for all such people, Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson hit on the idea of bringing that old screaming magic back. Except that this group would be entirely owned by them with no opportunity to grow up and grow difficult; a television show recapturing the symbiotic daftness of A Hard Day’s Night (including a Genuine Brit!) but with all of the script already written.

It worked, if only temporarily; and then it worked for far more important reasons. Yes, Mickey Dolenz was the only Monkee present on “I’m A Believer” (if you don’t count some subsequent dubbed backing vocals from Davy Jones) despite Tork and Nesmith being more than capable musicians, but then Brian Wilson was the only Beach Boy present on “Caroline No.” And I’m afraid that if you plan to damn the Monkees, then you also have to say no to the Sex Pistols and maybe even the Beatles – all manufactured to a greater degree. The Beatles were a roughneck Toxteth bar band whom Epstein gayed up in Pierre Cardin collars. The Pistols were put together to promote a clothes shop and comprised a roughneck Shepherd’s Bush bar band who thought they were going to be in The Faces Mk II except McLaren hired Ornette Coleman as the lead singer. And certainly no pop lover worth their love would say no to a second of “Pleasant Valley Sunday” or “Daydream Believer” or “The Porpoise Song” or “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone” – immortal records all, all written by hardened Brill Building professionals and performed by hardened veterans of Spector’s Wrecking Crew.

Or indeed “I’m A Believer.” From its dual intro of coy Farfisa organ and slightly more forward guitar (the latter very cleverly reorganising the chordal components of the intro to “A Hard Day’s Night”), Dolenz whispers his way into the song with his tale of previous woe (“Seems the more I gave, the less I got,” “Disappointment haunted all my dreams”) before a reluctantly ecstatic smile broadens his face and voice to intone “And then I saw her face! Now I’m a believer!” Now, this could well be another example of old gospel memes being translated into pop currency – yet, despite all the aura of manufacture, there is a strangely sweet and serene sincerity which shines through this record like an early summer sun in January. And the middle eight sees the singer growing into puberty – note the fuzzed-up electric piano pounding out the “Wipe Out” riff – before exiting in some kind of spiritual/carnal rejoicing. It’s like a renewal of pop.

Inevitably, if temporarily, the Monkees themselves won through; by the summer of ’67 they were playing on their own records, and via Dolenz were responsible for one of that year’s most avant-garde hits, “Randy Scouse Git” (a.k.a. “Alternate Title”). By the summer of ’68, Schneider, Rafelson and Jack Nicholson had decided to throw them into the sea (with Head) and they duly dispersed. But then, the killing irony lies in the fact that the money which these producers had earned out of “The Monkees” was sufficient to bankroll this film in which Nicholson was interested, about these two hippie bikers -–and thus the first unapologetically manufactured pop group literally paved the way for the opening shot in the second, gloriously independent golden age of American cinema (Repo Man, which Nesmith executive produced, is the meeting point where the two made their truce).

BACK TO THE DIAMOND

That Godhood persists in Neil Diamond to this day – on 12 Songs there are two curious numbers which deal specifically and not so specifically (respectively) with where the singer stands in relation to his creator. “Man Of God” is a straightforward gospel waltz, though some may blanche at Diamond’s assertion that “When I hear my voice, I believe that it’s His!” Whereas the less restful “Create Me” seems to be a prayer for God – or his unrequited love? – to will him into being.

Such tactics remind us that Diamond, whatever his songwriting genius, and however quiet Rick Rubin managed to get him in the studio, never quite shakes off the concept of the Big Idea, the Big Finish. Much of Diamond’s music would be unimaginable without the songs’ crucial Big-ness. So even on a quiet(ish) acoustic (mostly) album such as 12 Songs, Diamond can cut epics; most explicitly in two songs. Firstly, “Hell Yeah,” which you realise about halfway through the second verse is Diamond’s attempt to do a “My Way.” No “what have I become?” terminating anguish for Neil! No, he SAYS IT LOUD that it WAS all worth it and that he knows damn well he’ll be MISSED when he’s GONE. And despite all of this genteel grandstanding it’s still hard for my heart not to be touched in a silly, sublime way by his going up an octave in the final verse and screaming with pure joy that he’s “found the life he was after! Filled it up with love and laughter! FINALLY GOT IT RIGHT!!” Even though the concept of “getting it right” recurs in several of these 12 songs, that “FINALLY GOT IT RIGHT!!” pierces me like – well, like a passionate kiss of YES.

But Diamond can do tragedy as grandly as happiness, and thus the record’s big setpiece “Evermore,” which starts with some studio chatter – “Let Neil start it by himself” says Rubin in the control room and you immediately know this is going to be Cecil B DeMille. Up to a point. Nevertheless “Evermore” IS a great song, one which Roy Orbison should have been alive to sing, and while it might build up in a vaguely obvious way (i.e. this is something Bono would try, and get so NOT right) its “Bridge Over Troubled Water” assault (complete with Larry Knetchel at the piano!) is beautifully timed – and when the orchestra and timpani finally come in, it actually sounds organic, as though they performed it live, in the room; and there’s the crucial difference between something like “Evermore” and something like “Green, Green Grass Of Home” – on the latter, the strings and choir were tacked on gratuitously (but to what results! – the launch of an unfeasibly successful international career for its singer which four decades later still shows no signs of closing down), but on the former, they breathe symbiotically (not to say, of course, that sometimes the other way doesn’t work – Larry Fallon’s string parts for Astral Weeks were overdubbed, but the arrangements are so sensitive and generous that you still feel they are rising and falling in complete tandem with Morrison’s voice and Richard Davis’ extraordinarily singing bass).

But 12 Songs works best, I think, on a smaller canvas; thus the genuinely heartbreaking simplicity of “Save Me A Saturday Night,” which with its descending celeste seems to have come straight from an early ’66 Diamond session – hear how his voice falters carefully at the words “save me” and “baby”; the touching tenderness of the straightforward devotional love songs “Oh Mary” and (my favourite) “Captain of A Shipwreck” (“If you’re captain of a shipwreck, I’ll be first mate to your shame” – soundtracked by some lovely, delicate guitar from Mike Campbell which sounds exactly like the breeze of my fingers gently running through your hair), and – in complete contrast – the unapologetic sexuality of “Delirious Love”; even though the song is sung slightly regretfully, in the past tense, there is something truly majestic and subversive about 65-year-old Diamond exulting “I can feel it!” as Campbell (again) swoons his guitar into a lovely bend, like a renegade bedspring.

And there is also some mordant dark humour which almost conjures up Leonard Cohen in Rubin’s studio by mistake – the sneering “I’m On To You” which comes across as Lambchop singing Morrissey, with the Carla Bley Band in the background trying to play “Milestones” as quietly as possible, and its half-partner of a song to an uncertain (physical) lover “What’s It Gonna Be.” Eventually the whole thing bows out with the stoned bar-brawl shuffle singalong “We.” Thus 12 Songs is a fine record, almost despite itself (I’m not so sure about the straight-faced Sufjan Stevens comparisons though – there is a mournfulness which balances Stevens’ pranks, and Diamond doesn’t really touch either end of that particular spectrum), but catch that very angry statement by Diamond on the briefly harrowing eve-of-break-up song “Face Me” – “What is insanity if not a cry for the truth to be truthfully told?” Now there’s some Nietzschean pop food for your thought.

TIGA – SeXoR

There’s revivalism and there’s revivalism. Sometimes I think it simply comes down to which sort of revivalism we prefer as individuals, or the fact that we usually want to be reminded strongly of certain things and not at all of others. Take the new Tiga album (which, as far as I can tell, is unbelievably his first bona fide album as an artist). Every one of its 15 tracks could have been written, recorded and produced before 1989 – and that’s a big part of its charm. But what separates Tiga’s imagined ‘80s from those of the Arctic Monkeys? They’re both revisiting a past they never really lived through – but you end up with two entirely different stories. Two equally valid stories too, in my view; but then over the last month or so Tiga has been getting the lion’s share of plays on my stereo, and I cannot give a coherent critical opinion as to why this should be, other than his ‘80s speak more to me than that of the Arctic Monkeys; an ‘80s of steel cube synthesisers fit for idolatry, for distant, muttered vocals, for a Big-ness which might be the polar opposite to that of Neil Diamond.

Perhaps it’s Tiga’s extensive sleevenotes, from which I quote: “The past years have been very strange and hard and painful, experiencing the greatest loss and in the process losing a part of myself and watching some of the color fade from the world and wondering if life could ever shine again…” Well, then, it’s no wonder I keep going back to SeXoR, because even at its bleakest and gloomiest it still issues breaths of fascinating fire and (doomed?) futurism.

There’s always been something of the grievous night about Tiga’s music, and especially that trembling baritone of a voice of his, right through his imagined ‘80s of “Sunglasses At Night” and “Crockett’s Theme” – but here it, and he, make especial sense. So you could say that “(Far From) Home” in the first of its two versions is like a slightly more cheerful Air, or that its extended, insanely danceable reprise later on in the album makes me think of LCD Soundsystem with smugness replaced by humanity.

Also, as songs, the songs on SeXoR are immense; the shivering minor string synth chords which come in towards the end of “High School” and the ominous tenor monotone which underscores the wasted “Down In It.” Elsewhere, “You Gonna Want Me” and “The Ballad Of SeXoR” recall a reborn Human League (truly – I ended up singing along to them and found I sounded exactly like Phil Oakey! Oh yes…), “Pleasure From The Bass” is breathlessly enticing, and as for Tiga’s take on Public Enemy’s “Louder Than A Bomb” – well, he takes it down to an even more menacing basso profundo stream of conscientiousness which, set against the spiky West Cromwell Road electronics, actually sounds like the Eric B and Rakim of Follow The Leader meeting the Public Enemy of Nation Of Millions; and for personal reasons I don’t need to go into here, that kind of makes my today.

And then there’s “Brothers” which is so obviously a New Order wannabe – right down to Tiga’s guileless Sumner vocals and logical non-sequiturs of lyrics, that blissful chord change and even the Peter Hook suddenly-shove-your-arm-up-an-octave bass – that it comes close to overturning my entire critical viewpoint on music and its relationship to the past; that sometimes, even after all you’ve lived through (and all you’ve outlived), you just want to sit down and listen to an expert pastiche of ‘80s New Order. Except it’s Tiga, who clearly has his own story to tell, and that’s what keeps you listening. Right through to the extra track, the devastating “Sir Sir Sir,” which is like John Foxx’s Garden overrun by refugees from Renoir’s Les Regles Du Jeu (“And now I tend this hearth alone/And so take hold of these carriage reins/And drive me away”) with those gruesomely gorgeous descending minor semitone chords which conjure up the desolate Lanarkshire of that summer of 1981, just before I was to desert it for good; abandoned mineshafts set against brilliantined blue skies in the middle of the countryside, somewhere on the long road between Blantyre and Tollcross.

But then another excerpt from Tiga’s sleevenote, and a reminder of why I’m living in 2006: “…when I needed you most you proved yourself a million times over, and I will never forget. You are my world, and I cherish and love you so much, for never letting the lights go out and showing me that life still sparkles.”

I could not have said it better.

posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink

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THE 1965 BRIT AWARDS

One of their huge tuneful hits is called “Midnight In Moscow” – but even the most devoted fans of the kings of Trad, Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen, would find that easier to imagine than their shocking victory in this year’s Brit Awards, where the loveable, cleancut lads have scooped the award for Best British Act ahead of highly-rated fellow nominees Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Shadows, The George Mitchell Minstrels, and, most surprisingly of all, the self-styled “Fab Four” themselves – the Beatles!

In a stormy, fun ceremony held live at the Empire Pool, Wembley, north-west of London, even compere Jimmy “Top Of The Pops” Savile seemed to be stunned by some of the night’s results. “Now then now then, who’d have thought that all the groovy young guys and gals going for that there heavy heavy Merseybeat thing there,” he told a star-sudded audience estimated at 15,000 in number, “would be beat-en by the Trad Dads in 19 Hundred and like Sixty Five you see, so howzabout that then?” Even trumpeter Ball, leader of Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen, looked startled as he tenderly accepted his award from comedy legend Tommy Trinder. The Beatles could only look on helplessly, on a film specially shot in San Francisco three weeks previously.

And that wasn’t the only surprise in this year’s never-failing-to-surprise Brits, as legendary fun pianist and entertainer Mrs Mills won the Best British Female Artist trophy, ahead of much fancied rivals Julie Rogers, Alma Cogan, Vera Lynn and Annie Lennox. “This just goes to show,” quipped Mills at a press conference after the fun-packed ceremony, “that proper music with proper tunes never goes out of fashion, no matter what all those long-haired layabouts say! Now, who’s for a tiddly at the milk bar?” she quipped to gales of laughter from the press reporters present.

You’d need to wear a thick scarf to protect yourself from the gales of laughter that arise whenever cuddly, cheeky all-round entertainer Kenny Lynch is in town, and the star was in particularly fulsome fun form as he scooped the Best R&B Act award, having gleaned more votes from the all-star music business panel (“This’ll show everyone us oldies are – as they say – with it!” chuckled the Brits panel chairman Billy Cotton) than fellow contenders Adam Faith, Emile Ford and the Checkmates, Swinging Blue Jeans, The, and hot purveyors of what the kids in the street are calling “Souls” music – none other than Liverpool’s finest, Wayne Fontana with his Mindbenders. “Funny you should say that,” quipped star Lynch, “but I was playing a round of golf with Adam [Faith – Ed.] at Weybridge the other day, and we got to the eighteenth hole and Tarby and I said to Adam: ‘Hey Adam, you’ll never pot that eighteenth hole in one!’ And do you know what – he didn’t!” Lynch quipped, doubtless warmed by the warm reception he got from up and coming comic legend Jimmy “Tarby” Tarbuck, who happily was on hand to present “Lynchie” Lynch with his richly-deserved award at the ceremony yesterday.

But even “Tarby” Tarbuck couldn’t hold a candle to the King of Knotty Ash, the tattifilarious, madcap Ken Dodd who walked home from Wembley, near London, with the Best British Male Artist award, despite strong competition from male artists of the calibre of Frank Ifield, Michael Cox, David Whitfield and the late Michael Holliday. “Only I wouldn’t have walked home missus,” quipped comedy star Ken “Doddy” Dodd, “because I live in Knotty Ash!” The loveable wild man best known as “Doddy” won for his happy hits like “Happiness,” but Mr Tickling Stick himself certainly looked more than happy after the ceremony, having been snapped in the company of TV’s glamorous “Vernons Girls”! Quipped Cliff Richard, who specially attended the ceremony although won nothing, “Obviously I’m disappointed not to be amongst the winners, but let’s face it, Ken Dodd’s worked hard and long to get where he is and frankly I’m a little bit sick and tired of the long-haired layabouts you see hanging around the streets these days who expect pots of gold for hanging around the streets and doing nothing at all, these days. It wasn’t like that when Tommy Steele and I were singing for fungal crusts at the Two I’s in the early days of rock and roll!”

The star-studded ceremony got off to a “swinging” start thanks to a touching and poignant tribute from one generation of entertainers to another as Dame Anna Neagle and Gerry Marsden of Gerry and The Pacemakers performed a “Mod” rendition of the old Fred Astaire and Judy Garland classic, “We’re A Couple Of Swells.” Soon the audience were rollicking in hysterics of hysterical laughter from the forays of comic purveyed by the legions of legendary entertainers who came on stage to present the much-coveted “Brit” Awards, including amongst their number up and coming comic comet Bruce “I’m In Charge” Forsyth, Kenneth “Round The Horne” Horne, “Carry On” stars Sid James and Raymond Huntley, screen legend Ted Ray, and the reunited “Band Waggon” comedy duo of Arthur “Big Hearted Arthur Askey” Askey and Richard “Stinker” Murdoch, who seemed especially thrilled to be presenting the award for Best International Act – though this was controversially won posthumously, by the late, great “Country and Western” entertainer Jim “Gentleman Jim” Reeves, in recognition of his stunning hit parade successes, which sadly he never lived to enjoy, the award was accepted on the late great’s behalf by a visibly tearful Dorothy Squires, 53. Other international stars in contention for this contested award were loveable, cleancut Irish trio The Bachelors, cleancut, loveable Irish entertainer Val Doonican, star Bert Kaempfert and the Beach Boys. Indeed, the self-styled “Kings of Surf” the Beach Boys flew in specially for the ceremony and raised a slight how-to-do when they protested about “having come all this flipping way for a phoney flipping ceremony for old people,” as their leader, Mike Love, was heard to quip on his way to the “Exit.”

But the most emotional emotions were saved for the emotional final Cyril Lord Carpets Lifetime Achievement Award, which a visibly tearful Norman “Don’t Laugh At Me” Wisdom presented tenderly to that legendary duo of a double act, Flanagan and Allen. Bud and Woody thanked the audience, estimated at 20,000 strong, for supporting them throughout their 60 years in the business before launching into a medley of their showstopping hit. Onlookers in the all-important “VIP” front row, including Stanley Holloway, Brian Poole and Max Bygraves, were visibly tearful to see those loveable rogues of old strut their stuff once more, in defiance of an age which has washed away all nobility, decency and respect in favour of long-haired layabouts. You’ll find none of these at the Brit Awards – where “Real Music” is rewarded!

When quizzed about comments from disgruntled “Left-wingers” – probably “Communists” – about the Brits being an antiquated, ridiculous ceremony which studiously ignored everything that was interesting about that year’s music in favour of constantly playing safe and rewarding mediocre time-servers for the act of still breathing, BBC chief Lord “Reithy” Reith quipped: “Well, what one has to remember is that the BBC paid a substantial sum of money for this ceremony to be broadcast live on our colourful new “Colour” channel BBC2 – and one has to remember that the potential audience for that includes young children and also old ‘pensioners,’ many of whom fought in two world wars so that long-haired layabouts could have the freedom to hang around the streets these days – those so-called “Moderns” and “Rockists” we see getting caught up in dreadful scrapes at the seaside of an Easter, you wouldn’t have that, I can tell you, if we hadn’t abolished National Service – and the BBC has a remit to please all of its audience, not to offend all of its audience. So it would have been inappropriate for us to give out awards to the scruffy likes of the Roaring Stones, the Kings, the Whose and Cilla Black, for the BBC certainly doesn’t play any of that long-haired layabout tommy rot, no matter how many long-haired layabouts hang around the streets playing this so-called ‘music’ on their Dansettes these days. Also one has to remember that this ‘music’ is most commonly made popular on illegal pirate radio stations, and the BBC and the Brits committee certainly cannot be seen openly to endorse ‘music’ which becomes popular by virtue of criminal gain. Think of all the brave lads in the Army and Navy out there on the high seas, fighting for our freedom – Jerry would blow them away in a trice were their important communication wavelengths disrupted by scruffy long-haired layabout so-called ‘pirate’ ‘music’! As I said to Rab Butler over our fourteenth Scotch at the Carlton Club the other e’en – one has to take a stand. This ‘music’ will not last and will be eventually and thankfully superseded by genuine music. One never knows – some distant day in the future, one of our own brave squadron leaders fighting in foreign lands for our freedom may win a ‘Brit’!”

Quipped a spokesman for the Brit Awards, “Forget it, Jarvis. It’s Chinatown.”

posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink

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GHOSTS MADE OF SCARCER VOICES

The talk now is of “hauntology,” and it’s a subject with which this weblog should feel immediate empathy. After all, The Church Of Me has for the last four years or so been primarily concerned about ghosts; about learning to live with them, about extracting new life from their pale, glum shrouds – and maybe, eventually, learning to let them go. Because the aim has been to invite ghosts to live again, whether it’s a forgotten record from 1973 or 1993, or even this writer, who for long periods could have been classified as a ghost writer. Certainly there have been many times when I have felt like a ghost when writing for CoM; a non-living person stranded in some kind of post-bereavement limbo with only recalled memories for colder comfort. But I think it fair to say that I currently feel less like a ghost than I have done for half a decade (is it really coming up for five years? Who knows where the time went?). The journey out of the tunnel is nearly complete; and yes, someone in particular has been excavating at the other end to let the light in, and that necessarily (re)colours everything. Thus the return to a living, inquisitive state, a shrugging off of shadows (if not The Shadows, but more about that in a moment); the gladsome turning of the mind towards the now very real notion of starting again.

The ghosts persist, and I suppose as long as I continue to maintain record and book collections they will always do so. Nevertheless it’s time, for me at any rate, to ease them gently into the background. There are worse ways of doing so than to consider a 2CD compilation which I recently picked up at a competitive price in one of my many forays into charity shops (establishments which are virtually by definition ghost homes; sometimes one might walk into a Cancer Research shop, for instance, and see a lovingly assembled, thoughtfully organised CD or tape collection, knowing instinctively that it has all come from the one person, but then be chilled by the strong possibility that this collector is in all probability deceased from cancer. Yet the urge to keep this gallery of thoughts alive is the same urge which prevented me from torching our own collections on the tormented afternoon of Sunday 26 August 2001. Let’s, however, keep all of that at a distance now. It’s vital). This particular package, however, was from the record company direct, as proven by the blue and white label on the cover: “THIS RECORD HAS BEEN DONATED TO CHARITY BY VIRGIN RECORDS.”

The collection is entitled Instrumental Memories…Are Made Of This (subtitle: 54 Timeless Memories) which is the most recent episode in a series which perhaps should have been entitled Now That’s What I Called Music – compilations of hits for people too old to look forward to many more hits; hits in most cases older than me; specifically, hits for people who cling fearfully to the Sunday schedule of Radio 2. The chill of death is indeed tangible in the echoing output of that station on Sundays; a pocket simulacrum of how Radio 2 used to sound all the time, every day, with carefully ageing presenters, gradually bowing out to nature (Charlie Chester, Alan Keith, Hubert Gregg, Cliff Adams…all now gone) with cold reminders of what life used to be like, as now witnessed from the terminal waiting room. Indeed, listening to something like The David Jacobs Collection, which is broadcast very late on Sundays, makes me feel I am already in the afterlife (try segueing with Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide on Radio 1, or Nick Luscombe’s Flo-Motion on XFM, while half asleep, for truly surrealist sound art).

I don’t propose to discuss all 54 tracks, as some I have already discussed at adequate length (Telstar, Apache) or don’t have too much to say about at this, or any, moment (the James Bond and Pink Panther themes, On The Rebound). But it is worth taking a sample to demonstrate how Instrumental Memories…Are Made Of This could rival Morton Feldman’s Coptic Light as a graceful bridge towards another, darker world.

MR. ACKER BILK Stranger On The Shore
PERCY FAITH Theme From “A Summer Place”
Two early examples of courtly nothingness, suggesting that only suggestion is required; both number two hits in Britain with lengthy chart runs (55 and 30 weeks respectively). How did the lugubrious vibrato of Barney Bigard find its way into a Cornish waterscape of footpads and murder? The Sunday teatime serial which gave “Stranger On The Shore” its name went out before I did, and it was never repeated, so I can only guess. Neither is the film A Summer Place frequently, or even rarely, broadcast on Saturday afternoon television. Yet the signifiers remain, abstract in their benignity; and now, divested of their childhood associations with refreshments at intermissions in the cinema, when cinemas still had such things as intermissions, they suggest only a blank afterlife. “Theme From A Summer Place” now only conjures up the spirit of David Lynch, the cast of Twin Peaks forever doomed to wander the labyrinth of a mythical 1962, or was it 2002? The high-pitched, serene violins could well be the sober sensors of electrodes, there to bind us in our involuntary peace.

BERT KAEMPFERT AND HIS ORCHESTRA A Swingin’ Safari
WHISTLING JACK SMITH I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman
Even when ostensibly “uptempo” and “major key,” mono-mood music still comes across as slightly forced; yet it was and is loved by millions. So, while Chris McGregor and the Blue Notes were busy storming the stuffy citadels of British jazz in the mid-‘60s, the general public’s idea of kwela music was to iron out all the roughness (all the blackness, maybe?), so we end up with a facsimile of otherness viewed with joy and welcome, just like prides of lions in the safari park when we don’t have to get out of the car.

And did Whistling Jack Smith ever exist? “I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman” was authored by Rogers Cook and Greenaway, and in all probability was a throwaway bit of mucking about concocted in ten minutes of studio downtime; yet it was a top five hit in 1967 when the Doors’ “Light My Fire” could only make #49, and “White Rabbit” and “Incense And Peppermints” not even register on the lists. Sometimes the continued acceptance of twelfth-best can make one vengeful, if one isn’t careful.

KENNY BALL AND HIS JAZZMEN Midnight In Moscow
A number two hit in 1961, produced by the 22-year-old Tony Hatch, and now it sounds like a chart hit from 1761; something which, with its dulled and distant echoes, really does come across as a piece of music performed by ghosts, even if Mr Ball and his Jazzmen persist unaltered to this day. Of course, releasing a record entitled “Midnight In Moscow” in 1961 invited the possibility of the Apocalypse (recall how “Telstar” might, had the Cuban missile crisis gone the other way, have been the last number one record ever) and it’s difficult to scrape away this supratext from the performance. Although it was merely the first example of Ball taking unlikely source material (it was based on a Russian folk song) and turning it all into a Dixieland-via-Bexleyheath rave-up (and later in their career they were the house band on The Morecambe And Wise Show; how avidly did Eric wish for the Spontaneous Music Ensemble instead?), it does retain an element of guilty motivation (it worked surprisingly well when I tested it on the dancefloor, as a DJ, just before Christmas) even if the CND backdrop presumably occurred to Mr Ball never at all.

BRIAN FAHEY AND HIS ORCHESTRA At The Sign Of The Swinging Symbol
Better known as the theme tune for Pick Of The Pops, once the key Sunday afternoon chart show, now a mausoleum for old charts; listen to it on Radio 2 of a Sunday, hosted by a pre-recorded, neon-hearted Dale Winton – a museum whose keepers have long since fled, and it’s a programme which I try to avoid, for it has the unenviable ability to extract every last drop of life out of every record it broadcasts, particularly when Winton is compelled to skip rapidly over a 1973 listing, say, where Gary Glitter is inconveniently situated at number two, or three.

NELSON RIDDLE AND HIS ORCHESTRA Dick Van Dyke Theme
THE CHARLES WILLIAMS ORCHESTRA Devil’s Gallop
SIDNEY TORCH AND HIS ORCHESTRA Barwick Green
RAY ANTHONY Dragnet
BILLY MAY The Man With The Golden Arm
JOHNNY KEATING AND THE Z MEN Theme From Z Cars
Three American theme tunes and three British ones, and they sound as though they come from two different planets. The jackboot tympani of “Dragnet” creak with their determined pitilessness where the distant rumblings of “Devil’s Gallop” (the Dick Barton theme) practices its façade of franticity at a respectful distance; it’s like watching a car chase through a telescope in a lighthouse in Arbroath. The Dick Van Dyke theme is suave, assured and vaguely 1962-echt-hip in its tromboning tantalising, while the theme from Z Cars jumps epileptically on the spot, like an Orange Lodge march stranded on a traffic island. And then there are the screaming trumpets and bitemporal drums of Elmer Bernstein’s drug-addicted film score set against – well, the theme from The Archers, significantly lacking either trumpet or drum, or indeed sex. Much like Radio 4's UK Theme (like Z Cars, penned by Fritz Spiegl) it persuades its stalwart listeners not to be dead.

MOOD MOSAIC A Touch Of Velvet, A Sting Of Brass
KEN WOODMAN AND HIS PICCADILLY BRASS Town Talk
And when Tony Benn forced pirate radio off the air, and the BBC had to come up with a face-saving Kwik Save substitute, these tunes became prominent; “A Touch Of Velvet…” as penned by Mark “Teenage Opera” Wirtz and sung, wordlessly, by bemused session singers, was used on about four different early Radio One programmes, and later became an unlikely staple of Northern Soul playlists with its mock-Tudor promise of a cooler tomorrow. Whereas “Town Talk” persisted for decades as the theme to the Jimmy Young Show; but divested from its “ar-har Denis Healey you see” environment comes across as a surprisingly punchy, forceful post-Mod orchestral stomp with the solo altoist (Peter King?) clearly happy to get his eight bars’ worth of improv in the middle.

WINIFRED ATWELL The Poor People Of Paris
Seven years before “Telstar”; a musical saw harmonising an octave above Atwell’s jolly piano melody, and Joe Meek in the engineer’s booth. And you think it came from nowhere?

FLEETWOOD MAC Albatross
THE SHADOWS Sleep Walk
The second was, of course, the begetter of the first, in both ways; the Shadows’ take on Santo and Johnny dates from 1961 and clearly demonstrates Hank Marvin far in front of the rest of his band, who don’t even bother to follow his ingenious re-harmonisations (maybe they couldn’t?). But how the Shadows of 1969, dissolute and on the verge of extinction as they were, must have viewed the vision of “Albatross” reaching number one. What did we do wrong?
(Although Hank Marvin did return to the top ten later in 1969, as author and co-credited performer of Cliff Richard’s “Throw Down A Line,” where his irritated-sounding guitar betrays more than a little Peter Green influence)

CHRIS BARBER’S JAZZ BAND FEATURING MONTY SUNSHINE Petite Fleur
JOHNNY DANKWORTH African Waltz
SOUNDS INCORPORATED Cast Your Fate To The Wind
The punters wanted a certain kind of jazz in the charts of the late ‘50s and early-mid ‘60s. Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz notwithstanding – and Brubeck does turn up on CD1 of this compilation with “Unsquare Dance” – it tended to be MoR with signifiers of “jazz” (and one looks at the album chart of 2006 to establish how this has changed not a jot) or jolly-good-try-Roger British attempts at jazz. Thus, while Cannonball Adderley stormed the Billboard top ten singles chart in 1965 with “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” we made do with Dankworth’s bland reading of Adderley’s “African Waltz” (actually Galt McDermot’s “African Waltz,” but Adderley, with David Axelrod as arranger, did record the definitive version), where A Love Supreme, and eventually even Pharaoh Sanders’ Karma, went gold in the States, we settled for Johnny Pearson’s cheerful stop-start ambient romp through Vince Guaraldi’s proto-Charlie Brown tune, or Monty Sunshine’s wobbling vibrato paying tribute to Sidney Bechet and sounding like the perfect soundtrack for the club scenes in the Goons’ film The Case Of The Mukkinese Battlehorn.

RAY MARTIN AND HIS CONCERT STRINGS Marching Strings
A staccato, imperiously jaunty military tattoo of major key melody used for decades as the theme tune to the schools’ quiz show Top Of The Form, which if you study hard at school Marcello you might appear on (My Blighted Youth, part 323), and which inadvertently joined the dots between the concepts of school and barracks. As if they weren’t the same concept.

THE JOHNNY PEARSON ORCHESTRA Sleepy Shores
ERIC COATES By The Sleepy Lagoon (Valse Serenade)
The two closing tracks on Instrumental Melodies…Are Made Of This, inevitably so, as we reach the shoreline. Perhaps it’s just my age and upbringing, but something like “Sleepy Shores” – the theme to the early ‘70s medical soap Owen M.D. – brings the reality of my 1971 back to me far more readily and lushly than the collected works of Led Zeppelin, in the same way that I can listen to a chart from 1970, hear “Ride A White Swan” and busily nod yes yes, but then be torn apart by, say, “I Don’t Believe In If Anymore” by Roger Whittaker – and suddenly I’m six years old again, alone in the bedroom sunlight. And “Sleepy Lagoon,” a.k.a. the theme from Desert Island Discs, brings us to…Ballard’s Terminal Beach? Or, perhaps, and hopefully, away from all of these ghosts, signifying a sea which I must cross, because when it comes down to it you’re there on the other side of that ocean, waiting patiently but eagerly.

COLDCUT: SOUND MIRRORS

And then I thought, where’s the place for Coldcut in 2006, where do we put them, what do we do with them, and then I looked at the sorry Brit Awards shortlists, but don’t look at me, I didn’t get a vote, and then I remembered that Coldcut actually won a Brit Award, in 1990, or was it 1991, for Best Producer(s), and then I remembered that everything about Coldcut was encompassed by those brackets, and this was when they were all over the place, in a 1944 Charlie Parker as well as a 1994 Dale Winton sense, up the charts, down on mainstream radio, with their febrile follies, in Smash Hits and in the Wire, and then I remember that a huge part of the destructive follies of 2006 lies in the fact that we can never deploy that phrase again, even if the Wire could be said in an incurious sense to have beaten Smash Hits, outlived them, won “a war,” even if it meant becoming Uncut for 44-year-old industrial heads as opposed to Jazz Monthly for 24-year-old Pet Shop Boy fans, which is what it was when I was 24 years old, but really, the lack of Xenomania and Mr Agreeable in the Wire indicates how wrongly, or how strongly, the Wire has turned, but then again, were it not for the Wire, where else would you put Coldcut in 2006, because then I turned to the radio, and once Coldcut were on Kiss FM, then they were on GLR, and now the Solid Steel show survives, but on Resonance, so they have been painted out of a multipop corner and seethe in quiet fury, even if that Journeys By DJ mix CD wasn’t quite as transformative or deliciously delusive as what they could produce on some of these late ‘80s/early-mid ‘90s Solid Steel programmes, many of which I still have on tape, but even then this was a time after they had actually been Number One in the Actual Charts, and part of the hopefulness of 2006 is that they might be Number One in the Actual Charts again, and why not, really, since the sheerest delight of 2006 is that I appear actually to have been given a chance to live my life over, so you never know, except what your heart truly knows, but anyway.

And then there is this new album by Coldcut, Sound Mirrors, and listening to side one I can almost be convinced that this is going to be a big event, in that people will actually notice it, instead of waving the mouth and quipping I didn’t know they were still going before yawning, but yawn they shouldn’t, not yet at any rate, but what I like about it is that it continues this underused practice of record-as-magazine, that is, turn the page and read a different but connected article, or move on to the next track and there’s an entirely different attitude, a different voice, a differing story, but still united by this one (or dual) underlying vision, not quite an Operatic thing, not like War Of The Worlds, a bit more like Escalator Over The Hill, a lot more alike to Robert Fripp’s Exposure, and then obviously BEF’s Music Of Quality And Distinction, and somehow we get on to Massive Attack’s Blue Lines - via the Golden Palominos - but somehow we don’t get past Future Pilot AKA’s A Galaxy Of Sound – oops, did I skip Kish Kash? - yet we end up at Gorillaz’ Demon Days, nimbly leapfogging UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction, except we should be neither so nimble nor so quaint, but coming to a point, Sound Mirrors is something of a missing link between Psyence Fiction and Demon Days, in that it deploys many voices to depict a none-too-optimistic perspective of humanity as the 21st century prepares to anagrammatise itself and turn back into the 12th century, in fact listening to all three in quick succession would constitute a triptych of doomy doom and all rights, but then again Demon Days has what Psyence Fiction lacked, and Psyence Fiction, despite some uncanny moments, really brought whole new worlds of meaning to the term “trying too hard,” and one minor universe of demeaning to the motif “enormous resources he hasn’t yet learned to marshal,” but then Demon Days has good humour as well as black comedy, and sometimes you just want the headlights afront Thom Yorke’s rabbit to blast out “Feel Good Inc.” or the glutinously glorious fuck-it-ness of “Dare” in order to prepare the world for Radiohead’s forthcoming 1974 tribute album, Your Baby Ain’t Your Baby Anymore, and if Sound Mirrors doesn’t quite make you fall sideways, side one made me jump and not skip, not quite anyway.

So there’s “Man In A Garage,” sung and strummed by one John Matthias, sounding very like Kevin Ayers (especially those “slide over”s), on his way to work, but calling for help “with a ‘phone book on my knees,” so this jollity is all superficial, but then the truly jolly Roots Manuva rolls into pole position with “True Skool,” and the stoned eagerness of his “cooler than cooler than cool” yet again makes you wish it were 1995 or 1988 again, as though they’ve restarted that crazier thing, well who else is doing it at the moment apart from the Jaxx, and they must be feeling pretty lonely out there in the solitary sunshine, and then fuck me if it isn’t Annette Peacock (how did they get her?) banging on about hollow celebrity and flirting cameras and it all sounds the same but Coldcut interpret her “Just For The Kick” literally, and they set her against a fantastic hard(y) house rave-down, and it’s Annette Peacock gone House, and someone please put this out as a single and play it so Annette can finally get on Top Of The Pops as she should have done 34 years ago (which reminds me, nobody’s done anything yet, so they certainly need reminding), and the house fractures in the middle before violently, seductively slamming itself together again, and it’s magic anyway.

Then the house gets deeper with “Walk A Mile In My Shoes,” which is suitably, soberly and sobbingly sung by Robert Owens (the singer of “Tears,” aptly), with its fantastic, subtly scolding string line, forever ascending but never losing sight of rock bottom, but then if Coldcut wanted a number one, they would have slung a jackhammer beat under the song, as opposed to glide with grace, which is what they actually do, just as Joe South intended when he wrote the song in the first place, because guessing the centre of rhythm is so much sexier than having it spelt out to you, wouldn’t you feel, and if it only got to number five hundred and one, well, whose fault would that be, but “A Whistle And A Prayer,” gives us a different ‘90s from the one Larry Heard inhabited, the now nearly lost lo-fi electronica indie thing, let’s say Future Bible Heroes, Lizard Music, maybe even some Primitive Radio Gods, you know where this is going, and someone called Andrew Broder sings this brilliantly (sidewalk) cracked lament (“Tell me when the water is sheets”) with wandering but morbid synths and guitar and this whistle, which might come off “Utopia” by Goldfrapp, but it’s the same spice of poignancy one gets when Scott Walker or Bill Fay sings dolefully of those old, tramping war veterans, as if there weren’t a war on now, but anyway.

Side two, though, more or less gets a little too Gilles Peterson, if you get even a little of what I mean, for example “Mr Nichols” which is an entreaty not to commit suicide, and indeed even if you know only a little of the whole Coldcut story you’ll realise that entreaties not to commit suicide on Coldcut records are to be taken seriously, even if you don’t know what actually was going through the minds of Coldcut when they made those thumping, uprising records such as “The Only Way Is Up” or “People Hold On,” but unfortunately the speaker on “Mr Nichols” is Saul Williams, the George Galloway of rap, and he starts with suitable humility but, as usual, quickly becomes a hammy hector, commanding the unfortunate titular hero to turn his back on all that lethal gaudy capitalism “turned away from the East,” ah yes, that’ll be the wise, consoling, inspiring East of Tiannamen Square, Indonesian business parks, endemic avian ‘flu and fatwas, if you wanted to be as crassly generalising as Mr Williams, and I hope you don’t, because then we get “Everything’s Under Control,” which sadly justifies its title, featuring those very 1998 characters Jon Spencer and Mike Ladd, and nice to see you chaps, hope you got paid for the gig, as they revive the good ole days of Rage Against The Machine, half-heartedly informing us that “Big Brother ain’t a TV show,” “Murdoch Pop look (sic) top for consumption,” “Vatican taps on the Texas Mafia,” and other things we didn’t already know, though I did catch that “hang on now” ad lib, or was it, at the end, and then we get Amiri Baraka (how did they get him?), though it may be a sampled Baraka, telling us he’s the Boogieman, and then everything he is and everything he’s not, as if Amiri Baraka were suddenly the new lead singer with the Arctic Monkeys, and wouldn’t that be an unlistenably novel thing if he were, but then there are curves and curlicues in young Alex which make me envisage a future Albarn, and then thinking that makes me re-realise that Dennis Hopper’s cameo on Demon Days is so much more elegant, so far more cutting, but then it cuts to “Aid Dealer” wherein Soweto Kinch proves that, as a rapper, he’s a great saxophonist, well a sort of David Gray to Dudu Pukwana’s Peter Hammill really, but anyway.

Then “This Island Earth” which rambles boringly like the Platinum Pied Pipers don’t (I’ve only just gotten around to listening to the Platinum Pied Pipers’ thrillingly askew album, evidence that sometimes even Gilles Peterson gets it right), that is until the halfway mark when singer Mpho Skeef suddenly dissolves into abstract ecstasy, cutting up giggles of “Hit me!” like Kelis hijacking Ian Dury, and then the mirrors sound a little deeper as the record veers towards its end, the ambling flaming lips of “Colours The Soul,” nice enough except when you’ve just been tickled into 57 pieces by Broken Social Scene, experimentation which makes you laugh and live, after all, this is our future lives we’re talking about here, and then the broken, sodden guitar of the titular closer (not that far from Closer, really) which stumbles in the mud until an orchestra majestically arises out of the burned glades, and it’s nice, even if only as a stopgap before the next Massive Attack record, so Sound Mirrors is half a sublime album, half an album sub-lime (as in: sticking far too close to its roots to flourish and colour), and at least it tells you that Coldcut still count, even if only their thumbs, and if I tell you that Xenomania are not on the shortlist for Best Producer(s) in the 2006 Brit Awards, then maybe we shouldn’t have so keen and so gradual to shake off Coldcut, because now we couldn’t even get away with the doped, diplomatic dipso rave of Underworld circa 1993, but fuck it let’s get away anyway.

posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink

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