Just dug this one out #7 - The Men They Couldn’t Hang

Posted on July 2nd, 2007 by Andy

There was a period from about 1984, after I had drifted away from Heavy Metal, when the music I listened to was driven by three important factors…

1. It was an exhillarating and energetic live experience.
2. It was lyrically a little more challenging than most of the music I’d listened to before.
3. The more beer that had been consumed the better it sounded.

There were two bands that pretty much filled those criteria perfectly and for a couple of years were the bands I listened to and saw above any others. While I can still occasionally dig out and enjoy the first three The Pogues albums, I have found listening to The Men They Couldn’t Hang to be a more problematic thing.

For a couple of years we were seeing TMTCH regularly, possibly 20 or 30 times (maybe more) between 85 and 88 and most stick in my head as memorable and exciting experiences - although they had a following of a few unpleasant and aggressive fans who seemed to want to rule the moshpit and build tiresome human pyramids at every show.

They had some great songs but outside of the sweaty, agressive live shows the albums now sound weak, occasionally formulaic and often politically naive or unsubtle (that’s not to say the politics was wrong just that it was often not fully developed). Listening now it is still difficult to separate some of the songs from one live show or another. I suspect that my enjoyment of them at the time was driven by the fact that I wasn’t really listening to an album but re-living the excitement of those live shows.

How Green Is The Valley is probably as near to a perfectly balanced album as they managed to produce. The songs are mostly good, the production is clear, the sound occasionally drifts too close to The Pogues (I suspect they suffered comparisons) and it has their two real political gems in The Ghosts Of Cable Street and Shirt Of Blue.

The Men They Couldn’t Hang split up - they really did, I distinctly remember it happening - it was after I’d stopped following them - probably after the poor Silvertown album. I’m not sure when they reformed but it seems likely it was shortly after that split but by then they were completely off my radar. They still seem to be doing the rounds although I have no desire to re-acquaint myself with them live because that’s something that’s so special I wouldn’t want to risk ruining those memories (the same would apply to The Pogues).

Sadly YouTube has very little to offer from that classic period short of this clip of them on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

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Just dug this one out #6 - McCarthy

Posted on June 5th, 2007 by Andy

Banking, Violence and the Inner Life Today - McCarthy

My fondness for McCarthy was partly founded in their politics - at a time when Thatcher and her Tory party seemed hell bent on destroying all that I believed in, I was excited to find anyone who railed against them - and McCarthy railed…I vaguely remember them dissing Billy Bragg in an interview for being too right wing.

But beyond their politics they made just the sort of guitar pop that I loved then (and still pretty much love now). Their last album really does seem to be the end of the road though - not because it’s bad (it’s very good). But more because it seemed that McCarthy (like Thatcher) was a thing of the 80s (Thathcer was ousted within six months of the release of this album).

Let’s look at the evidence…

• It included a prominent role for Laetitia Sadier whose credits up until this point where for translating McCarthy lyrics into French. Laetitia and Tim Gane of course went on to form Stereolab.
• It included a shameless (and utterly brilliant) attempt to jump on the baggy bandwagon (Get a Knife Between Your Teeth).
• It was shinier, more produced than their previous efforts.

I saw what was (possibly) their penultimate performance at ULU supporting The Chills, they were plagued by poor sound but I still remember it fondly. I love Stereolab and for a while it seemed that Malcolm Eden’s Herzfeld would also help fill the hole that McCarthy left.

If pushed I’d probably say I prefer I Am a Wallet - but I definitely listen to this one more.

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Just dug this one out… #5

Posted on May 25th, 2007 by Andy

Flare - Bottom

I’m not sure how I came across Flare, I suspect it was on the Low or Galaxie 500 mailing list many, many years ago. But having heard a little I rushed out and bought pretty much all that was available at that point which was this, their debut album, Circa an EP, and a couple of 7" singles. Everything was superb but Bottom was just so beautiful (there should be some words telling you just how beautiful but I couldn’t think of anything worthy enough).

And then, like so many albums in my collection it sort of got lost in the filing and drifted out of my consciousness…I quite enjoyed last years LD & The New Criticism album which inspired me to revisit Flare and then this morning I grabbed a pile of CDs from the ‘f’ section and I just fell in love with Bottom all over again…

Confession time…

Despite my love of this, and my appreciation of the various and varied works of Stephin Merritt I have never owned 69 Love Songs. I did order it once but something (I can’t remember what) went wrong and it never arrived…and I just never got around to following up on it. Maybe because by that time it was getting so highly praised that the snob in me felt the need to resist.

So I was never able to fully appreciate davidjennings’s wiki dedicated to the album (I wanted to call it a love-wiki but it didn’t sound as hilariously witty when I read it back to myself) and I’d sort of mumble incoherently and try not to give the game away whenever it got mentioned.

I’ve listened to The Magnetic Fields Get Lost this week as well as Flare so I was inspired to fill this hole in my collection this afternoon.

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Just dug this one out… #4

Posted on April 23rd, 2007 by Andy

Grenadine - Nopalitos

I can’t remember how this one came into my posession - I guess I was recommended it on the Galaxie 500 Mailing List - I looked through my (sadly incomplete) mailing list archives but all I could find was this from December 1999…
Over the last few weeks I’ve been listening to an awful lot of albums that I haven’t listened to for a while, some even forgotten (and some rightfully forgotten - - step forward Grenadine!).
I’m pretty much certain that I haven’t listened to it since then and I suspect that, if anything, it sounds worse now than it did then. But somewhere in the back of my head there’s this nagging concern that, for a short period of time, I actually liked this album - it was probably because of a slight fondness for Unrest. But listening to it now it makes my toes curl. Whether it’s the olde-time laughably smug croon of "Grenadine – Hell Over Hickory Dew" or the tiresome vocoder (?) cover of "Grenadine – This Girl’s in Love With You". But picking out those two memorably bad tracks just exposes how unmemorable the rest of the album is.

I’ve bought some pretty woeful albums in my time but suspect that this one is one of the worst. It will be (at least) another seven and a half years before I dig this one out again…

I’ve moved the "Just dug this one out…" series from my blog Everything’s Swirling into last.fm - to read the earlier ones you’ll need to head on over there…

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Just Dug This One Out #3 - Palace Brothers

Posted on March 1st, 2007 by Andy

amazon.com|amazon.co.uk

There is No-One What Will Take Care Of You by Palace Brothers

I bought this album when it was released in the summer of 1993 based on some rave reviews in the British music press.

Quite unlike anything in the US indie-rock scene–insane, minimal and beautiful
NME - 26th June 1993

You’ll not hear another record like this until they make one….extraordinary
Melody Maker - 12th June 1993

I listened to it a couple of times and couldn’t get my head around the sparse, country arrangements and Will Oldham’s strained and fragile voice. I knew it was good and original but I couldn’t get past my own difficulties with it. I promptly filed it away and forgot about Palace/Will Oldham until, as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, he released “I See A Darkness” six years later.

Going back to There is No One… has been a strange experience, I’m still uncomfortable with all that bothered me first time around, but this time that discomfort is tempered by Will Oldham’s subsequent work, and within the context of that, it starts to sound like what I guess it was all along a unique and fascinating album of country washed guitar twang with Will Oldham’s voice providing a perfect.

I don’t think it’ll ever be something I listen to as much as Darkness or Ease Down The Road but it’s an album that I have finally come to terms with.

mp3: Riding - The Palace Brothers (5MB)

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Just dug this one out #2 - The Primitives

Posted on January 24th, 2007 by Andy

The Primitives - Pure

I’ve taken to grabbing random bunches of CDs to take into work - yesterday it was from the Ns and I had a day of Neu!, Neutral Milk Hotel and The New Year - not too much to complain about there. This morning I grabbed from the Ps and have listened to Pram and Portishead (I’ll take the Prince CDs home unplayed).

I loved The Primitives back in the day - the first two albums had little gems amidst the oftent retro psychedilic-pop - and listening to Pure this afternoon it became clear that all those gems were the songs that Tracy sang on, and the songs Paul sings on are…well not so gem…ish. I don’t have the first album on CD but Pure is worth it just for “Sick of It”, “Secrets” and “Way Behind Me”.

I saw The Primitives a few times way back when, but most memorable was probably the sad and shabby final-legs performance at the Borderline which saw the guitarist finally storm off in a frustrated huff and left the band to labour through the rest of the song guitar-less and leave the stage, shoulders-hunched, never to be seen again.

I was horrified to see “Crash” being used for a drink-driving information film a couple of years back…there I was in the cinema happily tapping and singing along when a cyclist got flattened on the screen - very disturbing! Despite that it’s a song that doesn’t fail to make me smile in all it’s shiny, shallow, vibrant beauty.

Fantastic fan site with stacks of mp3s and videos!

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Just dug this one out #1 - The Sundays

Posted on January 3rd, 2007 by Andy

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
The Sundays
Amazon (US) | Amazon (UK)

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic by The Sundays is a cracking album that just makes me feel so warm every time I pull it out (which is not often enough). Listening to it right now it sounds a little dated but those jangly Smiths-y (yawn) guitars and Harriet’s voice just makes me very nostalgic for the late 80s and early 90s when discovering music was so exciting (it still is but in a different way - the Internet has made discovering music a lot less challenging!). Their second album “Blind” was forgettable and until I checked Wikipedia I didn’t even know there was a third! I think just one perfect Sundays album is all I need.

Of course my enduring memory of The Sundays is that they are responsible for me seeing Galaxie 500 one less time than I should have done when they postponed their London show (with G500 supporting) - the rescheduled gig was great but no Galaxie 500!

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