FEATURE: Cue Fanfare: Prefab Sprout’s Swoon at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

Cue Fanfare

 

Prefab Sprout’s Swoon at Forty

_________

THE debut album….

from a truly legendary band, Prefab Sprout’s Swoon was released on 12th March, 1984. Led by the phenomenal songwriting of Paddy McAloon, I want to go into more depth. I am going to come to some reviews and insight into a magnificent debut album. Released through Kitchenware and produced by Prefab Sprout and David Brewis, this is an album that everyone should know about. Paddy McAloon sways Swoon is among his favourite albums, though he feels he could have been more concise when it comes to the songwriting. Not completely happy with the vocals. It is modesty and self-criticism from a masterful songwriter. Together Martin McAloon and Wendy Smith, Swoon was unlike anything else that came out in 1984. Ahead of its fortieth anniversary, it is worth learning more about the magnificent Swoon. I will start with Wikipedia’s background details. It is remarkable discovering how Prefab Sprout formed and the way Swoon came together:

“Prefab Sprout, formed by brothers Paddy and Martin McAloon, first played live in 1979, having been joined by drummer Michael Salmon. Songs that would appear on Swoon such as "Ghost Town Blues", "Here on the Eerie" and "Technique" were already part of their set by April 1980. The band recorded their first single "Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)" on 25 February 1982, and self-released it on their own Candle Records. Their lineup expanded shortly after to incorporate vocalist Wendy Smith, and they recorded a second single "The Devil Has All the Best Tunes" that September. In a 1981 interview McAloon expressed a dislike of well-regarded songwriters such as Paul Weller, Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, the last of whom he said he disliked intensely, and he attributed the band's lack of success up to that point to laziness. Prefab Sprout were signed by Keith Armstrong's Kitchenware Records in March 1983, after Armstrong heard their music played in the Newcastle branch of HMV he managed. Kitchenware issued "The Devil Has All The Best Tunes / Walk On" and additionally reissued the first single. These releases attracted notice including laudation from Elvis Costello.

After the departure of Michael Salmon, the band recorded their debut album in a 24-track studio in Edinburgh on a budget of £5,000. It features session drummer Graham Lant and was produced by fellow Kitchenware artist David Brewis of The Kane Gang. The songs were written over a 7-year period, and the album was titled Swoon, standing for 'Songs Written out of Necessity'. McAloon mostly avoided the material the band had been playing live for the preceding years, instead favouring more recent complex material he felt would "only work on tape".

The basic tracks were recorded in just one day, and put the band under intense pressure. During a session, McAloon made a crying Wendy Smith sing two words over and over for three hours. McAloon wrote piano parts for the songs despite being unable to play the instrument, and recorded the parts with the aid of drop-ins. A synthesiser was used on several tracks, chosen for its sparse and refined sound. Swoon was completed in August 1983, and the band was then signed to CBS for distribution Graham Lant's relationship with Prefab Sprout ended soon after recording due to his disappointment at being given a flat fee for his work rather than a percentage of album sales. In the months leading to the album's release in March 1984, the band performed live with a succession of short-term drummers. In December 1983, they opened for Elvis Costello at several concerts. Costello's championing led to Prefab Sprout being tagged as "Costello's little band!”

I will move to an article where Martin McAloon recalled working on Swoon. Published in 2019, he looked back on the remarkable Swoon. If the band would arguably go on to record more powerful and enduring albums, it is clear that Swoon is very special. The sprouts (pardon the pun!) of something beautiful starting to come through. I would recommend that everyone buys Swoon and adds it to their collection:

“I’m not one for reminiscing. So when the wonderful people at Sony Legacy asked me for a few anecdotes about Swoon, just a couple of facts about the recording of an album that took place thirty-six years ago, I fretted. We don’t do facts: there are no facts and I’ve not actually listened to any of our albums since the year 2000.

However, when the arrival of the re-mastered test pressing of Swoon coincided with a road trip I was planning to Berwick for the JMW Turner exhibition at The Maltings, my alter-ego Feliks Culpa and I thought it the perfect opportunity to reacquaint our older and younger selves and perhaps, in the spirit of looking forward rather than backwards, describe how it feels to time travel.

I strap myself in, and we’re out of the blocks on the “B of the Bang”: drums and guitar, my bass run, the harmonica, just as I’d left it – Don’t Sing – flooding back. The memories are a tsunami, a thick muffled constant of debris churning towards me, and then the vocal: “Don’t Sing”. He’s not singing. Why is my brother shouting? He’s commanding me from atop a lamppost, he’s lashed himself to a tree to avoid the deluge, he’s warning that it’s not going to stop for another forty-five minutes, and as with the Sirens, I’ve got to listen!

Fragments form in the swirl, reconstituted facts, the drums; Graham Lant, brother of Venom’s Cronos, available for one day. Eleven backing tracks, five first takes, the songs Cherry Tree and Diana languish unfinished in Ampex limbo. Rehearsing at extreme altitude in exhausting temperatures above Wadds the glass fitters, 62 Clayton Street, Graham in boxer shorts to keep his Top Shop suit crease free. What do all these facts mean?

Cue Fanfare: “I can only play this once,” Graham warns. That’s all he needed. Wendy’s supersonic vocals taxiing on the runway, “Some expressions take me back”, I cut to my fourth birthday, “hair of gold and sweet Mary”. I’m somewhere else. I’m in a version of Michael Apted’s 7Up. Paddy’s singing The Green, Green Grass of Home into Anne Salmon’s tape recorder, I’m reciting “Dolly had the measle, dolly had the flu…” Bass harmonics cut me back to the present: Morpeth to my left and the carriageway narrowing, I squeeze the chevrons and avoid the speed camera. I’m loving it!

I need to concentrate – Green Isaac 1 – the memory provokes a premonition of Green Isaac 2, the end of the album, the culmination of the journey. I’m ahead of myself, I’m Tom Cruise, a “pre-cog” in Stealers Wheel. Is there a time before or between Green Isaac 1 and 2, a time before playing live, when the song could exist without pandering to the muddy fields of festival expectations? Stevie Smith at Glastonbury, “Not drowning, but waving to Guy Garvey”.

I’ve Just realised I’m typing this while listening to Jessye Norman singing Ravel’s Sheherazade with Pierre Boulez conducting from 1984, the same year as Swoon’s release. We met Boulez a year later and gave him a copy of Steve McQueen. That’s a fact and almost an anecdote but it’s from the future. Am I a “Looper” sent to cancel myself out?

Cut to the here and now, a full throttle Here on the Eerie, Paddy’s Hagstrom guitar solo.

The closest we came with Swoon to playing on the “T of the Beat” was Cruel, recorded sans drums or click, brushed snare and hi-hat being added after the event, hence the less than quantised groove. Paddy’s vocal, head cold intact, squeezed onto the last available track. My contribution to urban blues? An upright bass and the Ebony Concerto.

Muff Winwood at Sony (neé CBS) signed us after hearing only five songs from Swoon; “By the time I get to Felton, he’d have signed us”.

Couldn’t Bear to be Special streams above the engine noise. Was this the order, is this how side two starts? Is Basketball next? (Memo, check label copy). Just like I pictured it, Wendy’s voice, the shiver of the fur, Dave Brewis’s Hawaiian lap steel guitar, the “go to” instrument for crashes, bangs, wallops, glissando, skyscrapers and everything.

I Never Play Basketball Now: the chords, the endless chords, 164 and counting. Why? Igor Stravinsky made us to do it! I can still play them all, and in the correct order! John Sunter’s bounced ball, no click track, no count in, no editing, pure luck.

Ghost Town Blues. I may amble past Amble, but I still rush the bassline!

Elegance, I play it once, twice, three times a sublime melody, a lacerating lyric. Technique the same again, the way we were, the sound of wild abandon, of being young, fearless and fretless. We can’t go back, but it all still resonates!

Clowns to the left of me, Holy Island to my right, we were out there, among the waves, cut off from the mainland but somehow still immersed in pop culture. Saintly hermits intoxicated on home brewed mead, Prefab Stout, Lindisfarne. (Now they were a great band)

I’m almost there, the end of the journey, the final track, Green Isaac 2, the glockenspiel, Wendy’s chromatic “Suggest…”. I hear the music of Nino Rota drifting up the stairs. I cut back to the intro of Green Isaac 1, (back to Morpeth 20 minutes ago), then back again to Green Isaac 2 1983. The Godfather 1 and 2 are showing on TV in sequence for the first time, or are they out of sequence, perhaps in chronological order? Is this the order of time, do we shape time? I’ve been here before! “Suggest…” Is there a prequal, a missing section, before Green Isaac 2, ”Suggest…”? Between the intro and the outro, before The Godfather 3?

I’m falling through floorboards, between fact and fiction.

The facts are: we recorded Swoon, Sony / Kitchenware released it and an audience heard it. From there on in, it’s up to the listener to create the facts, add their own memories – “the song that was playing, will help you recall, the feeling of falling, the thrill of it all”.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”.

It is worth getting to some reviews. In 2014, this review from movingtheriver.com explored the wonderous and hugely original Swoon. It introduced Prefab Sprout to a legion of people. Many unaware of who they were and how they would progress as a band. Forty years later and Swoon still sounds utterly compelling:

“Perhaps like a lot of Prefab fans, I came to Swoon some time after I’d bought and fallen in love with the later albums Steve McQueen, Protest Songs, From Langley Park to Memphis and Jordan The Comeback.

The dry, Thomas Dolby-less production came as a bit of a shock at the time but Swoon stands up pretty well today.

Though some critics have compared the album to Steely Dan, my contemporary reference points would be Lloyd Cole, The Smiths, Aztec Camera and Songs To Remember-era Scritti, though it’s basically impossible to locate Prefab’s influences.

It’s tempting to say that Swoon sounds like the epitome of an ‘indie’ record, 1980s style, with its stripped-back production values and jagged edges. Prefab singer/songwriter Paddy McAloon recently told The Guardian that he thinks of it as more akin to Captain Beefheart, nicknaming the album ‘Sprout Mask Replica’!

Swoon definitely still sounds very much like a debut album; it’s perky, eager to please, naive, studenty, slightly pretentious. McAloon’s vocals occasionally resemble the ramblings of a slightly squiffy, randy teenager. But the album’s adolescent in a really good way with its literary flights of fancy, indulgent ruminations on romantic love and lots of audacious melodic flourishes.

paddy prefabIt sounds almost like rock, with solid 4/4 drums, always-inventive bass from Paddy’s brother Martin and ‘girlie’ backing vocals from Wendy Smith, and yet it resolutely refuses to ‘rock out’ with not a single power chord or jangly electric guitar in the mix.

Instead, the intrepid layering of synths and acoustic guitars (utilised to far greater effect on Steve McQueen and Jordan) probes the songs’ pressure points. And Smith’s pristine vocals give the music an enigmatic, otherworldly flavour.

Lyrically, Swoon reminds me of Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’; a survey of a young man’s hopes, dreams and romantic/professional disappointments. From a songwriting perspective, the words presumably came before the music, resembling stream-of-consciousness prose rather than traditional verse/chorus songcraft.

Novelist/essayist Dave Eggers wrote a great piece about how much he was influenced by this golden generation of literate British songwriters.

As befitting a band from the North East, work (and the lack of it) is a recurring theme, particularly on ‘I Never Play Basketball Now’ and the extraordinary ‘Technique’. ‘Couldn’t Bear To Be Special’ is a classic Prefab ballad (though surely never the right choice for second single) and seems to offer a truly original take on the doomed love affair – the narrator simply doesn’t feel worthy to deserve the attentions of another. Very Nick Hornby-esque.

Future producer Thomas Dolby has talked about the shock of hearing ‘Don’t Sing’ when he was a guest reviewer on the Radio 1 ‘Round Table’ show.

‘Cruel’ is still a delicious piece of pop/bossa nova, more than a decade before the likes of Belle and Sebastian mined similar ground. Some of Paddy’s chords are gorgeous on this. Lyrically it’s original too, an expression of lust and affection from someone who is desperately afraid of offending his ‘enlightened’ paramour. A very modern love song. It was once covered by Elvis Costello”.

The final review I want to get to was published in 2015. I wonder how Martin and Paddy McAloon will mark the fortieth anniversary of Swoon on 12th March. Whether Wendy Smith has any particular memories and special recollections. Many may not have heard Swoon, so it is a perfect opportunity to dive into a spellbinding audio experience:

“The band’s debut, the difficult to track down Swoon gave no clue to how the band’s lead singer and primary songwriter Paddy McAloon would evolve into the Thomas Dolby collaborator and maker of slick alternative pop. No dreamy Wendy Smith singing in the background here – or at least not as much.

Swoon might be the band’s least accessible album. It’s sound teeters somewhere between the quirky but dry jazz/funk of Steely Dan, China Crisis or Aztec Camera. It’s challenging structures are sometimes crammed with what sounds like multiple arrangements in one song. “Here on the Erie” and the amusing “I Never Play Basketball Now” are as much infused with catchy rhythms as they are they are overlapping lyrical references. All clever stuff from the mind of a young under employed genius.

McAloon in many ways was like Green Gartside during the earliest period of Scritti Politti. While Gartside mixed forms of post punk with academia, McAloon does something similar. There’s so much going on lyrically and musically, that you might easily miss some of it with cheap iPhone headphones.

This is exactly the kind of album that I tend to gravitate back to over the years. While Steve McQueen (Two Wheels Good in the States) or Jordan: The Comeback might be easier to enjoy right away, the sublime notes of Swoon can an acquired taste that gets better with time.

In sounding so unconventional for 1984, it has aged well over the years. The album’s rough edges are fitting with the musical legacy of Northern Soul with its subtle black American musical influences. “Crule Fanfare” for instance mixes these musical legacies to create a back-beat with some swing to it.  It’s far from  traditional R&B, but then again much of Swoon is far from most new wave and pop music released in 1984.

The mix of mid tempo and ballads at times hints to a future of Thomas Dolby produced polish that would come later. “Elegance” and “Cruel” prove that McAloon and Dolby were equals when it came to the vision of the band’s sound in subsequent albums.

If you are already a Prefab Sprout fan, you’ve likely heard Swoon. For new fans, Swoon offers a peak into the mind of a very young McAloon who was bursting with interesting musical ideals. He of course is still one of the great singer songwriters of his generation, even if many Americans are ignorant of his later work”.

A very happy fortieth anniversary to Swoon. I am not sure whether there is an anniversary release planned or whether any events will take place. The latest Prefab Sprout album, Crimson/Red, was released in 2013. Essentially it was a Paddy McAloon solo album. It would be wonderful to see Paddy McAloon, Wendy Smith, Martin McAloon and drummer Neil Conti reuniting and recording more material. Maybe it will not happen. In the meantime, let us celebrate the magic Swoon. An album that sounds captivating…

FORTY years later.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Brian Wilson - Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

 

Brian Wilson - Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE

_________

THERE are reasons why…

I am suggesting people listen to Brian Wilson’s Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is an album that is very well-regarded and is magnificent, yet I don’t see too many tracks featured on the radio. It is not as exposed and shared as music from The Beach Boys. That is a shame! It was released on 28th September, 2004. Recently, the family of Brian Wilson asked a court in Los Angeles to place him under a conservatorship. The legendary musicians is living with a ‘neurocognitive disorder’, similar to dementia. Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE turns twenty in September. I am going to get to some reviews. Featuring all-new music, this was Brian Wilson reviving an unfinished album by The Beach Boys that he abandoned in 1967. By all accounts, revisiting this album – also referred to as SMiLE - was a hugely emotional undertaking for Wilson. He had been traumatised by the circumstances that had originally surrounded the project. Brian Wilson and his band premiered Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 20th February, 2004. Buoyed by an enormously positive reception, Wilson adapted the performance of Brian Wilson Presents Smile as a solo album. None of the other Beach Boys were involved with the album. There is not as much written about this majestic album as there should be. In terms of its making and legacy. How it is such an important album. I will start out with Pitchfork’s review. They discuss the background and circumstances behind Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. How originally it took so much out of Wilson. When it was finally released in 2004, it was met with unanimous praise and positivity:

“Brian Wilson was the son of a songwriter. He was a naturally creative boy, though also prone to the same sunny interests and obsessions as his friends and cousins. He came of age just as thousands of other kids did at the time, learning that this place really could be the land of the free, home of love, peace, self-discovery and where everyone he cared about lived. He loved music. He still does, though at 61, despite the full mane of hair, he doesn't quite sound or write like the same boy who once scored the perfect soundtrack for an American summer. He was obsessed with George Gershwin and vanilla white harmony groups like The Four Freshman; he gave the world "In My Room" and Pet Sounds in return. Brian Wilson is touring Smile right now, with, they say, an unplugged keyboard and the same stiff onstage demeanor he showed during the "Brian is back" days. But then, performance has never been his bag.

Wilson abandoned Smile, his painstakingly planned follow-up to Pet Sounds, in 1967 because he had a nervous breakdown. He was emotionally unfit to continue. He was 24, only a few years older than I was when I bought my first bootleg copy of the music. If you want to know the precise details about how he broke down, there are dozens of accounts available (including mine here at Pitchfork). The short end of it has to do with drugs, growing pains, a new cast of friends, and a dysfunctional family. Brian had too much of all those things in the mid-60s; working on what was supposed to be the greatest record ever made might not have been the most realistic endeavor. Or maybe it would have been, had he surrounded himself with more understanding people. Or fewer drugs. Or better drugs. Or been able to keep his overbearing dad out of the picture. And on and on and on, until being a fan of the guy is more exhausting than it is rewarding. I really don't blame him for staying in bed for the 70s.

I first heard Smile when I compiled my own version of it. The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations box had just come out, containing the first "officially" sanctioned missing pieces of the album. I, like many amateur Beach Boys historians, used them, along with the best songs from the boots to make ad-hoc masterpieces. I'd read how "Our Prayer" was supposed to go first, and it seemed naturally to segue right into "Heroes & Villains". Then I had to decide which versions to use. I strung together the single mix with the "Cantina" version with "Do You Like Worms" (its cousin), using a complex system of cassette deck editing techniques-- that is, I got really good at using the "pause" button. I put Wilson's solo vocal and piano performance of "Surf's Up" last. It ended my tape on a bittersweet note, which I guessed was in the spirit of what Smile would have been. I was wrong. Sigh. A lot of us were.

Darian Sahanaja was right. Wilson's wife Melinda suggested that Brian take Smile on the road, and Sahanaja, keyboardist and backing vocalist in Wilson's touring band (aka The Wondermints) took up the sizable task of organizing the project. He dumped every Smile song and song-fragment he could find onto his laptop, took them to Wilson's house and watched as Wilson proceeded to phone no less an authority than original lyricist Van Dyke Parks when he needed help remembering lyrics. They hadn't really kept in touch for a few years, but Parks was at Wilson's place within 24 hours-- and would stay for five days-- to settle past scores and finish the lost record.

The trio made subtle changes to the music when necessary, and in the spring, Wilson headed to Studio One at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles to make his record. Just as he'd made the original "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes & Villains" there, Wilson gathered his band, strings and brass to record the tracks, cutting the basic arrangements live while doing the vocals on the same tube consoles his old Beach Boys had.

The end result is a great album, albeit one more lighthearted than its myth would suggest. The music I hear is like round pegs in square holes; it's just as insular and manic-compassionate as "In My Room" or "God Only Knows", but filtered through an amiable resolve. It sounds pleasant and assured, lacking the vulnerable, shy wave of hope drenching the old Beach Boys records. Yet, Wilson's voice sounds great. It's a bit lower, and his inflections have lost some subtlety over the years, but it still carries the weight of those angelic melodies (and when it can't, his band helps him out).

And what of his band? The eight musicians who contributed to recording Smile with Wilson not only live up to the material, but also make possible what could not have been all those years ago. They are not the Beach Boys. There is no Carl Wilson. For better or worse, there is no Mike Love. But there is the music, and all concerned parties should be given some kind of musical amnesty award for managing to avoid the pitfalls of posthumous reworking and re-recording. This is no ghost record or bout of nostalgia. Rather than study the lonely, bittersweet passions of Wilson's youth, it celebrates the return of his muse and his gift to the world in the form of a "teenage symphony to God”.

In a recent feature, Rolling Stone spoke with multi-instrumentalist Probyn Gregory about working with a genius on Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. They asked what it was like touring with Wilson and helping him finish this classic album. It is a fascinating piece I would advise people to check out in full:

“How did you learn about the lost Smile record?

I heard rumors of it in college, but when I first came to L.A., someone loaned me a cassette with a few fragments on there. I thought, “Wow, this is crazy stuff.” I began seeking it out at what they call “swap meets,” these places where you could buy bootleg records. I don’t know how this stuff leaked out of the vaults, but various parts of Smile would come my way, or come other people’s way.

When I met Darian, he had fragments that I didn’t have, and I had fragments that he didn’t have. We would meet at each other’s houses, along with Nick Walusko, or this person, Domenic Priore, who was a Smile scholar. He may not have been a musician, but he was a real fan of all that Smile stuff.

What captivated you so much about this music?

The vibe. One of the things about the Beach Boys has always been their ethereal vocal blends. Even after I joined the Brian Wilson Band, we would try to sound like that, but we couldn’t because we weren’t the brothers. We didn’t have the history that they did of sitting around the Wilson family piano, with Al Jardine and Mike Love. They had a sound like no one else did. There was something that came across in the yearning and the mournful feeling that imbues a lot of Brian Wilson’s music.


hat came through in spades, to me, in the Smile fragments. I got a real sense of, not incompletion, but world weariness, and an understanding. Pet Sounds was all about that too, the teenager trying to become a man.

There was this sort of illicit thrill of listening to Smile bootlegs back then. It was this forbidden music you knew drove Brian insane trying to finish, and no longer wanted anything to do with.

I know what you mean. Every time I heard a new fragment that I fell in love with, I would thank God for my little inner circle of people that allowed me to hear this music that otherwise wouldn’t be heard. I really wished that other people would hear it. At some point, there was a paper in Los Angeles called The Reader. I took out an ad in the back, and I said something along the order of, “Capitol Records, please release Smile. This music needs to be heard.”

Was your mind blown when you got the job?

Oh my God. Todd Rundgren, Neil Young, and Brian Wilson, especially Brian Wilson and Todd, those are my heroes. To be able to play with one of my heroes, it just blew my head off.

Tell me about preparing for that tour. You guys approached the material very differently than the Beach Boys touring band of that time.

Yes. But I didn’t even really know what the touring band was up to. My friends told me in the Seventies and the Eighties that the touring band didn’t float their boat. They said, “Just listen to the records. Don’t bother going to the show. You’ll be disappointed,” which was stupid, and I’m sorry I ever listened to them, because I could have seen Dennis play. I never saw Dennis play before he passed away. And similarly with Carl. But the time I got around to seeing the Beach Boys, it was 2000. I felt cheated that I didn’t get to see those earlier versions of the band”.

I will end with a couple of reviews. The Guardian were among those who shared their opinions about Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is a masterpiece that I would urge everyone to seek out and listen to. Up there with any album by The Beach Boys in terms of its beauty, quality and musicianship. Such a wonderful album from one of the greatest songwriters ever:

“There has been much hand-wringing about the detrimental effect of hype on rock and pop music. But no manufactured pop single or media-darling indie album can hope to match the hype preceding Smile, which has been going on not for weeks or months, but for 37 years. It was the Beach Boys album that was supposed to revolutionise pop music, to dwarf even its predecessor, Pet Sounds. Instead, composer and producer Brian Wilson suffered a drug-induced breakdown in 1967, declined to finish the album and took to his bed.

Smile became mythic, a status fuelled by the outrageously inventive tracks that trickled out on later Beach Boys albums and bootlegs. They suggested that, during the Smile sessions, Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks had variously been writing elegiac ballads of startling beauty (Surf's Up, Wonderful, Wind Chimes), attempting to condense the entire history of America into a series of LSD-skewed musical fragments (Heroes and Villains, Do You Like Worms?, Cabinessence) and, perhaps less ambitiously, making animal noises and banging bits of wood together (Barnyard, Workshop).

The news that Wilson and his backing band (based around American 1960s revivalists the Wondermints) were going to completely re-record and release Smile, after touring a completed version of it, was enough to cause an outbreak of mild hysteria. One Sunday supplement urgently sought the government's opinion. Even they may have been surprised to get an answer not from the arts minister, but from defence secretary Geoff Hoon. Luckily, the past 18 months have been exceptionally quiet for the British armed forces, giving Hoon plenty of time to ponder the influence of the Beach Boys' mid-1960s work on current alt-rock. He certainly seems well informed - "It's such a good time for its re-release," he told the Observer; "the indie bands my son listens to are building on Wilson's ideas" - which will doubtless come as some comfort to the 8,900 British troops stationed in Iraq.

Despite the hype, it is hard not to be impressed with the new Smile. Ever since his 1967 breakdown, Wilson has looked pretty bewildered by life. Even today, ostensibly healthy, he gives off the air of a man not entirely sure which way round his trousers go, let alone how the myriad parts of Smile were ever supposed to fit together. And yet, fit together they now do. The album's "concept" may be as baffling as ever (even Parks seems at a loss to explain precisely what the richly evocative imagery of his lyrics is evoking), but the music flows beautifully - no mean feat when it encompasses barbershop singing, acid rock, early pop, Hawaiian chanting and mock-religious plainsong.

You suspect this may have more to do with Wilson's "musical secretary", Wondermints keyboard player Darian Sahanaja, than anybody is letting on. The painstaking re-creation of Heroes and Villains' complex harmonies or the orchestral arrangement of Mrs O'Leary's Cow sound less like the work of a songwriting genius than that of a particularly dogged fan given free rein in the studio. The feeling that some of the re-recordings are otiose - given that you can't improve on perfection, it's hard to see the point of a new version of Good Vibrations - is undermined by the fact that if Wilson had simply wanted to complete the original 1960s recordings, he would presumably have had to negotiate with Mike Love, the vocalist who now owns the Beach Boys' name. Negotiating with Mike Love is a state of affairs you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, let alone a fragile 62-year-old.

Sahanaja also deserves credit for reining in his band's excesses. On their own albums, the Wondermints tend towards a wearisome brand of wackiness, which must have been hard to keep in check, given the nature of Smile's music. Only once does the temptation become too much to resist: the joyous Holiday now comes with a monologue about pirates going yo-ho-me-hearties that could make even the soundest of minds consider following Wilson's lead and pulling a duvet over their head for a few years.

For his part, Wilson seems reinvigorated by Smile's resurrection. His last album, Gettin' in Over My Head, was marred by his disconcerting vocal technique: he sang everything in a halting, distressed bark, as if he were reading a ransom note rather than his own lyrics. Here, he may not always reach the high notes, but he oozes a relaxed confidence, and with good reason. Confronted with Cabinessence's breathtaking chorus, the unfathomably lovely melody of Wonderful or the sudden explosion of lavish vocal harmonies that brings Wind Chimes to a close, you're forced to conclude that four decades on, the songs Wilson wrote for Smile still sound like nothing else rock music has ever produced. Its release may not warrant a quote from the defence secretary, but only the hardest heart would not be gladdened by its contents”.

I shall end with a review from AllMusic. Reaching the top twenty in the U.K. and U.S., I would urge everyone to listen to Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is a true masterpiece! I don’t think that you have to be a big fan of The Beach Boys to appreciate the album and its sound:

“The white whale of '60s record-making, the Beach Boys' aborted SMiLE album gradually gained a legend that not only inflated its rumored importance and complexity, but gave credence to an odd notion -- that completing it, then or ever, was impossible. In truth, SMiLE should have been released and forgotten, reissued and reappraised, and finally remastered for the digital era and ushered into the rock canon ever since Brian Wilson halted work on it in May 1967 (after an exhausting 85 recording sessions). Instead, it languished in the vaults and remained the perfect record -- perfect, of course, because it had never been finished. Reports that the recording of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" had caused a nearby building to burn down and whispers of "inappropriate music" gave it the character of a monster, one that cursed all those who approached it and claimed the heart and mind of its major participant. Wilson's love of "feels" -- short passages of cyclical music that could be overdubbed and rearranged countless times -- had made 1966's "Good Vibrations" the ultimate pocket symphony, but had also quickly spiralled into the instability that consumed him during its follow-up, "Heroes and Villains," projected to be the centerpiece of SMiLE.

Happily, a new recording of SMiLE by Brian Wilson reveals the record as nothing more (or less) than a jaunty epic of psychedelic Americana, a rambling and discursive, playful and affectionate series of song cycles. Infectious and hummable, to be sure, and a remarkably unified, irresistible piece of pop music, but no musical watershed on par with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Wilson's masterpiece, Pet Sounds. For the first time ever, the program for SMiLE was compiled, after Brian Wilson first listened to the original recordings with his musical midwife, Darian Sahanaja of the Wondermints (which has long functioned as Wilson's live backing band), and then worked them into a live show and album recording. The work that evolved divides into three sections: SMiLE begins with Americana, which takes the dream of continental expansion from the old Spanish town saga of "Heroes and Villains" to the landing at Plymouth Rock and, finally, the end of the frontier at Hawaii; it continues with a Cycle of Life that progresses from the virginal grace of "Wonderful" to the simultaneous peak and decline of the creative life on "Surf's Up"; and ends with an environmental cycle called The Elements, which includes "Vega-Tables," (Earth), "Wind Chimes" (Air), "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (Fire), and "In Blue Hawaii" (Water).

Since Wilson himself was previously the most opposed to SMiLE appearing in any form, it's a considerable shock that this new recording justifies even half of the promise that fans had attached to it. Everything that Wilson and his band could control sounds nearly perfect. Every instrument, every note, and every intonation is nearly identical to the late-'60s tapes; one has to wonder whether vintage hand tools weren't acquired for "Workshop" and Paul McCartney wasn't flown in to add chewing noises to "Vega-Tables." (The players did, however, book time at one of Brian's old haunts, Sunset Sound, and utilized a '60s tube console to record their vocals.) No, the harmonies here aren't the Beach Boys' harmonies, and Brian's vocals aren't the vocals he was capable of 37 years ago, but they're excellent and (best of all) never distracting. Aside from the technical acumen on display, Wilson has also, amazingly, found a home -- the proper home -- for all of the brilliant instrumental snippets that lent the greatest part of the mystery to the unreleased SMiLE. Van Dyke Parks' new (or newly heard) lyrics fit into these compositions, and the work as a whole, like hand in glove. (The former instrumentals include "Barnyard"; "Holiday," which is here called "On a Holiday"; "Look," which is now "Song for Children"; and "I Love to Say Da-Da," which is now part of "In Blue Hawaii.") Most surprisingly, nearly all of this thematic unity was accomplished by merely reworking the original material already on tape, which proves that Wilson was never very far from finishing SMiLE in 1967. (It's very likely that the gulf was psychological; SMiLE had few supporters among Brian's closest friends and family.) Hopefully, Capitol is readying a SMiLE Sessions box set to release all of the vintage material, but it's clear that nothing they dig up from the vaults will be able to match the unity of this attractive recording. It's up to the standards of anyone who's ever scoured the bootlegs to create a SMiLE tape, and further, it beats them all, which is the highest compliment. So, if you've never been burdened with a friend's SMiLE tape before, count yourself lucky that Brian Wilson's is the first you'll hear. And if you have heard a few, prepare to listen to them much less religiously”.

Go and listen to the magnificent and unforgettable Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. Many of us are thinking about Brian Wilson because of his health issues. Whether he will ever record music again or perform live. As it turns twenty later in the year, I wanted to spend time with an album that is not as played and known about as it should be. Pick up a copy and listen to this phenomenal album. It is one of the greatest works ever from…

A true music master.

FEATURE: To Watch in 2024: Hannah Grae

FEATURE:

 

 

To Watch in 2024

 

Hannah Grae

_________

AN artist I have highlighted previously…

PHOTO CREDIT: Frances Beach for DORK

I feel that Hannah Grae is going to do some incredible things before the end of the year. Definitely someone that we should all be looking out for. There are a few interviews from last year I will start with before ending one from recently. I will start out with an interview from DORK. They chatted with her back in August, Earlier in the year, in April, Grae released the E.P., Hell Is a Teenage Girl:

“Growing up, Hannah believed music only existed within the worlds of film, TV and theatre. She loved Hannah Montana and had her mind blown when she discovered Justin Bieber as a ten-year-old. Her original plan was to work in musical theatre, but then she saw an episode of Friends where Phoebe Buffay writes a song, which sparked something within her. Hannah wrote her own “ridiculous” track called ‘The Chicken Song’ and would play it constantly. “I just loved creating something from nothing and playing it to people.” She carried on doing that throughout her teenage years, writing stripped-down, piano-led pop songs based on stories and suggestions sent in by her blossoming YouTube following. A rejection from theatre school coincided with her first proper studio session, and she quickly realised playing her own music is all she really wanted to do.

From there, she started posting rock-inspired covers and reworkings on TikTok as she chased what felt good and set about figuring out how to bring that untethered joy to her own music. In 2021, she shared an updated version of Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ featuring pointed lyrics like “they think that they can stare, undress me anywhere. ‘It’s just romantic, stop being dramatic’.” It quickly racked up millions of views on YouTube and TikTok.

“It was weird because nothing like that had ever happened to me before,” she explains. “I read every single comment, and I got really emotional because I felt this strange sense of responsibility knowing I was responsible for the conversations that were taking place. I think people wanted to share their own stories and experiences, and they saw that video as a safe space for that.”

After seeing the impact that sharing something so honest had with others, Hannah started writing the super personal, super direct songs that she’s known for today. “I’m so proud of how brutally honest I am in my songs now. And I’m only getting more confident in doing that,” she teases, her background in musical theatre giving her permission to not hold anything back and removing any fear about being “too much”.

Hannah Grae’s ambitious, nine-track ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’ was released earlier this year. Inspired by Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Queen and Taylor Swift, the record sees her revisit her shitty high school experiences with all the swaggering, disruptive attitude of Mean Girls. “I wanted it to feel like a movie,” she explains, with a focus on worldbuilding as well as killer songs.

“School was a really tough time for me, but I always knew I’d get my revenge someday, somehow,” she grins. The entire process was a cathartic one, offering Hannah a much-needed sense of closure. It also gave others a chance to “scream about their feelings at the top of their lungs,” she explains. The entire project was written before Hannah had ever played a proper gig. “Seeing people’s faces and just knowing which moments hit, that was a really important thing that I took into writing this next era.”

And that next chapter starts today with ‘Screw Loose’. According to Hannah, the fiery, twisting track sits well with ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’ but is also quite different. “I’m not worried about that, though; it’s exactly what I wanted to say in this moment.”

Still imbued with the theatrical might of what’s come before, the track also features the angst and humour of early Green Day with Weezer’s emo slacker anthem ‘The Sweater Song’ another big inspiration.

“When I wrote ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’, there was a clear story, and it was all written in hindsight,” explains Hannah, who approached each song wanting to make something she needed to hear. “This second endeavour was written in real-time, as Hannah moved to London in January 2022 to pursue a career in music.

For some, that shift wouldn’t be as much of a gamble, but for Hannah, it meant she was the first person in her family to ever move away from Wales. While both her mum and dad worked in creative fields (drama teacher and film, respectively), she still had to promise them it was just a gap year and she’d return to education if things didn’t work out. “Oh, I always knew I was never going to go to uni,” she grins today.

Hannah soon found herself sitting in her cold room of a house she shared with strangers in an unknown city, questioning her decisions. “I’d spent so long dreaming of living in London, and I’d been so excited to get out there and chase my dreams, but I just felt lost,” she explains. “‘Screw Loose’ is about that feeling.”

“No matter what you do with your life, you probably feel confused about it at some point,” starts Hannah. “Isn’t it weird that if I had listened to my parents and gone to uni, I’d have just finished, and I’d probably be asking myself, ‘What do I do now?'”

This upcoming project might be more eclectic than what’s come before, but the themes are altogether “darker and less blind” than what Hannah has previously explored. “It’s got way more perspective,” she explains. “Life hit me hard over the past year, and I realised it wasn’t all roses. It’s actually quite a sad collection of songs.”

While ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’ offered empowerment and giddy catharsis around every corner, Hannah isn’t sure you’ll finish listening to this next record and feel excited. “It’s more a picture of a really bad time in someone’s life. Hopefully, if anyone has gone or is going through that, they’ll feel seen. That’s all you need sometimes”

I want to come now to an interview with The Line of Best Fit. I was not sure about some of the artists who have inspired Hannah Grae’s own music. She is someone in turn who is going to inspire a lot of artists coming through. Such a compelling and strong artist who is going to have a very long and bright future in the music industry:

“Grae’s music is littered with female influences, from Swift’s songwriting sentimentalities and melodic prowess to the energy of No Doubt and a powerful vocal dexterity that, at its highest reaches, carries echoes of Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Disney alumni Demi Lovato. “Alanis Morrisette is a huge influence, just how honest she is. She’s one that I definitely sometimes sit and think, ‘What would Alanis do?’” This writing as her influences and embodying their quirks helps Grae trial what feels right in her own music, but she reflects that on Hell Is A Teenage Girl she can tell that she was playing a character even though it’s autobiographical. “I’m just not getting to the core of things, and the more I’m writing, I’m just getting more vulnerable which has reflected in my real relationships as well.

“Before I started writing [for myself], I never wrote about myself ever – I was writing about scenarios or different perspectives of different songs. I was quite a closed book and I didn’t really love to be vulnerable at all,” Grae says. “I can’t tell if my communication has become better with people because of songwriting or because I’ve experienced more and got a bit older, but they probably go hand in hand.”

Grae describes some of her upcoming music as her most “devastating” yet, even if her feelings are masked under upbeat drums or an epic guitar riff, but others songs have challenged her to strip back the arrangement to allow her vulnerability to shine. One track, unnamed, was recorded in one take with acoustic guitar and documents the experience of grief. Another, “Number Four”, talks of Grae’s relationship with her mother”.

Rolling Stone spoke with Hannah Grae last year. Even though she is a fledgling artist still coming through, there is an ambition there. She wants to take over the world. Make sure that her music is making an impact and reaching people. As we look ahead to a new E.P. or album, it is interesting learning more about Grae’s past and what comes next. There is this loyal and growing fanbase behind Grae. So many people love her music. She is an artist everyone needs to check out:

“When did the transition from doing covers and reinterpretations to writing your own music happen?

When I first did my first proper writing session two and a bit years ago, I knew I wanted to be very autobiographical, because I had so much pent up anger and bitterness from school and I needed to get it out in some way. I realized that I got a lot of closure from writing about things, so that’s when that journey kind of started.

How does your debut mini album, Hell Is A Teenage Girl, reflect that anger and bitterness?

That whole project is different angles of my teenage years and my school experience. ‘Time Of Your Life’ is about me feeling like I’ve maybe wasted those years, because I didn’t have the best time. But, you know, that’s ridiculous. You can’t force an experience. So I’ve kind of took a little sarcastic tone in that song. There’s also like songs about friendship breakups and then ‘I Hope You’re Happy’ is kind of like a little ‘See ya, I’m doing better now.’

How does your next project build on what you were doing with ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’?

I took a five month writing break between those two projects, which was really beneficial. In that time, I moved to London, and I wrote the whole of Hell Is A Teenage Girl when I was still living in Wales. So I experienced a lot of new things in that five month period. The second project in terms of concept is more about starting your 20s. I guess a lot of it is about me choosing a life that I didn’t think I would choose, I thought I would go to university and I didn’t. In terms of musicality, I wrote that project when I had started playing live, because with Hell Is A Teenage Girl, I hadn’t played one live show yet. I took the experience of playing live seeing people’s reaction to certain things into writing my second project.

You’ve said your new single ‘Screw Loose’ “kickstarted a new headspace” for you. Where were you in your mind when writing it and the other songs you have that are yet to be released?

I was in a pretty bad place when I was writing that project. I was struggling elsewhere in my life and I threw myself into writing, completely just distracting myself with these songs. They’re literally my favourite songs I’ve ever written. They make me feel so happy now in hindsight, but if you actually listen to the lyrics [closely], pretty much all of the songs are pretty devastating! The first song that I wrote for this project was ‘Screw Loose’ and it was just when I was feeling like every day was the same and I lost a lot of hope for what I was doing.

What would you say the big dream is for you right now?

A big dream is for me to take over the world! My main goal is to be in a room full of people, no matter how big or how small, and every single person in there knows every single lyric and [it feels] so alive when I’m playing live”.

In fact, when reading this recent interview with Kerrang!, that I discovered that her mini-album, Nothing Lasts Forever, is out this month. A perfect time to highlight and celebrate the remarkable and distinct Hannah Grae. I hope that there are going to be more interviews with her. I feel we have only scratched the surface:

“When she first began writing music, Hannah was more accustomed to telling stories not about herself, but about others. She’d always fancied herself as a performer, but after being rejected from drama school she shifted focus, giving herself a more unconventional, self-directed education by making music for her YouTube channel in lockdown. As well as recording herself playing covers, she wrote reinterpretations of existing songs based on suggestions her followers would send in, such as a new version of Olivia Rodrigo’s 2021 mega-hit drivers license.

Hannah was far more reserved about exhuming her own feelings for the purpose of music. “I literally was never, ever vulnerable,” she admits. “I never spoke about my feelings to anyone. I just pushed them down and ignored them. The idea of writing a song that was about me, and the idea of playing it to people, was so scary.”

Eventually, Hannah felt more able to tell the world exactly how she was feeling at a given moment, set to a vibrant alt.rock sound inspired by everything from No Doubt and Alanis Morissette to Taylor Swift and Disney pop-punk. Her breakout moment arrived in the form of her mini-album Hell Is A Teenage Girl, a diaristic expulsion of coming-of-age growing pains determined to tear to shreds the idea that your school years are the best years of your life.

Growing up doesn’t stop when you hit 20, however, as Hannah has learned. When Hell Is A Teenage Girl was released, she was still at home in Port Talbot, Wales, but then moved to London to grow her career. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a dream come true,’ and then I got to London and realised I had way too high expectations,” she says. “I really struggled for a couple of months and I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to write again.”

Fortunately, songwriting was still there for Hannah as a means of distracting herself from the awkward adjustment to leaving home, which forms the basis of her second body of work, Nothing Lasts Forever. The latest taste from that release is her fiery new single Better Now You’re Gone, whose fun and upbeat feel is contrasted by angst and regret. “It’s about that phase in a break-up when you’re convincing yourself that you’re fine and as the song unravels, it becomes more clear that I’m not fine,” Hannah explains.

The rest of Nothing Lasts Forever is a more ambitious, mature project than its predecessor. “I had so many ideas and I executed them all. It means it’s not the most concise, fluid project you’ve ever heard, but it really is just [going into] every pocket of my brain. There’s some very high-highs and some very low-lows on there, but it’s really honest. I’m really proud of it”.

Check out Hannah Grae and her forthcoming project, Nothing Lasts Forever. She is an artist who is going to be playing massive stages and headlining festivals in years to come. I think that she is a standout artist this year. Someone that should be known far and wide. If you have not yet discovered her music, then make sure that you spend time with…

THIS incredible talent.

_________

Follow Hannah Grae

FEATURE: Spotlight: FIZZ

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: JP Bonino

 

FIZZ

_________

EVEN if modern-day supergroups…

PHOTO CREDIT: Em Marcovecchio for DORK

might not have the same stature and clout as some of the classics, I think there is more variety now. In terms of the great artists who can come together and form a new project. In the case of London-based FIZZ, we have Orla Gartland, Dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown. Before coming to a few other interviews with them, back in September, the BBC introduced us to the amazing FIZZ:

“It started as a way to blow off steam in the studio. Now it's become a fully-fledged psychedelic pop group.

That's Fizz - a sort of indie supergroup formed by Irish singer-songwriter Orla Gartland and her musical friends Dodie Clark, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown.

Over the past 10 years, all four have achieved a degree of success as solo acts, with Orla and Dodie both scoring top 10 albums. But the music industry can be a lonely place when you're on your own. The pressure to create, promote, find money and drum up opportunities often becomes a treadmill.

"We'd been working on our own projects so hard and for so long that they started to feel like jobs," says Martin.

"I was like, 'I want to go on a holiday but still do music'."

Plans were hatched in a WhatsApp group. The quartet booked themselves into a studio in Devon and went crazy.

Over two weeks, they recorded an entire album from scratch, using every colour in the crayon box to create a giddy, freewheeling pop sound that shrugs off the straitjacket of streaming algorithms.

"We were like, 'Let's play, with no thoughts about what playlist the music's going to be on'," says Martin.

"We wanted to be completely uncorrupted and have a laugh... And as soon as the chains were off, of course there were so many ideas."

"It happened so fast," adds Orla. "We didn't have time to overthink it. No-one was like, 'Ooh, is this guitar part right?' It was all done on pure instinct.

"I think it sounds like happiness bottled."

With this anything-goes approach, producer Pete Miles encouraged the group to pick up instruments they'd never played before, from clarinets to pipe organs.

Vocals were recorded as a gang, standing in a circle, rather than isolating each voice to obtain a clean recording.

"Pete understands that if we spend too much time getting everything sounding really polished, everyone starts to feel lethargic and demotivated," says Greta.

"He really focuses on capturing the energy, and we definitely just sing differently when we're all together."

For Greta, this even involved singing in character as "two old ladies" for the backing vocals on the single High In Brighton.

"Silliness is definitely good and to be celebrated in this band - and perfection doesn't matter," she laughs.

Indeed, if you listen to the individual vocal recordings (which the band kindly shared on their podcast), there's what you might call a relaxed attitude to pitch. Mariah Carey this is not. Instead, the music gains a giddy sense of fun and togetherness.

"All together, we sound so powerful," says Dodie. "But if you take everyone else away and it's just your vocal, you sound like a child."

Unused to musical democracy, members make compromises and concessions that dilute what makes them unique.

The opposite seems to have happened for Fizz. Maybe it helps that Dodie, Greta and Martin share a flat, so the group dynamics were already in place. Or maybe it's because they've established a musical shorthand by working on each other's projects.

"I know exactly what you mean about how the edges can get sanded off," says Orla, "and I think if we didn't know each other so intimately, that could have happened. But instead it was about pushing each other to be braver and more confident and more untethered and just slightly feral.

"You know, Dodie sings famously quietly but this was like, 'Dodie, get out there and yell!'"

Fizz made their debut at the Great Escape Festival in May and signed to Decca Records soon after. The album is due in October and, in tandem with the music, there's a lack of inhibition to their presentation.

Speaking at July's Latitude Festival, the quartet are kitted out in colourful outfits from their childhood.

"I'm dressed like a baby," laughs Martin. "If you saw a five-year-old wearing this you'd be like, 'Oh my God, cute!' But because it's me, in my 20s with a moustache, I'm getting some interesting looks!"

The band's high concept artwork has already spawned imitations

The Harlequin aesthetic extends to their artwork and music videos, which are set in a fictional theme park called Fizzville. And although it's still early days, fans are starting to adopt the look.

"Everyone's definitely on board with the circus vibe, Willy Wonka chic," says Martin.

"Even online, we're getting tagged in a lot of messages from people who are dressed up and saying, 'I'm feeling very Fizz today'," adds Orla.

"The band seems to be encouraging people to be creative and elaborate and loud."

"I think we're missing theatre in pop music," Greta agrees. "We had it with Queen and Abba, that high-camp theatricality, inviting people to let go of themselves."

And that, says Martin, is what makes the band special.

"When I was a kid, that's all I wanted from the show: To be outside of myself.

"If something's too cool, you shrink. You feel like you have to like play the role of a cool person in a cool crowd.

"It's nice to just be, like, part of a big group of people screaming”.

FIZZ are just about to complete a string of amazing live dates. I suspect that they are going to be appear on a few festival bills. Even there are not many interviews from the past few months, I will take us back to late last year. One of the acts that are going to make some big moves this year, FIZZ should be on your radar. Their debut album, The Secret to Life, was released in October. It is an album I would recommend people seek out. In September, FIZZ spoke with NME about their album and how the band’s dynamic and songwriting will affect how each member writes as a solo member. An act of rebellion in the industry, FIZZ definitely got people excited and intrigued:

“NME: ‘The Secret To Life’ begins with ‘A New Phase Awaits You :-)’, where you offer listeners something to “lift you up and get out of that funk”. Did you find making this album got you out of a funk?

Dodie: “Oh my god, totally. I was absolutely stuck, and we said yes to everything when we were writing, there were no bad ideas. In fact there were too many ideas, I’ve never written songs so fast and so fun.”

Gartland: “It felt like we were running the collective tap in a way that I had definitely not experienced for a really long time – if ever – and it was like the energy of us all being there made the writing really different. When someone’s energy dipped, someone else could pick it up, and that’s not something I had ever experienced before.”

Do you think this experience will change how you write your solo projects?

Dodie: “Definitely. I think letting go a little bit more will hopefully allow some doors to open. Before Fizz, I felt like there was a structure I had to stick to and a lane that was mine”

Brown: “I feel like I’m more ambitious now. Everything feels achievable after you’ve written a song with eight key changes. Before, the task of aiming for something big and grand was something I talked myself out of all the time.”

Isaac: “I definitely feel much braver, and like I trust my instincts a little bit more creatively. Being around these guys and feeling validated in your experience really helps your creative process. I’ll definitely carry that into my own music.”

‘As Good As It Gets’ is a powerhouse single that sees you take on misogyny in a really cathartic way. How did it come together?

Isaac: “I was doing these down plucky things on the rubber bridge [of the guitar], and we wanted it to feel quite punky and have a lot of drive to it. Originally it really did sound like ‘American Idiot’, very punk-y and loud, with a lot of energy behind it. Slowly it turned into something different. We built a bit of a story around it, and then we wanted it to sound soft and feminine and beautiful to begin with, and then erupt into something much more angry later on.

“We had an assistant engineer called Soren Bryce at the studio with us, who’s also got a project called Tummyache, which is very dark and post-punk and beautiful. She felt like quite a subtle reference point for us creatively; and she sang on the song with us. I was having a shit day that day, and it felt like a really cathartic moment. It felt like that anger I was holding in my body was fuel to be able to sing the song.”

Was there a specific moment that inspired that song lyrically, or is it a lifetime of moments?

Dodie: “There’s definitely a few nuggets of real stories in there that we all just inherently know, because we’ve shared them.”

Gartland: “I think a lot of experiences of just not feeling enough. Particularly as a female, in the industry and out of it, where you get that little fire in you and you’re told or shown in some way that your feelings aren’t enough. For me when it erupts into that really high note Greta sings, it feels like that’s been building up for years.”

Isaac: “It feels like the whole thing is a pressure cooker. In my experience, I’ve equated a lot of worth to my appearance or how palatable I am to dudes, and deconstructing in my 20s has been really powerful, and this song’s a direct mirror to that.”

The music industry has changed hugely since you all started your careers. Were there things you felt like you had to consider – like TikTok – when working on this project, you didn’t before?

Gartland: “I think for all of us, the release plan was not thought about during the making of the music. What was essential to the bubble that we created making [the album], was ignoring completely how it might come out, and how you might present it, or even whether we will put it out at all.

“There were points where I was thinking ‘I would be so happy if this music never came out’; it was all about the process and about the time. But I also felt really proud of it and felt like I wanted to put it out. But yeah, [the industry] has definitely changed a lot since we’ve all started. God knows where it ends up!”

Brown: “I really feel like the culture of Fizz is so apparent, what we’re about, without us having to shove it down people’s throats. If people come across it, they will get it, even if they absolutely hate it, which I’m totally fine with.

“And I think people will hate it as well. It is what it is, and it’s so boldly what it is, and that in and of itself is so amazing, because I know people can just discover it. I don’t feel like we’re fighting for a way to cut through the noise”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Karina Barberis

I will move on to an interview from CLASH. Speaking with FIZZ in October, we get to learn more about a fascinating group. For those who have not heard of them or experienced the music, go and check them out on social media and investigate what they have put out so far:

“Welcome to Fizzville – your new favourite indie supergroup has arrived. Fondly referring to their fans as ‘fizzlets’ and sporting bright, clashing colours, FIZZ is infused with the psychedelia, euphoria and sheer imagination necessary for when friendship is the only thing saving you from disillusionment with an extractive industry. Comprised of Martin Luke Brown, Orla Gartland, Greta Isaac and dodie, the band blend everyday moments with surreal levels of theatricality on debut full-length, ‘The Secret To Life’.

In spite of their respective successes as individual artists, FIZZ evidently provides the opportunity for a new era of experimentation for its members. ‘The Secret To Life’ is a cathartic release of emotion and tension, blending the band’s musical maturity with a charmingly youthful spirit for life. The process behind the record was crucial. Motivated by an inherent desire to avoid overcomplicating music-making, FIZZ’s time at Middle Farm allowed them to go back to basics and focus on the most crucial theme of all, friendship.

Describing this project as infused with play and a liberating sense of creative freedom, it’s clear that the four friends believe their solo work has been enhanced by FIZZ. Providing the perfect chance to embrace their inner child, ‘The Secret To Life’ is about exploring the weird and wonderful spectrum of emotion.

CLASH caught up with the super group to discuss origin stories, avoiding the tendency to overthink and the delirious laughter that takes over when four friends decide to record together over two weeks.

What was it like recording as a group at Middle Farm?

Dodie: It’s the best bit for sure. We were writing and recording at the same time because, again, we were really trying not to think too hard about anything. Pete Miles is the producer at Middle Farm, which is the studio we went to. He really encourages play. He basically set us up little recording stations where we stayed and recorded. There was a lot of red wine and vibes. Yeah we had a great time. Lots of fits of giggles.

Greta: So many hilarious vocal takes that are probably still buried somewhere in the album if you listen closely. I think simultaneously singing together is so powerful, and kind of spiritual in some ways. But then also can be fucking hilarious if someone sings a bum note or pulls a funny face when they’re singing or whatever.

Martin: We tracked all the vocals round; we had four mics and we were all facing each other tracking vocals at the same time. By the nature of being directly opposite each other and being able to look at everyone – just the faces that people would pull while they’re hitting certain notes – we laughed a lot for sure.

Greta: There’s something about also singing with your friends, when you’re laughing in a recording environment and you’re not meant to laugh, because of time, pressure or tiredness and you just want to get it done. There’s something about that kind of laughing. It’s almost like vomiting, it’s like involuntary vomiting. You’re just like, I need to stop laughing but I can’t.

What are each of your favourite moments on the album?

Orla: The second verse of ‘Close One’ right at the beginning, where it goes “careful”, and it drops. That’s just so fun.

Greta: There’s a guitar solo in ‘The Secret To Life’ at the end where Orla is playing it, and it’s just so sick, and so sexy I always forget that Orla can play guitar so amazingly.

Martin: There’s a bit in ‘The Grand Finale’, which is the last song in the album. Me and Gret do a verse. We call it ‘Paul’s a Plumber’. That’s the section. And it’s like Thomas the Tank Engine meets…

D: The Beatles, I think.

M: Yeah, it’s just so so silly. It’s such a fun thing. Maximum, maximum silly. I love it.

D: My favourite is in ‘As Good As It Gets’. There’s a note that Gret hits, that when she was recording it I was literally like ‘Ahhh!’ It still gives me goosebumps, literally it will always give me goosebumps.

The album explores a variety of different emotions so effortlessly. How did you go about approaching the blend of emotional intensity and playfulness?

Martin: We honestly just did it. We just did it and afterwards we were like “Oh, it worked! Cool.” Yeah, truly.

Orla: I think so much of it was unspoken about intentionally because it felt like such an experiment. The only thing I was intent on, and felt across the board, was fighting the urge to overcook or overthink any decision. It’s not something that we’ve ever discussed as a band, because the whole point of it was not to discuss anything and build up a trust in your own instinct that I definitely lost in my projects. The speed at which we wrote with, lent into fighting the urge to overthink things. We would just go in and throw the vocal down, and the vocal you sing the first time is the final take. It’s like this really fast fever dream.

Martin: It’s how we were feeling on the day. We were just gassed and excited because it was this playground for us.

Greta: Yeah, the songs are like a huge mirror of how we were feeling that day. We were writing them and finishing them in a day or two essentially, there wasn’t much time spent on properly going through the tracks and tweaking anything. We just didn’t allow time for that. I think Martin’s right – each song is a true reflection of how we were feeling that day. We have sad songs and more funny, stupid songs, which is testament to the full spectrum we allow ourselves as a friendship group; to both be vulnerable and cry one minute, and then crack jokes and chat about Paul the Plumber the other.

Much of the album feels like they’re almost a guttural scream into the void. Were they cathartic to record?

Dodie: Yes, totally.

Orla: Especially ‘Hell Of A Ride’ for me. I think I was thinking about aging so much at that time, without even ever having acknowledged that within myself. There’s something really amazing that happens when you have a feeling in you that you haven’t said out loud, and then someone else suggests a lyric that is literally like a mirror to that. ‘As Good As It Gets’ as well, but in a different way. It was the three of us gals and our friend Soren Bryce, she was like a character in the studio for the whole album and her own projects are post-punky amazingness. We channelled her energy when all four of us were yelling around the mics. That was so cathartic”.

I am going to end with a snippet of a NOTION. Even though there may not be a set long-term plan for FIZZ in terms of how long they are together, you can tell they are going to be around for a long time. Lots of exciting music to come. The bond and chemistry between them is incredible. You can feel how much they love recording together:

“What are the challenges of being a young band in the UK music industry?

I think the hardest thing has been navigating social media as a group. Portraying four distinct personalities through one channel has been challenging at times. We all care so much and are so involved in every decision, it feels much more democratic than our own projects, which we all dictate individually.

Why did you feel it was the right moment to produce your first album?

It just felt serendipitous. Orla was between albums, dodie had just released an EP, Martin was wrapping up his first album campaign. It logistically lined up and just felt like the right time in our lives to fuck shit up and try something completely different for a sec. I think the project itself and all of our individual projects can only ever benefit from that new perspective.

Can you discuss your journey with The Secret To Life album? what inspired it, what were the highlights and what were the challenges?

Truly, there were very minimal challenges. It was a complete inverting of our usual way of working. No ego, no cerebral overthinking about how it was gonna be perceived; it was just total joy and escapism. We’re all so proud we managed to follow through on that intention. I guess it’s been hard at times navigating business and pleasure but again it all just boils down to trust and communication and we’ve got so good at that now.

PHOTO CREDIT: Karina Barberis

What are each of you most excited about going on this tour?

All of it: the singing, the costumes and the energy. The campaign has felt largely online so far but nothing compares to that sense of community you get being in a room of like-minded people having a daft old time, singing, dancing and celebrating life. We’re all gassed for that. Orla always says you top and tail campaigns with the fun stuff, the tour feels like the reward for all the hard work.

Aside from your tour, what will you be working on the next few months?

We’ve already started writing for whatever’s next, we can’t help it. Orla is prepping for her next release, we’re all working on various bits and pieces, but we’re all open to being reactive with FIZZ too. It’s all completely unknown and out of our control so we’re doing our best to prepare for absolutely anything!

Where do you hope FIZZ will be 2 years from now?

On holiday.

Do you have a collective dream as a band?

Honestly, no. The band is the dream, everything else is a bonus!”.

Go and follow the brilliant FIZZ. This is a group that are going to make some exciting moves through this year. After the release of their debut album, The Secret to Life, they are going to be looking ahead. They put out their Acoustic E.P. last month. A few acoustic versions of track that appeared on their debut album, I am sure that we will get a further E.P. later in the year. The music of this wonderful quartet…

TRULY pops.

_________

Follow FIZZ

FEATURE: Huge Originality from the Start… How Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside Announced An Artist Like No Other

FEATURE:

 

 

Huge Originality from the Start…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz 


How Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside Announced An Artist Like No Other

_________

I am briefly returning…

to Kate Bush’s amazing 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. Not only did it turn forty-six earlier this month. It reminds me just how radical and original the album is! We often take for granted the fact Kate Bush is such an individual artist. I feel many do not appreciate how refreshingly different and original Kate Bush was in 1978. Still a teenager, she came into the music scene with a debut album that was far from conventional. Hugely feminine in some respects, The Kick Inside is also so accomplished in terms of its lyrics and vocal performances. Extraordinary range from Kate Bush, the sort of things she was covering on her debut album is mind-blowing. Not as heard and revered as it should be, many people do not respect The Kick Inside in terms of its boldness, bravery and beauty. Often open to mockery and ridicule by the music press, I don’t think anyone was ready for The Kick Inside. Not sure how to handle this extraordinary and unusual talent that was in front of them. I am compelled to come back to The Kick Inside, as MOJO recently marked its forty-sixth anniversary. They saluted its originality. An album that includes whale song, ancient murder ballads, gothic fiction and meditations on love and sex:

“The first sound heard is whale song, sampled from the 1970 The Song Of the Humpback Whale, recorded by pioneering bio-acoustician Roger Payne (excerpts were also included on the Voyager space probes’ Golden Records, both of which are now in interstellar space). Alien yet somehow familiar, they lead us into Moving. A rising, falling theatrical rock tribute to Lindsay Kemp – who didn’t know his pupil was a singer until she put a copy of the album under his door – it finds her soprano voice reaching out like lighthouse beams through the mist. Balletic and expressive, the suspicion that its lyrics could also be interpreted sexually are not assuaged by The Saxophone Song. Progressive pop with gutsy sax by British jazz ace Alan Skidmore, it’s earthy stuff, as she ladles on a fantasia of juxtaposed images that elude concrete interpretation: “It’s in me/And you know it’s for real/Tuning in on your saxophone… the stars that climb from her bowels/Those stars make towers on vowels”, before the static frenzy of the outro.

A vivid internal world made external, this is music which presents female experience and feeling to an intense degree (this writer was harshly informed by one female fan that not inhabiting the same biological reality as a woman means a man’s understanding of Bush’s oeuvre will remain incomplete). A feathery, hovering prog-pop question mark, Strange Phenomena contemplates menstruation, déjà vu, synchronicity, intuition and unconscious communications, and was portrayed by the singer dressed as a magician in a TV special filmed at the Efteling theme park in the Netherlands in May 1978.

The male gets a look-in on the next song, but the message is ambivalent. A Number 6 hit in July ’78, the orchestral, exquisite The Man With The Child In His Eyes was, it’s claimed, written for early boyfriend and future TV presenter Steve Blacknell, who was then working cleaning toilets at a Kent mental hospital. On that year’s US interview promo the Kate Bush Radio Special, she described the song as, “a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic.”

Before offence can be taken by the liberated sensitive man of 2024 – does she actually mean me? - the ground zero of Wuthering Heights stops time, again. Sung in a morphing, trilling voice that straddles the world of the living and the dead, it’s quixotic, brilliant and utterly mesmeric. Surprisingly, it didn’t come from obsessive readings of Emily Bronte’s 1847 gothic romance, but was written in one night after watching a 1967 BBC TV adaption starring Ian McShane and Angela Scoular – later the wife of British screen cad Leslie Phillips – who died in 2011 after drinking drain cleaner. And this is just Side

Side 2 continues its sophisto-rock explorations via a unique artistic sensibility, with reflections on firearms and masculinity (James And The Cold Gun), sex and intoxicating romance (a non-prurient triple-punch of Feel It, Oh To Be In Love and L’Amour Looks Something Like You), spiritual enlightenment (Them Heavy People) and childbirth (Room For The Life). The closing title song’s voice, piano and strings arrangement is lulling and sweet, but death and madness lurk at its heart. Adapted from Lizie Wan, an old British song collected by folklorist Francis James Child, with added references to the Olympian gods, it concerns a sister killing herself after becoming pregnant with her brother’s child. Few other singers could pull off this sleight of hand, of lightness and something genuinely unsettling, so convincingly”.

In 1978, there was a particular scene and sound at the forefront. An industry still favouring and celebrating male artists, there was not a great deal of awareness and promotion of female artists. Aside from the Debbie Harry-led Blondie, a lot of the female artists in the charts in 1978 sounded a lot different to Kate Bush. Maybe Patti Smith was the only woman challenging a male-dominated year that saw albums from The Jam, Elvis Costello, Wire and Buzzcocks gain huge critical acclaim. There was not the sort of diversity we would see in years to come. Because of that, against a backdrop where you had a lot of male bands in demand and filling the scene, hearing a female artist of such distinction and originality come through must have been startling! Of course, there were those who applauded Kate Bush and were kind to her music – though there were plenty more who were not. Because she was not like anyone around her and was this beguiling and hypnotic voice, there was this cynicism and mockery. A voice that definitely was nothing like the edgier and masculine sounds of 1978, The Kick Inside did get a rough ride from some. Bush seen as quite screechy or eccentric. In fact, rather than her being this alien and strange thing, she was an extraordinary artist who would change music forever.

The Kick Inside did recently turn forty-six. Released on 17th February, 1978, maybe we take for granted today the fact that it is distinctly the work of Kate Bush. Not enough people discuss the album. In terms of its sheer and consistent quality, though also how strikingly and stunningly original it is. If one would expect a teenage female artist to discuss love on a debut album, you would be a little disappointed. Bush does do that. As she was influenced a lot by literature, there are these more evocative and imaginative songs. Spiritualism and self-examination stands alongside sex and meditations on womanhood and life-giving. Wuthering Heights sounds nothing like The Man with the Child in His Eyes. Moving is one of her most beautiful and stirring opening songs. Them Heavy People name-checks spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff. The Kick Inside did reach number three in the U.K. It got some positive reviews. However, I still feel that it was written off by many. And Kate Bush. Seen as this oddity that was not in keeping with what was expected in 1978. There has been retrospection in years to come. Perhaps not as much as there should be. I hope ensuing years recognises the brilliance and importance of The Kick Inside. An album that has influenced so many other artists. One that was hugely refreshing and important. From the transcendent whale song that opens the album – on Moving – to the haunted lines and piano that closes with the title track, The Kick Inside is this astonishing work from an artist like no other. I don’t think it quite gets all of the credit and respect…

THAT it deserves.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Shania Twain – Man! I Feel Like a Woman!

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

  

Shania Twain – Man! I Feel Like a Woman!

_________

ONE of the biggest albums ever…

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Come On Over did receive mixed reviews from music critics upon its release in 1997. At the 41st GRAMMYs in 1999, it was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Country Album. An extraordinary success story, Come on Over achieved sales of over forty million copies worldwide. It was recognised by Guinness World Records as the biggest-selling studio album of all time by a solo female artist. It is testament to its popularity and commercial appeal that twelve singles from the album were released! It seems insane now that any album would get that many single releases! I can’t think of any other album in history where almost the entirety has been put out as singles. Because of that, in 1999, Come on Over was still getting exposure because of single releases. On 3rd March, 1999, the music video one of the standout tracks from the album, Man! I Feel Like a Woman!, came out and was a huge hit. Hitting the top ten in many countries – and topping the charts in some -, I want to come to some articles about the single. I shall come to some reviews and reception around Man! I Feel Like a Woman! I had no idea about the origins and background. How Shania Twain came up with a song that seems to be a little ambiguous. Or at least not too obvious. Written with producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, critics noted the hooks and merits of the track. This Wikipedia article talks about the history of Man! I Feel Like a Woman! One of Shania Twain’s most popular tracks:

“The title and thus the lyrics of the song were based on Shania Twain's experience while working at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario to provide for her brothers and sisters after their parents died in a car crash. Twain recalls seeing some drag performers working at the resort and credits them as the source of her inspiration. Later in 1993, after being signed to Mercury Nashville and releasing her first album Shania Twain, Twain met Robert John "Mutt" Lange, whom she would collaborate extensively with and marry at the end of the year. In 1994, while composing songs for what would become her second studio album The Woman in Me, Lange played to Twain a riff he had been working on and Twain sang lyrics for what would become "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!". Speaking of the writing of the song, she stated "There was no time to waste on ideas that wouldn't make the album, but something like [the song] was just there. I was inspired right off the bat with that one, for example, by a riff Mutt had going, and the lyrics and phrasing just came out of the blue."

After reaching domestic success in the United States, and selling over 15 million copies with The Woman in Me, Twain was determined to become an international star and decided to do whatever was necessary to achieve her goal. In order to achieve a worldwide success, Twain recorded her third studio album, Come On Over, with the intention of being "international". After completing the album and delivering it to Mercury Records, Lange spent four months remixing 70 percent of the album for its international edition, diluting and removing the twang elements. While writing for the album, Twain and Lange revisited "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" and insisted on having the track on the album. The track was then the final song recorded for Come On Over. The song is the opening track of the U.S. edition of Come On Over, however, the international edition starts with "You're Still the One", since the song has country elements.

Seen as a powerful feminist anthem, it has been dissected and discussed through the years. As it turns twenty-five on 3rd March, I wanted to mark a quarter-century of a huge song from one of the most acclaimed and successful albums of the 1990s. At the end of last year, Biography highlighted how the inspiration for Man! I Feel Like a Woman! has its roots at Toronto’s L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ bars:

“On the surface, Shania Twain’s 1999 radio hit “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” is the ultimate girl power anthem. With lyrics like “No inhibitions, make no conditions / Get a little outta line / I ain’t gonna act politically correct / I only want to have a good time / The best thing about being a woman is the prerogative to have a little fun,” it’s all about letting loose for a no hold’s bar night on the town.

But the actual inspiration behind the song? Men at Toronto’s LGBTQ bars.

The singer co-wrote the song, featured on her 1997 album, Come On Over, with her producer-turned-ex-husband Robert John “Mutt” Lange. Twain has said the hit was likely inspired by nights out at gay clubs with her friends during her teen years. And it’s no wonder that today, it’s become as popular with drag queens as it has with audiences of every kind.

“I was just going to give up music,” Twain told Country Weekly in 1995. “I thought, my family comes first. I have to take care of them. I didn’t even think of the future.” As fate would have it, taking care of her younger siblings—Carrie-Ann, Darryl, and Mark—came in the form of a performing job at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario. “I’m lucky I got the job at Deerhurst because it was music,” she continued.

Not only did the job keep her on track, but it also introduced her to the world of showmanship. “Deerhurst was the first time I was directed on stage, and it was the first time I had dancers. It educated me,” she told the Canadian publication Macleans in 2015.

“When it was time to put together my show in Vegas, all that dazzle wasn’t foreign to me. I was familiar with the whole feel of a big stage show because of my being there,” she said of the resort. “It was like a mini-Vegas! Or like attending a Vegas performing arts school.”

Some sources report that her exposure to drag performers during her time there also contributed to the influences of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

Twain believes the song brings people together

Twain’s early influences from her Toronto club days and her Vegas-like training likely combined to bring the frivolous fun to “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” extending wide appeal to a broad swath of listeners. Rolling Stone even called the music video, in which Twain dresses up in a menswear-inspired look, complete with a top hat, “stereotypically male and indulgently female.” And, like in her early gay club days, the men in the video don perfect eyeliner.

“A lot of straight men sing ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ just for the sheer entertainment of it,” she said in a 2017 interview with PrideSource. “I think songs like that have been great, maybe, contributors to bringing us together, if not for anything than just for the common denominator of music... and that breaks down barriers.”

In fact, that’s what Twain relies on when she’s performing songs that she’s written like this—appealing to the love of music over anything that could spark controversy. “I like to have a sense of humor about everything, especially things that can have a lot of tension,” she continued. “A song like ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ just smacks it dead for me. The audience issue is not something I worry about. I’m respectful to my audience, and I appreciate them for relating to my music regardless of their point of view on whatever it is, whether it’s politics or social issues. I’m not here to judge.”

Twain believes “entertainment doesn’t have a gender”

More recently, Twain has said the song is about fully embracing her own femininity. She shied away from being overtly feminine when she was growing up to avoid unwanted male attention. But dancing at Toronto’s LGBTQ bars, while all dressed up with makeup on, was a liberating experience where she could “feel good about being female,” she told The Messenger. “That’s why it’s such a statement—not just ‘I Feel Like a Woman,’ but ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ and I love it, and I’m enjoying it, and I’m wearing it well.”

No matter her original intention, Twain has become an idol, especially in the drag queen community. The first time she came across a drag performer dressed as herself was at a Las Vegas imposter show.

“It was incredible,” she said. “The country world... might be more conservative, but it’s funny, three of the artists that were in the show were myself, Reba McEntire, and Dolly Parton. I thought that was so wonderful… Any artist that is, on a visual level, very expressive would make a great imposter night subject.”

Ultimately, Twain isn’t worried about her work and her legacy fitting traditional gender norms. “Entertainment doesn’t have a gender. The fashions that ended up stringing together my career—especially the epic, iconic looks—[go] both ways,” she told Macleans. “It can be drag queen-y as easily as it can be a sophisticated woman. We created a seamless, natural place for all of us.”

In fact, she even proudly doles out advice for drag performers who want to mimic her style. As she told PrideSource, the essential ingredients are: “Something leopard print, and I would say a top hat. The boots, for sure!”.

First released as a single in the U.S. on 3rd March, 1999, maybe she was not concerned with taking a song like Man! I Feel Like a Woman! internationally. As Come on Over had been out for over a year, maybe keeping singles in the U.S. was the plan. Feeling there would not be much commercial success and desire from other nations. Selling huge amounts and receiving big critical acclaim, Man! I Feel Like a Woman! was released around the world. This article also goes into the background of an iconic Shania Twain song. We get to learn more about its standout and arresting video:

“The country superstar explained that it was pretty late for her to acknowledge that she was becoming a woman. She added that she grew up as a rowdy girl who was always with the boys playing football and other sports. However, she noticed that she is getting curvier day by day, making her uncomfortable with her body.

Even so, Twain learned to embrace such changes. She began appreciating the fact that she can absolutely have fun being a woman, and that became the central theme of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” She decided to write the song to share her own self-empowerment – a symbol of her shift into womanhood.

However, many other people relate to the compelling track that it eventually developed into a girl-power anthem.

In another interview, the country music hit-maker said that the song’s title and lyrics were based on her experiences while working at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario. Twain remembered working with some drag performers at the resort, and she finds it fascinating enough every time they transform themselves into gorgeous women. She also credits them as the source of her inspiration.

Equally Frivolous Music Video

The song is also accompanied by a music video shot in New York City. Twain can be seen standing in front of a group of men dressed in the same way, donning perfect eyeliner. They were meant to imitate the women in Robert Palmer’s music videos for “Simply Irresistible” and “Addicted to Love.” It became Twain’s second most watched video, garnering 240 million views while “From This Moment On” was on top with 250 million views as of this writing.

Indeed, it’s the most iconic among Shania Twain songs. You can listen to “Man! I Feel Like A Woman” by Shania Twain in the video below”.

Crowned the number one karaoke song by Billboard in 2022, Shania Twain shared her reaction on The Jennifer Hudson Show. Feeling it was pretty cool, the track has taken on a life of its own. Still played a lot to this day, I doubt Twain would have realised what a legacy and impact the song would have. And how it would be adored and known so widely twenty-five years later. That is why I wanted to go deep with it for Groovelines. On an album like Come on Over with so many singles, Man! I Feel Like a Woman! ranks alongside the very best. Her most-streamed song on Spotify – with over 539,000,000 streams -, the video has been viewed over 400,000,000 times. It is a colossal success story from an artist who made history with a globe-conquering album. I remember when Man! I Feel Like a Woman! reached the U.K. a little while after its U.S. release in March 1999. I was instantly hooked by it. Even to this day, I feel it sounds fresh and alive. Influencing a whole host of artists, this incredible anthem has stood the test of time. It is an incredible song that so many Shainia Twain fans hold dear. Impossible to resist and not sing along to, I know we will be talking about Man! I Feel Like a Woman! for…

DEACDES longer.

FEATURE: Contenders: Mercury Prize-Worthy Albums from July 2023 to February 2024

FEATURE:

 

 

Contenders

IN THIS PHOTO: Sprints 

 

Mercury Prize-Worthy Albums from July 2023 to February 2024

_________

EVEN though…

IN THIS PHOTO: Corinne Bailey Rae

we have to wait until the summer to find out which twelve albums are shortlisted for this year’s Mercury Prize. Last year’s dozen was a very strong field. The prize was won by Ezra Collective for their album, Where I’m Meant to Be. There was a blend of debut albums, albums from legends, in addition to some eclectic and experimental albums mixing alongside darker Folk and Disco-Pop. Since the 2023 ceremony, we have seen some tremendous albums from British and Irish albums. The eligibility for shortlisting ran up to 15th July, 2023. I assume everything released after that and before 15th July or thereabouts this year will be eligible. I think there have been a selection so far that could well be in contention when we discover who will make the dozen shortlist Mercury albums this year. From a brand-new album from Nadine Shah to the debut from The Last Dinner Party, it is clear that some of these magnificent albums are going to be named later in the year. Rather than get the hopes up of these artists, it is a temperature check and early prediction. I will do an updated feature in three or four months. Right now, sort of at the half-way point, there are albums I feel are Mercury-worthy. Below are ten terrific releases that should be on that prestigious shortlist…

IN July.

___________

Nadine Shah – Filthy Underneath

Release Date: 23rd February, 2024

Label: EMI North

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/nadine-shah/filthy-underneath

Producer: Ben Hillier

Standout Tracks: You Drive, I Shoot/Sad Lads Anonymous/Twenty Things

Key Cut: Topless Mother

Review:

“Like countless singer-songwriters before her, South Tyneside-born auteur Nadine Shah has used her lived experience as a springboard. Love Your Dum and Mad, her 2013 debut, channelled her grief after two friends took their own lives. Kitchen Sink, Shah’s 2020 outing, pilloried the absurdities of thirtysomething womanhood. Between records, she has been outspoken on racism and musicians’ dwindling incomes. Filthy Underneath is, though, her most personal statement yet. Topless Mother details a sub par therapy experience with Shah’s usual unsparing eye; Twenty Things pays homage to her fellow-travellers to sobriety, some of whom did not make it.

The idea of trauma porn has deservedly come under scrutiny, particularly where race and gender are factors. But Filthy Underneath feels like an intelligently calibrated vehicle in which musical and emotional progress is made, even as suffering laps at the running boards like flood water. Shah nursed her mother through terminal cancer, got married and divorced, tried to take her own life and entered rehab. She handles the anguish of it all with a deft observational touch. You can hear the link, via producer Ben Hillier, between Shah’s intimate interiors and the stadium goth of Depeche Mode, with whom she recently toured (Hillier has produced both). But a heightened sense of rhythm pushes Shah along relentlessly, and her glacial, swooping melodies contain non-western inspirations such as Sufi singer Abida Parveen” – The Guardian

CMAT - Crazymad, For Me

Release Date: 13th October, 2023

Label: AWAL

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/cmat/crazymad-for-me

Producer: Matias Tellez

Standout Tracks: California/Where Are Your Kids Tonight?/Have Fun!

Key Cut: Rent

Review:

“On last year’s debut ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’, CMAT swung open the doors to her bold, brilliant world via a set of sparkling heart-on-sleeve anthems, and a good dose of pop culture nous. On its follow-up, though, the ante’s been upped considerably. Arriving with a suitably bonkers concept in tow (involving a 47-year-old CMAT and a malfunctioning time machine), this second album not only delves into the anger and heartbreak of a toxic relationship, but manages to do so with such a deft sense of wit and flare that it’s impossible, as a listener, not to feel embedded within the story itself. Once again, she transforms pop culture into poetry, painting the most vivid of worlds in the process, while her brand of country-indebted pop feels even richer this time around. From the gentle acoustics of the Sex and the City-inspired ‘Such A Miranda’, to the Bowie-esque glam stomp of ‘Rent’’s outro; the soaring sass of the John Grant-featuring ‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight?’ to the glitzy self-aware wink of closer ‘Have Fun!’, ‘CrazyMad, For Me’ is a triumphant whirlwind of pain and self-preservation, which reveals more of itself with every listen” – DIY

Sampha – Lahai

Release Date: 20th October, 2023

Label: Young

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/sampha/lahai

Producers: Ricky Damian/El Guincho/Kwake Bass/Kwes/Teo Halm/Sampha

Standout Tracks: Dancing Circles/Only/What If You Hypnotise Me?

Key Cut: Spirit 2.0

Review:

“Last time Sampha Sisay gifted us with a full-length record, the London-based singer-songwriter produced Process, a record centered on grief, anxiety, and mourning in the aftermath of his mother’s passing. Now, the electronic chaos of his earlier work is traded for softness as he sings of higher powers, healing, and – perhaps most of all – his daughter, born during the pandemic. 

The warm synths of lead single “Spirit 2.0” create a fitting backdrop for the artist as he sings of waves, light, faith, love, time, and spirit. In the context of the record, “Spirit 2.0” comes after “Stereo Colour Cloud,” which opens Lahai with a female voice proclaiming “I wish you could time / time-missile back-forward.”

Time is an ever-present motif on Lahai. On the interlude “Time Piece,” another female voice asks (in French) for a time machine ‘to go back’ in time. “Can’t Go Back” is the track that follows, interpolating the opening lines from “Stereo Colour Cloud” in its hook.

There are a handful of featured voices on Lahai; and every single one is female. It’d be foolish to then not note Lahai’s devotion to Wassoulou music, the West African genre performed almost entirely by women.

As Sampha declares his daughter ‘heaven-sent’ on “Can’t Go Back,” the singer’s words call back to his description of himself as a prisoner to heaven on 2017’s “Timmy’s Prayer.” Singing of spirits, surrounded by female voices reminding him of time, and amidst his musings on the connection between his past and his future, Lahai’s remarkable second half pulls together the record as an expressionist painting of life’s cyclical nature as Sampha reflects on his daughter’s place in his life, and her connection to her late grandmother. “You’re enough evidence for me,” the singer declares on “Evidence.”

On the penultimate track “What If You Hypnotise Me?” we get a glimpse into the anxieties and fears that still burden Sampha: “Please articulate my anguish / please explain to me why these raindrops accompany better times.” The classic Sampha drum-driven beat is broken, giving way to a steady beeping akin to a heartbeat on an ECG machine.

Finally, one more female voice enters. Maybe it’s the spirit of Sampha’s mother, with new life breathed into her, her memory living through her newborn granddaughter. Or maybe it’s Sampha’s daughter. Or maybe it’s nobody. No matter who it is, we know who Sampha is: a generational talent who has once again delivered a rich, emotional work for us to process. Lahai is phenomenal” – The Line of Best Fit

Corinne Bailey Rae - Black Rainbows

Release Date: 15th September, 2023

Labels: Black Rainbows/Thirty Tigers

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/corinne-bailey-rae/black-rainbows-2

Producers: S. J. Brown/Corinne Bailey Rae/Paris Strother

Standout Tracks: Black Rainbows/New York Transit Queen/Peach Velvet Sky

Key Cut: Erasure

Review:

“I feel it’s this weird punk, jazz kind of moment for me,” Corinne Bailey Rae told Stereoboard last year. It’s not a statement you might expect from a Grammy-winning singer who’s best-known for warm, easy-going neo-soul that soundtracked many a suburban dinner party in the late ‘00s. What next? Katie Melua dabbling in speed-metal? Norah Jones in corpse paint?

And yet here we are: ‘Black Rainbows’, Rae’s fourth album, swings from crunching glam-punk to skronking experimental jazz that wouldn’t sound out of place on David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’. There are left turns, and then there’s this. The Leeds-raised musician’s creative epiphany occurred on tour in Chicago, where she visited the Stony Island Arts Bank, a centre of Black history that honours African-American citizens while holding the country’s brutally racist past to account.

This challenging array of exhibits fired Rae’s imagination. Her new album’s centrepiece, lead single ‘New York Transit Queen’, was inspired by a photo of Audrey Smaltz, a Black 17-year-old model who won the Miss New York Transit pageant in 1954. The result is a fabulous blast of riot grrrl with enough handclaps, guitar squalls and joyously chanted vocals to blow a hole in the 6 Music playlist. We’re a long way from ‘Put Your Records On’.

On the flipside is ‘Erasure’, a pummelling neo-grunge track that sees Rae spit, through distorted vocals, about her disgust at the violence that besets Black children: “They try to erase you / They try to eviscerate you.” It’s a stunning piece of protest music that puts many a full-time punk band to shame (which is less surprising than it seems, given that she fronted a teenage riot grrl group with the extremely hardcore name Helen).

Rae initially planned to release this record – her independent debut – as a “side project”, but ultimately found the confidence to place ‘Black Rainbows’ front-and-centre. Perhaps that’s why the album also trades in the accessible sounds with which she made her name – take the pretty piano ballad ‘Peach Velvet Sky’ and loungey Winehouse pastiche ‘He Will Follow You With His Eyes’. Even the latter, though, segues into a spooky electronic soundscape.

The gear shifts can be jarring, but album four is actually more cohesive than it has any right to be, a fact its creator has attributed to her common thread of influence in Stony Island Arts Bank. Horns up: Corinne Bailey Rae has thrown the musical curveball of the year” – NME

Blur – The Ballad of Darren

Release Date: 21st July, 2023

Label: Parlophone

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/blur/the-ballad-of-darren-2

Producer: James Ford

Standout Tracks: The Ballad/The Narcissist/Avalon

Key Cut: Barbaric

Review:

“Early on in The Ballad of Darren, the unexpected and understated Blur reunion album, Damon Albarn sings "We have lost the feeling that we thought we'd never lose," a line that could easily be interpreted as the vocalist addressing his bandmates. Blur lost an intangible feeling during an acrimonious split in the early 2000s, the band limping forward after the departure of guitarist Graham Coxon during the sessions for Think Tank. Within a few years, the group tended to their lingering wounds, healing enough to play the occasional reunion concert, a union that eventually led to The Magic Whip, a happy accident of an album. The Ballad of Darren is something entirely different. Where Coxon crafted The Magic Whip from studio jams the band left behind after a week exiled in Hong Kong, Blur recorded The Ballad of Darren as a unit within the studio, shaping and coloring compositions Albarn wrote while on tour with Gorillaz in 2022. It's how Blur made records back in the '90s but, notably, the group replaced their mainstay Stephen Street with James Ford, a producer who has worked with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine, not to mention Gorillaz. Ford teases out the louche, loungey aspects of Albarn's songs, lending a lushness to the melancholy undercurrents that flow through The Ballad of Darren. Apart from "St. Charles Square," which announces itself with a flurry of guitar skronk and profanity, there's no direct evocation of Blur's younger days; far from conjuring the ghost of the melodramatic "To the End," the hints of hi-fi sophistication lend weary texture to melodies that sigh and linger. Albarn spends the album pondering severed connections and vanished spaces, sentiments that could be read either as mourning a personal loss or as a meditation on a post-pandemic world, yet The Ballad of Darren doesn't feel precisely sad, not in the way Damon's solo albums often can. Blur gives Albarn's songs depth and dimension, as Graham Coxon decorates the margins left by the elastic rhythms of Alex James and Dave Rowntree. The Magic Whip hinted at the essence of this chemistry but The Ballad of Darren revels in it, resulting in an album that feels age-appropriate without being stodgy: it's mature and nuanced, cherishing the connections that once were taken for granted but now seem precious” – AllMusic

The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy

Release Date: 2nd February, 2024

Label: Island

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/the-last-dinner-party/prelude-to-ecstasy

Producer: James Ford

Standout Tracks: Caesar on a TV Screen/Sinner/Nothing Matters

Key Cut: The Feminine Urge

Review:

“It could have been a very different outcome. When you have a debut single that bulldozes through the music scene in the way that Nothing Matters did last year, it’s usually only downhill from there. Indeed, the enormous early success of The Last Dinner Party soon led to accusations of the London band being either nepo babies who were fast-tracked to the top or manufactured industry plants – charges not subdued by their top placing on the BBC’s Sound of 2024 poll and a Brit Award as rising stars. Really, there is only one way to quieten the naysayers: make a killer debut album.

Prelude to Ecstasy is just that: a pop album that swerves and swoops into unexpected places but with plenty of hidden depths to discover with every listen. The band, led by Abigail Morris, take a forward-thinking approach to songwriting yet are similarly unafraid to dip into nostalgia for a brief wallow. Opening the record with a classical overture, borrowing from 1980s acts such as Kate Bush and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and plundering a hearty baroque influence throughout, this is a delightfully offbeat and incredibly accomplished collection, steered by the steady hand of James Ford, its producer.

More to the point, these are simply great songs. Morris, her versatile voice laden with both charisma and firepower, sells her lyric sheet with a convincing side of melodrama, as heard on Burn Alive (“I break off my rib to make another you”) and Portrait (“I’d die for you, no questions asked/ If anyone could kill me, it probably would be you”), songs that sound as if they were plucked from the soundtrack of the 1980s cult horror film The Lost Boys. If Florence Welch is too screechy for your taste, the slightly more understated Feminine Urge ticks a similar box without the vocal histrionics. Sinner and Caesar on a TV Screen do a line in barbed, tongue-in-cheek indiepop; My Lady of Mercy deftly switches between a Sparks-like surrealist pop verse and a beefy stadium-rock chorus, while the sultry Portrait shows that the band are not afraid to pull out the big guns when required, building to a powerful, string-drenched climax.

Is there an element of shtick to it all? Undoubtedly: this is a band that thrives on image, as their stylised music videos and extravagant stagewear have shown. Yet beneath the facade is also thoughtful, well-crafted songwriting that instils a confidence that we’ll be hearing more of The Last Dinner Party in years to come. And if not? Well, they’ve made that killer debut album, regardless” – The Irish Times

The Smile – Wall of Eyes

Release Date: 26th January, 2024

Label: XL

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/the-smile/wall-of-eyes

Producer: Sam Petts-Davies

Standout Tracks: Wall of Eyes/Read the Room/Friend of a Friend

Key Cut: Bending Hectic

Review:

“As far back as 2009, Jonny Greenwood was fed up with the faff of the world’s most studious stadium band. “He can’t stand it anymore, the pace of the way we work,” Thom Yorke said that year. Despite the guitarist and composer’s impatience, he was prone to obsessing over what Yorke called the “extra things”: the sly strings and choked squeals that thread razor wire into Radiohead’s pillowed luxury. “‘Come on, we need some wrong notes,’ he’s always saying. OK, you got ’em,” Yorke joked.

But never have we heard Greenwood quite like this. On Wall of Eyes, the second album from the Smile, his hostile harmonies and expediency in the studio nudge the trio somewhere new; it is his most exciting and volatile performance since In Rainbows. No time for their usual effortful cohesion: Producer Sam Petts-Davies resolves to stress, not conceal, the eclecticism of Yorke and Greenwood’s songs, while drummer Tom Skinner squirrels around making nests in their inhospitable time signatures. After the debut’s big bang, Wall of Eyes connects the particles into somewhere you, and perhaps these restless musicians, might like to make a home.

More than anything on A Light for Attracting Attention, the Beatlesy “Friend of a Friend” and riotous “Bending Hectic” present contrasting spectacles of the Smile’s allure. The former draws inspiration from lockdown footage of Italians uniting in song on their balconies; the coda juxtaposes that pandemic solidarity against the elites’ response. “All of that money, where did it go?/In somebody’s pocket, a friend of a friend,” Yorke laments, invoking the COVID cronyism of Britain’s Conservative Party. But the tune is divine, even hummable—his deftest lunge for your heartstrings since unshelving “True Love Waits.”

At the other extreme, “Bending Hectic” indulges Yorke’s time-honored passion for calamitous automobile events—in this case the last moments of a public figure, apparently disgraced, who vows to drive off the Italian mountainside. The band plays the car-crash suicide ballad as a brilliantly twisted love song: Such is the narrator’s hubris that, when an orchestral crescendo signals the plunge, and Greenwood’s lustrous string bends transmute into tire squeals, we hear the infernal crusade as a valorous final act.

Across the album, Greenwood’s haywire guitars and arrangements veer between Can’s warehouse expressionism and Robert Wyatt’s alien-abducted folk fusion, conspiring with the live production and convulsive rhythms to save his bandmate from his more ponderous impulses. Yorke’s ethereal vocal register has long been his calling card and his crutch, tested to dizzying effect on the verses of “Climbing Up the Walls” before taking root on The King of Limbs. These days, he is split between warring impulses to command a song or spritz it with ghostly vapor. But even his weaker spells enchant, and Wall of Eyes opens with two irresistible slow burners: the wintry bossa nova title track, where he murmurs about digital surveillance and sedation (“You will go behind a wall of eyes/Of your own device/Is that still you with the hollow eyes?”), and “Teleharmonic,” from the “All I Need” school of fraught narrators caught in whirlpool synths, clinging to love like a life preserver.

By sequencing the two foggiest songs up front, the album lulls you into a trance. Then Greenwood’s guitar, coaxed from the sidelines, electrifies the nerve center on “Read the Room” and “Under Our Pillows,” an alt-rock suite of clanking-piston hooks and motorik finales. When the tension lifts with a music-box melody or swell of London Contemporary Orchestra strings, the songs have surprised us twice: first by forestalling expectations of beauty, then by providing it anyway.

The second side’s tour-de-luxe falters only on “I Quit,” one of those Smile songs that perhaps suffers from Greenwood’s desire to release records “90 percent as good [that] come out twice as often.” Where the arresting closer “You Know Me!” evolves Yorke’s paranoid balladry, “I Quit” is the discount “Codex” or “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor”: intoxicating as ever but without the final revelation—the sense of dawn penetrating some murky underworld—that tilts those Radiohead songs into the sublime.

After decades refining, refusing, and reformulating the Radiohead sound, Yorke and Greenwood seem emboldened to stop resisting—to loosen up and let their songwriting impulses absorb whatever happens to be on their stereo that day. Wall of Eyes gives center stage to jazz, kosmische, prog—aesthetic signposts and satellite genres usually kept in the more established band’s wings. The Smile, though stranger and wilder, more comfortably fit in the omnivorous art-rock tradition.

Greenwood’s fusion of refinement and insurrection echoes that of his beloved pianist Glenn Gould, who once made a nice observation about the pioneering modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg: “Whenever one honestly defies a tradition, one becomes, in reality, the more responsible to it.” As Radiohead defied rock convention, so the Smile cannot help but defy Radiohead. Yet defiance, Gould suggests, is the lifeblood of tradition. To defy classicism or rock or a cherished old band may finally preserve their sanctity. The defied thing endures—and then, if we are lucky, defiance provokes it to react” – Pitchfork

Bill Ryder-Jones – Iechyd Da

Release Date: 12th January, 2024

Label: Domino

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/bill-ryder-jones/iechyd-da

Producer: Bill Ryder-Jones

Standout Tracks: If Tomorrow Starts Without Me/I Hold Something in My Hand/Christinha

Key Cut: This Can’t Go On

Review:

“A decade ago, Bill Ryder-Jones made what he would come to think of as the defining record of his career. Then a few years out of The Coral – the band he had co-founded with a group of school friends as a teen, and a solo album deep (an instrumental recording with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra that served as an imaginary soundtrack to Italo Calvino’s novel If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller) he released A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart.

The album set out Ryder-Jones’ stylistic and thematic stall: songs marked by a remarkable closeness, by the intimacy of place and people. It was a world filled with colloquialisms and gentle wit, where we were all on first-name terms and the geography sat in our marrow. He carried the style further on 2015’s West Kirby County Primary, and through to 2018’s Yawn (and its stunning acoustic companion, Yawny Yawn). Not nostalgia exactly, but a certain squaring with the past – former loves, distant conversations, things he should’ve said or done.

Across his solo catalogue, there has been a kind of wet leaf quality at the heart of many of Ryder-Jones’ songs; something beautiful and sad that seems to cling to the singer. We might trace this to the early loss of his older brother, to his experiences of depression, anxiety and agoraphobia, but wherever its source lies, what it brings to his music is a beguiling elusiveness; the sense that something is halfway gone and just out of reach.

His seventh record, Iechyd Da, follows a five-year gap, in which he spent time producing albums for other artists – among them Michael Head’s Dear Scott, and Brooke Bentham’s Everyday Nothing. The time away has allowed for a certain recalibration, and the singer has said that the new record is an effort to return to the feeling he found in A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart. This desire seems in itself wholly in keeping with Ryder-Jonesian sentiment – a reaching-back, once again, to an earlier time and place. But regardless of its intention, the result is impressive; Iechyd Da is an album that confirms Ryder-Jones as one of Britain’s finest songwriters.

Certainly there are nods to his 2013 album here – a reappearance of the characters Christinha and Anthony, for instance, the return of mixer James Ford, and a track named “A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart Pt 3”. There is also a similarly exploratory approach to style, grown bolder now, perhaps through his own production experience. The record is filled with orchestral swells and sonic oddities, a Gal Costa sample here, a wink to Lou Reed’s Street Hassle there, a children’s chorus, skewed instrumentals. On “…And The Sea…”, Michael Head pops up to read an excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses, his rich Scouse tones mixed beneath waves of strings as he makes his way through Molly Bloom’s closing thoughts. It leads to something strangely affecting, like a more disco take on Van Morrison’s “Coney Island”.

Like Head, Ryder-Jones was raised in Merseyside, and still lives in his native West Kirby. He sings with the characteristic melody of the Liverpudlian accent: muffled and mish-mashed, fricative, debuccalised, taking clear relish in his delivery. And so we find the pleasing sing-song of lines such as “From Ant’s to Our’s to Arrowe Park/ Somewhere around the seven-minute mark…” on “Thankfully For Anthony”, or the distinctive Scouse pluralisation of “Oh no I’m feeling blue/And it’s all because of yous…” on “Nothing To Be Done”. It brings a sense of warm informality, as if the accent itself stands among the record’s run of familiar characters.

Ryder-Jones’ voice isn’t quite ASMR-inducing, but it sits soft and low and just at the edge of hearing, as something heard through walls, or in somniferous recline. It catches sometimes, or seems to give out completely, and in these moments the effect is for the listener to lean in even closer.

It’s a neat trick, and Ryder-Jones has a particular gift for experimenting with where sound sits and what effect that can exert on the listener. Where instrumentation dominates, it seems to replicate an intense surge of feeling, burying the singer’s voice, obscuring the lyric, obliterating all. Sometimes, as on “This Can’t Go On”, the music works counter to the subject matter — the old disco trick of a rum tune carrying great sorrow. In the gulf between grows a lurching disorientation, in much the same way as he starts the song walking at night listening to “The Killing Moon”, spurred by the memory of some advice to “get outside, go get some sun.”

What frames this record is a kind of love. The opening track, “I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)” begins as a heady take on romantic love, filled with besotted canoodling and the joy of staying in and watching TV with someone you adore. By the chorus it’s curdling. Ryder-Jones singing of being at once too much and not enough, as the Gal Costa sample, taken from a song that soundtracked that particular relationship, rises and falls.

The track is followed by “A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart Pt 3”, which sees the singer rejecting the lonely advances of an ex, reminding her of their troubled relationship. But above, around, between runs an acknowledgment: “Oh how I loved you.” He sings the line repeatedly, each time resting on the low, heavy vowel of ‘love’, and the simplicity of it grows quietly devastating.

There are other loves here: the ones we’ve hurt, the ones we hope might return, the love of belonging, the surprise of being told you’re beautiful. All the heartfelt moments we still think about, and a dispassionate acknowledgement that, after all, a relationship can simply come to a natural end: “A sun just sank into some sea,” he concludes on “Cristinha”.

But it’s the penultimate track, “Thankfully For Anthony”, that gives the real heart-lurch. One of the album’s standouts, it presents an altogether different kind of loving: this is not hurly-burly romance, but a love marked by constancy and choice. Ryder-Jones finds it among his friends, and even for himself: “And I felt love/I’m still lost, but I know love,” it runs. “And I know loss/But I choose love.” The lines land plum, like a gut-punch.

When Ryder-Jones left The Coral, the band were at the height of their success – five Top 10 albums, critical acclaim, touring with the Arctic Monkeys, a Mercury nomination. But the bigger they became, the more Ryder-Jones, the band’s lead guitarist, seemed to pull in another direction. He became more interested in string arrangements, he grew weary of the demands placed on a commercially successful group, he began to experience panic attacks ahead of live shows.

What he chose instead was a creative life that was altogether more intimate. Success was measured not so much in sales as craftsmanship. The big venues and festival stages were abandoned for smaller rooms. In the studio, he largely worked alone: singer, lyricist, producer. The songs grew closer, truer, tougher.

There have been turbulent moments along the way, of course. But Iechyd Da feels a culmination of all he set out to do. It’s a record that beckons you over and invites you in, that rewards your faith and careful listening with moments of extraordinary beauty, unflinching honesty, a sonic exchange of love” – Uncut

SPRINTS – Letter to Self

Release Date: 5th January, 2024

Label: City Slang

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/sprints-2/letter-to-self

Producer: Daniel Fox

Standout Tracks: Heavy/Shadow of a Doubt/A Wreck (A Mess)

Key Cut: Literary Mind

Review:

“Dublin four-piece Sprints signed to City Slang in 2023, and blast into the New Year with debut album ‘Letter To Self’. Opening with the brooding beats of ‘Ticking’, the vocals of Karla Chubb begin low, full of foreboding. Questioning and self-doubt are apparent from the very beginning, an uncertainty about oneself. The instrumentation builds into an all-encompassing soundscape – a thrilling start which sets the scene for what is to follow. And to hear lyrics in German, the guttural nature of the language fitting perfectly with the atmosphere of the track. Although born in Dublin, Karla Chubb spent part of her early childhood in Germany, initially turning to music as a consequence of feeling out-of-step with the world.

It’s then straight into the scuzzy static-fuelled guitars of ‘Heavy’.  The external questions continue: “Do you ever feel like the room is heavy?” they ask. The energy and passion evoked here are raw and true. The lyrics build, eventually exploding in an air of frustration “watching the world go around the window”.

‘Cathedral’ is in a similar vein. There is a darkness here; “Maybe living’s easy / Maybe dying’s the same.”  The emotional intensity continues to seep through the music. The combination of Sam McCann’s bass and the guitars of Chubb and Colm O’Reilly combine to create a cacophony of sound, fast and furious.

‘Shaking Their Hands’ takes us to a different place, with its weariness with life.  More contemplative, witnesses Chubb deliver a softer vocal.  The theme is more thoughtful with the singer “counting the minutes until the clock strikes six” – a sentiment most can connect with.  However it’s an intriguing song as the question is inevitably “whose hands?”.  ‘Adore, Adore, Adore’ was released as a single and projects the idea of being judged with its question “Do you adore me?” The pace rattles along and its chorus of “they never call me beautiful, they only call me insane” suggests a desire to fit in, to be accepted.

‘Shadow Of A Doubt’ has an eerie start with its haunting plucking guitar chords.  Again there is a atmosphere of foreboding, a lack of belonging.  The repetition of “I am lost” is gut-wrenching and Chubb builds the tension until the frustration boils over “can you hear me calling?” The sentiment is heart-breaking as it seems to be a call for help, and that wavering guitar chord perfectly evokes the anxiety.  Likewise with ‘Can’t Get Enough Of It’, the agitation remains. The inevitable ear-worm of the repeating “This is a living nightmare” is breath-taking, as it combines with the soaring soundscape. The mid-track key change takes the listener by surprise as it punches at the very core with its emotional impact. Perhaps there is a sense here of not being able to be oneself, a lack of self-belief, of security in ones own self-worth.  And goodness do those guitar parts add to the overall sense of anxiety.

The sign of a great song is that it still elicits an emotional response long after its initial release. And so it is with the 2022 single ‘Literary Mind’. Re-recorded for ‘Letter To Self’, Sprints have shared that this track has evolved over time. It is pacier than the original single version and is all the better for it. A love song, it relieves the tension felt so far on the album. It’s a song to belt out at the top of your voice, and is thus cathartic for us all. And just listen to McCann’s vocal on the outro, you know Sprints love playing this track. ‘A Wreck (A Mess)’ opens with electrifying guitar riffs and the percussive beats of Jack Callan.  The lighter tone set by ‘Literary Mind’ continues. Again lyrically reflective ‘A Wreck (A Mess)’ is delivered with wild abandon, all scuzzy guitars and thunderous drums. The ebb and flow of the pace keeps the listener on their toes, plus lyrics that will live long in the memory including: “is everyone a wreck, is everyone stressed?”

Latest single ‘Up And Comer’ reached the dizzy heights of the 6Music A-list. The opening guitar riffs stops the listener in their tracks every time.  And then the full force of ‘Up And Comer’ kicks in and once it reaches top speed you just know it’s not stopping with its full-frontal assault. The chorus is simply electrifying.

The title track closes out ‘Letter To Self’ and it takes a stand against the internal turmoil. “I’ll give as good as I get”.  Here there is defiance. The expression is one of hope, of possibility, of coming out from under the weight of expectation, of fighting back. It sees the journey through the album reach its conclusion.  Now the lyrics question those who criticise, those whose behaviour is inappropriate.  ‘Letter To Self’ states confidently “I am alive” compared to the questioning “am I alive?” from opener ‘Ticking’.  It’s a thunderous end, the theme of the track completely different from the rest of the album.

With ‘Letter To Self’ Sprints have produced an album brutally honest and personal. They have not been afraid to express the feeling of being an outsider, of looking for validation, of attempting to overcome self-doubt. The human condition and thus society is complex and difficult to navigate but Sprints have not been afraid to express uncertainty and vulnerability. And all the while they have enveloped these themes in the most glorious noise for us all to find comfort and lose ourselves in.

Is it possible to have an album of the year contender on only the first week in? Of course it is.  9/10” – CLASH

Crawlers – The Mess We Seem to Make

Release Date: 16th February, 2024

Label: Polydor

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/crawlers/the-mess-we-seem-to-make

Producer: Pete Robinson

Standout Tracks: Better If I Just Pretend/Come Over (Again) /I End Up Alone

Key Cut: Would You Come to My Funeral

Review:

“Crawlers arrive with their long-awaited debut album not on hands and knees, but with strident purpose and fractured hearts beating out of their chests. It’s understandable. Having blown up on TikTok and been invited out on tour with giants like My Chemical Romance and YUNGBLUD, the Liverpudlian quartet have every reason to be overloaded with strident self-belief, but the striking vibrancy and surging energy with which they translate it to these 12 tracks is utterly remarkable.

There’s little time for looking in the rearview mirror. Yes, mega-hit 2021 single Come Over (Again) makes the tracklist – its grungy, hooky, melancholy brilliance shines as brilliantly here as it on each of the tens of millions of streams already racked up – but this is an album built for the road ahead.

As pumping opener Meaningless Sex thrusts into the fuzzy Kiss Me, their meld of vulnerability and intimacy with stadium-ready composition continues to bear fruit. Hit It Again proves a willingness to crank the heaviness when the moment calls. The brilliant Would You Come to My Funeral is a teasing lyrical masterclass with a pulsing bassline and soaring chorus that are impossibly full of life.

For a band who broke out on attention-deficit social media, Crawlers command the long-form with no lack of substance and impressive pacing. The mournful, piano-driven Golden Bridge finds room to sprawl and fully develop mid-album. The probing Kills Me To Be Kind loses nothing for sitting alongside their breakout hit, painting a picture of how the band have grown up since. The tentative alt. pop of Call It Love wears the influence of icons like PJ Harvey and Fiona Apple on its sleeve before heart-rending closer Nighttime Affair delivers a masterclass in theatrical understatement.

Perhaps most impressive is how this is a record destined to delight not just Crawlers’ fans – the affectionately named Creepy Crawlies – but pretty much anyone whose earways it happens to invade. The, ahem, crawl to superstardom is well underway. Verdict: 4/5” – Kerrang!

FEATURE: Revisiting… Iraina Mancini – Undo the Blue

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

 

 Iraina Mancini – Undo the Blue

_________

PEOPLE know how much I love…

Iraina Mancini’s music! A hugely talented D.J., artist and songwriter, she released her much-anticipated debut album, Undo the Blue, on 18th August. One of the last year’s best albums, I crowned it my favourite of 2023. Mancini, too, was my artist of 2023. Such an amazing and natural talent, I was lucky to get Undo the Blue and hear it early. I was impressed by many things: the breadth and eclectic nature of the sounds and styles Mancini covered; the incredible songwriting and her wide and stunning vocal range. She brought you into every song and truly captured the imagination and heart with every single note! I wondered about some of the love songs and who inspired them. Which vinyl albums in her collection influenced particular numbers. A flawless album that could naturally translate to a short film/visual project from Mancini, I think that Undo the Blue hints at a very long and prosperous music career. As we wait for the second album – new music is planned but, as it is early days, no release date yet for a second album -, enjoy a golden album full of musical bounty and sonic pleasure. Go and get this truly magnificent album:

“Needle Mythology, the label founded by music writer, author and broadcaster Pete Paphides, release the eagerly anticipated debut album by London singer-songwriter and renowned DJ Iraina Mancini. Iraina’s singular pop vision will be known to regular listeners of 6 Music, where her singles ‘Undo The Blue’, ‘Deep End’, ‘Shotgun’ and ‘Do It (You Stole The Rhythm)’ have all been enthusiastically embraced. Iraina's obsession with music stretches back into her early childhood, much of which was spent absorbing her parents’ collection of old 45s, in particular her dad’s Northern Soul records – an alternative education which meant that, by her early 20s, she was a familiar presence in the DJ booth at many discerning London club nights. Her love of French ye-ye, British freakbeat, Brazilian bossa nova, soul, and Turkish psych will be well-known to regular listeners of her Soho Radio show. Having always sung from a young age, Iraina embarked on a string of collaborators such as Jagz Kooner (Sabres Of Paradise), Sunglasses For Jaws (Miles Kane) and Simon Dine (Paul Weller, Noonday Underground) which truly saw her find her metier as a songwriter, conjuring melodies that stand shoulder to shoulder alongside her impeccable influences. Iraina describes her first single for Needle Mythology ‘Cannonball’ as “a celebration of that moment when you meet someone you really fall for and it knocks you for six. It can be a bit scary, but you’ve just got to go with what your intuition is telling you.” Written with Simon Dine, the vertiginous heart-in-mouth abandon of the song perfectly mirrors the circumstances that brought it into being. Iraina cites Jacqueline Taïeb’s 1967 single 7h du Matin as an early inspiration for the song: “There’s such a great energy about that song. Her vocal is amazing and all those stops and starts that grab your attention.” “This is an artist I absolutely love, one of our rising stars at 6Music.“ Lauren Laverne BBC 6Music”.

I will come to some positive reviews for Undo the Blue. Even though stations like BBC Radio 6 Music gave the singles a lot of love, I think that more publications and websites should have reviewed and spotlighted Undo the Blue. I want to start out with some testimony from Needle Mythology. Run by broadcaster, D.J. and author Pete Paphides, he was thrilled to announce a mighty debut from the tremendous London-based Iraina Mancini:

“Please give a warm welcome to Needle Mythology’s latest signing.

Can I tell you about the first proper conversation I had with Iraina Mancini? We’d met three or four times in passing, at Soho Radio, where we both host radio shows. And by the most recent of those occasions, I’d heard her own music, three self-released singles.It says a lot about the quality of those songs and about Iraina’s sheer determination that she managed to get them playlisted on 6 Music *without a plugger*. That’s almost unheard of. But if you listen to Deep End, Undo The Blue and Shotgun, you’ll know why. These are songs that stick to you on first listen the way they did when you were a kid and you couldn’t rest until you’d either taped it off the radio or got the money together to get them from your local record shop.

So, last November, on the most recent of those in-passing conversations, I asked Iraina if there was an album on the way. She told me that half of it had been recorded, and the other half existed in demo form. “Who’s putting it out?” I asked her. That process was ongoing right now; a bit of back-and-forth with a couple of major labels. They were dragging their heels. I sensed a sliver of opportunity.

“I run a small label,” I said. “Would you mind sending me the songs?”

“Sure!” she nodded. That night, ten songs landed in my inbox. Ten individually beautiful songs; but also, thirteen songs which, all together, propelled you into the fully-furnished, flawlessly-curated pop universe of their creator. Every detail just-so.

Iraina and I met a few days later at Maison Bertaux. I told her about the label. I told her that my job, as I saw it, was to just get out of the way and let her finish what she’d started. She told me about her – for want of a better word – method. About the melodies that come to her as far back as she could remember. Fully fully-formed tunes that flow into choruses that pitch up in your brain, kick off their boots and make themselves at home. A lifetime spent obsessing upon pop in all its myriad forms: northern soul; French ye-ye; bubblegum; freakbeat. From the Supremes to Betty Boo – her interior world was like a radio station to which no-one else had access.

When she talked to me about Deep End, she hymned “the scuzzy sound of 60s garage rock”; the atmosphere of early Jacques Dutronc records, and the adrenalised harmonies of The Shangri-Las. For Undo The Blue (the song), she talked about creating something that might make people feel something of what she felt the first time she heard the luxuriant psych-soul of Rotary Connection.

We also talked about Jacqueline Taïeb, Margo Guryan and Astrud Gilberto. When Iraina stepped up to the mic to sing Sugar High, she asked herself, “How does it make you feel when Julie London and Dusty Springfield sing about love?” If you want to know what the answer is, listen to Sugar High.

During the course of that conversation, I sent myself a dozen texts – reminders of records she’d mentioned that had in some way established the sonic mood board of Undo The Blue. I had a lot of homework to do. But when I heard them all, no single album managed to resound with quite the iridescent joie de vivre that pours forth from these songs. That’s 100% Iraina.

When pop is done with this sort of full-pelt brio and impeccable taste, what you end up with is an album that will repeatedly remind you why you fell in love with this supposedly ephemeral art form in the first place.

And that’s why everyone who has worked with Iraina on Undo The Blue – Will Harris , Mark Wood , Craig Caukill, Julian Stockton, Martin Kelly, Rupert Orton, James Gosling, Erol Alkan,  Mig and everyone at Cool Badge – is thrilled to have been part of this adventure.

I had a few ambitions when we started this label, but one of the big ones was to put out at least one genius Platonic-ideal-of-pop album. The sort of record just as good on a sunny Saturday morning when you’re doing the dishes as it does when you’re getting ready to go on a night out with your friends. This is all of that and so much more”.

An artist impossibly cool and wonderful – I am predicting she will play Glastonbury and many other big festivals this year -, I feel she is worthy of a big interview with the likes of The Guardian, Rolling Stone, or even U.S. publications like The New Yorker. I feel that her music could translate to the U.S. easily. Maybe there is not a big budget to tour international, though I can imagine Mancini rocking Los Angeles and New York audiences. Paris seems like a natural haven and home for her music. She toured through the U.K. last year, yet I can feel American attention coming her way soon. In addition to her amazing Soho Radio show, Mancini also does D.J. work at a variety of events and locations. She is someone I can also see having an acting career and being on the small screen soon. Last year, House Collective spoke with Iraina Mancini about her route into music:

“The sublime retro chanteuse Iraina Mancini is a singer-songwriter whose star has been in the ascendent since the mid-pandemic release of her first single “Shotgun” - a delectable slice of francophile summer-of-love-inspired pop that has been championed by the likes of Jo Wiley and Lauren Laverne, becoming a firm favourite on the BBC Radio 6 playlist. Effortlessly channelling the style of the yé-yé’ girls of the 60s, it's fair to say that Mancini has a somewhat encyclopaedic knowledge of every element of her craft, having DJ’d rare northern soul and funk sets at festivals all over the world as one-half of the disc-spinning Smoking Guns, and via hosting her own weekly radio show on Soho Radio. And she is a musician with strong pedigree, being the daughter of the singer, dancer and composer Warren Peace, who worked extensively with the legendary David Bowie throughout the 70s, among many others. Culture Collective caught up with the soul songstress to talk about the new single from her forthcoming debut album "Undo The Blue", and to get the lowdown on manifesting your dreams as reality.

What set you out on the path to be a musician?

I grew up in a very creative household, my mother was a photographer and my father was a music producer, so I was surrounded by the importance of expressing yourself through art as a kid, whether it was watching my mum develop film in dark rooms or sitting in on music sessions at my dad’s studio. My dad used to sing with David Bowie back in the day, from Aladdin Sane through to Station to Station, so I used to listen to old tapes and watch videos of him on stage – all of that had a huge impact on my life. My love of singing started at a super young age – I used to do vocals for dad in the studio when he had an advert or film to write for, so, even at the age of four, I was singing on a song he wrote for an Italian clothing brand, hilarious! I also had a music teacher at school that really believed in me. I used to write songs, and he used to push me to sing them in church in front of the whole school. When people started to ask for copies of the songs afterwards, I knew that perhaps I was okay!

Why is musical expression important to you?

If I have gone though a bad patch, I tend to need a way to vent those feelings, and emotion and tension can be expressed so beautifully through melodies and harmonies. I have always had a crazy love affair with music, though. There have been times when I have had long breaks from writing, then, all of a sudden I will get a creative burst and won’t be able to stop. It was actually during the pandemic when my music seemed to take off the most, which was interesting. I really had time to focus on it. I released my first single ‘Shotgun’, and that did really well – it got picked up by lot of radio stations and was playlisted on BBC Radio 6, so that was kind of when I thought, oh, okay, hold on, this is kind of working. Then I really buckled down, and, as with all things in life, when you really focus on something, it kind of works out.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kirk Truman

How would you describe your music?

I would describe it as psychedelic pop. I am very inspired by the 60s and French singers, I love the style of that era. I discovered the album Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg in my 20s and I just fell absolutely in love. I love all the music Serge made. I love the grooves. I love all the girls who he picked to be on the records. I mean, probably chosen because he liked pretty women as well, right? But I don't know – that's one of those things, isn't it? (Laughs) I mean, he was obviously a bit of a player, let's say, but I'm not particularly interested in that side of him, more just the music he made. I think he was a bit of a genius. Nowadays, of course, it's as much about the personality and the way that they choose to live, as well as their art, which can cause problems. I think pre-social media you could actually have some mystique.

What are the key themes on the album?

A lot of it's about a fresh start and letting go of stuff. I had a big relationship end, and I went through a period of self-reflection, and started kind of questioning what was going on inside? I kind of started again, and built myself up again – I did so much work on myself. I really felt like a brand new person afterwards. So, a lot of my songs like “Undo The Blue”, which, which is my latest single, is all about that thing of starting again and undoing the negative. I do find it it's really odd when I write, though. It's like kind of a button I push and it just all comes out – sometimes I don’t know what I'm going to write about at all, I'll just write, and then I'll read the page and it kind of tells me what I'm feeling, and I'll go, oh yeah, that is what's going on in my head”.

Undo the Blue, in my view, is a modern classic. It does nod heavily to classic and older sounds, though it sounds so modern and fresh because of the production and songwriting. It was a shame that this year-best album was not featured by bigger publications. As a result, some people have not heard Undo the Blue. The Afterword were among those to recognised the sublime brilliance and majesty of a phenomenal debut album:

“The first song Deep End has an incredible brass intro and becomes a driving, breathless opener in the style of Republica’s Ready To Go. It certainly got me interested. Iraina gives us a 90s vocal masterclass. Intense and dramatic. OK, I’m in.

Cannonball is more of the same putting me in mind of Garbage this time. I suspected this was where Iraina’s influence lies before I found out more about her. It’s an era that almost passed this 80s boy by but this song has that voice, guitars, organ, passion and plenty of hooks to drag me along.

Sugar High is a lovely shift in styles. Jazzy and dreamy. Iraina’s voice sounds amazing and my crazy brain is getting Olivia Newton John pre-Grease during the chorus. Imagine Olivia doing a Style Council or Blow Monkeys song and we’re there. The string arrangement is exquisite. This is absolutely lovely.

The title track is another smooth delicious piece of pop. I’m going back to Dusty now or Lenny Kravitz doing It Ain’t Over. In fact, such is the range displayed here there it goes from those unlikely sisters Swing Out and Shakespears. It has a fabulous crescendo moment, harmonies and swoon. Some song this.

Do It (You Stole The Rhythm) and we’re back in the 90s with a baggy rhythmed slightly underwhelming song only elevated by Iraina’s voice. Maybe it’s a grower, a slow burner lost in an inferno.

My Umbrella has more than enough hooks for any one song. It’s the Astrud Gilberto moment. Even my old hips are moving (in their own time but moving none the less). I need a hot day, a fast car and an open road to seal the deal on this song. Ooh it’s very good.

Shotgun could be the theme to a smart 60s / 70s detective thriller. It’s no Shaft but it has that smokey late, hot New York night vibe. If Netflix don’t start developing Shotgun on the back of this then they’re not really trying. If Regé-Jean Page doesn’t get Bond somebody send him this song.

What You Doin’? Annoys me in a good way. I’m failing because there’s a 70s glam song in there that wants its groove back and I can’t bloody get what song it is. Suzi Quatro maybe? Showaddwaddy? Can someone help? I am also afraid that What You Doin’? the monster earworrm it is will be rattling round my head at 2 am denying me sleep. Especially if I can’t find what it reminds me of.

Need Your Love is, surprise surprise, a love song with a feel of a Bond theme. A great showcase for Iraina’s vocal range but doesn’t really get going until a lovely spoken section. I will grow to love it I’m sure. Just needs more listens.

In a flash we are at the last song Take A Bow. Come on Iraina let’s finish on a high. She goes back to the 60s again. Join her and float on a gorgeous ride through the great chanteuse of our time. Pick out the voice of your choice it’s in there somewhere. Take A Bow Indeed.

What does it all *mean*?

I’d seen so much about this album on Twitter that it had become like white noise. I came to it with quite a bit of negativity. Come on then, prove you’ve worth all the fuss. I should have trusted Pete. This is something very special that I wouldn’t have listened to without the relentless plugging. Maybe this is the album that will prove to me that despite me being so entrenched musically there is other stuff out there for me. New stuff. You know that special place you always wanted to go but just couldn’t bring yourself to Dave? It’s right here now go and find some more. Cheers Pete. And Iraina obviously.

Goes well with…

Anything really. It’s the sort of album you could put on anywhere and it will lift yours and the mood of anyone listening. Dare I mention Sade here?”.

Undo the Blue was my favourite album of last year for a reason: every song is unique and has you completely gripped. Pete Paphides said Undo the Blue is an album with only singles on it. All the classic albums feel like every song could do well in the charts. That is the case with Undo the Blue. I am not sure whether Iraina Mancini is tempted to release one more single from the album – I know many would love to see a video for the stunning album closer, Take a Bow -, though I guess moving on and creating the blueprints for the second album are in her mind. Seriously, if you have not heard the wonderous and unforgettable Undo the Blue, then go get the vinyl, drop the needle and let it…

TAKE you somewhere blissful!

FEATURE: Spotlight: Maya Hawke

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Maya Hawke

_________

THERE are artists who…

PHOTO CREDIT: Heather Hazzan for Variety

are accused of being nepo babies or industries plants. That they are there because of their parents’ fame and influence. Maybe the industry has funded them and put money their way meaning they can get a head start. A cynical move to make a group or artist seem new and independent, when it fact they are already signed and getting support. This is something that is levied against quite a few different artists. The Last Dinner Party were accused of being industry plants. Even though her parents are actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, Maya Hawke is definitely not a nepo baby. Not having to rely on that link to her famed parents to get noticed in music. She is a genuine and talented artist who would have got in the industry regardless. Music has always been her passion. The New York-born actor and artist released her second studio album, Moss, in 2022. She is set to release Chaos Angel in May. I will come to some interview with Hawke. A couple of from last year/2022 and one that is very recent. An artist that people should know about and follow, I am excited to see where she takes her music career. I really love Moss, so I am excited to see what Chaos Angel offers. Here are more details about it:

“Maya Hawke is a musician, songwriter, actor and producer - She has released two lauded albums of music to date, Moss (2022) and Blush (2020), both of which showcase her natural gift for songwriting and storytelling, as well as a knack for striking visual presentation with sleeve designs of her own creation - "Therese," the lead single from Moss, garnered global attention with its mesmerizing Brady Corbet-directed video - and tens of millions of streams - and saw Maya make an impressive network TV performance debut on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Now 25 years old, Maya's third album, Chaos Angel, takes the spare, viscerally honest songwriting she has made her name on and goes deeper and bolder. Both her most sonically sophisticated and thematically nuanced collection to date, it feels like a culmination. Across these 10 songs, Hawke catalogues upheavals, revelations, foibles, and broken promises, all while navigating the patterns we repeat while reaching towards growth, wandering astray, and finding our way back to some core understanding of ourselves.

Chaos Angel is also a document of Hawke coming more fully into her own as a musician. More adventurous in the studio after her previous two albums, Hawke leaned into her ambition. Many of these tracks are still anchored by acoustic guitar and Hawke's graceful yet conversational vocals, but their surroundings are more intricate and lush than ever before. She reconvened with longtime collaborators Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe, with Christian Lee Hutson serving as producer”.

I want to start out with a feature from The Line of Best Fit. They spoke with Maya Hawke in 2022 and asked her about some of her favourite songs. Those most important to her. I have chosen a few from the selection. Useful and interesting tracing some of the origins and influences in her music:

“The 24-year-old daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke is an actor with chameleonic instinct, capable of channelling a certain charisma through a lens of vulnerability that belies her years.

She is Robin Buckley in Stranger Things, wry and whip-smart on the surface, but untangling the complexities of her sexuality beneath; she is ‘Flowerchild’, Linda Kasabian in Manson’s California in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; she is Jo March in Vanessa Caswill's Little Women, fiery and outspoken - and most recently, she is Eleanor Levetan, an inciter of chaos in the pastel-kissed world of Do Revenge. She is certainly more than a familiar surname.

Hawke’s mind whirrs at a pace that her words have no hope to match – though she is naturally observant, more prone to introspection and quiet pauses of thoughtfulness than her enthusiastic fizz would have you believe. Though the uninitiated may cynically assume that Hawke’s success was pre-ordained through pulled strings, the fact remains that this would soon fizzle were it not sustained by her talent. That, and a devotion to her craft; a sense of humility, of knowing that she is still, and always hopes to be, a student.

As Hawke’s career has gained momentum, she has become a figure of fascination – a ‘Someone’ with a capital S whose life, beyond her work, is deemed worthy of dissection. Reflecting on putting together her Nine Songs, she tells me, “I love doing this kind of thing. Any opportunity to talk about anything without having to talk too much about, like, ‘what you’re wearing’,” she laughs. “It’s nice to have these jumping off points that feel creative and connected to why you wanted to make art in the first place. It’s my privilege,” she adds, “So thank you.”

I catch Hawke at an interesting moment in her life. Everything is about to happen, and right now, she is standing on the edge of it all. Next year, Hawke is set to star in Bradley Cooper’s biographical film about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro, and Wes Anderson’s upcoming romantic dramedy, Asteroid City. “I’m in a beautiful moment of giving away a lot of hard work from the last two years of my life, and closing a chapter,” she tells me. “It’s so nice to give these things away to the world and share them.”

Among these gifts Hawke is leaving with us is her second record, Moss, following the release of her critically acclaimed 2020 debut, Blush. Many described Blush as a “coming-of-age record”, but that’s a chapter that Hawke still feels is being written. “We’re always coming of age to a new place until we die,” she observes. “We’re always changing and evolving. Moss is just as much a coming-of-age record – it’s just coming into a different moment.”

It feels apt, given Hawke’s gift for evocative imagery in her lyrics, that she would say: “You know when you’re playing tarot cards and you draw a death card, and tarot card readers say, ‘Don’t worry, it’s a great card?’ – well that’s how I feel about this record. It was a death card draw. It’s a good death, it’s a great death: a death that will lead to something new.”

Hawke assembled her Nine Songs choices based on retracing her steps. Each crystallises a moment in time from which there was no turning back; without these songs, we wouldn’t know the same person Hawke came to be. Her greatest enthusiasm, however, is reserved for an unexpected corner of music – one which she feels she could make a dozen playlists for, in itself: children’s music.

One of her earliest memories was listening to the likes of Woodie Guthrie’s Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child in the car. And when you listen to Hawke’s music now, that same luminosity, the finely-spun blend of rich, but simplistic language and sharp imagery, is common to both.

“The best children’s music is interesting to listen to, even as an adult, and that’s because it’s good storytelling,” she explains, having written her senior thesis in high school on the genre’s evolution. “It’s an interesting lesson in songwriting. The message is very clear, but if you go back and listen, there’s something powerful, moving and mysterious that lies beneath.”

“Extraordinary Machine” by Fiona Apple

I wanted to start with “Extraordinary Machine” because It's one of the first songs that was put on for me by my parents in the house that wasn't older music - that wasn't Elvis, and Johnny and Willie. This was a new voice. It felt confident. And feminine. And modern. It was rich and lyrically complex.

I was probably eight or nine years old. I was in my dad's house in Chelsea, and I was like, ‘What is this? Because I want to be an extraordinary machine! I want my brain to work that way.’ I certainly hadn’t been shopping for any news shoes; I hadn’t been spreading myself around. I was like, ‘What are those things? What do they mean?’

It made me want to write down all the words and dissect them, to figure out what the lyrics meant. There’s a lyric about being the youngest sibling; there’s a lyric about being a chaperone while wearing sheep’s clothes. I remember it turning my brain on in a big way. There was this voice in it - and I would really say ‘brain’ - inside that made me be like, ‘Who is that person, and how do I turn out like that?’

“Vincent” by Don McLean

This is more my mom’s influence, It’s another on the chapter of sadness with “Radio Cure”, but I was a little bit older. There’s this genre of music in my head that I know means something to some people, and that I know means something to me – and I don’t even really know if it’s true for this song or not – but I call it an ‘upstate feel’.

My mom had this beautiful, kind of ramshackle cottage out at the end of a long, winding road in Upstate New York. There’s something about “Vincent” that really evokes those long drives up that winding road. I’ve been revisiting this song a lot recently – it recalls this sense of being alone in nature.

It’s also ekphrastic, just like my own song, “Thérèse”. This is a song about Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night in many ways, and I wrote “Thérèse” about Thérèse Dreaming by Balthus. I think I was really influenced by the art of other people, so it’s a combination of those two things. One is that detail of the connective tissue to “Thérèse” and the way in which I’ve been inspired by stealing. I feel that stealing is an artist’s greatest tool, like being a thought thief who runs around finding things that inspire you and make you want to make art.

My favourite movies to watch are movies that make me want to write movies. My favourite music to listen to is music that makes me want to write music. It feels very natural to me: I’m lying on the grass, looking up at the sky and having this melancholy feeling of wanting the people you love to be safe.

BEST FIT: There are so many interesting elements to this song. I had no idea that Don McLean had written the lyrics on a paper bag that sold at auction for $1.5 million, or that this was played when Tupac was taken to hospital after he had been shot.

That’s so beautiful and fascinating. It sounds like a song I’d want to hear in the hospital. It’s comfortable with sadness, and I feel that way about this song and “Radio Cure”. Sometimes, there’s a certain kind of sadness that sets in where you want to escape it – and sometimes you just want permission to feel it. This song gives you that permission, I think.

“Hard Drive” by Evan Dando

This song became really important to me when I left drama school, I was living by myself in Brooklyn and trying to figure out who I was going to be as an adult. You break out of your youth - you have the “Fluorescent Adolescent” roar that comes with older adolescence, and then there’s this moment where you wonder who you are, what it all means, where it’s all going to go and how you want to be loved.

There’s a need to make space for yourself as a person in this world, and the lyrics of this song: “This is the town I’m living in / This is the street I’m walking down”; “This is the girl I’m marrying”, and “This is the face I make when I’m sad” – it was this sense of self-acceptance and self-actualisation in the world; claiming things as your own. Whether they’re big or small, good or bad, they’re yours. That always felt good to me.

The lyrics are so simple, but they kick me in my heart when I hear them. We’re just these big bundles of love and grief and we’re always changing. Sometimes I can be ecstatically happy and sometimes I can be so down. But I think figuring out how to accept yourself as a bundle of feelings is so powerful.

Moving from adolescence to adulthood is about coming to the realisation that even if you’re sad, you will be happy again; if you’re happy, you will be sad again – you can’t have one thing without the other.

A debate that applies to her music career as well as acting, the subject of being a nepo baby arose when Variety spoke with Maya and Ethan Hawke about them acting together. Rather than it being a case of Maya Hawke getting into acting because she has actor parents, she is a natural talent who found her path and forged success on her own terms:

“It’s a testament to her effortless, cool vibe that Maya can make a wonky thesis about a long-dead short-story writer seem like a great idea for a movie. She successfully pitched the passion project to her dad’s production company, Under the Influence; she felt that Ethan’s recent work as a producer and director of “The Good Lord Bird,” an offbeat look at abolitionist John Brown, as well as the Blaze Foley biopic “Blaze,” shared themes with O’Connor’s life story. Also, she admits, “I don’t know anyone else that interested in art, faith and America.”

Ethan was flattered that Maya thought of him. He was approaching 50 at the time and had his own reasons for taking on the film, beyond the chance to create art with his daughter. He envisioned the movie about O’Connor, a deeply religious Catholic, as a way to answer an ever-nagging question: Is human creativity an act of faith?

It would be easy to dismiss the Hawkes’ collaboration as an example of nepotism in an industry where who you know is more important than how talented you are. And both father and daughter are sensitive to the way that sort of thing can be characterized in today’s world. But Ethan reiterates that “Wildcat” was all Maya’s idea.

“Put simply, I’m a nepo dad!” Ethan jokes. “And I’m not embarrassed about it.” The look on Maya’s face suggests she’s instantly concerned about how that declaration will resonate.

She’s not wrong. The conversation about nepo babies — the children of celebrities and the advantages they enjoy — has been a recent obsession of the internet. When Anjelica and John Huston collaborated on “Prizzi’s Honors,” they didn’t have to endure the wrath of Twitter. In a time when simply pursuing the same career as your famous relatives is enough to provoke outrage, starring in a movie directed by your father is basically a declaration of war.

“I had moments of insecurity about it while we were shooting the movie,” admits Maya, who was also a producer. ”But the internet doesn’t have a lot of nuances. My dad has been a massive teacher for me, and we want to work together. We like being with each other”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Josefina Santos

I will finish off with a new interview from The Guardian. Forging her way with a daring new Folk album, there will be a lot of eyes on Chaos Angel. In the interview, Maya Hawke spoke about her acting career and shaking off those ‘nepo baby’ tags. She also discussed her upbringing and path into music:

“I think you probably can tell that I love this work and I’m so grateful to be getting to do it,” she adds. “I can believe anything I want to believe about me having found a way to be an artist even if I’d been adopted. But I don’t know – I’m so grateful for the world I grew up around, for the New York City theatre scene I was raised in, getting to go see plays and sit backstage, and to know about great directors and how I wanted to be.”

She says her upbringing was “rooted in poetry, and a constant conversation about what it means to make art”. Yesterday, Hawke received a phone call from her father “philosophising” about art and life. “It [was] about responding to when things get positive attention that are not your favourite things you’ve ever done, and your favourite things don’t get that much attention,” she says. “How do you not follow the bad wolf that leads you towards being likable? How do you stay true to yourself?”

PHOTO CREDIT: Josefina Santos

An individualistic streak surges through Chaos Angel, where the poetry of 70s folk rock is orbited by modern sounds – a vocodered sea shanty here, impudent brass toots there and an occasional beat switch that suggests the entire mixing desk has been plunged underwater. The record is produced by frequent Phoebe Bridgers collaborator Christian Lee Hutson, who is also Hawke’s boyfriend. Did they get together while making the record? “Not exactly,” she says. “It’s not a secret, but I think it’s a very odd thing about modern pop culture that people that have been dating for two weeks talk about their relationship to the public. It’s a bit unhinged.”

Chaos Angel is a little off the rails itself with its spectrum of sounds enlivened by a performer’s knack for personae. During recording sessions, Hawke tried her hand at different characters, like “whispery depressive” and “pop maniac”. A song titled Okay is a quietly devastating exploration of codependency inspired by Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence. At other times, Hawke’s airy, sure voice needs little else: the opener, Black Ice, recalls the hushed longing of cult songwriters such as Linda Perhacs or Kath Bloom. Talking about her new music gets her fired up. “I’m more excited to put this record out than I’ve been about anything in my life,” Hawke says decisively. “I think you have to narrow down your audience as a creative. If you’re trying to make art for everybody, you’re gonna make bad, neutral art.”

Growing up in New York, Hawke lived between her parents’ New York homes after they split when she was five. While her mother listened to pop radio in the car, her father’s CD collection was packed with Willie Nelson, Wilco and Patti Smith. It wasn’t uncommon for dad and daughter to write poetry, paint and play guitar together well into the night. Still, she was a kid growing up in the 00s. At nine, she saw her first concert. “Hannah Montana meets Miley Cyrus,” Hawke recalls. “She did half the show in the blond wig and half without”

An amazing young artist who should be on everyone’s radar, take out of the equation the fact that she is well-known because of her acting career. Music is definitely a big focus and passion. Maya Hawke is a phenomenal artist that is going to have a long career in music. Such a wonderful talent with a distinct voice and songwriting style, you need to go and pre-order Chaos Angel. This is an artist who is…

AMONG the very best out there.

FEATURE: Pretty/Unpretty: TLC’s FanMail at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Pretty/Unpretty

  

TLC’s FanMail at Twenty-Five

_________

ONE of the best albums…

IN THIS PHOTO: Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas, Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes of TLC at the 1999 Video Music Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

of the late-1990s, TLC’s FanMail was released on 23rd February, 1999. The title, it is said, relates to the fan mail that the trio were sent during their hiatus. Five years after the iconic CrazySexyCool, we got the magnificent FanMail. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 318,000 copies in its first week of release. It was at number one for five weeks. I am going to get to features and reviews of the album. It is an album I remember buying and loving. Songs like No Scrubs and Unpretty were pivotal and adored by me and my friends. In the final year of high school, we got this incredible album from Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins, Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes. FanMail received eight nominations at the GRAMMY Awards, including Album of the Year. It won three. It was the group's final album released in Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes' lifetime. She tragically died in 2002; killed in a car crash prior to the release of their fourth studio album, 3D (2002). There are a few features that I need to get to. I will end with a review from NME from 1994. There are many reasons why FanMail is legendary. I will start with a 2019 article from Albumism. They spotlighted and celebrated FanMail on its twentieth anniversary:

“There may have never been an album that marked the beginning of a new musical era as succinctly as TLC’s FanMail. After a four-and-a-half year lay-off, America’s craziest, sexiest, coolest, and most successful R&B group helped craft a new blueprint for how to aurally captivate, visually dazzle, and personally engage millions with a groundbreaking LP.

The dynamic trio of Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes, and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas who were originally fused and later nurtured under the warmth of the Peach State, fostered an unprecedented string of hits and albums sales with their first two long players, Ooooooohhh...On the TLC Tip (1992) and CrazySexyCool (1994). Released as the fourth and final single from the multi-platinum latter album in late 1995, “Diggin’ On You” extended the hot streak for TLC as their seventh top 10 single.

Maximizing their time during their hiatus to strategically select songs that spoke directly to TLC’s maturity, the ladies turned down several songs that proved to be hits for younger recording artists looking to establish themselves. “Where My Girls At?” was passed on to fellow trio 702 as the lead single for their self-titled sophomore LP, which was released later in 1999.  Likewise, “...Baby One More Time” was later used to launch the career of teenage pop sensation Britney Spears for her 1999 debut LP of the same name. Once TLC was finally primed for their third installment, their lead single was as edgy, empowering, and irresistible as any highlight of their acclaimed catalog to date.

Produced by Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, who also co-wrote the song alongside Xscape members Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, “No Scrubs” propelled TLC toward an even bolder and more unapologetic voice of womanhood. The song’s contentious lyrics led by Chilli shot down some notoriously clichéd pickup lines of the latter half of the 20th Century with hardline rejections like “no, I don't want your number / no, I don't want to give you mine / and no, I don't want to meet you nowhere / no, I don't want none of your time.”

Once T-Boz joined in for the chorus, young women instantly had an anthem to memorize, and guys over 18 who still claimed dibs on the shotgun seat were enflamed by the not-so-subtle jabs at their so-called masculinity. “I don't want no scrubs / a scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me / hangin' out the passenger side of his best friend's ride / trying to holla at me.”

Left Eye, who had always been the major creative force behind the group’s success, contributed to “No Scrubs” by providing a brilliant verse that transitioned smoothly from a spoken word poetry style intro into the hip-hop lyrics “So, let me give you something to think about / inundate your mind with intentions to turn you out / can't forget the focus on the picture in front of me / you as clear as DVD on digital TV screens / satisfy my appetite with something spectacular / check your vernacular, and then I get back to ya.”

The overall performance showed substantial artistic growth for a group that had already scored number one hit singles and achieved multi-platinum status. Aside from stirring up a reasonable amount of new debate material for the never-ending battle of the sexes and redefining the American deadbeat, “No Scrubs” landed as TLC’s third number one single, was nominated for the GRAMMY award in the Record of the Year category, and the Hype Williams directed video won MTV’s Best Group Video award.

Reuniting with long-time collaborator Dallas Austin who wrote and produced “Silly Ho” under his pseudonym Cyptron, the ladies continued with their demonstrative approach to female independence, proclaiming “not goin' let you catch me out / you should take a lesson from me / I ain't the one to be / depending on someone else / I can run a scam / before he can.”

“I’m Good at Being Bad” helped FanMail earn a parental advisory sticker for its unedited version. Produced by the legendary tag-team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the song begins with an innocent instrumental to complement the lyrics delivered by Chilli, “As we walk hand in hand / just kickin' up sand / as the ocean laps at our feet / I'm in your arms / and all of your charms are for me.” The song picks up the pace as T-Boz and Left Eye join the fray, for their own expressions of new millennium feminism.

“Unpretty” slowed the pace down a few notches, embracing a poetic style of songwriting, while meshing Pop and Alternative Rock with the girls’ R&B roots. Across their acclaimed recording career, “Unpretty” sits atop a mountain of hits as the summit of TLC’s ability to connect with fans on a personal level. The heartfelt lyrics touched on themes of insecurity, peer pressure, and female agency. The coinciding video directed by veteran Paul Hunter effectively conveyed the same message visually and even included sign language to avoid communication barriers.

FanMail was timely for the closing of a decade and served as a remarkable proclamation for the voice of young women set to come of age in a new century. TLC used clever avenues to seize the anticipation of the approaching Y2K, with the album’s binary coded album cover and audio appearances by their computer modulated collaborator Vic-E. The ladies stuck to their brand of fun, while artistically expressing each growing pain they had encountered since their previous LP. With FanMail, TLC not only changed the look and sound of R&B at the time, they introduced a newfound depth to the genre, packaging all of it into a generous aural gift to the fans that made them the most successful American female group of the ‘90s”.

Moving things to Rolling Stone and their 2019 feature about FanMail. They highlight a feminist tour de force twenty years after its release. I have such fond memories of FanMail. It is an album that I have endless respect and love for. A legendary trio creating something astonishing and hugely inspiring:

“Nevertheless, instead of capitulating to the demands of the late Nineties pop machine, TLC decided to stick to their R&B roots, turning to both Austin and Babyface to create something more timelessly TLC. And while much of the first world was panicked about the impending doom of Y2K, the crew leaned into the looming techno-disaster, adapting their “New Jill Swing” to a more 808-infused hybrid sound — including a computerized vocaloid and honorary bandmate, who they fondly nicknamed Vic-E. What resulted was FanMail, a cyber-R&B masterpiece that would serve as a blueprint for a new, digitally-savvy generation of genre-defying musicians.

No song better encapsulated their future-facing transformation than the lead single “No Scrubs.” Co-written with Kandi Burruss, former member of girl group Xscape, the song started as a flippant jab at loose men who rove the streets, looking for women to hassle — but would swiftly became a millennial feminist anthem. “A scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me,” sing the trio: “Hangin’ out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride/Trying to holla at me.”

“We got a Grammy for writing ‘No Scrubs,'” Burruss told Rolling Stone earlier this month. “It contributed to me getting Songwriter of the Year. I was the first woman to get Songwriter of the Year from ASCAP and ‘No Scrubs’ was part of the reason for me getting it. I couldn’t have asked for a better blessing of a song to have had in my catalog.”

“No Scrubs” was also the first song in which Chilli, who usually ceded the floor to T-Boz and Left Eye’s bad girl swagger, was able to take center stage as a vocalist — and a dissenting voice amid a culture that was all too permissive to sexual harassment. Almost right on schedule, an all-male group called Sporty Thievz led the misogynist backlash against “No Scrubs,” with their own lukewarm track, “No Pigeons.”

“We were cracking up when we heard Sporty Thieves’ [response track] ‘No Pigeons,'” Chilli told Billboard in a recent interview. “There’s so many songs that are negative towards women and you don’t hear a lot of females saying, ‘We’ve got to do an anti version of that one.’ So it’s funny that you have these guys that want to flip “No Scrubs” real quick. They can’t take the heat!”

Their 1994 breakthrough CrazySexyCool delved into the nuances of being liberated women: take their coolly, sexually dominant stance in “Red Light Special,” or their HIV-conscious megahit “Waterfalls,” which cautioned to choose your own adventure wisely — or in other words, by using a barrier method. But in 1999, Fanmail raised the bar to equally stress the need for protecting your heart: the song “Unpretty” was the brainchild of T-Boz, whose boyfriend at the time ghosted her while she was hospitalized with complications from sickle-cell anemia. A gentle, alt-rock reflection on the ways women struggle to embody an unattainable physical ideal — even Grammy-winning vocalists — “Unpretty” was adapted from her book of poems, titled Thoughts, which she penned while in and out of intensive care. “Why do I look to all these things/To keep you happy?” wrote T-Boz, “Maybe get rid of you/And then I’ll get back to me.”

The reception was greater than they ever could have imagined: Letters cascaded in from fans old and new, imparting words of support and stories of their own issues with body image. TLC would invite some of those fans to speak their truths live at the Lady of Soul Awards, where they would be honored with the Aretha Franklin Entertainer of the Year Award. Left Eye, typically accustomed to delivering hard bars, was relegated to perform “Unpretty” that night exclusively in American Sign Language — hinting at her increasing creative divergence from the band. (She barely got the chance to recoup her role in TLC in their following 2002 record, 3D, which she never finished recording; she died in a car wreck that year while on a healing retreat in Honduras.)

Twenty years following the release of their landmark album, TLC still receive fan mail to this very day: In January, it came in the form of a cover song by nerd rockers Weezer, who paid tribute to “No Scrubs” in their latest record, The Teal Album.

“When I heard it, I loved it!” Chilli told Rolling Stone last month. “It feels really good because when you’re in the studio working, you hope and pray that you make songs that have longevity. And we have, so that’s a blessing. I’m telling you, I wanna reach out to [Weezer] and try to make this performance happen”.

I want to go back to 2012. That is when Pitchfork wrote about FanMail. Fifteen years after its release, they revisited a huge commercial success. Despite it not being the best-reviewed album from TLC, FanMail was groundbreaking and history-making. It is an album that came after a difficult period. Pitchfork discussed the period between 1994’s CrazySexyCool and FanMail:

“When most people think TLC, their brains immediately go to the sounds and images of their 1994 R&B classic CrazySexyCool: "Waterfalls", silk pajamas, "Red Light Special". But, perhaps because I still have a very vivid memory of buying it in a New Jersey mall, my thumb obscuring the Parental Advisory sticker so my mom wouldn't see it, the TLC album I've found myself returning to the most in recent years is FanMail.

It was not the group's greatest success (coming off CrazySexyCool, the first-ever diamond-selling album by a female group, six million units in the U.S. is good-not-great), though FanMail did spawn the mega-hit "No Scrubs", the #1 single "Unpretty", and earned two Grammys. But this record doesn't seem as ingrained in the collective cultural memory of TLC. Maybe because it's something of an inconsistent hodgepodge, or because certain elements of its futuristic aesthetic have not aged particularly well. But when we talk about TLC's current influence on a whole crop of web-minded, Tumblr-savvy, android-obsessed artists, we don't seem to realize how much we're talking about FanMail-- a record that, almost a decade and a half after its release, still sounds hauntingly prescient, like a transmission from the future.

In the years between CrazySexyCool and FanMail, the TLC story got tumultuous. Lopes burned down her boyfriend Andre Rison's house and went to rehab, the group declared bankruptcy at the height of their success thanks to a profoundly shitty recording contract, and internal tensions became almost unbearable. Plenty of other things were going on between 1994 and 1999, behind bedroom doors and in front of flickering screens. Over that five-year span, I added a computer, email address, and an AIM screen name to my life, and by 1999 these things had begun to feel intricately interlaced with my personal identity.

Considering CrazySexyCool and FanMail back-to-back, you can hear these cultural changes take place. A skittish, glitchy album full of distractions, interruptions, and ruptures in consciousness, FanMail was one of the very first pop records to aestheticize the internet. And, like most first times, it was not without awkwardness. Its cover is swathed in not-so-subtle binary code accents and features virtual reality avatar portraits of the ladies. Its beats are gilded with the aged chirps of dial-up connections, and then there's the whole conceit of Vic-E (pronounced "Vicki"), the record's recurring android character who narrates interludes and-- in her shining moment-- raps an entire verse on the track "Silly Ho": "You know you can't get with this…/ Stuck on silly shit/ Boy you know you need to quit." On its surface, FanMail screams "Y2K."

But if you can get past that, the album grapples with something much deeper that reverberates throughout a lot of pop music today. Although the way the group's delight in singing about email, cyberspace, and "the future of music" captures a sense of emergent-technology wonder that's always a little embarrassing in hindsight, FanMail is not nearly as interested in what's gained by technology as it

And no song on the album captures that as masterfully as the title track. "Welcome, we have dedicated our entire album to any person who ever sent us fanmail," Vic-E drones over the song's intro, "TLC would like to thank you for your support. But just like you..."-- and here the human voices join in-- "... they get lonely too." If you unfold the booklet accompanying the FanMail CD, you'll see a poster listing the names of thousands of people who had sent the group fan letters, and in the foreground there's a large image of T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli made up to look like computer-generated androids themselves, steely and stoic.

As if to say, "this is your brain on the internet," the atmosphere of "FanMail" teems with disembodied voices and interruptions (shouts of "fanmail!" and "the letters!" nag like a backlog of unanswered messages), while T-Boz's gravelly alto lays out the verses: "I got an email today/ I kinda thought that you forgot about me/ So I wanna hit you back to say/ Just like you, I get lonely too”.

There are a couple of features I want to cover before getting to a review. Vibe took us inside a classic that was “A Futurist Prelude To Digital Era Intimacy”. Their 2019 feature revealed some interesting details and interpretations:

“FanMail, from the sound to the art direction, embodied a timely futuristic aesthetic, as everyone was obsessed with technology’s cultural takeover in the new millennium: remember Y2K hysteria, Napster mp3 file sharing, and the Dot.com boom? On the album’s cover, T-Boz, Chilli and Left Eye‘s faces appear as silver-faced avatars floating above an orbit. A code of numbers are printed across the cover, imagery often associated with The Matrix. (Although FanMail dropped a month before the film hit theaters.)

On the title track, listeners are greeted by Vic-E, the everpresent robotic voice narrating the album: “Just like you, they [TLC] get lonely, too.” She reassures listeners that fame doesn’t stop them from being human. The digitized voice is reminiscent of the “tour guide” on A Tribe Called Quest’s 1993 album Midnight Marauders. Yet, unlike Tribe, TLC collaborates with the robot, as it contributes background vocals throughout. Austin also sprinkled FanMail with samples of sounds — check “Communicate (Interlude)” and “LoveSick” for examples — he found on the Internet, movies, and devices like printers, he shared with MixOnline.

It was a smart move to modernize, as it had been five years since TLC released its best-selling 1994 album CrazySexyCool. The sultry mix presented a more mature and stripped back follow-up to the colorful, youthful angst of Ooooooohhh… On The TLC Tip. This five-year gap could have left the group’s fans uninterested, especially if they were releasing in today’s fast-paced consumption environment, in which stans demand new releases on social media after only a year or two. But the time away didn’t hinder TLC. Now 10 years in the game, they managed a successful return by dedicating this project to their fanbase.

“Left Eye came up with the title, and we made it come together creatively as a group, along with Dallas Austin,” T-Boz said in their May 1999 VIBE cover story. “It was like, Let’s write and sing one big fan letter. Let’s put fan names on everything – all the singles, the album cover, T-shirts, mugs. Just show our appreciation.”

Left Eye also chimed in with a transparent business savvy explanation. “Now we know that the way contracts are set up, it’s not really made for artists to get rich from selling records – that’s the company’s one shot to make money,” she explained. “The artist is supposed to use that as an outlet to do merchandising and other things that we never took advantage of because we were too busy sitting in bankruptcy court trying to get a settlement out of LaFace.”

That part. Although TLC were multi-platinum selling artists up until FanMail, they had faced a public financial battle with their management Pebbitone, Inc. and label, LaFace Records. This caused the delay between their sophomore and third efforts. In 1995, the group, who revealed they were “broke” at the 1996 Grammys, filed for bankruptcy in hopes to break their contract and renegotiate a new deal.

They were $3.5 million dollars in debt and earning an 8 percent royalty rate. In November 1996, they settled with Arista and BMG and LaFace for an 18 percent royalty rate. To add to the drama, there were talks of producer Dallas Austin leaving the project because of back-and-forths with TLC and L.A. Reid over the creative direction of the album, the 1999 VIBE cover story stated. Thankfully, the parties resolved their misunderstandings enough to complete one of the biggest albums of the decade.

On 17 tracks, TLC took on sexuality, insecurities, self-reliance, and vulnerability with resistant messaging, their tried and true winning formula. This energy paved the way for Destiny’s Child’s reign in the 2000s, and the transparency R&B singers like SZA, H.E.R. and Summer Walker carry on today. TLC’s defiance gave women of the ‘90s permission to be vocal about the spectrum of their emotions, from their sex drives on “I Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” to revenge cheating on “Creep.” FanMail brought more of those goods.

The most notable “No Scrubs,” also considered pop canon, is a scathing critique on men at bottom of the dating pool. “A scrub is a guy, who thinks he’s fly and is also known as a busta/ always talking about what he wants and just sits on his broke a**,” Chilli belts in opening lines. The no. 1 track became such a phenomenon that it inspired the petty male response, “No Pigeons” from Sporty Thievz, their biggest claim to fame. Former Xscape members Kandi Burruss and Tameka Dianne “Tiny” Harris penned it and Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, also behind Destiny’s Child’s no. 1 song “Bills, Bills, Bills,” produced it.

TLC tapped the legendary Hype Williams for the “No Scrubs” visual. Instead of setting the video in a club where scrubs are likely inhabitants, the visual features the trio in outer-space suits floating through a futuristic setting no scrub could ever reach. Most notably Lopes, who in the video does martial arts while a drone films her, manages to keep the digital theme, even when dissing the guys. “Can’t forget the focus on the picture in front of me/You as clear as DVD on digital TV screens,” Lopes raps.

The wonky bop “Silly Ho” is another anti-playa anthem, in which TLC proclaim they aren’t the kind of women who are scheming for men’s pockets. “I can run a scam before he can/ I am better than a man/ I always keep my game all day,” they chant. TLC keeps demanding respect on the choppy “My Life,” their Janet Jackson Control moment, appropriate given their music industry woes.

TLC breaks from jittery beats and Vic-E assisted numbers for alternative pop, on the album’s second no. 1 hit single “Unpretty,” which tackles insecurities caused by a toxic partner’s body-shaming. T-Boz deads him by summoning self-love: “Maybe get rid of you/ And then I’ll get back to me, yeah.” The track was inspired by a poem T-Boz wrote, Dallas Austin told CNN in 2000. He also spoke on the songs’ folky essence. “I like a lot of alternative music, and when I saw the title, “Unpretty” reminded me of a song somebody like (alternative singer) Ani DiFranco would have (written). I just went at it,” he explained. The crew also gave us sensual beckoning on the mid-tempo groove “Come On Down,” penned by legendary pop songwriter Diane Warren.

The album ends with soulful bop “Don’t Pull Out on Me Yet,” but it’s “Communication (Interlude)” that feels like the proper conclusion. “There’s over a thousand ways/ To communicate in our world today/ And it’s a shame/ That we don’t connect,” they say in a spoken word that offers a foreshadowing to our present human condition. Loneliness is on the rise, and more screen time and less human interaction are being linked to growing depression among American adolescents. “So if you also feel the need/ For us to come together/ Will you communicate with me?” As technological advancements create the feeling of being in closer proximity to more people’s thoughts and happenings, it reminds us that these interactions can be fleeting and one-on-one intimacy with your chosen tribe could never become obsolete.

Although its 1999 original drop date has come and gone, in 2019, FanMail is still a fitting soundtrack for dating in the digital age. Whether they’re making their contact through the passenger sides of cars or down in the DMs, the personalities pointed out on the poignant album, are still walking amongst us, messing with our hearts one way or another. FanMail proved that TLC was more in tune with the future than their pop peers, and will more than likely continue to be”.

COMPLEX dove into FanMail on its fifteenth anniversary in 2012. Many do not know what was happening in the TLC camp. It was a turbulent and trio for the trio. It is amazing that such a cohesive and excellent album was made considering what was happening around them:

“Beneath all of FanMail's visionary veneer, though, TLC's essence shone, and that meant a lot of sensual, assertive songs about integrity and self-esteem. "No Scrubs," the album's lead single and an international smash hit still, was ushered in by a skit called "Whispering Playa." On it, a corny dude at a party tries to holler at the ladies, who respond with incredulous giggles. Its overall mien, a more mature transition from similar sentiments expressed on Oooh… on the TLC Tip, set a precedent for the bossy steezes of stars that marched in their confident footsteps, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ciara, Minaj. And, well sure, "Cyptron" was doing his best Timbaland imitation on "Silly Ho" ("Are You That Somebody?" had swept the world off its feet in June of '98), but its message was one of total independence, and not playing one's self out to sit at the feet of a dude. (Even Vic-E wasn't having it, declaring "I'm OUT" on the bridge.)

Yet, they weren't all hard exterior: the popular, proto-"Pretty Hurts" ballad "Unpretty," written by T-Boz, detailed the decline of a woman's self-esteem, at the hands of a debilitating and emotionally abusive man. With the concept of fan-outreach, TLC was sincerely trying to touch all the bases, crafting fist-in-the-air woman-power anthems, as well as weepy, pillow-hugging singalongs.

Maybe too many of the latter, actually. FanMail came at a tumultuous time for TLC. It was their first album after filing for bankruptcy in '95 and a public beef with their label LaFace. More pressingly, it represented a rift that had developed within the group. Left Eye denounced much of their music via a VIBE Magazine cover story that also revealed Dallas Austin, their longtime producer and the father of Chilli's son, had almost walked off the project. On one hand, it's why FanMail is a strong step for TLC's independence: Then in their late 20s, the women were staking out on their own after being burned by bad management, and some of their choices, such as using producers other than Dallas Austin, weren't amenable to everyone in the group. On the other, it's why FanMail is in a bit of disarray, particularly in the album's ballad-heavy latter half, which was partly, according to Chilli, inspired by Shania Twain. (Bless Shania Twain and new directions, but at some point you sacrifice cohesion.) Left Eye told VIBE, "I cannot stand 100 percent behind this TLC project and the music that is supposed to represent me." (She later complained about the group turning down the song "Heartbreak Hotel," which ended up going platinum for Whitney Houston; it's also worth noting that Britney's "Baby One More Time" was offered to TLC first.)

With the perspective of history, FanMail's gleaming prescience is also slightly somber. Left Eye, never quite satisfied after its release, dropped her first solo album in 2001, a week before Aaliyah died. Eight months later, she, too was dead. The weightless beats that informed FanMail—no doubt stemming from Timbaland's influence—fell so far out of fashion they're coming back in style again only now. Drake covered "FanMail" as "I Get Lonely Too," transforming a populist song about unity and empathy into a navel-gazing, self-contained diary entry.

But on the other hand, this world we now live in is the FanMail dream realized. They can talk to their fans directly every day if they like, and Chilli often does, hitting Twitter for bouts of RTs and answering questions when she's in the mood. Cool T-Boz is characteristically less interactive, offering photos of her day, bon mots, or her opinions on current cultural happenings.

The FanMail concept was Left Eye's idea in the first place, though, and while the world she left behind remains only through relics, her bandmates could resurrect her through hologram if they so chose. (They won't. But here we are, the future.) But in a way we really have reached that utopia, talking to each other every single day, separated only by fiber-optics and our own imaginations.

"Communication is the key to life," declared Left Eye on her interlude. "Communication is the key to love. Communication is the key to us. There's over a thousand ways to communicate in our world today. And it's a shame that we don't connect”.

I am going to end with a review from NME. They shared their thoughts about one of the greatest albums of the 1990s. Twenty-five years after its release, FanMail still sounds like nothing else! I would urge anyone unfamiliar with this album to check it out. As a teenager when it came out, I was instantly struck and hooked! The more I listen to the album, the more that I get from it:

“TLC must find it consoling that they can slap stickers on their baby deer-eyed cyber sleeve saying The Biggest-Selling Female Trio Of All Time. In the deluge of midriff-thrusting, control-girls-on-a-sexy-urban-R&B-plus-rap-grit; tip, it's been somewhat eclipsed that they carved the template.

When T-Boz, Left Eye and Chilli strutted on to Babyface and LA Reid's Atlanta label in 1992 they gave definitive shape to female hip-hop attitude in pop. They wore the condoms, took baggy strides into videoland, trilled about AIDS'n'drugs ('Waterfalls') and topped out with an accidental black feminist distress flare when Left Eye burned down her sports star boyfriend's $2million mansion.

The phrase 'go girl' belongs to them, so it's fair enough that four years on from 'CrazySexyCool' they've softened a little and broadened out. 'Fanmail''s overarching 'cyber concept' pushes towards the kind of electronic funk that Prince used to excel at, but no amount of robot FX and virtual fourth members can disguise the solid pop core.

A posse of producers shamelessly boost harmonies and razor beats and the songwriting team cover the waterfront ruthlessly. The acoustics'n'tinkling of 'I Miss You So Much' are Celine Dion for the projects. 'Unpretty' rocks like Hanson. 'Shout' is a close cousin of 'When Doves Cry' and the very mellow interludes of 'Come On Down' and 'Dear Lie' drip with enough spare syrup to reinvent Five Star as street coolsters.

Elsewhere, however, the ruffness levels rise considerably as they contribute to pop's discourse on dating with a cheeky candour that Brit imitators could never ever muster. 'Silly Ho''s minimal funk lays down the law on not being "a chicken-head". The mandolin and beats marvel 'No Scrubs' applies vigorous elbow to men who think they're big, but really live with Mom ('a scrub'), 'I'm Good At Being Bad' blends superfly soul with Donna Summerisms and Left Eye's sly 'bad bitch' lewdness - "A good man is hard to find/Well actually a hard man is so good to find...".

The pop/sex on our own terms manifesto is given a final underscoring by the twinkling soul snog ballad finale 'Don't Pull Out On Me' which combines their trademark pliant, soft-focus purring with explicit, in-control instructions to the boys on how to do the late-night creep properly.

Maturity and cyber tips have not diminished them. Seven years on TLC are still showing the Honeyz, Saints and Spices how real grrrls do it.

8/10”.

On 23rd February, FanMail turns twenty-five. A classic marks its quarter-century. 1999 gave us so many classics. Right there with there with the best of them, TLC’s final album with Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes is a work of brilliance! I have very fond memories of it. I hope that TLC mark the twenty-fifth anniversary and recall their memories. Anyone who has not heard the album needs to…

LISTEN to it right away.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A 1994 Mixtape: A Year That Changed Music

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Tori Amos in 1994

 

A 1994 Mixtape: A Year That Changed Music

_________

IT is interesting…

IN THIS PHOTO: Jeff Buckley in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Anton Corbijn

looking at some of the iconic albums from 1994 coming up for their thirtieth anniversary. I have marked a few already, though there are many more approaching. It is, in my view, the best year for music ever. I will go into more depth about particular albums in time. I was keen to compile a playlist of some of the best album tracks and singles from 1994. It was a magnificent year that resonates to this day. The sheer legacy and importance of the albums from that year. If you are a little murky about which great albums came out in 1994, you can find songs from there below. There are also some classic and standout singles. A wonderful mixtape to get you inspired and moved, I would challenge anyone to name a better year for music. Maybe 1989 comes close. If you need a refresher as to the best tracks and albums of 1994, the below playlist should…

GIVE you a real insight.

FEATURE: Don’t Lose That Number: The Timeless Brilliance of Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic: Their Masterpiece Third Studio Album at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

Don’t Lose That Number

  

The Timeless Brilliance of Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic: Their Masterpiece Third Studio Album at Fifty

_________

DEBATE will rage…

IN THIS PHOTO: Steely Dan circa 1973

among Steely Dan as to their best album. I guess most would say 1977’s Aja. It would be hard to argue against, as it is a study in sublime and masterful musicianship and command. Such rich and deep songs. My favourite-ever track, Deacon Blues, is on that album. I know people who would plump for 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy or even their debut, 1972’s Can’t Buy a Thrill. There is no doubt that Pretzel Logic ranks alongside the best. The third studio album from the band, it was the moment Steely Dan became Steely Dan. A version 2.0 where they focused. Where the songwriting shifted a gear and confidence grew. David Palmer, who had been lead vocalist on tracks on Can’t Buy a Thrill and did some backing vocals for songs on Countdown to Ecstasy, was replaced by now-full-time singer. Donald Fagen. He and Walter Becker were the core of Steely Dan and the only permanent members. With Fagen at the front and The Dan in peak form, they released a masterpiece on 2nd March, 1974. It is fifty very soon, so I wanted to highlight it. Everyone needs to buy this album on vinyl. I shall end with a feature that focused on the Steely Dan reissues from last year. I want to start out with Readers Digest on their investigation of an album they deem to be both pivotal and perfectionist:

“As Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic returns to vinyl for the first time in 30 years, we review the record that redefined the band's sound and songwriting

If any record embodies the definition of a make or break album, it’s Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic. Remembered for condensing the band’s noodling jazz rock into the radio-ready three minute format, it also sounded the death knell for the group’s original line-up.

As Walter Becker and Donald Fagen buried themselves deeper into the studio, adopting a perfectionist pursuit of new sonic worlds, their inclination for the live performances that their bandmates held dear drifted. Jeff Baxter and Michael McDonald eventually left to join The Doobie Brothers.

With the reissue of Pretzel Logic on vinyl—for the first time in three decades—we get to ask ourselves, was it worth it?

"It remains fascinatingly uncategorisable—too surreal to be pop, too psychedelic to be jazz"

“Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” at least is as irresistible as it was in 1974, setting up the band’s propensity for whimsy with a flapamba opening before launching into a cool piano hook.

“East St Louis Toodle-Oo” pays tribute to jazz maestro Duke Ellington, his free-flowing riff gaining psychedelic overtones from an electric guitar and talk box.

The title track meanwhile best manifests Steely Dan’s holy trinity—wit, storytelling and groove—in its time travel sequence, framed by a swaggering bluesy guitar.

It may not be their bestselling album (that spot is reserved for Aja, which perfected Steely Dan’s session musician format with an army of 40 artists), but it remains fascinatingly uncategorisable—too surreal to be pop, too psychedelic to be jazz, and yet managing to merge each into a cerebral funk.

Rikki, don't lose that cassette tape

For a demonstration of Steely Dan’s dogged commitment to the perfect take, look no further than the 1979 fiasco, when an assistant engineer accidentally wiped “The Second Arrangement” in the studio.

After some attempts to rescue the song, and one effort to rerecord, it was scrapped, and fans were left to scrape together a mythology around salvaged bootlegs.

"We knew that if we played it, it could be the last time anyone might hear it"

This summer, at last, that lost take has made its way onto the airwaves, after being discovered on a tape in engineer Roger Nichols’ cassette player.

Cassette tapes are thought to only be playable for 30 years, so Nichols’ daughters made sure to get a digital backup—“We knew that if we played it, it could be the last time anyone might hear it,” they told Expanding Dan”.

There is no doubt that Pretzel Logic was a turning point for Steely Dan. More fully-formed and defined, it was the start of a run of stunning albums. I really love its predecessor, Countdown to Ecstasy, though I feel Pretzel Logic is stronger. In terms of its material and the musicianship. Maybe one or two more memorable songs. Alongside the epic Rikki Don’t Lose That Number, Night By Night and the touching Any Major Dude Will Tell You, there is the magnificent title track, Charlie Freak and Parker’s Band. Such a diverse and fascinating album. This feature from last year highlighted the wonderful production (from Gary Katz and Steely Dan) on an album that was their first U.S. top ten:

“Their enigmatic lyrical imagery was part of the allure of Steely Dan, and they lived up to those expectations with the title of their third album Pretzel Logic, released on March 2, 1974.

Not all of their admirers would have known that the phrase meant “fallible or circular reasoning,” and not all of them would have cared. The important thing was that the band were back, and after the success of their first two records, Can’t Buy A Thrill and Countdown To Ecstasy, they were about to have their first US Top 10 album, and the biggest hit single of their career.

“Pretzel Logic” entered the Billboard 200 at the end of March that year and went on to reach No.8. It would later land at No. 385 in Rolling Stone’s all-time critics’ Top 500 chart of 2003. Produced as usual by Gary Katz, the album featured another selection of intelligent rock compositions by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, including such favorites as “Night By Night” and “Barrytown.”

The record also wore the duo’s jazz influences on its sleeve with a version of Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” and the Charlie Parker tribute “Parker’s Band.” The band’s line-up of the time featured Becker and Fagen along with Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Denny Dias, and Jim Hodder. There were also contributions by such stellar players as Wilton Felder of the Crusaders, British percussionist Victor Feldman, and future Toto members David Paich and Jeff Porcaro.

The album opened with what turned into one of Steely Dan’s signature pieces, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” which outdid their previous best No.6 peak with “Do It Again,” reaching No.4. In the UK, the song inexplicably failed to chart, despite being a turntable hit. It made a modest showing, at No.58, as a reissue in 1979.

Nevertheless, “Pretzel Logic” did become the group‘s first UK chart album, albeit only at No.37 in a two-week run, and won critical approval. Wrote the British music weekly Melody Maker: “They have soul and fire, but leave nothing to chance, with superb productions and songs”.

I am going to end with some reviews for Pretzel Logic. Maybe not as revered and celebrated as Aja, Pretzel Logic is a supreme and astonishing album that sounds as oriignal and fresh fifty years later. It has not dated or lost any of its appeal. I first heard songs from it thirty years ago or so. It still moves me. Rolling Stone reviewed Pretzel Logic in 1974:

“Steely Dan is the most improbable hit-singles band to emerge in ages. On its three albums, the group has developed an impressionistic approach to rock & roll that all but abandons many musical conventions and literal lyrics for an unpredictable, free-roving style. While the group considered the first album, Can’t Buy a Thrill, a compromise for the sake of accessibility, and the second, Countdown To Ecstasy, to emphasize extended instrumental work, the new Pretzel Logic is an attempt to make complete musical statements within the narrow borders of the three-minute pop-song format.

Like the earlier LPs, Pretzel Logic makes its own kind of sense: On a typical track, rhythmic patterns that might have worked for Astrud Gilberto, elegant pop piano, double lead guitars, and nasal harmony voices singing obscure phrases converge into a coherent expression. When the band doesn’t undulate to samba rhythms (as it did on “Do It Again,” its first Top Ten single), it pushes itself to a full gallop (as it did on “Reelin’ in the Years,” its second). These two rhythmic preferences persist and sometimes intermingle, as on “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” which jumps in mid-chorus from “Hernando’s Hideaway” into “Honky Tonk Women.” Great transition.

Steely Dan’s five musicians seem to play single-mindedly, like freelancers, but each is actually contributing to a wonderfully fluid ensemble sound that has no obvious antecedent in pop. These five are so imaginative that their mistakes generally result from too much clever detail. This band is never conventional, never bland.

And neither is its material. Despite the almost arrogant impenetrability of the lyrics (co-written by the group’s songwriting team, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker), the words create an emotionally charged atmosphere, and the best are quite affecting. While it’s disconcerting to be stirred by language that resists comprehension, it’s still difficult not to admire the open-ended ambiguity of the lyrics.

But along with Pretzel Logic‘s private-joke obscurities (like the made-up jargon on “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” and “Through With Buzz”), there are concessions to the literal: “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” makes sense as a conventional lover’s plea, while “Barrytown” takes a satirical look at class prejudice. But each has an emotional cutting edge that can’t be attributed directly to its viewpoint or story. As writers, Fagen and Becker may be calculating, but they aren’t cold.

As the group’s two foremost members, Fagen sings, plays keyboards and leads the band; Jeff Baxter, a brilliant musician on guitar, pedal steel and hand drums, powers it.

As a vocalist, Fagen (who looks like a rock & roll version of Montgomery Clift) is as effective as he is unusual. With a peculiar nasal voice that seems richer at the top of its range than in the middle, Fagen stresses meter as well as sense, so much so that his singing becomes another of the group’s interlocked rhythmic elements. At the same time, there’s a plaintive aspect to his singing that expands the impact of even his most opaque lines.

Baxter, an expert electric guitarist with a broad background in rock & roll and jazz, draws on these influences with pragmatic shrewdness. Even on these short tracks he’s impressive. On one of the band’s more conventional songs, “Pretzel Logic” (a modified blues), he improvises on the standard patterns without referring to a single ready-made blues. And he does things with pedal steel that have nothing to do with country music. At one point — in the vintage “East St. Louis Toodle-oo” — he duplicates note-for-note a ragtime mute-trombone solo. His command of technique is impressive, but it’s his use of technique to heighten the dynamic and emotional range of the group’s songs that makes him Steely Dan’s central instrumental force.

When Fagen, Baxter and the rest can’t give a track the right touch, they send out for it. The exotic percussion, violin sections, bells and horns that augment certain cuts are woven tightly into the arrangements, each with a clear function. Producer Gary Katz provides a sound that’s vibrant without seeming artificial. The band uses additional instrumentation in its live sets as well as on record, traveling with a different array each time they tour. For the current one, they’ve added a second drummer, a second pianist (who also sings) and a vocalist, so that now there are four singers and every instrument but bass is doubled. I don’t think any of their records can equal this band on a good night”.

Let’s end with this feature from last year. They assessed and reviewed  Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic. They felt that there is a fresh and exciting listening experience with a new, precision-pressed 180g L.P. edition from Geffen/Ume:

“Steely Dan and UMe have thrown fans of the band’s music a sweet-but-curious series of bones when it comes to their current vinyl reissue series. We all know about (and mostly love) the AAA 200g 2LP UHQR editions crafted by Analogue Productions that all have an admittedly steeper SRP entry fee of $150. But the hard reality is that many of us can only really afford the standard 180g 1LP editions being released under the Geffen/UMe label banner. What’s a budget-minded, audiophile-leaning Steely Dan fan to do?

Well, before I dig down into the pros and cons of hitchhiking your way ’round these twisty sonic streets to decide whether the latest entry in the series — February 1974’s Pretzel Logic — is one you need to get, let’s look at the key stats for these new standard-edition albums, courtesy of Steely Dan’s official press release: “All albums are being meticulously remastered by Bernie Grundman from the original analog tapes. . . Lacquers for UMe’s standard 33 1/3 RPM 180-gram version will be cut by Alex Abrash at his renowned AA Mastering studio from high-resolution digital files of Grundman’s new masters and pressed at Precision. They will be housed in reproductions of the original artwork.”

The underlying DNA of these new standard-edition SD releases is certainly promising, especially given the $29.99 SRP, but the digital files notation may give some of you pause. I’m not going to discuss the AAA version of Pretzel Logic in this review, since AP editor Mike Mettler has already explored that edition quite in depth here. Besides, if you are reading this review, you are probably interested in knowing whether the lower-cost edition is worthy of your attention.

Ultimately, the answer to that question, and the final choice you make, will come down to setting and managing your individual priorities for sound and pressing quality, trueness to the original album design and packaging, and, of course, bottom-line cost.

First, let’s look at the going rate of NM original pressings of our review subject at hand, Pretzel Logic. Of the 14 copies currently on Discogs at the time of this posting, only one was less than $50 (a somewhat less-desirable record club version) and most were going for upwards of $100 (including several more club editions). The point is, finding truly clean original copies of any Steely Dan album is not an easy task these days.

These were popular party albums back in the day — especially among the college students of the times — so there are many “well-loved” VG/VG+ editions out there that do indeed play fine but come with a certain amount of ticks, pops, and inner-groove distortion from repeated play on those poorly aligned automatic changers that were a pretty popular thing back then. Add in the reality of the mid-’70s oil crisis (oil being a key ingredient in making vinyl), and you’ll find many of these original pressings weren’t the greatest to begin with, as far as the audiophile experience goes.

Of course, you can get some of the later editions on the rainbow-target ABC Records label — which can indeed sound quite good, if you are lucky to find one! — but you’ll probably want to avoid the MCA Records editions of the late-’70s and ’80s, some of which were often problematic on multiple levels (poor pressing quality, compromised cover art, etc.). I personally saw many returns of these MCA editions coming through the record store I worked in while attending college in the early ’80s.

Circling back to our initial premise, you are probably wondering by now whether this new UMe edition of Pretzel Logic is worth the 30 bucks. I think it is — albeit with caveats, of course! On the plus side, Pretzel Logic certainly sounds better than the last UMe reissue in this series, July 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy, which had some pressing issues, as I noted in my review of it here. As for my new copy of Pretzel Logic, it is well-centered, and the vinyl is clean, dark, quiet, and solid. So, all those key factors line up just fine with this new edition.

However, the cover art is not entirely accurate to the original editions — which, unusually, put the album pocket on the left front part of the gatefold. So, this new edition is more of a standard gatefold-format scenario, placing the disc in the right-side pocket. And while they do use the original album art, the graphics are not quite as clear as my original pressings (see the above example of that) — even though it is a somewhat blurry black-and-white photo to begin with! The new edition veers toward a near-sepia-toned, higher-contrast image vs. being pure black-and-white with shades of gray. And, as I’ve mentioned in the past, UMe does not recreate the original ABC Records label design on the LP itself, but instead offers a more modern, and simple, Geffen Records logo in its place.

The sound of my new copy of Pretzel Logic wasn’t bad, all things considered. It sounds pretty good for the most part, if a bit rolled off at points. There was definitely some of that crisp digital feel going on, but after a while, I got used to it for what it is.

But, would I replace my originals with it? Well, no, because I have a nice condition black label original, and a decent condition white label promo copy, both of which sound quite good despite some rather significant surface noise — hey, it was the mid-’70s, and, like I said earlier, the oil crisis was on, impacting the quality of vinyl production at the time.

So, therein lies the rub when it comes to deciding what to do regarding these mid-70s Steely Dan albums. If you are willing and interested in trying to score an original pressing and don’t mind listening to used albums that will inevitably have some sort of anomaly on them — again, things like surface noise and perhaps a tick and pop here and there are very commonplace — then you’ll probably want to start looking around for one.

Personally, I don’t mind that sort of thing, as long as it isn’t a major distraction to the music. I find inner-groove distortion far more of an issue, as it’s something that does annoy my, shall we say, sonic sensibilities. I’ve gone through many copies of Pretzel Logic, looking for a copy that plays “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” — a rare Duke Ellington cover that ends Side A, and the first instrumental-only track the band had issued, just a month before the maestro passed away in 1974.

But for those of you who primarily and simply want that “new album” experience with vinyl that plays very quietly and offers a pretty solid representation of what the album is supposed to sound like, then this Geffen/UMe edition may well be appealing for you. The price is fair, and it is still cheaper than trying to buy a mint or near-mint original pressing of some sort. Yes, there are no doubt tradeoffs involved here, given the digital sourcing and your threshold for what that may entail in terms of your own listening experience preferences. But if that latter fact doesn’t deter you, and you do want a decent clean version of this album, then the new Geffen/UMe 180g 1LP edition of Pretzel Logic should serve you just fine”.

Turning fifty on 2nd March, the remarkable Pretzel Logic is one of Steely Dan’s most essential albums. I have loved it since I was a child. It remains my favourite from them. Establishing their sound and line-up – though Donald Fagen was the lead, they would rotate members through the years -, this is an album that everyone needs to hear. Fifty years from its release, there are few albums as majestic…

AS Pretzel Logic.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Uncle Waffles

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

Uncle Waffles

_________

A name that people should know…

PHOTO CREDIT: Kreative Kornerr

I wanted to shine a light on the brilliant Uncle Waffles. The D.J., producer and artist is someone that I am new to. I have been looking back at her rise to prominence. Perhaps not as well-known as she should be, I feel the rest of this year will see her release incredible sounds and confirm that she is a fascinating talent to look out for. I am going to head back to 2022 for the first interview. Complex UK caught up with a Amapiano (a South African subgenre of House music that emerged in South Africa in the mid-2010s) pioneer:

“Whether it’s house or techno, Black electronic music has been at the forefront of popular culture for decades, often with the Black musicians and communities behind it rarely afforded the credit for actually birthing it. The tides, however, are slowly changing, thanks in part to social media making it easier to credit creators and discover new sounds.

One such sound that began to gain international traction around 2019 is Amapiano—or, as it’s also affectionately referred to by its people in South Africa, ‘piano (which also reflects the literal Zulu translation). Amapiano—a blend of percussive loop samples and melodic, energetic vocals, deep house and jazz—is arguably the biggest sound coming out of the continent right now, with the likes of Burna Boy, Wizkid and Davido all collaborating with its artists and even taking them on global tours. This increased awareness has helped shine a light on the rich and ever-evolving musical legacy of South Africa, a nation where music has been integral not only in soundtracking major historical events, but also in forming Black national identity and culture post-Apartheid.

Someone who has been instrumental to the genre’s growth for the last couple of years is 22-year-old Lungelihle Zwane, more commonly known as the DJ/producer Uncle Waffles. Since shooting to international stardom following a viral clip late last year, Zwane has since performed at a string of sold-out shows—at home and, more recently, here in the UK—and is here to prove that she is more than just an internet sensation. With a laser focus on building her brand, and with all eyes currently on Amapiano, the woman who describes herself as ‘awkward’ is intent on doing things her own way.

We caught up with Uncle Waffles to discuss internet trolls, that “surreal” Drake follow on Instagram, the future of Amapiano, and more.

COMPLEX: Congratulations on a sold-out UK and Ireland tour with Piano People! What was it like going on the first Amapiano all-star tour this country has ever seen, for a sound that is relatively new to this market?

Uncle Waffles: Thank you! I’m feeling so blessed, but also tired. This was my first ever time in the UK, let alone for a booking. The headline show at Ministry Of Sound sold out two weeks before the event, so it was such a pleasant surprise to see how much love Amapiano is getting and how much of an appetite and appreciation there is in every city we’ve been to. Seeing people singing along is such a surreal feeling, especially when in some cases they don’t even know what it means; especially when DJs directly from South Africa are more likely to play the specialist stuff that is less known as opposed to the commercial ones that are more widely available. I think, as the sound grows around the world, producers and DJs from around the world will bring in their influences and tastes and create Amapiano with their own flavour.

You shot to fame when a clip of you DJing at a gig in Soweto, South Africa, went viral last year—which, in turn, has triggered a set of events that have led to international recognition, as well as a follow from Drake. How did it lead up to that?

Nothing was planned, but it all happened at the right time. I’m originally from Swaziland—a small country neighbouring South Africa—and there isn’t much of a creative scene there, maybe two or three gigs a year at best, so I had to work in South Africa to develop my career. The people who have now become part of my team were hosting a show and invited me to come over and DJ; they had originally given me a slot of 6.30pm, which is a horrible time. I had another show that day, too, but after a flurry of cancellations, I ended up covering somebody. I was terrified, because not only was it my first big event in South Africa, it was sold-out too”.

Born Lungelihle Zwane, Uncle Waffles released the SOLACE long-E.P./mini-album, last year. There are a couple of interviews from last year that I want to end with. Back in August, okayafrica. Spoke with the Swazi-born, South African-based D.J. about her new work. We discover how Uncle Waffles rose to become a Amapiano heroine and leader:

“In the beginning, Unce Waffles had simpler ambitions: to express her creativity. She grew up in Eswatini, a country which shares borders with South Africa and Mozambique, and was exposed to a lot of local sounds.

“Born at the turn of a new century in 2000, music was the most natural expression for Waffles. She eventually landed on a name that came from a scene in the DC Comics cartoon Teen Titans, which her friends in high school always sang. In 2020, while Uncle Waffles interned at a local Eswatini TV station, she chanced upon some DJ decks and a professional who frequented the studio taught her to play. At the same time she was learning to produce and create her own sounds.

Her big break came later that year, ironically from something that wasn’t planned. The DJ who was supposed to play the prime slot at the Soweto-based Zone 6 Venue wasn’t available and Waffles stepped in. A clip posted from that performance, featuring Waffles whining to Young Stunna’s “Adiwele” became an internet sensation.

Uncle Waffles' performances are an immersion into dance and visual storytelling. “Traveling around the world,” she says, “I realized that people consume music differently, especially music they don’t understand. So you’re not only introducing a new genre to people but you’re also introducing a genre in a language they don’t completely understand. How do you express to them, so they experience the music the same way you hear it? As you know ‘Piano has so many dances and people know ‘Piano through the dances, so it encouraged me to want to perform more.”

Uncle Waffles’ progression from a viral star to a premier tastemaker in Amapiano was deliberate. “We wanted to ensure that I always stay visible,” says Waffles, “Because the issue with viral moments is that you go viral, and then you step back and you kind of disappear in the midst of people who’s gone viral, so you need to make sure that you are still very visible.”

Earlier this year, Waffles released ASYLUM, whose soundscape was markedly different from her debut. Showcasing a renewed approach, the songs incorporated more features while exploring the motions of everyday life. With SOLACE, she extended the concerns about finding joy and fulfillment that she has reflected throughout her career, although the execution in sound is markedly different this time.

“When you release a project, you get to tell a story through it,” she says. “From Red Dragon, which was my first ever project, to ASYLUM, that’s what has allowed me to put meaning into the music. ASYLUM is meant to represent the chaos of my journey, because you know, waking one day and going viral and having to run with it was quite a lot. There’s been a lot of things that have happened and I want to reflect that in music.”

Creating projects emboldens Waffles to “tell stories that allow the people who support you to feel close to you, to understand you,” she says. Her third project, SOLACE, “represents the part of the journey where it’s beautiful and I’m at rest.” The sound evolves to carry the tranquility of this present moment. Whereas her two initial projects overtly expressed her DJ tendencies, on the third she wants to “show that you can do hard music, but it can still be super soft, actually.”

She describes ASYLUM as the "Side B" to SOLACE, and she was conscious of that multi-dimensional continuity while she was creating the latter. To utilize her global stature within the Southern African scene, she reached out to artists that an international crowd wouldn’t be quite familiar with. On “Echoes,” her favorite song on the project, Waffles features frequent collaborator Tony Duardo, along with Manana and Lusanda, whose videos on TikTok she’d been familiar with for a while.

This new project signifies a graceful run towards global domination for Uncle Waffles. Still deep into her creative process, she wants to explore more pockets within Amapiano, and she’s returning to house music, which she affirms as one of the first genres South Africans championed globally. House music has platformed a lot of acts, especially DJs like herself. “Up till now, DJs were never stars,” she opines, “but now, they are becoming them.”

Uncle Waffles is surely a star. She constantly reiterates her forward-facing vision throughout our conversation towards its endm she lays down the ethos of SOLACE. “This album is meant to represent the actual happiness I feel,” she says. Hearing her speak, there’s no doubt that Waffles is in a good place. She’s earned this peace and happiness, and being a serious creative, she’s gone back into the sound, seeking to extend her three-year grasp on the pulse of global pop culture”.

I am going to finish with an interview from December. This interview goes deep with a truly tremendous artist. I think that we are going to see and hear a lot more from the sensational Uncle Waffles. If you have not heard her music yet, do make sure that you check it out. She is a supreme talent that people need to know about:

“In her short experience with fame, Uncle Waffles has demonstrated that she is a student of her discipline(s). She stands defiant against her critics, though maintains a willingness to learn. Whilst it is unclear what the future may hold for Uncle Waffles, she is determined to make her mark and repel rhetoric suggesting she is “just a pretty face”. We have seen her ability to bring life to the party, and now she is keen to make an indelible mark on the creative industry through multifaceted abilities, and too represent the Southern African region in inspiring fashion. Her love for music is unquestionable and is extremely thankful for what it has done for her so far. “Music just hits you”, she says, pointing to her heart, indicating just how much it means to her.

To understand Uncle Waffles as a human being, and her journey thus far, we spoke to her about her passions, influences and too a snippet on her future plans.

It’s been a mad year for you, let’s be real! But firstly, how are you doing?

I’m okay, I’m doing pretty well.

When you started going viral and you started seeing your face in the newspapers and on Twitter, how did that make you feel?

Initially, I was very overwhelmed but a part of me was like I am just gonna goof around for a while.. it’ll be a cool video but how it turned out was like no.. this is not just a cool video but instead it’s gonna complete launch me!

I was very overwhelmed by the love but of course the love comes with the latter because people want to knit pick.. or say whatever it is they want to say. Having to take everything in at once, an immense amount of love and immense amount of hate, it was a bit of a struggle. I have very severe anxiety so initially it was a bit of a struggle, but now I have just found the balance knowing that the love [of music] is what brought me here and what keeps me here, as well as the hard work but the love overtakes everything. So I think now I am at a place where there is so much good.. I am less anxious, less overwhelmed and I am very, very happy! [Uncle Waffles cannot help but smile]

How long have you been DJ’ing for? Is it something you have been doing for a while or was it quite recent?

Yes, I started learning during the pandemic when we had our first lockdown. It was six months of 8 hours a day, just trying to learn and understand it, and I started taking gigs this year in January

You were practising 8 hours a day?! That is practically like a full time job!

Yeah it is like a job, you have to dedicate yourself, as much as people make it seem like its potentially easy. I already knew that my struggle would be like people would say ‘she’s just a pretty face’, so I always knew that I had to be good at it (DJ’ing) to show no one has nothing to nit-pick, and even if they tried the reality is what it is.

Do you have any DJ’ing inspirations?

I didn’t have someone that I was looking up to… part of me felt like these things weren’t possible [aspiring to be like the DJ greats] given that I was just starting. I was like, maybe if I look at Black Coffee, it’ll be something that I achieve 10 years from now. I didn’t really have someone I was looking up to.. it was more so about ‘I actually really like this’, and I am going to try my best even on days where this [being Uncle Waffles] doesn’t seem like the right thing to do anymore, I still need to push!

Uncle Waffles… where does that name come from?

[Laughs] I need to start coming up with a very serious story, because everyone asks me! My friends came up with it at school.

Was it given to you as a joke?

It was! If you watch Teen Titans, Beast Boy and Cyborg had a waffles song, so my friends would sing it every day and then one of them decided that I am going to be waffles, and here we are today! It’s a real anti-climactic story, I know! But that’s what happened!

On a more personal level, would you say you are more introverted or extroverted?

I am actually quite awkward.. introverted. I am the most awkward person you could probably ever meet! I think when people meet me, they realise I am awkward and they say “oh you’re just normal”, and I am like “yeah I really am!” I don’t know how to act… when people scream at me, I scream back!

How do you spend your down time? Is there a particular TV series you’re watching now or artist you’re listening to?

I watch a lot of YouTube, Emma Chamberlain particularly and she is like my comfort, I don’t know why. She’s quite awkward and gives me comfort. I do also read a lot and music wise, I listen to Mereba. I like that type of music because it calms my spirit and I listen to a lot of Gospel. With this whole thing [being well known] comes with it a lot of internal battles, and so sometimes I feel like I need to connect and just come back to Earth

You were born in Swaziland right? Do you feel your setting a foundation for the world to learn more about Swaziland?

There is no creative space in my country, no creative funding.. we barely have any events that are successful. So I think with what happened to me, a lot people feel there is hope for talent because as much as they don’t have exposure, there is great talent (In Swaziland), very talented people, but we just don’t have the reach. I always say that ‘you can never make it at home’, I feel people don’t support you at home the (same) way other people support you. People are always going to South Africa (for exposure) e.g. the likes of Amanda Du-Pont, but you wouldn’t know because she decided to chase a dream and go to South Africa.

If there was a way to get more reach into countries where there is little reach, we can find very talented people. They just need help. Not everyone will have the faith that I had to take money and go to South Africa, go to promoters to promote themselves. Not everyone has that.

Where do you feel you have been received the best?

Kenya is number 1! The Kenyan crowd was really young, and it was my first fully young crowd. That day, I spent 2 hours taking pictures because everyone wanted one, but even I wanted to take pictures with them because they showed me so much love. When I was on the decks, everyone was dancing! Keep in mind that most of these countries don’t know the words to the music but they still understand it!

Are there any other countries that you really want to perform in?

The UK! I would also love to go to Mozambique, because of the crowd there. I would also love to perform in Namibia, Botswana too. Other countries more so for selfish reasons, I mean.. Dubai, come on! That would be really nice. Ibiza! That would be great!

With fame comes negative press or comments as we know. How do you feel about recent comments on Twitter, where people are trying to police how you dress?

I always feel like people are trying to police a 21 year old. I don’t fully control my own Twitter, but because I want to still have a presence, I pop on here and there. I try my best not to be on it because then I get sucked into reading what everyone is saying and that affects me emotionally. People are allowed to have their own said morals, but once you’re trying to project your morals to someone, that’s not okay. People are saying “it’s too revealing” but if you actually see the outfits in real life, it’s like “is it really” [people on the internet exaggerating].

I get a lot of my [fashion] inspiration from the 2000s, and it was very common at that time [to dress in such a way] and I really liked it. So I started dressing like this, to be comfortable in myself. I feel like, people shouldn’t then look at how you dress as who you are. People should be allowed to be an individual

Who are these inspirations?

Saweetie. I really love her she dresses, it’s very ‘I’m a bad bitch’, ‘I’m on my money’, as well as video vixens from back in the day. I take a lot of inspiration from Aaliyah too, but in the modern day it has to be Saweetie, it’s very cool and they she can switch up and be so sexy, I love it!

Do you feel like this is more so a case of Twitter rather than what happens when people approach you in real life?

I think haters are fictional because those are the same people who want to watch you. So what happens is that they start buying tickets to come watch you, to prove themselves right yet you’re investing time in proving that someone you supposedly don’t like is not doing something right.

I’ve read that you’re planning to start releasing music yourself, is this true?

[Laughs] Yes!

Have you thought about a particular sound you’d like to explore?

I’ve been working with a lot of producers and have been listening to a lot of music daily to find my sound. Initially the sound I wanted to go for was something slower but as I am growing into my brand, I am realising that maybe not. But I will be releasing some stuff [soon].

What are the next steps for you?

To completely expand my brand and to.. there is a lot in the works! I don’t want to only be remembered as the girl for the viral videos, that’s always going to be my start but that’s not going to be my finish!”.

A brilliant D.J., producer and artist, I am relatively new to Uncle Waffles. I feel that she is too good not to be heard by all. I hope that more stations in the U.K. spin the sounds of this phenomenon. I am quite unfamiliar with Amapiano, so to have an artist like Uncle Waffles putting it to the forefront is much-needed. I can highly recommend this…

PHENOMENAL human.

______________

Follow Uncle Waffles

FEATURE: Speaking in Sympathy: Kate Bush’s Love and Anger at Thirty-Four

FEATURE:

 

 

Speaking in Sympathy

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

 

Kate Bush’s Love and Anger at Thirty-Four

_________

THERE are a few singles…

in Kate Bush’s cannon that are underrated or did not get the reception they deserved. One that stands out is Love and Anger. On 26th February, the single turns thirty-four. Many people will not know about the song. It has a prominent place on 1989’s The Sensual World. The second song in the running, Bush clearly had faith in the track. It was not buried in the middle or left near the end. Following the title track, we get this really amazing number. I have looked at the track before but, as it has an anniversary coming up, there is opportunity and need to revisit it. There are some cool and interesting B-sides worth exploring. Peaking at thirty-eight in the U.K., Love and Anger went to number one on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Featuring David Gilmour on guitar, we get Ken as the B-side on the 7” cassette single. The 12” and C.D. single has the beautiful One Last Look Around the House Before We Go... as one of the B-sides. Kate Bush directed the video. If not seen as one of her best singles, it is a great song that I have never heard played on the radio. It is a song that Bush had trouble putting together and getting finished. I shall come to some press snippets where Bush was discussing Love and Anger. The press redaction was not too positive:

“Is it too late to take back all those gushing hymns of praise we wrote in homage to Kate’s recent LP? [This is] pretty dispensable, fairly orthodox pop-rock listening.

PAUL LESTER, MELODY MAKER, 3 MARCH 1990

Kate seems to have lost the plot… all middle without a beginning or an end… lost in an unfocused mire…

TIM NICHOLSON, RECORD MIRROR, 3 MARCH 1990

Dynamic understanding and depth that is quite untouchable. Bloody fantastic.

PHIL WILDING, KERRANG!, 3 MARCH 1990”.

It is a shame there is not more love for a very good track! I never miss any Kate Bush single anniversary, so I wanted to spend some time with one of The Sensual World’s highlights. Love and Anger is clearly a personal song for Kate Bush. She has revealed how The Sensual World is an album where she was exploring herself as a woman. Sensual. Revealing, honest and deep, there is quite a bit in common with earlier albums. If Bush pointed towards a more masculine sound for albums such as Hounds of Love (1985), its following album was more concerned with Bush taking things in a different direction. I don’t think we have given Love and Anger enough exposure and respect. Going back to the previous website I quoted from, this is what Kate Bush said about Love and Anger:

“Well ‘Love and Anger’, of all the songs on the album, is really the one I know the least about. I don’t really know what it’s about – it’s had so many different faces. But it was one of the first songs to be written, but one of the last songs to be finished. And I think all the songs on this album are about relationships.

VH1 INTERVIEW, 1989

This song! This bloody song!

It was one of the most difficult to put together, yet the first to be written. I came back to it 18 months later and pieced it together. It doesn’t really have a story. It’s just me trying to write a song, ha-ha.

Obviously the imagery you get as a child is very strong. This is about who you can or cannot confide in when there’s something you can’t talk about. “If you can’t tell your sister, If you can’t tell a priest…” Who did I have in the lyrics? Was it sister or mother? I can’t remember.

LEN BROWN, ‘IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES’. NME (UK), 7 OCTOBER 1989

It’s one of the most difficult songs I think I’ve ever written. It was so elusive, and even today I don’t like to talk about it, because I never really felt it let me know what it’s about. It’s just kind of a song that pulled itself together, and with a tremendous amount of encouragement from people around me. There were so many times I thought it would never get on the album. But I’m really pleased it did now.

INTERVIEW, WFNX BOSTON (USA), 1989

I couldn’t get the lyrics. They were one of the last things to do. I just couldn’t find out what the song was about, though the tune was there. The first verse was always there, and that was the problem, because I’d already set some form of direction, but I couldn’t follow through. I didn’t know what I wanted to say at all. I guess I was just tying to make a song that was comforting, up tempo, and about how when things get really bad, it’s alright really – “Don’t worry old bean. Someone will come and help you out.”

The song started with a piano, and Del put a straight rhythm down. Then we got the drummer, and it stayed like that for at least a year and a half. Then I thought maybe it could be okay, so we got Dave Gilmour in. This is actually one of the more difficult songs – everyone I asked to try and play something on this track had problems. It was one of those awful tracks where either everything would sound ordinary, really MOR, or people just couldn’t come to terms with it. They’d ask me what it was about, but I didn’t know because I hadn’t written the lyrics. Dave was great – I think he gave me a bit of a foothold there, really. At least there was a guitar that made some sense. And John [Giblin] putting the bass on – that was very important. He was one of the few people brave enough to say that he actually liked the song.

TONY HORKINS, ‘WHAT KATIE DID NEXT’. INTERNATIONAL MUSICIAN, DECEMBER 1989”.

There are tracks from The Sensual World that get a lot of focus. The title track is one example. This Woman’s Work another. Many of the other songs are underrated and under-discussed. I have said how The Fog is one of my favourite Kate Bush cuts. I realise that hard decisions need to be made when it comes to releasing singles, though many might wonder why Love and Anger was selected as the third single from The Sensual World. Perhaps not as strong as other choices on the album, perhaps there has been this negativity through the years because of what Bush has said. Even if she sees it as throwaway and has been a bit dismissive, I feel that Love and Anger warrants better. There is a Stereogum feature about the song, though it is paywalled. We need to make it accessible and free to all. In fact, there needs to be more features about Love and Anger. From one of Kate Bush’s finest albums, there are many standout lines and moments from the song. I feel the opening lines refer to struggles Bush might have been having. Reflecting on relationship with Del Palmer, perhaps: “It lay buried here, it lay deep inside me/It's so deep I don't think that I can speak about it/It could take me all of my life”. Poetic, emotive and interesting, it is impossible not to jump into the song and the scenes unfolding: “To let go of these feelings/Like a bell to a Southerly wind?/We could be like two strings beating/Speaking in sympathy/What would we do without you?”. As Love and Anger turns thirty-four on 26th February, I felt it deserved salute and spotlight. Not as loved as, say, Deeper Understanding or The Sensual World, it is a track from an album that many hold dear. By 1989, Bush was in her thirties and was perhaps being more personal with her music. More willing to be more open. This can be heard in 1993’s The Red Shoes. Love and Anger might seem disposable and a lesser track, though I feel that it is…

FEATURE: Making Waves: A Busy Year for Promotion: Kate Bush’s 1980

FEATURE:

 

 

Making Waves: A Busy Year for Promotion

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Phillips

 

Kate Bush’s 1980

_________

I recently shared a couple of interviews…

where Kate Bush was speaking with Paul Gambaccini about her favourite music. It was for his BBC Radio 1 show. Those interviews happened at the end of December 1980. It marked the end of a busy year of promotion for Kate Bush. Ignoring the print interviews and any T.V. exposure, Kate Bush was definitely busy when it came to audio promotion. It was interesting discovering that interview with Paul Gambaccini. Bush was involved in a two-part interview. She was revealing her favourite Folk and Classic music in addition to her chosen Rock and Pop. As you can imagine, there were quite a few unusual and esoteric choices from her. What was really intriguing is how varied her selections were. She raved about Captain Beefheart and Steely Dan. We had this rare opportunity for Kate Bush to discuss the music that is important to her. It is an interview not many people know about but everyone should check out. If you look here, you can see that there are some awards honours alongside the interview. Bush won  at the Capital Radio Awards in March 1980. When she was speaking with Kid Jensen in April 1980, Bush was talking about her work. She also revealed that she had a partner (Del Palmer) and that took away some of the pressure. She was never one to reveal too many personal details, though there are these moments where she took us inside her private life. Despite the fact a lot of the audio from 1980 is not great and could do with cleaning up, it gives you a sense of how busy she was that year.

I don’t think people realise how busy artists like Kate Bush were. 1980 was when she releases Never for Ever. That came out in September. At this point in her career, Bush was not considered a national treasure. Maybe still seen as a curiosity of this rather strange artist, there was some of this misconception and dismissal too. Against this, there was some love. Maybe more people starting to accept her talent and promise. In June 1980, there was a Roundtable on BBC Radio 1 where Babooshka is reviewed. Among those assessing the song is the recently-departed Steve Wright. He notes that the song is quite commercial. He admires the raunchiness of it and Bush’s talents as a vocalist. It is very touching hearing him speak highly of her! Wind back to April, and Breathing was not getting the same acclaim. Music can divide people, I know, but it was fascinating hearing a contrast in views between Breathing and Babooshka. Mainly male figures in the music industry giving their thoughts on Kate Bush. The interviews from 1980 are really nice. On 25th April, 1980, Annie Nightingale spoke with Kate Bush. It is an interview that the majority of people would not have heard of. I really love it. Quite a deep and affectionate discussion. Listening to the interview archive makes me wonder whether there is a way to clean up the audio and keep it somewhere. I don’t think there is a website where we get all of Kate Bush’s audio archive from through the years. 1980 is especially compelling and diverse.

In July 1980, Kate Bush was interviewed by Capital Radio. She said how she felt she was being accepted on a male level. Not being dismissed the same way many female artists were at the time. A realisation that her music was starting to penetrate. Bush turned reviewer in August 1980 for BBC Radio 1’s Roundtable. On 5th September, 1980, hearing Never for Ever dissected and reviewed is a real treat. Some positive vibes and feedback coming from that clip. There is a lot of really interesting and varied audio to be discovered from 1980. Producing Never for Ever alongside Jon Kelly, maybe Kate Bush felt that she had more responsibility this time around. Needed to do even more promotion. Between 1978 and 1980, Bush had practically been promoting non-stop. She was very engaging and willing to talk about her music. In turn, many others had their thoughts on her. Something I did not know about her is that, In December 1980, Bush recorded some Christmas jingles. For BBC Radio 1 and Capital Radio, she wrote some unique and cool jingles for the stations! A Michael Aspel interview from the middle of December is worth listening to. We then end with that two-part chat with Paul Gambaccini. He dove deep and wondered what music Kate Bush was inspired and moved by. We are very lucky to have this interview archive. Thanks to Kate Bush News for ensuring that we can discover it! I think we get more context and insight into the year and how her music was being perceived. Never for Ever is quite an underrated album. One that didn’t get all positive reviews. Even so, there was appreciation and fascination from those in radio. Hearing Bush talk about her music and process is really eye-opening and wonderful. These interviews let us into a busy and important year from…

A truly wonderful artist.

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 1982: Paul Simper (Melody Maker)

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982

 

1982: Paul Simper (Melody Maker)

_________

I was going to give this feature up…

but there are a few other interviews I want to cover off before wrapping it all up. One interview I have not included before is Kate Bush’s interview with Melody Maker in 1982. Paul Simper was the man charged with interviewing her. Published in October 1982, a month after The Dreaming was released, this was a stage of Bush’s career that was a shock for many. In terms of what people expected from an album and the sound coming from it. I love interviews from 1982, as it sees Kate Bush in a very interesting period. Immersed in various studios working insane hours putting an album together, this was her first time producing alone. As such, what she was making was more layered and ambitious than any album that came before. Her fourth studio effort, The Dreaming is still one of her most underrated works. I think that the album should get more recognition and airplay. Maybe Sat in Your Lap gets played on the radio, though the rest of the songs are largely overlooked. Finishing with two of her best tracks, Houdini and Get Out of My House, there is great need for people to check out this remarkable album:

“To some people Kate Bush has almost ceased to exist. Usurped on the bedroom walls young upstarts like Clare Grogan and Kim Wilde, she is now a much more private lady who rarely goes out and seems quite content to concentrate on her singing and dancing.

It's been two years since her last LP, Never For Ever, and though the single that followed "Sat In Your Lap", reached number 11, the recent commercial failure of "The Dreaming" has seen the undertakers beginning to shuffle and murmur impatiently.

Was the title track the actual cornerstone of the LP?

"No. The thing about all my album titles is that they're usually one of the last things to be thought of because it's so difficult just to find a few words to sum the whole thing up.

"I've got this book which is all about Aborigines and Australian art and it's called The Dreaming. The song was originally called 'Dreamtime', but when we found out that the other word for it was 'The Dreaming' it was so beautiful - just by putting 'the' in front of 'dreaming' made something very different - and so I used that.

"It also seems to sum up a lot of the songs because one of the main points about that time for the Aborigines was that it was very religious and humans and animals were very closely connected. Humans were actually living in animal's bodies and that's an idea which I particularly like playing with."

Have you ever been to Australia?

"Yes, but not recently. I have contact with a few Australians and it seems that at the moment Aboriginal art is becoming very fashionable so the young Australians are starting to take a lot more serious notice of what's happening to them. Also, happily, the Aborigines seem to be growing in number again."

The Dreaming is an LP that mutates at an alarming rate. One minute you're playing walkabout in the outback, the next it's Vietnam and you're fighting for your life. But through the images are diverse and at times oblique, the sound - principally driven by menacing, pounding drums - is more consistent. It certainly owes much to Peter Gabriel's third LP which housed such resounding nightmares as "Biko" and "No Self Control".

"I'd been trying to get some kind of tribal drum sound together for a couple of albums, especially the last one. But really the problem was that I was trying to work with a pop medium and get something out of it that wasn't part of that set-up."

"Seeing Peter working in the Town House Studio, especially with the engineers he had, it was the nearest thing I'd heard to real guts for a long long time. I mean, I'm not into rhythm boxes - they're very useful to write with but I don't think they're good sounds for a finished record - and that was what was so exciting because the drums had so much power."

Another influence you're quoted before is Pink Floyd's The Wall, did you see the film?

"Yes. I've been very much influenced by The Wall because I like the way that the Floyd get right into that emotional area and work with sounds as pictures. I think the problem with the film though is that, although as a piece of art it is devastating, it isn't real enough. The whole film is negatively based. No once during Pink's life is there a moment of happiness which I know in every human's life there is. Even if you have the shittiest life of all there is always one little moment where you smile for a second or you fall in love with someone and feel happy - maybe only for ten minutes.

Listening to The Dreaming and Never For Ever the night before my interview with Kate the two LPs gradually revealed many lyrical similarities - the anti-war theme of "Breathing" and "Army Dreamers", which is continued on "Pull Out The Pin", for instance. One track, though, left me utterly bewildered - "Suspended In Gaffa"...

"Lyrically it's not really that dissimilar from "Sat In Your Lap" in saying that you really want to work for something. It's playing with the idea of hell. At school I was always taught that if you went to hell you would see a glimpse of God and that was it - you never saw him again and you'd spend the rest of eternity pining to see him. In a way it was even worse if you went to purgatory because you got the glimpse of God and you would see him again [??? but you] didn't know when. So it was almost like you had to sit here until he decided to com back.

"I suppose for me in my work, because it's such a sped up life and so much happens to you and you analyse yourself a lot, you see the potential for perhaps getting to somewhere very special on an artistic or a spiritual level and that excites me a lot. And it's the idea of working towards that and perhaps one day, when you're ready for that change, it's like entering a different level of existence, where everything goes slow-mo... it's almost like a religious experience. That's basically what the song's about."

Are you very religious or do you simply have a strong belief in yourself?

"I think I very much believe in the forces and energies that humans and other things which are alive can create. I do feel that what you give out sincerely then karmically you should get it back."

Time seems to have changed your thirst for knowledge. While in "Rolling The Ball" [sic - "Them Heavy People] you were overbrimming with the joys of gathering wisdom, on a track like "Sat In Your Lap" you appear a lot more impatient - "I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a scholar./But I really Can't be bothered, ooh just/Gimme it quick..."

"I think it's also about the way you try to work for something and you end up finding you've been working away from it rather than towards it. It's really about the whole frustration of having to wait for things - the fact that you can't do what you want to do now, you have to work toward it and maybe, only maybe, in five years you'll get what you're after.

"For me there are so many things I do which I don't want to - the mechanics of the industry - but I hope that through them I can get what I really want. You have to realise that, say, you can't just be an artist and not promote. If you're not a salesman for your work the likelihood is that people won't realise that it's there and eventually you'll stop yourself from being able to make something else. There's no doubt about it that every album I make is really dependant on the money I made from the last one."

Do you do a lot of reading?

"No, not really, because I just don't get the time. But whenever I do it really sparks things off in me. The last book I read was The Shining and it just blew me away, it was absolutely brilliant, and that definitely inspired "Get Out Of My House" because the atmosphere of the book is so strong”.

There are a lot of interesting interviews with Kate Bush from 1982. It might have been hard for journalists to get their mind around The Dreaming and what to ask. It is fascinating reading Bush discussing her most unusual and innovative album. If you are someone who has avoided it or only heard a track or two, I hope the interview above gives you impetus to explore it in more detail and depth. It is an album that needs to be celebrated and properly listened to. It has been a pleasure going back to 1982 again for another instalment of The Kate Bush Interview Archive. The Dreaming is a treasure that…

DESERVES more love and attention.

FEATURE: Our Lady the Divine: Madonna’s Like a Prayer at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Our Lady the Divine

  

Madonna’s Like a Prayer at Thirty-Five

_________

MAYBE not as significant…

as a thirtieth or fortieth anniversary, I think that a thirty-fifth anniversary is still important and big. Madonna’s seminal album, Like a Prayer, turns thirty-five on 21st March. One of the defining albums from the Queen of Pop, it topped the charts in the U.S. and the U.K. With timeless singles such as Like a Prayer and Express Yourself on the album, there are few who can argue against the majesty of this 1989 work of genius. I want to explore it further now. I am going to come to some reviews for Like a Prayer. First, in 2019, Vice marked thirty years of a classic. An album where Madonna truly established herself as a serious and meaningful artist:

“Madonna was already a superstar before she released Like a Prayer, which turns 30 years old this week. She had produced at least half-a-dozen era-defining hits (“Holiday,” “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl,” “Into the Groove,” “Papa Don’t Preach,” and “La Isla Bonita”), and her previous album, 1986’s True Blue, had sold more than 25 million copies. But, in a way, she was also strangely underrated. When Like a Prayer came out in 1989, six years after she hit the ground running with her infectious debut single, “Everybody,” critics lauded Madonna for changing our conceptions around how a female pop singer could present herself and conduct her career. But they didn’t necessarily regard her as a “great artist.”

"Critics flock to her uneven product the way liberal arts magnas flock to investment banking," Robert Christgau, the self-styled “Dean of American Rock Critics,” wrote in his review of True Blue. "So desperate are they to connect to a zeitgeist that has nothing to do with them that they decide a little glamour and the right numbers add up to meaningful work, or at least 'fun.’”

Like a Prayer certainly confirmed Madonna’s flair for fun; with its kindergarten-friendly lyrics about “pink elephants and lemonade” and treacle-sweet, Beatles-y psychedelia, “Dear Jessie” remains one of her most charming singles. But the album as a whole, Madonna’s first undisputed masterpiece, also proved once and for all that she was a meaningful artist, not just an uncommonly savvy and driven pop star. She bared her navel on the album’s cover, and her soul in its songs.

Even three decades later, it’s difficult to separate the album from the scandal that surrounded its release. When the brilliantly provocative “Like a Prayer” video debuted in February 1989, just a day after the release of a high-profile Pepsi commercial starring Madonna, the Vatican and various religious groups condemned the clip for including allegedly blasphemous imagery. Here was Madonna dancing in front of burning crosses, kissing a Black Saint, and displaying what looked like stigmata on her palms.

As the video continued causin’ a commotion, Madonna stood by it, telling the New York Times that “Art should be controversial, and that's all there is to it.” Pepsi bosses were so keen to distance themselves from the button-pushing singer that they pulled the commercial without trying to take back her $5 million fee.

Today, Madonna still seems fabulously unbothered by the whole thing. She breezily celebrated the anniversary of the “Like a Prayer” furor on Instagram earlier this month, writing: “Happy birthday to me and controversy.” Atta girl!

But where the “Like a Prayer” video controversy captured Madonna at her most bullish and brazen, the album that followed a few weeks later revealed new depths of honesty, vulnerability, and cathartic emotion. “Oh Father,” one of eight Like a Prayer tracks that she co-wrote with regular collaborator Patrick Leonard, is a glorious, classic-sounding ballad about taking back control from male authority figures, including her father. "I lay down next to your boots and I prayed for your anger to end / Oh father, I have sinned," she sings, extending the title track’s conflation of religion and real-life experience.

Funk workout “Keep it Together,” one of two tracks she co-wrote with another frequent collaborator, Stephen Bray, explores how family ties can feel suffocating and comforting at the same time. “Promise to Try,” another stellar ballad, finds Madonna grappling with the memory of her mother, who died when she was just five years old. "She's a faded smile frozen in time," she sings achingly. "I'm still hanging on, but I'm doing it wrong."

Meanwhile, the sad and aromatic “Pray for Spanish Eyes” is a seeming eulogy for lives lost to America’s worsening AIDS crisis. The man Madonna still describes as her BFF, former Studio 54 bartender Martin Burgoyne, had succumbed to the disease in 1986. “How many lives will they have to take? How much heartache?” Madonna sings, pleadingly. It’s certainly worth remembering that Madonna included an AIDS fact sheet with Like a Prayer in a bid to reduce the stigma and ignorance surrounding the disease, one the recently departed President Ronald Reagan had ignored for as long as possible. "People with AIDS—regardless of their sexual orientation—deserve compassion and support, not violence and bigotry," the sheet stated matter-of-factly.

But the album’s most shocking track is probably “Till Death Do Us Part.” Underpinned by a deceptively perky keyboard riff, the lyrics hint at domestic abuse ("The bruises they will fade away / You hit so hard with the things you say") and violent rows ("He starts to scream, the vases fly"), offering a devastating summary of a dysfunctional relationship: "You're not in love with someone else / You don't even love yourself / Still I wish you'd ask me not to go." Coinciding with the end of Madonna’s first marriage to Sean Penn (she’d filed for divorce in January 1989), it’s one of the most affecting moments in Madonna's discography, though she’d later go on the record denying allegations that she had experienced physical abuse during their relationship.

Still, the album never becomes too introspective to work as stadium-ready pop. The Romeo and Juliet-referencing “Cherish” is a retro melodic gem in the vein of “True Blue.” The Sly and the Family Stoinspired funk missile “Express Yourself' offers a feminist rallying cry that would inspire generations to come: Christina Aguilera and the Spice Girls have both hailed it as influence. When Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” debuted in 2011, many pop fans and music critics noted its distinct resemblance to “Express Yourself.” Madonna said Gaga's song sounded "familiar" and felt “reductive,” but Gaga insisted she didn't intentionally reference the Madonna anthem, telling NME in 2011: “If you put the songs next to each other, side by side, the only similarities are the chord progressions. It’s the same one that’s been in disco music for the last 50 years."

The accompanying video is a queer classic that's been likened to "Tom of Finland meets Fritz Lang's Metropolis," with Madonna presiding over a futuristic city fueled by shirtless male workers. And the immortal title track mixes religious and sexual ecstasy so thrillingly, it could make a celibate atheist want to dance.

Then again, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Like a Prayer's most heavyweight track on paper turns out to be its frothiest in practice. Like a Prayer is a rare beast: an iconic pop album that retains its ability to surprise you, using richly evocative songcraft to explore deeply personal themes—sometimes spiritual, sometimes socially conscious—from a woman’s perspective. With it, Madonna had once again remodeled people's expectations of what a female pop singer could achieve. Decades before Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next, it laid the foundation for the deeply persona pop blockbuster, auteured by a strong woman at the peak of her creative powers”.

It is interesting reading these deep features. Ones which provide us with context and background. How Like a Prayer fits into her discography. How it defines Madonna. Even if some would say 1998’s Ray of Light is her greatest work, there are many more who argue that this honour should go to 1989’s Like a Prayer. There was a lot of retrospection around Like a Prayer on its thirtieth in 2019. People keen to mark such an important album. Albumism did so in a fascinating feature:

“Madonna’s Like A Prayer is “as close to art as pop gets,” Rolling Stone’s J.D. Considine opined in his review of her fourth studio album published nearly thirty years ago in April of 1989. Though I don’t doubt that Mr. Considine likely meant well, his declaration is borderline asinine, if you ask me. His insinuation is that pop music can never actually be considered art and is forever destined to fall short of warranting this qualification. That pop music is somehow inherently less than other musical forms. Um, yeah, I’m calling bullshit.

Indeed, it is precisely this type of myopic perspective and critical snobbery that has plagued Madonna since she first emerged on the public stage back in 1982. Despite her millions upon millions of loyalists worldwide, and arguably due in large part to their preoccupation with her unabashedly iconoclastic persona, a sizeable contingency of critics and listeners still refuse to take her seriously as an artist and songwriter. But let’s not waste any more time lamenting the naysayers, shall we? Like A Prayer is, in fact, art. And arguably matched only by Ray of Light (1998) released nearly a decade later, it remains her artistic pinnacle to date, in my opinion.

Other more discerning interpreters of Madonna’s musical repertoire often cite Like A Prayer as her first serious album, following the more whimsical fare—or “brassy dance-pop” as the New York Times’ Stephen Holden likened it—found on her first three studio albums: Madonna (1983), Like A Virgin (1984) and True Blue (1986). “Serious” is a relative term, open to interpretation, mind you. For I know I took Madonna very seriously when I first heard “Everybody” back in ’82. I was five years old. But I knew a perfect pop song when I heard it, even then.

Perhaps more accurately, Like A Prayer is Madonna’s first personal album, throughout which she balances the fictional with the autobiographical more than she ever had up until that point. Joined once again by True Blue co-producers and fellow Michigan natives Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, she began recording the album in September 1988. One month prior, she had turned 30, the same age her mother—to whom Like A Prayer is dedicated—had been when she succumbed to breast cancer in 1963, when Madonna was just five years old. The following year, her four-year marriage with Sean Penn—to whom she dedicated True Blue—dissolved and ended in divorce. Meanwhile, Madonna’s attempt to cross over to film and seize upon the modest success of Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) hadn’t gone too well, with two back-to-back box office mishaps in Shanghai Surprise (1986) and Who’s That Girl (1987).

So, suffice to say, Madonna was in a particularly reflective state of mind when recording sessions commenced. Hence it’s no great surprise that amidst all of the other turmoil in her life, she also reawakened all of her conflicted feelings about her Catholic upbringing. These sentiments ultimately informed the title of the album and the controversial, gospel-tinged title track and lead single “Like A Prayer,” the video for which caused an irrationally disproportionate amount of attention and rebuke by more rigid segments of the American populace. It also ruffled the robes of the Vatican brass, due to its religious and racial imagery, coupled with the song’s perceived sexual double entendres.

“It's me struggling with the mystery and magic that surrounds it,” she confided to the New York Times around the time of the album’s release. “My own Catholicism is in constant upheaval. When I left home at 17 and went to New York, which is the city with the most sinners, I renounced the traditional meaning of Catholicism in terms of how I would live my life. But I never stopped feeling the guilt and shame that are ingrained in you if you are brought up Catholic.''

When the dogmatic dust finally settled from the bombastic, bible-thumping brouhaha over the video, listeners were able to devote more of their attention toward the ten other songs that comprise Like A Prayer. The next two official singles lifted from the album reinforced Madonna’s penchant for pop perfectionism, beginning with the anthemic “Express Yourself.” Echoing the clarion call tone heard on the Staple Singers’ 1971 black empowerment mantra “Respect Yourself,” the kinetically crafted song finds Madonna encouraging women to affirm and articulate their own needs, while deconstructing the superficial dependence on materialism in relationships. The buoyant, wistful love song and third single “Cherish” bears the closest resemblance to her radio-friendly fare of previous albums, introducing some warmer, winsome fare to the otherwise ruminative affair.

For my money, the album’s most powerful and memorable moments can be found in its more understated and introspective moments. The plaintive, piano-driven “Promise to Try” revisits the emotional impact of her mother’s death, while the symphonic, strings-laden swell of “Oh Father” is one of the most stirring moments, as Madonna examines her fractured relationship with her father in the wake of the loss they’ve shared. While she harbors resentment toward him for unspecified discretions, she also expresses empathy and understanding, reflecting, “Maybe someday / When I look back, I'll be able to say / You didn't mean to be cruel / Somebody hurt you too.” It’s a refreshingly candid and compassionate moment for Madonna, who has remained relatively taciturn when it comes to discussing her father publicly.

The sobering “Till Death Do Us Part” explores the dissolution of her marriage to Penn, with Madonna fluctuating between playing the real-life role of the victim (“I think I interrupt your life / When you laugh, it cuts me just like a knife / I'm not your friend, I'm just your little wife”) and assuming the voice of the observer (“They never laugh, not like before / She takes the keys, he breaks the door / She cannot stay here anymore / He's not in love with her anymore”). Her second verse is a particularly brutal reproach of her ex-husband, as she declares, “The bruises they will fade away / You hit so hard with the things you say / I will not stay to watch your hate as it grows / You're not in love with someone else / You don't even love yourself,” while her conflicted, vulnerable heart surfaces in the verse’s closing line, “Still I wish you'd ask me not to go.”

Other standout moments include “Keep It Together,” an upbeat ode to family solidarity that lobs another presumed dig in Penn’s direction: “blood is thicker than any other circumstance.” And of course, the lush, leftfield soul of “Love Song”—co-written and co-produced by Prince (whose uncredited guitar work also appears on “Like A Prayer,” “Keep It Together” and “Act of Contrition”)—is notable for being a once-in-a-lifetime songwriting collaboration between two of the most influential figures in the past 40 years of popular music.

"If it had not been clear with True Blue, Like A Prayer staked Madonna's motive to master the album format,” Quentin Harrison, Albumism contributor and author of Record Redux: Madonna, explains. In retrospect three decades on, the album signaled not just Madonna’s emboldened commitment to crafting cohesive albums, but also a pivotal, transitional point in Madonna’s recording career.

As the new decade arrived, and with the expansive, career-to-date compendium The Immaculate Collection (1990) neatly synthesizing her most popular songs to date, Madonna turned to exercising more creative freedom than ever before. In the ensuing years, she continually redefined and reinvigorated her musical footprint, beginning with 1992’s Erotica, which found her exploring not only new and bold thematic territory, but previously untrodden sonic paths as well. She moved on from her longtime partnership with producers Bray and Leonard, and gradually forged stronger connections with dancefloor-friendly collaborators like Shep Pettibone (Erotica), Nellee Hooper (1994’s Bedtime Stories) and William Orbit (Ray of Light). And together with these and other musical kindred spirits along the way, Madonna created art—yes, art—of the most thrilling caliber”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews for Like a Prayer. I am going to start with a Rolling Stone review from 1989. They were extremely positive about Like a Prayer. One couldn’t deny the power and importance of Madonna then. Climbing to heights few other artists ever have, Like a Prayer is an album that still sounds so compelling and accomplished. The Queen of Pop hitting a peak and standing out as one of music’s greatest ever artists:

“Ever since Madonna‘s bellybutton first undulated its way into mass consciousness, her fame has been more a matter of image than artistry. Never mind whether there was any depth or resonance behind it; for many of her fans, the image alone — Madonna as wily, wanton boy toy, gleefully manipulating the material world — was resonant enough. For others, it was just an act, a coolly calculated pop ploy designed to sell records.

With Like a Prayer, Madonna doesn’t just ask to be taken seriously, she insists on it. Daring in its lyrics, ambitious in its sonics, this is far and away the most self-consciously serious album she’s made. There are no punches pulled, anywhere; Madonna is brutally frank about the dissolution of her marriage (“Till Death Do Us Part”), her ambivalence toward her father (“Oh Father”) and even her feelings of loss about her mother (“Promise to Try”). Yet as intensely personal as these songs are, the underlying themes are universal enough to move almost any listener. Likewise, the music, though clearly a step beyond the pop confections that earned the singer her place on the charts, remains as accessible as ever.

Don’t expect to be won over instantly, though, for Like a Prayer is more interested in exorcising demons than entertaining fans. The album is in large part about growing up and dealing with such ghosts from the past as parents, religion and the promises of love. At times, the album can be heartbreaking in its honesty — read through the lyrics to “Till Death Do Us Part,” and you’ll feel guilty for ever having glanced at a tabloid with a Madonna & Sean Wedding Shocker headline.

This is serious stuff, and nowhere is that more apparent than on the title tune. Opening with a sudden blast of stun-gun guitar, “Like a Prayer” seems at first like a struggle between the sacred and the profane as Madonna’s voice is alternately driven by a jangling, bass-heavy funk riff and framed by an angelic aura of backing voices. Madonna stokes the spiritual fires with a potent, high-gloss groove that eventually surrenders to gospel abandon.

The tracks that Madonna coproduced with Patrick Leonard — which include “Like a Prayer” — are stunning in their breadth and achievement. “Cherish,” which manages a nod to the Association song of the same title, makes savvy retro-rock references, and “Dear Jessie” boasts kaleidoscopic Sgt. Pepper-isms. When Stephen Bray replaces Leonard as coproducer, even an unabashed groove tune like “Express Yourself” seems smart and sassy, right down to Madonna’s soul-style testimony on the intro: “Come on, girls, do you believe in love?”

Believing in love doesn’t seem as easy for Madonna as it once did, though. “Till Death Do Us Part” takes its wedding-vow title almost mockingly, as the singer contemplates all the ways her marriage seems to be killing her. “The bruises, they will fade away/You hit so hard with the things you say,” goes one verse, and it’s hard not to be shocked. But the saddest thing about the song isn’t the abuse endured by Madonna (for this hardly seems a fictional “I”); it’s her helplessness in the face of her husband’s self-loathing: “You’re not in love with someone else/You don’t even love yourself/Still I wish you’d ask me not to go.”

But difficult love seems a familiar refrain in this collection of songs. “Oh Father” mirrors many of the horrors hinted at by “Till Death Do Us Part” (which provides plenty of material for armchair psychiatrists), and despite the song’s lush string arrangement, there’s still a disturbing amount of ache in lines like “You can’t hurt me now/I got away from you, I never thought I would.” Not that it’s all bad love and childhood trauma. “Promise to Try,” for instance, is about gathering a certain strength from feelings of loss and abandonment, as Madonna tries to live up to the memories she holds so dear.

The worst that can be said of the album’s obviously confessional numbers is that they engender such powerful emotions that an admirable pop song like “Keep It Together” seems almost trivial by comparison (when in fact it’s a rather impressive invocation of the importance of family). Fortunately, Madonna maintains an impressive sense of balance throughout the album, leavening the pain of “Till Death Do Us Part” with the lighthearted love of “Cherish,” contrasting the trauma of “Oh Father” with the libidinal power games of “Love Song” (a coy, musically adventurous duel-duet with Prince) and juxtaposing the ecstatic fervor of “Like a Prayer” with the Catholic injoking of “Act of Contrition.”

As for her image, well, you may see her navel on the inner sleeve, but what you hear once you get inside the package is as close to art as pop music gets. Like a Prayer is proof not only that Madonna should be taken seriously as an artist but that hers is one of the most compelling voices of the Eighties. And if you have trouble accepting that, maybe it’s time for a little image adjustment of your own”.

I am going to end with Consequence’s 2019 review of Like a Prayer. If you have not heard this album in a while, then make sure that you do spend time with it. Such a powerful and moving listen from start to finish, we mark its thirty-fifth anniversary on 21st March:

“It helps that Like a Prayer is a masterpiece, representing real growth for the former material girl. It opens with a musical thesis statement: an aggressive, rebellious guitar that’s instantly replaced by a heavenly choir. This is the tension at the heart of the album, and it makes the song, “Like a Prayer”, an electrifying listen. Those gospel-tinged choruses are part of the fun, but the real joy is in the transgression. Madonna grew up in a deeply religious household and is purposefully blurring the lines between sexual and religious euphorias. It means more than it would coming from a born atheist. It’s more wrong. Some — perhaps even Madonna — might call it naughty.

The album starts with a powerhouse 1-2 punch of “Like  Prayer” and “Express Yourself”. “Express Yourself” is probably the single most joyful-sounding track on the album, and it comes from a place of anxiety. Madonna is urging a friend in an uncertain relationship to have a talk with their boyfriend. “Make him express how he feels,” she urges.

Listeners of a certain age might hear the chord progression and expect Lady Gaga to belt out, “Born This Way”. The similarities between the two songs was enough to cause a feud between Madonna and Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga’s defense is that the chord progression goes back to the ’70s, and Madonna told Rolling Stone that “Express Yourself” was “my tribute to Sly and the Family Stone.” Now, we could raise a polite eyebrow at her calling it a “tribute,” or we could just agree that all three artists are great and more people should listen to Sly and The Family Stone.

Most of Like a Prayer was co-written with Patrick Leonard. Two songs, “Express Yourself” and “Keep It Together”, were co-written with Stephen Bray. The only other collaborator is Prince. “Love Song” is a slinky duet with His Purpleness, with Prince’s signature guitar flirting with Madonna’s synths. It’s a drunken first date of a song, where they alternate assuring each other that “this is not a love song,” before asking, “Are you just being kind?”

There are a few purely positive moments on the album. There’s the bubblegum “Cherish” and the bedtime psychedelia of “Dear Jessie”. These are unambiguously happy. But Like a Prayer is Madonna’s best album because it is her most personal album. And a lot of her personal life is dark. “Till Death Do Us Part” deals with the dissolution of her marriage to Sean Penn. “Promise to Try” is a heartbreaking song about the death of her mother. “Oh Father” is all defiance and hurt, addressed to a father who is only half-forgiven. As a group, these songs make a mini-arc within the broader album, and the climax is “Keep It Together”: “Keep it together in the family/ They’re a reminder of your history.”

Does that sound less than enthusiastic? The beat is bright, disco, jaunty. The lyrics are more reserved. This is the same tension in the album from the beginning — the tension between the thing that is fun and the thing that is true, the guitar and the choir.

The final track of Like a Prayer begins how the album begins: with a raucous, muscular guitar. But this time, the church choir doesn’t cut it off. Instead, the choir hollers their approval and begins clapping along. In a solemn voice, sometimes reciting and sometimes singing, Madonna performs a Catholic prayer of contrition. “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.” For a moment, it seems that the tension has been resolved. Guitar and choir can coexist. As the prayer concludes, Madonna seems to find herself at a reservation desk — the front desk of Heaven, probably. “I have a reservation,” she says confidently. “I have a reservation,” she repeats. And how does the album end? With Madonna belligerently bellowing, “Whaddya mean it’s not in the computer!”

Ah well, perhaps she won’t get into Heaven after all. Perhaps that tension between guitar and choir cannot be resolved. Madonna’s priorities were never really in doubt, anyway. By mixing the sacred and the profane in a way sure to draw attention, Madonna went from being a regular old star to one of the most famous people on the planet. Of course, courting controversy for profit is as old as profit. But the way Madonna manipulated the media provided a blueprint for generations of the scandal-inclined.

More importantly, the music was fresh, honest, and real: a bubblegum pop exorcism. By making her music more personal, Madonna did more than improve on her earlier records. She stretched the boundaries of popular music and cemented her place as one of the greatest artists of our time”.

One of the greatest albums ever released, Like a Prayer was Madonna’s first real masterpiece – though not her last. Moving to 1992’s Erotica, 1994’s Bedtime Stories and 1998’s Ray of Light, Madonna would keep pushing boundaries and evolving as an artist. At the end of the 1980s, she showed why she was an artist with no peers! Reshaping the idea of what a Pop artist was and showing that she was not to be dismissed or seen as merely a Pop artist, this was an icon in full bloom. Touring at the moment, Madonna is still out there and bringing songs from Like a Prayer to the people. I know she will look back on this album when it turns thirty-five on 21st March. It is an album that is…

TRULY like no other.

FEATURE: Mellow Song: Blur’s 13 at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Mellow Song

 

Blur’s 13 at Twenty-Five

_________

THE amazing sixth…

studio album from Blur arrived on 15th March, 1999. 13 is an album that sort of signalled the end of Blur as we would know them. It may sound dark, though it was a period where relationships between the band members were strained; members frequently missing from the sessions. In terms of the lyrics, 13 is darker than Blur's previous albums. Inspired by Damon Albarn's breakup with long-term girlfriend, Justine Frischmann, that followed an increasingly strained relationship. 13 was the last for over a decade to feature the original line-up as Graham Coxon left the band during the sessions of their next album, Think Tank (2003), before returning for The Magic Whip (2015). Blur have since got back together again and released The Ballad of Darren last year. They are back on hiatus now. Even if 13 and the end of the 1990s was a struggling and tense period for the band, the album that came from that time is among their best. It contains two of their best-loved songs, Tender and Coffee + TV. I shall get to some reviews to end this feature. Almost twenty-five years after the release of 13, I think the album more than stands out. It is worth of a lot of love and celebration. In 2022, Dig! looked inside Blur’s end-of-a-century masterpiece:

“Released two years earlier, in 1997, Blur’s self-titled album had forced a rethink of everything the group had become known for: Albarn’s lyrics took a more introspective turn, and the band’s music expanded to encompass influences from US alt-rock while also incorporating new working practices that found them recording songs piecemeal in the studio. Shaped by two external factors – a relationship breakup and a cutting-edge new producer – 13 would double down on this new creative process.

Like the music they would record over the latter half of 1998, Blur themselves had been pulling in different directions, with guitarist Graham Coxon’s debut solo album, The Sky Is Too High, further embracing his love of US indie-rock, and Albarn working in secret on a dubby mash-up of styles that would soon emerge as Gorillaz’s debut album.

The latter came together in Albarn’s new flat – a place he shared with illustrator Jamie Hewlett, Gorillaz’s visual foil. Albarn had moved in with Hewlett since breaking up with Justine Frischmann, his longtime girlfriend and then lead singer with Elastica. “A lot of 13 stems from that period,” the singer told Blur biographer Stuart Maconie. “My life was not right. Not in harmony. Everything stems from your emotional life, and mine just wasn’t working at all. It was really dysfunctional. So I was misfiring everywhere.” Suffering from panic attacks, Albarn began working on a song whose lyrics would serve as a salve: “Tender is the day/The demons go away/Lord, I need to find/Someone who can heal my mind.”

Titled Tender, the finished version of the song would be as startling an album opener to 13 as Beetlebum had been to Blur: Coxon’s opening lo-fi guitar melody sounded all the more fragile for having been recorded through a Dictaphone, while the band created a beat by dropping planks of wood on the floor. Realising he needed to bring something entirely new, bassist Alex James swapped his patented pop bounce for a more sensitive bassline played on a double bass, while Albarn – having reportedly immersed himself in Otis Redding’s music – delivered a devastating vocal. Bringing the song’s soulful undertones to the fore, the group topped it off with a guest turn from the London Community Choir, whose repeated encouragement, “Come on, come on, come on/Get through it,” added to the fervour of a song Albarn described as “a celebration of love found and lost but not forgotten”.

“As soon as they started singing, it was instantly and obviously a No.1 record,” James wrote in his memoir, Bit Of A Blur, rightly clocking Tender as one of the best Blur songs of all time. “I’d never been so certain of anything.”

Released as 13’s lead single in February 1999, just three weeks ahead of its parent album, Tender was kept off the top spot by Britney Spears’ … Baby One More Time. But, having nailed the song early in the album sessions, it gave Blur the confidence to keep pushing forward.

Further encouragement came from their new producer, William Orbit. Fresh off the back of his work with Madonna on the all-conquering Ray Of Light album, and delivering what Blur felt were the standout moments on their then recent remix collection, Bustin’ + Dronin’, Orbit’s background in electronica helped take the group’s new material far beyond anything they had released before.

Though there was some trepidation about leaving their longtime producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Morrissey) after a career-defining five-album run together, Blur also knew their new material needed an outsider’s ear. “It was such a personal thing going on, we needed to have someone who didn’t really know us,” Albarn said at the time. “William was a bit like a psychiatrist through all of this. Everyone encouraged the emotional blood-letting.”

If 13’s penultimate song, No Distance Left To Run, distilled those emotions into the most fragile-sounding Blur song to date, the album’s more uncompromising moments came out of hours’ worth of lengthy jams worked up in a drab warehouse in West London (the specific room they’d hired, Unit 13, gave the record its name) and the group’s adopted safe haven of Reykjavík, in Iceland. With Orbit then editing the recordings into something more closely resembling structured songs, the band were, Coxon realised, hearing their music “as someone else would hear it”. The experience was “a revelation”.

Under the strain of such emotional intensity and the demands of trying to keep their music unified amid an increasing number of new influences, experimental recording techniques and disparate individual interests all jostling for space on one record, Blur’s interpersonal relationships began to suffer. But while all involved have agreed that 13 was a challenge to complete, a decade together as a band had honed their musicianship to near-perfection. When they all plugged in, they managed a unity rare in even the most road-hardened of groups. Alex James recalled Orbit’s later admission that “the way we were able instantly to conjure an arrangement without talking about it had completely knocked him out. It had taken us a long time to be able to do that.”

One of a clutch of songs to look to faraway horizons, Battle sounds like a missive from an interplanetary craft, circling around a looped drum beat, mumbled lyrics and Coxon seemingly running a one-man insurgency with an array of combative guitar noises. Floating up from the melee, Albarn repeats the title word in falsetto, giving way to the suggestion – or perhaps decision, or capitulation – “Battle someone, ooh.” Elsewhere, Caramel takes Battle’s space-rock into zero gravity and Trimm Trabb lays these excursions on top of a mournful melody in which Albarn, though namechecking a pair of “flash boys” vintage Adidas trainers in the title, concludes, with bereft lethargy, “I’ve got no style/I’ll take my time/All those losers on the piss again/I doze, doze away/That’s just the way it is”.

In 2019, Stereogum commemorated twenty years of Blur’s 13. If it was a frazzled album in some ways that was signalling an end, it is also an apex. One of the great albums from the end of the Britpop era. The band and lead, Damon Albarn, broken down but set free:

“Of course, there was a plot to 13 — or, rather, a great deal of narrative surrounding it, which two decades on still makes it a crucial entry in Blur’s timeline and in the life of their frontman Damon Albarn. The album, famously, stemmed primarily from the end of Albarn’s relationship with Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann. For much of the decade, they’d been a Britpop celeb couple, and the final disintegration of their relationship left Albarn wounded and searching. What came out of him and Blur next was a strange mixture, an album that’s often downtrodden and defeated emotionally but liberated creatively.

Blur had rendered melancholy beautifully before, especially on career highlights like Parklife’s “This Is A Low” and The Great Escape’s “The Universal.” But those had been installments in greater tapestries, Albarn’s kaleidoscopic character studies of British life at the end of a century. He had never written from an explicitly personal place before, and 13 entirely changed this. Reeling from the loss of his relationship with Frischmann, he channeled longing and confusion and pain into songs that themselves were often breaking apart, or into songs that stand as some of the band’s most beautiful and heartrending compositions. The band’s visual language changed accordingly, too, as they fully abandoned the Technicolor Pop Art vibes of their previous albums for an oil painting done by guitarist Graham Coxon, a painting that communicated the dirty and inward-looking sounds of the album as much as it communicated its blend of physical and emotional hurt.

The whole thing, of course, opens with “Tender.” A totemic introduction, “Tender” remains not quite like anything else in Blur’s diverse catalog — a towering Britpop anthem aided by gospel, a lachrymose exorcism that can sound like the lowest point in your life at the same time as it can sound like a true salve. “Tender is the night” are the first lyrics Albarn sings on the album, sharing words with the title of a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, tapping into the desperate romanticism of another artist with an infamously fractious and public relationship. The song’s power is in how Albarn begins alone, remembering a partner who’s no longer there and singing paeans to love, and how the instrumentation continues to grow around him so that he is far from alone by its finale. Without any grand sweeping changes, the song gently climbs upwards, the chorus of voices by the end playing out like the healing Albarn pleads for in the lyrics.

If only the journey was that simple. “Tender” is one of the only moments on 13 that approaches true release. From there, 13 fires off in a lot of directions, almost all of them leading towards bleakness. There’s the caustic “Bugman,” the numbed routine of “Coffee & TV” grasping for the promise of “We can start over again,” the throbbing haze of “1992,” the spare loneliness of “No Distance Left To Run,” effectively the album’s closing statement. Perhaps the most striking tracks are “Battle” and “Caramel.” Both of them are haunting, spaced-out sagas, perfect representations of Blur’s experimental ambitions for 13 and the meditative headspace of the album thematically.

Those latter examples came from another of 13’s defining stories, that of heroin use. Hinted at throughout the years, and more explicitly discussed by Albarn earlier this decade, this was an era in which a lot of people in the scene were falling deeper into heroin use. Though Blur had offered narcotic odes before — like the self-titled’s opener “Beetlebum” — 13 is heroin music almost across the board.

Albarn’s been careful when approaching the subject. The creative exploration, the unlocking of a whole new vein of his songwriting at this juncture, he’ll credit that to heroin. But it’s also a wildly destructive force, one that lends 13 a depressive zone-out sound that once more aligned it with all the great comedown albums in Britpop’s final stretch. Like Be Here Now, Ladies And Gentlemen, and This Is Hardcore all did in their own ways, 13 combined a kind of unsexy hedonism with drained emotional landscapes. In the end it proved to be one of the band’s more difficult listens, but also perhaps their most rewarding, enduring, and evocative.

13 was, in many ways, the apex of Blur. The band had already restlessly sought out new sounds and ideas in the five albums they’d released in the preceding eight years. And the Britpop albums remain pivotal to the story of ’90s England and its music scene. Many fans might still identify one of those as their favorites, and Blur’s best songs are fairly evenly distributed throughout.

The nature of 13 demands a stronger connection. British listeners may have related to the scenery of the “Life” trilogy, but 13 is the sort of album that ingrains itself in a person’s life, that is there in our own darkest moments. Many of its songs, from “Tender” to “Trimm Trabb” to “No Distance Left To Run,” remain amongst Blur’s most beloved. And all of these existed on an album that should have sounded scattered and damaged and yet came together into such a moving whole that it seemed, definitively, to solidify the notion of Blur as true artists”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews. A number one album in the U.K., 13 was definitely commercially successful. Produced alongside William Orbit, Blur created something meaningful. This is what Pitchfork said in 2012 when reviewing Blur 21 (a compilation of seven Blur studio albums):

"Graham used to say that he wanted to make an album that nobody would want to listen to," says drummer Dave Rowntree in the box's liner notes, "But you can't do that in a band with Damon." 13, their second masterpiece, finds Albarn and Coxon's opposing sensibilities bleeding into each other like a muddy watercolor. Both were hurting. Coxon was depressed and still at odds with the rest of the band, and Albarn's long relationship with Elastica's Justine Frischmann had just ended. A coping method he'd picked up from blues and DIY alike, Coxon knew how to translate personal pathos into Blur's music. Both the Blur songs on which he sings lead, "You're So Great" and 13's "Coffee and TV", are candidly about his drinking, and on 13, he guided Albarn toward confessional songwriting, too. Albarn had always used character songs to express emotion, but his songs on 13 strip away the protective covering of wit. "I hope you're with someone who makes you feel safe in your sleep," he croaks on the gorgeous closing lament "No Distance Left to Run", while the wounded pop-spiritual "Tender" is an obvious career highlight. William Orbit's brilliant, painstaking production pushes Albarn's ever-present pop sensibility to the brink of dissolve. The Third/Sister Lovers comparison feels more apt here: 13 is a record in a sustained state of elegant unravel, full of the unexpectedly beautiful sounds that pop songs (and people) make while they're falling apart”.

I am going to round up in a second. In 2019, XS Noize revisiting a classic album twenty years later. It is one I would urge people to listen back to as it approaches its twenty-fifth anniversary. An underrated and strong effort from Blur. An album that still reveals layers to this day:

“Wondering what direction the next Blur album was going to take was something that brought up many possibilities. Would they decide the experimenting was out of their system and return to writing catchy pop anthems again? After 'Song 2's success would this be their lo-fi grunge punk album? It was confirmed that the record would be produced by William Orbit, a dance musician who had previously worked with Madonna on her 'Ray Of Light' album. Would this be Blur's dance album? Far from being littered with club anthems and trance beats, '13' would turn out to be a brave, dense, ambitious, weird, noisy and emotionally fragile piece of work that sounds even more incredible 20 years on than it did back then. Before its release, the music press was alive with speculation about what the album, and when I first read about the album's first single, the band described it as a country-gospel song. When I first heard 'Tender' I realised that while it was indeed that, it was also a whole lot more.

I bought the single on its day on release from a record shop in Bath called Rival Records, and a few weeks later excitedly purchased '13' on the day it hit the shops. I recall hearing a few of the tracks previewed on Radio One in the week leading up to the album's release, but hearing the album in full was an utter revelation. I also instantly found it to be even more of a challenging listen than its predecessor, but after a while, every single moment of '13' grew on me in a most rewarding way. With its gospel choir and inventive percussion (made up from planks of wood being banged against the studio floor), it's hard to imagine anything more uplifting than the joyously soulful 'Tender'. But this glorious opener was something of a red herring when it came to what the rest of the LP would sound like.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is the blistering 'Bugman' with its brutal guitar fuzz and pneumatic drill noise that descends into utter chaos before a stinging bassline and raucous riffage take things to a new level. 'Coffee And TV' was noticeably more pop than anything else but even the album's most accessible moment had an off-kilter quality and a slightly weird feel to it, topped off with Graham Coxon's squealing, shredding guitar towards the end. Back then it sounded almost throwaway. Now, it's an essential part of '13' that adds some much-needed light relief and a great deal of charm. It's ironic that Coxon should pen the album's most melodic and accessible track since his fondness for blistering guitar noise was key in the transformation of Blur's sound on '13' and the self-titled album released two years earlier. 'Coffee and TV' was written while Graham was struggling with his alcoholism, which had increased throughout the hedonistic 90s, with the guitarist reflecting on how he would unwind by watching television over a cup of coffee to take his mind off the booze.

'Swamp Song' is a sludgy monster, covered in heavy, muddy riffage, and indulging in the sort of reckless, chaotic fun that went on at the "party pad" that Damon Albarn and his Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett shared during the late 90s. It's The Fall doing Bowie doing Elvis, and it's a total blast. It'll also destroy your brain when played at top volume. Much was said of the personal nature of the lyrics throughout the record, and revelatory they are indeed. Damon had been in a relationship with Elastica vocalist Justine Frischmann throughout the Britpop years, and the couple's break-up in late 1997 hit him hard. "That relationship just absolutely crashed. I mean, it really was a spectacularly sad end" he remembered. "It was the first time in my life that I'd been knocked for six emotionally. I'd been very lucky up to that point and had no real reason to explore that, so that's why it's happened now."

What wasn't so public at the time was Albarn's use of heroin. Suede and Elastica's problems with the drug were well-documented, yet people only found out years later that Damon was a regular heroin user from 1996 up until some point in the 2000s. In hindsight, the clues are all there: 'Bugman' refers to "the nodding dogs", with "chasing the bug" being slang for smoking the drug in tin foil. 'Caramel' is said to hint at the colour of heroin, the "I dose away" lyric in Trimm Trabb could be about a different kind of "hit" than the ones Blur were previously known for, and theories that the Damon-Justine break-up was down to heroin use are fuelled by 'Trailerpark's refrain "I lost my girl to the Rolling Stones". Those who did notice the drug references at the time assumed that they were all pointing to Frischmann when it's very likely that Albarn was opening up about his own state of mind.

Discovered as a demo on a cassette seven years after it was recorded, the solemn, unsettling '1992' is a musical relative of 'Sing' from their debut album 'Leisure', which seems to lyrically address themes of infidelity, while the dark, sombre music aches with shattered emotions and torn hearts as anguished guitars scratch and tear away at the surface. Meanwhile, blazing rave-up 'B.L.U.R.E.M.I' goes truly berserk with its punk riffs, deranged helium voices and some wild, bizarrely-placed melodica. Following one of the short instrumental segues that are found on a few occasions throughout '13', the album's magnificent centrepiece 'Battle' arrives. 7 minutes 42 seconds of extraordinary music that showcases the four members of Blur reaching a technical peak. It's the sound of beauty and decay, pulling off the feat of being both noisy and relaxing at the same time, pairing blissful ambience with more of the incredible sounds that emerge from Coxon's distorted guitar, as fluid keys ring out to create an otherworldly atmosphere. It's a fine example of the layered sound William Orbit brings to the record, and if you play it through a good pair of headphones, you'll experience something that words cannot describe.

Many of the songs were pieced together from jam sessions, and the four members of the band were rarely in the studio together at the same time. The tension in the group was running high during the recording sessions, with Orbit recalling "There was a battle between Damon's more experimental direction, and Graham's punk one and Graham prevailed. If that tension had been growing on previous LPs, it came to a head here." Meanwhile, drummer Dave Rowntree later revealed "Things were starting to fall apart between the four of us. It was quite a sad process making it. People were not turning up to the sessions, or turning up drunk, being abusive and storming off." Coxon admitted later "I was really out there around 13, which made for some pretty great noise but I was probably a bit of a crap to be around."

The mesmerising 'Mellow Song' switches from bare voice and acoustic guitar to a slow, humpy rhythm topped off with an addictive bassline and more of that melodica, an instrument that Albarn makes superb use of on '13'. The middle part turns into a magnificent psychedelic circus but plays well with the moody acoustic grunge verses. 'Trailerpark' instantly conjures up images of dirty ghetto streets with its tone of squalor. It was originally premiered a year previously at the band's 1998 headline set at Glastonbury. The half-rapped delivery is again highly reminiscent of The Fall's Mark E. Smith, especially so in its live incarnation, while his deepest and most solemn tone is saved for the chorus. Style-wise its a clear precursor to the hip-hop flavours of Albarn's hugely successful Gorillaz.

However, the vocalist's most emotional performance is reserved for the desolate ambience of 'Caramel'. It almost feels like you shouldn't be hearing something so personal, but clearly, this song couldn't have existed any other way. Ambient textures flow into one another dramatically as the overwhelming heartbreak is exhibited so openly and sincerely. 'Trimm Trabb' is made up of another rhythm formed from odd percussion sounds and a rather grungy acoustic riff, before exploding like a nail bomb at the end as Coxon unleashes a torrent of devastating guitar. The candid, spacious 'No Distance Left To Run' again finds Damon at his most fragile and soulful, complimented by an effectively minimal arrangement. '13' concludes with the lovely oddity 'Optigan 1, a short Joe Meek-esque instrumental with a nod to some of the fairground and end-of-pier vibes that featured on a few 'Parklife' tracks, but this time far more grainy, sounding like some long lost 78 record from the past.

When '13' was released I had been a Blur fan for five years and was always pleased to see them taking new directions, but this album did take a while to sound like the seminal piece of work that it represents today. 20 years later '13' is a record that resonates even more now than it did back then, and stands as perhaps the most essential Blur album. It cemented Blur's legacy and reputation as one of Britain's all-time greatest musical exports. The LP scored Blur their fourth consecutive Number 1 album in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Years later, it's regarded as one of the group's finest works”.

On 15th March, Blur’s 13 turns twenty-five. Even though the band were dislocated and falling apart, we all know that they came back together. We can look at 13 now with less anxiety. At the time, it was quite tough for fans of the band; perhaps not realising that they were having real struggles behind the scenes. Even so, 13 stands as one of the best albums from the band. Beautiful, honest and hugely varied, its odder deep cuts stand alongside classic singles such as Tender. In ending the century, Blur put out an incredible artistic statement. The mighty and magnificent 13 is…

A tremendous album.

FEATURE: Mr. Self Destruct: Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Mr. Self Destruct

  

Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral at Thirty

_________

I will come to…

IN THIS PHOTO: Nine Inch Nails captured in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Albert Watson

a review for Nine Inch Nails’ second studio album, The Downward Spiral. Released on the same day as Soundgarden’s Superunknown - 8th March, 1994 -, this album was perhaps even less conventional and uncommercial. In the sense that it does not instantly sound radio-friendly and bound for the charts. A concept cycle about a man who goes to a downward spiral to the point of suicide, one might wonder why it his album remains so popular and ensuring. If some critics in 1994 found the music too abrasive and off-putting, The Downward Spiral has received retrospective correction and much more praise. Due to the delayed release of the album – because of the time it took to record -, maybe there was a sense of disappointment after hype and wait. Even so, The Downward Spiral reached number two in the U.S. It has sold over four million copies. If small faction did see this as career suicide for Nine Inch Nails, there are more than that who view The Downward Spiral as a compelling classic. The Nine Inch Nails lead, Trent Reznor, had moved to 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles - the site of the murder of actress Sharon Tate by members of the Manson Family in 1969 - to record. It was transformed into a studio for the band’s 1992 Broken EP and The Downward Spiral. Maybe helping the sound and tone of the album, it is a very strange and dark settings to record anything! Maybe indicative of the mindset of Reznor at the time, it is a hard listen for anyone not familiar with Nine Inch Nails. Reznor has said how The Downward Spiral was an extension of his own personal struggles, as he was dealing social anxiety disorder and depression and he had started his abuse of narcotics. A perfectionist in the studio, he was dealing with alcohol binges and writer's block.

I want to come to some features about The Downward Spiral. Last year, Kerrang! talked about the cultural impact of Nine Inch Nails’ 1994 masterpiece. Within the darkness and despair is something that has endured and survived. A brilliance and work that so many people have taken to heart. Perhaps the most revealing and raw album from the U.S. band:

“I really like The Downward Spiral,” the band’s fearsome, then 29-year-old Trent Reznor said upon completion of a second album that’s become a byword for singular, uncompromising excellence. “There aren’t any obvious radio and MTV songs.”

At that point Trent was right, of course. The Downward Spiral seemed entirely alien and far from chart fodder. One of its singles was a relentless, throbbing, structurally unusual assault called March Of The Pigs. Closer featured the lyric, ‘I want to fuck you like an animal,’ against a hissing disco beat. Elsewhere, on Heresy, Trent spits, ‘God is dead and no-one cares.’ Even the album’s most accessible track, the piano-driven closer Hurt, was about self-harm and heroin addiction. In fact, that such a stark, nakedly vulnerable offering could, by contrast, appear so welcoming, is testament to the sense of pervading despair.

Despite The Downward Spiral seeming so unpalatable – the sound, as Trent put it in 1998, of “shedding skin, taking a layer off and analysing it” – the album became an unprecedented success. Upon its release, it reached Number Two in the Billboard 200.

“All I hope is that there are a few people who’ll think, ‘Wow, I’m not the only person who thought those things,’” Trent said upon its release. The album has since sold a remarkable 3.7 million copies in the U.S. alone.

“I made a small-scale, personal, potentially ugly record that reflected how I felt,” was Trent’s understated appraisal. Showcasing a complicated relationship with his responsibilities as an artist that continues to this day, he added, “Some of those ugly things are things you wouldn’t want to tell your mom, your friends or even your lover. But it’s no public fucking service either. It’s just what I felt.”…

Two rock classics were also looming large over his creative thoughts: David Bowie’s 1977 album Low, and Pink Floyd’s 1979 release The Wall. Both featured artists making drastic left turns during fraught periods in their lives. In Bowie’s case, it was his struggle with cocaine, coupled with a sense of dislocation after moving from Los Angeles to Berlin. Pink Floyd, meanwhile, had grown disillusioned with the scale of their shows during 1977’s In The Flesh tour, not to mention the way their audience interacted with them. This culminated in an incident during a show at Montreal Olympic Stadium, when bassist and songwriter Roger Waters spat in the face of one rowdy fan. The Wall was Roger’s exploration of his own horror and the self-imposed isolation it inspired.

PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Harries

The Downward Spiral clearly pulled on threads from both albums. From Low, as illustrated by a largely instrumental second half created with ambient supremo Brian Eno, was the use of synthesisers to build soundscapes that conveyed an atmosphere of disquiet (NIN would, of course, end up supporting David Bowie on his Outside Tour in 1995). From The Wall, The Downward Spiral took the idea of having an overarching concept in which to articulate a sense of frustration and alienation. Trent Reznor, like Roger Waters, had felt the deep undercurrent of negativity that can envelope a rock star on a big stage. And, as Roger Waters had done on The Wall, Trent built an album around a wounded central figure to help him navigate it.

At that point in his life, Trent’s wounds had numerous sources. His relationship with bandmate Richard Patrick had become so fractious that Richard would quit in the midst of recording The Downward Spiral, and form new band Filter soon afterwards. As one source of anxiety disappeared, however, another took its place, as Trent’s relationship with drugs intensified during the 18-month recording.

Despite his struggles, NIN had no trouble recruiting formidable talent to bring this bleak vision to life, with the legendary Flood (aka Mark Ellis) co-producing, and contributions from the likes of Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins and King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew. The latter, who would play on three more NIN albums, is on particularly searing form during opener Mr. Self-Destruct. Trent has since described him as “the most awesome musician in the world”.

The after effects of The Downward Spiral, however, were destructive.

“I wound up distorted, someone I didn’t know,” Trent would say of the aftermath to K! in 1999. The Downward Spiral had an effect on the wider world, as well. Upon its release, the Republican Party took issue with the lyrics from the track Big Man With A Gun, suggesting that they attacked American conservatives. Trent later clarified that the song satirised gangsta rap. The greater storm came in 1999, however, when it was revealed Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre, had made diary references to The Downward Spiral in the years before he and classmate Eric Harris murdered 13 people”.

There are a few more pieces I want to source before I finish off. The Quietus looked at The Downward Spiral in 2014. Twenty years after its release, Nine Inch Nails’ second album sounded even more like the future then. Perhaps just as relevant today, it is a big reason why The Downward Spiral has this endurance and popularity:

“What is easily forgotten here is that Reznor was really pushing the boundaries, he was creating new sounds that would not fit into recognized emotional associations and he was doing this before the days when any floppy-haired goth could punch it out on their iPad. It does seem almost a shame that these effects are so easily reproduced these days, leading to legions of diluted and passionless NIN imitators.

Beneath all the noise, however, are some excellently crafted pop tunes. 'Piggy' and album single 'March Of The Pigs' are, for different reasons, both proof of Reznor's gift for a tasty hook. He showed this off on Pretty Hate Machine as well, but here he seems to have taken the pop sensibilities from influences like Depeche Mode and turned them into something darker and dirtier and, most of all, wrenched right out of the 80s. An incredible thing about listening to this album in context is how well it holds up in comparison to its contemporaries. Also celebrating a twentieth anniversary currently is Soundgarden's Superunknown, which happened to be the only record that kept Downward Spiral off the top of the U.S. charts when they were both released twenty years ago. Possibly owing to the clarity of Reznor's production, it's mind-blowing that these are from the same decade, let alone the same month – Superunknown sounds so 'retro' in comparison. It's no wonder that David Bowie took a shine to young Trent and his groundbreaking, obnoxious noise.

The recording process itself was also notable because at the time Reznor was renting 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, where the most famous of the Manson Family murders took place. Though it was over twenty years since Sharon Tate and her house guests were so brutally slaughtered, it was still quite a big talking point when Reznor took up residence and built Le Pig studio inside it. He later admitted that naming the studio after the word once scrawled in blood on the front door was in particularly bad taste, but would also take said door as a souvenir with him after leaving the property.

It's hard to say why he would do such a thing without much consideration over why taking up residence there was a controversial move. I do believe that Reznor was genuine in saying that it wasn't for press, but rather out of simple curiosity about 'American folklore'. Pretty Hate Machine had seen the band getting big in a "strange way" according to Reznor. And always much more the anti-star than any others at the time, he was all about satisfying himself over anyone else. In fact, Reznor went about creating angrier and angrier music with noise of escalating, clanging terror and bitter dirge. He seemed bent on creating something totally non-commercial and even went so far as taking the catchiest song on the record, 'Closer', and turning it into something nigh on impossible to get on the radio. He also accompanied it with a disturbing video showing bondage, nudity, a monkey tied to a cross and various bloody and disembodied animal parts. But to his own detriment/fortune, Reznor couldn't hide his own melodic skills and 'Closer' became his biggest hit up to that point (not to mention the heaps of praise that the video has received over the years). With this in mind, it's actually quite comical to watch him lament in interviews about 'not doing enough' to keep from getting so big.

But if I were Reznor I wouldn't regret a thing – except maybe the whole Tate house fiasco – as The Downward Spiral remains a dynamic and layered work that offers more at every listen. Though it takes time for some to fully appreciate it, its varied textures and moods make it both a staple and subverter of industrial music. The melodies are actually very accessible, once accessed; you just have to wade through and learn to appreciate the noise, distractions and overall dirt around them. Just because something jars your senses, be that thundering dissonance or the smell of 70,000 kids not giving a shit, it doesn't mean there's no poignancy and meaning behind it”.

I am going to end soon. I am interested in the LoudWire retrospective from 2023. Noticing how different The Downward Spiral is from Nine Inch Nails’ 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine, it was a long creative process making the album happen:

“By March 8, 1994, Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails cohorts finally released The Downward Spiral. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, bested only by Soundgarden's Superunkown in its opening week. But it didn't have a hot song right out of the gate.

The thrashy industrial rocker "March of the Pigs" was released a week ahead of the album's street date, but only managed to climb to No. 59 on the charts. It wasn't a natural song for radio play, but was definitely embraced by fans of the band in the live setting who loved the high energy BPMs that bridged the song's piano breakdowns. Adding to the song's legacy was the single-camera video for the track, which simply had the band rambunctiously performing on a white soundstage, with no mic stand in site safe. While the track set things in motion for the album, no one could have predicted what would come next.

In May of 1994, Nine Inch Nails released a funky single called "Closer" that needed major edits in order to be aired both on MTV and radio. But there was no denying the infectious nature of the song. With the memorable NSFW line, "I want to f--k you like an animal," Nine Inch Nails had a hit on their hands. "The song started with that line. Everything else kind of got pieced around that," said Reznor. "I was trying to get a vibe something like the song 'Nightclubbing' from Iggy Pop's album The Idiot. I don't know what it sounded like when it came out. But now it sounds like a real obvious, cheesy, almost disco, song--but in a cool way."

And while the song needed edits to cover the curse words, the video needed much more work before it could air. The singer told Spin, "I thought, f--k it, instead of the Super 8 video directors we've used in the past, underground people, let's go with Mr. F--king Gloss, Mark Romanek, who just did that Michael Jackson piece of s--t. But he could do a beautiful shot, Stanley Kubrick-like in its attention to detail. So we decided to spend some money and go to ridiculous lengths to recreate some works of artists that we liked, from Joel-Peter Witkin to Man Ray, Brothers Quay, this hodgepodge of stuff. The video was great. It was cool as f--k looking. Right away, MTV said, 'Can't have that, can't have that.' Now okay, there was naked p--sy. We knew that was going to get cut. And then we got complaints that people still found the video disturbing. 'Well why?' 'Well, we don't know why, but it seems satanic and evil.' And then I thought, 'Great, we did it.'" "Closer would fall just shy of breaking the Top 40 on Billboard's Hot 100, but did climb to No. 11 at Alternative Radio”.

I will end with Rolling Stone’s review from 1994. In a year of such diversity and brilliance, Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral definitely sat alongside the best. During a year where Britpop was starting to really take shape in the U.K., U.S. albums like The Downward Spiral and Soundgarden’s Superunknown offered something opposite. A much darker and inward-looking sound to the more jubilant and bombastic British alternative:

“NINE INCH NAILS achieve a new kind of loud on The Downward Spiral: accessible hard-rock moves overlaid with a scrim of electronic racket, white noise, screams, the kind of blown-speaker rattle that seems to use the limitations of crappy stereo equipment the way that Hendrix riffed on the distortion that howled from overdriven Marshall stacks. It’s a new frontier in rock & roll: music that pins playback levels far into the red. You have only two options with this album: Play it too softly, or play it too loud.

When you slap on “Mr. Self-Destruct,” for example, the first song on the CD, the soft passages are soft chiefly in the sense of not being loud, as if there were a really great party down the street that you were wimping out on, pumped guitars and cranking boom-thwack drum machines and whatnot. But almost as soon as you rush to your pre-amp and squeeze in more juice, the loud comes back in, but so unimaginably loud this time that you think your speaker coils might melt, and old man Reilly in the next apartment has already started to bang his broomstick on the wall.

Then you turn it down and start the cycle again. Sure, bands like Nirvana play the soft-loud game, too, but Nine Inch Nails auteur Trent Reznor takes it to sadistic extremes, especially since the song — without the power riffing and the howl, the distortion and the infinite layering — would essentially be as melodic as a late Beatles tune.

What Robert Plant was to the post-blues screech and Kurt Cobain is to Northwest grunge, Reznor is to tortured death-disco howl — existential pain expressed as rock & roll. His 1990 anthem, “Head Like a Hole,” from Pretty Hate Machine, came this close to becoming what “Smells Like Teen Spirit” became — the theme song of smart misfits everywhere. Then Nine Inch Nails stole the show from Jane’s Addiction on the first Lollapalooza tour — and sold more T-shirts, too. And when the steel-edged dance-punk hybrid known as industrial finally became popular, a lot of people were betting that Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, the two most important bands associated with the genre, had the potential to redefine rock in their own image.

Ministry, of course, did kind of redefine rock, with an awe-inspiring speedmetal/disco blend that delighted Beavis and Butthead even as it failed to win many converts from fans of less extreme music. Nine Inch Nails came out with Broken at the end of ’92, an intriguingly unlistenable meditation on how much Reznor hated his old record company. While the EP didn’t really break new ground, it did get that second-album thing out of the way.

“March of the Pigs,” the first single from Spiral, alternates purest torment — the anguish of swine before the slaughter — with a piano hook saccharine enough to sell pre-sweetened cereal to toddlers. “Piggy” is an affectionately whispered, almost-tender lost-love song that carries the emotional weight of a George Jones ballad. There’s a lot of pig imagery in the song, perhaps inspired by the nihilist legend carved into slain actress Sharon Tate’s pregnant belly, but the LP is less nihilistic than you might expect.

Recorded not incidentally in the Beverly Hills living room where Tate was murdered (the living room, also not incidentally, of Reznor’s home), The Downward Spiral explores Reznor’s No. 1 subject — control — in a thousand different guises. Paranoia, predation and acceptance, sex power and religious power and gun power, the power of the suffering over the guilty and the consumer over the consumed are all blasted out with the kind of overwhelming presence Baudelaire might have had if he’d had access to a battery of Macintoshes, a MIDI hookup and a Strat.

Reznor’s voice seduces and insinuates where it previously expressed itself only in animal screams; it slithers into your ears and curls up somewhere near the medulla oblongata. He sometimes even expresses an emotion that isn’t anger, which throws the full-on assault of his catch phrases — “Don’t you tell me how I feel”; “Your God is dead, and no one cares” — into brilliant relief.

The Downward Spiral is music the blade runner might throw down to: low-tech futurism that rocks”.

Turning thirty on 8th March, I do hope there is new inspection of Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. Viewed as one of the most important albums of the 1990s and some of Trent Reznor’s best work, it is an album that everybody needs to hear – even if it is quite challenging and dark. Out on the same day as the quite bleak and anxious Superunknown, it was an interesting day for releases. Regardless, that day – 8th March, 1994 – gave us two classics from two remarkable bands. The tremendous The Downward Spiral is definitely…

WORTHY of respect and applause.

FEATURE: Won't You Come, and Wash Away the Rain? Soundgarden’s Superunknown at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Won't You Come, and Wash Away the Rain?

 

Soundgarden’s Superunknown at Thirty

_________

IT will be an emotional day…

PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Harries

when 8th March arrives. It is a time to celebrate thirty years since the release of Soundgarden’s Superunknown. No doubt one of the best albums of the 1990s, it is also sad that the band’s lead, Chris Cornell, is no longer with us (he died by suicide in 2017). His voice and lyrics are so crucial to the success and brilliance of the album. So poetic and intelligent as a songwriter, his awesome vocal power and range makes each of the fifteen tracks so compelling. Even though the album is seventy minutes and is quite sprawling, there seems to be no waste or bloat on Soundgarden’s fourth studio album. In fact, the international version of the album have sixteen tracks – ending on She Likes Surprises rather than Like Suicide. Less than a month before Grunge godfather Kurt Cobain died (5th April, 1994), we got an album that seemed to predict something terrible. Black Hole Sun, the best-known track from Superunknown, has that feeling of needing something to wash away pain and darkness. Produced with Michael Beinhorn, Soundgarden released a timeless album. One that seemed to capture a mood perfectly in 1994. In perhaps music’s greatest-ever year, Superunknown stands alongside the greatest albums from the year. I will end with some reviews of Superunknown. Prior to that, there are features about the album that are worth bringing in. Whilst many have seen the 1994 album as harrowing, alienating and tortured, there is so much richness and range on the album. Rather than seeing it as an insight into Chris Cornell’s psyche at the time, I feel it is a testament to the remarkable talent of this man. Words that can resonate with many people but also offer hope and depth. It is hard to explain. I feel many paint Superunknown as bleak. That is not how I see it.

In 2022, Kerrang! discussed how Superunknown was a breakthrough for Soundgarden. A legacy that has lasted all of this time, there is no doubt that this album – released on 8th March, 1994 – is a masterpiece. Even stronger than the remarkable Badmotorfinger of 1991:

“Soundgarden were the first of the big grunge acts to sprout and yet the last to bloom. At least commercially. Long before Nirvana and Pearl Jam struck gold with Nevermind and Ten respectively, Soundgarden had impressed with their staggering musical intelligence – fusing punk, metal and rock with an array of bewildering time signatures and dynamics. And that was to say nothing of Chris’ voice: both sky-scraping and inimitable.

By 1991 they were drowning in critical acclaim following classic third album Badmotorfinger, but they weren’t smashing charts. Moreover, when Soundgarden toured that album supporting Guns N’ Roses, they soon found the rock world to be a divided nation. When Kerrang! interviewed them in Australia on their headline tour ahead of Superunknown’s release, they were ecstatic simply to be playing to their own fans.

“We went to Europe with Guns N’ Roses playing in front of 60,000 people who didn’t give a shit about us,” Chris reflected.

At the time of recording Superunknown in 1993, Soundgarden were a band searching for individuation: not just to distinguish themselves from every other band, but also from what they had done previously. First, they changed the way they worked.

“Someone would bring in a demo of a song they wrote, and as opposed to really concentrating on why we liked it and what it was about the original idea, we’d just sort of Soundgarden-ise it,” Chris told K! about their old method. “That can make an album sound a little more sterile.”

Their new material would be different and their musical remit would have to expand to accommodate it. Twenty tracks in total were made at Seattle’s legendary Bad Animals studio with producer Michael Beinhorn, before whittling that number down to 15.

Chris Cornell delivered big moments aplenty, including the classic singles The Day I Tried To Live and Fell On Black Days, plus frenetic opener Let Me Drown. But one of his songs would, of course, go on to eclipse the rest, at least in terms of mainstream attention. Even in the present day, the disenchanted psychedelia of Black Hole Sun remains extraordinary. Chris told Rolling Stone he saw it as a “surreal, esoteric word painting”.

Indeed, the whole album painted with an unrestricted palette. Keyboards, alternative tunings, viola, cello, spoons and, in the case of My Wave, even a nod to surf-rock were all introduced. It is, in the words of guitarist Kim Thayil speaking for a Spotify commentary on the 20th anniversary reissue, a “perfect headphones album”.

Each member made big contributions. Some of the most arresting riffs belong neither to Chris nor Kim but rather drummer Matt Cameron, who not only conceived of the central riff for Mailman but also played mellotron on it. Fresh Tendrils was another Matt composition (made even more atypical by including clavinet), and so was the rising guitar of Limo Wreck. “Our drummer came up with that,” gushed Kim.

Two of the album’s most unique songs came courtesy of bassist Ben Shepherd. The disembodied, twisting strains of Head Down was his creation, as was the Indian music-influenced Half. Chris even refused to sing on the latter, insisting that it would lose its character without Ben’s voice.

Kim Thayil not only served up the surging, punky Kickstand, as you would expect, he augmented songs brilliantly, adding compelling layers and riffs. Most stunning of all was his standout solo on Like Suicide.

Soundgarden didn’t shy away from the molten noise that had defined them, either. On 4th Of July – inspired by Chris’ LSD trip on an Indian reservation – they arguably delivered their heaviest moment.

When all of the above was put together in the studio, Soundgarden had recorded an album that fit their own adventurous brief and was set to confound expectations. “There has been much rumour about Superunknown… the dreaded word ‘commercial’ has been bandied about,” reported K! ahead of its release. “It’s far from commercial, but it’s not Badmotorfinger 2.”

As its legacy would attest, this was something else entirely.

Soundgarden soon unravelled after their mainstream breakthrough. They would release one more (excellent) album, 1996’s Down On The Upside, before imploding. Though it took 16 years before they would release 2012’s King Animal, even in that protracted absence, Superunknown remained omnipresent in rock’s collective conscience.

Much of it was dark, articulating themes of loss, depression and isolation with unflinching grace and a searing poetic edge. Reflecting with Rolling Stone in 2012, Chris – who had always been so allergic to nostalgia – reappraised their masterpiece.

“There’s an eeriness in there, a kind of unresolvable sadness or indescribable longing that I’ve never really tried to isolate and define and fully understand,” he said. “But it’s always there. It’s like a haunted thing.”

In light of the tragedy of his passing in 2017, it is perhaps now more haunting than ever. The loss of Chris Cornell – and, indeed, of Soundgarden – is one rock fans will mourn greatly. But such grief should also be tempered by the undiminished power of their music. ‘Alive in the Superunknown,’ Chris bellowed on the title-track’s chorus. So he was then. So he shall remain”.

Before coming to a couple of reviews, there is an interesting feature from Consequence of Sound. Marking the twentieth anniversary of Superunknown in 2014, their colleagues Matt Melis and Henry Hauser discussed the album’s place in both the band’s history and the legacy of the Grunge movement. There are some interesting exchanges and observations. I never thought about the track sequencing and, if you had to, would you cut a song from this classic?! There is no doubt everyone has their own favourite tracks from Superunknown:

“MM: What’s your favorite cut off the record?

HH: That would be “Head Down”. The track kicks off with Cornell’s soft whisper lulling us into a numb calm. Complex time signature shifts come into play once again, really showcasing Cameron’s impeccable timing. The drummer takes a 20-second victory lap as the track fades, almost like a curtain call after a Herculean effort. Fully deserved.

Is there a track you would drop?

MM: It’s bordering on sacrilege, but I never understood the hysteria over “Black Hole Sun”, even though that song blew Soundgarden up. And do you remember the video? Christ, that gave me nightmares. All those Enzyte commercial smiles and morphing, impish faces. But it plays so long and always struck me as a bizarre take on an old-timey song like “You Are My Sunshine”. It’s the only track I routinely skip over. I’m guessing you and the 19 million YouTubers who’ve watched it don’t agree.

HH: I agree in part and dissent in part. I find the melodic guitar and cold, distant harmonies to be really compelling. But for all this catchy, cosmic, psychedelic pop, it’s a self-obsessed song and goes on for way too long. Plus, it’s been playing in select coffee shops for two decades straight. Tons of overplayed songs become parodies of themselves; it’s unavoidable.

MM: Or become part of Weird Al polka medleys.

So, Soundgarden announced that they’ll be playing Superunknown in its entirety next week down in Austin as part of the iTunes Festival. Is this something to get excited about attending or streaming?

HH: I think Superunknown deserves the spotlight, but I hope this doesn’t mean they’re going to exclude material from the first three albums. That would be unfortunate.

MM: Would you want a second set that delved into the rest of their discography?

HH: Yeah, I’d be hoping for a second set. And I’d also advise them to shuffle up the order.

MM: Abandon the original sequence?

HH: I would. I think it works well in an album context, but a lot of the most visceral cuts are towards the front of the LP. In terms of playing a live set, if they stick to the original order they’re going to get through all the singles relatively early. That doesn’t make for a grand climax, which is what they ought to be going for.

What do you think?

MM: It’s like a movie you love. You know every scene, beat, and twist, and there’s an emotional and psychological payoff when you can anticipate what’s coming and it still delivers when it arrives. So, I do think there’s something to seeing the journey through from opener to closer, never being surprised but also never being bored by knowing what’s coming. So, the original sequence would be my preference”

I would urge anyone who does not own Superunknown to go and buy it. In 2014, to mark its twentieth anniversary, there were reissues. Depending on your budget, there was a two or five-disc set. Soundgarden’s magnum opus was reviewed by Pitchfork in 2014. They were hugely positive about this incredible and epic album:

“Usually, it’s a bad sign when the wild-child frontman of your favorite group cuts his hair and starts wearing shirts. But the clean-cut Cornell that emerged with Superunknown was emblematic of the album’s mission to deliver maximal effect with minimal histrionics. With its despairing worldview, gold-plated production, and CD-stuffing 71-minute running time, Superunknown is a quintessential ’90s artifact. But thanks to its still-formidable high-wire balance of hooks and heft, the album nonetheless represents, some 20 years later, the platonic ideal of what a mainstream hard rock record should be. And even if that’s an ideal to which few contemporary bands aspire (aside from, say, Queens of the Stone Age), Superunknown remains a useful model for any left-of-center artist hoping to achieve accessibility without sacrificing identity.

For Soundgarden, the push toward pop was the result of incremental evolutions rather than a spectacular leap. Where Badmotorfinger introduced flashes of psychedelia and paisley-patterned melody amid Kim Thayil’s pulverizing riffage, on Superunknown, these elements become featured attractions. The once-oblique John Lennon references gave way to unabashed homage—centerpiece power ballad “Black Hole Sun” is pretty much “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” turned upside down and dropped in a heap of soot and coal. That song counts as Superunknown’s most wanton act of subversion—setting its apocalyptic imagery to a tune so pretty, even Paul Anka can dig it—but if that element of surprise has been diluted by two decades of perpetual rock-radio rotation, the album boasts a wealth of less celebrated deep cuts (the queasy psych-folk of “Head Down,” the dread-ridden doom of “4th of July”) that retain a palpable sense of unease.

Even the album’s eternal fist-pump anthems—“The Day I Tried to Live”, “Fell on Black Days”, “My Wave”—are infected with misanthropy and malaise, making Superunknown the rare arena-rock album that makes just as much sense in blacked-out bedroom. (And yet, despite the junkie intimations of its title, “Spoonman” is really just about a man who plays with spoons.) That said, if you don’t hate the world now quite as much as did when you were 18, you may find yourself skipping over the leaden likes of “Mailman” and “Limo Wreck,” while developing a newfound appreciation for how bassist Ben Shepherd’s India-inspired oddity, “Half”, injects a welcome dose of absurdity into the mix.

By fortuitous coincidence, Superunknown hit stores the same day as Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, an album boasting a similarly expansive scope and thematic framework, albeit approached from a drastically different set of influences (’80s new wave, goth, and electro as opposed to ’60s classic rock). The connection between the two albums is strong enough that the two bands toured together in 1994 and—despite some shit-talkin’ in the interim—are reuniting once again this summer for a joint-20th-anniversary jaunt. For casual Soundgarden fans who still own the record, a concert ticket may ultimately be a more efficient way of celebrating Superunknown’s birthday than by shelling out for this reissue (available in two-and five-CD box set iterations), whose bonus material mostly amounts to demos and rehearsal tapes that cast this epic album in a more normalizing light. However, you do develop a greater appreciation for the final product when you hear the ideas that got scrapped along the away or relegated to B-sides, like the dirgey embryonic arrangement of “Fell on Black Days” (a.k.a. “Black Days III”), the free-form ambient stew of “Jerry Garcia’s Finger”, and a club-friendly industrial funk mix of “Spoonman” by Steve Fisk that sounds like a test run for his beat-driven project Pigeonhed.

You also get a glimpse of the band’s future course with a beautifully spare acoustic treatment of “Like Suicide” that points the way to 1996’s more temperate Down on the Upside, the album that effectively triggered Soundgarden’s subsequent 13-year break-up. But then the go-for-broke, peak-conquering triumphalism of Superunknown was itself a harbinger that the writing was on the wall for this band at the time. When Cornell sings, “Alive in the superunknown” on the album’s acid-swirled title track, it’s both a valorous testament to Soundgarden’s last-gang-in-town fortitude and a telling prophecy of the uncertainty to come, with grunge’s early ’90s stranglehold on alt-rock radio soon to be loosened by the emergence of pop-punk, Britpop, electronica, and nu-metal. But amid a musical landscape now splintered into infinite subgenres, Superunknown remains the very definition of no-qualifiers-required rock—a tombstone for a once-dominant aesthetic, perhaps, but also a solid, immovable mass that endures no matter how dramatically its surroundings have changed”.

I am going to round up with a review from AllMusic. If some find Superunknown too dark or heavy a listen, there are those that can appreciate the range and depth of the album. The smarts, the anxiety, the measured moments, the anthems and surprise moments. Taking Metal and Grunge to new places, there is no doubt that Superunknown inspired so many other artists. It was a huge statement. Seen as one of the best albums ever, Chris Cornell, Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd and Matt Cameron delivered a masterpiece on 8th March, 1994:

“Soundgarden's finest hour, Superunknown is a sprawling, 70-minute magnum opus that pushes beyond any previous boundaries. Soundgarden had always loved replicating Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath riffs, but Superunknown's debt is more to mid-period Zep's layered arrangements and sweeping epics. Their earlier punk influences are rarely detectable, replaced by surprisingly effective appropriations of pop and psychedelia. Badmotorfinger boasted more than its fair share of indelible riffs, but here the main hooks reside mostly in Chris Cornell's vocals; accordingly, he's mixed right up front, floating over the band instead of cutting through it. The rest of the production is just as crisp, with the band achieving a huge, robust sound that makes even the heaviest songs sound deceptively bright.

But the most important reason Superunknown is such a rich listen is twofold: the band's embrace of psychedelia, and their rapidly progressing mastery of songcraft. Soundgarden had always been a little mind-bending, but the full-on experiments with psychedelia give them a much wider sonic palette, paving the way for less metallic sounds and instruments, more detailed arrangements, and a bridge into pop (which made the eerie ballad "Black Hole Sun" an inescapable hit). That blossoming melodic skill is apparent on most of the record, not just the poppier songs and Cornell-penned hits; though a couple of drummer Matt Cameron's contributions are pretty undistinguished, they're easy to overlook, given the overall consistency. The focused songwriting allows the band to stretch material out for grander effect, without sinking into the pointlessly drawn-out muck that cluttered their early records. The dissonance and odd time signatures are still in force, though not as jarring or immediately obvious, which means that the album reveals more subtleties with each listen. It's obvious that Superunknown was consciously styled as a masterwork, and it fulfills every ambition”.

Even though there has been an anniversary reissue, I hope that many revisit Superunknown ahead of its thirtieth anniversary. So many classics from 1994 have anniversaries coming up. Without doubt one of the finest albums of that incredible year, I remember when it came out. Watching the video for Black Hole Sun for the first time when I was ten. Listening to the album years later – maybe in the late-1990s – and being blown away by it. Even though Chris Cornell is no longer with us, we remember him through albums like this. Such a compelling and amazing songwriter and singer. Someone who can never be replaced or forgotten. We will definitely remember the phenomenal Superunknown…

FOR decades to come.