LaRM day 34 (Bee Gees-Chris Bell)

So, Odessa (1969). This is a fantastic album, bonkers, sprawling, absurd, and quite brilliant. The idea of the Bee Gees making a genuinely brilliant album is sort of absurd to begin with, but this is the one. It's a mammoth double album, originally intended to be a concept album but when they all fell out with each other, that idea was abandoned and instead we have unconnected songs about Russia in the 19th century, the British empire and hillbilly families amidst the psychedelic love songs. Stylistically it's all over the place with country and blues rock as well as the delicate psychedelia and the densely orchestrated numbers (the orchestral arrangement on 'You'll Never See My Face Again' is really lovely), but it all works, there's scarcely a dud song and certainly there are no dud arrangements. It's the sound of a band struggling to find its own identity after years of pastiche and essentially failing, but as a result making a truly remarkable and fabulous album in the process. Now we skip forward six years and six albums to alight on the Bee Gees opening disco salvo of 1975's Main Course. This is also a very good album, but in a totally different way. There are great songs here and the disco stylings are really interesting (Jive Talking's ace choppy guitar) but as with most disco, even when it's as brilliantly done as this, it sounds totally and utterly stupid. All those daft squelching synths and falsetto vocals, it's just all so cheesy. But if you can take that in your stride, this is a great record, and unlike the albums to come, it's not overloaded with disco cheese. There's still room for a couple of decent love songs and ballads and the balance is all about right. After this it all gets so utterly daft that I can't listen to it, and so ends the Bee Gees chapter.

Next up is the second album by Beekeeper which is called Ostrich (1998). This was the outfit of Karla and Matt Schickele, before she joined Ida. It's an interesting piece of experimental indie, and the siblings odd harmonies and even odder instrumental arrangements are on the whole really successful. It's a fairly low-key album but its peculiarities really underscore just how well constructed and attractive Karla's melodies are. What she would bring to Ida is well represented by this record, it's really good.

And at this point, under no instruction and for no discernible reason, Spotify seems to have instructed iTunes to wipe my entire ipod thereby putting an end to pretty much the whole thing for the day. Technology, eh? Shit isn't it? Anyway, I'll stagger on as best I can until I hit a defining stumbling block. So, thanks to Grooveshark, we have next the Be Good Tanyas third and last album, Hello Love (2006). I love the Be Good Tanyas, I think they're ace. There's something very dark and very strange in these Canadian folk records and while the vocal phrasing takes a bit of getting used to, their three albums are all quite special. Hello Love is maybe the least successful of the three but there's little really to judge between them and there are some fabulous bits of sharp edged folk on it and the band's three vocals do their usual wonderful harmonising, in which one person will always slip out of key or yelp or something to add a weird depth. Anyway, it's a really good record.

Then it's Norway's esoteric answer to the Cocteau Twins, Bel Canto and their third album, Shimmering, Warm and Bright (1992). While being nowhere nearly as good or inventive as the Cocteau Twins, Bel Canto nevertheless made a couple of lovely records, using electronics rather than treated guitars. They do veer dangerously close to naff on occasion, but on the whole these are lovely bits of delicate pretension and there's no denying that Anneli Drecker has a fabulous voice.

So a couple of quick ones to finish off - Archie Bell & the Drells compo Platinum Collection taking in a whole load of their joyous funk and soul in the late 1960's including, of course, the legendary 'Tighten Up', which is the ultimate example of the funk riff, never bettered, with Archie himself inviting us all to join him in having an excellent time. The genius of the riff was not lost on the Drells and they basically replicated it a number of times and the first half of this compilation is rife with it. There are a stack of other great tunes on here too though, including some fantastic slowies, but when it all ends with 'Tighten Up part 2', you can tell everybody knew at the time that this was as good as it was going to get.

To finish we have Chris Bell's posthumously cobbled together collection of demos and full recordings, I Am the Cosmos (1975). Obviously the majority of these songs are fantastic and 'You and Your Sister' remains a benchmark for a particular style of post-Barrett songwriting. There are some low moments ('Fight at the Table' with its funky bass/keyboard combo) but you can feel at the low moments that even Bell's own sense of purpose is awol and there are times during the record when you can feel the fragile mental state of the man and it's occasionally a little overwhelming. When he concentrated on the songs over their provenance though, they were great, great songs.