Monday 12 March 2012

LaRM day 39 (Bevis Frond-Big Country)

It Just Is (1993) is another solid mix-up of the psychedelic and the folkie, the tuneless and the melodic. The nice songs this time out are a bit more fuzzed up than usual, but they're still occasionally charming ('Time Share Heart' is lovely for instance). The album really isn't as good, or as wide-ranging, as New River Head, and there are a number of songs that aren't necessary at all and on the whole the songwriting isn't quite as strong. But it's still a great example of modern freak-out, and I reckon as a showcase for Nick Saloman's guitar work, it's pretty decent.

Then we move on to the absolute mind-melting genius of the debut album by the B52's. Everything about this album is stupendous, from Fred's absurdist lyrics, to Ricky's completely genre-redefining guitar playing (and why doesn't Ricky Wilson get more props as a phenomenal guitarist I wonder, he was quite brilliant and totally unique). The songs are, of course, great ('Planet Claire', 'Rock Lobster', 'There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon)' and most particularly '52 Girls' - it's all wonderful). The later albums would slide into an almost parodic version of this early stuff, but everything on this first album is just fantastic. Why on earth haven't a got the rest of the albums, particularly Wild Planet? Why? What's wrong with me. I guess a trip to Fopp at lunchtime is in order.

Next we have the compilation L'Amour, Demure, Stenhousmuir (1992) by Alan McGee's sappy indie rock band Biff Bang Pow! The songs on this comp cover their whole career from 1984 - 1991. I've never liked McGee, he's always seemed to me to probably be a thoroughly unpleasant chap and it's hard to like his irritatingly twee and weedy songs. There's huge amounts of pastiche, homage and downright thievery going on in these records, and I have a feeling that McGee thought that he was going to be the next legendary songwriter, but this stuff is really all pretty second-rate. To be brutally honest I only bought this album because of the cover, which was fairly blistering stuff to a seventeen year old indie boy back in the day.

This is Big Audio Dynamite (1985) was the first album I ever bought. I was twelve. It was brilliant. Incredibly, it still is. The whole album, although quite dated, still sounds like little else, and Mick Jones' amateur relationship with sampling really worked in his favour - the mixture of post-punk songwriting and sample heavy production still sounds really unusual. There are one or two absolutely terrible songs, but the big singles work (the aural meltdown at the end of 'Medicine Show' still sounds bold for a pop single) and the whole album is more than just a nostalgia trip. Everything else they made was really pretty poor, but This Is is surprisingly worth revisiting.

TIme now for the aural equivalent of a succession of blows to the face. Big Black's The Hammer Party (1986) is a compilation of their first two mini-albums, Lungs (1982) and Bulldozer (1983). This very early stuff is fairly tame, and sounds a bit like early 4AD records, all muddy atmosphere and drum machines. The songs are clearly intended to be aggressive and brutal and Steve Albini's lyrics are as grotesque and upsetting as they would ever be, but the whole thing actually sounds completely unthreatening, particularly the Lungs mini-LP. Things really improved on Bulldozer, with the production stripping out the atmospherics and setting the basic tone for the records that would follow, visceral, screeching guitars, fuzzy bass low in the mix and the drum machine higher, with Albini's tales of urban and psychological decay voiced in much more forceful and aggressive fashion.

With a couple of years gap, the release of Atomizer (1986) proved that the band had been really honing their sound and had come up with a one that fitted intention. This stuff is brilliantly brutal, and 'Kerosene' may well have been their finest moment. Where the piledriving bass and clattering drum machine make for solid, rounded slabs of nasty noise, the songs on the follow-up, Songs About Fucking (1987) are vicious, scything little assaults. The cheesegrater wire guitars are so tinny and visceral, it feels like something is jabbing at your brain, and Albini's lyrics are more repellantly unpleasant and mordantly funny than ever. It's a fantastic album, depicting the many and varied ways in which people abuse and wound each other, physically and psychologically, with such unfettered glee that you can almost understand the controversy and the occasional questions about Albini's sanity at the time.

Proof of Albini's determination to be as confrontationally unpleasant as is humanly possible through a cultural medium is to be found in the original cover of the next single, Headache (1987) which there is no way in a million years I would put on here and would advise nobody to seek it out, it's not only one of the most disturbing things ever committed to record sleeve, there's a genuine chance that you'll genuinely vomit at the sight, and I seriously question Albini's judgment, particularly in making a joke of the title. Love his records as I do, it's one of a number of frankly unforgivable choices he made over the years which were designed to prove a) that he doesn't care what anybody thinks of him and b) that we're all disgusting hypocrites pretending to be prudish about certain issues and not others. Well, he carried both points but at a cost to the fan (and to the music come to that) that I consider to be substantially too high, and it all only demonstrates that his intentions were ultimately childish. Anyway, the songs on Headache are pretty decent, but not up to the par of the albums, likewise the three songs on the 'Heartbeat' 7".

After that gruelling trawl through hell, it's time for something of a very different hue. Now many people would think that it was a worse hell to have to listen to The Crossing (1983) by Big Country, but I'm not in their number. Against all better reason, better judgment and better sense, I absolutely love The Crossing. I know it's rubbish, I know the "bagpipe guitars" are beyond parody, but whatever, I just love this record. I think it must be because it came out just as I was developing my determinedly nostalgic, maudlin and occasionally mawkish personality, and it just fitted perfectly. After growing up with The Wall, The Crossing sounded like a jolly romp in comparison. I don't know, I can't explain it. It's a really overblown, silly, meaningless record but somehow it gets me every time I listen to it. There aren't many records that take me back so specifically to a place and time and the ones that do have a special place in my heart, no matter how good or bad they are.

Back tomorrow, beginning with another, much worse, slice of "Highlands Rock"....

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