That took a few hours so only time for a couple more, starting with Julian Cope's second solo album Fried (1984). Fried is a legendarily messy and unpredictable record, and one which makes it's unconventionality clear from the cover photo onwards - Cope is shown playing with a toy truck on a slag heap wearing a giant turtle's shell instead of any clothes. Musically Fried is a mix of the kind of clear pop sensibility he showed off in the Teardrop Explodes and a light-headed psychedelia. There are the obligatory backwards guitar solos and unexpected time changes, but the sense of melody is paramount throughout and despite Cope's own clear efforts to sabotage the pop song elements of the record, it's all shot through with great melodies. It's a lo-fi, low-key affair, especially when compared to the ill-judged grandstanding of the records he released either side of it (As the NME described them the vainglorious World Shut Your Mouth and Saint Julian), and it has a much more endearing feel to it than any of his other albums in my view. This is helped a lot by Kate St. John's charming woodwind work which gives the whole thing a delicately pastoral feel which suits Cope's style surprisingly well. I've always found Cope difficult to like on the whole but Fried is a curiously lovely record and one that I always enjoy a lot.
Next should have been the Boxtruck 7" (1993) by Coral but there's no tracking it down on the internet as far as I can tell, so it's on to the debut album by one-time Hoxton hipsters Cosmetique. I Was Born in a Disco Fun Pub (2002) is simultaneously an infuriating demonstration of the casual arrogance of hipsters and a great piece of super lo-fi electronica. These are dismal pop songs which have an air of sticky pub carpets and smelly "cool" dives and are perfect evocations of the kind of pretence that the Shoreditch kids were desperate to affect back in the day. All of which means that it should be a truly godawful album. But it really isn't. The songs are really good and the irony is so very arch that it's genuinely engaging rather than smug. The affected vocal indifference and loose musical delivery (it's all cheap drum machines, broken keyboards and home 4-tracked acoustic guitars and bass) are all part of its charm and there's something indefinably on about the whole thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment