Holiday

I am on holiday for the next three weeks, so service will be temporarily suspended. Look forward to new features (hopefully) when service resumes in August!

Track of the Week: Lydia Lunch: Suicide Ocean (1982)

"I wanted to contradict not just everything that preceded me but my own previous music." Lydia Lunch

Lydia Lunch has certainly stayed true to her word. After disbanding No Wave pioneers Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, her career has ranged from the jazzy 'Queen Of Siam' to spoken word, rarely if ever stepping over the same ground twice. 1982's '13.13' is arguably her strongest album, sounding like an unholy marriage between the cyclical guitar and cavernous drums and bass of 'Metal Box' and the untamed noise of the No Wave scene she originated from, all topped off with Lunch's signature howling. It's some record. The devastating 'Suicide Ocean' is a highlight. Lydia's monotone howl rises in intensity throughout the song, touching on the lyrical themes that she has followed throughout her career - sex, death and desperation. Like Public Image Limited's 'Poptones', the lyrics are a series of startling images - broken clocks, 'frozen angels', 'the scent of ghosts' - that are repeated over and over to create a nightmare-ish sensation of deja vu. Greg William's simple and memorable bass line and Cliff Martinez's slow and deliberate drums anchor the proceedings, whilst Dix Denney plays looping arcs of feedback over a circling riff, not miles away from the work of PiL's Keith Levene, which mutates into a searing lead guitar line for the chorus. The huge, spacious dubby feel of the drums and bass is filled up with swelling guitar feedback, almost drowning out Lydia's increasingly desperate screams, creating a sickening intensity that threatens to swamp the listener - you feel like you are drowning in an ocean of pain and desperation. The song doesn’t let up for its entire duration, just shy of the six minute mark; its single minded intensity bridges the gap between PiL’s ‘Theme’ and the punishing grind of Swans.
'13.13' sounds like both a cousin to PiL's 'Metal Box' and Flipper's 'Album - Generic Flipper', and, in tying the sonic chaos of No Wave to song-like structures, it paves the way for Sonic Youth's integration of radical guitar experimentation into rock music. But the album has its own sonic identity, and bears the unmistakable mark of Lydia Lunch's personality. Listened to today, it is an album of rare intensity and invention. Sadly, it appears to be currently out of print, a situation I hope will be rectified soon. But soon after its release, Lydia Lunch had already moved on - plays, movie appearances and collaborations with Einsturzende Neubauten, Foetus, Sonic Youth and Nick Cave are just some of the things she has done since then. To this day she remains a creative force to be reckoned with, and a true embodiment of the spirit of punk and No Wave.

R.I.P. Syd Barret 6.01.46 - 7.07.06

http://www.nme.com/news/pink-floyd/23570

Tragic news

Track of the Week: The Skids: Into The Valley (1979)

Hailing from Dunfermline in Scotland and jumped up on punk and glam-rock energy, The Skids were a fantastic New Wave band, and 'Into The Valley', their 1979 single, is their masterpiece. The song takes The Skids trademark sound - somewhere between a football chant and a Caledonian battle hymn - and nails it perfectly. It opens with William Simpson's driving, throbbing bassline, before the entry of Tom Kellichan's martial drummer-boy's drums and Stuart Adamson's instantly memorable guitar riff kick the song into gear. Rousing and victorious in tone, the song is topped off by Richard Jobson's lyrics, which are, depending on your point of view, cryptic and poetic or hilariously pretentious - "Into the Valley /Betrothed and divine / Realisations no virtue /But who can define /Why soldiers go marching /Those masses a line". Yeah. But I can only tell you that that's what he's saying because I looked them up - Jobson's bizarre, strangulated singing voice garbles the lyrics and renders them utterly indecipherable so it hardly matters anyway. The tune is so memorable and catchy that you don't even bother to think about what the words are, but are swept up by the pure pop thrill of it all. The chorus kicks our with chant-along "Ahoy! Ahoy"s by the whole band, adding to the sheer sense of fun. Then Stuart Adamson treats us to a soaring, histrionic guitar solo - his individual, chiming uplifting soloing and economical, catchy riffing is a clear influence on both The Edge from U2 and Graham Coxon from Blur. At the end of the song, Jobson gives up on lyrics all together, and basically winds up singing 'Lalalalalalalalalala' for the rest of the song. As it fades out, your natural reaction is to go straight back to the beginning and play the track all over again. Unsurprisingly, it reached the Top 10 in the charts and landed them a performance on Top of the Pops. Listening to the song today, you can hear its influence on the New Wave, Brit Pop and the recent post-punk revival.
The Skids produced more great pop singles, but the tempestuous relationship between Richard Jobson, the man with the lyrics, and Stuart Adamson, the guy with the tunes, meant that Adamson left after their third album, and Jobson wisely split the band after a disastrous final album without him. Adamson achieved mainstream success with Big Country, who had their moments, but never matched the transcendental brilliance of his former band's best moments.

Track of the Week: The Rapture: House Of Jealous Lovers (2002)

There is something special about this song. It announces its arrival with doubled electronic and acoustic drums and, of course, the utterly manic cowbell. Sloppy, restless and desperately intense, the cowbell sets the tone for the rest of the song - The Rapture are by no means excellent musicians, but every instrument, from Luke Jenner's scratchy, Gang of Four/PiL style guitar mangling and tortured Robert Smith-esque vocals to Matt Safer's driving bass, is played with an almost overwhelming enthusiasm and energy. The Rapture appeared in New York at the turn of the century, inspired by both the post punk music of the late 70s/early 80s and early 90s Madchester. Impressed by their energy, producers James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy of DFA took them under their wing and produced their first album and 'House of Jealous Lovers', the band's signature song. Sonically, the song is framed by the DFA's production - the electronic and acoustic production and cowbells are favourite techniques of theirs. Luke Jenner's vocals never amount to much more then him shouting 'House of! Jealous Lovers!', but that hardly matters. The song's strength comes from the way it embraces the sound and style of dance music in the same way that the original post punk bands did - helped, no doubt, by the DFA's in-depth knowledge of the era. The song's simplicity, the regular breakdowns - at one point including a fantastically sloppy solo from Jenner, and the prominence of the drum and bass lines, are all taken from dance music. Of course this was nothing new in any way by 2002, but it had been a while since indie music had so openly embraced the dance floor - 'House of Jealous Lovers' is meant to be a dance track rather then a rock track. The fact that it fails somewhere along the way and falls somewhere in between is simply part of its charm, in the same way that the band's effort to keep up with the DFA's programmed drum beats is part of the song's appeal. Also, though this may be more because of the DFA's involvement then The Rapture's - but big deal - the song's economy and use of space echoes the original post punk bands more accurately then the host of post punk revivalists who followed in The Rapture's wake and perhaps somewhat missed the point. Bands like Maximo Park and Bloc Party over fill their music with too many parts, losing the sparseness and dub-like feel of much vintage post punk and sounding quite messy - not in a good way - in the process. Many of the post-punk revivalists would have perhaps done well to turn to The Slits' mantra - 'If in doubt, leave it out'. Nothing in 'House of Jealous Lovers' is extraneous. And although even The Rapture themselves have struggled to equal its giddy peaks, today, as the post punk revival fades away amidst the return of brain-dead pub rock, The Rapture's signature song stands as a reminder of what could have been, and why there was a post punk revival in the first place. And to this day, whenever I hear that cowbell part, my heart beat starts racing.