Track of the Week: Belle and Sebastian: The State I Am In (1996)

Some bands are special. From the first time I heard 'With A Little Help From My Friends', 'Cruiser's Creek', 'All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead' and 'Rip It Up', before the end of the song, my life had somehow imperceptibly changed. This is what I listen to music for - the magic moment when your breath stops and the room seems to spin around you because something has passed straight from the recording into your soul like a bolt of lightening. So you idly dream through the day, the haunted echoes of the music floating around in your head, then you listen to the album by yourself in your dimly lit room, because it provides you with a touch of the heavens: and escape from mundane reality. There are other bands you like a lot, but it's not quite the same - they are, through no fault of their own, incapable of taking you to that same magical place.
Belle and Sebastian are special. This was apparent from the start, with their very limited edition first album, non-album EP tracks, reluctance to talk to the press or provide them with photos, even down to the name, referring to a boy and his dog from a cult French children's novel rather then any of the actual band members. And that's without going into the music. Let's talk about 'The State I Am In' purely as an example. Delicate, folky chords and the beautiful, elegant melody, played and sung with endearing frailty - singer Stuart Murdoch has a lisp. But countering the accusations of 'tweeness' (God how I hate that word!) are the lyrics, which play off images of purity and carnality against each other, with a cast of eccentrics ranging from gay brothers and sailor friends to child brides and crippled friends, right down to the confessional priest who turns the protagonist's bizarre story into a pulp novel. All of which is delivered with both wit and tenderness - Murdoch has a cutting sense of humour and is obviously well read, but feels a deep empathy with the outcast characters that populate his songs. The song starts of barely audible, with just Stuart singing softly over strummed chords, but builds up to a dramatic chorus. The, er, climax of the song? 'So I gave myself to God / There was a pregnant pause before he said "OK"'. B&S's discography is full of weird and wonderful outsiders, from Lazy Line Painter Jane, a rebel who sleeps with random boys and girls simply for 'the joy of giving', to the senile retired army officer in 'Me And The Major', all who are more then crudely painted stereotypes, and recounted in songs with deathless melodies.
In a time where loutish, unimaginative and loud music dominates the charts, Belle and Sebastian show the virtue of quietness, sensitivity and wit without ever descending into unimaginative blandness. When they first hit the scene, they were touted as the 'new Smiths' - a somewhat double-edged compliment that gets thrown up at most halfway decent indie bands with a trace of wit and sexual ambiguity, and with B&S it seemed to make more sense, but in reality they were - and are - much more then that. They are the natural descendants of Orange Juice, Felt and The Pastels, a reminder of a time when 'indie' meant an alternative approach to making music and a true link to the DIY ethics of punk rather then a meaningless marketing term. And in many ways, the commercial success of Belle and Sebastian has proved their musical ancestors right; even if they themselves were unable to shift units at the time, finally the aesthetic is being appreciated. Despite dips in their fortune along the way, and despite the fact that their new album has been mastered too loud (common with modern CDs - read this http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-forever.htm) - the tunes are still fantastic - Belle and Sebastian are still as important as they ever were. In a time when more and more music fails to inspire or excite, Belle and Sebastian stand for all that is good and magical about music. They are truly special.

Track of the Week: Pulp: The Fear (1998)

What would you do if you finally got everything you ever wanted, and it turned out to be a big disappointment? Before 1994, Jarvis Cocker looked like any other under-rated indie hero whose dreams of pop stardom were never going to be fulfilled. Then, suddenly, the rise of Britpop made Pulp into huge stars - ironic, since their intelligent, witty music stood at odds with the blatant lad-ism of the movement. 'Different Class' and especially 'Common People' brought the band fame and fortune, but also intrusive tabloid journalists, cocaine, depression and the departure of long term guitarist Russell Senior. All of this was obviously weighing heavily on Jarvis Cocker's mind as he wrote the songs that would make up the band's next album, 'This Is Hardcore'. As far as commercial suicides go, this wasn't a bad effort - the album wreaks of depression and paranoia, disillusion and disappointment, only to grind to an anticlimactic end itself. The fans expecting more of the bright poppiness of 'Different Class' were bitterly disappointed, and Pulp's commercial reputation never recovered. Which is a shame, because 'This Is Hardcore', despite copping out somewhat at the end, is a good album. It opens with 'The Fear', which is one of my favourite Pulp tracks. The song is a statement of intent for the whole album. It opens with a mournful, two-note drone before Cocker warns us that 'This is the sound of someone losing the plot / Of making out that they're OK when they're not / You're going to like it... but not a lot'. The soaring chorus - a rallying cry for the depressed - states 'Here comes the fear again', 'again' being the pertinent word - this feeling is nothing new, just a low-point on the endless cycle of depression. The next verse outlines the difference between 'Different Class' and it's harrowing follow up - 'Common People' acknowledges the despair and hopelessness of being poor, the upbeat song itself acts as an escape - a soundtrack to 'dance, drink and screw / Because there's nothing else to do'. 'The Fear' is there to soundtrack the times 'When you're sad, when you're lonely / And it all turns out wrong'. Whilst 'Common People' hid despair behind an upbeat exterior, 'The Fear' is a black hole of depression - Cocker is 'No longer searching for beauty and love / Just some kind of life with the edges taken off.' In the second chorus, any hope of release or happiness is crushed as Cocker briefly toys with the possibility that he will 'Find the thing that you lack' before bitterly saying he was only 'having a laugh' by even mentioning them.
Cocker's skill as a lyricist has never been in question, and 'The Fear' certainly has fine lyrics, but what really lifts up the song is, for once, the music. Pulp's back catalogue occasionally suffers because the band sometimes are unable to provide a backing as dramatic as the lyrics. Here, however, they are on fire, from the sinister guitar drone that opens the song right through to the haunting synthesiser line and searing guitar solo that dramatically bring the song to the end in a flurry of feedback - Jarvis doesn’t say a word for the last two minutes, and for once he doesn't need to.
Pulp are defined in many people's eyes by 'Different Class' and 'His 'N' Hers', which is a shame, because on the wonderfully claustrophobic 'This Is Hardcore' and the mature, almost pastoral 'We Love Life', the band kept developing and during this period made some of the best music of their careers. Whilst their peers lapsed into parodic self-repetition (of what wasn't really a very good idea in the first place), Pulp kept changing, growing and maturing. Although their later albums are all but forgotten these days, they are ripe for discovery in an increasingly retro and unadventurous pop music setting. Perhaps what really separated Pulp from their peers was Jarvis' unflinching honesty and refusal to simplify or resort to cliché when it came to human emotions and desires - something those trying to follow in his footsteps today should keep in mind.

Track of the Week: Heaven 17: Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry (1983)

Heaven 17 - Crushed By The Wheels of Industry


Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh left The Human League in 1980, shortly before the League conquered the world with the pop smash 'Dare', ironically because they were frustrated with their former group's lack of commercial success. Ware and Marsh formed the British Electronic Foundation (B.E.F.) in order to ironically masquerade as a company manufacturing commercially successful pop products - both men being socialists angered by Thatcher's rise. And the B.E.F.'s major concern was Ware and Marsh's new group, Heaven 17 formed with vocalist Glenn Gregory. Heaven 17 made smart, groovy electronic pop that dealt with issues of the day - their debut single, '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thing' was banned by the BBC for fear that lines like 'Reagan's president elect / Fascist guard in motion' would be construed as slander. 'Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry' is the single and stand-out track off their second album, 'The Luxury Gap'. The song is driven along by crunching electronic dance beats and the chorus' irrepressible 'Whoo! Whoo!' hook which, when allied to lines like 'It's time for a party / Liberation for the nation now!', make it sound like a care-free party anthem. The rest of the lyrics, however, deal ironically with the selfish and career-driven materialism of the Yuppie lifestyle. The song ironically celebrates the ability to 'Have what you desire if and when you see the fact / They will lead us to the land of milk and honey' before reminding us that, if you want the money, you have to 'Work all day or work all night, it's all the same'. The character in the song is trapped as a cog in a machine, but doesn't fully realise it - the song's outwardly positive demeanour and upbeat tune hides the blandness of a life where 'Before we go to work we'll have planned the day ahead / We'll while away the working day together.' He is too focused on furthering his career to see his true position, but the nagging doubt - represented by the song's frenetically funky and insistent beat, and the desperate, repetitive chorus - is always somewhere in the back of his mind. This is further brought out by the fantastic, if somewhat dated music video, which you can watch above, in which the band play confident looking business executive types who, by the end of the song, are showing the strain of exhaustion and overwork despite desperately trying to maintain a cool facade ('So play it cool and don't get excited' indeed). It's also coupled by images of the band's faces superimposed onto machines to hammer the point home. Heaven 17 were a great, innovational band, but they would never again sound as good after this single, and their tendency to criticise that which they ere fighting against by dressing up as the enemy would irritate a lot of people who shared their political beliefs and thought that the boys should be more sincere. As the hit singles dried up and the Great British Record Buying Public lost interest, Heaven 17 and B.E.F. were increasingly unable to compete in a competitive market place, and so Marsh and Ware's vision of B.E.F. as a hit factory selling superior pop product collapsed. In fact, one could almost say that the band was crushed by the wheels of the music industry. That's irony for you.

Walking Back To You: Psychocandy Revisited

Sometime after my vehement attack on The Jesus And Mary Chain, I wound up listening to Psychocandy again, and perhaps I was a little bit harsh on the album the last time round. Whilst I think what I said about them being no great shakes in the songwriting department and the general inanity of their lyrics stands up - see all their other albums for proof - Psychocandy, far from being original as it is, is none the less a fine album. In retrospect, the general approach - pop combined with ear-splitting feedback - seems fairly obvious, but at the same time, there are genuinely exciting moments. The album does suffer from being a bit samey, especially as the band seem to only have two rhythmic gears - one goes 'chunk...chunkchunk..clash' ('Just Like Honey', 'Cut Dead') and the other goes 'clank clank clank clank' (,You Trip Me Up', 'Never Understand Me'). But there are some truly stunning moments. 'You Trip Me Up' is truly bracing, swamped in ear splitting feedback and one of the album's most successful songs. 'Just Like Honey' is a particular favourite of mine, starting off as it does with The Mary Chain's finest couplet. 'Listen to the girl / As she takes on half the world' is a beautiful way to open up the album, and followed by 'Walking back to you / Is the hardest thing that I can do / For you', it makes for a touching moment, before the song disintegrates into feedback and repetitive drugged-out mumbling ('Just like honey x17', the lyrics off the internet inform me). It's almost the perfect deconstruction of a pop song. But the thought occurs that The JAMC chanced on their moments of greatness almost entirely by accident - part of the album's appeal is its rough naivety, and the directionlessness of the band after their first statement of intent suggests that they didn't have the necessary vision to take their sound further, as others such as My Bloody Valentine would. And whilst I don't believe that Psychocandy is a work of genius, (and everything I said about the rest of The Mary Chain back-catalogue still stands), it is a good album when judged on its own merits.
I don't do this for everyone I slag off, mind.

Track of the Week: Elastica: Connection (1994)

They come from a punkier, spikier basis, Oasis are very Beatles, Blur are Kinksier, but Elastica are nasty." - Marc Waterman, Elastica's producer

Perhaps it's time Elastica were given their due. Now largely forgotten outside of Justine Frischmann's relationships with certain Britpop stars, their music has a freshness and inventiveness lacking in many of their more frequently remembered peers. These guys were ripping off Wire and The Fall years before any of today's post-punk revivalists cottoned on to the idea, and with more charisma and musical clout to boot. 'Connection' is a case in point, opening as it does with a guitar line copped shamelessly from Wire's 'Three Girl Rhumba', which basically provides the musical backbone for the song. Although many of Elastica's songs share Wire's short, spiky attack, they replace Wire's harsh anti-rockist stance with an altogether more poppy and approachable sound: 'Connection' definitely rocks, something Wire would shudder at, but Elastica turn to their advantage. Imitating Wire is, despite the legion of post-punk revivalists who attempt it, ludicrously hard to do: Wire sound harsh, minimalist, cold and clinical; and without Wire's rigorous and almost autistic logic (not to mention gifted ability for pop melodies), their sort of music can sound unfinished and devoid of personality - just listen to, say, The Futureheads next to anything off Pink Flag to see the massive difference in their lesser imitators. 'Connection', however, is driven along by Frischmann's sexy and engagingly arrogant vocals as she slags off pedestrian indie bands 'Riding on any wave', whilst her and Donna Matthews' guitar lines serve up hooks aplenty and steer away from turgid punk rock clichés. The whole thing swaggers with an irresistible confidence, right through to the joyous hand claps at the coda, and it's beautifully concise - over in just under two-and-a-half minutes. But unfortunately, the rise of the meat-and-potatoes rock of Oasis swept away the artier, more interesting bands like Elastica. Which is a shame, because with Franz Ferdinand et al owing much to Elastica's reWiring of the post-punk era, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs achieving notable record sales, today's indie rock scene might have been more appreciative of their music.

R.I.P. Arthur Lee 7.3.45 - 3.8.06

At this rate, there won't be any rock stars left by the end of the year.