Records

Rip It Up, Issue 113, 1 December 1986, Page 30

Records

The Housemartins London 0, Hull 4 Chrysalis In Britain this album’s had reviews you couldn’t buy. Comparisons with the Undertones at their best, the Beatles and even Al Green have been heaped on this harmlessly named four-piece from Hull. Student radios in this country have been thrashing ‘Sheep’ and ‘Happy Hour,’ and all three of the Housemartins’ singles have just been released locally. Housemartins-mania it isn’t yet, but if media consensus can create public demand then this band’s gonna take off. The question is just what the hell is all the fuss over?

“We are probably one of the most political bands around at the moment. Not one of our songs is about relationships,” said vocalist/lyricist Paul Heaton earlier this year. This political bent plus their Marxist beliefs stitched onto old anoraks and duffle coats and their well-publicised dislike of London and its associated hype have

made them really credible to the media intelligensia. And some of their songs are very lively and very clever; ‘Sheep’ is a pretty smart commentary on human stupidity and it pops with Undertones’ charm; ‘Get Up Off Your Knees,’ their best song to date, is a well-aimed blow at the apathy over the gap between rich and poor; and ‘Anxious,’ ‘Sitting on a Fence’ and ‘Think for a Minute’ are tidy songs with tough political messages. Reservations spring from the fact that the band is at full stretch to carry the album. Slower songs like their first single ‘Flag Day’ and the laboured gospel of ‘Lean on Me’ don’t clear the runway. And over the span of 11 songs (‘Reverend’s Revenge’ is an instrumental) Paul Heaton’s impishness is irritating and the band’s playing is too cute and bubbly. Musically great bands are made of sterner stuff. Maybe they’ll get there, but this doesn’t. George Kay George Clinton Best 0f... Capitol The figurehead of funk. Clinton has preached to us about faking it, failing it, and of bumping your rump to it. He painted the White

House black and replotted the universe according to Starchild. It’s been one hell of a trip. This is an album of his best since he went “solo.” Even though Clinton has never actually written a good song. Instead he makes sweat, fidgety feet and locoweed chants, this is junk food beat, and for some reason, which you can work out for yourself, this is great funk. ‘Atomic Dog’ is still one of his best to date, it begins the album, but it’s a pity we can’t have his rap version for cross-reference. From the second album You Shouldn't Nuff Bit Fish we get three tracks, ‘Quickie’ and ‘Last Dance,’ which are both sublime and ridiculous, and ‘Nubian Nut’ which is a twisted African joke, a rap for all the Felas. From Some of My Best Friends are Jokes (a title I can identify with) comes ‘Double Oh-Oh,’ a track I’ve only just come to appreciate for its roaring drums and “take that!” lyrics. From last year’s R&B Skeletons in the Closet we get the title song and ‘Do Fries Go with that Shake,’ which is the first Clinton song in a while I can truly say is shit. This is a good compilation, well chosen from his recent works. I don’t know if Clinton is going to break the funk sound barrier again like he did in the old days. But he can’t make a fool of himself like James Brown frequently does,

mostly because he’s always been a fool. For showmanship he’s still a brilliant man, and for funk he still keeps the books. For insanity, this man is a genius. Peter Grace Shriekback Big Night Music Island Showcased on last month’s tour, the English band’s fifth album sees Shriekback gunning for the jugular of the popular music market. They wanna be big, but they wanna do it their own way. The departure of Carl Marsh means that all singing and lyrical duties were handed to Barry Andrews. He appears to relish that role. As well as producing the LP with Gavin McKillop, the album is stamped all over with the enigmatic Andrews’ signature — from “Zen pop songs” to joyous celebrations of existence and animals, Big Night Music revolves around his interests.

Fame is an integral part of those interests, and to that end come songs like ‘Gunning For the Buddha,’ ‘Pretty Little Things' and ‘The Reptiles and I.’ They all display Shriekback’s mellow heart, and (especially ‘Gunning For the Buddha”) their pop sensibilities ... The big noisy numbers, as always on Shriekback records, are

outnumbered here, but still show up forcefully in the form of ‘Sticky Jazz’, ‘Black Light Trap’ and ‘Running On The Rocks.’ I like this as a whole, late at night. Then, it’s a whole story like Sun Syat-Sen might tell. But at other times, it is less seductive and too pretty. The album title says it all though, and in the end, Big Night Music tells me things and I like it. Paul McKessar The Pretenders Get Close WEA This is definitely the best Pretenders (aka Chrissie Hynde) album so far. However that in itself isn’t saying much. After all, by far the strongest tracks on each of the previous three albums were those which had been the previous year’s singles (a fact which made the debut Pretenders album the most successful because it had the most singles to draw on.) But Get Close is the best for a number of reasons. For starters Martin Chambers, surely one of the crassest of the major league drummers, has been dumped. Secondly, although the credits and photos assure us there’s a new and stable four-piece line-up, Ms Hynde hasn’t felt bound by it. Her band may now sport a black

rhythm duo but the album also includes appearances by an Elvis Costello bassist and a Simple Minds drummer. Furthermore, a crucial feature of the album’s sound is the tasteful keyboard work of Bernie Worrall, member of the George Clinton conglomerate and recently with Talking Heads’ funk ensemble.

The singer is in her best form ever, strong and assured without relying on those vocal mannerisms that once proved irksome on her slower performances. Which brings us to the songs. Fully half of the eight originals — the two that lead off each side — are up with her best work, and for Chrissie Hynde that’s an extraordinarily high strike rate. Of these four, the current single ‘Don't Get Me Wrong’ is decidedly the most upbeat. Hynde’s writing increasingly seems to favour slow to medium tempi. The album’s one really successful outright rocker is an ambitious cover of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Room Full of Mirrors.’ Get Close is a new kind of Pretenders album, and not just because it preceded any associated singles. It is the clearest and most consistently agreeable expression of Chrissie Hynde’s talent yet on record.

Peter Thomson