albums

Rip It Up, Issue 166, 1 May 1991, Page 24

albums

JANE’S ADDICTION

(Triple X/Warners) Jane’s Addiction have gained worldwide adoration for their twisted metal musical concoction, leaving few in the way of unbelievers. Their hints at imminent self-destruction seem to

endear them to those looking for heroes and living legends while making them all the more frightening to the music industry powers keen to capitalise on the group’s godlike status. This re-release, however dubious in its motivation, does at least provide easier access to the now legendary live debut album. It is also an excellent (if dated) indication of what one might expect at their forthcoming concert in New Zealand. The sleaze and urban decay that is Jane’s Addiction is more than visible on this compact disc, it positively oozes forth. To the unenlightened, seek out this musical education as soon as possible. To the believers, we can only wait until June. LUKE CASEY : ELVIS COSTELLO Mighty Like A Rose (Warner Bros) So it's time again to gird the loins, dust off the dunce’s cap and check the sheets — ‘ol four eyes is back with his latest batch of songs, exorcisms and flagellations. Assimilating Costello songs has never been an overnight sensation — his tunes are too elusive for that and as David Goldstone points out in his book interpreting EC’s lyrics, A Man Out of Time, the man’s words may only exist in the medium of rock n'roll but they're too intense and accomplished to be dismissed. Mighty Like A Rose is two years down the line from Spike, an album of varied and bitter power, and it may largely be a continuation of his

tortured love themes but there’s signs of softening in the Costello heart. Dedicated to his “unspeakable wife” Cait O'Riordon, she’s credited with one song on the album — ‘Broken’ —a traditional and moving commitment to love, something that Costello has always tried to avoid. And on the

beautiful carousel-like ‘Couldn’t Call It Unexpected’ that closes the album he admits, “l can’t believe I'll never believe in anything again.”

So has Cait softened old hard heart? Yeah, ‘Sweat Pear’ is triple i confirmation, but the Costello vitriol is still in the back pocket. ‘The Other Side

of Summer’ means surfsup and the Beach Boy harmonies are ironic backdrops, ‘Hurry Down Doomsday’ sees the world being taken over by bugs international, all Costello - pessimism in contrast to ‘All Grown Up/, a perceptive and sensitive ballad of teenage frustration that leads into the wary encounter of ‘Harpies Bizarre'. Looking for a Veronica’, then, ‘Georgie and Her Rival’, a tale of those poisonous phone calls, could fit the bill or even one of the two tell-tale

McArtney collaborations — ‘So Like Candy’ or ‘Playboy To A Man’, could cutitasasingle. .

In his book Gouldston named Gir/ Happy, Trust and Imperial Bedroom as classic Costello. Mighty Like A Rose isn't in that company, but it's a mighty fine album and probably his best since King of America. GEORGE KAY

ROD STEWART Vagabond Heart (Warner Bros) - It's over twenty yeras since | bought my first Rod Stewart LP and ten since | bought my last one. In that time he had gone from being one of rock's preeminent talents to a mincing self-parody, and then to a clawing back of some credibility. However, over the past decade he’s been far more conspicuous as a mid-life libertine than as a musician. So it was with mixed expectations that | approached Vagabond Heart. After all, the first single, a rehash of ‘lt Takes Two’ with Tina Turner seemed little

more than a couple of old lags having anostalgic knees-up.

Yet within the context of this hour-long album it makes sense. Stewart has always been as much an interpreter as a singer-songwriter and on Vagabond Heart he shows his interpretive skills to fine account. Ranging from a yearning ballad (courtesy Van Morrison, Robbie Robertson, the Stylistics) to driving mid-tempo (Tom Waits) to the

uproarious ‘lt Takes Two’, Stewart always respects and serves the song while simultaneously making it his own. His original material is, as usual, co-written though these days he needs at least two or three partners to come up with each song. Nonetheless the results, while hardly vying for the

classic stature of his greatest glories, are always durable. And the fact that five of his six new numbers are

stompoing rock-outs shows that

Stewart has no intention of

relinquishing his spiritied past. As to be expected, Vagabond Heart bears all the hallmarks of a major ‘marketing startegy too. Rod’s duet with Tina Turner is not the only instance of calculated appeal to the middle-aged, CD-buying baby boomers. There’s also an extremely catchy number all about playing old Motown records which features the Temptations singing backup. Undoubtedly it will be a future single release. Set that beside the all-age popularity of the current ‘Rhythm of My Heart’ and this album makes all the right moves. Cynical? Possibly, but what makes the album so

palatable is that every track sounds so damngood. = »

Just when he seemed about to be written off to terminal satyriasis, Rod Stewart — with a little help form half a dozen producers — has kick started his career into a full throated roar. Its great to have him back. : PETER THOMSON APALACE IN THE SUN Creation Records Compilation Creation have been responsible for some of the least interesting records in history: all those abjectly earnest

oh‘em'ph at 60s “authenticity” and of late a string of anonymous, uninspired house pastiches. Every so often,

though, they leap light years ahead of themselves and put out something like the Jesus and Mary Chain'’s ‘Upside Down'’ single or My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything LP, something that makes everything else around at the time

seem workmanlike, monochromatic. It's been a few years since any revelations like those, but Creation’s latest

compilation does have a few sublime moments. . 2

The first is Swervedriver’s massive ‘Ravedown’, a distillation of all the best bits of five yeras of noise-pop into four minutes of pure bliss. Then there's Peter Aston’s ‘Chevron Rising’, the kind of song David Sylvian might write if he moved into Nick Cave’s Berlin garret (work that one out for yourself). And then there's ‘Dark Melt' by Simon : Turner, an endlessly intricate ambient thing that might pass by unnoticed if it wasn't for occasional sample that

sound likg_they came straight off

Skeptics 111. My Bloody Valentine’s best material would out-radiate any of this stuff, but ‘Don't Ask Why' which opens the compilation, is really just a helium filled pop song, quite restrained for them. Undemanding souls might also be pleased by Love Corporation’s

‘Lovers’, essentially a windswept piano piece set to a dance beat, or by Primal Scream’s nostalgia, so studied it's camp, or even by the Jazz Butcher’s Robyn Hitchcockish whimsy. Beyond that

things get pretty dodgy: the Telescopes imitate Loop, Hypnotone imitate every other house record, two wretched folk-singers whose names | didn’t notice imitate earlier wretched folksingers whose names your parents have forgotten, and Something Pretty Beautiful are as mediocre as the desperate sounding name suggests. MATTHEW HYLAND CHAINSAW MASOCHIST Periphery : (Flying Nun) There's at least three mesmerising songs on this record, maybe more, along with one or two moments that drag. But as | said in the article, ; Periphery is a low-key experience, quietly unsettling guitar melodies and ‘introspective lyrics sung by the pleasantly doleful sounding Murray . Couling. His voice has a sort of rough masculine honesty about it which

enhances the force of his words, @ man laying his heart on the line. This spirit is epitomised by the Chainsaw Masochist choice of cover, ‘Last Waltz'. In fact, the theme of two lonely people sort of permeates the album, that's even the name of one of the songs. That said, tags like “folk rock” or “Peter Paul and Murray” (there’s a

female guitarist in there and Murray’s the name of the other one) are unfair. There is some fine, highly strung guitar work going down here and many haunting moments. Perhaps if you were feeling too lonely this record would rub salt in your wounds, but if you find solace in solitude, here’s your

soundtrack. DONNA YUZWALK

JOHNNY CASH : The Mystery of Life (Polygram) The term Living Legend is an over-subscribed sobriquet at best but if anyone deserves that lofty accolade it's John R Cash. This man in black has loomed large over country music for more than two decades. Through the good times and the bad, Cash has

been the great constant, the voice implacable, the presence near

monolithic.

The Mystery of Life continues the re-evaluation of the Cash sound begun with last year’s Boom-Chikka-Boom. Again, he and producer Jack Clement have wisely opted for the stripped

down clarity Cash made his own as far back as the late fifties on seminal

sessions laid down for Sam Phillips’ legendary Sun label. :

The uncluttered resonance allows Cash to get on with what he excels af, singing tales of quiet dignity and low-key courage. It comes as no

surprise to find the eponymous hero of “The Greatest Cowboy of Them All” is boss of the ranch called Heaven, or ‘Going By The Book' is not referring o the Oxford Dictionary. In no less adroit hands these songs may be a little, shall we say, corny.

- Never afraid to revisit his back pages and with a body of work as

formidable as his, its a pleasure to make the acquaintance of such Cash chestnuts as ‘Hey, Porter!’ and ‘Beans For Breakfast’ again. All Nick Cave fans should also look out for ‘Wanted Man’, delivered in peerless fashion by its original interpreter and still probably the greatest song about alienation and paranoia ever written. GARTH SEEAR THE TREE AND THE BIRD AND THE FISH AND THE BELL Glasgow Songs by Glasgow Artists (CBS) This compilation has been organised to raise money for an archive to commemorate the work of Glasgow photographer Oscar Marzaroli who died in 1988 leaving behind an : impressive folio of post-war Scotland. . The album, although obviously . inconsistent like most (charitable) : compilations, has its moments. The mediocre ones belong to the Big Dish (‘Prospect St'), Deacon Blue (‘Christmas in Glasgow’) and Love and Money (‘Jocelyn Square’). Songs that succeed in capturing something of the city’s soul and presence lie with John Martyn’s Clydeside ballad ‘The River’ and folkman Dick Gaughan’s heart-rendering ‘Jamie Foyers'.

Elsewhere Texas's ‘Southside” and Lloyd Cole’s live and faster version of ‘Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken’ are tasty enough but conspicuously absent are Simple Minds and Aztec Camera’s ‘Killermont St regarded by many as the best song about Glasgow ever written. Gripes aside, this is a modestly successful, if far from orgasmic, compilation. GEORGE KAY

TALL DWARFS Weeville

(Flying Nun)

This is about the tenth release from the Tall Dwarfs (Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate) and asfine a place to start as any if you want to join the swollen ~ ranks of their admirers. The sixteen tracks here add up to a rare

combination of soul and dissonance, melody and tunelessness, social

invective and celebrations of love. The songs take place against a background of strange syncopated rhythms (CK's tape loops) overlaid with — as Chris puts it in the bonzer bonus lyric handbook — chord sequences by Alec “of great beauty and resonance”, plus Chris Knoxian oddities and

idiosyncracies, like when the line of a song is traced by the weedy piping of an organ. -

Each track is a certifiable departure from the last, from acoustic folk sing-along to agitated rhythm and highstrung harmonising, and there are one or two priceless songs, suchas ‘Hallelujah Boy'or ‘Skin of My Teeth’. You should buy this record if you always wondered what the fuss was about, and what the Tall Dwarfs ; reputation was based on. Now you know. ' DONNA YUZWALK

RIDE Nowhere (Sire) | used to think that Ride were just inept Valentine copyists, but in fact they know exactly what they’re doing. They are to English noise-pop what Depeche Mode are to European industrial music. They take an obvious characteristic of the genre — a chewy, satisfying distortion/wah-wah based guitar sound, add pretty faces and tunes, and take away all the abrasion, the confrontation, the strangeness that made it exciting in the first place. In short, they’re noise-pop without the noise, or at least without its implications. All the chord changes are either the wistful sort or the

comfortable sort (never the jarring sort or the rare as Shane McGowan’s good teeth shoot you into the stratosphere sort). The vocals‘are mixed up front and always sung (never spat out or screamed or sobbed) so we know that these are “proper songs”. Curiously the overall effect recalls pre-noise 80s bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and the Sound or their more overt

disciples the House of Love. All this, of course, means that Ride are dangerously easy to listen to and even to like. The guitar sounds still there, the melodies are as sugar coated as they are predictable, and ‘Dreams Burn Down' is an

unreasonably pleasant song. It's just that these pleasures are so transitory, so weak, such a compromise. Ride are an attractive pop concept, and perhaps they'll introduce lots of 14 year olds to the joys of feedback, but considering that ‘Psychocandy’ did the same for my generation (!) do the youth of today really need such mollycoddling? MATTHEW HYLAND

WHITE LION Mane Attraction (Atlantic) White Lion confinue to produce rock magic that is at the top of its class. Songs are drenched in emotion and insight, leaving tired themes and overdone topics to those with more hair than talent. Mane Attraction has a maturity that comes only through years of touring and hard work. Like all rock heavyweights, White Lion have their own charismatic frontman in the form of one Mike Tramp. Unlike many other groups in this genre, he possesses a smooth and often haunting voice that sits among the other instruments rather than on top of them. He adds a rich blues feel to the group, which coaxes the listener and brings relief after constant assault from tight trousered Axel Rose plagiarists. Why commercial radio never picks up on these groups is beyond me.

‘Broken Heart’, You're All | Need’ and ‘lfs Qver’ are guaranteed money spinners. However, White Lion seem to excel in the left of centre areas. Check out ‘Leave Me Alone’ if you like things a little funky. Definitely worth a look. LUKE CASEY

MASSIVE Blue Lines

(Wild Bunch) : Some serious English dance pedigree going on here, these are the boys who pretty much spawned the Soul Il Soul deal through their involvement with Nellie Hooper and who are responsible for a lot of the better dance remixes coming out of England. Blue Lines is their first solo work, and although it has all the hallmarks of one of those terrible

producers albums (famous guest vocalists, big conceptual look and lots of serious drum programming),

Massive have come out with a

remarkably brilliant contribution to our listening pleasure. Blue Lines takes the whole mellowed out 98bpm dance music deal one step further. Massive draw more on jazz and reggae feels than the traditional funky sources.

This album is so smooth it makes Julio seem like a punk rocker. The sound is really reminiscent of those great 60s jazz/funk masterpieces like Grant

Green or Lee Morgan. But with the added bonus of great vocals. Some really nice reggae stylings from Horace Andy and the now standard elegant soul from Shara Nelson, all underscored by spine chilling basslines and cooled-out raps from the Massive boys that give the whole affair a very sharp and vaguely malevolent feel. Tracks like ‘Safe From Harm’ and ‘Five Man Army’ are almost threatening and definitely far too cool for words. | have afeeling Blue Lines is going to be the best album to come out of England this year. Very Massive is a very fair description of what's going on here. KIRK GEE

THE DOORS Movie Soundtrack A (Warner Bros) ‘ The movie is totally great and this soundtrack brings it all back, enabling you to relive the romantic excesses of Jim Morrison’s life, as seen by Oliver Stone, at your leisure. In the movie, Stone lets the music tell the story and the songs appear here in the same chronological order as the film. Starting with ‘The Movie’ (spoken words by Morrison), Side One kicks off with ‘Riders On The Storm’, ‘Love Street’, ‘Break On Through', ‘The End’, ‘Light My Fire’, ‘Ghost Song". Side Two goes ‘Roadhouse Blues’; ‘Heroin’ (performed by the Velvet : Underground; along with ‘Carmina Burand’, the only non-Doors tracks on the album), ‘Stoned Immaculate’, ‘When The Music’s Over’, ‘The Severed Garden’, and ending with a flourish with ‘LA Woman'. A class collection from the Doors immortal legacy. DONNA YUZWALK

GRAND DADDY IV Smooth Assassin (Cold Chillin) Tape/CD Check out the cover, there's the Grand Daddy and his crew dressed like old style gangsters, guns and knives all akimbo, some dude : collapsed on the stairs, his money spread out, ready for the Grand Daddy.. - I'm just glad romanticism has returned to rap, | mean that ‘daisy age’ stuff almost destroyed it. Do you really want white middle class buying rap! Saying, ‘oh, these black folks are just so damm clever, so ethinic!’. Well, they're -not going to touch this one, if's too old school in its philosophy, too much like real rhythm and blues. - Songs about sex, death, money and hanging out. The Grand Daddy means business, when he raps ‘I Kick Ass” and ‘Mass Destruction’ you somehow know he’s not kidding. _ But the best thing about it is the fresh approach. The beats are nearly all old soul or seventies funk of the slow,

smooth and groovy sort. Things like the O'lays, Isaac Hayes, Blackbyrds, Mandrill, mixed together by Biz Markie. Grand Daddy IV (said as one word!) just sort of coasts over the top, like he’s getting @ manicure at the same time or something. Best cuts are ‘Pick Up The Pace’, ‘This Is A Recording’, ‘Dominos’ and the definitely un-safe sex of ‘Girl In The Mall'. Great to see a rapper do a reggae song without destroying it,

‘Gals Dem So Hot' is a smooth dance hall remix, using a Yellowman style. I'd suggest you have a listen, if only for Biz Markie's super cool production KERRY BUCHANAN

DEBORAH HARRY AND BLONDIE The Complete Picture (Chrysalis) So if's reissue time again is it | guess we shouldn't be too surprised

Debbie, oops Deborah Harry, has proved herself to be an endlessly

viable commodity. Let's go back for a while. Even in the halcyon days of the late 70s/early 80s not too many pundits were able or indeed wanted to see beyond those exquisitely chiselled cheekbones and perfectly pouting lips. Advertising tags that proclaimed Blondie a “a group” appeared desperate and then superfluous. To most pop pickers,

Deborah Harry was Blondie: part pop queen, part sex kitten. Those rather ploin gents she chose to _surrqund

herself with were scarcely relevant. Which was a shame because Blondie was a group and for a while back then they were arguably the finest singles band on the face of the planet. So here they come again, pristine pop snapshots, coy and sensual by - turns. Memories are made of these, the irresistible trash aesthetic of ‘Rip Her To Shreds’, the insouciant candour of the glorious ‘Picture This’. Then

there’s ‘Sunday Girl’, one of the most perfect three minutes in pop music, ‘Atomic’ and ‘Presence, Dear’ sill

scores through its spaced-out

grandeur. Great as Blondie were this twenty track set does throw up the odd clunker. ‘Heart of Glass’, the band's biggest hit, is endearing but rather clumsy discd, ‘The Tide Is High’ and ‘lsland of Lost Souls’ are both pretty dire exercises in odd reggae. But I'm being churlish. Despite smacking of odious marketing ploys, The Complete Blondie (which runs the gamut of the divine Miss H career right up to the vaudeville turn with Iggy on ‘Well, Did You Evah?) is irrefutable evidence of the woman (and the band's) frequent greatness. -

GARTH SEEAR