she loves me not - alan rankine

In his inspiring work 'Rip it up and start again: postpunk 1978-1984' Simon Reynolds cautions us to be wary when dabbling into the music of our post-punk heroes after 1984. Not only had the shiny bauble of New Pop become 'bloated' and 'plunged into decadence' but Pop Stars suddenly found themselves spokespeople for the world on a scale never seen before. It was the time of the Po-Faced Political Message but also of Pop Stars blowing hugely ridiculous budgets on videos and yachts, champagne and cocaine, the record labels getting fatter and fatter. Everything Went Over the Top in the security of a bouyant market and Smugness ruled in the pop charts, epitomised by those horrible Spandau Ballet songs 'True' and 'Gold'. By 1985, as Reynolds quotes, even the great John Peel was lamenting that "I don't even like the records I like." But there is something strangely addictive about 'bad' music, after all witness the whole 'Guilty Pleasures' movement. And a dabble here and there into the post-1984 cultural wilderness can be rewarding, although generally anything from the mid-late eighties does suffer for being inflicted by what was deemed fashionable in the day, i.e. too much honking saxophone, overwrought female vocals and bathed in that smooth, syrupy production that makes it hard to distinguish the real instruments from the synthesisers. Far from being 'Abba on speed' New Pop began to sound like Abba had swapped the speed for Ovaltine.

It seems to me it was more the loss of the Punk and Post-punk spirit that Reynolds and Peel were mourning, the warped beauty of New Pop that for a brief moment lit up the mainstream more brightly than the bland monotony usually labelled 'Pop' music. Looking back there are treasures to be found. The Cure's 'Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me' (1987) is the best twisted Pop record ever made after 'Sulk'. Paul Haig descended into 'The Warp of Pure Fun' in 1985 and emerged with his dignity intact, while 'Perhaps' (1984) saw Billy Mackenzie haphazardly balancing between youthful hysteria and a growing propensity towards a 'maturer' style (although the later, unreleased, 'Glamour Chase' would see the transformation complete). ZTT were doing good things e.g. with Propaganda, although they were overshadowed by the crass antics surrounding Frankie Goes to Hollywood. David Sylvian, Gene Loves Jezebel, The Wake, Siouxsie and the Banshees.... the Post-Punk greats did not die they just reinvented themselves. However the mainstream certainly returned to the 'manufactured' - no longer could it be countenanced that something like 'Party Fears Two' could sneak into the top ten, into everyone's living room and steal their hearts with its sultry shimmer.

Into 1987 we wade, when Billy Mackenzie's erstwhile Associate, Alan Rankine, released 'She loves me not'. Prior to that he had spent time producing other peoples' records (such as the Cocteau Twins and Paul Haig), working with cultish record label, the wonderfully named Les Disques du Crepscule, and living in Belgium. It's not quite a forgotten classic but like Haig's 'The Warp of Pure Fun' (of which it is reminiscent and not entirely a coincidence since Alan Rankine produced it) it is just that, a fun record which, in this period of 80s revival, is able to stand up to (and maybe even surpass some) contemporary attempts at melding the guitar with the synthesiser. Responsible for most of the instruments / parts in the Associates, Alan Rankine has a keen ear for melody which makes even the weaker songs palatable, but even he was not immune from the taint of sax and syrup. The mid to late 80s also seemed to be to the detriment of the guitar, which almost disappears into the murk here, surprising since Rankine ranks with the best of the Post-Punk guitar pioneers in terms of the sounds he managed to conjure with his fingers and a few effects. Still there is enough sophistication to make up for the disappointment that it sounds, well, so conventional at times. Especially when compared to the diverse and wonky marvellousness of 'Fourth Drawer Down'. It's like listening to 'Perhaps' - you know that both men had to move on and could not have produced another 'Sulk' (and nor would they want to) but it makes you yearn for its weirdness, it's boldness in abandoning the typical song format and its attempt to cram every possible emotion into one circle of vinyl.

And 'She loves me not' certainly starts with a bang! and ends with the apocalypse! clamouring for your ears' attention. 'Beat Fit' has rather silly lyrics but is infectious and introduces several of the 1001 synthesiser noises which identifies this record as a spawn of the 80s - as does the hyper female backing vocals and ubiquitous saxophone. Luckily this is not too intrusive keeping as it does to the rhythm of the song rather than meandering all over it. Alan Rankine's singing voice is remarkably urbane, slightly gruff and cynical at times, but that seems to suit the world-weary, even baffled, tone he affects. 'Days and Days' is the first of one of the more schmaltzy songs here, along with 'Last Bullet' they are quite light and relatively forgettable, but then I have never been a fan of ballad-type songs so they are probably okay if you like that kind of thing. 'Loaded' juxtaposes icy, melancholic synths (the ones that remind me of speeding down German autobahns at night lit only by orange sodium) and a softer vocal, ostensibly about throwing your cares away and having a good time but underlaid with that sadness it suggests it can only ever be ephemeral? Finally a guitar is spotted from very far away singing to itself in the background. 'Enough of that' says the sax and wrests domination of 'Your Very Last Day', unfortunately quite a plodding song despite Rankine's attempt to enliven things up with a dramatic vocal, but tones its influence down for 'The Sandman' which deals with a chilling subject (child abuse) in a surprisingly sympathetic way, when it potentially could be very clunky especially since Rankine's lyrics are far more literal than his former partner's. 'Break for Me' adopts that cod-reggae rhythm that was once so popular (please don't bring it back!) and that 'shimmery-curtain' percussion thing but apart from those two crimes against music it is a pleasant moment, a break after the frenetic rush of 'Lose Control'. And certainly a moment's pause is required before the stand-out track of the album, a slight intake of breath before the aural assault begins. Betraying more than a little of the 'more is more' philosophy that so drove the Associates ever upwards towards musical greatness, 'The World Begins to Look Her Age' is an attempt to capture the end of the world, well what the end of the world would sound like if only hysterical female backing singers, chuntering saxes, synthesisers and Alan Rankine were all that were left. Into this one song Rankine crams an album's worth of ideas and sounds and textures; its overloaded certainly and in the hands of someone less skilled it would probably collapse under its own weight, but this was the man responsible for 'Club Country' and however he does it, somehow it works! It's like magic because taking it all apart it's a pretty much standard 80s pop tune but combining all the unprepossessing elements together with a random song structure, explosions, layer upon layer of alarm and panic, ramping it all up and over eleven, well... it's an exhausting experience. But like the best of the Associates it makes you feel; its more than wallpaper or something to put on in the background and ignore. This is a song that defies being ignored! And it's certainly better to go out on a bang than a whimper. So yes, there could be many things wrong with this record but when it works the sheer verve reminds you that greatness never dies completely.

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, there are no videos of Alan Rankine solo on YouTube so a badly taken picture of the album cover is all I can offer in way of illustration. Luckily he is a very handsome fellow :)

And just for fun, the Associates do 'Club Country' on Top of the Pops, Alan keeping out of the bizarre sartorial choices made by some other members of the band, thinking here of Martha Ladly in the swimsuit!

Squeaks, pops and Scratches: Adventures in Vinyl

It has been a long time in coming. It must have been over a year ago when I decided that it was time to test the idea that vinyl is the preferred listening choice of the 'serious' or nostalgic music lover. Although I was brought up with vinyl I would hardly call myself nostalgic for it since it always seemed a bit of a palaver setting it all up and then making sure that the needle was in the right place. It was when my house-mate pointed out that you placed it on the edge of the record to start rather than have to find the songs manually that I realised that perhaps I was a little bit out of my depth. I realised I was even more out of my depth when it took me over three hours to work out how to record the lps through the computer; after much knashing of teeth it was possible to be confident that the software that came with the record player was clearly rubbish rather than it being my fault for being unintelligent when it comes to technology. Fortunately Audacity saved the day and much knashing of teeth and tearing of hair later I worked out how to record the lp, save it to itunes and convert it to MP3 all in one evening. To quote the Inspiral Carpets, 'Nobody said it was gonna be easy...' It became slightly more surreal when some of my worst concerns about buying second-hand records on ebay and in charity shops came true and the lp simply would not play and any amount of cursing at it would not compel it to not jump and not crackle like a crazy coco-pop monkey on lsd with maracas, however it reminded me that someone had obviously loved the album so much they had played it to death (that one of these records was 'Sulk' by the Associates was quite pleasing in that respect if it was not so frustrating in wanting to listen to it...). Anyway the said purchase has opened up a whole new world of music, chiefly because it enables me to seek out even more obscure stuff from the 80s that is only available in vinyl, yay!

Summer Sundae 14-16 August 2009 (a review in bullet points for brevity)

Good things about Summer Sundae 2009 (general)

• It didn't rain - hooray for sun!
• It clinched more space from Victoria Park so there was more room to walk about and the sound clash from the various stages was less pronounced
• The Garden was relaxing if you wanted some peace and quiet... ha ha albeit with lots of screaming children having a pillow fight
• Now the Charlotte is gone Summer Sundae is one of Leicester's few hopes of seeing new bands and it did not disappoint!!
• The Streets got swine flu so Idlewild jumped to headline!!

Bad things about Summer Sundae 2009 (general)

• Having to avoid psycho ex-housemates
• Disorientation caused by a larger site to play about in
• Electronica largely absent this year - too much reliance on guitar and whiny folk singers, get rid!
• Some strange choices of time-tabling
• Constant queues in the Ladies toilets (but when doesn't that happen???)

Notable bands at Summer Sundae (in no real order of preference)

• Wild Beasts - the mad poets of Kendal were glorious. These guys deserve to be HUGE - who else would dare sing sweetly choir boy about diverse and unpleasant (ahem) subjects as snogging drunken in alleys, yobs on a night out, fathers being ignored by the courts and the sordid dreams of shiny-shoed men?? I lost my heart in that tent
• Idlewild - thanks to the defection of The Streets Idlewild were promoted (thank goodness) to headliners and gave a rollicking set of over an hour despite being unprepared for it, although the passion and anger of former years has definitely mellowed (but that's what you get for being over 30)
• Minnaars - described as math rock crossed with indie dance not sure exactly what that means but definitely exuberant and kicking the retro guitar-synth into the twenty-first century, set the tone whereby younger bands put some of the more established bands to shame for their sheer panache and verve
• The Kabeedies definitely get a mention for the best on-stage banter of the festival, not sure their sound is doing anything new but fun all the same like swallowing a whole bag of minstrels in one go
• The Charlatans - Tim Burgess just stepped out of his time machine looking like he had never left the 90s. Like Idlewild the Charlatans rose to the occasion with the right amount of nostalgia / new song ratio and invited the crowd to feel touched by the wonder of their presence (or something like that) - anyway it proved that clunky Oasis stole the crown that should have belonged to the Charlatans
• Kevin Hewick proved that people over 50 do not have to be staid and boring and can lie on the stage playing their guitar with their teeth. But only just.
• Monotonix defy any kind of description except they are completely bonkers - playing scuzzed-up dirty rock and roll IN the audience - a security guard's nightmare they must be - moving their instruments around, only wearing pants, chucking water, hairy and sweaty, leaping off balconies, a drummer who is the personification of Animal - audience participation to the max and proving that it can be done. Monotonix I salute you
• Ou est le swimming pool - strange sartorial decisions abounded (bat-winged cardigan with nowt underneath? tank-top gym wear? check shirt and hairband with moustache? Shirt and jacket like dodgy club promoter?) kind of wonky pop by a boy band who hate each other's guts
• The Cheek - are they the new Menswear of the twenty-first century? Or is there something brewing in their heads which will blow us all away with its total awesomeness? Only time will tell but there was a good attempt at feigning aloofness whilst trying not to laugh as the sweat drips from the chin

The disappointments

• Mystery Jets - pretty dull really except for their one good song about being in love with a girl who lives two doors down, since they sacked the Dad it seems to have gone downhill
• The Domino State - wanted to sound like Echo and the Bunnyman and the Chameleons, sounded more like Richard Ashcroft without the Verve, bloated and dull
• Broken Records - unforgettable folk whining, the first of many
• St Etienne - it was amazing to finally see Sarah Cracknell in the flesh and with a feather boa but there was something lacking in the performance, bit flat and they only played one really really good song, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, the rest was slightly drivel (sorry)
• Bon Iver - less said about this the better as only more whiny folk. Should have been on in the day not the evening, its like getting a sparkler and it fizzing out before it even starts
• The Zutons - like Bon Iver it makes me feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with my brain - both these bands are so popular but they just leave me cold. Zutons had no warmth no sparkle just sounded conventional and adding nothing to the musical lexicon - very disappointing ending to Summer Sundae this year

Bands I should have seen / seen more of

• 65daysofstatic - VERY VERY LOUD but sounded promising
• Micachu and the Shapes - clashed with The Cheek and our allegiance was to the boys from Suffolk
• Hugh Cornwall - punk and post-punk relic
• Future of the Left

Ou est le swimming pool prove that sartorial decisions are not their strong point

The Charlatans - effortlessly good

The Kabeedies - blurred but bouncy

Someone forgot to inform the drummer about the visual aesthetic - Minnaars

The Wild Beasts - obliterated by light and poor camera on mobile phone

The best way to see (and hear) the Zutons - slightly out of focus

Yawn, yawn - Bon Iver

Suffolk's finest - The Cheek

choose your own adventure - heartsrevolution

'choose your own adventure' books were always a bit of a con: firstly, of course you could only choose the adventure in the parameters of the author's imaginings (sometimes quite sadistic if it was one by Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson, such as monsters with huge numbers of eyes bursting open in blisters from their backs that lounged in pools of disfiguring acid, ice maidens with slaves controlled by metal collars that could burst and kill them, beautiful women enslaved within magic armour that forced you to kill them whilst tears rolled down their face, haunted houses owned by devil worshippers far more vindictive than any hollywood fright fest, vampires with biscuits made of blood to catch the unwary adventurer... who knows what impact such things have on the intensely open minds of young persons) and the fiendishly complicated and ultimately time-consuming approach to fighting monsters meant that it was always more tempting to choose your own outcome (vanquishing the monster of course) and keep going backwards and forwards through the options until the happy ending was reached. heartsrevolution on the other hand are a boy and a girl and 'choose your own adventure' is a deceptively simple, though compulsively hectic rush of adrenaline which despite its cutesy exterior hints at a dark heart beneath.

veil veil vanish - into a new mausoleum EP

Goth somehow suits the eternal greyness of Britain, desperate to glean something elaborate out of the mishmash of brutal box like houses and grotesque Victoriana that blights our nondescript towns. The Cure and their ilk are as familiar as the cracked pavements and greasy windowsills on the high street even if the black lace gloves and creepy makeup is largely gone. Now the Americans come to steal our monopoly on melancholy. Veil Veil Vanish from San Francisco, not somewhere to be immediately associated with the intense mournfulness that spreads slowly and with intent from the speakers. I wanted to think 'they are trying too hard' after all the Ep is entitled 'into a new mausoleum' and it's like duh death and goth how obvious. I wanted to hate it. To take songs like 'Reproach' and gleefully tear them to shreds (which the masochists would probably love if they have a goth-like inferiority complex). To use the fact that they appear on the Cure tribute album 'Perfect as Cats' covering 'The Upstairs Room' as evidence that you may as well go and listen to the original instead. Instead it's been on repeat all evening. It is the blissfulness of colliding guitars, exploding into the aural equivalent of gazing up into the wonder of a starfilled night; the intense anxiety / obscurity of those shattered by existence and needing to sing about 'shadows dripping like honey kissing'; the exhaustion of feeling captured in sound.

white rose movement - kick / cigarette machine

Named after an abortive movement by students from Munich to oust Hitler from power, the band known as White Rose Movement epitomises dystopian world views of Ballard, Foxx et al tied to the pop bombast of Duran Duran - yes its another eighties throw back electroclash special but WRM do it so well you can forgive them for being a little bit derivative. Dancing towards the apocalypse, the power of 'Kick' (their debut) lies in the tunes they meld, speaking of the sleaze, tension, general nastiness of 21st century life, narrated by the sensual, sulky vocals of singer Finn. Certainly there is something inextricably sexy about synthpop, perhaps its the breathy vocalists the genre seems to attract, which both Finn and (former) bandmate Taxxi demonstrate (the double xx there perhaps another nod to pioneers like John Foxx?), alongside a catalogue of teasing yelps, random screams and emotional outbursts that makes this album so vital, so alive in its conception of 21st century nightmare. Like the movement known as 'New Miserablism' e.g. Interpol, Editors, White Lies etc there is more than a hint of violence driving the melancholy, but unlike say the White Lies for instance there is no compromise in 'Kick' as to there being any hope that we will break out of this; you can kick and scream and rail all you want but we are stuck in this mess. So you might as well revel in the seediness, in the sleaze and leap in with guts. Check out 'Speed' and 'London's Mine' for maximum exhilaration, 'Girls in the back' cuts deep whilst the hidden track after 'Cruella' is to swoon for. Also for the record; Newest single 'cigarette machine' (how quaintly subversive) sounds like Elvis had he been hanging round the English high street too long and ingested the local patter.

Balgay Hill: A play about Dundee, Billy MacKenzie, The Associates, about heroes, fame and home

History is (mostly) straightforward. Events happen, are recorded by a number of eyewitnesses, whether written down or carried in the minds of those who experience it. These become the definitive 'facts' which give us our sense of identity, our sense of who we are, the sense that we are the product of a long line of Others - that we are here today because of their actions. We impose upon it a beginning, a middle and an end. And because we are a perverse species we mostly like to insist on a happy ending.

Even music is prone to such gross simplification. Not so 'Balgay Hill' a play which reflects the inter-connectedness between home, our sense of belonging and the memories which become (formalised as) our histories.

"Neither James (Brining, Director) nor I wanted to write a straightforward bio because nothing about Billy or his story is straightforward. He is an amazing character full of contradictions trailing a litany of legends in his wake. He is a different kind of hero blessed with an extraordinary voice" (Simon Macullum, Writer).

Balgay Hill is (loosely) the story of Billy Mackenzie, maverick and magnificent singer with The Associates, told through the interwoven lives of four individuals from Dundee, where Billy was born and now rests close to the titular Balgay Hill. At first I was uncertain as to how this could be accomplished without seeming forced in terms of incorporating Billy's (larger than) life into the lives of mere mortals (so to speak), however it was very sensitively done, with the main framing device being a video that one of the characters was making about Billy's life as, they quite rightly said, there is no real, lasting memorial to him. Only fragments of a life that was lived for the briefest of moments in the spotlight; the seminal being when Billy shimmered onto the Top of the Pops stage - wearing a black beret and raincoat, seemingly trying not to laugh at Alan Rankine and the chopsticks stuck in his hair - rightly identified as a key moment (as beautifully described by Simon Reynolds in 'Rip it up and start again'). Such fragments can be misleading - how much do we really know about someone like Billy?

"To think you learned to know someone and find / That you don't know, don't know them at all." (Club County, The Associates)

Whilst Billy's life provided the structure for the events (the details of which would be familiar to anyone with more than a passing interest in The Associates, they cannot help but attract big stories to them), there was always some blurring between what belonged to the life of the character, and what belonged in the life of Billy. This was effective in that it created a real sense of how memories operate, they are often jumbled and incoherent, hard to fathom as to their time and place until we place them into a narrative. These memories were not existing as something given, but we had to piece them together, to give them meaning.

"I found a coin and washed away the silt / I found a shiny coin / A coin whose head was slightly to the tilt / Who'd leave it there in silt / guilt?" (Nude Spoons, The Associates)

Whilst it seems ironic that going by his singing voice you could have thought that Billy Mackenzie was as likely to have come from Saturn than from Dundee, also poignant was the emphasis within the play, in the words of writer Simon Macallum, "our relationship with the place of our birth". And although Billy himself left Dundee several times he always came back. Two of the characters in the play had never left, one never really belonged there, and the last only returned (as was implied) to die there, according to the Japanese saying. Sadly this was the same for Billy, who was found in his father's garden shed in 1997 having taken a fatal overdose. The closing of the play on Balgay Hill, close to Billy's final resting place, no happy ending, no tying of the ends reflects (for me) the reality of memory, there is no end, and with there being no end the memories will live on, gathering their own momentum; not Billy-as-he-was but Billy-as-he-is-remembered which will necessarily be different depending upon who is doing the remembering. Yet this is the nature of memories, they are idiosyncratic, highly personal and indisputable, the perfect foil to the 'boring old history' that we are forced to learn because someone tells us it is important. But it got me thinking, why do some memories endure more than others? Which memories of Billy will endure and which will fade? All in all it was more than a curiosity piece, it was a thoughtful and engaging work which deserves a lot of success. Now I wonder if Take That the Musical will have the same effect....

"So what if this party fears two? / The alcohol loves you whilst turning you blue / View it from here, from closer to near / Awake me!" (Party Fears Two - The Associates)

Some pictures....

Looking across to The Law from Balgay Hill

Looking across to the 'Silvery Tay' from the cemetery on Balgay Hill

The Dundee Rep Theatre

The best record shop I have visited in ages, Groucho's in Dundee

NB All quotes from Simon Macallum are from the 'Balgay Hill' programme; song lyrics from The Associates album 'Sulk'

Crystal Stilts - Alight of the Night

The name Crystal Stilts sounds like one of those magical objects found only in European fairytales; like Baba Yaga's house that spins on chicken legs, the nettle shirts that Elisa must knit for her doomed brothers or the singing ringing tree that restores the morally bankrupt Princess to goodness.  Likewise the sounds constructed by the Stilts are somewhat vague and ethereal, with a tinge of the typical English weather.  If drizzle and mist could sing, rather than whisper with eerie precision in your ears, 'Alight of the night' might be the consequence.  Singer Brad sounds like he is enveloped in the stuff, his melancholic drawl subsumed beneath the weight of the ponderous production, recalling the wooziness of sinusitis, or that early sensation of numbness when operating on little sleep.  The world becomes cocoon-ed, perhaps a little indifferent, a little detached; its rather reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine and Shoegaze bands, but without the excruciating  ear-bleed.  Whatever - the results are beguiling, particularly songs 'The Dazzling' and 'Departure' which set a simple repetitive rift against bass-lines that chog along almost jovially alongside the mournful (and unfathomable) vocals, the slight melodies weaving in and out.  The power of the rhythms rise above the murk and prevent this album sinking into its own navel, creating an oddly uplifting experience.