the black ghosts - the black ghosts

It is rather shameful to admit that I completely passed The Black Ghosts by when they first emerged... introduced to 'Something New', which was a rather jaunty tune with a pleasing discordant chord opening, nonetheless it (unfortunately) came across as rather insipid outside the context of its encompassing album (although in place it makes perfect sense).  It took an opening song to a recent low-budget film with lame (ahem) sparkly vampires to ignite that fatal interest....  A little bit of research and it emerges that the 'Ghosts are formed from the smouldering ashes of Simian (splitting into two with Simian Mobile Disco being the most obvious link), a band who exists virtually in my collection and is virtually never played, being a bit too day-glo and sickly sweet for more melancholy tastes.  The Black Ghosts are, however, leaning more towards this vein; despite the high energy forced into dance-able tracks like 'Repetition kills you' and 'Anyway you choose to give it' there is a certain fragility in the arrangements - a sense of loss underlying the optimism - that keeps it interesting, a vibe that hangs together upon the wistful, yet fortunately not so cloying, vocals of singer Simon Lord (he seems to have lost most of the affectation he employed in Simian although there is an ill-advised lapse into cockerney at times).  Damon Albarn also appears but I am not sure he adds much in the way of interest (meow!)  In terms of the songs... there is a certain schizoid nature at work here; if you heard some of these songs randomly you would hardly link the two together.  Take 'Full Moon' (from said sparkly-vamp-fest) which could be from the pen of a folk group, all lilting guitars and throbbing bass speaking of the earth and pine trees, immediately followed by 'I don't know' which was made for all I know by intelligent computers and robots manipulating synth pads, only the voice recognisably human (and even then you would hardly link the Simon 'here' with the lushly-tracked Simon 'before').  Both have in common that they are ridiculously catchy.  Gloriously dramatic to open, 'Some way through this' is aching to be the soundtrack to bleeding hearts, however in the next breath 'Anyway you choose to give it' revels in the obsession caused by love - although the narrator is of sufficient presence of mind to almost resent their paramour for causing this parlous state - to what must be one of the most criminally underrated disco stomps this century (it's not the kind of thing I hear at the disco anyway when it should be!)  As well as disco, the 'Ghosts also reveal a well-raided musical styles sheet, managing smooth ('It's your touch'), funky ('Until it comes again') guest singers ('Repetition kills you') and ballads ('Don't cry').  It all builds for the cataclysmic final blow-out - 'Face' - constructed around the repetitious call to arms 'you've got to face the music', underpinned with basic killer beat and 80s throwback synth crunches that makes my heart skip with excitement and notch up the volume.  One to play as loud as you dare in the hope that the neighbours will lap it up with grateful pleasure.

The video for 'Anyway you choose to give it' , which sort of goes with the idea that it's made by computers or robots!



For comparison purposes, 'LaBreeze' by Simian....



...and the brilliant 'I Believe' by Simian Mobile Disco (you might recognise the singer)

bell hollow - foxgloves

Foxgloves are amongst my favourite flowers, a graceful blush of pink amongst the trees, carefully designed to manipulate the bee into its pollen-lain interior.... Bell Hollow likewise draw you in with a rich, velvety sound like those petals.  Whilst having more than a passing resemblance to Interpol and their ilk (not a terrible sin in my book I'll admit) Bell Hollow do not have the same aggressive edge exhibited by that band, more of a shimmery softness around the edges; so trailing a hand lazily in the water on a sultry summer's day (rather than getting all hot and irritable on the sweltering streets of New York).  Opening with the spirited dance-y 'Seven Sisters', Bell Hollow echoes all the pleasant aspects of those fey whimsical bands that you feel might be too delicate to be bruised by the rigours of success (and alas Bell Hollow are no more, adding weight to that ad hoc theory....)  Even Nick Niles singing "and we're young and wild" barely stretches to upbeat.  Even so the sound of melancholy is a wondrous thing, his voice drips with such lusciousness it has the effect of making even the most prosaic of actions compelling.  Exhibit A on 'Our Water Burden' - "take the letter on the mantle, open it slowly, read my hand-" convinces me that even a shopping list would be transformed in his capable larynx.  If you have an irrational hatred of jangly guitars then this album might be hurled against the nearest wall in a fit of pique, for herein is plenty of delicate chiming 'bell-like' guitar (I am honestly running out of metaphors and words to describe this kind of thing, no wonder music journalists go a little barmy in the search for better and greater adjectives), inducing all kinds of pleasant imaginings in the mind of the susceptible listener; personally I am still reclining in a boat slipping silently through the water, somewhat like the doomed Lady of Shalott, especially by the time 'Eyes like Planets' mopes into view.  Things head rapidly downhill after that before pining away with the despair of 'Lowlights' only...only... before there is a brief flash of resilience 'The Bottle Tree' which crackles with the bitterness of resigned 'told-you-so' - 'that was then, but this was now, you got what you wanted but it went sour' - a battered cry to be careful what you wish for if ever there was one.  Still, a good dose of melancholy which never collapses into utter misery is always welcome, only the sad note to end on reflects the fact that it DOES end here. Forever.  And the bell tolls goodbye.

The lovely strains of 'Seven Sisters' (as found on YouTube)

The Stills - Logic will break your heart and Oceans will rise

I refused to even engage with the second album from The Stills (Without Feathers) as soon as I learnt that David Hamelin, who had previously been the drummer, would be taking on vocal duties alongside Tim Fletcher, who sang for the majority of their first album 'Logic Will Break Your Heart.'  Not that I have any specific prejudice against singing drummers (ahem Phil Collins ahem) and I am very sorry to Mr Hamelin but the sublimity of 'Logic Will break your heart' was mostly secured for me because of the vocals of Mr Fletcher, which are often so beautiful I often found myself longing to have his dulcet tones drip-fed into one ear continuously (the other ear would be reserved for David Sylvian) as I am certain this would make the world a much better place to inhabit.  Anyway, I am running ahead of myself to get on to the second without talking about the first... Aside from having an inspired title, 'Logic Will Break your Heart' for me was the best example of the harnessing of an intelligent post-punk sensibility and reconfiguring it through the glossy sounds of the '00s; okay they are still dealing with the same issues as everyone else, love, death, love and death, however the heartfelt nature of Tim Fletcher's keening vocals helps to lift this collections of songs above the murky parapet of indie rock and imbue them with a fatalistic core that taps into our deepest fears of melancholy and being alone-ness (or something to that effect).  An instinctive pull towards melody pervades songs like 'Changes are no good' which contains some of my most favourite lyrics ever - 'All the world's deranged and I'm left crushed, people delayed or in a rush' - for their simplicity.  'Fevered' is sheer heartache melted and poured into the amplifier, a tiny tear clinging to the ephemeral plastic of our mass culture.

Like the Killers, the Stills kind of lost their edge on their second album although, as I admit, I have not taken the time to listen to it and find out.  I will have to wallow in my ignorance for the third attempt 'Oceans will Rise' is taking my attention at the moment and... hooray there is Tim Fletcher's voice stamped all over it and David Hamelin's voice is pleasant enough and there is plenty of melody to counteract the slight element of U2-esque bombasity that has crept in, but then 'Logic...' had such an atmosphere of resigned introspection that even the slightest cranking up of those guitars could blow away its fragile pretensions.   Saying that, I think The Stills have sacrificed some of their quirkiness for conventionality, unless they were a conventional band all along and 'Logic...' was merely an aberration.  Still, whilst some of the songs are forgettable ('Hands on Fire' is pretty bland, 'I'm with You' predictably dull) there is enough to make you hope; 'Snow in California' is a lovely song with seductive harmonies, 'Snakecharming the masses' a more low-key appeal and unusual structure; an achingly beautiful song seems to be trying to get free from 'Dinosaurs' if it wasn't for the intrusive 'rawk' guitar that stomps heavily all over the fledging attempt.  So 'Logic...' still beats the pants off 'Oceans' merely for its refusal to get too enmeshed in the need to be anthemic  - for this reason, 'Oceans' seems rather forced instead of effortless. 

Courtesy of YouTube, the sublimity of 'Changes are no good' from 'Logic will break your heart'

Taking it easy with Mansun and Marion

There seems to be a 90s revival happening at the moment, lots of rumours flying around about the 'seminal' (I say this with a heavy amount of sarcasm) 90s band The Stone Roses reforming, and The Charlatans and Saint Etienne playing at the Summer Sundae festival in Leicester this August, to suggest but two things floating around the Internet ether.  So I decided to have a listen tonight to some tunes that I was listening to in that very decade.  A couple I have to mention; the first is 'Take it Easy Chicken' by Mansun.  I was never a huge fan but I did love this song, due to the wonderful sneering vocals and the dense guitar riff that drives into your skull with the subtlety of a migraine.  Besides the gratuitous incorporation of a farmyard animal into a song title is pretty funny.  The second song I 're-discovered' was 'Sleep' by Marion; poor Marion never really seemed to get anywhere and I think they ended up re-releasing Sleep twice in slightly different versions.   Like 'Take it easy chicken' I get the sense that Marion do not really like the protagonist of their song, although singer Jaime Harding is too polite to sound really cruel.  I always like the lyric 'Go to sleep there's more fish in the sea' as a potential put-down, sadly I have never had an occasion to use it.

empires and dance - simple minds

It's always an exciting moment when an assumption that you have held for such a long time is irrevocably shattered in the light of a new discovery.  I was always dismissive of Simple Minds based on the fact that when I was conscious enough to listen to and remember music their output was pretty much the overblown stadium rock God posturing of the mid to late 80s which I cannot help feel numb towards (stadium rock in general that is).  There's nothing wrong with ambition yet achieving the pinnacles of success (almost) inevitably mean a slide downwards and the 80s are littered with countless bands who reached the stars only to be burnt and cringe into a congealed mass of MOR.  Of course there are exceptions to the rule, however based on my admittedly scanty knowledge, Simple Minds appear to fit into this arbitrary category quite nicely.  Reading the reviews for their 1980 album Empires and Dance it seemed to suggest it was something of a masterpiece and having listened it is hard not to think it is far more sophisticated than their later rock efforts.  Not that it was even popular at the time, like many of the bands I have discovered in recent months abandoned by their record companies and the public, it does not seem much of a coincidence that much of it is dark (read miserable), experimental (read all over the place) and oblique (read incomprehensible lyrics).  I have no idea what Jim Kerr is singing half the time but something about his pronunciation makes it seem important.  Opener I Travel bursts brightly into being quite aware of its brilliance, a sparkling intensity of spacey synths, squalling guitar and decadent disco that could slip into the charts today and you would swear it was by Ladyhawke or White Rose Movement or Neon Neon it is so NOW (but of then) except for Kerr's unmistakable vocal style of course (him not being a woman either which is all the rage in electro in the noughties). It all ends too soon.  Today I died again is heavy with echo and subdued in comparison, concerned with a life lost - 'The clothes he wears, date back to the war.'  Celebration is starker still, a glam-stomp only someone forgot to put the glam in, disappearing with it into the void instead.  This Fear of Gods is almost-trance drip dripping into consciousness (like a fast train travelling through snow-bound mountains) until it turns on a chord and disrupts itself crashing into brighter sparks.  So many echoes here... Capitol City reminds me of dirge-pop, not in a good way particularly.  'Hey Waiter' things are getting a bit peculiar around here, firstly Constantinople Line comes over like a Gothic Japan, and now some woman is talking in French (a la Visage), until a nursery rhyme mash-up and hideous wounded saxophone keep cutting her off (aha must be twist/run/repulsion then).    Its back to business with Thirty Frames of Second channelling the same nervy sense of paranoia that would define post-punk pioneers  like Magazine, and the shiny synths here reminiscent of those great 80s school TV programmes we watched like Dark Towers and one I cannot remember the name of but it concerned an spooky boy alien who landed in a gravel pit.  Kant-Kino has a great title and lovely squelchy synth attack which comes and goes again before it is even introduces itself properly. You have to love how some bands can just throw away a great idea like that. Oh for the experimentation of youth!  Which leaves the final Room 'I only live here, a fragile man' emerging from the slow burning mire, only to peter out again...  Empires and dance indeed, the hedonism before the crash (as we may/may not be experiencing again), the sound of a band struggling to contain a thousand ideas (so lets put them all in).

A performance of the brilliant 'I Travel' from 1980 (with thanks to YouTube)

Here comes everybody - the wake

In 1985 Scotland's The Wake made the kind of music where you are afraid to sneeze in case you disrupt the delicate melodies; even breathing seems a harsh activity in the company of the ethereal Here comes everybody a relatively hidden gem in the history of Factory records.  Although at first condemned for producing sub-Joy Division standard post-punk dirges on their debut (as must every band signed to Factory at the time) by the mid-80s The Wake were coating their tales of love lorn and love lost in woozy blankets of loveliness, sugaring the misery so to speak.  Elements of pop and dub-tinged bass provide the bedrock bubbling away beneath which prevents songs from floating into the ether or the sensitive listener either drowning in sorrow or in syrup, whilst the vocals are gentle without sounding too twee or cloying.  Indeed singer Caesar sounds so doleful, even on the more upbeat songs like Talk about the past,  you might have, like me, the strong desire to want to force feed him with fairy cakes and tea until he gives in and raises a smile.  Nevertheless it is the fragile beauty of the triumvirate of Torn Calendar, All I Asked You To Do and Here Comes Everybody which all deal to some extent with the disappointment caused by love (a good topic for the day after Valentine's) which are the most endearing.  Here Comes Everybody overlies cavernous drums with tender melodies and crushing heartache - 'I lost you in a lonely crowd, you wanted to be free / you wanted to be someone else, I'll always disagree" whilst All I Asked You To Do wears its pop sensibilities on its sleeve and, like The Cure at their best, is infectiously catchy, the simple melody underlain with mists of synth to create a dream-like atmosphere.  Torn Calendar is the wispiest little thing, best consumed in the quiet rather than the bustle of everyday life.   Together with The Names (sort of their label mates) The Wake create soundtracks to lose yourself in the waves of soothing melody.

new song - Howard Jones

Seeing Howard Jones on Top of the Pops performing New Song with a semi-naked man in chains standing beside him is one of my earliest memories, and for some reason it has always stuck with me.  Listening to the song now in adulthood it seems a very peculiar juxtaposition between a rather twee and naive-sounding primitive synth-driven muzak sound with very grown-up lyrics exhorting us to be all post-modern and open-minded, so 'don't crack up, bend your brain, see both sides, throw off your mental chains' which has subconsciously become a kind of mantra. It is a shame that after writing such lyrics as 'challenging preconceived ideas' HJ went and blandly called it 'New Song', which, along with the dated soundtrack, unfortunately detracts from what I think is still a strong and important message especially when in the depths of a 'I have no reason to be here' existential crisis.

Pop Always Shines on TV

Two videos from the 80s which both happen to revolve around the act of watching the television in an otherwise deserted room - Independence Day by The Comsat Angels and Visions of China by Japan. Both want to convey an important message. With respect to both songs being fantastic, the production values of the videos are pretty terrible and suspiciously similar.

Poor Comsat Angels' singer Steven Fellows is agitated because instead of the usual Saturday night entertainment he is being subjected to continual images of people in uniform marching through New York and rockets being launched. Like him I would be pretty frustrated if that happened. So he gets together with his band-mates to sing about it.



Poor David Sylvian looks pretty bored too, trapped in a room with only a TV and jigsaw to occupy him. Occasionally he puts the TV on but like the Comsat Angels' TV this one is faulty and keeps showing only static and unreal images of China. Oh look there's some people marching in uniform! Even worse the only clothes he has left to wear are a check shirt and some dungarees. Bravely he struggles on and even manages to complete his jigsaw before being rescued by his bandmates and taken to a fancy dress Communist party.