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Here are three albums
that have illuminated my year so far in diverse ways. They share a few
common traits. These are geographical, all hail from Scotland, a sense
of adventurousness and a distinctive sense of being outsiders in that
they sound nothing like any of their contemporaries or even one another.
These albums by St Jude’s Infirmary, My Latest Novel and Viva Stereo
retain the mantle of the outsider but wear it proudly and proclaim it
jubilantly. Each band has enchanted, haunted and moved me in ways that
few others have of late. They seem to have developed in isolation but
embrace pop from differing angles. They are pop. Pop that charms, chills
and insinuates, rather than bludgeons itself into your consciousness.
Pop that strives for perfection without losing its focus, bite or power.
Pop that makes you fall head over heels in love again in an effortless
fashion that leaves me breathless, wondering how it happened but elated
that it did. Three bands, three albums, an infinite world of possibilities
contained within them.
Saint Jude’s Infirmary have been around in one form or another for around a decade,
gigging sporadically, recording demos and much as I’d loved them I thought they
were doomed to being one of those bands who were constantly overlooked. Departing
Edinburgh for Utrecht then returning to the capital seems to have focussed their
minds sufficiently that they released their debut album Happy Healthy Lucky
Month on SL Recordings in January to no little critical acclaim. Was it
worth the wait? Damn right it was. St Jude, so aptly named after the patron saint
of lost causes, have produced a perfect album, all beauty and rawness. The best
way to describe this album is to say that it begins with a prayer, the
beautiful ‘The Church Of John Coltrane’, and ends in a riot, the rambunctious,
fiery ‘Vvvampyres’. In between, there are songs about saints, the firebombing
of Dresden and the actress Jean Seberg, most famous for playing Joan of Arc in
Otto Preminger’s
1957 film Maid
Of Orleans. Latterly, Seberg was hounded to suicide by the C.I.A. over her
support for the Black Panther Movement. It’s a beautifully haunting song; Joan
of Arc relocated to Scotland, love as an act of martyrdom with heartbreakingly
simple lines such as ‘I would have followed you from the light to the dark to
be at your side’. Religious imagery pervades through the song’s lyrics, there’s
a hymnal feel to some of it but it’s a determinedly secular record. The theme
of love; love between people, of music,
of times and places, runs through Happy
Healthy Lucky Month. From ‘The Church Of John Coltrane’ with its spectral
organ and sparse drums prominently foregrounding a delicately uplifting, almost
reverential vocal singing lines like ‘When we kiss / it’s not with lust / or
with hormones /But a salute between old partisans’, to ‘Montreal’ a sweet hymn
to the city. Historical figures, songs, events and places are invoked contributing
to the strange world that Saint Jude creates for themselves out of disparate
sources and influences. ‘Good-bye Jack Vettrainno’ is heavenly, invoking Kirkcaldy’s
most famous son (it’s the hometown of St Jude’s) with a rough, deep and warm
male vocal and heavenly female backing. It’s a tale of loss and regret, pulling
no punches as the protagonist admits to knowing everything about his body, from
his liver that takes ‘another lucky punch’ but does not know his heart. It’s
a bruised, elegant epic, full of warmth and pathos. Often St Jude’s Infirmary
sound as though the songs will collapse around them, there’s fragility to this
album that just adds to the gorgeousness of it. Guitars, bass and drums are augmented
with cello, keyboards, melodica and an everything- but-the-kitchen-sink approach
is attempted, though with subtlety and skill, leaving the songs and arrangements
room to breath. ‘All My Rowdy Friends’ is the sound of a band falling drunkenly
down a flight of stairs. Along with ‘Vvvampyre’, it’s the noisiest thing on an
album of varying moods. As the chorus says, ‘It’s all very sweet in a Jim Carroll
kinda way’. I keep coming back to this album, it’s luscious. It drops in millions
of influences, moods and resonances and sounds like everything good in music
over the last four decades and hugely original. It’s accompanied me at all hours
of the day, from 7 a.m. winter Sundays staggering home from work to blocking
out shopping mall muzak. It’s a lean album, no excess flesh or deadwood, simple
but breathtakingly ingenious. Raw, precise and fragile, bits that might sound
like mistakes on lesser records add to the charm of it. A truly ambitious album,
a thing of rare beauty. |
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My Latest Novel hail
from Greenock. I’d seen the name being touted about a few times but thought
it was terrible. Very knowing, very post-modern and slightly smug. Then
I heard them and had to retract all my preconceived notions within less
than a minute. Wolves is an epic piece of work, hugely engaging
and imaginative. Like St Jude’s Infirmary, they use the pop song only
as a frame to hang their own ideas upon, stretching and distorting them
into something new.
The first song ‘Ghost In The Gutter’ builds up out of almost nothing, just a
sparse guitar motif before exploding into an incredible instrumental passage
that reminds me a lot of that first Godspeed You Black Emperor album, the truly
good one with ‘Dead Flag Blues’ on it. It moves with ease from passage to passage,
instruments and volume dropping in and out. There’s more ambition in this opening
song than many bands achieve over an album and it leaves me exhilarated, breathless
and enraptured. Greenock appears to have allowed the band to develop in isolation,
their sound is equally expansive and claustrophobic, difficult yet catchy as
hell. At times My Latest Novel are almost overwhelming in intensity, at other
points the sound is sparse. At all times they sound slightly otherworldly as
if they inhabit another time and place. Tracks such as ‘Pretty In A Panic’, the
luscious ‘The Hope Edition’ and ‘Wrongfully I Rested’ sound folky, in a haunting,
mournful way. The two singles, ‘Sister Sneaker Sister Soul’ and ‘The Reputation
Of Ross Francis’ (which for a while I thought was Francis Rossi and had some
weird image of the erstwhile Status Quo member busking in the streets of Greenock)
are excellent. The former is an elegant love song, all soaring violin and uplifting
vocals. The latter tells the tale of Ross Francis, a prophet without a flock, ‘our
effervescent friend’ pleading his case at the gates of heaven: ‘If you give me
a chance to explain/I’ll show my life wasn’t in vain’. Both are pop songs at
their best, catchy as hell, but with plenty of odd twists and turns, much like
the rest of Wolves really. As with St Jude’s Infirmary there is a hell
of a lot going on in here, much of which isn’t obvious on just a couple of casual
listens. Both albums go well beyond the simple musical and lyrical limits of
most of their contemporaries to explore a rich vein of music that, while definitely
having precedents, sounds original and unique. Both albums feature some exceptional
song writing and a beautiful interplay between male and female vocals, which
leave me gasping for breath.
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Viva Stereo are probably Glasgow’s best-kept secret. Patterns
Of Behaviour is
their second album on their own miniscule Much Better Records via Fence. The
cover is of a familiar yet unrecognisable scene, The Halt Bar on Glasgow’s Woodlands
Road. The grainy black and white picture, the car and clothes of the people passing
by date it to the late 60s/early 70s, yet the pub itself is still the same. The
sound here is less organic but equally inventive. There is a much heavier focus
on electronic instrumentation in the Viva Stereo camp and many of the songs fall
into a more pop format though again it’s a challenging form of pop. Opening song, ‘Lost
in A Field’ insinuates itself into your psyche with its repetitive bass-line,
simple acoustic guitar and Spartan drum pattern providing the background for
some beautiful trumpet playing. It’s very atmospheric, haunting and pretty. Oh
I know it’s a cliché but it does sound like the soundtrack to a film never made,
perhaps a prequel to The
Wicker Man. Later on in, ‘Gone’ treads similar ground. It’s an imaginative,
elegiac instrumental with a vaguely Eastern European spy film soundtrack feel,
reminiscent of that exceptional first Portishead album, Dummy. ‘Ridden’ really
stands out with it’s wasp in a vocal booth electronics and raw, forlorn vocal
high in the mix lamenting a relationship that has gone badly awry: ‘There’s three
of us in the end/Or was it four?’ Other songs adopt a more full on electronic
approach, the darkly disturbing ‘Syntax Errors’ sounds frightened and frightening
at the same time. ‘Patterns Of Behaviour’ features a lovely duet with the theme
of communication breakdown being developed as a motif for much of the album with
the accusations thrown between the male and female vocalists: ‘Why don’t you
say what you mean for a change? / Why don’t you mean what you say for a change?’ before
the song bursts into some edgy punk-funk guitars like a warped ‘Wrote For Luck’ and
the repeated refrain of ‘Good times are all we ever want/Bad times are never
far behind’. ‘You’re Not Committed To The Company’ is an excellently sardonic
swipe at the world of 9-5 employment while the final tracks, ‘The Orange Room’ and ‘Take
Me To The Bridge’ are more downbeat, almost mournful. Patterns
Of Behaviour is a breath of fresh air for those of us who hoped that electronic
based pop music could be more than just a blast of early '80s nostalgia.
Each of these albums is remarkably different from the other, you couldn’t attempt
to lump them together as part of some spurious movement. Over an album each band
has created a world of their own out of disparate sources, worlds, which draw
you in completely.
©
2006 Andy Wood
www.saintjudesinfirmary.co.uk
www.mylatestnovel.com
www.vivastereo.co.uk |