The Tris McCall Report
British Inversion, October 14, 2000
No, no Kid A review here, but a few prefatory words about Radiohead. Of all the major releases of 2000, Kid A is, without a doubt the one I anticipated the least, and that, to put this in perspective, includes albums by the Baha Men and Britney Spears. Now, before you dismiss me as woefully contrary, let me get it on the record that I sorta like Radiohead; I think they are OK, as computers go. And I have been listening to, or rather, I've been subjected to, their albums since the very beginning, before Thom Yorke developed his keening, melodramatic delivery, back when the group still read as a fussier, more immature version of Fretblanket. I think "Just" is a very fine rock performance (albeit one with an awful video that encapsulates everything that's wrong with their ideology), and Johnny Greenwood's guitar solos on "Paranoid Android" almost compensate for the unfulfilled promise of the empty reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. But if these guys aren't the world's most boring Important band -- the Midnight Oil of our time -- I'll eat my Alesis digital effects processor. Strip away, for a moment, the wall of guitars and production gloss that drench Radiohead's songs, and what do you have?, poker-faced U-2 rewrites coupled with hokey, unremittingly grim man-against-the-machine lyrics that compare unfavorably to Neal Peart's, all delivered by a humorless, self-important singer who sounds as if he is perpetually in the midst of a particularly painful Kermit the Frog parody. Radiohead personifies angst-ridden, besieged white-man culture, and if you yourself are an angst-ridden, besieged white man, you may have received OK Computer as a way forward for guitar-rock -- which was, at the time, looking a bit passe next to the sampladelic intricacy of dance music and hip-hop. Certainly, plenty of British and Canadian rock groups did; and in the year 2000, when nobody is worried anymore whether dance acts and samplers are going to run guitar bands off the radio for good, there are now almost as many Radiohead copy acts in London as there were Pearl Jam copy acts in America in 1992.
When What's The Story (Morning Glory) stormed the charts in 1995, I braced myself for the onslaught of Oasis imitators -- a movement that, despite Noel Gallagher's active encouragement, never achieved any real momentum. Today, in the midst of Radiohead's critical and commercial ascendancy, like David Byrne I ask myself, how did we get here? Didn't this position belong to Oasis by divine right, or just by popular sovereignty? No, this was yet another instantiation of the In The Air Tonight axiom -- in rock, that which is most frequently imitated is that which can be sonically duplicated. In order to reference or copy Radiohead on record, a recording act must embark upon a complex but doable process of matching sounds, investing in expensive equipment, and finding somebody willing to take on the sticky task of mimicking Yorke's compressed choirboy delivery. In order to imitate Oasis, though, you have to actually sit down and write a song. A simple task, to be sure, but also deceptively complex. What I've come to realize is that while songwriting fetishism can be overdone and taken to ridiculous extremes, the quality song is still the basic unit of real value in rock music. I haven't listened to Kid A enough yet to be rendering any judgment on its quality, but I can tell you this: like Blur on 13 (the album that Kid A most closely resembles), Radiohead seems to be attempting to intellectually distinguish themselves from their peers by abandoning songwriting altogether. This approach doesn't necessarily damn the project. In fact, I think it can be argued that since songwriting has always been Radiohead's weakest suit, relegating it to a secondary role and concentrating, instead, on soundscape is just good sense.
Well, maybe. In this year when so many rock groups are rediscovering narrative, continuity, and intertextuality, it's dispiriting to me to see the world's most acclaimed rock band retreat into a nearly prediscursive mode. Radiohead has never been terribly good at communication -- even their big conceptual pieces feel dreamily amorphous rather than clear and accessible -- and mostly what they've managed to convey so far is a kind of inchoate sadness that resonates with the hurt, depressed feelings of white guys world over. Ultimately, it is more than telling that the two most overrated acts of the nineties came to mass consciousness by singing "I'm a loser". It isn't production techniques or derivative songwriting that makes rock music seem tame or toothless when compared to techno and hip hop -- it's its status as the last haven for the expression of unreconstructed white-man angst. Once we move beyond that, we can get this party started for real. When we do, here are twelve records for the turntables:
A brutal, often incisive Scottish group engaged (as many Scottish groups currently seem to be) in a simultaneous exploration and evaluation of naturalism. The pop melodies are solid, the lyrics are intelligent, and singer Hugh Duggie discharges them with the utmost conviction over a sonic assault reminiscent of Six.By Seven at their most caffeinated. None of that would matter much, or provide more than a momentary visceral ride if there weren't several songs here that keep playing for you once the album is over: not the pissed off pop-thrash songs like "Superhero No 1" (though it's bracing) but the gentler tracks; most notably "The Ghost of Vernon Howell", which may just be the best and most moving song I've heard all year. "It hasn't been the easiest transition" sings Duggie in a cracked, short-of-breath voice that groans like bone on bone. What saves Never Got Hip from the kind of ponderousness that sullied much of Six.By Seven's sophomore album: wicked black humor and raw, manic intensity. Imperative for appreciators of UK guitar rock.
Somewhere further left from center -- both aesthetically and geographically -- lies Arab Strap, an unforgettable and singular act that epitomizes the new emphasis on narrative and pure communication. While Foil hail from the drably industrialized West Lothian, and craft music that reflects their cosmopolitan urbanity and respect for (certain) tradition(s), Aidan Moffatt and Malcolm Middleton, the prime movers behind the Arab Strap, incubated their project in a nowhere town in the center of Scotland. Vocalist Moffatt -- some will recognize him as the voice from the finest cut on Mogwai's Young Team -- rarely bothers to sing or rhyme; instead, he recites gruesome, realist stories of fragile and twisted relationships over stark musical backdrops that explode into torrents of noise and guitar feedback. The effect, once you unravel Moffatt's seemingly impenetrable Scottish accent, is undeniably compelling -- somewhere between cybersex addiction and staring at an automobile accident. Mad For Sadness, recorded live, compiles hypnotic performances of several of the best cuts from the first two Arab Strap albums, and functions as an effective and surprisingly listenable introduction to the group. Moffatt's refusal to allow melody or time to mediate his stories -- his urgency and palpable desperation -- coupled with Middleton's sensitivity and comprehension of these stories, makes Arab Strap pioneers on the frontier of the new classicist approach, and one of the most interesting acts in the United Kingdom.
Belle & Sebastian -- Fold Your Hands, Child, You Walk Like A Peasant
B&S might not be the best or most important group of the current Scottish renaissance (though they get patriotic props for referencing the aforementioned act in their last album title) but they are its most notable product, and, therefore, its most scrutinized. By now, Stuart Murdoch has written enough great pop songs that he deserves to be taken seriously as a major artist on the level of, say, Morrissey; yet something makes me hesitant about praising him. Part of the problem, I recognize, is Murdoch's spiteful and resentful attitude, on display here in songs like "Nice Day For A Sulk" and "I Fought In A War", among other tracks. (I know B&S are supposed to be a bunch of sensitive wallflowers, but that's the biggest laugh in indiepop). Morrissey wasn't much better, of course, but at his best he was such a dazzling lyrical stylist that it was always difficult to punish him for his indiscretions. But as great as the Smiths were, they never had the arrangement sense, nor the production skill, that has characterized all of B&S's albums. After years of near-misses, B&S finally executes flawlessly: from the electric piano/falsetto soul of "Don't Leave The Light On, Baby" to the infectious schoolhouse rock chunk-chunk of "Women's Realm", from the effective use of horns and strings on "The Wrong Girl" to the gorgeous orchestral outro to "Beyond The Sunrise", this is a musical-imaginitave act at the top of its game, spinning out variations on the Donovan/Bryter Layter formula with more efficiency and energy than anybody but Sean O'Hagan. And while Murdoch has, again, farmed out songwriting and singing duties to members of the group who are his distinct inferiors, that doesn't prevent Fold Your Hands from being the first Belle & Sebastian album that really feels like an album, and not an uneven collection of unforgettable gems and total throwaways. Murdoch remains a world-class chain-puller -- his another-man-against-violence-against-women song here ("The Chalet Lines") falls somewhere in between artful disingenuousness and sheer exploitation, and that's just what's good about it. But he recovers his equilibrium in time for the mammoth closer, where, over the best track of the band's luminescent career, he breaks down and finally gives it to us straight: "I'm brutal, honest, and afraid of you". More of that, please, wherever it came from.
Part 117, for those who care, of a working distinction between indiepop and power-pop: if it sounds like it was made with an eye on the radio, it's probably power-pop. (If it sounds like it was made by people who don't even own a radio, it's almost definitely indiepop.) Independent power-pop groups tend to make forceful, pristine recordings with hi-fidelity standards, arguing that, were all things perfectly equal, their songwriting talent and sense of melody would land them on hit radio and in six-figure contracts with the world's biggest record companies. Simon Steadman, independent power-pop artist, is no stranger to those corporate boardrooms -- the poor guy was shaken forcefully out of Arista Records during the label's recent turmoil -- and his airwave-friendly self-released album is independent only in letter, not in spirit. That isn't to knock it at all -- as I mentioned before, I anticipated Britney Spears's new album, too. Steadman comes not with dance tracks, but with the kind of sturdily constructed, earnest guitar songs that wouldn't sound out of place on a Matthew Sweet album. "Cut Me Loose" and "stml" are solid singalong numbers, and despite consistently bitter lyrics, Loser Friendly is no downer. Steadman himself has a tendency to overemote, and when he pushes it too far, he can suggest vocal featherweights like Tim Edwards of Jesus Jones. But when he keeps himself under control, this highly polished, moderately intelligent set does manage to generate interest and some intensity. You, and Arista Records, could do a hell of a lot worse.
When first we heard Gaz Coombes sing, his voice bore a strong sonic resemblance to Roger Waters at his most paranoid, and that enlivened and sharpened pop fluff singles like "We're Alright" and drove Britpop masterpieces like "Caught By The Fuzz" straight over the edge into delirious hysteria. Coombes lost himself -- and quite a bit of his remarkable vocal presence -- on Supergrass's indistinct and largely forgotten sophomore effort. But with Supergrass, he seems to have reinvented himself, and, like so many young British singers, he has caught the Thom Yorke bug. You'd be forgiven for assuming that "Moving" was a smoothed-out Radiohead song during the verses -- luckily, the song kicks into an angular chorus more reminiscent of Kula Shaker at their ultra-processed best, and Coombes's voice follows suit. Other Yorke-isms abound, particularly a newfound penchant for nebulous lyrical generalities, far from the blunt storytelling of I Should Coco or the scattershot ruminations of We're In It For The Money. But that's not what you're interested in, you want to know about the music. Well, technically speaking, it's terrific; marvelously played, and as solid an exhibition of retro formalism as you're liable to find since Ride called it quits. Several tracks, particularly "Jesus Came From Outer Space" and the electric piano-driven "Mary" strut with the assurance of Spacehog at the apex of their glam-redux powers; "Pumping On Your Stereo" skips over the tribute acts and rips off Bowie and the Stones directly. Robert Coombes's organ fills and deepens several of the more derivative cuts, and the chord structures of even the least compelling tracks take odd and interesting turns. Many do not ask much more of their records than melodic invention and musical excellence, and if that's your bag, you can't do much better than this.
Or, the record that answers the question: what would happen if you gave a bunch of enthusiastic second-year liberal arts students the assignment to write a follow-up to the first Elastica set? You'd get something very much like The Menace, an album that strains so earnestly to sound like Elastica that it consistently, and often hilariously, lands wide of the mark. This time out, instead of straight Wire ripoffs, you get the interesting spectacle of a group attempting to rip off Wire -- just because they're supposed to -- and muffing the job entirely. And in the place of the forced posturing and phony tough-girl pococurantism, here's a group striving to sound phony-tough but mishandling the attitude altogether. The mind reels: never before has a group tried so hard to sound like artificial, derivative jerks, and failed at it. The whole thing feels like a new wave homework assignment, and perhaps that's exactly what it is; Justine Frischmann was too old (or perhaps just too jaded) to be convincing on songs like "Your Arse My Place" five years ago, so perhaps nobody could blame her for going through the motions to fulfill her contractual obligations to Atlantic Records. Yet in its failure to reproduce the tropes and gestures of Elastica, The Menace takes on a strange, crumpled life of its own; out of the rubble of her own misinterpretations of what made their first album commercially successful and mildly notorious, Frischmann, for the first time, manages to generate sympathy and warmth, and a few solid grooves. And "Nothing Stays The Same" is probably the best thing she's ever written, even if it is just her most successful attempt at mimicking the spirit, rather than just the letter, of Colin Newman's songbook. Some homework assignments, do, after all, deserve acceptable marks.
Richard Ashcroft -- Alone With Everybody
God, I wanted to hate this album. Ashcroft epitomizes the tortured, self-involved rock star, and much as I can occasionally have sympathy for that paradigm (witness my consistent appreciation for Liam Gallagher), the ex-Verve frontman and professional bad interview has always swung between maddeningly smug and noxiously confessional. The Verve's one good song -- "Bitter Sweet Symphony", perhaps you've heard of it - didn't even turn out to be an Ashcroft original, and its video, which depicted the gaunt frontman striding like a big asshole down a London street and deliberately bumping into women, represented Laddism at its most unrepentantly offensive. But it's a pretty fair bet that when you push somebody that self-involved into the studio, and give him a huge budget, he's not going to squander the opportunity to be grandiose by recording a polite, mannered collection of songs. On Alone With Everybody, Ashcroft, liberated from his pedestrian backing group, shoots for Astral Weeks-style orchestral transcendence -- and I will be damned if he doesn't get halfway there. "I Get My Beat" is an exhilarating exercise in orchestral big-arrangement pop, and the grinding "New York" (Ashcroft's open-faced and surprisingly even-handed reflections after a visit to "your island") wouldn't sound out of place blasting out of the Stadium speakers after a Yankee victory. Bassist Pino Palladino, fresh from his work with Lauryn Hill, deftly grounds the power ballads and keeps the arrangements moving. This year's biggest shocker, for sure, and proof again that nobody can be written off completely.
Despite Chris Hillier's penchant for hiring club magicians to remix his singles to hell and back, Dubstar has always resembled Kirsty MacColl much more than Spring Heel Jack. This is music built on samples and loops, but you wouldn't know that from a cursory listen -- the songs follow traditional verse-chorus structures, and Hillier has no interest at all in odd harmonics or experimental explorations. Goodbye, the Dubstar collection released stateside in '97, was one of the unadorned pop delights of that year, and Make It Better can't help but disappoint in comparison. Nevertheless, Sarah Blackwood's delightful deadpan has lost none of its edge, and several of the jumpier tracks here, particularly "I" and the waltz-tempo "Another Word" (which concludes with the summer's finest guitar solo) conjure the old synth-pop pyrotechnics. But Make It Better is perhaps most notable as yet another example of the emigration of electronica and trip-hop songsters from dance music paradigms -- these mixes lean heavily on rhythm guitar and traditional rock beats that you'll be inclined to wonder why Hillier didn't just break down and record with a live band. "Arc Of Fire" and the uproarious "I'm Conscious of Myself" could have been great heavy metal songs, even with the proper Blackwood singing them, and it's a shame that her puppetmaster's lingering commitment to the dance floor gets in the way of some very obvious moves.
Hooverphonic -- The Magnificent Tree
If Chris Hillier has retreated from techno arrangements into the more comfortable territory of formal pop song construction, Alex Callier of Hooverphonic appears to have lost his compass altogether. Now, Hooverphonic has never exactly been a coherent act, straddling uncomfortably between soundtrack trip-hop and beat and sonic experimentalism, and the tension between those competing models made Blue Wonder Power Milk (1998) an occasionally fascinating study. But with the departure of anticommercial gadfly Frank Duchene, Callier is freed up to reorient his group toward delightful big-riff sixties-cinema fluff ("Jacky Cane", "Vinegar and Salt") and Bjorkian off-the-wall fairy tale nonsense ("Frosted Flake Wood"). Geike Arnaert has never been the most adept singer working this territory, and touring with Roisin Murphy and Moloko appears to have deepened an already palpable inferiority complex -- she spends much of The Magnificent Tree either vainly attempting to reproduce Murphy's delivery ("Mad About You", a straight rewrite of the Prince Paul-Roisin Murphy collaboration on the Handsome Boy Modeling School album) or consciously running from it ("Pink Fluffy Dinosaurs"). Nevertheless, Callier hasn't misplaced his signature beat styles, and he deftly avoids soporific Morcheeba territory by indulging his instinct for sonic weirdness. The Magnificent Tree isn't this group's finest hour, but it's an enjoyable listen with substantial rewards.
The subtraction of Duchene's fascinating but often excessive instrumental wizardry might have made Hooverphonic a more radio-friendly act (though this still remains to be seen); post trip-hop peers Olive have shed a member, too, but all Robin Taylor-Firth appears to have taken with him is Tim Kellett's flugelhorn. Here's hoping he'll give it back soon; the mournful brass distinguished Extra Virgin from generic dance-floor fodder, and contributed a sweet counterpoint to Ruth-Ann's smoky, precise, and quietly emotive vocals. On Trickle, Ruth-Ann's role has, predictably, increased (though she still isn't given the courtesy of a last name), and she's quite up to the task; soulful when she needs to be, alternately tough and tender, always welcoming but never naïve. When given a piece of bombast like "Liberty", she can sing the stuffing out of it, but it's her nuanced approach to less obvious material ("Indulge Me", "Beyond The Fray") that marks her as a truly special singer, and one who may step out of the shadows and into multiplatinum success any old time. Kellett's melodic gifts have waned a bit this time out, and there's nothing here as infectious as "Outlaw" or hypnotic as "Safer Hands"; sadly, he's also reined in his penchant for lengthy, bizarre intros and outros. There is, however, a terrific disco remake of 10cc's "You're Not Alone", which compares very favorably to Elastica's staggeringly misguided take on "Da Da Da".
Add N to (X) -- Add Insult To Injury
Hillier, Callier, and Kellett (and 99% of musicians who currently use them) all pretty much do the same thing with synthesizers -- they feed the signals into quantizers, sample and loop the parts, and produce well-manicured, computer processed tracks tailored for smooth consumption on the dance floor and hit radio. But think, for a second, about what an analog synthesizer is. It's a noisemaking device of unparalleled efficiency, an agent of chaos and indeterminacy that resists taming. The marriage of synthesizers to neatly processed disco tracks is an artificial one, and one that's bound to break down. Add N to (X), a techno act in name only, are pioneers of this liberation effort, playing Arps, Moogs, and old Korgs over a combustible live rhythm section, simultaneously evoking the intensity of surf-rock and the menacing new wave robotics of Stop Making Sense. "Kingdom of Shades" is terrifying and portentious, but "Miami Dust Mite Harvest" is the best thing here: over a ferocious, staggering rock drum tattoo, Ann Shenton weaves a mellotron solo reminiscent of the best and most bracing prog-rock insanity. Not many groups have managed to bridge the gap between King Crimson, the Ventures, and Gang Of Four. That alone makes Add N To (X) a force to reckon with -- but their commitment to returning the synthesizer to its natural place as a lead rock instrument earns them my unambivalent praise. While I'd enjoy this album more if fewer tracks were instrumental, in this case alone, I can admit that this is my failing, not theirs.
The Go-Betweens -- The Friends of Rachel Worth
Before there were Belles, Sebastians, Cardinals, or Trembling Blue Stars, there were the Go-Betweens, penning straightforward acoustic heartbreak numbers, occasionally with wicked humor and always with a mischievous sense of fun; postcards from Australia, under-produced, bravely intelligent, lyrically challenging. Richard Davies has channeled their spirit, Rob Wratten has mined their melodic archive, but they are still very much kicking, and with The Friends of Rachel Worth, quite decidedly better than ever. Many of these songs are positively gorgeous, and the straight rockers, discharged with Dylanesque disregard for sonic fidelity, preen with a sort of genuine tough-mindedness that Stuart Murdoch could never pretend to. The album concerns geographical and emotional removal -- tales of retreat and denial, and examinations of the unwillingness to engage and the forces that pull and push us away from society. "When She Sang About Angels" is the aching, perfect ballad that will grab the attention, but it's the ragged "German Farmhouse" that stands in for the album's principal concerns: a story about living incognito, in which a decaying castle functions metaphorically for the narrator's vista and condition. Great acoustic guitar sound, great drum sound, winning and instantly recognizable performances, powerful images; a great driving album, to be sure. Take it with you on your next romantic trip -- if music is an emotional preservative (and I know you know what I mean), The Friends of Rachel Worth, is pure, glistening amber.
I'm a million different people from one day to the next, I can't change my mould.