RECORDS

Rip It Up, Issue 53, 1 December 1981, Page 12

RECORDS

Jerry Harrison The Red And The Black Sire Tom Tom Club WEA While David Byrne has been dabbling academically in African culture, his fellow Talking Heads have been working on their own projects, resulting in two very different albums. Harrison has teamed up with ex-Laballe Nona Hendryx, Labelle, Bernie Worrell and Adrian Belew, George Murray (who's worked with Bowie), and New Yorkers Yogi Horton, John Cooksey and Steve Scales. The shadow of David Byrne hangs over The Red And The Black, with Harrison, consciously or unconsciously, imitating his vocal styles. The songs have obviously come together over a long period, so that while 'Things Fall Apart' mirrors the complex, percussive styles of Remain In Light, 'Slink' is closer to the jerky, transitional approach of Fear Of Music. But Harrison is still his own man, and his album is just brimming with fine songs. The lyrics are a chronicle of a world that's falling apart. Urban violence, everyone carrying a gun, living in tension, a warmongering actor in the White House. Harrison asks: What are you going to do? So there's a way out of that comer you've painted yourself into. And maybe you're just going to have to dig that ditch a little bit deeper before you can get out of it. The red and the black. Fire and death. Jerry Harrison is not out to soothe people.

The Tom Tom Club, on the other hand, are so soothing they'll make you nod off. It's a loose collection of people, headed by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. Belew comes along for the ride, so do Tina's three sisters, Wailer Tyrone Dowmie, percussionist Sticky Thompson, and a few other

lesser persons. Frantz says they wanted to make a 'musical anti-snob record'. The Weymouths handle all the vocals, and none of them can really sing. Tina does the vocals on 'Woody Rappinghood' (a hit single overseas), sounding like a halfliberal schoolmarm.

If this is new-age funk, I can take or leave it. It's mindless, repetitive, and barely a step ahead of the old disco. Tom Tom Club sound like a bunch of spoilt brats, living it up in the Bahamas, and recording a little something to amuse themselves. Give me Jerry Harrison anytime. Duncan Campbell

The Human League Dare!

Virgin

It is strange, almost ironic that a band that started life as depressing, synthesised futurists could split down the middle and form two lightweight pop/disco units. Such is the fate of Human League.

When Martyn Ware and lan Marsh left to form Heaven 17, Phil Oakey and Philip Wright roped in occasional member lan Burden, ex-Rezillos leader Jo Callis and two disco dancing singers, Joanne Catherall and Susanne Sulley the new Human League was born. Dare is essentially a commercial album. It's stuffed full of songs in the same vein as 'Love Action'. Songs that demand dancing, singing and bouncing about. The only time it strays is for 'I am the Law', a meander-

ing song reminiscent of 'Circus of Death' from the first album. That .'Hard Times' is absent, yet the album still strong, illustrates the Human League's current strength. There are no weak links on the album. Cuts such as 'Seconds' and Do or Die weave and bop on some of the best synth hooks you'll hear in a long time.

Produced by Martin Rushent, Dare has the lush feel that only he can give to synthesisers. Couple that with the fastdeveloping abilities of Oakey, Wright and Burden and you have a fine album. Mark Phillips Heaven 17 Penthouse and Pavement Virgin This one's been long overdue. The original Human League had ambitions that fell well short of actuality. They wanted to synthesise the abstract, be ahead of their time and yet collect a cheque at the end of the day. This dichotomy meant that they remained unsatisfying and consequently they split, leaving Phils Oakey and Wright with the name, and lan Marsh and Martyn Ware the freedom to establish the British Electric Foundation aka Heaven 17. A. With new vocalist Glenn Gregory in tow, Heaven 17 have produced Penthouse and Pavement. an extraordinary debut.

The Pavement side is shrewdly devoted to a contemporary funk-a-long encompassing their renowned kick at the National Front '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang', an

exhilarating six minutes-plus title track, the abbreviated smack of their new single Play To Win' and the suitably named 'Soul Warfare'. And the fun and political topicality has just started.

The Penthouse side offers more items but none of them armchairs. 'Geisha Boys and Temple Girls' is the British-based Eastern imagery that they almost got right with 'Being Boiled'. The

self-explanatory irony of 'Let's All Make A Bomb' ('it's time to designate your fate') is pavement funk re-visited and The Height of the Fighting' and 'Song With No Name' are compassionate protest songs with a rare touch of melody.

Penthouse and Pavement is an album of (a)cute business acumen. Its current affairs concern and funk gradients mark it as obviously in vogue, but the whole deal is presented with such clarity, incisiveness and sheer emotional endeavour that you can't deny its place as one

of the finest albums of the year. George Kay Renee Geyer So Lucky Mushroom Renee Geyer has struck gold with her new album, So Lucky. It's the first record, she says, with which she has been totally satisfied and she's not easy to please. Recorded in California with some top session people lan McLagan, Ricky Fataar (ex-Beach Boys), Bobby Keys it is the fine singer's finest achievement. The phenomenal success in New Zealand of the first single from the album, 'Say I Love You', augurs well for the album's public reception. The Caribbean feel of 'Say I Love You' is echoed in her remake of Lee Michaels' 'Do You Know What I Mean', the second single. Elsewhere, the music is searing soul ballad or plain, old-fashioned rocking. Renee Geyer has a remarkable ability to find good, but forgotten, songs and turn them into diamonds. Rod Stewart once had this gift; Ry Cooder still does. Consider a song like 'I Can Feel The Fire'. On Ron Wood's first solo album, it seemed a pretty good, but rather unfinished piece. Renee makes it into a monster. Or Chuck Berry's 'Come On' obscure even as the Rolling Stones' first single. She tears up the highway on this one. And breaks, hearts on 'You Don't Know Nothing About Love', a forgotten song by a forgotten soul singer, Howard Tate. The

title song, written by lan McLagan, would have perished in the hands of a lesser artist. Miss Geyer makes it a classic. The recording is easily her best, most cohesive work. Her voice and performance seem to have gained maturity and subtlety. She is one of today's great singers. I'll go so far as to nominate this my album of the year. Ken Williams Elvis Costello Almost Blue WEA Costello recently hasn't been selling nearly as many records as he should be doing. Possibly the man's prolific output works against him, but more likely it's the musical area he inhabits where such stylistic lieutenants as Graham Parker and the truly excellent John Hiatt have fared even more dismally. One wonders then how much this Nashville-recorded country album is a crystalisation of Costello's oft-expressed love for George Jones and Gram Parsons, and how much it is an attempt to climb back into the charts. The main surprise is that Costello hasn't written any of the songs he has, after all, written a country gem or two in the past. The reports are he felt his writing was becoming too 'precious and introverted', hence he decided to lay his singing reputation on the line. Unlike some, I've always thought Elvis was a pretty good singer, but there are tracks here which will definitely enhance that vocal reputation the ballads most of all. Producer Billy Sherrill seems to put more into these songs (the fine single 'Good Year For The Roses', 'Sweet Dreams' and Sherrill's own 'Too Far Gone') and it's when Costello, Sherrill and band are all shooting for the same thing (not always) that the record works best. Check out too, the two Parsons songs 'How Much I Lied' and 'l'm Your Toy'. Very nice. Almost Blue is only intermittently a great country record, but as a collection of sensiblypaced well-chosen country songs for a rock audience, it could conceivably do very well indeed. Roy Colbert

Graham Brazier Inside Out Poly dor Of the three ex Hello Sailor frontliners Graham Brazier has both the most to live up to and the most to live down. On the one hand he was responsible for their finest moments, the all-time debut single Latin Lover', 'Blue Lady', 'Blackpool' and 'Dr Jazz'. In fact the whole personality of Sailor pivoted on the Brazier persona; the swaggering, lowlife romantic, viewing far away places through rose-tinted spectacles and those closer to home merely through blood-shot eyes. On the other hand it was the falling apart of. Brazier, swallowed up in classic fashion by the self-destructive aspect of his own pose which precipitated the collapse of the band. Now after his three year lunchbreak, Brazier, aided by heavy friends' (McArtney, Dobbvn, Lynch, Urlich, Kinney etc) has produced pretty much the album his old admirers will have been hoping for. There is little new about Inside Out; three tracks are even recycled oldies ( Trouble' and 'Street Boy' from Sailor days plus the old Ripper single Six Piece Chamber’) but there is a great deal which is quality. Not the least of these is the production, Brazier-McArtney, which recaptures the lost art of being muscular without being obtrusively raucus. The eight new tracks deal with familiar Brazier themes in familiar musical frameworks, ranging from the defiantly torchy High Wind in Jamaica', rescued from travelogue tack by

the shere panache of its delivery, to the street anthem stomp of 'Juan Pacenta'.. ■

Constant, throughout is Brazier's ability to strike a wide range of emotional responses while working within a narrow and well worn stylistic groove. Everyone who has gone to see Pink Flamingos or Coup D'Etat and come away wondering what big brother/sister saw in Hello Sailor should cock an ear at this one. Its the real oil. Don Mac Kay Simple Minds Sons and Fascination Virgin . Last year . Glasgow's Simple Minds turned out Empires and Dance, their third album and, as the title suggests, one that created a tension between continental sweep (almost as convincing as Kraftwerk's TransEurope Express) and neu white funkadelic. With their first outing, Life In A Day, being immature and too derivative, and the second, Reel to Real Cacophony, unreleased here. Empires came as an eye-opener. A label change and now the fourth, Sons and Fascination, and although less adventurous and varied than its predecessor, it still runs on similar rails. Another cryptic title alluding to the veiled, clipped perceptions of the lyrics, the album, musically, concentrates on developing and compacting the repetitive hypnotic power used so well on This Fear Of Gods' and 'Capital City' from Empires.

In Trance As Mission', 'Sweat In Bullet', Boys From Brazil', the single Tove Song' and a vocalized

re-mixed version of the flip; This Earth That You Walk Upon' are particularly arresting. Structured around Brian McGee's basic pounding drum patterns the songs" build' to a determined swirling funk platform, the ideal basis for Jim Kerr's maturing vocals. Yet first prize, and probably their best song to date, is snatched by a moving ballad opus, .'Seeing Out the Angels', a great arrangement and an expert vocal display from Kerr that recalls Roxy's 'Sea Breezes'. No higher praise. 'ln England you receive a bonus album but don't worry Sons and Fascination contains bonuses enough. Simple Minds continue to entertain. A fine album. - George Kay King Crimson Discipline EG Not since the 1969 pathfinding debut album, In The Court of the Crimson King, has it been possible to view KC as a band, rather than a vehicle for Robert Fripp's grand design. After endless changes in personnel, the name was laid to rest on a high note with the neglected Red, issued in 1974. Between Red and Discipline, Fripp worked on a series of esoteric " recordings, becoming steadily more inaccessible in his search for perfection. This 1981 reincarnation of KC sees Fripp feeding off a superb band, featuring Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford and Tony Levin. With a sound bearing little resemblance to earlier incarnations, the band lays down a successful amalgam of 70s avant-garde music, ranging from the surging 'Elephant Talk', reminiscent df Talking Heads, 'Frame By Frame', which nods approval at the infant KC, and the majestic landscapes of. 'The Sheltering Sky', with its Eno overtones. This is tough, uncompromising music. Fripp is his most accessible for years, succeeding in areas where the ideas previously burned out for lack of direction. KC are back with a new deal for the 80s. Essential listening. David Perkins