Records

Rip It Up, Issue 85, 1 August 1984, Page 22

Records

Sneaky Feelings Send You

Flying Nun One thing is apparent right from the first listening of this record it's not merely streets but entire suburbs ahead of previous Sneaky Feelings recordings. It’s partly the production four track recordings were never very kind to this band. But, on the whole, the songs are also better and the arrangements more confident.

Phil Yule's 16-track sound is apparently just what the band ordered; warm, friendly and immediately inviting. It’s interesting to compare this with the new Verlaines record, a collection of romantic songs so bare it actually hurts at times. Here the knife edges have been buffed down just enough so you can feel them prodding without actually being stuck it’s rather easy to let drift by. On the other hand this album is capable of grasping the listener with quite different emotions. 'Won't Change' and the beautiful, slipping, sliding vocal melody of 'Not To Take Sides' take you up and carry you with them. Send you, in fact. David Pine's songs are those with the bite, they’re more sharply etched both musically and lyrically. 'P.I.T. Song' in particular evokes the relationship that prompted it. But the Matthew

Bannister and Martin Durrant songs perplexingly waver both sides of Pine’s, particularly Bannister’s solo acoustic perform ance of Not To Take Sides'. It's drippy but it's a disarmingly honest drippiness. Sneaky Feelings have always admitted and even coveted the 60s tag and the big studio has allowed them to fulfill ringing guitar fantasies. At times you could even swear you were listening to the Byrds. The effectiveness is undeniable but it would be interesting for them to approach the next one with more nebulous ideas of what they wanted and tried allowing the song to dictate the sound.

Send You won't startle you, which isn’t to say it won’t move you. Sneaky Feelings seem to have achieved almost everything they strove for here and that’s admirable in itself. What they have

done here is often very beautiful but I hope for their sakes the next album doesn’t sound the same. Get the picture? Russell Brown

Tracey Ullman You Broke My Heart In 17 Places Stiff

There are a number of serious ideological reasons why you should probably reject this album. Firstly, Ms Ullman is cashing in on the huge British popularity of her feisty scrubber role in the hit TV series Three of a Kind. I mean this woman’s not even primarily a musician!

Secondly, You Broke My Heart is largely made up of calculated, instant nostalgia; a set of 60s remakes packaged in Spectorspectra production, period sleeve art and ‘Ooh-weren't-they-corny-back-then’ video.

Thirdly, many of the song lyrics here can irritate even the mildest feminist. And fourthly, Ullman’s recording career was instigated by Stiff, probably Britain's most smugly pop-as-novelty oriented record company. However, there may also be an occasional reason for listening. Only one number is a deliberate novelty (‘Life Is A Rock’) and all the others are performed with care and what sounds like genuine affection. Some of the rhythms are perhaps now more pub-rock than pure but Ullman sings as if she’s still in love with those dusty 45s lying underneath her parents' radiogram. There’s a few new numbers too. Now this reviewer’s not about to suggest that ’They Don’t Know' is in the class of, say, anything on Side One of Cyndi Lauper’s album. I am, nonetheless, very happy to sing along to Tracey while doing the dishes. (But then I’m also delighted to acquire my own version of 'Move Over Darling’ because Mum’s Doris Day original got lost years ago.) Peter Thomson Lou Reed New Sensations RCA Hey, I wish I had more time to look into this one but they only gave me one day, so I’ve only heard it two and a half times and, hey, it’s fulla stuff to think about, like violence, man, and jealousy and this modern world and the city and nu-cle-ar fullstop, man. Hey, now look, I gotta stop talkin’ dis way. Cheez, dis Noo Yawk thang rilly gits to ya. Hey, dat’s right Jim, Lou’s rediscovered the streets, man! And, golly gee, how they have changed. Now there’s TV games and you're not safe without your can of mace and even MK. Reed’s old pal and mentor George has gone and stuck someone with a sword. But Lou’s happy, he’s looking forward to the big one, he’ll just "break up into a million pieces and fly up to the sun." And if that don’t work he’ll catch a play by Sam Sheppard or a film by Martin Scorcese and smile wistfully as he toasts Travis Bicke and Johnny Boy. Yeah, whatever, he’s not quite so keen on going home to the wife as he was on his last few albums, in fact he sings to a person with a wife. “When your teeth are ground down to the bone and there’s nothing between your legs ... turn to me." What sorta people have wives? Hey Lou, you gettin' ambiguous on us again? This man hasn't done a great album since Street Hassle and this one seems to be a retreat from the honesty of Growing Up In Public, The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts but I suspect that given more hearing it would reveal a helluva lot more than I've got so far. Instrument wise, he's lost Quine's guitar and his is brilliant on only two songs but there’s small adventures being had. Hey, man, how 'bout that ultimate guitar album you keep promising? Hey, man, can I review this again next month? Chris Knox The Kiwi Animal Music Media Brent and Julie Records You might style this record as an opening. If the Kiwi Animal are an inside joke or a secret club as Jewel Sanyo suggested in last month’s RIU, this reqord has the ability to open them up to many more ears. And that's important. This does seem the most welcoming TKA yet and that's all the better because it's really only Brent Hayward and Julie Cooper continuing to steadfastly plough their own furrow and getting better at it. The sound is such that you could play it to almost anyone ... and just let the sentiments creep through. "Massage tunes,”

says the label and yet there are hard messages within the likes of 'Performance Peace,' Brent’s slightly arrogant peer in on the working man and wife. Many of his spoken-sung lyrics reflect the pair's oft-hinted William Burroughs fascination (not quite brought to fruition here, a lyric sheet would help a lot). Music Media: ah alternative medium of communication, another perspective, sometimes naive-sounding but no less valid for that. Highlights: ‘Union Song’ ("The boss of factories / He’s a lover / A lover of war”), 'Radio One', Julie's militant 'Crusader'; the contributions of the string players Patrick Waller, Caroline Sommerville and Sarah Westwood; the record’s sleeve. A lot of work has gone into this record and the recording (both at Last Laugh and the Old Syagogue) is beautiful. Brent promises the next one will be better, The Kiwi Animal have made a new record and I think we should at the very least listen. Russell Brown Michael Bloomfield Bloomfield CBS When some of rock's finest moments were made the late Michael Bloomfield and his guitar were there. He was on Bob Dylan’s electric (in all senses) Highway 61 Revisted album and was with Dylan at Newport when the "sell-out” controversy over the amplification began to rage. His work with the ground-break Paul Butterfield Blues Band set new standards and directions. His jams with Al Kooper constituted the first of the "super sessions.” The horn-oriented Electric Flag band set a pattern Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago would profit from. This double album retrospective collects some of Bloomfield’s finest performances for the Colombia label. His work with Butterfield is represented by a live cut of 'Born in Chicago’ good to have. Perhaps best of a very good bunch is Bloomfield’s own, heartfelt rendition of Ray Charles’ ‘I Wonder Who', recorded with Al Kooper at the Fillmore in 1968. The blues was Bloomfield’s forte, here he is at his best. Ken Williams The Black Sorrows Sonolo Spirit Records Joey Vincent and the Black Sorrows is an alias for the marginally better known Joe Camillieri and the Falcons, a Melbourne R&B band who’ve had memorable hits with songs such as 'Hit and Run', ‘So Young', 'Shape I’m In’ and more recently, 'Walk On By’. Joking aside, this album is Camillieri’s return to the music he loves best, songs that have formed an attitude and feeling that he’s kept through successive Zep albums despite their subtle shifts to the whims of fashion. So Sonola is a black Pin-Ups collection with the inspired addition of George Butrumlis on piano accordion and Steve McTaggart on violin. If Camillieri is the voice then Butrumlis is the backing. Through standards like ‘Brown Eye'd Girl’ (Joe even tries Morrison’s vowel bending), Berry’s ‘Promised Land’, Covay’s ‘Have Mercy’ and Alexander’s ‘You Better Move On’, they work a little bit of magic. But it's on John Lee Hooker’s 'Don’t Look Back’ that the empathy between Camillieri and Butrumlis really tugs at the heart, just one of those combinations you can't forget too easily. Sonola isn’t a high-profile market oriented bid. It’s Joey Vincent’s quiet and almost private resurrection of his past. It just happens to be a gem. George Kay

Rank And File Long Gone Dead Slash

l could say "Wank and Vile" but it ain't that bad or I could say "File Under Rank" but it ain't even that bad. Problem is, this album is superficially fine and dandy; with tons of "hooks" and a "fresh new approach to country/rock music" and it's got "an eclectic use of esoteric instrumentation" • and "the Kinman brothers useta be the Dils" and "so on and so on." But, cowpunks, it ain't got no depth and in the immortal words of Shelley, it’s "hollow inside," it’s all scintillating surface and no soul or gut. The Dils wuz (or so rumour has it) punkees on speed, fast, fast pop. The Kinmans've slowed down, returned to roots, rediscovered C&W and some other stuff and their deficiencies glare once you've got over the sparkle. Because because because there's some great playing on this, Chip K's harmonica is loovely, Peter Grant's ’autoharp on Long Gone Dead’ is magical (cop a lug'ole. Great Unwashed) and his pedal steel’s OK too. It's just a real shame that it garnishes a marshmallow rather’n a wholesome big buffalo burger. ... : This is truckstop C ’n’ W, closer to Jade Hurley than Hank Williams, but it ain’t that bad, mebbe it's just a clinical studio

castration, mebbe live they’re as good as gold. However, if you want to try out some cowrock with soul, try Beaucoups Of Blues by Rmgo Starr, or any of Mike Nesmith’s First National Band albums from the early 70s. , PS: I grew up in Invercargill with Radio 4ZA playing wall to wall country music I hated it. Rank and File ain’t changed that. Chris Knox

Ultravox Lament Chrysalis

A nine-month silence has seen Ultravox’s first US success, and the making of this, their first completely self-produced album. The extra time and relaxed feel of the sessions show a changed band. The sound is their loosest and most spacious, though I still swear Warren Cann is the name of their drumbox.

The first three songs on Side One, all unforced elegance and melodic ease, left me wondering if I had the right record. And the title-track’s just lovely. Ironically it's the singles which are the least successful moments. The break with the established sound is unfortunately incomplete; 'White China' and ‘Tears in My Eyes’ sport rigid riddums and histrionics

reminders of the posing metro nomes these guys once were

And the departure into brash guitar and bombast in 'One Small Day' is awful. All proof of their ability to trash reasonable tunes. But there is a definite progression on the others and Lament is probably the closest they'll get in their aspirations to Eurorock. (Forget John Foxx the only thing he took was 'credibility' when he quit). They’ve still a way to go before reaching real warmth, but with the promise shown here, they're out of the ice-box.

Andrew Rockell This Kind Of Punshiment

Flying Nun

The This Kind Of Punishment which made this record is primar ily Peter and Graeme Jefferies, former singer and guitarist respectively of Nocturnal Projections. The Nocturnals were a band with genuine inspiration who seemed to find themselves hemmed in within curiously strict boundaries; le, there was a “Nocturnal sound" that fenced in a lot of ideas that might have gone beyond it. Within the fence, Nocturnal Projections were consummate.

It would be overstating the case to say this record was an exorcism of what went before but it seems in many ways a reaction to it. The recording was done at home on a four-track and there's a sparseness and timing in the songs that sometimes verges on sheer awkwardnes. It sounds like a discovery experience as much as anything else.

Much of what's here sounds very deliberate: Peter's strange vocal on 'Don't Take Those' or the piano on 'Ahead of Their Time’

pointedly simple components are brought together in unconventional ways. Likewise for the stereo panning an instrument or voice may appear on only the left or right channel, with no half measures. The panning control is possibly the most important tool on the album. Listen without good stereo placing and you miss half the record. A carryover from previous work is the lyrical style. On the lyric sheet they appear more like one paragraph pieces of prose than conventional blank verse. The meaning isn't always clear but lines or phrases leap out maybe the imagery hitting a

nerve. Chris Matthews’ more literal contribution 'Just Another Funeral' stands out clearly among the Jeffries' words. So what have we? A slightly self-conscious album (“... here are ‘the boys’...”) that contains a good deal of failure along with its success, but it’s failure stemming from adventure. This music can't be pegged down. I like this album and I can’t wait to hear them live. Russell Brown David Gilmour About Face CBS Roger Waters The Pros And Cons of Hitch Hiking

CBS These two albums provide a striking contrast in musical output between two members of the now defunct Pink Floyd. Gilmour's offering, very much in the vein of his previous solo album, is dominated by phased, thrashing guitar riffs, a kind of One Of These Days revisited and therein lies the problem. However, there are some compensations 'Out Of the Blue' is a ballad with that ethereal quality that distinguished so much of Floyd's quiet moments from their innumerable imitators while 'All Lovers Are Deranged’ lives up to its title as a manic piece of heavy rock.

Waters’ album is the antithesis restrained music that seldom moves into third gear. Very much a continuation of The Final Cufbut lyrically much more light-hearted. There are no individual songs, merely times on the clock; 4.30am-5.1 lam. The music has a transcendental quality, moving the listener into Waters' strange twists of the mind, ranging from the sublime to the absurd. Throughout the sound is underpinned by Eric Clapton's best guitar in years. The notes are wrung and squeezed in seeming slow motion, threatening an assault that never eventuates. The two faces of Pink Floyd are accurately represented by these albums, but in the final analysis Waters’ more challenging material has my vote. Dust off your headphones and get into it. Pink Floyd are alive and well in spirit. David Perkins