Records

Rip It Up, Issue 110, 1 September 1986, Page 26

Records

The Smiths

The Queen is Dead Rough Trade

The Queen is Dead is the Smiths’ third LR and it seems, also their most humorous. Morrissey still gets too heavy to make a truly light-hearted record, yet he’s not a profound lyricist — he’s too busy trying to spell things out for us, but he does have a turn of phrase, often self-mocking, that is endearing. ‘The Queen is Dead’, the best tune, is ostensibly a tale in which Morrissey does a Michael Fagan, visiting the Queen for a chat and a moan one night, but perhaps underneath lurks a personal turning of leaves on the celibate one’s part — “the Queen is dead, boys / You can trust me, boys / Life is very long when you’re lonely.” After all, on the last track, Morrissey has “just discovered: some girls are bigger than others”! In between those two is quite a variety, both stylistically and quality-wise, with side one’s five songs making up a better half than the second. ‘I Know It’s Over’ is a (deliberately?) vaguely Oedipal rock and roll ballad, and ‘Never Had No-one Ever’ is the best tune after the title track. I get the feeling that I’m supposed to like ‘Cemetery Gates’, but for all its mocking portentiousness (“Gravely reading stones” in a cemetery full of poets), I find it uninspiring. > The second side opens with, a roar — ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ is a strong tune with hilarious lyrics, but the only thing that comes even close to matching it is the country and western ‘Vicar in a Tutu’.

I wonder if one day Morrissey and Marr would like to see themselves combined into some 1980s’ Jacques Brel, but for the moment they’re still too consumed with fiddling with forms, both musical and lyrical. The Queen is Dead? T’ain’t no classic, and it doesn’t live up to the potential that was once seen in the Smiths, but it’s also likeable, and over half of not-a-badkjn in the end. Paul McKessar The Art of Noise In Visible Silence China It’s enough that child prodigies such as the Art of Noise go on to make a second album, let alone doing so without the parent company of ZTT, whose production values and publicity first mapped out the Noise’s aims and style. Who’s Afraid of the Art of Noise was a rambling collage of Stockhausen-meets-digital sampler, not so much challenging as surprising and fun. The Noise trio (Dudley, Jeczalik and Langan) are the only modern group to have ever dedicated a song to Tommy Cooper. In Visible Silence opens with ‘Opus 4’, a witty postcard ditty

from Mother England (“No sun, no clouds, no moon, no birds — November.”). Chuckle — the Noise is back.

Remember the sampled voices on ‘Snapshot’? ‘Legs’ takes them to their phonetic conclusion: bum-bum, hip, legs. ‘Camilla — the Old Story’ could be a left-over soundtrack from Bladerunner, ‘Paranoimia’ and ‘The Chameleon’s Dish’ from some equally luxurious SF film. If the Noise have left the adventure of improvised structure behind (songs on Who’s Afraid of ... ranged from 12 minutes to about 30 seconds long), they’ve retained the atmosphere. They’ve also written some very good songs for In Visible Silence, apart from the smart ‘Peter Gunn’ move (and have you seen the Julian Temple video for said track, featuring Rik Mayall and Anne Dudley? Gathering dust in a company file near you). ‘Eye of the Needle’ and ‘Paranoimia’ could be the somnambulist dancetracks of the week. When the Noise left ZTT, Paul Morley sourly remarked that its members “felt competent enough to pursue a conventional pop career,” and he was right. In Visible Silence is the ugly duckling’s second golden egg. George Michael might not be worried, but Dr Who must be losing some sleep ... Chad Taylor

The Chills Kaleidoscope World Flying Nun This was originally released early this year on Creation Records in England and scored really well on the English independent charts. The cover’s almost worth stealing

on its own — colourful plasticene and lollies on black — yum yum ... But having all these songs together just makes you miss the Chills more, doesn’t it? Crazy nights at the Windsor (even one at the Hillcrest of all godawful places!) and times that the huge booming bass of ‘Pink Frost’ could truly move you, or just bouncing up and down to some of the best pop songs around ...

I dunno, I guess it’s just a matter of choosing your favourite Chills records —me, I’d plump for remixed 'Kaleidoscope World,’ ‘Pink Frost’ and ‘Rolling Moon’ in no particular order. But hey — what about ‘Doledrums,’ ‘Purple Girl’ and the live ’Flamethrower’ from the B-side of ‘Rolling Moon? ‘Satin Doll? ‘Hidden Bay? Bloody hell, I dunno then ... It seems they’ve put them in the right order on Kaleidoscope World, and it’s better than turning singles over every three minutes isn’t it? I just hope that it’s not just gonna be memories of this band we’re left with now. Paul McKessar Comic Relief Utterly, Utterly Live WEA The trouble with live recordings is that you can never capture the visuals, the sheer feel of an event. A band’s best gig can sound like right dog shit on the tape recorder and things get worse for comedy. Imagine Richard Pryor, for instance, without that look of incredulous outrage and you can’t really imagine the man at all. It’s the Goon Show that remains the best comedy to listen to, mainly because their aural landscapes of laughter were shaped purely for the airwaves, stretching the possibilities of sound to colour their perverse misadventures. Thirty years after Eccles and British comedy hasn’t progressed the light years we’d been led to believe. Sure, Utterly, Utterly Live proves the wheeltappers-and-shunters-titsbum-howsyamuvvainlaw routine has long been transcended but only to be replaced by "Fucking” — both as a word and as an act. Use it as a prefix and you’re guaranteed a giggle, while describing it itself... phew ... the gales of laughter reach hurricane level.

Now there’s nothing actually wrong with that in itself, but using “Fucking” as the cornerstone and mainstay of comedy is like anything cheap and easy — definitely not to be trusted. Points here though must go to Ben Elton for his description of Bob Dylan (“... y’know, the bloke that couldn’t sing at the end of the ‘We are the World’ video ...”), a genuinely amusing description of an Australian jaunt by Billy Connolly, and Lenny Henry’s song ‘Big Love’, which is an accurate and none-too-gentle poke at the yucky innuendo practiced by the likes of Barry White. And am I the only one who thinks Vyv’s lead break in ‘Living Doll’ is by far the choicest moment in that horrible bloody thing ... I mean, it’s actually not that bad.

Shayne Carter