Records

Rip It Up, Issue 142, 1 May 1989, Page 24

Records

VARIOUS In Love With These Times (Flying Nun) ; In Love With These Times s Flying Nun’s second compilation and their first released to be advertised on TV betweenbakedbeansandsoap powder. It should sell well, but with no nightclub bears, no masturbatory guitar solos and no pornographic videos appealing to the mass of 89FM listeners outthere, it could be an uphill struggle. Side one could win afew new converts though. It concentrates on the label’s blue-eyed, red blooded pop songs, and has some of the best variations on that theme around. It starts off with the Chills’ ‘Rain’, a strong song which suffers alittle from Mayo Thompson's rather muted production butis eventually carried by Martin Phillips’ falsetto vocal. Next upis . Straightjacket Fits’‘She Speeds’, which stands out even in this company. One side one it's a big pink neon “excellent” in a sea of very (sometimes very very) goods. : - The other highlight of the side is the Jean Paul Satre Experience’s ‘Flex’. A good few years old now, it stands as testimony to the power of simplicity and controlled dynamics. Also on side one are Look Blue Go Purple’s pleasantly psychedelic ‘Cactus Cat’, the Bats’ ‘North By North’, on which they abandon their usual light and breezy pop for something darker and altogether more interesting, and

Sneaky Feelings’ The Trouble With Kay’ which is even lighter and breezier than the Bats usually are. Finally there’s the Verlaines’ ‘Slow Sad Love Song’ which, as it has to be with atitle like that, is fast and thrashy and apparently cathartic. ; : It's left to the bands on side two to throw awayt the safety netand take a flying leap into the future. Bailter Space begin the carnage with ‘Grader Spader’, an unstoppable chant riding a headrush of delicious white noise. Next come the Headless Chicken’s slickly menacing ‘Donca’ and the side’s only conventional pop song, the Able Tasmans’ ‘What Was That Thing’. The real excitement, though, is saved for the last three songs on the album. TVNZ had to band the Skeptic’s ‘AFFCO’ because it probablyw would have caused every television in middle New Zealand to explode. Its thinly

veiled brutality isimmense, but just controlled enoughto give the impression that the catastrophe is always aboutto happen. Snapper follow this with ‘Hang On’ from last year’s astonishing EP on which all the songs moved like the motorbike in the video. The last word is left to the Tall Dwarfs with their achingly melodic situation tragedy ‘The Slide’. Apartfrom its obvious drawbacks — no Gordons, no Fetus Productions— In Love With These Times represents a progression from Flying Nun's first compilation Tuatara. Ifit sells as well as it deserves to the artists will all be grotesque rock millionaires by the time the third one comesout. - MATTHEWHYLAND E THE JIMIHENDRIX EXPERIENCE Radio One (Ryko/WEA) v Itis tempting to blame Jimi Hendrix - for Eddie Van Halen, Angus Young and allthe cretins who sit in music shops and play ‘Purple Haze' on guitars shaped like machine guns. Ultimately though, this is like saying Jesus Christ is responsible for Mormons or Nick Cave for “Gothic Cult” headlines in the Herald. A generation of budding ‘ Axe-murderers have missed the point of Hendrixs music by thinking it's all about how fast he could move his fingers around a fretboard. They've remained oblivious to the fact that the guy from Guns n’ Roses can also play fast butis roughly level with single-celled organisms on the evolutionary scale. : ‘Where Hendrix's guitar playing differs from that of all other guitar exhibitionists, past and present, isin the way it's an all-enveloping sound, rhythmic as well as melodic, free from the common 60s fear of noise and dischord. While his contemporaries stuck religiously to their blues format - Hendrix knew that it's pointless o simply copy something you respect; thatto do itjustice you must endow it with a new ‘rawness greater than its own. He did fo the Howlin Wolf standard ‘Killing Floor exactly what Sonic Youth didto ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog': revitalised it with a white noise energy that has nothing at all to do with nostalgia. This three-sided album is a collection - of radio sessions, and includes such oddities as a Radio Onejingle recorded in five spare minutesand a _cover of the Beatles' ‘Day Tripper’. This music is worth acquiring before itis marred forever by inclusionona Vietnam compilation. ' MATTHEW HYLAND. XTC : Oranges And Lemons (Virgin) Until recently, (their last album Skylarkingto be exact), XTC have been dismissed in the 80s as passe, relics of thatturn of the decade new wave shit and eccentric English curios unable to re-find the pulse of what was really happening in rock ‘n’ roll. Consequently albums like English Settlement, Mummerand The Big Xpressfell into unsympathetic times, and may benefit from reassessment. In the last couple of years their star has re-ascended maybe not , commercially but certainly critically. * Their play-acting as the Dukes of

Stratosphearand the brilliant Beatlesque and psychedelia meets

pastoralism of Skylarking have led to renewed respectandinterestin Partridge’s outpourings. : So Oranges And Lemons descends into a sympathetic environment witha - cover that looks like asstill from Yellow Submarine supposedly reflecting a deeper delve into the kaleidioscopic pop of 20 years ago. Sure there'sa superficial evocation of the strains of Magical Mystery Tourin songs like the sublime ‘Chalkhills And Children’, ‘Across This Antheap’ and the ‘All You Need s Love’ swing of ‘The Loving’, but Partridge is only using past references as afocus for his own song content and to provide the band with a bit of image and provocation that they’ve lacked since Black Sea. , ; Forget about the Beatles, thisis Partridge’s and Moulding’s tree — the latter only writing three of the 15 songs butthey're three gems, particularly the humanistic ‘King For A Day’ and the silent majority inferiority of ‘One Of The Millions": Like his contemporaries Byrne and Costello, Partridge is a maverick talent whose music only occasionally coincides with public demand. The nearest Oranges And Lemons comesto that coincedence is with the ringing single ‘Mayor Of Simpleton’; elsewhere the songs are typically vintage Partridge — ‘Scarecrow People’, ‘Hold Me My Daddy’ and ‘Pink Thing’ being the best examples of how he can compress humour, passion and off-the-wall instrumentation into his - own tuneful lumps of song. : Lastyear was a great year for people we'd written off as boring old farts, and now what with Costello’s album and this pretty exceptional double, 1989 looks like being another benefit year for the middle-aged. And | that's as much a comment on the durability of the likes of Partridge et al asitis on the dearth of emerging talent. GEORGEKAY ' NEW ORDER : Technique {Factory) They're on an independent label but they sell millions. Their fans hate disco butthey make it. No-one knows what they look like. They do not have personal problems. The only thing that. delays their albums is the artwork (whichis asidiosyncraticandas important to the band’simage as Roger Dean’s designs were for Yes). The lead singer cannot sing. Until recently it was debatable asto whether any ofthe players could play. Their records are smooth and produced, but livethey play louder than Metallica and twice as raw. Americans think of them on the same level as the Go-Gos. Many New Yorkers think they're black. Everyone else thinks they're still Joy Division. New Order are in an enviable position, i.e. everywhere at once. They're impossible to pin down now; they cansslipin and out of any genre, any style and not sound dated. They are image-less, buthave a definite image. They had a definite sound (as the recent Kon-Kan single showed) but now they've dropped it. Well, sort of droppedit. : ‘Fine Time' topped charts all over the world, which is pretty good for asingle that jumps and hiccups like the mostdaring hip-hop edit and has no real vocals, only a Rick James style vocoder. Othertracks on Technique are more melodic, guitar-based; structurally this must be the sleekest New Order album to date. lt slips by so nicely you realise how rugged their early experiments with sequencing were. Barney almost sings on this album, which is provident since he is about to embark on a solo LP. : In simple terms, this is another best New Order album since the last one. Their experiments seem determined to alienate their diehard fans, butinstead bring them closer. So much for tradition, again. : CHADTAYLOR

MADONNA Like A Prayer e (Sire) - i Popsongsareasimpleand wonderful thing, and many are content to make simple and wonderful things their subject: tutti frutti, great balls of fire, blue suede shoes. Rock ‘n’ roll is suited to such subjects. Butthere are many people who want to see Rock sing about great things (some of these aspirants work for Rolling Stone, others belong to U2). With this album Madonna is grappling with subjects like God, Pepsi, Italy, Catholicism and Aids. Since Madonna became great writing lyrics like “Get into the groove / you've gotto prove / your love fo me”, she's kind of hamstrung from the beginning. | mean the woman’s wonderful, but Wordsworth she ain't. Madonna sounds most comfortable on Like A Prayersinging alongside Prince on (This Is Not A) ‘Love Song’, a slow, drunken bit of silliness. Elsewhere producer Patrick Leonard injects maximum fizz, butthe hi-energy doesn't necessarily suit Maddie’s mood. On Till Death Do Us Part’ Patrick has bubbled things up to a Stock Aitken Waterman level, but Maddie’s busy chronicling her breakup with Sean Penn: “He fakes a drink, she goes inside / He starts to scream, the vases fly.”‘Promise To Try'is ableating bit of misery. This womanis ‘worth $lO million —what's her problem? Her problem is that life, the universe and everything cannot be summed up inthree minutes— you atleast need a dance mix and Arif Mardin producing forthat. | liked the happy Maddie’ myself, the ‘Like A Virgin’ Maddie, the True Blue’ bottle-blonde. You could get to like the Walter Becker-sounding Maddie on ‘Cherish’ or even the Maddie that sings “Ifthere is a Christ he’llcome tonight” on ‘Spanish Eyes,’ butyou'll have to make an effort. The inside sleeve tells us that “Aids is no party.” Neither is pop music anymore, apparently. What ever happened to letting the good times roll? ‘ CHAD TAYLOR

FINEYOUNG CANNIBALS The Raw And The Cooked (Polygram) The FYChave had apretty low - profile around these parts since their firstalbum way backin 1987. One could be forgiven for assuming the band had broken up having seen more of singer - Roland Giftin the cinema than with his two ex-Beat bandmates. However it appearsthat Roland's successful stint as aleading actor in Stephen Frears’ Sammy And Rosie Get Laid was done between band commitments, and with ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ at the top of the charts everywhere, FYC are very much alive. The Raw And The Cookedisreally a compilation album featuring tracks from the films Tin Men and Something Wild as well as some new material. Most people will have heard the single ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ by now so | won't dwell on it other than to say it is very representative of the album. The emphasis is on Roland’s voice and the drums which are a mixture of machine and real and, for me, are the highlight ofthe album, especially on‘l'm Not The Man | Used To Be'. The FYC continue to have a sound leaning strongly towards soul, with an indescribable 60s feel whichlcanonly aftributetothedry, close guitar that was so much a part of. that 60s sound. There isalso anod to the dancefloor with the very produced and rhythmic’ll’'m Not Satisfied'. Side two features a couple of the more “raw” sounding songs aswell asa cover of the Buzzcocks’ classic ‘Ever Fallen In Love’, a chart hit from the Something Wild soundtrack. The success of this album in the charts tells us that there are lots of people around with a taste for quality and a good song obviously counts for somethingin the long run. Did | hear arumour that they might be visitingour shores? If so | hope they bring their instruments. GREGJOHNSON DEPECHE MODE 101 (Mute) Depeche Mode, the band that put outthatsong 'Just Can't Get Enough’ a

James Brown first charted April 1956 with 'Please, Please, Please'. James Brown was last on the R&B chart May 1988 with Tm Real'.

long time ago when a band without guitars or drums was still a novelty. Not a bad wee song, I'll wager most people could sing the chorus even if they haven't heard it since the mid-80s. The surprise for me was to learn that this, band has reached huge proportions in America, packing out stadiums all , across the country and selling albums, T-shirts and all the other paraphernalia that goes with success in the US in large quantities. So what lies behind this success? 101 is a live album with the answer on four sides; electro pop in the highest high-tech sense of the word. This album is the whole show from beginning to end, including a good dose of screaming adolescents and roaring crowd noise.

The actual music I can't really fathom. It couldn't (with one ortwo exceptions) be called catchy, or strong on melody. It couldn't be described as passionate or powerful. The one thing it does have is a sense of atmosphere, and it certainly is consistent in sound and style. If there was ever a time to say "there's no accounting for taste," then this is it. If you are a Depeche Mode fan then you will probably find a reason to spend money on a double live recording, but for those on the borderline I would personally recommend buying two New Order albums instead. It's a strange and wonderful place, America. GREGJOHNSON TESLA The Great Radio Controversy METAL CHURCH Blessing In Disguise (WEA) Two bands who appeared on the scene in 1986, Tesla and Metal Church have now both released second albums. Metal Church's debut The Dark was heavy duty speed metal that hit the mark but this new one doesn't rate in comparison. Even the cover looks suspect and the songs inside all sound awfully similar. An explanation for this could be that originally David Wayne (vocals) and Kurdy Vanderhoof (guitars) were main contributors but somewhere along the way they lost faith and left the Church. The aftermath is a disappointment that can't be disguised. The first Tesla album went largely unnoticed at the time which was a shame as it was good quality hard rock. Perhaps keeping the lineup stable has enabled them to do it again because Great Radio Controversy is a worthy follow-up. Best tracks would be the grinding 'Heaven's Trail' and 'Horny Tough', and there's an abundance of guitar supplied, whetherit's positively charged electric playing or gentle acoustic. If you give Tesla a try you may be pleasantly surprised. GEOFFDUNN

FLESH D-VICE The Flesh D-Vice Powerpack (Jayrem) The Flesh D-Vice Powerpack is comprised of two albums, Some Bloodstained Morning and Secrets of the Estranged, and two singles, Transmission'and 'Flaming Soul', all - presented as a box set and neatly done up in cellophane. Jayrem has gone to great lengths to ensure maximum appeal and maximum quality with this package, and for a mere $19.95 it is exceptional value. Some Bloodstained the first album, starts slowly but rapidly reaches the trademark crescendo distortion; sould that FDV fans have come to expect. 'Bullet (With My Name)'and 'Billy Shakes' are the two best tracks here, but 'lnvisible Man' (a song that pays homage to the Evil Dead) suggest that perhaps an alternative use of this record would be as a soundtrack to your favourite chainsaw splatter movie. A solid album, but overall the music lacks in variety; it's a bit of an effort to listen to the whole thing in one sitting. Secret the Estranged, however, recorded a year later, shows a more mature and experienced Flesh D-vice. This is a great album, with consistently - good songs and a much improved vocal sound. The secret to its appeal, perhaps, is that it takes a break from breakneck thrash rnetal and has a much more rhythmic approach, realising that you can have power in a song without speed. Highlights of this album are 'Strange Television', 'Flaming Soul' (their best song ever) and 'Science Faction'. Brilliant artwork by Jane Walker is also a further improvement on their first record. The singles are great too, and all in all I think the FDV Power Pack would be a worthwhile addition to the hard-edge section of any record collection. ' There's nd staggering originality or innovation here, but Flesh D-Vice are certaihly good within the limited horizons that they have set themselves. Switch your brain into neutral, buy this record and enjoy. MARKBLAIR RATT Reach For The Sky (WEA) . First listen to this leaves the impression that Raft have taken another step towards mousedom. Second listen reveals that there is actually something more substantial here like the use of horns in the catchy .Way fool Jr' and the rocking 'City To City'. It seems that only the singing of Steven Pearcy is limiting from developing further than their prime album achievement Out Of The Cellar. Third listen and, yeah, this is alright. But then again, who knows when the fourth listen will be? GEOFFDUNN