Records

Rip It Up, Issue 146, 1 September 1989, Page 24

Records

THEPOGUES Peace And Love (WEA) Listen and you can almost hear the backlash ... The Pogues have led a charmed life. They were born into a complacent scene needing an antidote to the Smiths and in MacGowan they had a muppet who looked as if he lived his ashtray songs with a nice line in Celtic angst and partying. " Accordingto the chronicles their first «album, Red Roses remains their best album by dint of itsinnocence and unself-conscious energy and the only thing to match it has been the first side of the Costello produced Rum Sodomy And The Lash. Somebody somewhere decreed that they should go eclecti: and broaden their sound and

MacGowan started believing all the flattering bullshit the critics were writing about him and so it was symptomatic that the best song on If/ Should Fall

With Grace From Godwas Phil

Chevron'’s Thousands Are Sailing’ with the Terry Woods / MacGowan ‘Streets Of Sorrow / Birmingham Six’ coming in second.

But what the hell, the facts are that Peace And Loveis the Pogues fourth album and it's their weakest. Of the half dozen MacGowan songsin

attendance, only three would’'ve made it onto the firsttwo albums. ‘White City’ is abit o’ the Irish but nudged by ' something akin to rock n’ roll viscosity while ‘Cottonfields’ uptempoes Presley’s ‘His Latest Flame’ and ‘London You're A Lady’ pairs up with ‘Lullaby Of London’ from If] Should Fallto make two lovely traditional ladies. Terry Woods has been around as long as the bodhran and his old folk sensibilities have been an asset to the band, especially when he can come up with a couple of rattling good songs like Young Ned Of The Hill' and ‘Garloney Rats’ leaving Jem Finer to produce the best non-McGowan ballad, the evocative ‘Misty Morning, Albert Bridge'. = " There'sbeen talk that Lillywhite's

production doesn’t meet the required needs and sure maybe his multi-tracking on this doesn’t capture the punch that he got from the live in the studio approach he toook on /fI Should Fall From Grace. And maybe, just maybe the half dozen songs or so that don’t make the grade could have been

salvaged by more bite. But | dontthink so— the albumis only half what it should be because half the songs lack character, aflaw that could've been avoided by slinging in the customary traditionals. The fall continues. GEORGEKAY CELIBATERIFLES Blind Ear (EMI) After havingheard this album five or sixtimes through, | finally gotthe - chance to listen to it in the most - desirable manner. Everyone else was outso | cranked the volume fromits usual “quite loud” setting all the way up to “really unreasonably loud”. If| owned a tennis racquet | probably would have been playing alongto it. It's nottoo often you get great noise guitars, great riffs, good melodies, beautifully controlled feedback, succinctlyrics, sardonic wit and frenetic rhythms all at once. Let's be honest — it is almost never that the whole package is of Australian origin. The songs are wile, but never out of control, reckless, but neverimpolite. They don't demand to be heard, but they certainly deserve tobe. ‘Electra Vision Mantra’ contains a guitar line which falls nothing short of glorious. As such, it claims the high

honour of standout track on Blind Ear, notto mention my song of the month. At times, the lyrics tend o rest a little uneasily on the music —they don't seem part of the same whole, butit'sa minor flaw. At the volume intended for Rifles’ music you hear the drive, not the poetics.

I was pleasantly suprised to discover

‘Johnny’ was almost directly borrowed fromthe Stooges’ ‘St Louis Nightmare (Going Down)'. | mean, it can’t be coincidence, can it At any rate, it makes for good rawk n’ roll. Lots of goodies, minimum of fillers. These Rifles may be Celibate, but they're sure potent. ANDREW DUBBER GEORGE CLINTON : The Cinderella Theory (Paisley Park) In the 70s Clinton bought the mothership down, a bastard creation of James Brown's bad self, weird noises from the chemistry lab and a philosophy of one nationunderthe groove. - Just as James Brown was the minister ofthe new heavy duty funk, well, George Clinton was its witch doctor. Dr Funkenstein in fact, your guide to

another dimension. This world of P-Funk was as free-form as Ornette Coleman'’s plastic sax and thick with words, jumbled up into a new black poetry. Hip-hop owes just as much to Clinton’s vision as it does to James Brown. Clinton always appears as one of the ghosts in hip-hop’s haunted mixes, like the word play of Public Enemy and De La Soul. Well, the 80s haven't been that good to the real Clinton. Great flashes like ‘Nubian Nut’ and ‘Do Fries Go With That Shake’ still say, hey, I'm still here babe. With The Cinderella Theory he doesn't really make that mothership touch down. I's a flawed work.

Things tend to meander rather than flow, like his version of ‘The Banana Boat Song’, which despite the pulse of Bootsy Collins’ bass, goes nowhere.

Same with ‘Serious Slammin’ and ‘There I Go Again’; the production’s keyboard touches just takes them into MOR land. None of thisis as good as 1986's R&B Skeletons In The Closet.

But let's try and forget about these slips and look at Clinton in full control. Like ‘Why Should I Dog U Out’, about the unacceptable side of funk,the sell-out boys shakin’ the rump without the bumb. Vintage Clinton word-play with bull dogs, pitbulls and Deputy Dawg giving George a bite. Then

there’s Tweaking’ with PE’s ChuckD and Flabour Flav cold-lampin’ about communication and consumption. Also ‘Artbound’, the only track that seems to be made for the radio. But then again there’s George in a pop mood with ‘French Kiss'.

Like the recent Bootsy Collins album What's Bootsy Doing, this is designed for hard core fans, with afew MOR tricks to grab a few extra. Like 'm afan,

so Clinton’s new one still makes the connection | look for. It's heart is sfill in the funk of the bass beat. No matter how high Clinton’s consciousness might rise, he still lands on the one witha flashlight in his hands. KERRY BUCHANAN LISALISA & CULTJAM Straight To The Sky (CBS) Asthe title suggests, it's about looking upwards, the surge towards happiness. Alot of pop musicis about the search for the good life, notjust the BMW and satin sheets, but the feeling of complete personal satisfaction. That's why pop music is about personal interaction, the love song being the prime example. Lisa Lisa sang about being lost in emotion lasttime, and she hasn't found her way out. On this one she talks a lot aboutloving “what you do to me” and “loving your tears away”, lots of lovey dovey stuff. Which is fine with me, because she does it so well. The voice isn't pure, like the silk cut madonnas who prowl that lonely street called soul. It's a pop voice that reminds me of 60s groups like the Excitersand the - Shirelles, and a bit of Motown in its urban touches, very much like the early Diana Ross. What makes this essential listening is the constant brilliance of Full Force. “Bow Legged” Lou and the boys turnin another master stroke of production. Like 1 Can't Take No More’ with the great drum beat, then an off the wall Spanish-style guitar solo. They really know where to find the spacesina

song, never over doing it, but every now and then throwing in something thatjust kills you. | thought their work on JB’s I'm Real was intense, but this is just nitro.

First single is the tale of a runaway seeking teenage dreams in ‘Litile

Jackie Wants To Be A Star’, which has a nice simplicity and understatement. | thinkthe next must be ‘Just Got

Together’, with UTFO on rap and

mixmaster Ice on turntables, which has the bubbling urgency of classic Latin hip-hop. One of my favesis ‘U Never No How Good U Had It’ with the

authoritative vocals of Bow Legged Lou, but Ms Lisatells him how itis, so he better be more careful nexttime.

Modern American pop music doesn't come much betterthan this. Afine

progression from their previous two albums, butin a way more self-assured ‘andin control. An album to enjoy the good times with. KERRY BUCHANAN

ROBYNHITCHCOCK & THEEGYPTIANS Queen Elvis (A&M) O A widely held misconception about Robin Hitchcock (and also They Might Be Giants and Julian Cope)is that he's terribly, terribly weird. It's probably got something to do with the way lyrics like “If he treats you horribly / he’s probably aScorpio”getthe mundane andthe celestial so hopelessly entangled, but this kind of user-friendly English eccentricity is hardly likely to place him near any lunatic fringe these days. Genesis P. Orridge of Psychic TV is weird; Hitchcock is ever so slightly Curious.

Queen Elvisis in fact the least wayward, most commercial Hitchcock album to date. More than half the songs play it completely straight lyrically, and even those which do quirk out aliftle are intelligible narratives with a beginning, a middle and an end. It's still in this whimsical mode, however, that the writing is at its most natural and lucid, and it's these qualities that make ‘The Devil's Coachman’ and Veins Of The Queen' the highlights of the album. The latteris particularly sublime, combining wit and pathos, and asking, “I wonder if she’s got any frogsé” Unfortunately, Queen Elvis often musically falls short of its predecessor, Globe Of Frogs. Where that album was characterised by John Collier’s sparse, clean production style, this one shows an alarming tendency to suffocate the songsin an unpleasant gel of keyboards and backing vocals. ‘Madonna Of The Wasps' and ‘Swirling’ in particular suffer from unnecessary synthesised clutter. ‘ Whatever you might have heard then, don't expect much psychedelia from Robyn. If you like witty, melodic butfairly unadventurous pop music, this rather mild fruitcake could be the recipe for you. MATTHEW HYLAND ZIGGY MARLEY & THE MELODY MAKERS One Bright Day (Virgin) Atthe age of 20, having already spent 10 years on the stage, Ziggy Marley has had plenty expected of him. It's atribute to his talent that he's living up to his early promise, his music steadily acquiring the simplicity and urgency that is the heartbeat of reggae.

With platinum record sales and stadium tours under his belt, Ziggy will soon surpass his father in commercial

terms. From the time he was old enough to talk, his future was assured, carrying onthe movement Bob began, crossing - musical barriers and bringing reggae to those who need to hear it most. When the soul of reggae isin danger of being killed by sterile digital rhythms, Ziggy's music breathes youthful vitality. The opener of One Bright Day, ‘Black My Story’ bridges the territory that Bob crossed on Survival, an African reggae song using the fine Ethiopian voices of Dallol, the musicians who form the

nucleus of Ziggy's band. On this and the followingtitle track the Melody Makers show how far they've come as vocalists infour albums. They're young but they’re no longer children. Sharon Marley Prendergast has three of her own.

Produced again by Chris Frantzand Tina Weymouth, Ziggy hits the dancefloor with a vengeance on ‘When The Lights Go Out’ and ‘AI Love’, showing the rent a riddim

merchants how it’s done. ‘Look Who's Dancing’isthe only tracktouse

computer rhythm and is more ordinary forit. Still, it's bound to catch on, especially with Stephen’s killer rap. ‘Pains Of Life’ is a song for children growing up. Like ‘Urban Music’, it makes discreet but effective use of

synthesisers. The drum and bass line still rules,whichisabigplus. ' Ziggy isstillsome way from producing a masterpiece, but One Bright Day shows he's got it in him.

There's a positive, foward looking and downright healthy aurato his music. It . makes me believe that reggae doesn't have to be swallowed up by slackness and cocaine, and that Bob Marley didn’twork himself to death for nothing Ziggy Marley is the son of a roots man and knows the race is not for the swift, butfor the sure. He's still growing and . onthe strength of this he still has plenty to give. DUNCAN CAMPBELL ;

LOVETRAIN =~ Human Feelings Return (Siren)

Conveniently referred to as a British guitar band with psychedelic undertones, Lovetrain are amuddle of | influences, none of which are dominant orvaluable enough to give the band the required direction. Songs like ‘Rags Toßiches To Rags’ show they have craftsmanship but without the bite or - individuality or flair to lift them out of the “itsounds like ..." category. Get the drifte

GEORGEKAY