albums

Rip It Up, Issue 167, 1 June 1991, Page 22

albums

SEA STORIES Wide Eyed and Dreaming (TRS) G.W. MCLENNAN Watershed (Mushroom) JACK FROST (Arista) PAUL KELLY AND THE MESSENGERS Comedy (Mushroom) With rap, the various shades of funk and dance mix still occupying centre stage, melodic rock'nroll continues to be de-emphasised and regarded as a reserve for those old enough to

remember when tunes came before rhythms. The four Australian acts on offer here are old-fashioned enough to believe that songs come before beat, the net result being that two of these albums will have to be

contended with as being amongst the year’s best. Starting with the newest and most modest, Sea Stories from Melbourne come highly recommended by Martin Phillipps perhaps because they share similar aquatic themes surfacing in recent Chills’ songs, but it's more likely to be that writers Simon Honisett and Penny Hewson imbue their material with the same plaintive intensity. Quoting specifics and ‘Milllown Flood’ has an impressive traditional tang that employs pathos and atmosphere

further developed on ballads like “All You Said’ and ‘Christmas City'. Classic rolling, jangling chords provide the basis of ‘Gone For Sure’ and

something almost infectious comes in the shape of ‘Wonderful Things'. Pop this honest and unpretentious is often plain but Sea Stories has depth and imagination to burn. Seek them out.

Since the Go Betweens split up last year Grant McLennan hasn't been resting on his laurels. Robert Forster might've beaten him to the punch by getting his album out first but Mclennan’s Watershed is so good it's a non contest.

Immaculately and sympathetically produced by Dave Dobbyn, this album reveals more graphically than any Go Betweens' record the many facets of G.W.s writing flair. In the ‘Streets of Your Town’ vein is the sparkling

recriminations of ‘Haven't | Been A Fool’, an early candidate for single of the year. ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’ is

almost as flawless and the funkiness of ‘Putting The Wheels Back On’ is matched by the hook of the chorus.

Mclennan is one of the most evocative pop craftsmen anywhere but his songs aren’t confections, they're often bittersweet love tales or

enigmatic little narratives with wry twists as in the brilliant bluesy hard-luck story of ‘Black Mule’. And if enough bases haven't been covered ‘Sally’s Revolution’ very nicely gets cynical with a gilt-edged guitar riff and ‘Dream About Tomorrow’ offers only a lingering melancholic hope in a small town scene of depression. McLennan didn’t need to put his

reputation on the line as the title ‘Watershed' suggests, he’d done enough with the Go Betweens to retire as a legend, but with this first solo album he’s at least equalled the band's best efforts in ‘Liberty Belle’ and ‘l6 Lovers Lane’.

Jack Frost, the result of a two week collaboration between G.W. and the Church’s Steve Kilbey, isn't in that revered company but it explores some individual and co-operative avenues that have produced some fine songs. It's hard to say how closely they

worked together but ‘Civil War’, Trapeze Boy’ and ‘Thought | Was Over You' are unmistakably poignant MclLennan masterworks.

Kilbey is no slouch either. With the Church his writing has mainly had an ethereal feel but his melody lines are well defined as in Jack Frosfs ‘Number Eleven’ and ‘Ramble’. Hazarding a

guess at the co-operative noises leads to the big aloof echoes of ‘Every Hour God Sends', the very moving forages of ‘Providence and Threshold’ and the out and out rocker ‘Didn’t Know Where | Was'.

But regardless of who's responsible for what, Jack Frost captures in its best moments two of Australia’s best writers in full flight. Mind you, in Australia at the moment only Paul Kelly could rival or surpass McLennan on form. Slightly more conventional in his rock'nroll writing habits, Kelly hasn’t received the

overseas accolades that he deserves, partly through lack of exposure but mostly because his songs are in that timeless zone that’s totally outside

fashion and so to like them carries no critical kudos.

A double album, Comedy scarcely puts a foot wrong in its distinctive depiction of Kelly as the rock'n’roll genre writer supreme. In a country, almost nursery rhyme narrative he recounts the Gurindiji’s land victory in ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ and in an up-tempo restrained barrage there’s the single ‘Don't Start Me Talking’, a tougher version of Gossip's ‘Stories of Me’ and a crunchy truncated ‘So You Wanna Be A Rock'n'Roll Star riff intro in ‘lt's All Downbhill From Here'.

But Kelly’s faintly quivering voice was born for vulnerability and he's never sounded so shyly accommodating as

on 'You Can Put Your Shoes Under My Bed' or as reassuringly sentimental as 'Wintercoat'. Just to round things off, 'lnvisible Me' should move you to tears and 'I Won't Be Your Dog' is prime Kelly blues. Comedy jostles with Gossip as Kelly's finest but the former's greater consistency and cohesion edges it ahead. Whatever happens to both Comedy and McLennan's Watershed, they will be two of the best albums to emerge this year. GEORGE KAY THIS MORTAL COIL Blood (4AD) 4AD record in simple cover image shock! On the sleeve of Blood there appears nothing but the words "This Mortal Coil" and a head and shoulders portrait of a girl with dark rings around her eyes that could be make-up or could be make-up trying to look like the signs of consumption. This picture is strangely symptomatic of the album's problem: it's convincing enough as opulent background music or gothic (art historical sense) MOR, but not when it attempts to be anything more sinister. This is, as they say on TV when a "sports hero" grazes his knee, something of a tragedy, as since the early 80s Ivo Watts-Russell and his various collaborators have produced some of the very little music in history actually to justify press release . j adjectives like "haunting" and "ethereal". ; < Now for some reason he's gone all "natural" and "organic", the hugely talented hippy bastard. Where once there were unfathomable washes of simultaneous electronic, orchestral and vocal sound there are now "real" pianos, audible lyrics and horrible Pink Floyd guitar solos. Where once there were dreamlike, tearful fragments of songs that appeared briefly then came back half a side later there are now Byrds and Rodney Crowell covers. Of course even this emasculated version of This Mortal Coil is far more alluring than most of what you'll hear this week or this year. But really, life is short, and in the seventy-six minutes this double album lasts for you could listen to 'Song To The Siren' about twenty-five times. MATTHEW HYLAND

THE RENDERERS Trail of Tears (Flying Nun) /Ihe Renderers, Christchurch’s own raiders of the lost art of country and western, have been dubbed “psyche-country”, as evidenced by the album cover — luscious purple it roses on front and chocolate swirls on back. On this, their debut LP, it's as if the cliches and traditions of the genre have been fed through the wah-wah pedal of their psyche to land up in some kind of a country’n'western twilight zone. Mary Rose Crook (vocals), husband Brian (vocals, guitar), John Billows (bass) and Haydn Jones (drums) might have their butts parked firmly in the deep south but that doesn’t mean their mental horizons aren't bigger than Gore. With a hick glitch in her voice, Mary Rose sings songs called ‘Arizond’, ‘Bigger Than Texas’ and ‘Holiday In Dakota’. Chances are those songs which aren’t odes to their spiritual homeland are rueful tributes to that other great source of inspiration, the bottle, as in ‘Liquor Slicked Highway', ‘Never Drink Alone’, ‘Drink In My Hand'. Or the Devil, as in I Hear ... . The melodies are every bit as evocative as the song titles, while Brian Crook’s guitar ebbs and flows throughout like a distant echo, - - weaving woozy parallel lines to the vocals. Trail of Trears puts the Renderers on the same emotional latitude as Mazzy Starr, songs which take you on a seductive downward spiral into self-pity, lonesomeness, regret for opportunities missed, love lost and other such forms of exquisite self-torture. This record is permeated with an irresistible sense of lassitude, of helpless surrender to one's weaker instincts, although | do believe Mary Rose and Brian are hard working and happily married and none of the band are known to slur their words before 10am. DONNA YUZWALK THE STRANGE LOVES See Your Colours. (Flying Nun) The back cover tells part of the story — the band in a front room bent over their Rickenbackers, thank you credits to the Bats, production by

David Kilgour — but vocalist/guitarist Rex Bourke sounds like he’s lived harder than yer average would-be generic southern guitar band member and he holds his notes better. He also packs his songs with idiosyncratic observations, details from a life that may look uneventful from the outside but teems with interest for the artist leading it. The Strange Loves can sound endearingly simple ('l Like You') or boyishly sweet (‘'Some Feeling’) or - eager and anxious as ‘Tally-Ho' era Clean ('When | See You Again’). Quiet acoustic intros build to smudgy electric riffs with emotional tension provided by Rex Bourke’s trenchant vocal style - and undertones of sarcasm. Sometimes he sounds bad tempered and black hearted, his guitar slipping and sliding dangerously close to “the edge”, as on Your Misery’. But he’s at his moody and passionate best on the opening track — ‘The Big Deep’ — underscored with a bewitching viola refrain. DONNA YUZWALK MARK ISHAM Mark Isham (Virgin America) Trumpeter, keyboard player, writer and arranger Mark Isham used to record for new-age label Wyndham Hill. However, his music has long been capable of much more than spaced-out ambience chasing. On 1988’ Castalia he evoked scenes as disparate as a stately town parade, an African market square and blissful moonlight slumbers — and those were just the first three tracks. This time out, despite the interesting mix of musicians, ‘Honeymoon Nights’ features an ex-Frank Zappa drummer alongside Chick Corea’s bassist — the contrasts aren’t so marked and individual tracks aren’t quite as distinctive. A common approach involves: slowly pulsing percussion, washes of keyboards and sympathetically sustained guitar, over which Isham’s immaculate trumpet goes exploring. There is atmosphere aplenty and in listening to the album it becomes obvious why so much of Isham’s work has been in film scores. He has also done some sterling work for Tanita Tikaram and here she returns the favour on two of the most memorable tracks. Her original ‘I

Never Will Know' is superior to nearly everything on her own recent album and the performance of Rodgers and Hart's ‘Blue Moon’ is little less than startling. Over a jaunty mid-tempo beat Tikaram intones as if heavily sedated. So, if you're wanting to hear Mark Isham at his best, Castalia probably has the edge, but this album presents a new approach from his guest singer: Tanita Tikaram as the valium vamp. PETER THOMSON THE CLEAR Live Stomach (Yellow Bike) : The Clear, quite ironically, are rather hazy and confusing. They leap from beautiful pop song to ear grating noise in a single bound, leaving the listener bewildered but ultimately happy. This CD only release documents all their subtleties and extremities and the result is a surprising harmony between the two. The disc itself was recorded, as the name suggests, at the Stomach in Palmerston North. It is a creative arts centre for musicians and others and is the brainchild of Clear guitarist David White. For a shoestring budget release the sound quality is excellent. The Clear excel at haunting songs, as their campus radio hit ‘The Quiet Sleeping' testifies. Their motivation and support for the New Zealand music scene should be an inspiration to us all. LUKE CASEY ; CHRIS KNOX Croaker _ (Flying Nun) - Another intense slab of vinyl from the grand old man of New Zealand alternative pop who sheds melodies like other people shed skin. Songs that rattle with low-tech effects culled from his musical toy-box, overlaid with that insidious voice — alternately sardonic and tender, political and personal. More witty, compassionate, intimate, mesmeric songs about death in life and the wonders of love, sketched in with the merest acoustic/tambourine accompaniment or painted black with an ‘Eleanor Rigby'-ish organ refrain, those signature rhythmic tape loops fluttering like a heartbeat throughout.

DONNA YUZWALK