Uncle Tupelo

Rip It Up, Issue 199, 1 March 1994, Page 20

Uncle Tupelo

UNCLE TUPELO Anodyne (Sire/ Reprise) BODEANS Go Slow Down (Liberation) KIRSTY MacCOLL Titanic Days (Liberation) DAVID BOWIE The Buddha of Suburbia (BMG) A fourth album from Illinois' Uncle Tupelo leads a fairly agreeable mixed bag this month. Coming from a formative start in punk/ thrash, Uncle Tupelo discovered that real C&W is tougher, leaner and more seductive than some new-fangled hardcore.

Recorded live in the studio in Austin, Texas, Anodyne has captured the raw beauty and cynicism of fiddle and pedal steel gems like 'Slate', 'We've Been Had' and ‘New Madrid'. Vocalist Jay Farrar has the required tired worldliness ideal for the genre and only the crackle and hum of guitars on ‘The Long Cut' and 'Chickamauga' hints at past thrashdom in an otherwise classic piece of C&W from these new age cowboys.

Not too far removed are eternally worthy also-rans the BoDeans. Seven years since their last album and a year in the making suggests

that Go Slow Down wasn't borne out of a burning need to make rock n'roll. It stands as a tasteful burst of FM Americana with their best, 'Closer to Free' and 'Something's Telling Me', resulting from how close they can keep to their Everly Brothers influences. The rest is made up of a bit of country, raunch, blues and psychedelia (well there's a wahwah pedal on 'The Other Side') and 'Cold Winter's Day' is a real nice ballad. Amiable.

The girl can't help it, try as she might, Kirsty Mac Coll can't shake off her pleasant but plain folky genetics. And she's had more breaks than most with a legendary pater and also superstar producer Steve Lillywhite as her doting spouse who supposedly only mixes the fairly dull Titanic Days. Ex-Fairground Attraction and Morrissey collaborator Mark Nevin gets landed with the job of trying to tie tunes to her bland poetry and only the rockabilly macho bullshit of 'Big Boy On A Saturday Night' leaves any noticeable teeth marks. Customary paths of melancholy like 'Tomorrow Never Comes' are too predictable to reach vital organs, leaving the brilliant Johnny Marr's restrained funk undercurrent 'Can't Stop Killing You' as almost good enough to salvage an album well short of titanic.

And finally, get past Bowie's self-serving and pretentious reasons for the decline of British rock n'roll and you arrive at his first and reasonably interesting attempt at a soundtrack, BBC2's The Buddha of Suburbia. The title track sees Bowie in good plaintive English form and since it's a soundtrack he loosens up, mixing funk, humour and experimentation on 'Sex and the Church' and gets suitably ambient on 'The Mysteries'. A sideways evolution into soundtracks could be his future. Buddha is certainly good enough to suggest that. GEORGE KAY RANCH ROMANCE Flip City (Sugar Hill) Here's something interesting. Ranch Romance are a five piece (four women, one man) from Grunge City — Seattle. This ain't grunge, but what is it? Ranch Romance call their style "regressive country". It’s a highenergy mix of accordian-based western swing and jazz, embellished with harmony singing that verges on yodelling. They're not quite folk, not quite country. Imagine the Topp Twins backed by acoustic bass, guitar, accordian, fiddle and drums crossed with k.d. lang going out of control. Vocalist Jo Miller twists her pure voice around any style, and

Nova Karina Devonie sure knows how to handle an accordian. This month Ranch Romance are on a nationwide tour of New Zealand. Seeing them live will be a delight, one imagines. It would also help figure just what is going on here — Flip City is too busy, too varied to fall in love with at first note. They're clever for sure, too clever by half maybe. Then again, maybe not.. . KEVIN NORQUAY PUSSY GALORE Corpse Love: The First Year ACTION SWINGERS Decimation Boulevard (Caroline) The Pussy Galore compilation brings together the Feel Good About Your Body, Groovy Hate Fuck and Pretty Fuck Look EPs with rare excerpts from their cover of the entire Exile in Main Street album, live recordings and practice room outtakes. And needless to say, it stands as testament to their towering genius: like no one else before or since they smashed rock to jagged, incoherent pieces (with trashcans for drums, no bass guitar and no powerchords, just continuous, asymmetrical eruptions of piercing noise) while retaining a fluid, "instinctive" feeling for the blues, rock n'roll or what-

ever countless others have tried and failed miserably to reproduce. And then there's Spencer's voice, deep and smooth enough to croon like Dean Martin if he wanted to, but always shuddering with the disgust-as-libido that drives what's probably the most virulently hateful music ever recorded.

Action Swingers used to include Pussy Galore's Julia Cafrity but they've always been more of a straight punk rock group with short songs, loud chords, larynx-shred-ding vocals and corrosive four bar solos. For the latest album they've got the formula worked out exactly: the whole thing's only 21 minutes long, the guitars and bass emit a constant Ramones-throb (without the pretty 50s melodies) and Ned Hayden sings threateningly about people he doesn't like much. It'll do nicely, thank you, but nowhere near as nicely as other PG offshoots the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Royal Trux. MATTHEW HYLAND DEAN DILLON Hot, Country and Single (Atlantic) Dean Dillon first made his name as a country songwriter with a clever line in song titles. He penned the George Srait hits 'Nobody in His Right Mind Would Have Left Her', 'Ocean Front Property' and the chatup classic 'The Chair'. Singing, Dillon doesn't have the personality of Strait, but he's no muggins either. He can do the smooth crooner, the country rocker, and the lovelorn loser without taking himself too seriously. And his songwriting is above the usual Nashville standard — 'Easy Come, Easy Go' sounds like a hit, 'When Hell Freezes Over' is worth a chuckle . . . 'Old News', 'Some Days it Takes All Night' . . . songs with hooks. Dillon may not be George Strait but he's closer than most. Worth a punt if you prefer mellow country. KEVIN NORQUAY TAJ MAHAL Dancing the Blues (BMG) Taj Mahal has often been called an ethnomusicologist of AfricanAmerican music. "But, man!" he cries, "there ain't no dust on my guitar." Taj may be a scholar, but he's no fussy academic. He shares

the same approach to his musical roots as Ry Cooder once did (the pair were in an LA band together during the 60s). He keeps alive old styles ranging from blues to calypso, and keeps looking for new ones (he even covered a couple of Herbs' classics in the mid-80s).

On Dancing the Blues Taj pays tribute to the music that's been "dancing through his head" since childhood: black R&B of the 40s and 50s. He has a big band (featuring several members of Little Feat) and with the Texicali Horns, captures the fat, slinky sound of jump blues as recorded by Joe Turner, BB King and Paul Gayten. It's an album of standards, and among the seminal musicians to whom he pays tribute are Percy Mayfield, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Otis Redding and Howlin' Wolf. He has a big, throaty voice that has more enthusiasm than character, but he's certainly got more soul and sweat than Robert Cray. Pick of the bunch is 'Stranger in My Own Home Town': pumping big band R&B at its best. Dancing the Blues is energetic and consistent, and if it encourages listeners to search out the originals, Taj would be a very happy man. CHRIS BOURKE SHAWN CAMP Shawn Camp (Reprise) Shawn Camp looks like cherub-faced actor James Spader. He hails from Arkansas, this is his first album. It's promising and patchy. Two or three good songs, nine okay-ish ones. On 'Confessin' My Love' he sounds melodic, gruff, tough and vulnerable all at the same time. Good stuff; it's like a new John Anderson. Elsewhere he sounds like a hundred other singers coming out of Nashville. KEVIN NORQUAY JOHN HAMMOND JNR Trouble No More (Pointblank) It's time to retire the old 60s adage that 'white boys can't play the blues’, a hangover from the 60s and the rise of the black civil rights movement. Black musicians had been used and abused by the record industry for decades. John Hammond Snr (the Columbia A&R legend who recorded Billy Holliday and Aretha Franklin) was one whitey who appreciated the blues. John Jnr's father's record-

JOHN RUSSELL

BAILTER SPACE 8.E.1.P CD EP (Matador/Flying In) As it's been said, the waiting is the hardest part. For the past eighteen months Bailter Space have been living, recording and touring in America and Europe. They return here in March and offer as a taster this musically mixed four-track EP. It's not all strictly new material though; remixes of the last album's 'Robot World' and 'EIP' close the record, but first up are brand spankings made in New York. 'Projects' is driven by an openly aggressive stark rhythm while John Halvorsen barks a grating vocal over the top. But the opening song 'X' displays the spacious side of Bailter Space I prefer, when they're melodic and atmospheric and killing you softly. ' EMULSIFIER Get On Up/H.M.N.J.S. CD Single (Wildside) During interviews Emulsifier have name-checked as influences such luminaries as Parliament, Bootsy, Funkadelic, and His Bad Self. So it wouldn't be unthinkable that they might lift the best moves from those hardcore funksters to use for their own means. But two versions each of 'Get On Up' and 'Heavy-Metal-New-Jack-Swing' are very much at the lightweight end of the funk scale. The album version of 'Get On Up' and the turbo mix of 'H.M.N.J.S.' get the nod from the choice of cuts, though with such a clean, highly polished production sound it's an effort to just tap a foot. HEAD LIKE A HOLE Faster Hooves CD Single (Wildside) This CD features three songs from HLAH and a tune each by fellowWellingtonians Steak and Funkmutha. 'Faster Hooves' is a departure from previous territory and a superb fullblooded metal based track complimented perfectly by the David D'Ath-like vocal delivery. The anarchic, foreboding 'Wallow' and the laborious 'This Egg And Its Leg' will only continue to enhance the reputation of a band capable of ferociously good playing.' Steak leave the feeling of being completely underwhelmed, they continue to churn out a mild blend of death metal vocals and one-riff songs. Funkmutha's'Groinal Screwdriver Punch' is incredibly similar in style to Rollins' 'Low Self Opinion' but with an E. Vedder sound-a-like emoting painfully during the chorus. TRIKE Blonde Rock Pig Cassette This second release from the Nelson trio Trike becomes more appealing with each listen. Much of the poppiness of their first cassette, Dwarf Pop, has disappeared under layers of swirling feeding-back guitar. Mostly melody is carried by the beautiful vocals of drummer Laura, especially on 'Flurry', an acoustic ballad that, just when you least expect it, is punctuated by sharp blasts of distorted gat. Of the noisier tracks a Pixies-like cover of 'Flipper' and Cole Porter's 'Everytime We Say Goodbye'are stunning. A sublime record that leaves a mouth open saying enough won't do. Available from Everyman Records, 249 Hardy Street, Nelson.

ings influenced his own 60s work. His phrasing has been described as evoking generations of black bluesmen and here, with a backing band that includes Little Charly and Charles Brown, the black and white melting point sparks with 'that feel'. Hammond plays a range of styles and guitars (acoustic, electric, steel, dobro) and a harp that you would swear was Little Walter or Sonny Boy. It's all blistering good fun and (incidentally) produced byJJ Cale. No trouble at all. Oh, and for all your trivia freaks, a chap called Jimmy Hendrix played in one of Hammond's early 60s bands called the Screaming Night Hawks. JOHN PILLEY BARK PSYCHOSIS A Street Scene (Caroline) Two quietly deranged, unreasonably pretty "songs" that owe nothing whatever to the post-Bloody Valentine English tradition of gui-tar-wash pop for all their hazy languor (although they do glance backward towards A.R. Kane, David Sylvian, 70s E.C.M. label jazz). A Street Scene sees delicate clusters of bass and guitar notes overwhelmed by hot flushes of trumpet, oboe and electronic noise. ‘Reverse Shot Gunman' is more aggressive, structurally something to do with hard techno but driven by a battery of exotic drums and lit up samples that melt into the strangest guitar

sound this side of King Loser's'Most Avid Sonic Spectrum'. MATTHEW HYLAND

SAM FORD Unhinged (Jayrem) The most essential requirement in country music is sincerity. You may

have the songs, the voice, the chops - or you may not. It doesn't matter. If it ain't sincere, it ain't worth a damn. From his days leading the Verandah Band, as part of the Neighbours, or various other Auckland outfits, Sam Ford's sincerity has never been in question. It brings a

credibility to his inimitable cautionary tales that, with their dollops of humour, would otherwise be hokey. Ford is like a Kiwi John Prine, writing about the daft scenarios ordinary folk get themselves in, and singing in a voice that makes the shaggy dog stories not just believable but often heartbreaking. Speaking of shaggy dogs, there's a doberman here whose head is shot off by his master. There's a man who falls in love with a woman who turns out to be his sister. 'Bad Moments’ the song is called, and as Ford sings, we've all had a few. 'The Homecoming' has a sentimental lilt to it, till you find out the singer has just done 15 years for shooting his wife. And then there's 'Jack', a good keen man who breaks in the country with his bare hands and loves his Mum. Then she dies, and he's never the same.

There is usually a sting in the tail of Ford's songs, and helping you get there with sensitivity and spirit is a crack band of auckland country players led by Red McKelvie on guitar, and featuring Cath Newhooke on fiddle and Glenn Campbell’s

pedal steel. The ballad 'l'm Losing You', with Mahinaarangi Tocker on guest vocals, is particularly moving. Unhinged may be slightly bent, but so was Ronald Hugh Morrieson. Sam Ford is the same kind of Kiwi yarn

spinner. CHRIS BOURKE

JOHN LEE HOOKER The Essential

(MCA/ BMG) Imagine, a 16 year old school kid walking into Roy Colbert's record shop with his saved up lunch money and hearing John Lee Hooker. The very first blues album that I bought was Sings Blues, just foot, guitar and voice recorded in the back room of a record shop far from these shores in 1948. It-turned my head around and changed my life. This new comp covers material from 1966 to 1974 but it's still vibrant and essential. John Lee was a bit of a musical prostitute, cutting songs for anyone that offered dollars. The 17 tracks here cover ABC, Bluesway, Impulse and Chess recordings. John Lee came from Clarksdale, Mississippi growing up with Muddy Waters. He left home by a different road, going to Cincinnati and Detroit and later San Francisco, rather than the traditional route to Chicago. Tracks appear from Boom Boom Boom Boom (1967), through the original 'Mister Lucky' to the over-arranged 'Bluebird' (1974). A personal highlight is ‘Never Get Out of These Blues Alive' with Van Morrison on vocals (1971). Recent albums have moved into the all stars bracket, re-recording the classics, but I can live with the fact that John Lee has got the recognition and financial security he deserves in his lifetime. JOHN PILLEY

MICHAEL MARTIN MURPHEY

Cowboy Songs III: Rhymes of the Renegades (Warner Western)

Murphey (remember 'Wildfire', the song about the horse in the snow?) dresses up as a cowboy for the album cover, rounds up a few classic western songs ('EI Paso', 'Riders in the Sky') and ropes in some selfpenned numbers about western

baddies. The guy's got a thing about cowboys — he's already released Cowboy Songs and Cowboy Christmas (Cowboy Songs II). He does okay by the outlaws, even if the classics gun down the Murphey creations. But if 'EI Paso' sounds great, Marty Robbins did it better, and give me Robert Earl Keen Jnr's murderous 'Sonora's Death Row' over this one. And 'The Ballad of Billy the Kid' is done at a geriatric pace unbefitting a rampaging outlaw — Ry Cooder beats Murphey to the draw there. Don't lynch him, he means well. KEVIN NORQUAY PRONG Cleansing (Epic) NYC's noise rock scene throws up some interesting mutants at times and Prong is definitley one of these. They've taken the vibe that creates the likes of the Swans and Missing Foundation and applied it to rock for several album's worth of interest. This is a band who are most definitely rock but this rock has more in common with the violent sounds of Cop Shoot Cop than clowns like Anthrax. Prong use the instruments to make their point, sheets of guitar backed up by the very tight sounding rhythm section that now boasts ex-Killing Joke member Paul Raven on bass. All the elements of metal are there except that it's all been clipped, trimmed and hardened up. Take 'Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck'. It could be Slayer at times but there's no hair shaking solos or rocker histrionics. The production is definitely the best a Prong album has seen, courtesy of Terry Date, who is best known for 'that Seattle sound'. It's not that Cleansing is some technical wonder but rather Date has managed to work the elements that make Prong worthy of attention above the rest of the metal bunch. He's taken the aggressive power and pushed that up front; loud, dirty guitars and a nice heavy bottom end that still manages to move and flow with the song. Vocals are for a large part reduced to being just another element in the wall of noise, which is fine as Prong really aren't a great lyric band and Tommy Victor can at best manage a relatively melodic scream. He does wrench some pretty

cool stuff out of a guitar though, and that more than makes up for the brusque vocals. The Killing Joke involvement (as well as Raven, John Bechdel crops up adding programming and samples) is a big element here, as Prong have a lot of the same distainful, stabbing sound that early Killing Joke perfected with some nasty riffs thrown in for good measure. Cleansing is a strong step on from 91 Prove You Wrong. KIRK GEE

TRANS-GLOBAL UNDERGROUND Dream of 100 Nations (Nation Records)

World Music. I hate it. Well, I hate the politically correct plonkers who champion its righteousness and condemn everyone else with 'holier than thou' toss usually reserved for opera lovers. The world music bunch

would love to claim Trans-global Underground as theirs. Don't let it happen!

The Trans-global sound is easy to define. Alternative British dance world fusion — with the occasional rap. Their musical conquest puts Britsy dance beats alongside the sounds of indigenous cultures from all over the globe. More tribal chants than an Indiana Jones flick, African choirs, Middle Eastern Instruments next to mutated funky guitar. It's 100 nations under a groove. And it's got pop on it's side. Forget the miserable Frenchy attempts of Deep Forest. The Globals have created a niche and perfected it. They've pulled off the seemingly impossible; they've brought together the music from cultures all over the world and made it internationally accessible. JOHN TAITE

THE GOLDEN PALOMINOS This Is How It Feels (Restless) This Is How It Feels is one of those albums that doesn't give you much to start with but slowly reveals its attractions after repeated listening. Initially easy to dismiss as sanitised funk/ jazz with a good singer, the songs of Lori Carson worm their way into your brain and leave a message that inisists on. being remembered. The Golden Palominos are the band of Anton Fier and (this time) Bill Laswell, who could both be accused of having a pedigree. This Is How It Feels features the talents of a fair few other familiar names including Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell and Nicky Skopelitis, but all their efforts come to little more than a couple of arresting percussion loops every now and then and a bland stew the rest of the time. It's only Carson that salvages it. Some songs are marvellous, especially 'Breakdown', a simple yet detailed piece that treads the edge of gentle collapse, the ominous and world-weary 'Bird Flying' and the steamy 'Prisoner of the Rhythm'. Sometimes it’s so good you can almost forgive the dull bits as being misplaced subtlety, but then it gets flat again, especially the songs sung by Lydia Kavanagh.

This Is How It Feels is maddeningly patchy. One gets the impression if it had been less dominated by Fier and more by the others it could have been much more worthwhile. CAMPBELL WALKER VARIOUS ARTISTS Ambient Volume 2: Imaginary Landscapes (Virgin) DAVID SYLVIAN AND ROBERT FRIPP Darshan (Virgin) SEEFEEL QuiQue (Too Pure) By its very definition ambience is the process of surrounding or bathing, in this instance it refers to the encompassing effects of electronic or experimental music. Now that that's out of the way Ambient 2 is an overview of some of the tonal soundscape bands and artists that have recorded on Virgin in the last twenty years. Since it's Virgin only artists the ambient fathers Cage and Riley

aren't here, neither are current faves the Orb, although their unmistakable stamp is on the remix of the Grid's 'Crystal Clear'. Brian Eno, the man who coined the term "ambience" in reference to this style of music,chips in with 'Talcoat', but what makes this double CD selection such great value is the variety ranging from Prince Far I's reggae dub 'Bendel Dub' to the outer space of new astronauts Voyager's 'Arrival' back to Tangerine Dream's surprisingly fresh 'Rubycon Part 2'. Ambience is musical yoga, it's therapeutic as well as weightless and evocative. Snap this up. David Sylvian's and Robert Fripp's Darshan is only a three track EP but since it clocks in at nearly 45 minutes it's been given honorary long player status. The first track 'Darshan' is a fairly typical but mesmeric blend of eastern tones floating into a fairly long techno club work out.'Darshana’ is more jagged with Fripp's guitar scrubbing and stabbing at the rhythm, an approach developed further on the final 'Darshan' with shuffling funk shot through with Fripp's guitar and Sylvian's pacifying vocals. Quite professional but hardly ground breaking. Finally London quartet seefeel (with the trendy lower-case lettering) have worked with the very fashionable Aphex Twin which at least puts them in the ambient picture. Quique is a decidedly assured tour through the various styles that tend to occupy the ambient mind. 'Cli-

mactic, Phase #3' is the nagging hypnotic trance aura, 'Filter Dub' the spacial reggae and 'Through You' and'Signals'theemotiveinnerspace. Again, they don't add anything new to the genre but they're good and Sarah Peacock's voice is an effective ephemeral additive. Wall paper lives. GEORGE KAY BILL MILLER The Red Road (Warner Bros) Bill Miller is a native American from the Stockbridge-Munsee — a band of Mohicans. The Mohicans believed the Red Road the album is named after to be a path through the world leadingtothe Higher Power — or so it says on the inner sleeve. The album features tracks with titles such as 'Dreams of Wounded Knee’, 'ln-ter-Tribal Pow Wow Song', 'Trail of Freedom' and 'Reservation Road'. Miller plays guitar, flutes, harmonica and percussion. It sounds just like you would expect it to. He makes as much noise by himself as a tribe of war dancing apaches. He does his rain dance thing on most tracks, one or two have an eerie Indian-on-the-plains feel. The tracks with English lyrics are not bad folk-country but they're nothing special either. KEVIN NORQUAY

808 DYLAN World Gone Wrong (Columbia) Thirty years after Dylan and his

new electric band were booed off the stage by narrow minded folkies, he returns with his second album of traditional blues and folk songs in two years. It may seem strange that one of music's greatest songwriters is now only interpreting other people's songs — enough songs have been written in the world already, he says — but this is where Dylan always came from, way back in the coffee club folk scene. He's always retained a folkie spontaneity to his recording approach (occasionally to the detriment of the songs) and the only difference between this and his debut album is the world weary voice, which takes some getting used to.

The voice has nothing like the awesome flexibility of old, but there is just as much emotional colour in this beaten, shredded croak. He ambleshiswaythrough little known' (with the exception of 'Stack a Lee') standards penned by old masters such as Blind Willie McTell, the Mississippi Shieks, Tom Paley and Public Domain. He delicately plucks his guitar like the Freewheelin' days, deftly bringing out the exquisite melodies in a way his voice cannot. Dylan has always done it his way, rather than his accountant's, and this is another insight into a stubborn, idiosyncratic artist. Eventually the subtlety of the performances captivates you, it's just the sameness (and bleakness) of the al-

bum that will limit it to diversion status. But he knows what he's doing (it's worth reminding yourself), as his witty, stream-of-conscious-ness liner notes show. All those never-ending tours of recent years had themes, he says. We just need to study the set lists. CHRIS BOURKE GREG FLEMING & THE TRAINS Ghosts Are White (Lost) Good singer/ songwriters are a rare breed. Usually they can write but not sing, or can sing but not write decent songs. In the case of Greg Fleming both sides of com-

position and performance come together with interesting and, at times, challenging songs with appropriate backing from the Trains. They are a group of musicians with pedigree; John Segovia (guitars and BVs), Mark Petersen (guitars and BVs), Stuart Broughton (drums), Robert Key (drums) and Nick Kreisler (bass). They don't all play on every track but are used as different arrangements require, also giving the impression that the album was recorded over a period of time. An easy comparison would be Paul Kelly (not Fagan with his big budget sound) with touches of Elvis Costello and a background

of Dylan (particularly vocally on the title track). However Fleming has a personal talent to infuse these influences in to something quite personal. And these songs are quite personal, with Fleming being an eloquent and lyrical observer.

Track 4 'Wished I'd Hesitated' could easily sit on an Eagles album (a compliment). Ranging in styles from languid pop to country feels and folk blues this was very easy to listen to, and the songs grow on you. My only gripe is a slightly thin production on some tracks, but overall it's well worth a listen.

JOHN PILLEY