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The Blue Nile, A Walk Across the Rooftops, 1984
I've regarded Glasgow's The Blue Nile – and this album especially – with reverence since the summer of 1984 when a mate in a local band lent me the vinyl with the words, "You must hear this." A Walk Across the Rooftops had an unusual beginning, with Linn Records being created especially to release this, their first album: austere, sparse, often haunting and vacant, somewhere this side of the Cocteau Twins but also elegantly gothic enough to sit comfortably alongside the 4AD sound. That weekend was something of a watershed, the kind that made me reconsider and reevaluate everything else I was listening to. I can imagine the effect that this album had on me also being played out on a few thousand other turntables across the country. This was a band you actually didn't want to see make it big, they quickly became a secret and private pleasure that you couldn't share with just anyone. Paul Buchanan's songwriting still possesses a rare originality: he and The Blue Nile have consistently given their songs space enough to make time slow down, and in that vein 'Easter Parade' was, appropriately, the song Rickie Lee Jones later chose for a cover version. Even the energy of 'Tinseltown in the Rain' possesses a kind of langorous, reluctant swagger that tries to play itself down, echoing the melancholy rock of England's Talk Talk. There was enough depth on this album to see them through the next five years, before excited rumour went around Glasgow that The Blue Nile were back in the studio, recording again. The result was 1989's Hats, equally excellent, equally sublime.
Gentlemen Without Weapons, Transmissions, 1986
There were a few hard-to-categorise one-off pop albums that rode the wave of musical positivism that was all over the UK in the early- to mid-1980s, for instance Red Box's singular The Circle and the Square and the psychologically didactic, shrink-wrapped Americana of Will Powers' strange Dancing for Mental Health. Into that cache you could also throw Gentlemen Without Weapons' Transmissions, a curiosity of high pedigree. I certainly fell for its 'green' credentials and timeliness, but then Transmissions also became dated just as quickly. Kenny Young – the American songwriter who wrote the immortal 'Under the Boardwalk' – had been into environmental issues since the early 1980s, and in 1985 he got together with British songwriters Nick Glennie-Smith and Vic Coppersmith-Heaven to record this project in the UK. It's way too pure in that whiter-than-white, ethically-driven 'Howard Jones' sense, not a negative vibe to be heard anywhere. Nevertheless, despite what one may think of that kind of correctness today it's still a unique recording: they used no instruments with every sound coming from nature, impressive when you consider the range, and things rarely sounded like they'd been distorted through a Fairlight. Their downfall is the frequently unintelligible and overworded lyrics: someone really should have pointed out that a verse such as "What you see as evolution of the species is what you've observed through the distorted medium of a fragmented subjective intelligence trapped within the past/future orientation of linear time" doesn't actually scan very well, no matter how much you torture it into submission. Transmissions is a work of technical genius, but with little to get out of it emotionally it falls flatter than it oughta. They released one single, 'Unconditional Love', which did moderately well; I don't think they ever gigged, they were not that kind of band. Douglas Adams fans may also recognise the cover: Storm Thorgerson reused the photo for the Picador edition of Adams's Mostly Harmless.
Prefab Sprout, Swoon, 1984
In a recent declutter I managed to whittle my Sprout albums down to just one that is very difficult to part with. This debut is both an assortment of 'Songs Written Out Of Necessity' and, with the ideas Paddy McAloon expressed herein, a document in its own right of his own early offbeat techniques. Swoon immediately feels like McAloon's exploration of the 'correctness' of songwriting, be it political, gender-themed, navel-gazing, heavily stylistic or story-based. It's a cautious album: wherever McAloon takes you he doesn't want to tread on anyone's toes, instead he puts his faith in his unusual songwriting methods with results that are sometimes awkward yet are all independently vital. He was certainly diverse in what he committed to vinyl: oddities like 'Elegance' and 'Technique' that could have ended up as forgotten B-sides are instead included because they seem to meet a certain criteria of clarity of expression, regardless of their offbeat musical form. McAloon's strength was his willingness to experiment, to discover what worked on record and what perhaps didn't, and Prefab Sprout never recaptured the emphatically alternative and indie vibe they achieved here, instead going for songs with a more predictable aim and a more understandable payoff. McAloon's very smart turn of phrase is one thing that he hasn't lost to this day, but now the edgy kind of songwriting on show here has gradually been replaced with a love of schmaltz, something that doesn't find an echo in my head at all. My first point of access was the haunting minor single 'Couldn't Bear to be Special', which led to discovering more unique yet well-expressed songs such as 'Cruel', 'Cue Fanfare' and 'I Never Play Basketball Now'. After a few more good hits in subsequent years my interest gradually waned and they don't interest me much at all these days; Swoon, on the other hand, still engages head and heart.
Simply Red, Picture Book, 1985
I always believed Simply Red were way too hasty in shaking off their cool. The few times when their politics were prominent they held my attention, and when the mawkishness took over I switched off more or less immediately, but for several years Picture Book was a must-have album on many a CD shelf and something that could be mined for ideas and points of view that might have pointed the way ahead as well (alas, that role seemed to fall to Dire Straits). Since his Manchester days with The Frantic Elevators, Simply Red was always going to be Mick Hucknall's gig first before any other consideration, with this debut album's understated cover self-consciously exhibiting northern working class roots, and Picture Book is indeed an equally understated title for an album of textured, well-considered soul. What was also revealed on first hearing was the tight group of session musicians behind Hucknall who exhibited a dynamic balance as opposed to a static one, bridging rock and soul more authentically and in a more forward-looking way than Paul Young, who in comparison always kept one eye fixed firmly on the past. That's not to say every song here hits a stunning creative bullseye; listening today it strikes me how ordinary so many of its tunes are. Over subsequent years that ordinariness kind of took over with the social commentary taking a back seat, the band blended into the shadows with Hucknall striving to get the songs across almost single-handedly while on stage: for a long time now it's been The Mick Hucknall Show in all but name. Overall, Picture Book is still a useful marker on mid-80s Britpop, the best tunes here being the hard and fast 'Look At You Now', the well-aimed hit on Reaganomics that was their cover of The Valentine Brothers' 'Money's Too Tight', and the jewel that can cram years of perspective into just four and a half minutes, 'Holding Back the Years', something that can still make time stop if you let it. Mostly great stuff, and mostly still coming across fresh more than twenty years later.
The Blue Nile, A Walk Across the Rooftops, 1984
I've regarded Glasgow's The Blue Nile – and this album especially – with reverence since the summer of 1984 when a mate in a local band lent me the vinyl with the words, "You must hear this." A Walk Across the Rooftops had an unusual beginning, with Linn Records being created especially to release this, their first album: austere, sparse, often haunting and vacant, somewhere this side of the Cocteau Twins but also elegantly gothic enough to sit comfortably alongside the 4AD sound. That weekend was something of a watershed, the kind that made me reconsider and reevaluate everything else I was listening to. I can imagine the effect that this album had on me also being played out on a few thousand other turntables across the country. This was a band you actually didn't want to see make it big, they quickly became a secret and private pleasure that you couldn't share with just anyone. Paul Buchanan's songwriting still possesses a rare originality: he and The Blue Nile have consistently given their songs space enough to make time slow down, and in that vein 'Easter Parade' was, appropriately, the song Rickie Lee Jones later chose for a cover version. Even the energy of 'Tinseltown in the Rain' possesses a kind of langorous, reluctant swagger that tries to play itself down, echoing the melancholy rock of England's Talk Talk. There was enough depth on this album to see them through the next five years, before excited rumour went around Glasgow that The Blue Nile were back in the studio, recording again. The result was 1989's Hats, equally excellent, equally sublime.
Gentlemen Without Weapons, Transmissions, 1986
There were a few hard-to-categorise one-off pop albums that rode the wave of musical positivism that was all over the UK in the early- to mid-1980s, for instance Red Box's singular The Circle and the Square and the psychologically didactic, shrink-wrapped Americana of Will Powers' strange Dancing for Mental Health. Into that cache you could also throw Gentlemen Without Weapons' Transmissions, a curiosity of high pedigree. I certainly fell for its 'green' credentials and timeliness, but then Transmissions also became dated just as quickly. Kenny Young – the American songwriter who wrote the immortal 'Under the Boardwalk' – had been into environmental issues since the early 1980s, and in 1985 he got together with British songwriters Nick Glennie-Smith and Vic Coppersmith-Heaven to record this project in the UK. It's way too pure in that whiter-than-white, ethically-driven 'Howard Jones' sense, not a negative vibe to be heard anywhere. Nevertheless, despite what one may think of that kind of correctness today it's still a unique recording: they used no instruments with every sound coming from nature, impressive when you consider the range, and things rarely sounded like they'd been distorted through a Fairlight. Their downfall is the frequently unintelligible and overworded lyrics: someone really should have pointed out that a verse such as "What you see as evolution of the species is what you've observed through the distorted medium of a fragmented subjective intelligence trapped within the past/future orientation of linear time" doesn't actually scan very well, no matter how much you torture it into submission. Transmissions is a work of technical genius, but with little to get out of it emotionally it falls flatter than it oughta. They released one single, 'Unconditional Love', which did moderately well; I don't think they ever gigged, they were not that kind of band. Douglas Adams fans may also recognise the cover: Storm Thorgerson reused the photo for the Picador edition of Adams's Mostly Harmless.
Prefab Sprout, Swoon, 1984
In a recent declutter I managed to whittle my Sprout albums down to just one that is very difficult to part with. This debut is both an assortment of 'Songs Written Out Of Necessity' and, with the ideas Paddy McAloon expressed herein, a document in its own right of his own early offbeat techniques. Swoon immediately feels like McAloon's exploration of the 'correctness' of songwriting, be it political, gender-themed, navel-gazing, heavily stylistic or story-based. It's a cautious album: wherever McAloon takes you he doesn't want to tread on anyone's toes, instead he puts his faith in his unusual songwriting methods with results that are sometimes awkward yet are all independently vital. He was certainly diverse in what he committed to vinyl: oddities like 'Elegance' and 'Technique' that could have ended up as forgotten B-sides are instead included because they seem to meet a certain criteria of clarity of expression, regardless of their offbeat musical form. McAloon's strength was his willingness to experiment, to discover what worked on record and what perhaps didn't, and Prefab Sprout never recaptured the emphatically alternative and indie vibe they achieved here, instead going for songs with a more predictable aim and a more understandable payoff. McAloon's very smart turn of phrase is one thing that he hasn't lost to this day, but now the edgy kind of songwriting on show here has gradually been replaced with a love of schmaltz, something that doesn't find an echo in my head at all. My first point of access was the haunting minor single 'Couldn't Bear to be Special', which led to discovering more unique yet well-expressed songs such as 'Cruel', 'Cue Fanfare' and 'I Never Play Basketball Now'. After a few more good hits in subsequent years my interest gradually waned and they don't interest me much at all these days; Swoon, on the other hand, still engages head and heart.
Simply Red, Picture Book, 1985
I always believed Simply Red were way too hasty in shaking off their cool. The few times when their politics were prominent they held my attention, and when the mawkishness took over I switched off more or less immediately, but for several years Picture Book was a must-have album on many a CD shelf and something that could be mined for ideas and points of view that might have pointed the way ahead as well (alas, that role seemed to fall to Dire Straits). Since his Manchester days with The Frantic Elevators, Simply Red was always going to be Mick Hucknall's gig first before any other consideration, with this debut album's understated cover self-consciously exhibiting northern working class roots, and Picture Book is indeed an equally understated title for an album of textured, well-considered soul. What was also revealed on first hearing was the tight group of session musicians behind Hucknall who exhibited a dynamic balance as opposed to a static one, bridging rock and soul more authentically and in a more forward-looking way than Paul Young, who in comparison always kept one eye fixed firmly on the past. That's not to say every song here hits a stunning creative bullseye; listening today it strikes me how ordinary so many of its tunes are. Over subsequent years that ordinariness kind of took over with the social commentary taking a back seat, the band blended into the shadows with Hucknall striving to get the songs across almost single-handedly while on stage: for a long time now it's been The Mick Hucknall Show in all but name. Overall, Picture Book is still a useful marker on mid-80s Britpop, the best tunes here being the hard and fast 'Look At You Now', the well-aimed hit on Reaganomics that was their cover of The Valentine Brothers' 'Money's Too Tight', and the jewel that can cram years of perspective into just four and a half minutes, 'Holding Back the Years', something that can still make time stop if you let it. Mostly great stuff, and mostly still coming across fresh more than twenty years later.
