Missive 81
15-08-2005
Singled Out

Missive 81

Dedicated with love to Kelly and Mark

As promised the second quick fire album special – for tedious reasons see earlier missives.

Singles return next time out with two or three quick fire musings. Complaints, death threats and general grumbles as usual to mark@losingtoday.com please note WE HAVE CHANGED ADDRESS AND ROYAL MAIL ARE STILL FUCKING THINGS UP – SO GET IN TOUCH IF YOU HAVE SENT GEAR.

Mark
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Albums under scrutiny –

Songs of Green Pheasant, Motorhead – not one but two – you lucky devils you, Midwest and the Dials.


Songs of Green Pheasant
Songs of Green Pheasant
Fat Cat

Those people over at Brighton’s Fat Cat HQ really do know how to spoil us, not content with gently waking the legendary Vashti Bunyan from her long sleep and hitting upon the quaint notion of putting out a record with her lost in an unworldly trance amid the not of this planet sounds of Animal Collective, they’ve sublimely enchanted our hi-fi with releases from Mice Parade, Stromba, the Ivy Tree and Konono No 1. And the treats keep coming – forthcoming debut releases from Aoki Takamasa / Tujiko Noriko and Amandine are on the horizon while not forgetting the superb teaser ‘Grass’ (perhaps their best to date) from the forthcoming ‘Feels’ full length by (the aforementioned) Animal Collective. For now though a serious coup and feather in the cap has been achieved with the release of this timid and shy debut.

As bold a statement as it may be but this debut release by Duncan Sumpner AKA Songs of Green Pheasant is one of the best releases put out to date by Fat Cat and when you consider FC’s bulging back catalogue then you quickly realise that we are talking a very special release indeed. The real beauty of Sumpner’s debut is that in the almost charcoal toned sparseness of these ten tracks there’s a richness and vibrancy more expressive and vivid than any oil painting could ever hope to capture for ‘Songs of Green Pheasant’ is an enchanting peek into an idyllically ornate secret world that elicits at times a meditative (almost Gregorian) feel, a life affirming collection of delicately woven and lilting dusty pop jewels; naked and unblemished they are as refreshing, perfect and intimately warming as you could ever wish ten tracks to sound.

The seeds of ‘Songs of Green Pheasant’ germinate in the frail and fragile shaded acoustic territories of the late 60’s soft psyche folk scene; it offers a master class in the timeless art of a dying song craft where honey honed harmonics prevail, marinated with the equally tempting subtle nuances of the Cambridge set and filtered in the warming glow of the West Coast. With such unassuming elegance it entwines the softer more penetrative moments of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Graduate’ work (none more so than on the arresting ‘Knulp’ as it sweetly trundles riverside resonating with the spirit of John Fahey at its side) with the drifting more daydreaming aspects found littered about soundtrack to the ‘Wicker Man’. But then ‘Songs of Green Pheasant’ isn’t some archaic throw back to a time now forgotten, its nostalgic aura translates into modern day currency with sublime ease – about these ten tracks the genteel rustic calm of the Relict (‘Nightfall – for Boris P’ so frail you worry that you’ll snap it in half just by breathing near it); the hazily silken 60’s majesty of the Clientele (especially on the romance laden ‘Until…’); the wilfully underrated Candidate; Damon and Naomi (as on the spectral ‘Truth but not Fact’ with its seductive far east like references to their collaborative work with Ghost); Flying Saucer Attack and Crescent all flicker and glow to different degrees to mainline directly back to elements of the likes of early career Bee Gees and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.

From the outset ‘Songs of Green Pheasant’ casts its passionate spellbinding glow; the melodies are both inviting and ghostly as if like aural apparitions that have been plucked from the ether liberated from their confines to wander and extol their mercurial beauty – exemplified perfectly by the albums best cut ‘the Burning Man’ where for once Sumpner shifts from the usual comfort zone of soothing pastoral tides and chances his hand with something a little more eerie where the melody assumes an oddly off kilter balancing act of oppressive moods and portent.

A truly amazing debut.


Motorhead
BBC Live in Session
Sanctuary

More Motorhead mayhem to celebrate the fact that they’ve been putting hi-fi’s through their paces for 30 years now – a perfect companion it has to be said to the recent double DVD set ‘Stage Fright’ released on SPV which features live footage recorded last December in Dusseldorf along with a plethora of extras that translates into over 4 hours of viewing – more than enough bludgeoning biker-ware for any self respecting rock addict to beat their chest to.

‘BBC live in Session’ is a superb 2 disc set featuring material plundered from the BEEB’s archives and includes their debut session for the late John Peel and recordings made for his rhythm partner Kid Jensen and (the late) Tommy Vance as well as an appearance for Radio 1’s flag ship out side broadcast of the day ‘In Concert’. Arguably a large part of this material was only previously available on 2003’s 5 disc career spanning ‘Stone Deaf Forever’ box set which combined all you ever needed to know about Motorhead warts ‘n’ all across 99 blistering cuts but this collection packs in the full sets for the first time on CD.

Hard to imagine really that there was a time when Motorhead might never have been given that they were at one time deemed ‘the worst band in the world’ after the Blue Oyster Cult debacle and were it not for the last minute intervention of Chiswick’s Ted Carroll then the wheels of Lemmy’s super chromed bike might never have gotten out off the garage. But then fate is a strange lady – within four years Motorhead had notched up four studio albums (Motorhead, Overkill, Bomber and Ace of Spades) and cemented their reputation as the most ferocious rock band on the live circuit with the defining ‘No sleep til Hammersmith’ live set in 1981 as well as showing the way forward for the new breed of rock’s dynasty – Iron Maiden, Slayer and Metallica to name but three.

First up the Peel session – with arguably the classic ‘Head line up of Lemmy, ‘Filthy’ Phil and ‘Fast’ Eddie - the trademark four cuts intact features material taken from their ‘Motorhead’ and ‘Overkill’ full lengths along with a blistering and faithful cover and live favourite in the shape of ‘Louie Louie’ the old Richard Berry number made famous by the Kingsmen – the tracks show Lemmy and Co still suffering from a 60’s hangover – the sounds raw almost gritty garage with heavy licks in comparison to the quick fire and honed ‘Bomber’ style they would later be best known for. An ‘In Concert’ performance from May 1979 (and dubiously released for posterity on the ‘Fuck Off’ bootleg from the same year though minus ‘Capricorn’ and the stoner like ‘Limb from Limb’ which are included here) – recorded at the Paris Theatre, London – Lemmy was no stranger to the surroundings given that Hawkwind had featured there in 1973.

Disc 2 collects together the Jensen and Vance sessions. Five cuts from a 1981 set for ‘Kid’ feature a liberal dose of ‘Ace of Spades’ material including the pared head crunching JD soaked ‘Bite the Bullet’ and ‘The Chase is better than the Catch’ which leaves the last five cuts featuring current guitarist Phil Campbell who for his sins has been with Lemmy for nigh on twenty years now. Originally broadcast in September 1986 this mainly dips into the ‘Orgasmatron’ gear the title track coming across pretty wired by Motorhead standards. Essential – are you kidding – like yeah – d’oh.


Motorhead
Stage Fright
SPV

As rightly said by Chris Jericho during the ‘LA’ special feature on Disc 2 – if there was no Motorhead there would be no Metallica or Slayer – so depending on which side of the fence you sit respect or blame is well deserved – but then never underplay the role of Motorhead in the shaping of ‘heavy’ rock – they took the genre kicking and screaming from its pomp, spandex and capes and made it cool again but this time with an primal back to basics edge and into the bargain where probably the first rock band to cross the punk / heavy divide way back in the late 70’s.

‘Stage Fright’ is a ball busting double disc set - four hours in the company of perhaps the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world – can you honestly resist?

It’s been thirty long years since Lemmy found himself politely being shown the door by Hawkwind following a slight disagreement with Canadian officials relating to a stash of non-prescription drugs. Proving to have the last laugh – his former charges had all but imploded by 1978 while Lemmy after a few changes in personnel and one band name change later went on to become one of the most respected and formidable outfits on the live circuit.

Okay fair do’s each album after the awesome ‘Bombers’, ‘Overkill’ and the career defining ‘Ace of Spades’ (which set the benchmark for the Motorhead sound) have arguably it would be true to say never really bettered those crucial releases instead merely, with varying degrees, upholstered, re-chromed and at times given the purring Jack Daniels soaked Harley Davidson chassis shinier headlamps. But then – so what – their legacy is assured. And while the returns from British audiences mightn’t be what they once were it’s Europe, in particular Germany, where Motorhead still do big business – hence the choice of location for this blistering 20 track set. Recorded in front of a sell out audience at Dusseldorf’s Phillipshalle last December this cranium crunching concert serves as a best of retrospective mixing old and new to span the divide of those thirty years – so that what you get are your obligatory crowd favourites such as ‘Iron Fist’, ‘Ace of Spades’, ‘Overkill’ and ‘Killed by Death’ all sparring bruisingly with a healthy crop of the new breed such as the incendiary ‘Killers’ and ‘Whore House Blues’ (performed here with Mickey Dee and Phil Campbell donning acoustic guitars to leave Lemmy cutting up his best Sun era rye ‘n’ blues Johnny Cash) both taken from last years return to form full length ‘Inferno’. Throughout all this Lemmy as per usual still looks like the gnarled last biker in town, he’s as hungry now spreading the rock ’n’ roll gospel as he was when he received his P45 way back in ‘75, hell the man is 60 this year and he has facial hair and tattoos older than the majority of the audience in attendance.

While not really shedding lights in terms of previously unknown insights into the band I mean let’s face Lemmy is your typical what you see is what you get – warts ‘n’ all - Disc 2 at least provides an absorbing background into the band – featuring as it does – a short technical documentary for all you would be film makers on the making of ‘Stage Fright’, the celebratory ‘LA’ special with cameos from ‘Filthy’ Phil and Dave Grohl and an excellent behind the scenes look at the road crew and back stage staff – worth the entrance fee alone as it shows the trio at their most casual – and shows them as your no heirs and graces three ordinary Joe’s having a good crack. Add to that a few DVD ROM extras – wallpaper, slide shows etc….Dare you pass up?



Midwest
Whatever you bring we sing
Homesleep

Picture the scene, the resplendent back drop of the Blue Ridge mountains, the hazy aura of a fiery sunset, the good to be alive aroma of nearby cornfields brought on a gentle evening breeze, the foliage alive with the sound of crickets, the distant bark of a working dog, the crackle of a warming campfire, the taste of homemade lemonade and the creak of the porch as it yawns and wrestles to shrink back to size after basking in the midday sun to prepare itself for a restful sleep.

Sounds inviting doesn’t it. Midwest’s second full length ‘Whatever you bring we sing’ could easily be the accompanying soundtrack for that evening – hell there are even times throughout these ten compositions where you’d swear it had been reared on a picture-esque reserve such is it’s almost at one with nature lull. That is until some kind soul gently taps you on the shoulder and whispers the small detail that Midwest are in fact from Italy. Varese to be more precise – a small town on the Swiss border situated in the Alpine foothills. Not that that in itself is extraordinary until that is you actually listen to this album and allow yourself to be drawn and romanticized by it do you begin to realise that what you have here is the great wide open – the very heartland of America deliciously preserved, bottled up and let loose to smokily cure and invigorate the grooves of ‘Whatever you bring we sing’.

‘Whatever you bring we sing’ is a deliciously pot boiling stew of drunk on moonshine curios (just check out ‘When the motor dies’) honey toned with a curious feel of Dixieland / music hall (especially on the glowing ‘We’re with the Madcap’) and whittled and carved in the old ways. Armed with banjos, mandolins, lap steels, cellos and a Wurlitzer piano this quartet load up their cart to embark on a journey throughout country / folk’s undiscovered and tranquil back waters. Beautifully crafted, the collection is marked by its lush textures, often upbeat and never less than mercurial. Book-ended by the full lengths frailest cuts – the Dylan meets Sparklehorse string bathed numbness of ‘Release the Catch’ and Will Oldham and Black Heart Procession meets Nick Cave’s ‘Murder Ballads’ introspection of the silkily snooze like caress of the parting ‘Warmed by the coming season’, ‘Whatever you bring we sing’ proves to be warmingly inviting. ‘Odd Fair’ as wonky as it may be is a cotton picking cross pollination of Alan Price’s ‘Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear’ and Keith West’s ‘Grocer Jack’ distilled and kaleidoscopically rethreaded through the mindset of Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart’s Club Band after a brief sojourn to Chicago while the oddly bluesy ‘J Rides a Donkey’ is warped through with a seriously lazy appeal that suggests Captain Beefheart faithfully mooching about a studio to tinker about with old Charly gems.

Yet for all that it’s Fife’s Fence Collective where Midwest find their closest allies, ‘Magpie on Wire’ really does harbour a succulent and arresting spectral beauty at its core that’s so King Creosote while the frankly mullered ‘Taillights’ is a campfire summit between Pavement, Lone Pigeon and Sackville. One suspects your record collection and hi-fi may never rest happily until its safely in their grasp being played it to death.

The Dials
Flex Time
Latest Flame

Okay gather together three young fillies with a collective CV that cites memberships with Electrelane, the Briefs, the Woggles, Puta-Pons and the Returnables – pair them with a demented drummer with the apparent onstage antics that suggest some kind of bloodline to Keith Moon but blessed with the work ethic and variation of Slits / Banshees / Creatures tub thumper Budgie and then set upon them the task to go away for a while and produce something vaguely spiky and wild with it.

Several months down the line and they return with the wiry self released ‘Sick Times’ EP (featured in all their naked glory here). This you might rightly (though misguidedly) think is a blip, the work of impish youthful exuberance. But then to repeat the trick again with a further nine (10 if you count the unnamed doomily frazzled reverb heavy mystery track which mooches in 10 minutes after the parting ‘High Tide’) party trashing wig flipping toxic cuts and you can already hear the deafening sound of the ‘your new favourite band’ whispers filtering from out of the underground.

‘Flex Time’ is an unholy hybrid, it never settles in any one specific generic medium preferring instead to assume a myriad of spiritual connections so disparate that its ultimately laying claim to it being their sound rather than anyone else’s – a trashcan trawling of mid 60’s Pebbles flashbacks, schizoid late 70’s no wave / new wave and post punk fall outs (listen out for the heavy influence of ‘Unknown Pleasures’ era Joy Division like dislocated manoeuvres that litter about the aural battleground like primed tripwires), effervescent 80’s candy pop and mid 90’s girl punk brat pop all moulded and finely tuned as if to sound like a must have acutely honed and distilled mix tape plundered from your cooler older brothers record collection. Yelping and cooing vocals that sound not unlike a bastardised mutation of Lene Lovich, Honey Bane, Kate Pierson with shades of Lydia Lunch thrown in to set you off guard (just check out the bop inducing ‘Stuck Inside’); kooky 60’s stylised organs that could easily be the work of the Mono Men via Blondie after a brief sabbatical at 1313 Mockingbird Lane and obtusely frenetic spastic rhythms that appear to be the work of a bullish forging of forces between the Fall and the Raincoats whose sole aim it seems is to kick that dippy clever grin belonging to the B-52’s back to ‘Planet Claire’ or better still further (especially on the zig zagging austere glazed head burrowing hypnotic blank generation licks amid ‘Flex Time’).

Wilfully catchy there’s an urgency that bleeds from ‘Flex Time’ – all at once discordant but with a serious pop heartbeat and caustically infectious so much so in fact that you’ll keep checking in the mirror for the obligatory rash. This baby wears its Ramones meets Helen Love heart on its sleeve none more so is this apparent than on the throbbing two chord cutesy college pop of the tangy self tanning ‘Bye Bye Bye Bye Baby’ which perhaps offers the most immediately accessible moment here with its early Primitives aftershocks. Elsewhere there’s the superbly atonal edge parading about on the viciously smarting ‘Rotten’ replete with feistily needling chords that at the close rear up into a seizure inducing cauldron of festering pyrotechnics. Best of the set though is the rampant bitten by the boogie bug volatile ‘Dead Beat’ a lovelorn bitter sweet comic book pictorial bruised and battered by the furious onslaught of staccato riffing all cutely tripped off with an adorable teen angst chorus to weep for. I could go on but I think you’ve got the general gist of things by now – buy or prepare for peer piss taking.

Additional note – Shortly after completion of the album The Dials drummer Doug Meis sadly lost his life in a tragic car accident on July 14th. He was one of three passengers killed (lead singer Becky’s husband John Glick of the Returnables and Michael Dahlquist from Silkworm) in a collision occurring in Skokie, IL. The accident was the result of a motorist attempting to commit suicide by ramming at high speed into the back of the stationary car that was carrying the three musicians back to work after a lunch break. A woman responsible for the accident and who escaped from the carnage with just a broken foot is being held without bail and has been charged with three counts of first degree murder. Our thoughts go out to the family and friends of Doug, John and Michael. For further information please visit the memorial site at http://www.dougmeis.com