Autumn 2000
GO TO: AC
Acoustics GO TO: Catherine Wheel
GO TO: The DumDums GO TO: Flaming Stars GO TO: Gentle
Waves
GO TO: Marble Valley GO TO: Nigo
GO TO: Sack Trick
And with
regards to the scoring system – the more Gizmos a band are awarded the better,
the more Gremlins, the more …bobbins. Up to a maximum of five each. Okay?
@© ACOUSTICS –
‘UNDERSTANDING MUSIC’ (Cooking Vinyl)
I first saw the lead singer of this band on
the Placebo tour, when he sheepishly appeared in the doorway of his
dressing-room, lipstick smeared in a Cure-style-ee. ‘I’ve been playing
kiss-chase with Brian’, was his response to the queries of the room. 
And
then Mr. Molko appears in the doorway, similarly unkempt. He just grinned…
So what’s the point of that story (beyond
slyly drawing attention to ’96 as a fantastic ligging year)…? Well. It can help
to show just how much the band have grown since. For where the last two records
were a leetle scuzzy in their Scottish rockin’, this album is astonishingly
classy. Unexpectedly understated. Slyly stylish. And that’s not just because
the sleeve-art wouldn’t look out of place on gallery display, or because in
places they’ve enlisted strings (though that helps). It’s more that the music
now seems to have a throbbing pulse, rather than a simple drum-stick back-beat.
The AC Acoustics here seem adept at (re-)affirming my old affection and faith
in them. Which is something that everyone should be a part of.
Oh, and yes, Placebo people, one Stefan
Olsdal is credited on some of the keyboard work. (Though if you’re going to buy
it for any reason beyond its quality, let it be the Kiss-Chase Story…)
CATHERINE WHEEL – ‘WISHVILLE’ (Chrysalis)
Rob Dickinson of the Catherine Wheel is
possessed of a voice that you wouldn’t find in a ‘Snowman’-scoring choir, or
backed up by a tap routine in a Broadway musical; it’s a thing of power, and
strength, and most memorably, 
of
very gentle fluttering grace. And the songs that rush behind him are sometimes
matched by it, and sometimes overwhelmed. ‘Wishville’ I approached with glee
because of this, thinking within I’d find songs to rival the butterfly glories
of ‘Happy Days’. And while it did everything it was supposed to – pushing the
right Rock Buttons and picking at incessant riffs that hook right in to your
memory – it didn’t set me alight in the way that I’d hoped. Shame, then, that
my favourite part of this new album should be the bonus live CD of old
material. Here, they spit out cracking versions of ‘Crank’ and ‘Little Muscle’.
Rob fumbles a song introduction in the style of Eddie Izzard. And there’s even
a duet-of-sorts with Andrew from Geneva providing free-flight soaring backing
for ‘Ma Solituda’. It’s amazing… where I’d hoped the album as a whole would be.
But then, considering I’ve spent the last month absentmindedly sticking it on
as a seemingly-daily soundtrack, maybe you should take that as the grudging
compliment which this review is missing…
THE DUM DUMS – ‘IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING’
(Good Behaviour)
Don’t
let the name fool you. The DumDums are anything but. Like the ever astute Marilyn
Manson (though, um, not in all respects), they seem to have an innate grasp of
what it is 
Der Kidz are after, and the treasure-trove ability to
provide it for them. ‘It Goes Without Saying’ is saturated with poptastic shiny
tunes to bounce around to and lyrics they can directly relate to – first love,
peer pressure, teen pregnancy… The DumDums understand. The DumDums have been
there. The DumDums will soundtrack your youth, help you get through it all, and
give you something that in casual sentiment and crunching volume for
parent-baiting purposes. (Because, after all, what’s the point of falling for a
band if you can’t use them to alienate your family…?) And The DumDums do want
to rock out. You can feel it. Their adoration of Green Day, Oasis and The Jam
is redolent throughout. But despite the frenetic guitars up to eleven their
aspirations are ever undermined by their innate pop sensibilities. Even live,
the melody is always there over the fretsaw strumming. The DumDums just can’t
help themselves when it comes to hooks ‘n’ harmonies. They’re not just three
pretty faces. Though that, in combination with their pop nous, should be enough
to ensure teen-screaming success…
THE FLAMING STARS – ‘A WALK ON THE WIRED SIDE’ (Vinyl Japan)
Wired
for sound? You will be… Suited and booted, the hipster quintet are back in
town, wry 
humour and lashings of musical nous at the ready, pounding
organ music and frenetic guitar as ever in tow. Not that there’s no place on
here for quiet reflection, mind. Brooding atmosphere even makes an appearance
(most notably in ‘The Villain’). But the Flaming Stars never neglect the good
ole rock ‘n’ roll for long… and where you find handclaps ‘n’ slide guitar, you
know their pet subjects aren’t far behind. Here, as you’d expect, we traverse
through languid odes to drunken paralysis (‘Swimming The Length Of This Bar’
being a particularly well-crafted example), the horrors that TOTP can throw at
you (notable in ‘Over And Done’, itself proof positive that songs with acoustic
song-starts don’t have to be ballad-limp), and life & love in London (most
all the rest…) All, of which, as you’d expect, makes for an eighteen-track
glory of an album. Hip-wigglingly invigorated, now I’m impatient and itching
for their next offering. And for the day John Peel’ll introduce them as ‘teen
pop sensations’. Oh happy days…
GENTLE WAVES – ‘SWANSONG FOR YOU’ (Jeepster)
From
the minute I realised Belle and Sebastian featured an Isobel (the name being more
important that its spelling), and that in 
session she was one capable of winding up Mark & Lard
(ohdoImisstheGraveyardShift, sigh), I was sold. (The, um, music that they were
making might’ve had a leetle to do with it too.) And some years later, these
associations and connotations stood me in good stead when it came to my
album-expectations. Because ‘Swansong For You’ is every bit as beautiful a
piece of work as you’d expect from a Sebastian-less Bel armed with a hammer
dulcimer and space echo, without sounding too much like her ‘parent’ group.
There are no rock ‘n’ roll moments on here, and no Coxon-esque lo-fi noodlings.
Instead the little-drummer-boy gallows-backing of ‘Partner in Crime’, the
xylophone tinkling behind the 50’s girl-group delights of ‘Flood’, the ballroom
epic of ‘There Was Magic, Then…’ And all the while the little-girl-lost vocals
and lazy strings lap at your conscious like, well, gentle waves (ahem), proving
they even got the name exactly right…
MARBLE VALLEY – ‘SUNSET SPRINKLER’ (Pork Recordings)
This is
what happens when you let drummer’s get bored, and set them loose in Hull. It’s
Pavement folks, but not as we know it.
Lazy-daze
of a summery album this, incongruously released in the wettest month our 
country
has seen for decades. Music to sand-bag your front-door to, then; scuzzed-up
samples, a smidgeon of scratching, and intricate looping around the loping
vocals. It manages to both live up to expectations and also confound them –
while ‘Simple Song’ is just that, the gracefully paranoid ‘Monster’ manages
tension and fear in the gentlest of ways, and ‘Kung Fu Fightin’ matches
aggressive lyrics with a full Chinese orchestra. There isn’t enough of this
kind of thing in pop music today. (Particularly Chinese orchestras.)
Gongs-a-go-go, this album is inestimably groovy. And with the likes of Money
Mark, UNKLE and Cornelius having a paw in here too (see, ‘paw’, like Planet of
the Ape Sounds! ahaha…) you are assured of quality. Like my words aren’t good
enough for ya. Honestly…
SACK TRICK – ‘PENGUINS ON THE MOON’ (Org Records)
Okay.
Rather than continue to harass Swedish tourists and compose rambling ditties
about blue ice-cream and, um, playing the bass, for their second album Sack
Trick have 
decided
to capitalise on their love for Antarctic birds and uncanny ability to find a
logical place for gargling in pop. This is a swooning rock opera of a concept
album, built around a penguin expedition to the moon, as created by a monster
London super-group united by their love for Kiss and dressing like
school-girls. It’s all about cheese and fish and trying to ski but being distracted
by NASA’s litter. It contains the penguin yelp of ‘I think I trod on some
brie’, and a love song to a microwave (“She can’t make love but she makes great
potato!”). It makes exquisite use of chugging guitars, penguin harmonies, and
excitable aliens. You wouldn’t think that in the midst of all this the album
would turn out to be so professional (the songs are as bright ‘n’ shiny as the
artwork) while retaining its endearing classy sweetness, would ya…? And if that
weren’t value-for-money incentive enough, in amongst the 20 minute
conversational wibbly-wobbly of the final (secret?) track, there’s a
Python-worthy ode to Belgium. Hee-hee-hee…
GO TO: AC
Acoustics GO TO: Catherine Wheel
GO TO: The DumDums GO TO: Flaming Stars GO TO: Gentle
Waves
GO TO: Marble Valley GO TO: Nigo
GO TO: Sack Trick
Last revised: 27/07/01