Volume 7 Side 4 - The Pastels, Lunachicks, Thee Hypnotics, Danielle Dax, Nick Cave

1. The Pastels - Baby You're Just You (Chapter 22)

"Over five minutes of Love, Pain, Dedication and Guitars, taken from five years of the same."

No matter what else happens or happened in the rest of the music world, The Pastels carried on trucking away, in a manner that some critics and listeners find endearing and others downright infuriating. Back in the late nineties, an NME critic explosively slated their work by arguing that nothing in their world ever changed one jot, "and they still hide behind the sofa when Mr Tuneful Singing rings on their doorbell!"

So it was, and so it shall be. The day The Pastels suddenly release an album of polished rock and roll FM radio numbers will be the day the Planet Earth gets sucked into some peculiar, reality-warping vortex where Morrissey records TV adverts for Burger King and Ellie Goulding refuses to ever make an advert again and instead releases a series of three vinyl-only experimental EDM albums with Boards of Canada. Unsurprisingly, then, "Baby You're Just You" could have easily been released immediately after "Crawl Babies" on Volume Two, and we'd be none the wiser. There's no sense of time having passed or the indie scene having moved around them, and unlike many of their old C86 companions, The Pastels would get away with it and retain their cult following.

"Baby You're Just You" is as maudlin and downbeat as "Crawl Babies", actually, featuring Stephen Pastel's mournful vocals and a funereal organ in the background. Just like the best cult punk records, though, it's fragility and the occasional stumbles it takes are a huge part of its appeal. It's a limping, human record and it sounds lovely, though on a personal level I have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to this one, whereas I can pop "Crawl Babies" on the stereo at any time and get some enjoyment out of it.



2. Lunachicks - Sugar Luv (Blast First)

"Russ Meyer's vision brought to life with guitars in their hands and havoc in their hearts".

Lunachicks were around before Riot Grrrl was a commonly used phrase in the punk underground (and possibly even used at all) much less the mainstream, and while what they produced wasn't particularly politicised and seemed to be much more about sheer punk noise for the hell of it, they're ahead of the pack here in terms of sound.

"Sugar Luv" is, of course, simple, fast, furious, and ridiculous. Sounding like it was pulled together in one take, possibly drunk, it's the sound of music colliding into the furniture and falling over itself until something pokes someone's eye out. Lunachicks were never, ever going to be a mainstream proposition, but the fat, rumbling chaos here sounds amazing for the first five or six listens. It probably helps if you're a teenager, though.

The band have been inactive since 2001.



3. Thee Hypnotics - Preachin' & Ramblin' (Situation Two)

"From the twelve-inch single 'Justice In Freedom', the classic debut on Situation Two, Thee Hypnotics take the righteously charged guitar rock of the late 60s into a new dimension."

What is it with garage revival bands and their insistence on using "Thee" at the start of their names? It is, I suppose, a good signifier at the very least. If a band poster appears in your town with a name like Thee Espadrilles, you know without even having to bother to read further that they're going to be giving you scuzzed up R&B or Rock and Roll through vintage valve amplifiers. If they didn't, explanations would surely be owed and refunds due.

Thee Hypnotics, naturally, never disappointed the world with misleading branding and were a powerful force in reviving ancient rock sounds to a new generation. The A-side "Justice In Freedom" is actually a fine, fine track, but "Preachin' & Ramblin'" isn't so bad either, sounding like a full-on MC5 excursion into bluesy chaos. It's so authentic sounding that you could trick someone who wasn't clued up to the band's work into believing that it was a genuine sixties artefact.

In the case of bands like Thee Hypnotics, there will always be naysayers who argue that they're doing nothing to progress rock music, and that self-consciously mining the past is pointless. However, there's always going to be an audience who just want to hear the overpowering noise of this stuff, and indeed, I would count myself among their number. I don't eat, sleep and breathe this music, but I occasionally appreciate a bit of full-throttle garage rock and roll and words like "revolution" being thrown around as if they're confetti, and Thee Hypnotics are deservedly respected for their output in this area. Chaos seldom sounds this righteous.



4. Danielle Dax - White Knuckle Ride (Awesome)

"White Knuckle Ride was written about the Hungerford massacre, as a vitriolic comment on both that and the Manson murders of the late 60s, highlighting the ludicrous gun laws which allow such events to continue."

It's not as explicit as suggested above, of course. "White Knuckle Ride" actually sounds like swaggering rock and roll surrounded by a few buzzwords on first listen, and caused my father to comment "Oh, delightful" in a sarcastic voice when he first heard it. He saw the video and believed that Danielle Dax was actually using the popular slang (of the time) for masturbation.

There is a suggestive, sexual edge to the track, which I would imagine was supposed to highlight the media glorification of violence; the way the John Wayne figure with the loaded gun is always seen a desirable, Alpha A male figure. Beyond that, its lyrical intent isn't clear - unless you're told - and away from the central message, "White Knuckle Ride" is just Danielle launching herself into a straightforward rock song again, and doing a fantastic job of it. Of all the tracks she released during this era, it sounds the most fully realised. The hammering piano lines and "Peter Gunn" styled horns meet with a killer chorus, and just as you think you're completely immersed in what she's doing, it's all over. (Nearly) three minutes of pop perfection.

This would be Danielle Dax's last single before signing to Sire Records. There she treated the world (at the record company's behest) to her rather tepid version of the Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" and probably ending up being marginalised to an even greater extent than when she was issuing material on her own label. You can safely add her to the ever-growing list of mysterious people who signed to major labels who had no idea what to do with them.



5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Deanna (Mute)

"Deanna is a song you can almost imagine coming out loud from a car window. Huge in a raucous 'truly devil-may-care' way - it is one of the best songs of '88".

More chaotic rock and roll, delivered in Nick Cave's inimitable style. Deanna was apparently a girl from Melbourne who Mr Cave was rather keen on, and his obsession explodes all over this song like it's just been confessed for the first time. It forcefully springs from his mouth like some kind of emotional vomiting.

Rather like the previous track, "Deanna" also strikes a strange partnership between sex and death, with many of the lyrics referring to "murder plans" and acts. "I come knocking with my toolbox and my stocking!" declares Nick ferociously, and he probably did as well.

This is equal parts Screaming Lord Sutch's "Jack The Ripper" and "My Sharona" - a driving, demanding chant colliding with something downright dark and wrong. In the end, though, it only ends up sounding like something Nick Cave could have produced.

Volume 5 Side 2 - Danielle Dax, Joy Division, Loop, Christian Death, Nick Cave

1. Danielle Dax - Cat-House (Awesome)

"Baby baby you're my heart's desire/ got my engine going and my pants on fire".

Seldom did a track in 1988 burst out of your stereo with a sexual statement of intent as direct as that. This phase of Danielle Dax's career is truly fascinating, because while you can reference its gothic edge as well as the glam and faintly psychedelic elements, the simple truth is that it's old fashioned rock and roll sass on a low budget as well. The honking one-note sax riff here hints to that, but so too does - and I almost dare not say this - the almost Meatloafian tail end to the verses just before the chorus kicks in. And if you don't think that kind of camp, biker rock element exists in "Cat-House", just listen to the way Danielle sings "He's the one with my magic key/ knows my road from A to Z" and try to imagine Cher singing it in biker gear. Far fetched? I rather thought not.

So "Cat-House" is ultimately camp, silly, trashy, hard-edged and sassy all at once, and was a much bigger deal at the time than you'd possibly imagine, despite the fact that a lot of elements of it seemed faintly out of step with everything else in 1988. A big part of that is down to the chaos of the chanting chorus,  which sounds incredibly "alt" even if the surrounding elements of the track aren't always so, and the fact that Danielle sells the song incredibly well. That so many people expected her to become a fully fledged pop star should probably surprise nobody.

"Cat-House" was a significant track for her, and paved the way for her to be signed to Sire in due course - but we'll be coming across her one more time before then.



2. Joy Division - She's Lost Control (Peel Session) (Strange Fruit)

We all know how this one goes, don't we? I mean, don't we? So too, I think, do we understand the inspiration for the track, and the fact that after "Love Will Tear Us Apart" it's arguably one of Joy Division's most important songs.

Interestingly, the Peel Session version of this track really doesn't contain a great many differences from the final studio version, bar the absence of the faintly disorientating echo effect which permeates through "Unknown Pleasures". It has an added grit and harshness to it, and the guitars are much more at the forefront, but basically all the main elements of the track were clearly in place.

The "Substance" compilation of Joy Division singles and pivotal tracks had not long been issued at this point, along with the re-release of "Atmosphere" with its Corbijn directed video. This meant that Beechwood clearly could have legitimately included "Atmosphere" on this compilation as a very recent large indie hit, but obviously didn't. Whether this was due to Factory Records not coming up with a favourable enough deal, I don't know - although it is notable that Factory singles crop up relatively infrequently throughout this series, which does suggest that the label clearly didn't have as sympathetic a relationship with the series as other indies at the time (except Creation, which has been utterly absent from the series all the way along so far).



3. Loop - Collision (Chapter 22)

Harsh, minimal and grating, Loop were a surprisingly big deal in the late eighties for a band so awkward. Sounding faintly like Suicide with distorted, effects-laden guitars instead of synths at times, or the most shimmering, three-chord, droning psychedelia, they were certainly a unique prospect. Comparisons with The Jesus and Mary Chain were inevitable, but Loop could never (or at least, would never) have written "Some Candy Talking" or "April Skies" - compared to Loop, JAMC were The Reynolds Girls, pure Top of the Pops fodder.

"Collision" is a lovely drone as well, which if sped up a bit more could easily be as contagious as the most nagging krautrock tracks.

Loop would continue to make their presence felt until 1990, after which point they split.



4. Christian Death - Church of No Return (Jungle)

Oh please no. Please don't make me listen to this again. It's just so fucking silly.

Christian Death began life in 1979 under the guiding hand of Rozz Williams, who eventually left the group in 1985 to pursue more experimental paths. The lead guitarist Valor Kand took control, and as a result there are fans of the group who argue that all post-85 material is null and void, in the way that some Pink Floyd fans believe that post-Waters material (or even post-Barrett material) is not "proper Floyd".

Whatever, I'm not here to debate the line-up difficulties of the act, of which they had many. What I'm here to do is consider this track, which, if you strip away the lyrics and the band's presentation, is basically very camp seventies glam rock with gothic undertones. A darker version of The Sweet, to be precise, with an air raid siren in place of the police siren at the start of "Blockbuster". Kand's vocals are also very Rocky Horror, which layers campness on top of pre-existing campness.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of this - I love The Sweet, in fact, and will happily have loud arguments with anyone who tells me I'm wrong for doing so - but in common with the failings of a lot of the worst Goth Rock acts, you're left with the impression that Christian Death think they produced something mind-blowingly significant with this one, that the theatricality of it and its references to original sin and the church's quaint views on fornication add up to a Big Statement... but unlike Danielle Dax on track one, it's far, far too pleased with itself to make an impression.

Perhaps I'm just far too British, and was brought up in far too atheistic a family, to give a shit about this single. If I were a teenager just beginning to have my first doubts about my faith, and the hypocrisy of organised religion, I can imagine that Christian Death would potentially feel like a lighting bolt, but to me at the time in 1988 - and indeed now - they just seemed quaint, signposting obvious things loudly like a drunk old man in the local pub (though to be fair, the drunk old man in the local pub wasn't big on tight leather outfits).

Another lesson to learn from this one is that, just as horror films lose their impact if there's a grisly death every 15 seconds, controversy from rock bands is at its best when it happens suddenly and fleetingly in the space of one song. When groups layer loaded gesture on top of loaded gesture, it begins to seem comic, as each idea fights for its own space. Subtlety can be a wonderful, wonderful thing, and Christian Death are all about grand gestures introduced with flashing neon signs - really, this couldn't be less my kind of thing if it tried.



5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "The Mercy Seat" (Mute)

Come to think of it, this track could very easily have fallen on that particular sword as well, but it somehow falls short of doing so. A big reason behind this is that it's such a rush of ideas - the listener is being asked to step into the mind of a prisoner about to be put in an electric chair, and the sheer rattling pace of the track means that so many of the lyrics (frequently brilliant) get missed until possibly the third, fourth, fifth or even tenth listen.

The lines "Christ was born into a manger/ And like some ragged stranger/ He died upon the cross/ Might I say it seems so fitting in its way/ He was a carpenter by trade" could be satirical and mocking if read one way, or resigned about the sheer ridiculousness of the world if taken another. That's the difference between lyrical poetry and big, self-conscious rock gestures - the former requires the listener to do some of the work, some of the untangling.

At the time, I thought "The Mercy Seat" was a truly fantastic single, taking a subject which could so easily have been mishandled and successfully hitting its marks. The way the different verses and ideas interrupt and break the flow, the way the song is basically one very simple, rattling melodic idea stretched to breaking point, and the carefully weighted drama of it all... it seemed genius. These days, I still like the track, but return to it relatively infrequently. Partly it's because it reveals its full hand melodically very early on, and becomes very familiar very quickly, and also partly I suspect because it's strongest lyrics are front loaded, and I'm more interested in lines like "Those sinister dinner deals/ The meal trolley's wicked wheels/ A hooked bone rising from my food/ And all things either good or ungood" than the dramatic flourishes of "Into the mercy seat I climb/ My head is shaved, my head is wired/ and like a moth that tries/ To enter the bright eye/ I go shuffling out of life/ Just to hide in death awhile".

But in the end, Cave's attempts at bringing macabre subject matters into rock music have always been fascinating, owing a debt to country or folk storytelling rather than sledgehammer shock-and-awe techniques. Johnny Cash covered this, and I was surprised when I first found out - but quickly realised that actually, it made total and absolute sense.

And minimal it may be, but the melodic framework of the track is hypnotic, and locks you into its ideas without escape. Turning your head and looking away is impossible.

Indie Top 20 Volume 3 - Side One - New Order, Depeche Mode, Leather Nun, Danielle Dax, PWEI, Motorcycle Boy

Indie Top 20 Volume 3
Format: Double LP, Double Cassette

Volume 3 of the Indie Top 20 series suddenly adopts a style which would last for years - the familiar Indie Top 20 logo has established itself along the left-hand side of the cover. That xeroxed "paper clip" would reoccur as a motif across the next few LPs too, and the Melody Maker sponsorship is now front and centre of all formats (dominating a goodly chunk of the sleeve here).

This was also the debut release on the newly formed Beechwood Music, presumably named after Bee and Ch(et) (Sel)wood, the driving forces behind the series. Beechwood would go on to release other LPs outside the Indie Top 20 series, eventually making more money out of the ever-fruitful Dance music compilation market. However, there were other odd excursions into Indie in their catalogue which didn't fit the rubric of the main series, and we might briefly explore those eventually in slightly less depth (please don't ask me to cover them in more depth, for Christ's sake).

This was also the start of the brief period Beechwood Music started giving titles to each album. Volume 3 is "War of Independents". It's not too clear what marketing purpose this served, and after a few of these sub-headers I suspect the idea got quietly dropped as a probable waste of time.

So what of the contents? Well, it's musically much more of a mish-mash, and you get a clear sense of the reign of indiepop fading away slightly and heads being turned towards different strands of "alternative music" which were less light and frivolous. In particular, several ground-breaking artists emerge for the first time, including two whose influence remains enormous, even though one of them still has their feet in the past at this particular point. Goth Rock remains hanging about the place as well, whiffing faintly of patchouli oil.



1. New Order - Truth (Peel Session) (Strange Fruit) 

If I were a cynic, I might argue that this track was placed right upfront to get people to buy the LP by mistake, accidentally believing that it might be New Order's recent huge hit "True Faith". New Order had recently worked with Pet Shop Boys producer Stephen Hague to create one of their finest pop moments, giving their chart career - actually somewhat patchy after "Thieves Like Us", although people seem to have forgotten that - a massive boost. The hugely memorable video featuring sinister primary coloured Michelin man type figures running around slapping each other up the face helped increase the exposure of the track tenfold.

"Truth", on the other hand, was a recently released but ancient New Order Peel Session track stemming from 1981, a point where their sense of identity was still rather incomplete. In short, they still sound rather like Joy Division here, only without one of the key elements. The drum machine and icy synths hint towards a clear future direction, though, and the track has the same cold eeriness that made "Turn The Heater On" such a compelling listen on Volume One.

It's a downright peculiar track to put upfront in the compilation for any other reason than the bankability of New Order's name, though. It's a quiet, despondent point of entrance.



2. Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again (Mute)

If only this had been the opening track... now, I sense trouble ahead with this one. Depeche Mode haven't always been widely appreciated in the UK, and that's a source of enormous frustration for me. People tend to either take the view that they were a middle-of-the-road teen synth-pop band or stadium rock stars scaling unsubtle heights. These simplistic overviews ignore swathes of their output, which include magnificent pop - much of it unplayed even on oldies radio these days - and material which mongrelised pop with epic, scaling hooks with experimental industrial indie and political protest with superb attention to detail, right down to the sleeves and videos. It created a band of heroes across mainland Europe (and even the USA for a period); a group freely mentioned alongside other huge musical pioneers, while Britain often looked the other way.

In reality, most of their naive teen-pop output can all be found on the first LP "Speak and Spell". The alternative stadium rock God phase is mostly encapsulated on "Songs Of Faith And Devotion". Everything else is decidedly interesting, even at its worst. The band even toyed with Marxist and Communist imagery across two LPs, "A Broken Frame" featuring a peasant woman scything a field, "Construction Time Again" a workman with a hammer, raised proud and high up a mountainside. The lyrics on "Construction Time Again" were naive, like most early Mode, but clear - "Pipeline" called for wealth redistribution while playing with industrial soundscapes, the melodic "And Then" dreamed of erasing all existing structures and erecting society from scratch. "I'd prefer to think that things couldn't turn out worse" they sang wearily. The band banged their fists on the table in interviews and talked about the importance of the welfare state. Again, I insist - this all happened while you were asleep, although the central message of "Everything Counts" wasn't too ambiguous on "Top of the Pops" either.

And "A Broken Frame" may be their most derided LP, disliked even by the band themselves, but the spells of pop light and moody atmospheric shade make it feel twin-towned with OMD's "Dazzle Ships". An imperfect twin it may be, but it still has some stellar moments.

Moving forward to 1987, the band had already released their bona-fide classic LP (if you're reading this outside Britain) in "Black Celebration", and had followed it up with the less-good but still frequently startling "Music For The Masses". That was the LP which turned the suburban Essex boys into a stadium band, and created so much of the trouble and confusion ahead. "Never Let Me Down" is a beast, though, an absolute juggernaut of a single which oscillates between slapping industrial rhythms and an almost symphonic sounding chorus. At this point, Anton Corbijn had also got fully on board to produce all their videos, grainy Super 8 affairs laced with dream-like imagery which worked with the music almost perfectly. Everything was gelling.

"Music For The Masses" came in a sleeve featuring a glossy photograph of a huge red megaphone, presumably broadcasting the album to an abandoned piece of twilight countryside, a string of lights from a road in the distance being the only sign of life. Internal sleeve shots showed the megaphone up mountains or by lakes and canals - in my mind, the bash and clatter of "Never Let Me Down Again" was coming out of all of them. It's a truly great single, the sound of all the best and most interesting elements of the eighties rolled into one ball.

Is it indie? Of course. It was released on Mute, a label the band stuck by throughout everything, even when their distribution and pressing plant power wasn't all it could have been ("Just Can't Get Enough" had to satisfy itself with a number 8 chart position, when most people imagine it was a huge top three hit). Is it any good? Well, you're entitled to disagree. But if you do, you're wrong.



3. The Leather Nun - Lost and Found (Wire)

Given Depeche Mode's dress sense a couple of years prior to this point you could forgive Chet and Bee for following them with a Swedish band called The Leather Nun, but this song is somewhat overshadowed by what precedes it.

The Leather Nun were cult artists and early industrial stars who had been around a fair while, and had constantly courted controversy across Europe with lewd live shows and imagery. By the mid-eighties their reputation began to spread to America, and it seemed as if a major breakthrough would occur - but it didn't. And while the atmospheric "I Can Smell Your Thoughts" received some TV and radio exposure in the UK and pushed the band to new heights, "Lost and Found" did less well, and only reached number 35 in the indie chart. That's perhaps not overly surprising. The rigid groove of the track doesn't really go anywhere interesting, feeling like a graceless, stilted industrial kind of Swing. A baffling inclusion here, and one to skip.

The band soldiered on until 1995, but failed to find much success again after being without a record label from 1991 onwards.



4. Danielle Dax - Big Hollow Man (Awesome)

Southender Danielle Dax was a visual artist and ex-member of the experimental group The Lemon Kittens, and previous collaborator with Robert Fripp. Her first solo LPs continued to explore often harsh and challenging forms, but towards the end of the eighties changes began to emerge in her musical style and she rocked out in a slightly more conventional way.

Always having a striking appearance and to all intents and purposes looking and dressing like an iconic pop star, however ill-suited her temperament may have been for that role, it was probably all worth a shot. "Big Hollow Man" begins with a funky guitar riff which then collides into thumping drums and a forceful melody, part glam, part new wave, and ever so slightly threatening but worthy of constant repeated listening. A cheap but effective video earned her "Chart Show" exposure, and a new phase began - Danielle Dax the possible star, popping up on interview shows, Juke Box Jury, and magazines the length and breadth of the land.

It couldn't last, and it didn't last, but more on that eventually.



5. Pop Will Eat Itself - Beaver Patrol (Chapter 22)

Oh Good God. You see, my wife's theories about "Sex Pest Rock" - she keeps threatening to start a blog with that title, by the way - really are proven right here. "Beaver Patrol" was originally a sixties garage single by The Wilde Knights, and was self-consciously sleazy even by the standards of that period, but at least possibly had a ludicrous enough edge to be titterworthy rather than offensive. In the sledgehammer fists of Pop Will Eat Itself, it becomes a Brummie beer boy sexual harrassment anthem, though, far too heavy and Beastie Boys aping to be easily dismissed as an ironic joke. It received slatings from many quarters, taking the group by unpleasant surprise.

Ignoring the lyrical contents, though, "Beaver Patrol" at least set the template for their forthcoming "Box Frenzy" album, being a loud, proud, British indie approximation of the Def Jam rock/rap hybrid style. Looking back, it all seems faintly amateurish to say the least, but even the KLF's debut "1987 - What The Fuck Is Going On" from the same period also seems like a clumsy sticklebrick creation. This was a new dawn and new rules were emerging, and the public didn't much mind the feel of chaos to start with - "Beaver Patrol" edged PWEI that bit closer towards the grown-up official Top 75, and it wouldn't be long before RCA would arrive with a chequebook in their hands. Unthinkable stuff at the point of "Oh Grebo, I Think I Love You".

Oh, and despite the fact it wasn't a proper hit, "Beaver Patrol" was still quite popular with the teenage boys at my school. Well, it would be, wouldn't it.



6. The Motorcycle Boy - Big Rock Candy Mountain (Rough Trade)

Edinburgh's The Motorcycle Boy consisted largely of ex-members of Creation noiseniks Meat Whiplash, and only hung around indieland for this one single before jumping on board Chrysalis's boutique label Blue Guitar. By the time they finally issued their grown-up work in 1989, the public had largely lost interest, and it was all over before it had even really started.

"Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a pretty and melancholy single with a driving, chugging riff which occasionally sounds like a Flatmates record played at the wrong speed. It stormed to number two in the Indie Charts, the band became NME cover stars, and then there was silence for nearly two years and momentum was clearly lost. "Big Rock" was a damn fine single, but very much of its moment, and not quite good enough to stretch interest in the group to a degree where a long break would have no ill effects on their career.

The group subsequently split in 1990.