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On Saturday my colleague Ian and I found ourselves in a dirty corner of Shoreditch to watch the legendary industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle at the cavernous Village Underground, more of an art space than a gig venue. The fourpiece band – Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and Genesis Breyer P’Orridge – delivered almost two hours of ear-shredding noise, electronic experimentation and even a naked stagediver during the encore. Those intrigued by the event and wishing to read me compare their sound to a Jubilee Line train at full speed can head over to Documentary Evidence where you'll find my review proper.
Tonight though Mrs S and I went to the Scala in Kings Cross to watch the infinitely more hearing-friendly ex-Libertine Carl Barat. Mrs S swoons whenever said singer is mentioned and has been gushing about his Brechtian debut solo album since it was released earlier this month. And it is indeed a good album; it's not The Libertines, and thankfully it's a world away from the coke-fuelled disaster of Dirty Pretty Things' sloppy second album. More theatrical and ambitious than any of the songs written for either of his previous two bands, Carl Barat is a work of some confidence from indie rock's mumbling troubadour. (I couldn't understand anything he said on stage tonight; I gave up trying after a while; even Mrs S, doe-eyed and smitten though she was, said we needed subtitles.)
Barat and his band were supported by Swimming and Heartbreaks. The former were probably only about 17 (which made me feel really old) and they looked like an after-school band practice, featuring a guitarist who had all the poise and clumsy gracelessness of the lanky kid in class who started shaving before anyone else. A blend of guitar fury and electronics, they didn't really move me, in much the same way as Delphic don't move me, and their keyboard / laptop kid bore an unnerving resemblance to Chesney Hawkes. Heartbreaks were better – frantic thrash indie-pop euphoria with a vocalist whose style aped vintage Costello. They also featured the most stylised Mod drummer avec obligatory Weller haircut, and the quiff count was unseasonably high. I liked them. The only dud song, bizarrely, was their first single.
Barat, on the other hand, proved that he doesn't need Pete Doherty at all. The Libertines festival reunion shows at Reading and Leeds, just ahead of Barat's debut album, looked set to overshadow his first solo release. There is no denying the deep love and affection shared by Barat and Doherty, and it's a theme that runs throughout his simultaneously-published Threepenny Memoir. Freed from the conflicting personalities of Dirty Pretty Things and Pete's bumbling 'is he a poet or a singer? An artist or a sad, washed-up mess?' meanderings, Barat proved himself tonight to be an accomplished and confident frontman (until he spoke and you couldn't fathom a word he said).
Tracks which initially don't make sense on the album like 'The Magus' and 'What Have I Done' shone tonight with a circus-like mysteriousness, while the album's clear highlight, 'So Long My Lover' – easily the most beautiful, emotional song I've heard outside of a Rufus Wainwright album – was rendered even more plaintive live, his girlfriend / mother-of-their-unborn-child Edie Langley and her two sisters sprinkling McGarrigle-like folksy harmonies behind the song's world-weary acquiescence. I damn near sobbed my heart out; always a sucker for a moving chord change and a theme of unrequited love, me.
Then there were tracks from The Libertines' and Dirty Pretty Things' quartet of albums, all of which – predictably – prompted the most enthusiastic and raucous crowd response. 'Up The Bracket' was probably the best track of the lot, the only disappointment being the absence of Gary Powell's intricate yet powerful drum work. But though they were always half his anyway, performing the songs without Doherty found him owning the songs completely, and it left you wondering why Pete's contribution was as highly regarded as it was.
Take a four-piece band, take away the singer after a supposedly acrimonious split, cleverly change the band's name so it both references the absence of the singer and yet remains broadly identifiable as the same band, add a load of guest singers and the passing of about five years after the 'split' and release a new album. That's the formulae in theory. In practice they're 1) Talking Heads - David Byrne = The Heads; 2) (1996 - 1991) + (Michael Hutchence + Shaun Ryder + Richard Hell + Debbie Harry etc) = No Talking Just Head.
I've had this album on my Amazon wish list for ages, and always saw it as a low priority item in my trawl through the Talking Heads / David Byrne back catalogue; plus I've never been that struck on Tom Tom Club, the band that Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz formed whilst still in Talking Heads, and whose success far outstripped the parent band; plus it never stays in stock for long.
There are undoubtedly elements reminiscent of Talking Heads – the funk edge and the distinct 'alternative' / 'college radio' sound; but in other ways it's a little like watching Rock Star: INXS, with various singers trying to fill David Byrne's shoes; only that doesn't work as an analogy since Michael Hutchence actually appears on 'The King Is Gone'. Considering the main reason for buying this would be because you're probably a Talking Heads fan, the best tracks are those which don't attempt to ape former glories. The opener 'Damage I've Done' (with Concrete Blonde's Johnette Napolitano) sounds like Wir's 'So And Slow It Grows' with a distorted, urgent chorus that creates something both fragile and tense simultaneously. 'Never Mind' (featuring original NYC punk Richard Hell) may sample the drums from the Eno-produced cover of Al Green's 'Take Me To The River', but the track positively swings under Hell's slightly creepy poetry. Another good track is the collaboration with Happy Mondays / Black Grape's Shaun Ryder which sounds to me like Dos Dedos Mis Amigos-era PWEI. Overall, this album works best when you try not to compare it too much to early Talking Heads glories, leaving you content to acknowledge the odd discernible echo of the elements that made that band so vital.
Happy Mondays turn up on the compilation Zero, which is a collection of tracks produced by auteur Manchester producer Martin Hannett; anyone who's seen his portrayal by Andy Serkis in Michael Winterbottom's Twenty-Four Hour Party People will recall Hannett as an odd mix of madcap scientist and musical rebel, ordering Joy Division drummer Stephen Morris to 'play faster, but slower' when creating the band's seminal 'She's Lost Control'. His unique treatment of drums and grinding bass appears throughout Zero, cropping up on tracks from Wasted Youth through The Psychedelic Furs and on to the starkly minimal 'In A Lonely Place' by New Order. This compilation is an essential purchase even if just for Jilted John's self-titled single and its 'Gordon is a moron' refrain. In 'Eleven O'Clock Tick Tock' there's also a brief reminder that U2 could have mined the post-punk sound successfully without turning into stadia dinosaurs.
Clearly forever to be associated with the punk of Buzzcocks (their first, self-financed single 'Boredom' is included here) and the post-punk of Basement Five, Joy Division and Magazine, Zero nevertheless highlights that Hannett worked just as successfully with leftfield indie pop bands like The Only Ones and Kitchens Of Distinction, while work with VU chanteuse Nico and her Invisible Girls on 'All Tomorrow's Parties' highlights a softer, more austerely-layered style. Happy Mondays' joyous 'Wrote For Luck' points to the producer's relevance right into the baggy / Madchester scene of the late Eighties and early Nineties, sadly coinciding with his death in 1991 from heart failure, induced by spiralling drug and alcohol use.
Underworld have come a long way from their early Eighties electronic pop work as Freur (their 'Doot Doot' single is totally of its time, but as relevant for the New Wave period as 'Rez' would be for the early Nineties dance scene), and Athens, a compilation released on !K7 last year highlights a totally different side to the duo of Karl Hyde and Rick Smith. For many, its the urgent strains of 'Born Slippy (Nuxx)' that they see (wrongly) as synonymous with the Underworld sound, and so Athens will disappoint anyone expecting an hour of shouted 'Lager! Lager! Lager!' laddishness, highlighting as it does Hyde / Smith's interest in, wait for it, jazz.
And not just any old jazz, but the interstellar strains of Alice Coltrane and Mahavishnu Orchestra; the out-there sounds of Sun Ra are sadly absent but would've dropped in just as well. There is a liberal sprinkling of jazz-funk-disco fusion and jazzy techno, all of which makes little sense in the context of the well-established Underworld sound until the segues into their own 'Oh' and the Eno / Hyde collaboration 'Beebop Shuffle', whereupon you start to appreciate that there really is a jazz looseness to their sound, whether that be in the sounds that float in and out of their tracks or the stream-of-consciousness (improvised?) vocal riffing from Hyde. All that said, this compilation works best – like No Talking Just Head – when you suspend any attempts at comparison with other reference points in the Underworld back catalogue.
