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.
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