In some ways it's not hard to see why Tom Tom Club were successful. The lengthy 'Wordy Rappinghood' and 'Genius Of Love' are big pop tracks, but to me feel like novelty pieces. The rapping on the first piece is frankly cringe-worthy at times, though I really like the hip-hop groove. 'Genius Of Love' was performed as an intermission by Tom Tom Club during Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense and I've removed it from that album's playlist as I really don't like it.
The remainder of the album – with the exception of the dreadful cover of 'Under The Boardwalk', which sounds like a bad pairing of Bananarama and August Darnell – is better, principally because the band stop trying to sound like they're aping Grandmaster Flash. 'L'Elephant' is my stand out favourite, but with good reason. When I first heard this solid funk groove I thought it sounded familiar, then it struck me that the main elements of the backing track cropped up on Talking Heads' Remain In Light CD/DVD reissue as an unfinished demo. Then again, reading This Must Be The Place – The Adventures Of Talking Heads In The Twentieth Century by David Bowman, most of that track was written by sometime Bowie / Talking Heads / Zappa / King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew anyway. 'As Above So Below', which Belew also claims he wrote whilst recording with the Club, though he didn't receive so much as a mention, is my other favourite song here.
Iggy Pop's Lust For Life is an enigma of an album. Produced by David Bowie and released in 1977 sometimes it feels like a confusing amalgam of some of the releases Bowie himself would release – the closing track 'Fall In Love With Me', for example, has a disco-funk stomp, a more clarified take on the sound the Thin White Duke would make (but not remember making) on Station To Station; 'Tonight', with its watery keyboard melody has all the grace and poise of Bowie's '"Heroes"' and his own distinctive backing vocals give the track a melancholy depth. In many ways Iggy doesn't seem to know where he fits into all of this, a malleable, jerking puppet for his master to direct as he sits fit. Iggy's plight was proven by 'China Girl', a track written for him by Bowie (admittedly not on this album), which Bowie released later himself and had a lot more success with. Perhaps the vilification Iggy has faced since he took the insurance advert gig isn't fair after all. It's hard to be hard on the youthful, beaming Iggy on the front cover.
I don't listen to this album very often, and consequently every time I do it feels like I'm hearing it for the first time. Aside from the obvious songs (the glam-tastic rumble of 'Lust For Life', whose profile received a shot in the arm thanks to Trainspotting, the wry 'Passengers'), the rest never sound familiar at all. Sometimes it reminds me of a less goofy take on the first New York Dolls album, and its themes are clearly pretty dark and decadent ('Sixteen' is just plain lewd), but sometimes those guitars do sound a bit ELO (as on the louche 'Success').
When Antony Heggarty and his Johnsons won the Mercury prize a few years ago, there were sighs of consternation that he wasn't British enough; he was born British, true, but he'd lived in the States for years. Possessing a voice that evoked the depth and colour of Nina Simone with the theatricality of a Brecht / Weil composition, people were quietly in awe of this figure, and that voice, which had come up from the murkiest Manhattan depths thanks to patronage from the likes of Lou Reed, and was now receiving critical public acclaim.
His is not a voice I can listen to too often; it's not that I don't like it, it's more to do with the songs themselves. One could argue that his songs are plaintive, almost euphoric in their transcendence, but they are also very dark; if I wanted music to be depressed by, an Antony & The Johnsons album would be my first port of call.
The reason for mentioning Antony is because of an album by a band called Hello Lovers entitled Gone With The Wind. I didn't buy this; it was mistakenly packaged in with something else I'd bought. I know nothing about them and I've tried to listen to the album a few times but kept giving up – because of the singer's voice. His voice is like Antony's but bigger, less subtle, more prone to jazzy switches in key, from baritone to soprano, and it's hard to warm to. It's a shame, because the music itself, a fusion of Satie-esque piano motifs, mournful violins and café jazz styles, is really beautiful. Mercifully there are a couple of good instrumental tracks which offer relief from that voice.
