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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.
‘I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar’ is potentially the most evocative lyric of the Eighties, but the Human League story didn’t start with Dare, the album that ’Don’t You Want Me’ was taken from. Dare was in fact their third and there are few indications on their previous two – Reproduction and Travelogue – that point to the glossy pop brilliance that producer Martyn Rushent would lend to the 1981 album. Travelogue includes a track called ’Gordon’s Gin’ which may inadvertently allude to the lyric above, but aside from a turgid disco track the earlier albums are mostly spiky and experimental.
According to an Amazon review of one of the League’s first two albums, the sound of the early trio of Martyn Ware, Ian Marsh and Philip Oakey was more like fellow Sheffield band Cabaret Voltaire or the Cabs’ counterparts Throbbing Gristle. This is the kind of lazy music journalism that gets my goat. Sure, the sound of the first two albums is more out there, more gritty, but I own every Cabaret Voltaire album and those two Human League albums are really tame in comparison. All the reviewer has done is looked at who else on the nascent electronic scene came from Sheffield and namedropped casually. As for the TG comparisons? Well don’t even get me started.
Rant aside, Reproduction and Travelogue have some good songs. The enduringly minimal early cult electro of the Mantronix-esque ‘Being Boiled’ is included as a bonus track on the former, while the latter includes an electro-glam medley of Glitter’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and Iggy’s ‘Nightclubbing’ which predates and predicts Goldfrapp’s dabbling in the genre circa Black Cherry. Marsh and Ware left to form Heaven 17, Oakey recruited Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall, recorded ’Don’t You Want Me’, defined the synth pop sound of the early Eighties then rapidly went downhill. I interviewed Martyn Ware a few years ago – my interview is here.
Music recommendations often come from unlikely places. In a recent profile, one of my fund manager colleagues was asked what he was currently listening to. He namechecked a band I’d never heard of, Datarock, which piqued my curiosity and so I took a listen. The consistently time-robbing website rcrdlbl.com has a couple of free Datarock songs, one of which is ‘True Stories’ whose lyrics are entirely made up of Talking Heads song names and whose clipped funk vibe authentically evokes the distinctive sound of that band. The Norwegian duo are clearly off their (data) rockers, and may be a huge joke, but I remain intrigued. They remind me of The Hives crossed with Daft Punk, but don’t ask me why.
Although terrible quality, I’ve been listening to a couple of sonically intriguing downloads from the expansive UbuWeb archive. One is the seven-minute track ‘Loop’ by a very early Velvet Underground (although it seems to just be John Cale). In ‘Loop’, which is essentially a pure noise feedback piece that was originally released as a rare flexi-disc, you really hear what attracted Andy Warhol into the band’s orbit originally; it’s rock ’n roll music reduced to its basest elements, justifying the band’s reputation as NY punk’s guiding lights. ‘I’m Sticking With You’ it ain’t.
A fairly typical journey to / from work:
In the car on the drive to the station
Talking Heads Sand In The Vaseline (disc two). The second part of their comprehensive retrospective includes selections from Stop Making Sense, through Little Creatures and their swansong, Naked. Aside from the usual favourites ('As She Was', 'Road To Nowhere', 'Nothing But Flowers') you also get two comparatively little known gems, 'Sax And Violins' and 'Lifetime Cracking Up', plus the final Talking Heads track, 'Popsicle', which joins together all their various facets – weird lyrics, clipped funk grooves and eighties keyboards.
On the train to work
Neu! Neu! 75. A bootleg bought in about 1997 from a charity shop in Colchester. At the time this Krautrock album was out of print, hence the need for a bootleg CD. I remember at the time being really pleased at having found this album, but actually quite disappointed when I listened to it. After it had launguished for a decade in the loft, I took another listen and thought it was... okay. Just okay, nothing special. 'Hero' is a good proto-punk track though.
On the Tube
Kraftwerk Radio-Activity. A conversation at work about how Coldplay ripped a section of 'Computer Love' drove me to dig out and dust down my Kraftwerk CDs. 'Radio-Activity' finds the Germans on the cusp of perfecting the electronic beats that would propel much of their later work, and has a much more concept-y, experimental feel than their subsequent albums. I still think the updated version of 'Radioactivity' from The Mix is far superior to the melancholy original available here.
On the train home
Throbbing Gristle The First Annual Report AKA Very Friendly. Another bootleg, and a purportedly mythical lost first album. Grainy sound quality, edgy and unsavoury at times (the first track, 'Very Friendly', is about the Brady / Hindley murders), if this really is the first utterances of the nascent post-Coum Transmissions TG then they set their uncompromising industrial art-punk stall out very early on.
Walking back to the car
System 7 Alpha Wave (Plastikman Acid House Remix). The hippy-tinged System 7 original I can live without; Richie Hawtin's twenty-minute 303-dominated mix is essential. If you only own one acid house track from the period after 1988, make it this one. The track length may seem quite challenging, but its subtle changes and minimal techno purism mean it could easily last double the time without remotely sapping at your energy.
