'Fin de Siècle' by The Divine Comedy

Only a few days ago, I listened to The Divine Comedy’s ‘Fanfare Of The Comic News’. ‘Fin De Siecle’ couldn’t be any more different. Album number six was written recorded when the band were at their commercial peak. They weren’t house-hold names, but they’d had a run of modest hits singles, and a couple of albums that had sold reasonably well. As a result, the budget for this album was higher, and the ambition was wider. It was the first album by the band that I ever bought, so it holds a special significance to me, though having said that, as I worked my way through the rest of the band’s back catalogue, it slipped very much down the list of my favourites. As such, it’s been a while since I properly listened to it.

Interestingly, although the album is very familiar, it sounds surprisingly different from the image I had in my head. I remember the album as being quite dark, almost oppressive. There is truth in that – the arrangements throughout the album are a touch excessive, and there is a great deal of angst throughout many of the lyrics, but there’s also a great deal of humour, even in the depths.

Commercially, this album came close to breaking the band into a new level of success. ‘Generation Sex’, the first single, did pretty well, and at around the time of its release, the band were given a support slot for Robbie Williams, exposing them to huge audiences. Second single, ‘The Certainty of Chance’ was almost certainly a massive own goal. It’s a great track if you’ve listened to the album build up to it, but it was never going to fit on the radio and be a hit. The third single, ‘National Express’ was their biggest hit to date, and it’s probably still the song most associated with the band, but leaving it until third single meant there was nothing to follow it with, and the momentum died away. There are lots of other great songs – the pounding ‘Thrillseeker’, the mournful but rather lovely ‘Commuter Love’, the delicate ‘Life On Earth’, and the soaring climax of ‘Sunrise’ all spring to mind.

The most unusual tracks deserve a special mention to. ‘Here Comes The Flood’ is a track from a musical that doesn’t exist. Here, Hannon pulls out all the stops – a full orchestra, a choir (two choirs?), explosions, and narration by Dexter Fletcher. It’s as if he knew he’d never have the money to do something like this ever again. The result is a beast of a track – difficult to relate to, almost impossible to play live, yet brilliant in its own way. Tucked away in the middle of the album is ‘Eric The Gardener’, an odd lyric set to a simple five-four pattern which builds into a swooning mix of strings and electronica. It’s the longest track on the album, and the most divisive amongst fans of the band, but it’s really rather lovely.

I went back through the catalogue after buying this album, and ‘Fin de Siecle’ stopped being my favourite. I stand by this change of mind, but this is a great record, and a clear reminder of why I started to love the band so much in the first place.

'Electro-Shock Blues Show' by Eels

As well as their regular album discography, Eels have released a whole collection of live albums via their website. This wasn't the first, but it was the first one I got, as a result of my brother's inadverdant criminality - he ordered an album, it arrived, it got hidden under a pile of stuff, he mistakenly asked for a replacement which ended up being mine.

'Electro-Shock Blues Show' was recorded in 1998 during the 'Electro-Shock Blues' tour, and released four years later. At the time, the Eels act consisted of only E, drummer Butch and and bassist Adam Siegel. This three piece version of the band leads to a very stark set of arrangements - bass, drums and organ or guitar. This gives the songs a real punch, but if anything, ups their intensity. It's great stuff. The vast majority of the songs are taken from 'Electro-Shock Blues', and Eels show no real sign of pandering to the crowd with the more popular stuff - 'Novocaine For The Soul' and 'My Beloved Monster' are both here, but in radically reworked form, and 'Not Ready Yet' is blown out to a hugely indulgent thirteen minutes. Seasonal track 'Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas' is hugley incongrous, but a welcome spot of light relief.

It's easy to see why this wasn't released in shops - a hard sell to the average consumer, but a good listen for the fanbase.

‘Electro-Shock Blues’ by Eels

There are melancholic albums, there are miserable albums, and there are very miserable albums. Then there’s ‘Electro-Shock Blues’.

In a sense, this should be no massive surprise. ‘Electro-Shock Blues’ was conceived and written as a response to Mark Everett’s sister’s suicide, and his mother’s death from lung cancer, so it was never going to be especially cheerful. Right from the word go, the listener is plunged into a sad and fragile world – ‘Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor’ and ‘Going To Your Funeral Part 1’ are as a bleak a way as you can imagine to open an album, and when an album’s most upbeat track is called ‘Cancer For The Cure’, you get a pretty good sense of what to expect from the rest of the record.

At the same time, the emotional intensity of this album remains surprising. His previous album, ‘Beautiful Freak’ had dark moments, but was commercially-orientated enough to supply three hit singles and win a Brit award, something which would have been unthinkable with this album. It would be fair to say, therefore, that this record set the path that E, and whatever forms Eels have taken since, have followed ever since. He has remained an individual – full of surprises, and never willing to make an album that just sounds like the last one.

There are glimmers of hope through the album – ‘Last Stop: This Town’ is all about death, but it’s sung with a smile, ‘Ant Farm’ is kind of sweet, in its own way, and ‘P.S. You Rock My World’ is some kind of attempt to finish on a note of optimism. Even in the bleaker moments, however, there are some wonderful moments on the album – ‘Efil’s God’ has a pleasant breeziness, and ‘Climbing To The Moon’ is a truly wonderful song.

So ‘Electro-Shock Blues’ isn’t for the faint hearted, and it wouldn’t work for all moods, but it’s a great record despite, and perhaps even because of those things.

‘Deserter’s Songs’ by Mercury Rev

‘Deserter’s Songs’ was the first album by Mercury Rev that I came across, and that’s true for most of the world. It was released to widespread critical acclaim, though mass commercial success wouldn’t be a side-effect of this. However, it did well enough for the band to change their mind about giving up, which was no bad thing in itself.

Apparently, suspecting it to be their last album, the band made a deliberate choice to make an album entirely for their own benefit, with no allowances made for others. It shows. From the beginning, the album throws you into a surreal dream-like world, a world where choruses don’t exist, strange theremin-like noises rule, and spelling is irrelevant. ‘Holes’, ‘Tonite It Shows’ and ‘Endlessly’, the albums first three tracks, are a mass of wobbly orchestrations, nonsensical lyrics, and Jonathan Donahue’s voice – beautiful, in its own way, but not for everyone.

Signs of relative normality appear as the album goes on. ‘Opus 40’ and ‘Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp’ all managed to nudge into the charts without sounding ridiculously out of place, but even ‘Goddess On A Highway’, the albums lead single and most identifiable track, doesn’t have ‘major hit single’ written all over it. Sitting in the middle of the album is ‘The Hudson Line’, perhaps the most conventional song on the record. Ironically, perhaps deliberately, it sounds somewhat out of place.

Like the Mercury Rev catalogue at larger, ‘Deserter’s Songs’ is not an album which would be to everyone’s tastes, and I imagine a number of those who sang its praises from the rooftops at the time would be somewhat less enthusiastic now. Nevertheless, it contains real beauty, and it’s unusualness as an album is something to be cherished.

'Bustin' + Dronin' by Blur

To co-incide with their album, 'Blur', and their creative rebirth, Blur handed out tracks to a variety of producers and asked for remixes. 'Bustin' + Dronin' is a collection of these remixes. It was created mainly for the Japanese market, but had a limited UK release, and in all honesty, that's all it deserved.

The idea behind the record was a good one, and individually, all of these remixes have their merits. Sadly, despite the range of people involved, the collection feels a bit samey - each track has been made slightly darker, slightly heavier, and slightly more morose. You never get the sense that any of the producers involved had had much fun. The Walter Wall Mix of 'On Your Own' deserves to be singled out - it's like three mixes in one, and it's fifteen minutes long, which is inexcusable.

The second disc is a live performance from John Peel's house of tracks from 'Blur', with an added rendition of 'Popscene'. This is better, showing the band at their most aggressive, but even this disc is a bit one-note - while the parent album is varied in its texture, the same can't be said of this. All in all, this is a reasonably good collection, but an ultimately unnecessary one.

'Bring It On' by Gomez

In 1998, the era of Britpop was coming to a close. Bands that had achieved the most success in the couple of years previously were either evolving into new directions or stagnating into a long slow death. Gomez, who released 'Bring It On' during this year, were something different.

That's not to say they were something new. On the whole, 'Bring It On' felt (and still feels) like a relic from another age when blues was still a genre of music that people cared about. Gomez looked like the bunch of scruffy students that they were, but their vocalist Ben Ottewell sounded like he'd spent decades gargling gravel in the deep south. Actually, Gomez were never quite that simple, as their lead vocals were split three ways - Ottewell's voice was wheeled out like a secret weapon for some tracks, and some parts of tracks. Sadly, though this made Gomez seem exciting at the time of their debut, the novelty wore off after a couple of albums, though the band are still plugging away to people who still care. There are still some out there.

'Bring It On' still sounds pretty good. 'Get Miles' is a bold opener, building slowly but steadily over its five minute duration. It's good, but there's better stuff to come. 'Whippin' Piccadilly', 'Get Myself Arrested' and '78 Stone Shuffle' are all great singles, but they're easily matched by 'Here Comes The Breeze' and 'Love Is Better Than A Warm Trombone' which both sit squarely in the middle of the album. It does tail off a bit at the end - 'Bubble Gum Years' is pretty forgettable, and 'Rie's Wagon' could have been comfortably edited down from its nine minutes to about three without losing anything important. Still, these are forgiveable indulgences on a debut which were dealt with, to a large degree, on album number two. Eventually, I'll reach the letter L...