‘Green’ by R.E.M.

R.E.M. A band I’ve consistently liked without ever quite managing to love. And yet, when I stop and make myself listen to an album, I always enjoy it. ‘Green’ is a particular pleasure to listen to. As the transition between their early cult success, and their later world domination, the album walks a fine line between artistry and commercialism, and it therefore manages a very fine balance.

‘Pop Song ‘89’, ‘Get Up’, ‘Stand’, ‘Orange Crush’ – all are great. Slightly disposable and possibly meaningless, perhaps, but still great. ‘World Leader Pretend’, whilst far more downbeat and introspective, is also great. Only a couple of tracks – ‘Turn You Inside Out’ and ‘I Remember California’ – are less successful. Since they’re the louder, more rock-heavy tracks on the album, that would suggest that, to my mind at least, R.E.M. are at their best when they’re writing pop songs and having a good time. This in turn suggests that when I reach their 90’s output, I’m not going to enjoy it quite so much.

‘Good Feeling’ by Travis

It’s a curious thing, Travis’ album number one. Like most people who own it, I bought it after ‘The Man Who’ had conquered the world, to see whether their debut had been similar. In some ways, it is. In others…

‘Good Feeling’ seems very much an album of two halves. The first half is very much the sound of a band flexing their muscles for the first time. ‘All I Want To Do Is Rock’, the opening track, is an exceptionally simple song, but shot through with a winning charm that somehow makes you overlook this. ‘U16 Girls’ is an extra-ordinary track about the dangers of relationships with underage girls. It’s almost impossible to imagine such a song being released today – was it really so different in 1997? The rest of the first half, from ‘The Line Is Fine’ to ‘Midsummer Night’s Dreaming’ is a continued collection of straightforward guitar indie.

In the second half, however, Travis as they would come to be begin to take shape. ‘Tied To The 90’s’, despite it’s lack of chorus, is the best-constructed track on the album up to that point, and ‘Happy’, whilst almost making a virtue of it’s simplicity, is infuriatingly catchy and loveable. It’s the last three tracks, however, that pave the way for Travis’ future career. ‘More Than Us’ in particular is delicate, tuneful and lovely.

After ‘The Man Who’ and ‘The Invisible Band’, there was a substantial amount of retrospective glory accorded to this album, a feeling amongst the worthy music press that Travis had abandoned their roots of greatness for a life in the middle of the road. Frankly, this is nonsense. There’s plenty to like about this album, but it’s ultimately a rough template, a first attempt at something they would go on to do much better.

‘Gold Against The Soul’ by The Manic Street Preachers

The second by The Manic Street Preachers wandered into my collection more or less by accident. As far as I can remember, I picked it up very cheaply in a sale somewhere around the time of ‘A Design For Life’, gave it a couple of cursory listens, and then ignored it forever. As a result, I’m listening properly now for more or less the first time. The surprise, for me at least, is how accessible quite a lot of it is. ‘La Tristesse Durera’ and ‘Roses In The Hospital’ especially are well written and orchestrated pop songs. Ironically, the band themselves dislike the album because of this approach, considering it some kind of corporate sell-out. Perhaps they’re right, but I’d rather listen to these tracks than the louder, angrier sounds of ‘Nostalgic Pushead’ or ‘Symphony of Tourette’.

It’s not an album I’m going to spend lots of time listening to – along this big listening process, I’ve confirmed to myself that I’m really not that fond of the Manics, but it has its qualities.

‘Glo’ by Delirious?

When Delirious? released Glo, I had high hopes. It was touted at the time as some sort of ‘Cutting Edge 5’, a return to the band’s routes after the moderate mainstream success of ‘King of Fools’ and ‘Mezzamorphis’. Ultimately, I remember finding the album something of a disappointment, and it’s not an album I’ve listened to much in the meantime.

I should be clear though – this is not a bad album. There are a number of very good songs on it, and nothing that’s worse than average. I think the album suffered, and still suffers, from high expectations, and a slight lack of direction. The idea of making an album more grounded in worship is hard to fault, but the albums preceding this one weren’t especially ambiguous, and the problem with ‘Glo’ is that it still isn’t written for a congregation. You couldn’t use these songs in a church, so all you really get is a slightly simpler version of what’s gone before. There’s no ‘Thank You For Saving Me’ on this record, no ‘Shout To The North’, not even a ‘Did You Feel The Mountains?’

‘God You Are My God’ is a case in point for the strengths and weaknesses of the album. It’s a confident performance with a solid production, and it has some lovely touches – the choir, and the chanting monks are both evidence of the band’s ambition, but there’s no real depth to the song, and it launches immediately into an improvised instrumental section that, for all its heart, doesn’t convey much of anything. ‘God’s Romance’ has more drive, and ‘Investigate’ more depth, though again, the extended musical outro is unnecessary. The middle of the album has some strong points. ‘My Glorious’ is the heart of the album, and a highlight track, but still a song that would sit awkwardly on the radio or in a church – the worst of both worlds, if you will. ‘Everything’ is a real standout, largely because it doesn’t try to straddle this line – it’s a song of worship, clearly, but it sounds like a mainstream hit until the end when the choir kicks in, but holding this trick back for the closing moments makes it work. ‘Hang On To You’ is a good listen, though it sounds like a closing track with six songs still to go. ‘Intimate Stranger’, in all honesty, is seven and a half minutes of tedium. ‘Awaken The Dawn’, on the other hand, is great – a classic Delirious anthem, and the only track from the album you could genuinely use in church. It would be a triumph, if not for the fact that it had been written several years before the rest of the album, and had already been released and made successful by Noel Richards. ‘Years Go By’ is Delirious by numbers, fine but unremarkable. ‘Jesus’ Blood’ is a brooding finisher, a kind of sequel to ‘Obsession’ from Cutting Edge 4.

So it really isn’t bad, but it was the first Delirious album not to represent a significant step forward, choosing instead to lurch sideways. Worse, the knock-on effect, in my opinion, had an impact on their next album, another attempt to break the mainstream market which was somewhat derailed by this. But out of context, and judged on its own merit, this was a decent listen.

‘Glass Spider’ by David Bowie

David Bowie’s Glass Spider Tour in 1987 was his biggest and most ambitious ever. It was also such a soul destroying experience that it made him believe forming Tin Machine would be a good idea. There was a video released at the time, and it resurfaced on DVD and CD a couple of years ago, presumably a release intended to put a lid on Bowie’s reignited critical acclaim. I’m reviewing this off the CD rather than the DVD, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing. In it’s favour, it means I’m not distracted by the horribly garish visual imagery. On the downside, it means I’m not distracted from the horribly garish music. It also means that the music is periodically interrupted by seemingly random spoken gibberish, but in fairness, I’ve seen the DVD, and the visuals don’t help any of that make any sense.

‘Glass Spider’ begins with enormous self indulgence. A ridiculous electric guitar solo opens the album, interrupted by a shouted ‘shut up’ (words that any listener would choose at various points to follow) before Bowie’s dancers launch into an a-cappella segment of ‘Up The Hill Backwards’ which is an intriguing idea, though one that doesn’t really go anywhere. From here, the band launch into the absurd ‘Glass Spider’, a track that works far better as a concert introduction than as a song in its own right. Over a wash of synthesizers and guitar wailing, Bowie delivers a spoken monologue about the eponymous glass spider which must have been as inexplicable then as it is now. It’s worth noting, however, that when he actually sings his first line, his voice is in fine form. Glass Spider, for all its faults is far more interesting than ‘Day In, Day Out’, the next track, which is a two chord dirge that seems to go on for decades. It’s depressing to think that, at the time, ‘Day In, Day Out’ counted as one of his better songs. Almost as bad is ‘Bang Bang’ which follows, a track utterly unremarkable aside from the drum breaks and guitar squeals in the chorus which seem desperate to suggest that ‘Bang Bang’ is somehow an exciting piece of music. It isn’t, and it becomes painfully obvious as the song comes to a close that, four tracks in, we’ve yet to hear anything that’s actually good.

Happily, Bowie himself seems to have realised this as well, as the next run of tracks is a series of hits – ‘Absolute Beginners’, one of his finest 80’s tracks, ‘Loving The Alien’, one of his most interesting, ‘China Girl’, one of his most catchy, the much loved ‘Rebel Rebel’, and a genuinely good version of ‘Fashion’, the only ‘old’ track so far to gain anything from the eighties gloss slathered all over it. ‘Scary Monsters’ brings the big hitters section to an end, and is a perfectly decent rendition of a track that’s always seemed a bit middling to me. Disc one ends with a slightly odd version of ‘All The Madmen’, and a straight-down-the-line performance of ‘Never Let Me Down’, a track that really isn’t that bad, though a chorus would have improved it no end.

Disc two falls into a pretty obvious pattern of old songs good, new songs bad. ‘Big Brother’ sounds great, ‘’87 And Cry’ sounds terrible. ‘Heroes’ sounds good, because it can’t not sound good, and ‘Sons Of The Silent Age’ is a rare moment of actual artistry, even if it is somewhat overblown. ‘Time Will Crawl’ is rubbish. ‘Young Americans’ is a little anaemic, but it’s such a great song, you can forgive it its faults. ‘Beat Of Your Drum’ is forgettable, ‘The Jean Genie’ is fine, but played by numbers, ‘Let’s Dance’ is a perfectly good version of a track you may or may not be fond of. ‘Fame’ is less good – a hugely self indulgent performance that only seems to be included so Bowie can announce he wrote it with John Lennon. For unfathomable reasons, he segues it into ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’, which suggests to me that he’s finding the whole experience as tiring as the listener must be. ‘Time’ comes next, and it stands out like a sore thumb. It’s a great performance though, let down only by the horrible synth horns towards the end. The record ends with ‘Blue Jean’ and ‘Modern Love’, two of the shallowest tracks in the Bowie catalogue, but tracks that are at least catchy and fun.

It would be wrong to label the whole Glass Spider experience as bad. There are good bits, even great bits, though they’re rarely sustained over even the length of a track. But alongside the highlights, there are great depths to the album as well, and you can’t help but think that even if you pruned these out and made a single disc, you’d still be left with a slightly crummy product. So, unless you’re a big Bowie fan, this is probably one to actively avoid.

'Giggle' by Why?

It was with a certain amount of trepidation I listened to this. As a teenager, I loved Why?, but I found it hard to believe that affection would be unchanged. As a result, this was a very pleasant surprise.

Musically, this is better than you might think. It’s played well, and the production is fairly good (though at times, the violin dominates like a buzz saw). There are also inventive flourishes throughout the album – unexpected shifts in tempo and key which generally work very well. The album’s vocal duties are shared by Ant and Nick Parker, and they complement each other well. Ant’s vocals are warmer, Nick’s are perhaps more ambitious, but with a certain degree of tongue in cheek.

Lyrically, the album is a curious mix. A deliberate amount of nonsense is on show, but the band were never afraid to display their faith openly, either through serious references to God, or in-jokes – you have to love a band who start a song with the line ‘every year, Steve Chalke brings out a video’.

Throughout it all, there’s a sense of fun and enjoyment that you can’t help but be sucked in by, even if that comes despite your better judgement.

‘Garbage’ by Garbage

As I continue to work through my collection, occasionally, I throw up a record I can’t quite explain. I’m not entirely sure why this is an album I own – I certainly didn’t own it on its release, so it must have been something I picked up at a later date, presumably in some sort of offer. It’s also not an album I’m especially familiar with, barring the more obvious big hits.

Still, having said all that, I’ve let this album play on rotation for the best part of a week, and I’ve been enjoying it quite a lot. I think you have to adjust your mindset slightly to get the most out of it – it’s not the cheeriest of records, and every now and again, the angsty lyrics and vaguely industrial backing tracks are a little wearing, but the album on the whole is underpinned by a good understanding of what makes good pop music. It does have strong melodies, and it is played, and sung, well. The big hits deserved their status – ‘Only Happy When It Rains’, ‘Queer’ and ‘Stupid Girl’ are particularly fine, but there are other good moments as well – ‘Supervixen’ is a strong opening, ‘Fix Me Now’ is good, ‘Milk’ is a well-crafted ending. It doesn’t all lodge in the memory so strongly – even after repeated listenings, I remain a bit vague about quite a lot of the record, but none of it stands out as bad. So, all in all, pretty enjoyable.