The Colourfield were an English band formed in 1984 in Manchester, England, when former Specials and Fun Boy Three frontman Terry Hall joined up with ex-Swinging Cats members Toby Lyons and Karl Shale. Despite the fact that all three members originally were from Coventry, the band was based in Manchester.
“Virgins and Philistines” is the debut album by British band The Colourfield, released on April 26th, 1985.
Returning to records years after their release can sometimes reveal the weaknesses that we’d failed to notice at the time. What seemed refreshing or innovative can, further down the line, appear primitive or tiresome. But we can’t simply hold our nostalgia responsible for the fact that records from the past sometimes, upon reinvestigation, sound dated.
And so it is that the recollection of Virgin And Philistines’ singles – ‘Thinking Of You’, ‘Castles In The Air’ – and its other standout moments have cultivated its candid melancholy and perversely perky pop, while the reality of listening to it exposes the tricks that memory plays as much as how fashions have changed. At the time it seemed a breath of fresh air, a semi-acoustic pastoral antidote to the neon pop landscape that surrounded it. Retrospectively, however, it sounds mildly overpolished, You’ll find the same problem with Aztec Camera, or Prefab Sprout, or The Lilac Time. But those who can accept this will find within its pristine forty minutes some of Hall’s finest moments, lyrically and melodically.
Terry Hall seems to understand the way that familiarity can breed contempt. He’s spent his career moving from one project to another, restlessly shaking things up, never staying with collaborators long enough for things to become stale. Virgins and Philistines may sound archaic, Making allowances for its technical approach is imperative, especially since its intentions remain clear, and when he pursued the idea with its follow-up, Deception, he soon realised that he’d reached a creative brick wall and called it quits. In fact Hall has never made more than two albums under any of the many guises under which he has operated. He bailed from The Specials in 1981 as ‘Ghost Town’ sat atop the charts, taking Lynval Golding and Neville Staples with him to form Fun Boy Three. He called time on Fun Boy Three within two years, despite further hits, and The Colourfield were born, his collaborators this time Toby Lyons and Karl Shal (of Swinging Cats). They in turn dissolved during the recording of their second album, and Hall moved onto further experiments: two solo albums, collaboration with Dave Stewart under the name Vegas, further collaborations with (amongst others) Fundamental’s Mushtaq, Damon Albarn, Tricky, Dub Pistols, The Lightning Seeds, and the rather painfully named (and oft forgotten) Terry, Blair, and Anouchka.
It was on the latter’s ‘Lucky In Luv’ that he sang “If life was fair / I’d be a millionaire”, and, to be honest, given the affection in which he’s generally held – underlined by the recent Specials reunion – it’s a little surprising that he isn’t. (Perhaps he is and simply doesn’t flaunt it, in which case the man deserves even more respect.) But one of the reasons for the high regard people have for Terry Hall is precisely that he’s never allowed us to become bored of his work. Its only constant is his doleful voice, its shortcomings at the heart of its charm. As soon as there’s a danger that whatever he’s working on might become formulaic he’s taken another left turn, and with this has come the unspoken suggestion that we too should leave his previous activities behind.
The Colourfield were one of those left behind. Two albums, a handful of singles that grazed the charts and a bunch of fuzzy videos on youtube are all that remain of this briefly wonderful exercise. The second album, frankly, is a mess, a painfully overproduced synthetic nightmare that could almost pass as part of the PWL catalogue. It’s hardly surprising Hall left the project behind, and little wonder that he looks especially morose – even by his own standards – on its cover. But 1985’s Virgins And Philistines is something else, and its reissue by Cherry Red – making it available on CD for the first time – is good reason to revisit it.
Virgins And Philistines‘ overwhelming mood is, true to form, that of imminent regret, the foreshadowing of things going wrong or at the very least not working out as hoped if, indeed, it’s not already too late. For the most part it’s focussed on domestic affairs, as though Hall has just emerged from a series of painful failed relationships. At its most optimistic, “romance is a word that should be seen but not heard” consisting merely of “castles in the air”, and even that often seems a forlorn hope: Hall’s seen “the world about us / and the Disneyland dream’s a lie” (‘Cruel Circus’). Even the lovelorn sentiments of ‘Thinking Of You’ are undermined by the slowly dawning reality that the object of his desire is resistant to his sentiments, assuming they’ve not walked away previously anyway: “I could be the one thing there in your hour of need / So if you decide to change your views I’m thinking of you”. At times, however, it broadens its reach to address social affairs: ‘Cruel Circus” refers to “fur coats on ugly people expensively dressed up to kill / In a sport that’s legal within the minds of the mentally ill”, while on ‘Faint Hearts’ he asks, “Will all this wishful thinking save your ship from sinking?”
In fact the number of lines that bear repeating here confirm that this was Hall at his most articulate, his attention to details as striking as Morrissey’s, his ear for a wry observation never more finely tuned. “I was travelling to nowhere when I fell off the rails” (‘Sorry’), “You took the good from the bad like the 36 pieces of cheap cutlery” (‘Take’), “I really wanted her hair to touch her knees / I really wanted to share forgotten dreams” (‘Castles In The Air’), “You can take me for a ride / but only if I get the window seat” (‘Armchair Theatre’): the examples are legion.
But the music – for the most part – matches this eloquence. On occasions, in fact, it’s a masterclass in songwriting. ‘Thinking Of You’ recalls Bacharach and David’s ‘Do You Know The Way To San Jose’ in its use of Spanish influences, its seemingly upbeat, almost coquettish melody at odds with its despondent lyrical tone. ‘Faint Hearts’ has hints of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Carousel Waltz’, Hall’s voice at its most yearning as he reaches for the top notes, Toby Lyons’ organ wheezing much as Steve Winwood’s did on Talk Talk’s The Colour Of Spring. ‘Castles In The Air’, meanwhile sports castanets and flourishes of flamenco, an autumnal melody, dramatic cello strokes and a guitar solo that, under most circumstances, would drag a song to the depths of hell but which here lift it into that blue haze between bitter and sweet. ‘Take’ may seem a little clunky in comparison, but its awkwardness matches Hall’s mood as he battles blatant belligerence with brutal honesty, the tremor in his voice challenged by the defiant self-denial at the song’s heart (“Me and the cat own the lease on the flat / And nothing you do will ever change that… / You could say that we’re having the time of our lives.”) ‘Cruel Circus’ even breaks unexpectedly, delightfully, comically into a music hall bridge, the sampled sounds of ducks, chickens and horses interrupting his pleading “Isn’t it enough to eat them?” while ‘Yours Sincerely’ is a deftly tender tune with which one suspects Kings Of Convenience may be familiar, though whether they’re capable of lines like “I took the wrong decision / So you turned on your ignition” is open to question. And then there’s ‘Armchair Theatre’, which alternates between the sincere, the twee and a knowing banality, highlighted by the way Hall delivers the line “I’m getting very bored indeed”.
But it’s actually a cover of The Roches’ ‘Hammond Song’ that steals the show, still sounding as magnificently heartfelt today as it did 35 years ago. Against gently strummed steel guitar strings, Hall shifts his attention from his own relationships to the naïve love of one younger than him who’s leaving town for someone he considers unworthy, much as McCartney did on ‘She’s Leaving Home’. It’s gentle, poignant and exquisitely understated, not a million miles from Simon & Garfunkel’s gentler moments, while its lush harmonies recall another hit of the time, Godley and Creme’s ‘Cry’.
Winning new converts to Virgins And Philistines might be hard: quite apart from the production, its heart-on-the-sleeve sentimentality may be simply too saccharine in cynical times. But that’s the danger of baring your soul, and Terry Hall never did it quite so beautifully as he did here. Like “the ghost of your love (that) will never die” in ‘Yours Sincerely’, its memory and wistful thinking still haunt those who experienced it. What we remember may not be quite what we find, but since nostalgia lies at its heart, let nostalgia be its reward.
From their beginnings, Spiritualized and The Verve were celestial brethren. Both bands formed in 1990, undoubtedly with a mutual love for Pink Floyd’s The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and an appetite for drug-taking: Jason “J Spaceman” Pierce founded Spiritualized from the ashes of his previous band, heroin-championing trance rockers Spacemen 3, while Verve (then without a “The”), led by the charismatic Richard Ashcroft, was a gang of teenagers that enjoyed trippin’ balls on LSD. They each jammed eternal, though with distinct styles: Pierce favoured extended, pedal-heavy drones, while Verve conceived loose, reverb-soaked grooves. Following the release of Spiritualized’s debut album, Lazer Guided Melodies, and Verve’s debut single, “All In The Mind,” in 1992, the two bands toured the UK together. For the next couple of years, the bands seemed to follow a similar path, on course for cult worship. Spiritualized has always been and forever will be Jason Pierce. The gaunt, straggly-haired Spaceman as he was called, formed the band in 1990 as Spacemen 3 was crumbling from the result of his acrimonious relationship with paper-thin bandmate Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, a 24/7 shades wearer with a bowl cut. A lot of it had to do with two songwriters going in different directions and likely drugs, but the presence of Pierce’s then-girlfriend, the Calvin Klein-modelesque Kate Radley, was also to blame. According to Kember, Radley put a strain on band relations by following the band around wherever they played, be it the studio, rehearsal, or gigs. Once the band imploded, Pierce recruited the remaining S3 members, sans Kember, for his new band, Spiritualized. After the release of their debut single, “Anyway That You Want Me,” Radley joined the band on keyboards, adding a face to Pierce’s muse for songs like “I Want You” and “If I Were With Her Now.” After joining in 1991, Radley became as synonymous with Spiritualized as Pierce, appearing in all press photos, sometimes just the two of them. They appeared as a match made in the heaven he so often referred to in his music.
In 1995, Spiritualized added “Electric Mainline” to their name for some reason and released the magnificent Pure Phase, an album of transcendental, cosmic R&B designed to “play loud ‘n’ drive fast.” Verve, meanwhile, was forced to add “The” to their name, thanks to a lawsuit by the record label of the same name. Unlike Spiritualized Electric Mainline, The Verve would stick. They too released an album, A Northern Soul, which followed up their 1993 debut, A Storm In Heaven. Moving on from their early cavernous psych-rock, A Northern Soul was a game-changer. Led by Ashcroft’s emotive voice, Nick McCabe’s virtuosic guitar work, and Oasis producer Owen Morris’ larger-than-life production, The Verve moved into a whole new stratosphere: the mainstream. Although the album is carried by a spirit that is equal parts Floyd and Zeppelin (see the rumbling low-end vibes of “Life’s An Ocean” or the ecstatic rave-up “This Is Music”), it was the ballads, “On Your Own” and “History,” that helped them crack the Top 30 and reveal Ashcroft, now referred to by Noel Gallagher as “Captain Rock,” as one of the UK’s most compelling songwriters.
The Verve had surpassed Spiritualized and entered the big time, but their success was not what caused a rift between the two bands. Instead, it was due to a personal matter. That same month, The Verve released A Northern Soul, Richard Ashcroft married Kate Radley in secret. Yeah, you read that right: Ashcroft, not Pierce, married Radley. This bombshell was kept under wraps until 1997, but for two more years, Radley was still an active member of Spiritualized. In fact, just days after the wedding, Spiritualized headlined above The Verve at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Neither camp has ever been forthcoming about whether Ashcroft was the cause of Pierce and Radley’s romance ending. Maybe that’s for the best, to let this dog lie and just enjoy all of the music that seemed to be a result of such an ordeal. But in these pre-social media times, this incredible love triangle story managed to transpire without details leaking to the press. Fifteen years after it happened, Ashcroft offered up a rare candid moment to Sirius XM, even accepting blame for her leaving Spiritualized. “I was supporting her band,” he said. “I saw this girl jump off the stage with these boots on, this beautiful little skirt. I’m like, ‘Wow! Who’s that? She’s gorgeous.’ And I’m just so lucky that she was intelligent as well. Such a bloody bonus, guys out there! You really should go for that. But I was very fortunate. People should check out her band, she doesn’t play with them anymore. I probably ruined that!”
The loss of Radley romantically seemed both devastating and inspirational for Pierce. Normally, he would let the songs just come to him, but when he sat down to begin writing Ladies and Gentleman in the summer of 1995, he amassed 14 songs in 11 days. According to then-bandmate Sean Cook, Pierce had been doing heroin, which he seems to corroborate on “Home Of The Brave”: “Sometimes I have my breakfast right off of a mirror.” Other lyrics like “There’s a hole in my arm where all the money goes” (“Cop Shoot Cop”) and “Just me, my spike in my arm, and my spoon” (“Think I’m In Love”) insinuate that he was consuming the brown stuff intravenously. Even for a guy who named an album, Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To , this seemed like a pretty shocking admission.
Of course, in hindsight, it’s Pierce’s romantic anguish and this supposed inability to carry on that makes the album such a gut-punch to hear. The first voice you hear on Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space isn’t his, but hers: Radley mutters the album’s titular words completely devoid of emotion. Rumour has it the line was left as a “kiss-off voicemail” for Pierce, though that has never been verified, and seems more like a thing of gossip. Lines like “I’m wasted all the time, I’ve got to drink you right out of my mind” (“Broken Heart”) and “All I want in life’s a little bit of love to take the pain away” (title track) painted a seemingly obvious picture of despair. But Pierce frequently denied that these songs were about his ex. He told MOJO, “If I hadn’t been doing interviews I wouldn’t even have come to that conclusion.” He also downplayed any kind of resentment over Radley leaving him for Ashcroft, telling NME, “I love her dearly and she loves me dearly. Simple fact.
Astonishingly, Radley was still in the band, and is credited with contributing organ, synths, and piano, as well as vocals to the album. However, when it came to gigs, Spiritualized’s PR team claimed she was suffering from a “mystery illness.”
Pierce has said that a lot of the album was recorded spontaneously, and most of what we hear are first takes. So the majority of his time was spent mixing the album, a total of 18 months all ce has said that a lot of the album was recorded spontaneously, and most of what we hear are first takes. So the majority of his time was spent mixing the album, a total of 18 months all together. Originally, he asked Brian Eno to take a crack at it, but he was too busy. And so Pierce began a quest on par with Kevin Shields‘ epic stab at refining My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, to achieve perfection. Some might say he achieved it. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space might not receive the same godlike praise as Loveless, but it’s every bit warranted. This was one man’s singular vision: an orchestral space rock odyssey complete with blessed gospel choirs, bursts of free jazz noise, swampy blues, and garage rock freak-outs, divulging the pain he’s suffered.
When Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space was released, the press was still unaware of Radley’s marriage to Ashcroft. Pierce was subjected to questioning about their relationship, considering the lyrical content, but no one caught on. And why would they? He was admittedly still living with Radley’s parents at the time. Months later, when the press found out, Radley and Ashcroft became tabloid fodder and their lives became a soap opera.
Pierce did everything he could to deflect any such attention in order to push his masterpiece. Despite no real hit single to boost it, the album was a commercial success, charting at number four in the UK and achieving a considerable breakthrough in the US. The novelty of packaging the CD in prescription pill form complete with a foil blister pack and dosage advice also helped shift a few copies. So did a performance 114 stories high at the top of Toronto’s CN Tower, which was recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest gig ever played.
The Verve, meanwhile, was on the verge of Oasis-level fame. After breaking up (for the first time) in 1995, Ashcroft began working on music he felt would be for his solo album. Instead, The Verve reformed and released the mammoth hit “Bitter Sweet Symphony” in June 1997. (To Pierce’s probable liking, the band was forced to pay 100 percent of the song’s royalties to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for sampling an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time.”) These new, uplifting anthems – perhaps a sign of his domestic bliss with Radley – formed their third album, Urban Hymns.
The Verve may not have survived (they would reform again in 2007 to make a spectacularly shit fourth album, then break up for a third time), but Ashcroft ended up with both the girl and the glory. The drugs may not have worked for him, but selling out sure did. By appealing to the common denominator – which at this time was deemed Noelrock – rather than continue with their cathartic space rock, Urban Hymns became a number one album, selling over ten million copies worldwide and making Ashcroft a rock star in the process.
For the most part, Urban Hymns is still lauded as a modern day classic, but in retrospect, it likely should have been credited to “Richard Ashcroft & The Verve.” That’s certainly how the press treated it. Maybe in 1997, when Britpop was still being touted and Oasis was – in their words: the biggest band in the world – songs like “The Drugs Don’t Work” and “Lucky Man” were candidates for Single of the Week, but two decades later they sure don’t sound much different from this. Maybe finding true love wasn’t the best thing for Ashcroft’s songwriting after all, because things only got worse when The Verve returned in 2008 with Forth.
The same cannot be said about Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. What Pierce created was timeless; an engrossing, uncompromising, and outright masterpiece that critics have never needed to reassess. That might have something to do with the fact that Pierce, unlike Ashcroft, has never strayed far from his original template.
OK Computer that year may have won over the critics, and Urban Hymns may have sold a zillion copies, but Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is 1997’s true magnum opus. It’s the sound of a man detailing how he lost his heart, body, and soul over the span of 69 spellbinding minutes.
Hayley Williams is an alternative American sweetheart, capturing the hearts of millions with her band Paramore. Her crossover appeal has made her a favourite among angsty teens and vaguely familiar amongst even the most culturally unaware. Williams’ striking voice and lyricism set them apart from their emo counterparts as they found the sweet spot between counterculture and pop stardom. Over the past decade, Williams has slowly forayed into a solo career with the occasional guest vocal spot, ultimately culminating with Petals for Armor, her solo debut. After her decade-long relationship and highly publicized divorce with New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert, the now 31-year old Williams took to her solo work as a way to open up about her struggles with mental health and romance. While Williams used Paramore’s later efforts as an opportunity to express herself without the constraints of sticking to their original pop punk roots, Petals for Armor feels like a true liberation done not out of frustration, but out of realization.
–Hayley Williams signed to Atlantic Records as a teenage solo artist in 2003 before quickly pivoting to become the frontwoman of Paramore. Almost two decades later, Williams finally released a solo album with the label, the highly personal, funky, experimental pop record Petals For Amor. The album, made up of two previously released EPs plus five additional tracks, has a confessional tone, with Williams touching on depression and death on the gently swaying “Leave It Alone” but also self-love and rebuilding on the springy “Watch Me While I Bloom.” It may be a solo record, but her Paramore bandmates are close by, with Taylor York handling production, Zac Farro drumming on a couple of songs and touring bassist Joey Howard nabbing some song-writing credits — calming any fears that Williams’ stellar solo effort would mark the end of the band.
Music Written by Hayley Williams, Taylor York & Joey Howard
The Petals For Armor Tour is coming to North America, Europe & the UK this May-June.
Hop Along‘s Painted Shut made many 2015 best-of lists and definitely made it into my personal top ten for the year. Now thankfully Saddle Creek Records is reissuing Hop Along’s 2012 debut full-length album “Get Disowned” for those of us who missed out on either of it’s previous pressings. This is also Get Disowned’s first ever colored vinyl pressing for those of us addicted to colored wax. With 2,000 pressed there will be plenty to go around, but preordering helps guarantee you’ll get the record about a month before it hits your local record store.
This band reminds me of Gang of Four. It has this strange indie-rock–meets-funk thing happening. The singer [Frances Quinlan] has this way of effortlessly taking it from this angular funk verse to this incredible melodic hooky thing. When she sings, she has this beautiful, breathy voice. But when she wants to hit something harsh, she pushes it so much you can feel her voice flaying under the pressure she’s putting into it. Her voice starts to whistle like it’s going to spray apart into pieces and shatter. It doesn’t ever, but it’s really cool
The 2012 debut full-length from Philadelphia’s Hop Along, Get Disowned. Featuring “Tibetan Pop Stars,” which Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 called “the most painfully beautiful song ever.”
“Their first album, 2012’s Get Disowned, is a messy world where people stomp on old floorboards for percussion and saw violins like they were made of something stronger than wood. Everything is governed by Quinlan, who sings in the wild voice of someone casting out demons (or having the demon cast out of them). Its second song, “Tibetan Pop Stars”, should be etched in titanium and shot into outer space for safekeeping.” – Pitchfork
“Hop Along’s first full-band full-length, Get Disowned was punk’s best kept secret. Critically overlooked but totally devastating, full of epic, unpredictably unfolding guitar songs with massive, quotable lyrics that wring you out emotionally and inspire the kind of furtive, conspiratorial devotion punks live for.” – Impose
“nearly perfect… The album is notable for its folk-gone-indie-punk approach, coupled with massive choruses and Quinlan’s personal, soul-crushing lyricism” – AV Club
“one of the most devastatingly honest records I’ve heard in years.” – Stereogum
The “Dandelion” 7″ features solo acoustic performances from Big Thief frontwoman Adrianne Lenker recorded by Luke Temple of Here We Go Magic, all adorned with a cover painting by Temple.
Put to tape one wintry day in early 2016, the recordings find Temple capturing Lenker in a searching, intimate performance. They offer a first public hearing for “Dandelion”, a beguiling new song from Lenker’s visionary pen; while the version of “Masterpiece” contained here casts a new light on the title track of their acclaimed debut LP.
Explaining how the recordings came about, Lenker says: “On tour with Here We Go Magic, our van, Bonnie, broke down in the Rocky Mountains. We really didn’t want to miss any shows. Fortunately, Here We Go kindly offered me the empty seat in their truck, and I went ahead to play two solo shows while the rest of the band fixed Bonnie.
“After Luke saw the show, he had an idea to capture the simple raw form of the songs played solo. Several months later, I went out to Hudson, NY, and we filled eight cassette tapes, with one song played through a few times per 15-minute tape. It was a really relaxing way of recording. I thought we might just stuff the tapes in a shoebox in a closet and find them years later. It’s nice to record without the intention of releasing the thing you’re making.”
Alexandra Levy makes music for maximum intimacy: Augmented by acoustic guitars, she frequently sings in a weary, tortured whisper. But her deeply reflective breakup songs crackle with tension and life, thanks in part to arrangements that lean on found sounds and field recordings. All that quiet clatter helps lend a diaristic quality to songs that aren’t heard so much as listened in on. Appropriately enough, her debut album is titled What We Say In Private.
Less than a year after the release of her highly-acclaimed debut album, What We Say In Private, Montreal, Quebec-based musician Alexandra Levy – who records and performs as Ada Lea – returns in early 2020 with a new four-song EP which acts as a bridge between what’s come before and where she means to go next.
A mix of both the old and new, the woman, here EP takes its name from a brand new composition recorded recently in LA with Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers, Better Oblivion Community Center). Perhaps her most direct work to-date, the new song offers a beautiful glimpse into the bold new chapter of Ada Lea. “I went to LA and recorded the song in a day and a half with Marshall,” Levy says of the song. “The writing and recording of this song happened like magic.”
Aside from the title-track, which is shared here alongside a raw and captivating demo version, the woman, here EP also offers two previously-unheard recordings from the What We Say In Private sessions, in the form of the reflective and melancholy ‘perfect world’, and the sparse and dream-like ‘jade’, which was inspired by a John Updike short story.
Ada Lea – perfect world from the EP woman, A fascinating glimpse behind the curtain, Levy says that the new EP should be seen as being “like a second cousin” to what we say in private. “We included the songs that we still felt close to,” she explains, “but didn’t seem to have a place on the album.”
Ada Lea – “Wild Heart”
from the album “What We Say In Private – Out 7/19/19!
“Thirty years? Fuck! Thirty years!” Jason Pierce, one half of the creative duo at the heart of Spacemen 3, is struggling to take in the fact that “Playing With Fire” is celebrating over thirty years since it’s release. And, it seems, he’s also struggling to remember events from 1989.
Pierce chuckles in response, “Playing With Fire” is that kind of an album. But that’s to damn the record with faint and superficial praise for in truth, it’s so much more than that: Playing With Fire is an extraordinary album and its ramifications and reverberations are still being felt to this very day. Not only was it the moment that Spacemen 3 found themselves reaching a wider audience after years of indifference, but it was also one that saw them create a contemporary form of psychedelia that was ripe for the time and beyond. And in fairness to Pierce, three decades is a considerable period of time, so a re-acquaintance with Spacemen 3’s third album and the times in which it was made is called for.
Looking back after three decades is to be reminded of a time characterised by huge social, political and cultural upheavals. The year leading up to the album’s release had been marred by shocking levels of violence in and around Northern Ireland. Margaret Thatcher became the 20th century’s longest-serving Prime Minister at the turn of the year. The Local Government Act – featuring the notorious Section 28 preventing local authorities from “promoting homosexuality” – became law. And in a grotesque full stop to the year, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie when a terrorist bomb went off on board, killing a total of 270 people.
Cultural changes were afoot. The first rumblings from the Pacific Northwest were beginning to make themselves felt, hip hop had taken bold steps forward thanks to ground breaking records by Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim and EPMD among others, while the likes of Sonic Youth, Pixies and R.E.M. were reaching far and wide. If you want to track the seed of the best of the 90s and what followed, this is when it was planted.
And it was against this backdrop that Spacemen 3 unshackled psychedelic rock from its origins in the 60s to give it an updated and modern vernacular.
Driven by the partnership of Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember and Jason Pierce, Spacemen 3 had been ploughing their own unique and unfashionable furrow since their formation in 1982. From the fuzzed-up ramalama of their Stooges-indebted 1986 debut album, Sound Of Confusion, through to its follow-up a year later with the laid-back and medicated washes of The Perfect Prescription, Spacemen 3’s gradual reduction and minimalising of their sound would result in Playing With Fire. Opening a fresh chapter in the band’s evolution in the shape of new bassist Will Carruthers, the circumstances around the album’s creation helped precipitate the increasingly fractious relationship between Pete Kember and Jason Pierce.
From his Berlin home, Carruthers muses: “People always ask, ‘Why did the band split up?’ The more interesting question is, ‘Why did they stay together?’”
Carruthers has a point and the answer lies in the grooves contained within Playing With Fire. This is an album that’s defined as much by what’s not there as is there. The monolithic and overdriven onslaught of their debut is largely gone, and when it does re-appear on the hypno-monotony of the repetitive call-to-arms that is ‘Revolution’, the sound is more streamlined, focussed and attacking. Boiled down to a single E chord, its audacity is matched by its mesmeric qualities as it layers one guitar on top of another, before reducing the sound down again to the bare minimum of guitars and single, open strings.
Similarly, ‘Suicide’ strips away structures to just an isolated chord, and instead applies washes of tremolo, delay, echo and wah-wah on a circular guitar riff for dynamic effect. Its tempo is anchored by the beat of a single, programmed bass drum and a bass guitar that locks in on the groove. The end result is a relentless wall of sound that simultaneously disorientates yet welcomes the listener to an experience where time, space and structure become meaningless concepts.
Yet for all that, Spacemen 3 were creating even more space on the album. Opening with the beatific ‘Honey’, the band’s intentions become manifestly clear. This is to be a trip fuelled less by power and more by stealth, pace and room to roam. The sparseness at the heart of ‘How Does It Feel?’ – an eight-minute exercise in minimalism – is matched by the haunting yet oddly lachrymose ‘Let Me Down Gently’.
And among these stark excursions are songs of stunning beauty. ‘Come Down Softly To My Soul’ dances and shimmers, while ‘So Hot (Wash Away All Of My Tears)’ is a tender search for redemption and inner peace that’s underlined by the neo-gospel yearn of ‘Lord Can You Hear Me?’.
In short, Spacemen 3 were making the best music of their career. And in doing so, they were also laying down the groundwork for what was to come next as they gradually fell apart first into factions, and then two separate groups in the shape of Spectrum and Spiritualized. But how much of it was evolution or revolution?
“I don’t think there was ever a wilful decision that said we’re going to do something different than we had before, but there was always an assumption that it was going to be like that,” states Jason Pierce. “But what seems to be a giant leap for the listener isn’t such a big step for the musician. To my ears it doesn’t seem like a huge step. We were moving relatively fast anyway, and we had a huge amount of influences already involved ahead, even, of the first album.”
It’s a viewpoint shared by Pete Kember: “I would venture that Sound Of Confusion through to The Perfect Prescription was a night and day switch as well. My thing has always been that I’m not that interested in making the same record twice. I think most musicians feel like that and it’s an unfulfilling thing to repeat yourself. Most of the bands that I like, they like to keep themselves walking.”
He continues: “Speaking for myself, I’d call myself an untrained musician and we were very much experimenting with what we could do and how we could encapsulate what we were trying to present in sound, really. The Perfect Prescription was definitely an awakening for us. Initially we thought that there would be severe limitations to having these one and two-chord, very minimal song structures that would burn themselves out quickly, but they never did. I think we kept finding other ways that we could have these other avenues and branches where we could take music that were still part of the same tree. Playing With Fire was a slightly different direction.”
“There was also a certain musical inability that helped our sound,” elaborates Pierce. “We couldn’t do certain chord changes so we minimalised the whole thing through necessity. With Spacemen 3, it’s almost like you’re listening to people learning their instruments as they go along; there might be guitar bends here and there, but they’re not learned guitar bends. And you’ve also got the inherent stupidity of rock & roll, but that’s not to undermine anyone’s talent. The simplicity of language and notes makes things so exciting.”
“Well, the greatest effects came from the least effort. That’s one of my driving motivations!” laughs Kember. “I’ve always been in awe of people like Kraftwerk, who wouldn’t have more than three or four elements in their tracks; they would all own and occupy their own space, sonically. They’d keep clear of each other but would be awesome around each other. I think there was some influence from that.”
Work began on Playing With Fire in June 1988 when Kember and Pierce were persuaded to record at ARK Studios in Cornwall instead of VHF Studios near Rugby where they’d previously recorded.
“We got offered a cheap deal at a studio that didn’t turn out what it was meant to be,” recalls Kember. “We did, in fact, complete about half of the album back in Rugby at VHF. We had to re-record parts as stuff got wiped in Cornwall.”
Will Carruthers, who had never actually played with Spacemen 3 until he arrived for the sessions, is less flattering in his recollections of the Cornish studios. “We’re not talking about fucking Abbey Road,” he chuckles at the memory. “It was the corner of the living room in a hippy house. It was a really crusty, anarchist punk household.” “We liked the idea of not being on an industrial estate in Rugby in a closed box for another summer,” adds Kember. “The best summers of my youth were spent in a box with no windows! In Cornwall, we could actually set up outside and play there.” Indeed. While the inside of the studio may not have lived up to the band’s expectations, its surrounding areas had a more positive effect.
“It was very exciting making a record and being in a studio and playing those songs and working with Pete and Jason,” says Carruthers. “I remember sitting in the garden, playing music and smoking hash and being pretty much focussed on making that record. That was all that really mattered.” Carruthers had arrived in Cornwall to find the recording sessions in their infancy.
“There wasn’t very much down at that point,” he says. “Maybe the backing track for [the cover of Suicide’s] ‘Che’, a few little drones for ‘Let Me Down Gently’, and a lot of it was written as it went. But what there was sounded great.” An oddly compelling aspect to Playing With Fire is that for a largely beatless album, it’s driven by a palpable groove. Was this by accident or design?
“The drums went down in some kind of form in Cornwall, but not particularly well executed,” says Jason Pierce. “This French guy was drafted in to have a go but didn’t really nail it,” explains Carruthers. “They had to programme the drums but no one was really labouring over that for weeks to get it done.”
He continues: “But it was hard to play those Spacemen 3 songs with a drummer. They’re deceptively simple, but if you weren’t bang on when you played them, they sounded gash.”
“Well, the thing with Spacemen 3 were the very minimal or underplayed drums,” adds Kember. “I love rhythm and groove but I’m not particularly great at creating it. I tend towards the minimal and simplistic. I’m bound by limitations and Spacemen 3 were band whose limitations helped us become the band we were. We were trying to make something out of nothing and sometimes, when you do that, you get really good things out of it.”
The distance between Cornwall and Rugby gave the principal players time to soak up further influences. For Kember and Carruthers, who’d drive back to their hometown at the weekends, it was bootleg cassettes of The Beach Boys’ Smile sessions as well as illicit recordings of New York’s electronic pioneers Suicide, while Pierce, remaining in Cornwall, would immerse himself in live bootlegs of The MC5 in action. But inspiration was coming from other areas, too.
“Jason got into gospel around the time of Playing With Fire,” says Will Carruthers. “‘Lord Can You Hear Me?’ is a classic gospel soul tune. We listened to a lot of that stuff.” “I think gospel has always been there, even in the early days,” says Pierce. “And American soul. It’s there on ‘Lord Can You Hear Me’ but it’s evident on some of the others tracks, if you listen carefully enough.”
“That song is so good that it should be a gospel standard,” opines Kember.
“But I don’t think those influences are that disparate,” continues Pierce. “I didn’t think it was that odd to be listening to The MC5 and Kraftwerk and Otis Redding. Now, it’s not such a big deal because it’s all easily available and has some kind of reference point. It all seems to make more sense now because the world is a little smaller.” He adds: “It was very natural. As soon as we put those sounds together on the earliest recordings, it didn’t sound like anyone else. Of course, it was coming from our small world of music and it became bigger as we heard more music. But it wasn’t trying to copy those sounds. It was this thing that worked.”
“We were certainly a magpie band,” admits Kember. “We would delve into the past but we ended up with this weird mix. But all of those songs are from the same place, in a weird way. It’s just people meaning what they say and owning it when they say it. We were definitely listening to Kraftwerk and Laurie Anderson, plus there were the records that we found in the studio in Cornwall that we didn’t have. Penguin Café Orchestra were an influence around that time and elements of all of them found their way into “Playing With Fire.”
While Jason Pierce and Will Carruthers deny that the emerging popularity in MDMA had any direct impact on the music Spacemen 3 were making, Pete Kember remembers things a little differently. “‘Ecstasy Symphony’ from The Perfect Prescription from ’87 is entirely referencing the ecstasy scene. We were lucky to play some of the pre-rave ecstasy shows in Hackney. They were called ‘The X Parties’ and we played two of those that I remember. There were large amounts of people there taking ecstasy and other psychedelic drugs. The days of The Grateful Dead and all that nonsense were long gone.”
Pondering the cultural impact of ecstasy, Kember continues: “Ecstasy really changed British culture. If you were a kid then and into Spacemen 3 and you went out into your town or city on a Friday or Saturday night, then you’d better watch your back. “It was one of the more interesting cultural steps; maybe even the last truly interesting cultural movement to have happened.”
Less harmonious was what was to come. A perfect storm of Jason Pierce’s romance with future Spiritualized keyboard player Kate Radley, a new management contract with local businessman Gerald Palmer and Kember’s perception of an imbalance in songwriting duties was beginning to take its toll on the band’s two song writers.
“We were badly advised and badly managed,” sighs Kember. “We were kids learning and trying to figure shit out.” A tone of remorse enters his voice.
“If I had the chance to change things, there are many things that I would’ve done differently,” he admits. “You know, at that point we separated our song writing and there was a period when Jason stopped writing songs and we’d always split the credit. I was like, ‘Dude, you can’t just leave me floating here. Come on – you come up with totally different stuff and our stuff works really well together. I’m not going to split the credit with you, dude, if you’re not going to write anything’ and I regret that.”
He continues: “It was only a small and temporary period that Jason wasn’t writing, and I think I reacted badly to it. I wish we had worked closer together and many of the tracks on the record were done in isolation: ‘Lord Can You Hear Me’, that’s Jason and I don’t play on that track. ‘Honey’, that’s me but Jason doesn’t play on that track. It wasn’t a critically destructive thing but it wasn’t good vibes.
“I just wish that maybe we could have done it differently. But on the other hand, I feel that, as with the bands whose music I really love, that dysfunction can produce great music. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes.”
In some respects, Playing With Fire is an album that’s curated as much as it’s composed. This far down the line it’s easy to spot the ingredients that went into its making but this is to miss the point. The analogue world of 1988 – 89 didn’t offer the same off-the-peg musical choices that it does now. Influences, records, and their histories and significance had to be physically hunted down. Time, effort and money were spent to seek these materials, to make sense of them and to refine and streamline them into something new. Consequently, Playing With Fire not only comes at the listener from different directions, it also sends the curious on a journey that joins a lot of dots. But crucially, it holds it all together to create a satisfying journey from beginning to end – and one that has continued to do so over the last 30 years as it inspires subsequent generations of space cadets.
Says Will Carruthers: “It’s a peculiar album, especially when you think about the diversity – from ‘Suicide’ to ‘Let Me Down Gently’, ‘Lord Can You Hear Me’ to ‘How Does It Feel?’ and I don’t know how it works as an album. On paper, it shouldn’t fucking work. You’ve got Jason’s classic, poppy and gospel tunes. It’s interesting how it hangs together, given the peculiarity of the elements within it.”
As one of the album’s two chief architects, Pete Kember has a clearer idea of how those different elements coalesce into a coherent statement.
“It’s one of those weird things where sometimes you have a collection of songs that don’t appear to go together and then you find that actually, you find a way to thread them together, and so make them all stronger,” he explains. “You know, ‘Suicide’ next to ‘Revolution’? That’s not such a great mix, but when you put ‘Suicide’ next to ‘Honey’, then it makes both of the tracks more extreme. I really like that kind of journey.”
“It’s funny, there are a lot of people now who sound like Spacemen 3 but when we were kids, we didn’t want to make psychedelic music that sounded like psychedelic music,” adds Jason Pierce. “I don’t think we’d have been able even if we wanted to. There were bands at the time wearing paisley and playing music that was copied from West Coast psychedelia, but the music we played didn’t come from that. We weren’t constrained by style or form; we went for what sounded right.” Pete Kember agrees and it’s with no little pride that he states: “I’ve never wanted to make a lot of records, but I’ve always wanted to feel happy about the ones I have made.
“I could go a decade without listening to Spacemen 3, but when I hear that stuff I’m always psyched and I think to myself, Yeah, we fucking nailed it.”
Playing with Fire is the third studio album by, released in February 1989. The original CD version included two live bonus tracks recorded in the Netherlands, and an ensuing release included two more b-sides from the “Revolution” single. A reissued version from 2001 has an entire extra disc of demos and rarities. The album was featured in Robert Dimery’s 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die”.
In a similar musical borrowing to those on the band’s prior albums, the song “Revolution” bears more than a passing resemblance to “Black to Comm” by the “MC5”.
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, the fifth studio album by Perfume Genius, boasts the best album title of 2020. There’s a visceral quality to it that not only paints a picture, but beautifully marries the urgent earnestness and theatrical camp that has defined his decade-long career. The album contains some typically transcendent musings on love and self and acceptance, this time painted with colours of rock and country – two traditionally hyper-masculine genres, confidently embodied and beautifully muddied by one of the most enigmatic artists working right now.
Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas is one of modern pop’s true boundary-pushing juggernauts. Each of his four albums—but particularly the last two: 2014’s Too Bright and 2017’s No Shape—rattled with sonic magnificence and lyrics of deep trauma, the fierce reclamation of space and the transcendence of love and intimacy. Hadreas is fresh off a collaborative dance piece with choreographer Kate Wallich and The YC dance company, and he’s now poised to bring that vulnerable physicality to his first Perfume Genius album in three years: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately. While No Shape saw him lean into bold, adventurous art-pop, Set My Heart sees him embrace American rock ‘n’ roll glory. It still preserves his enthralling tenderness and idiosyncratic pop palette, but it adds torched guitars and classic rock melodies. Songs like “Describe” are led by a dreamy, prevailing calm while still shaking the ground with guitar distortion. It’s Hadreas at his most abstract and carefree.
From Perfume Genius’ new album ‘Set My Heart On Fire Immediately” released on May 15th, 2020 on Matador Records.
Genre traversing North London collective Sorry have been bubbling under the radar for a couple of years now. Centred around the creative nucleus of childhood friends Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Brien, the band’s ability to fuse apparently disparate musical elements into something cohesive and unique is just one of the reasons people are getting very excited about this band. They don’t play by the rules and mix lo-fi indie-pop with thumping electronica, hip hop beats and soaring distorted riffs. They take their influences from everywhere and anywhere rather than allowing themselves to be constrained by artistically reductive by ill-advised genre tagging. Since signing to Domino Records the band have shown no signs of playing it safe and continue to be as experimental and off the wall as ever.
Sorry, the north London band are centred around songwriting duo Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen. 925 is music for high-functioning depressives, combining the sly pop smarts of Blur at their smackiest with the post-grunge pop of Cat Power and the post-everything pop of Dean Blunt without bothering to paper over the cracks – in fact, the cracks are kind of the whole point.
But the whole is held together by a strange glue, finding beauty in a world their generation finds itself increasingly locked out from: on the tentatively anthemic “Ode to Boy”, Lorenz composes an “ode for joy ’cause there is no joy”, and on “As the Sun Sets”, she sounds aglow with longing, like she’s got her face pressed up against the glass of a happier existence. On “In Unison”, she spits a line that, just a few short weeks ago, must have seemed a bleak nod to the trials of atomised 21st century life – “Everybody dreams alone, on their own, privately / in unison.” Flip the line on its head, though, and you can hear a note of frustrated optimism struggling to get free: what if, from all this solitude, something shared might begin to emerge?
“ODE TO BOY”
Asha Lorenz: This song was off the first mixtape. We revamped it for the album; we wanted it to play on the fact that it’s a knock-off of “Ode to Joy”. It sounds like a churchy choir song that you might sing at school. The lyrics are quite paternal and religious and also about innocence and love – it’s about protecting, really. We recorded a children’s choir singing the song and Campbell (Baum, bassist) played the organ.
Louis O’Bryen: We recorded the choir in a school hall in Highgate and then finished in James (Dring, producer)’s studio where we tried a lot of different glitchy sounds and effects to add over Campbell’s organ and the choir. We wanted the choir and their voices to mimic the childlike lyrics and innocence of the song.
“AS THE SUN SETS”
Asha Lorenz: This was one of the first newer songs (we wrote) that we knew we wanted to put on the album. We started at Asha’s with Louis producing and it was an overwhelmingly sweaty day. The lyrics were more of a string-of-consciousness and Louis and I worked quite quickly. It all flowed naturally and made sense; it felt like a cathartic song quite early on. The build-up bit in the middle and other parts of the song that make it bigger were added by Campbell Baum and Lincoln Barrett when we started playing it as a live band. Once it had developed for a while as a live song we then went into the studio to record it live. Finally, we took it to James Dring and together we merged the live song with the more ‘samply’ sounds we had made at home.
Louis O’Bryen: It reminds me of a hot summer’s day coming to an end, this one. It’s one of my favourites from the album and some of my favourite lyrics by Asha – it always makes me feel a little sad, but content. The electronic snare in it is a fave of mine, and adds to the weird, slightly apocalyptic feel of the tune – it sounds like a crow’s squawk. We also added loads of ethereal drone sounds to add to that feeling. We started this song on my computer at Asha’s house, making the bare bones of the tune with the weird sounds and snare, building it one part at a time, then took it to James who brought it to life.
“HEATHER”
Asha Lorenz: This is one of the lighter songs on the album. It’s a love song that’s more inspired by old crooner-esque artists like Tony Bennett. At the same time, we also wanted to make a Beatles-like showtune arrangement. For some reason it took the longest to finish because there was always a drum-pattern or one note that we wanted to change to make it perfect.
Louis O’Bryen:“Heather” is another of my favourites, and also a newer song on the album. Asha came to my house after she’d been on holiday with the first idea, then we built it (up) a bit at mine on the computer, adding the chorus and the horns, and then we took it to James. The chorus was an extension of that first idea of an old crooner-y love song, with the horns adding to that idea. We were always proud of this song, as I think it’s put together well and this makes me happy. It always reminds me of “Michelle” by The Beatles, for some reason.
“PERFECT”
Louis O’Bryen: “Perfect” is a very old song, one that’s close to the band’s heart, and one we’ve fallen in and out of love with many times. I wrote that first guitar part trying to replicate something like “Nude as the News” by Cat Power. We recorded a very old version at Asha’s and then it became a faster, more rocky live song, so it’s been through many different forms. I like it on the album as it’s energetic and picks things up a bit.
“IN UNISON”
Louis O’Bryen: This our marching band song, and a nice song to get into the album with, after “Right Round the Clock”.
Asha Lorenz: It’s quite a weird song. I tried to write it as though it was from an otherworldly character perspective looking in on humans, or perhaps someone in your head. It’s more based around phrases we use; it’s about trying to translate an idea. The drop is apocalyptic and every turn in the song makes you sink a bit lower into it. It started as a demo that we tried out live as a band before recording it. We also got a violin player to play on it so it didn’t sound too programmed. When we were working on it at home Louis thought it would be cool to add the ‘this is a demo’ voice, like Radiohead. ‘This is a demo’ is just what it said on their website but we thought it was cool so used it.
Their debut album 925 will be out via Domino Recordings in 2020.
Earlier this year, American-born and British-based singer/songwriter Erin Moran released her first album as “A Girl Called Eddy” in 15 years. Her critically-acclaimed self-titled debut arrived in 2004, which was produced by Richard Hawley and released on ANTI- Records. Per a press release, in the years since then, “she disappeared, procrastinated, did a world of other things then found herself writing again at home in New York’s West Village.” Been Around was released via Elefant Records and co-produced by Daniel Tashian, who also helmed Kacey Musgraves’ Grammy-winning Golden Hour. The album is a rich blend of classic rock, soul and baroque pop, and its warm grace never ceases thanks to Moran’s stunning, nurturing vocals, which will leave you misty-eyed without fail. Carole King is one of those sacred cow comparisons that should only be used sparingly, but this one is absolutely justified. This is one of the most moving releases of 2020 so far and the perfect elegant evening listen.
Both the public’s and the critics’ reactions to “Been Around” make it clear that the return of A Girl Called Eddy to the current music scene has become one of the musical events worth taking note. The elegance, the arrangements, and the charisma of Erin Moran’s voice have been unquestionable secret weapons, and they are put into play again on this latest Digital Single, “Big Mouth”. It is a song full of silences, that opens marvelously with one of those choruses that link Erin Moran to Carole King or Joni Mitchell. Because her stuff smells like a classic, like music that will be untouched by the passing of time.
Song taken from A Girl Called Eddy “Been Around” LP
