— Vici MacDonald
It was announced in Bitz a fortnight earlier that yet another member of the Hits staff would be moving on. Editor Steve Bush had only departed a month earlier and now the head of design would be joining him on the dole queue. Well, not so much. Bush was off mastermind the success of other magazines and Vici MacDonald would even be "popping in from time to time to write horrible things about The Cocteau Twins and Mike Smith". Ver kids barely had enough time to make Nick Kamen collages on the front of their geography work books before she was back (BACK!) to handle reviewing the singles. Some people can't bring themselves to stay away.
Alas, there was no Cocteau Twins for her to slag off (and, indeed, she refrained from laying into Mike Smith) but MacDonald can always be trusted to take on some sacred cows in her reviews. It's likely that few would have taken notice of her penchant for giving the likes of Madonna, Prince and Bruce Springsteen a good critical duffing over but it might cause a few raised eyebrows now. They were all huge stars then but that's nothing compared with the reverence with which they're held more than thirty years hence. Madge even crops up in the singles page, with "Open Your Heart" sharing a review with "I'm All You Need" by Samantha Fox. MacDonald doesn't think much of the two lightweight numbers and takes the opportunity to point out the curious double standard that Madonna was taken seriously while Fox was dismissed as a "slag" ("either they're both slags or they both aren't", she rightly points out).
MacDonald saves her harshest criticism this fortnight, however, for the likes of Paul McCartney's "Only Love Remains" ("compare this banal slush with almost anything he did with The Beatles and you really will weep"), Rod Stewart's cover of "In My Life" ("...sounds uncannily like the unsavoury old gent at Waterloo Station who tried to cage 10p off you for a "cuppa" and wheezes most disgustingly if you don't oblige"), Status Quo's "Dreamin'" ("...plonk this record on and you're straight back in 1974 which, as any "oldster" will tell you, was a very horrible year") and the Daryl Hall solo "I Wasn't Born Yesterday" ("why is it that all American mainstream pop songs sound much the same?"). The old farts aren't up to much but at least there are some young guns (and The Pretenders) with records that you'll want to listen to and that MacDonald might deign to give faint praise.
Delighting her most (or disappointing her least) is "Sunday Morning" by The Bolshoi. A pleasant surprise for MacDonald, the song's indie jangle pop contrasts with their supposed goth image. They don't appear especially Wagnerian to me, though this is mainly down to the group's casual demeanour in the accompanying promo. Direct predecessor "Away" (aka "A Way", the ambiguous little scamps) is much more in line with goth rock's spidery guitars, crashing drums, gaunt lead singer and creepy videos but, even then, there's this feeling that they don't quite fit it in — or if they do, shouldn't the umbrella of goth stretch further to include Suede? Either way, it's not as if they gave it all a big rethink since the two tracks both appear on the same album, 1986's Friends.
For her part, MacDonald doesn't even go into The Bolshoi's goth sound and I think her focusing on their look is instructive to understanding goth. The Cure had been through plenty of darkness but they also explored a much lighter side on "The Lovecats" and "The Caterpillar". The Sisters of Mercy were already incorporating dance elements into their sound and this was something that should have surprised no one given that Doktor Avalanche has been a permanent fixture on the drum machine. The Cult scarcely seemed goth at all and were typically little more than an updated and inferior version of The Doors. All About Eve were really just a folk group. The point is, pinning down The Bolshoi as goth is both tricky and easy: they don't really sound Teutonic so they don't qualify but, then, neither does anyone else so why not welcome them into the fold?
MacDonald doesn't appreciate the Catholic guilt of the lyrics, feeling that they "don't suit the mood of the music at all", but I think she's failing to grasp how going to church can cloud an otherwise lovely Sunday. I was nine-years-old in 1986 and I much preferred the last day of the weekend to the first. Saturdays were bogged down by swimming lessons and basketball games: I wasn't able to watch all the Saturday morning cartoons that I wanted and I could never go to birthday parties because of other commitments. Sundays, on the other hand, were all about going for a drive with my family, visiting grandparents, going to the park. En route to wherever we were headed, we would catch the dour faces of people going to church. Spending a nice day at such a miserable place? No, thank you. The Bolshoi seem to have something similar in mind on "Sunday Morning": days that are indeed "sky blue and pale yellow" which end up wasted away in the pointless tedium of a worship service. The video puts singer Trevor Tanner and his band on a sofa in his flat that then ends up in various locations (a pub, adjacent to a swimming pool, on an ice rink) that they would rather be at than in some bloody church. Finally, Catholic "guilt" Vici? (inverted commas are her's) Trevor isn't feeling guilty of anything, he's just had enough pretending to feel guilty — and who can blame him?
"Sunday Morning" is a superb track and evidence that you can't go wrong with a bit of Byrdsian jangle. There may not be a more malleable basis for a song and these supposed goths get so much out of it. A dark bridge ("it's wrong to feel, it's wrong to care, you must not steal, you must not swear" delivered by a scarier Tanner) gives away their roots but it segues in and out so effortlessly that it hardly matters. Get a 12-string acoustic, some gentle piano chords and make it sound as light as a Sunday morning breeze and you've got yourself a hit — or a Single of the Fortnight that somehow misses the charts.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Heavy D & The Boyz: "Mister Big Stuff"
A hip hop throwback to the era of boasting all about how bloomin' wonderful rappers are, I was hoping to enjoy "Mister Big Stuff" as much as MacDonald. Alas, three-and-a-half decades' distance have failed to endear these ears to a sound that Public Enemy ought to have dispensed with not long after. She admits that it's little more than a novelty record (albeit a "happy and jolly and fun" one in her words) and that was always the trouble with groups like Heavy D & The Boyz: they could never get past the high jinks and the comedy couldn't last forever. A shame since Heavy D was a talented rapper who seemed capable of more.
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