Weekend: "Past Meets Present"

22 July 1982

"But although Weekend don't make an instant impression, they leave an atmosphere hanging in the air afterwards. Three plays and you're hooked on it."

— Dave Rimmer

Play #1

Gosh this singer sounds an awful like the girl from Young Marble Giants. They both have that deadpan voice that was commonplace among post-punk female singers but done in a fashion that implies that they are convinced that they can carry a note. Does this make their form of non-singing singing a fraud since they can sing all along?

The instruments don't really mesh, do they? But I suppose that's the point. The strings and sax are meant to be all laid back but the guitars refuse to toe the line. It is the only instrument that matters so of course the guitarist has to be different.

Play #2

Nah, this isn't the girl from Young Marble Giants. This one's way too downbeat. Dave Rimmer thinks everything's in the background but maybe the vocals and instruments are all up in the front, trying to compete for the listener's attention. It's not a great way to listen to a record though.

I liked "A View from Her Room" a whole lot more I have to say. That song felt perfectly at home being a jazzy new wave song but this just isn't sure what it's supposed to be. And is there really the need for two sax solos?

Play #3

Honestly, this would have been a really strong album cut (ideally, as a final or penultimate track) but for the fact that no one bothered to put it on Weekend's album La varieté, the clots. "Past Meets Present" just isn't single material. Not sure if anything they did was compatible with the 45" format though.

Rimmer's right that it does linger in the air but so do farts. It's strange how you can fart when you're out on the street and then get on a bus and it follows you. This single isn't quite the same: it's easy to be rid of it unless you concentrate enough and then it sticks around a while. Good thing farts don't tend to be that powerful.

So, despite the pathetic "gag" above, I know full well this is Allison Stratton, formerly of Young Marble Giants. (As Brian Eno said, only 10,000 people bought the only YMG album but everyone who did formed a band that didn't get anywhere) You can have your skeletal indie rock, I'll take uneasy lounge jazz any day, even if this song is just all right.

Sorry Rims, not hooked.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Kid Creole & The Coconuts: "Stool Pigeon"

Play #1

Damn, this one's a banger!

Play #2

Still a banger! And rather miraculous considering August Darnell's zoot suit trousers go up to his nipples and he was flirting with novelty pop on "Stool Pigeon". But who could resist such a catchy delight?

Play #3

The bangiest banger that ever did bang! FYI, I was hooked three plays ago.

(Click here to see my original review)

Weekend: "Past Meets Present"

22 July 1982

"The title is appropriate, as Weekend's music has one foot in today, and the other in Radio 2 about 20 years ago when it was called the Light Programme."

— Dave Rimmer

In a recent episode of the brilliant Chart Music podcast, host Al Needham and guests Taylor Parkes and Simon Price discuss a Top of the Pops episode from 1983 in which Siouxie & The Banshees The Creatures perform their cover of the Herbie Mann standard "Right Now". Though a half-baked attempt, it is still them dabbling in jazz, something that a number of groups in the UK began doing, one of Needham, Parkes or Price point out, as they moved beyond soul. "Oh, like Weekend," I immediately thought to myself. (I have to say I took a small amount of satisfaction in these former Melody Maker scribes failing to mention the group that immediately sprang to my mind. Then again, I've only been aware of them myself for just a couple months so I needn't be too pleased with my powers of observation)

Alison Statton is not an especially big name in pop and those that are aware of her are more familiar with her first group of note Young Marble Giants, a trio from Wales who were a major influence on Kurt Cobain and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck (among others, I think) and one of the first acts to be associated with the term 'fey'. Of course being influential is interesting — up to a point at any rate — and worthwhile — so long as said acts themselves are any good — but it matters little if their stuff doesn't do much for you. That said, their one and only album, 1980's Colossal Youth, is pretty good listen, albeit one that you're better off only listening to just the once.

Better and arguably just as influential is Statton's next project, the jazzy new wave Weekend. As fey as ever, if not more so, their album La veriete and its concurrent singles, "A View from Her Room" and "Past Meets Present", are lush where Colossal Youth is sparse, matching better with Statton's deadened angelic vocals — a trait that would go on to influence an entire generation of indie popstresses. While Blue Rondo a la Turk were happy to get fans dancing to their brand of party hopping jazz, Weekend tasked themselves with some moody and reflective jazz pop that can be a tougher nut to crack but far more rewarding in the long term.

Jazz is only a part of what's on offer here: it also has a vaguely early-sixties French sound with touches of Baroque (although I must confess that I don't hear the "imaginary Beatles riff" that Dave Rimmer credits to Weekend guitarist Spike; I guess either he just imagined it or I'm not imagining enough). If "Past Meets Present" has a failing it's just that I don't dig it quite as much as cop pick "The View from Her Room" from a previous post. The sax solo near the end is nice but it doesn't quite leave quite as much of a mark the way the Lester Bowie-esque trumpet playing on "View" does. Statton's vocal, as Rimmer notes, is buried among the rest of the music which sounds pleasant but the lyrics are mostly lost on me; its predecessor has a story to tell about, er, views from some girl's room (or something) which makes it the choice of at least one Smash Hits-themed blogger out there.

"Past Meets Present" went nowhere just as Rimmer predicted but just a few months later Siouxie & The Banshees The Creatures were dabbling in jazz and a new outfit fronted by Jam mouthpiece Paul Weller was touching up his new sound with some Blue Note and the likes of Everything but the Girl and Sade were right around the corner. Give Weekend a bit of credit — or blame them if you are so inclined.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Marshall Crenshaw: "Cynical Girl"

Every pop music scene produces an American singer-songwriter who is widely championed by the music press but ignored by virtually everyone else. The hippies had John Fahey, the more individualist seventies had Randy Newman and the new wave early-eighties had Marshall Crenshaw. (The Generation X equivalent would probably be Elliott Smith although I feel Paul Westerberg fits in with this lot too) Irony seldom works in the hands of Americans so it feels like our Marshall really means it on this one — either that or he really means not meaning it. Good if inessential listening. "I wanna listen to an inessential song / One about love that ain't too long": oh, stop it.

The Associates: "Party Fears Two"

4 March 1982

"The song is excellent with an Abba-style piano tune (at least, I think it's a piano) breaking up the verses, rolling drums and a lyric which starts in the shower and proceeds to a party."
— Neil Tennant

"At least I think it's a piano". Much as I love music, I must confess that I have no ear. I can't hold a tune for the life of me, I've never been much cop at playing an instrument and aspirations to form a massively successful pop group long ago evaporated when I finally began to accept what I failure I've always been. (My one talent, if you can call it that, is for composing parodies, albeit done strictly at a dilettante level) Nor do I understand music to any degree beyond the basics. I used to think that squelching and DJ scratching came as a result of tricks of the mouth. And I'm still not completely sure exactly what a chord is.

It is therefore nice to read a Smash Hits critic expressing some confusion as to an instrument being played. And this particular Hits hack is no mere lightweight. Neil Tennant may have been a History graduate from the north of England with a background in publishing but he was soon to front my favourite group of all time. His musical ignorance makes me feel a little bit better about my own. (Tennant would have done well to check out "Party Fears Two"'s accompanying video in which the camerman spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on a fetching Martha Ladly of Martha & The Muffins as she nonchalantly twinkles the keys)

I'd been anticipating this first Tennant review ever since I unleashed this blog and I was hoping it would be a good one. Long familiar with some of his most arresting lyrics, I wondered if his criticism would mark a not dissimilar territory. (In particular, I imagined that his bitchy, irony-strewn numbers such as "Miserablism" and "Shameless" would make for superb critical fodder) It comes as a surprise, then, to read that Tennant has his music lover's hat on here, expressing appreciation for rock and funk and jazz and Gary Numan, genres I would never normally associate with Neil Tennant's discerning tastes.

But I hesitate from making this piece all about its critic — especially since he'll be making a fair share of appearances as both reviewer and reviewed in the years ahead — because the SOTF is an absolute gem, a gorgeous mix of sunny joie de vivre and acute melancholy. McKenzie's operatic Bowie vocal doesn't quite gel at first but it gradually makes itself at home in the song, eventually cascading into a blissful twenty second finale alongside Ladly's catchy as all hell keyboards and some lovely strumming from Alan Rankine. And it only gets better with each subsequent listen.

It's sad, then, to consider that this would end up being as great as The Associates ever got, their promise imploding on McKenzie's increasingly temperamental behaviour. Their position as the future of British pop ended up being usurped by the once and former Smash Hits scribe Neil Tennant.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Weekend: "The View from Her Room"

Indie-inflected jazz that isn't simply ahead of its time, it's better than virtually any of the generation of UK-based, Sinatra-inspired acts that were soon to emerge from Glasgow and Hull and, yes, Woking. Tennant fails to mention that Weekend's vocalist is Alison Statton, late of influence-on-everyone, bought-by-no-one's the Young Marble Giants, who manages the transition from sparse post-punk to jazz balladeering rather well. Like The Associates, we're hearing a future that never happened: it all could have been so different.