— Robert Smith
Integrity. Integrity. Not a word you hear a lot in music circles anymore (to the extent that I'm not sure whether to poo-poo Robert Smith for being so cliched and dated or if I should tip my hat to him for being so bloody novel). It's an obvious throwback to simpler, more rockist days when you were supposed to play your own instruments and write your own songs. A term frequently used yet seldom expounded upon. U2 allegedly had integrity but Rick Astley didn't and no one ever bothered to question this line of thinking; it was true simply because that's what we all believed.
I've knocked populism in the past in this space but it's worth considering that its forerunner wasn't up to much itself. Rockism was all about the dogma that old school rock 'n' roll values were all that mattered. It's why Bruce Springsteen remains slightly overvalued and why Tom Petty is worshiped for making a career out of creating the same pleasant but unremarkable Tom Petty records. Why power pop is considered a gold standard yet is all-too-often boring. Schoolmates who liked grunge or gangsta rap belittled me for being into Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode (even though members of both groups wrote their own songs and played their own instruments) because my stuff was "queer" while their's had a "message". Exploring past eras, Led Zeppelin was revered but ABBA was a "guilty pleasure" (again, the Swedes wrote their own songs, something the drunken Brummie foursome didn't always do). For all its sins, at least poptimism is all about judging the quality of music, not the supposed "integrity" of the artists.
I'm not sure Robert Smith is a rockist (I'd be very surprised to discover that's what he is) but integrity is important to him. The Cure grew out of punk and that generation was as protective of its spirit as they were down on the prog rockers and stadium theatrics that came before it. Keeping the flame of punk going in the indie scene mattered to a lot of people in the underground, especially with 1987 being the most eighties year imaginable. The writing/production assembly line of Stock Aitken Waterman was beginning to dominate the charts (Smith also reviews Astley's tepid follow up to "Never Gonna Give You Up" and has already had enough of them), rock dinosaurs were back and the post-punk generation was beginning to fade away so it's no wonder a fragment of what had been part of the scene ten years earlier would be so warmly greeted by some.
All this may read like I'm dumping on Smith's stint as singles reviewer but there's lots to enjoy in his write up. He makes several amusing remarks (of Astley's "Whenever You Need Somebody", he says "I'll probably find myself completely mortalled in Fellini's disco in Stockholm and dancing to this"; of The Fat Boys' Falling in Love", "...it's a very thin foundation on which to build your career — being fat. I speak from inexperience of course"; the great thing about the latter is that it's funny whether Smith means or not, especially given the rounder state he is in of late) and some of his tastes mirror my own (I think I love him just a little bit more because of how much he hates Eurythmics). He does better when trashing the records he doesn't care for than when he struggles to provide much of substance to say about his favourites — and I don't blame him. All in all, he does well in the role and was good enough to be asked back for a second time (he, in turn, must have enjoyed the task enough to have accepted the invitation) which we will get to next year.
This is the second appearance on this blog for That Petrol Emotion, the first being earlier in the same year when Shane MacGowan gave his approval to "Big Decision". It's notable that two guest reviewers who were close to the same age and both children of punk would be their biggest supporters in Smash Hits. The single "Swamp" was released in the summer of '87 but no one bothered reviewing while Barry McIlheney gave a positive critique of their album Babble, one that didn't fawn over the group's "integrity". The likes of NME and Melody Maker were enthusiastic of them but they, too, were there to keep the punk fires burning in the indie scene. While they didn't go so far as to brandish the word 'integrity', there was always a sense that they were championed by people who admired what they stood for rather than what they created.
"Big Decision" didn't do much for me either but at least a vague hint of its chorus and tune has stayed with me over the past few months; on the other hand, I've been listening to "Genius Move" over the past week and I still can't remember anything about it. I put it on and it goes about its business as if refusing to want my attention. As is inevitable, Smith mentions the connection to The Undertones, a band he used to like though not love since he never cared for Feargal Sharkey's voice. And, yeah, the Shark's singing is an acquired taste and I can understand it not being everyone's thing but implied here is a preference for the generic vocals of Petrol frontman Steve Mack. And while the young American doesn't ruin "Genius Move", he isn't able to make it rise above the competition either. And no one does in the end. There's nothing wrong with it except that it's just another pained indie hopeful in a scene drowning in them. You may believe that alternative acts from the eighties are "overlooked" or that they "deserved a bigger audience" — just don't say "criminally underrated", a term that no longer has any meaning — but the special groups tended not to fall through the cracks. Groups that were much better than That Petrol Emotion, though they did have integrity, I'll give them that.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Jesus & Mary Chain: "Darklands"
Smith considered the latest from the Reid brothers for SOTF and he would've done better had he gone with them. A little less thrilling than their early work (Smith admits it "isn't particularly stunning" and implies that he's much fonder of The Jesus than the single itself; I suppose they oozed integrity too), "Darkness" requires more time to digest but the listener's patience is rewarded by the multitude of hidden depths. As Smith notes, the Reids were masters of pinching melodies and riffs from a bevy of sources and making it seem like it was all their doing. They sound less like The Velvet Underground here but that could just be because they sound more like everyone else. Amazingly, no one managed to sound like them.
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