— Mark Ellen
What I previously said:
Reviewer Mark Ellen described this as "bursting its sides with lightness, depth and ingenuity" and it's not difficult to see why. Julian Cope and his old Teardrop mates leave nothing on the table for this, even if it does go on a bit long — although there could be a single edit that I'm not aware of, I used the version that closes the kind-of-dated-but-also-kind-of-timeless Kilimanjaro. A cracker.
Pop music in the seventies had been all about mega-successful albums. Rockists will obviously cite Led Zeppelin's fourth LP and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon but it wasn't just at the long haired metal bands and prog rockers who dominated with the 33⅓ format. David Bowie, Elton John, Joni Mitchell and (see below) Stevie Wonder built their hall-of-fame careers on the string of extraordinary albums they released over the decade. Bob Dylan returned to the top with Blood on the Tracks, his best work in a decade. Marvin Gaye broke out of his Motown straight jacket when he delivered the hugely influential What's Going On. Even disco artists got in on the act: with 12" singles still in their infancy, Donna Summer released LP's with extended cuts on the label Casablanca Records that captured to sweaty ecstasy of Studio 54. Some of theses individuals also did well on the singles charts at the same time but it was no longer a requirement and 45's were typically neutered to more radio-friendly running times.
There were holdouts to this trend, however. Paced by punk, British acts of the late-seventies began to focus on singles. Now, a lot of musicologists will go into all that stuff about the crippling recession of the time but this big picture explanation leaves out the realities of the everyday person and the towns they were living in. The economy may have been suffering but music was thriving. Clubs were all over the place and there were eager bands aplenty to play them every night. Independent record labels also began springing up.
British pop at the close of the seventies marked a return of the single as the preeminent format and many of the best albums of the time are almost like greatest hits collections. XTC's Black Sea, Madness' Absolutely, Dexys Midnight Runners' Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, The Jam's Sound Affects, The Specials' More Specials all still sound like compilatinos of singles and b-sides and they're all the better for it. (Elvis Costello took it to an extreme with Get Happy!! which was designed to look like an obscure old album and was packed with twenty soul/Motown-esque tracks)
But no one did this as well as The Teardrop Explodes. With a background in the psychedelic garage rock of Love and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, more prog tendencies on their second album Wilder and Julian Cope's subsequent career releasing sprawling LP's of thrilling nonsense, you might assume that they'd be a more album-oriented group like Joy Division or Talking Heads but you'd only be half-right. Debut Kilimanjaro has up to six singles on it (depending on which version of the album you have) but the group worked out a running order so expertly that you'd never know it was effectively a compilation album. Imagine if the numbers for, say, the classic Forever Changes had been culled from more than two years' worth of material while still sounding as coherent as it always has.
Initially a part of Liverpool-based indie label Zoo Records (co-run by David Balfe, who also happened to be their keyboard player, which is certainly a good way to get yourself signed), The Teardrop Explodes released a pair of well-regarded singles — "Sleeping Gas" and "Bouncing Babies" — that nevertheless failed to make much of an impact. Being on a tiny imprint, this hardly mattered: the records probably sold well enough around their Merseyside base while the group played gigs all over the place. An album was earmarked but didn't materialise in time. "Treason (It's Just a Story)" became their first single of the eighties and did well enough to become a sizable indie chart hit. Things were going well enough that they signed with major label Mercury and "When I Dream" became their first real shot at the mainstream.
Ellen is impressed that they've moved on from their former "sombre, sparser sound" which is something I'd never thought of until this week. It was only when I sequenced the Kilimanjaro album to play the first four singles in chronological order that I began to see his point. "Sleeping Gas" and "Bouncing Babies" are both spirited affairs but they were both produced with that clean, skeletal post-punk sound: chugging guitars, primal beats and some organ playing that could easily have been played by Steve Nieve of The Attractions — and with little else in the background. "Treason" is a turning point, with greater emphasis placed on dynamic effects courtesy of the famed Langer-Winstanley team. With major label backing, there was more of an opportunity to explore to the fullest extent, which sort of belies the punk ethos (one that is notably echoed by Julian Cope) that D.I.Y. values are best.
"When I Dream" wasn't the most obvious single in their repetoire. The closing track on Kilimanjaro, it is over five minutes long and really feels like the sort of deep cut that committed followers swear by while remaining obscure to everyone else. (Ellen calls it a "ballad" which is only really accurate in the realm of Teardrop/Cope numbers) They could've gone with "Poppies" or "Brave Boys Keep Their Promises" and no one would've blamed them. Yet, "When I Dream" deserved to have the privilege of headlining its own single. Less dense than earlier efforts, there's a pleasant bubbliness to the tune which lightens the song that Cope is singing. A much more restrained performance from Balfe on the keys ought to have been in order but that would have weighed it down. Cope is at his best when he sings profound material in as comical a style as possible and his Teardrop associates seem to understand this.
We tend to keep compilations at a distance from so-called studio albums (unless they happen to be one of those few accepted collections like Hatful of Hollow). Listeners like to think that groups craft their LP's in a similar fashion to the way The Beatles did with Please Please Me. Yet, "proper" albums may take months and years to record and they are frequently compiled just like a greatest hits. Either way, it doesn't matter; a sense of end-to-end unity is what we all crave when we sit down to listen to an album of any kind. Plus, it doesn't hurt to have some killer singles to put out at the same time. The Teardrop Explodes did more than enough in both respects, regardless of how it all came together.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Stevie Wonder: "Master Blaster (Jammin')"
Ellen is pleased that Stevie is back crafting lovely pop rather than whatever it is he was trying to do on that Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants thing. That said, he seems aware that the glory days are gone ("Three years ago his music was a celebration in itself. Now...who knows?"). Like Miles Davis, The Beatles and Bowie, Wonder had been leading music by the collar but now he was the one doing the following. "Boogie on Reggae Woman" was the closest thing to Jamaican music that I ever wanted from him but I'll take this as a bonus. Hotter Than July would be the first Stevie Wonder album in ages that no needed to have but at least the fumes he was riding on were from his incredible peak. Being a shadow of himself would have to wait a bit.
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