The Sugarcubes: "Birthday"

7 September 1988

"Q. Why are The Sugarcubes' record company re-releasing this splendiferous waxing?

A. Because it's the best thing that Iceland's sole famous pop group have ever done and because this is actually a brand new version recorded with the help of Jim and William from The Jesus And Mary Chain."

— Josephine Collins

People had been trying to warn us for a long time that there was this fabulously talented chanteuse from the tiny nation of Iceland who was going to be huge. The Sugarcubes had only formed in 1986 but hipster critics from the NME and the Melody Maker were already praising them to death just a year later. Twelve months on from that and they were the musical guests on an episode of Saturday Night Live and they still hadn't had a Top 40 in either the UK or US. Their fanbase grew but for the rest of us they remained this group whose debut album was always in the discount racks of HMV stores. Then it was 1993 and Björk was everywhere. It only took seven years but here she was, an overnight success. (Of course, no one knew what was coming for her but it was easy to see that The Sugarcubes were going to be something else — and this wasn't all down to their unique vocalist)

Rock guitarists were on the defensive by the end of the decade. Most of them found the eighties to be a cess pool of fairlight synths, drum machines and, more recently, sampling. The "real" music they had grown up on in their bedrooms, basements and garages no longer had a place alongside all this "manufactured" junk that was dominating the charts. They seemed unaware that hip hop had been every bit as D.I.Y. as punk and were similarly ignorant to their beloved Beatles having been masters of studio trickery which clashed with rock 'n' roll mythology. The remix had long been a staple of dance pop but Coldcut's groundbreaking retooling of Erik B & Rakim's "Paid in Full" made it a much more commercially viable option. So, too, did the Quincy Jones remix of New Order's "Blue Monday", once a brilliantly dark 12" sensation that the legendary producer/jazz musician turned into a glorious pop song (one that this writer prefers to the original).

Remixes were anathema to rock purists so it was a good thing that Jim and William Reid were anything but classic rock snobs. Rather than rope in, say, The Beatmasters or Frankie Knuckles to twist their 1987 single "Birthday" into a rave up favourite (something Björk would not have been against a few years later), they got their drinking pals from Scottish act The Jesus & Mary Chain to drench their trademark buzzsaw guitars and slop buckets full of feedback all over it. The results seem unnecessary on paper but proved to be exactly what was needed. While there's no denying that the version from a year earlier is outstanding, it still sounds like they were struggling to hide the influence of the Cocteau Twins. By making "Birthday" more of a Jesus & Mary Chain single, it ended up sounding like nothing that had ever been made.

As I have said before about J&MC, the Reids had patented a method of burying their vocals beneath layers of distortion rather than screaming and shouting over the racket. While this would seem to be exactly what you shouldn't do, it somehow worked and fans had to force themselves to listen closely to whispers among loads of chaos. This is somewhat the case here as well only Björk is a much stronger singer than Jim and William Reid. While it is much easier to appreciate her range on the original mix of "Birthday" (especially the way her voice pierces and wails on the Icelandic version "Ammæli"), her vocal seems all the more extraordinary as she tries to push her way past all that Mary Chain noise. It's impossible to say which is better but the two compliment each other not unlike The Beatles' electrified "Revolution" and its acoustic companion "Revolution 1" — one may prefer one or the other but they're best appreciated in tandem.

In a fortnight teeming with Stock Aitken Waterman releases (no less than four reviewed by Josephine Collins and that's not including stable king Rick Astley with an early stab at creative independence), as well as plenty of solid yet unspectacular pop from the likes of Michael Jackson and even the Pet Shop Boys (big a fan of them as I am, "Domino Dancing" has never been a huge favourite of mine), "Birthday" stands out as a testament to The Sugarcubes as one of the finest groups of their time, the Reids expertly transforming someone else's work into something they could have created and Björk as a generational vocalist and performer. It even suggests what she might have done in the nineties had she gone in the direction of indie rock. The Top 40 wasn't quite ready for them but indie kids were starting to catch on. We can't say we weren't warned.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Pasadenas: "Riding on a Train"

Quite the contrast from a Sugarcubes/J&MC collaboration, it would be easy and understandable to dismiss "Riding on a Train" as derivative fluff. It's not especially profound or fresh but it's a highly enjoyable record nonetheless. All five Pasadenas have top notch voices and none of them resort to over-emoting the way R&B Romeos couldn't stop doing just a few short years later. (This was a time when people were still using the word 'soul' to describe this kind of music which I always felt was much more in line with top flight mainstream pop than the bulk of subsequent R&B acts who always seemed painfully concerned with 'keeping it real' and all that) I thought it was stupid when it began it's push up into the UK Top 20 that September but the earworm tune eventually won me over. We need more groups like The Pasadenas.

That Petrol Emotion: "Genius Move"

21 October 1987

"I like what they do because it sounds like they're enjoying themselves and it sounds like they could go wrong and I like that in a record. They are a group that's got integrity."

— 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.

~~~~~

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.

The Jesus & Mary Chain: Some Candy Talking

2 July 1986

"It may well be filched from a very, very ancient LP by The Velvet Underground but who gives a flying fish when confronted with something so tragic and melancholy and melodic and utterly delightful?"

— Lola Borg

The Jesus & Mary Chain last popped up on this page back on Christmas Day, 2019. In Smash Hits time (ie real time), it's actually been about eighteen months between "Never Understand" getting an enthusiastic SOTF from DJ Andy Kershaw and the Some Candy Talking EP being similarly recommended by staff writer Lola Borg. Listen to the two releases back-to-back, however, and it's like time standing still. You'd even be forgiven for assuming that the latter work predated the former.

Indie groups who hit it big are frequently accused of selling out, typically by the very fans that helped get them there. What they fail to consider — beyond the fact that there's nothing inherently wrong with success — is that having hits, becoming famous and making money changes everything. Music critic Taylor Parkes recently made this point on the Chart Music podcast in the context of The Smiths and Morrissey's rapid decline as a songwriter. Drawn to the singer's sharp early work, Parkes concludes that he had a lifetime as a angsty, self-righteous youth to compile his observations into the songs that make up the group's self-titled debut album, as well as the material that made up the companion compilation Hatful of Hollow. By 1985, his bedsit scribblings have all dried up and he's reduced to composing fresh material from the perspective of a whiny pop star, tackling serious issues with naiveté, making lame quips about the poor and the needy being "selfish and greedy" and being increasingly unconvincing about being inadequate. Sure, he invented the concept of powerful individuals pretending to be victims (cheers, Stephen) but his art suffered. (Though at least the bugger never sold out so there is that)

The Jesus & Mary Chain weren't on the same level as either critical darlings nor in terms of commercial might as The Smiths but they were doing all right for themselves. Psychocandy sold in respectable numbers for such an abrasive act and it managed to finish second to Tom Waits' Rain Dogs as NME's Album of the Year (nine spots ahead of Meat Is Murder by The Smiths). But tensions were high with William Reid fraying from the constant touring, an over-indulgence in alcohol and drummer Bobby Gillespie's imminent departure. This could very easily have been the moment they lost the plot, in terms of both their creativity and their sanity, but for the Reid brothers decision, as Zoë Howe recounts in her splendid JAMC biography Barbed Wire Kisses, to "return to East Kilbride to try to write songs in the kitchen".

The idea of Jim and William spending their precious free time in the nondescript home they grew up in right in the middle of a bleak Scottish New Town outside of Glasgow in the greyness of Thatcher's Britain might seem peculiar but it was precisely the same setting in which they conjured up the likes of "Upside Down", "Never Understand" and "Just Like Honey". Composing on the road may have suited the talents of Lennon and McCartney as they sat on hotel beds "face to face and eyeball to eyeball" but it couldn't have done much for the volatile Reids. The "inspiration" of East Kilbride was in its lack of culture, its stifling atmosphere and its neighbours with their (to quote The Style Council in their own New Town demolishing "Come to Milton Keynes) "curtains all drawn". This was the sort of place they came from.

Though released as an EP, the title track is the clear standout and could have easily stood on its own as a single. This scarcely matters (Lola Borg doesn't mention the format and keeps her review strictly to the A side) but it does give equal prominence (at least in theory) to companion tracks "Psychocandy" and "Hit". It could just have been a thoughtful gesture to fans by having more than two cuts on their latest release, plus the promise of acoustic demos on the  Double 7" and 12" versions to really get their followers down to the local Our Price. This material is all perfectly fine even if there's something off about a JAMC song that isn't plugged in with maximum distortion.

As for "Some Candy Talking" itself, the song is about sex (not heroin as is often reported). Had the Reids been at work on it in a hotel room in Munich or Philadelphia, it would have been an altogether different beast. On the road there's booze flowing and groupies at one's disposal (or so I hear) so it's hard to imagine yearning for sex and futilely seeking it out coming from a night spent with a woman. Back in their family kitchen in East Kilbride, their sexual frustrations returned. There's no glamour in being a guitarist for an indie rock band up there. People talk about success and how everything changes when you return home but inadequacies also come back. The bully who duffed you up on a regular basis at school might suddenly be pleased to see you but how happy are you bumping into him? Now, for most this doesn't matter or it would be a situation to avoid but it was just what Jim and William needed. Nothing humbles the ego like being a nothing again.

Morale had been low on the road and their misery remained while holed up in East Kilbride. Having previously taken pride in their ability to fuse sugar-sweet melodies with ferocious lyrical darkness on earlier material, the Beach Boys/Girl Group lightness is expunged on "Some Candy Talking" in favour of pure aggression and pain. Is it a joy to listen to? Somehow it is. Yes, as Borg says, they sound more like The Velvet Underground than ever but there's lots to mine in "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "Venus in Furs" and the results of which developed into the sparse beauty of what would be their best album, 1987's Darklands. All the while never quite getting that wretched Scots New Town out of them. And how could they? They needed it now more than ever.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Vindaloo Summer Special: "Rockin' with Rita"

The daft side of indie which makes for a welcome pallet cleanser after all this dour Jesus & Mary Chain stuff, The Vindaloo Summer Special were a one off "super" group made up of comedian Ted Chippington, a still punk We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It and a nearly done Nightingales. Some good, if rather pointless, bit of summer fun, it certainly gives some idea of what a British B-52's might sound like. Amazingly, it almost became a hit but there were much worse records to be buying during the summer of '86.

The Jesus & Mary Chain: "Never Understand"

28 February 1985

"Its simplicity and individuality amid countless, cowardly records in the review pile striving to sound like each other is nothing short of exhilarating. Good vibrations."

— Andy Kershaw

The class of '85 is so far a trip through the British indie scene (although that will soon change). If The Associates weren't quite the same as the others, they were at least adjacent to what was going on in the periphery and their journey down the dumper in the aftermath of Alan Rankine's departure ensured they were down to a loyal but diminished following of people with possible interests in The Cure, The Smiths, Bauhaus, Depeche Mode and Siousxie & The Banshees — Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet fans probably weren't listening anymore. Frank Chickens were as much performance artists as musicians and they, too, had a small following that was never going to grow enough to get them near the charts. Julian Cope had, like The Associates, enjoyed hit singles but his muse had become far too out there for him to get anything more than the odd token top forty appearance.

With all due respect to these three acts, none were of much importance to UK indie. (I type this feeling like if I had any readers they'd complain that I'm ignoring Cope's influence but (a) I'm not overly convinced he had much of an effect and (b) he was way too much of a one-off to be taken as a capable alternative figure; his erratic talent could have meant millions of fans or a smattering of loyalists in Monmouthshire but either scenario doesn't make him any more indie than pop - in the end he's just Julian Cope, an alternative to absolutely everyone else) Few major figures materialise; just as it's rare to come across a pop act that bursts forth to sustained success and a positive effect on other groups, indie acts that really matter are difficult to come by.

The Jesus & Mary Chain don't seem quite as radical as they must have been back in the mid-eighties — and much of that is down to their massive influence over British and American indie. While hard rock, metal and punk had all been accompanied by vocalists screaming, shouting and sneering, few had ever heard (or not heard as the case may be) someone like Jim Reid casually mumbling and whispering his way through a track such as "Never Understand", as if demanding that his audience really listen to him through noise. Fans unwilling or unable to do so were still able to enjoy William Reid's crunching, slithering guitar parts thereby bringing together indie types with interests in angsty lyrics and chaotic feedback into following one act.

For all of that, a figure as musically knowledgeable as Andy Kershaw (of The Old Grey Whistle Test) is able to see through the racket and detect a "breezy melody curiously reminiscent of The Beach Boys". Those of us who are as well versed in Pet Sounds as they are in Psychocandy (if not more so) can see this too but I imagine the average Chainer wouldn't have be aware of it had William Reid dressed up like Mike Love and Bobby Gillespie gone a little less down the dirt bag path to model himself after Dennis Wilson. But the influence doesn't stop "Never Understand" from being as unique as virtually everything else on offer is typical.

But from the vantage point of nearly thirty-five years, it's a record that sounds like much of what would come later. Only much better. Not everyone can whisper over screaming guitar feedback and make it work no matter how hard they might have tried.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

"Starvation" / "Tam tam pour l'Ethiopie"

A self-titled split single released as a reggae/African music answer to "Do They Know It's Christmas?", "Starvation" / "Tam tam pour l'Ethiopie" are good enough songs not to even require a good cause which makes its low chart placing even more shameful. The UB40/Madness led "Starvation" is the more commercial with a great singalong chorus but "Tam tam pour l'Ethiopie" gets better with repeated hearings. The white guilt of Band Aid has never bothered me as much as many but something done from the perspective of the millions of poor victims of the Ethiopian famine is much more potent than cries of "thank god it's them instead of you". Just give it a try.