Hook, Line & Sinker: June 1998
Archived
Bernard Butler
People Move On
Columbia
Retroglam artists Suede have often been compared to The Smiths, so when guitarist Bernard Butler quit the band over a spat with singer Brett Anderson, it seemed like Morrissey and Marr all over again. Taking a tip from the Moz, Suede cloned another guitar hero and pressed on. Unlike Johnny Marr, however, Butler seems able at least to function without someone to push against. His second solo offering, “People Move On,” is a peach-fuzz lush orchestration of texture, washes of synth and Hammond organ, piano, vibes, flute, “Kashmir” strings, even Pink Floyd-esque gospel backup vocals. These overproduced slabs of Glam-o-Rama sound sort of hollow without Anderson’s Tinker Bell charm to set them off. Butler, or whoever is singing on this, isn’t exactly frontman material. His voice sounds remarkably like Roddy Frame (of Aztec Camera), more suited to the album’s slower, pared-down ballads than its wannabe power pop anthems. Although the song titles are among the worst in recent memory (“You Just Know,” “You’ve Got What it Takes,” etc.) the songs themselves aren’t half bad, if you skip the long noodly guitar solos. There are few lyrical surprises, for example on the title track: “There’s a man following me down the street / Holding roses for all the girls he meets I And his hair curls down to his feet I He gives me the creeps.” A vengeful Suedehead stalker, perhaps? The rest of the album, alas, doesn’t follow up on this. When he rasps “the songs in my head you write” in “Autograph” I wonder what imaginary star is writing the songs in Butler’s head, and why he isn’t singing them, too.
Glide
Disappear Here
Shock Records
“Original Australian music” is arguably somewhat of an oxymoron: all the really cool bands are from New Zealand. I bet these boys all slip Starbucks lattes while riffing around bad love and heroin withdrawal. Singer William Arthur is a less unhinged version of Gordon Gano (of the Violent Femmes), a good thing in my book, but it may grate on some listener’s ears. It’s probably better if you don’t listen too closely to the words (which you weren’t going to do anyway); it’s that old frustrated-loser-faking-sensitivity-to-get-laid thing all over again.
The Femmes at least do it with a (sick) sense of humor, but Glide takes themselves far too seriously. What they do have, though, is a fair sense of melody and an even better sense of dynamic. The album kicks off with a slash of flamenco guitar, and drummer Jason Kingshott likes to waltz, giving the songs sway and careen rather than plod. The guitar’s crispy-hard edge is set off by moody chording, an honest to goodness Mellotron, and by Vicki Norris‘ backing vocals. At its best, as on the closing track, “Cradlesong,” “Disappear Here” approaches the scatter-shot of the Afghan Whigs, minus the homeboy poetry.
Jeff Buckley
Sketches from My Sweetheart the Drunk
Columbia
The long-awaited post-mortem, this two-disc set of twenty songs contains no B-sides, no outtakes from Grace or Live at Sin-e, but all new stuff, mostly unfinished songs and demos for the second album, put together by Buckley’s mother. Buckley’s band and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden were consulted on the selection and mixdown of the tracks, but nothing was added or changed. This is all according to liner notes, which are oddly blank about the source of some of these recordings. The almost-finished cuts are as strong as anything on Grace, and if anything more diverse, or disperse. Buckley was a singer first, and arranged his material around his voice, rather than around a single marketable style or genre.
“The Sky is a Landfill,” “Nightmares by the Sea,” “Witches,” “Rave” and “Vancouver” are in the same vein as Grace, with unexpected key changes and rhythmical quirks (probably the brain children of guitarist Michael Tighe, formerly of Captain Beefheart). The R7B groove of “Everybody Here Wants You” is distinguished only by double-tracked vocal virtuosity, while “Opened Once” and “Morning Theft” sound like Buckley priming himself for 4AD. Finally, there’s the singer’s interest in Sufi qaali, a blend of poetry and liturgical chant made popular by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (who died, eerily enough, not long after Buckley, and to whom the album is dedicated). Nusrat’s influence colors tracks such as “New Year’s Prayer” and “You & I,” showing to full advantage the dramatic twists and turns of the singer’s banshee wail.
The Memphis recordings, Buckley dicking around with a four-track, will probably annoy listeners whose taste in production runs to the flossy. Except maybe for the pornographic “Your Flesh Is So Nice” (included, I suspect, for fun, as a dig to the swooning legions who thought Buckley was such a sweet and sensitive guy), they contain the germs of what would probably have been great songs. Hopefully, Columbia will someday release an album of cover tunes, of which there are probably many floating around in the vaults, but failing that, this is all we’re likely to get. If you’re already One of Us, you didn’t need to be told. If you’re not, go get Grace first, and work your way up to this.
The Loud Family
Days for Days
Alias Records
Back in 1986 a band called Game Theory burned up the college charts with Lolita Nation, the Ray Gun Era’s answer to the White album’s snappy-smart pop songs, screechy jam-outs, breathy little folk numbers, all interspersed with snippets of random noise. It was sort of like reading James Joyce on an acid flashback. Game Theory died a long and painful death, partly strangled by bad production, partly by a revolving-door lineup, and partly because, let’s admit it, Scott Miller‘s nasal white-boy whine was probably not going to appeal to anyone with more than one testicle intact. Days for Days, Miller’s fourth release with his “new” band, The Loud Family, is more of the same quirky pop, cutting through the jangle of Big Star with a dissonant wedge of early Roxy Music (I think they still cover “Re-Make/Re-Model” live). The latest lineup brings back original Game Theory drummer Gil Ray and new pianist/backup singer Alison Faith-Levy, both good moves. Even though keyboards are finally coming back in, and bands following the Big Star are all over the airwaves, it’s not clear whether the Louds will ever get beyond their cult following of English grad students and C++ programmers. Most of this is too weird or too pretty, or both at the same time, to win widespread applause, much less get played on mainstream radio, where Soul Coughing is the upper limit of surreal. I mean, what does one do with lines like: “Christine, tell me to be quiet I Cause I’ve got some quiet to say I And I’m not sure I know how to get out of its way” set to a boppy beat, punctuated by flourishes of grand piano, in a song called, “Crypto-Sicko?” The answer: put it on, place tongue firmly in cheek and pass the pharmaceuticals.
Hugh
Brave Little Soldier
Mafia Money Records
Like The Loud Family, Hugh are another Bay Area band with a healthy Big Star obsession, but with more commercial savvy. The CD begins deceptively, with a pair of dreamy drugged-out songs that seem to stop just short of being finished Red House Painters tunes, perhaps? Then, we lurch into power pop mode, with blaster-guitars set on stun, tasty harmonies, splashy snare-rolls, smart-ass lyrics, and lots of squiggly things going on in the background. The obvious reference point here is Pavement, who they even try to one-up in “Pretty Good Pop Song.” It’s generally a bad idea to tell people who you’re trying not to be, and invite comparisons. But, truth be told, singer/multi-instrumentalist David Rosenheim has a better set of pipes than Steve Malkmus, and he’s more willing to use them. Definitely worth a listen. —Craig Arnold
Read more from June 1998:
Clutch
Crass Dismissed: June 1998
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