Who's for Hawaii?

A Bestiary of the Creatures. Five Stars.

I don't usually do complilations, but this one is a cohesive library: it is the collection of pre-Boomerang Creatures, containing their debut EP Wild Things, the album Feast and couple of singles.

The Creatures were a spin-off of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Siouxsie Sioux and drummer Budgie teamed up in 1981 and made Wild Things, seemingly as an experiment with no intention of it becoming a long-running off-shoot.

Wild Things is five tracks worth of jungle percussion that holds promise not always lived up to. It gets off to an explosive start with Mad-Eyed Screamer. Anyone familiar with the Banshees will notice that Sioux didn't really have to change her writing style to accomodate the extremes of exotica that are the trademark of early Creatures.

So Unreal proves that Budgie is simply an amazing percussionist. The whole track is nothing but percussive elements and Sioux's reverberating voice. The melody makes it beautiful.

But Not Them has energetic drumming, I'll give it that. But it's repetitive to a fault. Sioux sings all three verses exactly the same, and then repeats them in the same order. A highly boring track.

Wild Thing is dissonance incarnate. Lots of theatrical pauses and her voice grates. Moving along...

Thumb is lovely. Soft traffic sound affects(it's about a hitchhiker), the percussion a gentle accent, Sioux nearly a cappella to start. It's haunting and understated, very slowly gaining power. It's a relief after the last two and a high point to end the EP on.

However, it's only an indication of things to come. In 1983, a year after the Banshees' creative highpoint of A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, the Creatures returned with the full album Feast. Taking Hawaii for inspiration, it opens with bonechilling, howling metallic dementia. Then gentle wind chimes on the tide take over while she sings the beautiful Morning Dawning. This is the only record I think she did where she lets other singers on. Wordless chanting backs her up on this elegant lament.

Inoa'Ole doesn't have English lyrics. It's the strangest song they ever did, featuring prominent chanting (courtesy of The Lamalani Hula Academy Hawaiian Chanters) which fades out as Budgie and Siouxsie come into play. She vocalises wonderfully and it is highly atmospheric.

Ice House is an erotic glance at tropical flowers. It's weird and suitably disturbing and gothic. Like much of Feast, it's not so much a song in itself, as it blends into the tracks before and after.

Therefore it segues perfectly into Dancing on Glass, an imagery packed little gem.

Then it's on to the good-natured Gecko. Percussion is fabulous, and the song is memorable. It's silly nonsense, which is rare from Sioux. There's also Jungle background (recorded in somebody's backyard) which adds colour.

Sky Train is a torrential downpour of drums. This one is Budgie's show. Sioux howls a bit. Her one line is buried. It's a really freaky "tune," but the ambiance fits perfectly onto the rest of the album.

Festival of Colours gets back to tribal chanting, with Sioux joining in. It's a wonderful track; sounds like the title, which is all you need to know.

Miss the Girl was the single. It got to No. 21, which isn't bad for a rather eccentric, though beautifully crafted track with a disturbing lyric apparantly about an abusive relationship.

Next up is A Strutting Rooster. Just like Sky Train, it's a drum powerhouse. Scarce any lyric and Sioux drowns her voice in echo anyway. Actually, the lyric is a traditional Hawaiian riddle.

More sound affects open Flesh. It's the finale and exceptionally unpleasant. It moves between Sioux dispassionately describing a decadent party and a dissonant chorus that flies in the face of the overall mood and dissolves in the end into cacophonous noise.

Then there's the B-side to Miss the Girl, and idle curiosity called Hot Springs in the Snow. It's an instrumental with no melody to speak of. Percussive noodling with a return from that metallic voice on Morning Dawning.

Lastly, two months after Feast and Miss the Girl, another single came out: Right Now/Weathercade. The latter plays first. Weathercade is probably one of the Creatures best tracks. It's got the exotic edge still, but also manages to stand as a good song. By far most of Feast blends into a one-of-a-kind atmosphere, but when taken apart, only a few of the songs are good standing alone.

Lastly, there's Right Now. Finger snapping and...a big band! The lyric was originally for Mel Torme back in the sixties and how the Creatures got ahold I'll never know. It's a hilarious pastiche and also a nifty little tune in its own right. The single made it to No. 14 in the U.K.

The Creatures disbanded until the late eighties when Boomerang, their most celebrated work, came out. Inspiration turned to Spain for that more accessible album.

If your favorite Banshees records are the McGeogh triptych, and you wish they'd done something afterwards with half as much bite, this is the record to get. Feast is completely out of print and A Bestiary manages to come to just 60 minutes, which is pretty decent for a comp.

The other side of New York

You know, as opposed to The Velvet Underground...

Bridge Over Troubled Water. Four and a half stars.

1970, and Simon and Garfunkel walked away with no less than six Grammys for what ended up as their final album. That makes it sound like the greatest album ever made, but the hype doesn't quite hold water. Not to say that this is a bad record - far from it. It's just that if you take it on a song by song analysis, you'll find a fair amount of filler is included.

And a cursory glance at the liner notes leave me wondering: where the hell was Garfunkel? Was he just on board for the harmonies and production, or what? He's not even credited among the featured musicians, and Simon was the songwriter, so I ask myself...

Garfunkel does get to sing lead on the lead-off title track, a kind-hearted piano ballad. It rises to a gorgeous crescendo, he has a heavenly voice and the strings that join in (on this and other songs) are tasteful and unobnoxious. Pay attention to the gunshot drum; it will be used to far better effect later on.

El Condor Pasa (If I Could) is an old Peruvian song. Simon lifted the melody and wrote his own words to it. It's my own favorite and only suffers from being way too short (a trait most of the songs share). The lyric is one of Simon's best, as it walks the knife-edge between being a sweet sentiment on the one hand, and tipping over into cutesy pie on the other.

Cecilia sounds like it came from an entirely different studio session. It's buoyant and all in harmony...and rather silly if one pays attention.

Being a pop duo, Simon and G never ever rock. The best you can hope for is a jaunty toe-tapper, like Keep the Customer Satisfied, which features punchy horns. It's more fun than Cecilia, and one has to admit, even ignoring the lyrics, that Paul Simon is a very clever songwriter; he seems to avoid the common verse-chorus-bridge design that makes so many pop songs blend together. A lot is packed in a short amount of space.

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright is a beautiful, quiet little number. I'm not sure why he wrote an ode to the architect in question, but there's a peaceful melancholy to it and it makes an excellent change of pace.

The Boxer is the true centerpiece of the album and maybe of their entire careers, together and solo. It's a production miracle, the gunshot drum returns and absolutely makes the "lie-la-lie" chorus, and the lyric holds up perfectly. It's epic, at five minutes by far the longest track included, and emotionally satisfying. The album would crumble into dust without this one.

Baby Driver cheapens the effect, more by its placement than anything else. It's comic and silly (includes car sounds, for instance). There's nothing wrong with it, but in the long run, it heralds the downslide of Bridge Over Troubled Water.

The Only Living Boy in New York is another standout. I believe Simon wrote it during one of Garfunkel's absences, which gives the words meaning. The harmonies included herein are breathtaking, even more so than all the others. It returns the album to greatness, but Baby Driver so clashes with the two serious songs that sandwich it, that this whole half of the record sticks in my craw.

Why Don't You Write Me? is another rather light trifle. It's one of the weaker moments, but the total despair in the lyric is completely at odds with the jaunty music surrounding it, and that makes it interesting.

Bye Bye Love is live (weird). Was Simon hard up for material? Its inclusion is a surreal twist. For those who might not have realised their similarity to the Everly Brothers, this will set them straight. The audience handclaps are nice, but Simon and Garfunkel bring nothing new to the song, and since Simon can write real good, I'm stumped as to how this got on here.

Song for the Asking makes an excellent coda. Guitar and strings while Simon breaks the fourth wall and finishes off with a tune equally as uplifting as the opener. The only problem is that, at less than two minutes, it's the shortest track on record.

I can't be too hard on it overall, as it is entirely pleasant and very well done. Even Bye Bye Love is a nice extra. If it weren't for the inconsequential filler, and the overall disorganized side two, and the fact that the last track should be called Half a Song for the Asking, this would be perfect.

Even with those problems noted, this is a wonderful little album, if you don't mind light music. It has left me with the desire to hear a lot more Simon and G.

Epitaph

I realize that I mostly keep to the rock arena, but I'm compelled to write a brief note on Lena Horne, who passed away on May 9th. No one can pretend to enjoy so-called Easy Listening music without having heard her voice. And since I hadn't, in respect to her, I popped in Stormy Weather.

Quite simply, if you haven't yet heard that CD, go do so. Lena had a voice of liquid crystal, one which didn't just sing the right notes, but would catch thoses notes and make them earn their keep. Like Tony Bennett, she clearly had a great respect for her source material, and a verve for the telling; a spin for each individual song that made even the novelty numbers as powerful and dynamic as the torch ballads.

She was also in quite a few Hollywood musicals, and while I'm sure we can argue about the merits of those, one can't but admire her elegance and glamourous air. By the time she got to the Stormy Weather album in 1956, the squeaky-clean delivery from the fourties (such as in the orginal cut of Stormy Weather) was being supplanted by a brimstone flair, but the glamour never went away.

She was a class act, a dear and wonderful singer who had her Moment, had her success, and has left us a marvelous recorded legacy. Wherever she is now, God bless.

As to the album Stormy Weather, I don't actually have any clue how to review an album not of rock lineage. I'm inclined to say just go track it down and let it speak for itself. As with most records of that age, it's short. Only a half hour. And the lady never put a foot wrong. She saved the rather quaint lyrics of Tomorrow Mountain, gave all the fast songs jive (it's honestly just a fun CD to listen to) and the timbre of her voice made all the torchy moments hit home.

There was only one Lena Horne. Now I just wonder why it took me so long to get around to listening to her...

One of the new wave girls...

Return of the Giant Slits. Four and a half stars.

I'll begin by saying there is no guarantee (whatever your musical preference) that
you'll like this. The Slits stepped out of the punk arena and into new wave. But since that's almost as generic an umbrella term as "rock" it's not much help.

Put simply, this is just plain weird. It's quite daring and innovative for its time, highly experimental and decidedly uncommercial. It's been doomed to obscurity, of course.

Though the Slits have had numerous men in the band (notably Budgie, who went on to higher profile work in Siouxsie and the Banshees), they've always been considered a girl band and the focus has always been on Ari Upp, frontwoman and singer of amazing distinction. Throughout this, their second album, released in 1981, what stands out first is her fascinating, wandering voice, which interprets lyrics seemingly regardless of their meaning. She leaps up and down the scale, warbles and howls like a half-mad jungle native, ranging from playful to angry and back again, and slurring her words so much that it's hopeless to try and make sense of them.

The music almost equals Ari and her backup singers in the bizarre, since it trips along on afro-centric beats and rhythms.

I own the Japanese import of the CD and I don't know if that's the reason it opens with the closing song Earthbeat...in Japanese. You certainly couldn't find a less accessable way to open an album if you tried. Driven by tribal drums, any melody it may have possessed is knocked off center by the odd handling of Japanese. It also features Ari doing her best attempt at a bird call, adding to the generally exotic flavour.

Or What It is? takes up English. Its time signature is all crosseyed, forever halting just when it starts to go somewhere. The sheer amount of strange percussion, including rattles, and Ari in prima-donna overdrive, makes it a continuation of eccentricity; but the second half of the song takes up a gradual fade on a chorus that, coming from these ladies, is downright appealing.

Face Place kicks in with trombone, juxtaposing an almost sinister with the more light-hearted tempos of a carnival. Three piece harmonies practicing vocal acrobatics... it's like the Boswell Sisters channeling Yoko Ono, and it sounds as fresh as the day it was recorded.

Walk About is the most appealing song on the whole record, possessing a cool, funky riff and a fascinating vocal line. It wasn't a single, and would have gone nowhere if it had, but one can dream...

Difficult Fun takes up flute, the sort of synth one hears on a lot of eighties fantasy films and soaring vocals.

Animal Space/Spacier is one of the darker tracks. The lyrics are a little more comprehensible, but it's really Ari that makes these tracks what they are. This one has a good guitar solo on it. And the "spacier" part is the instrumental only section, which is chaotic, yet with a distinct method to the madness that keeps the beat up front and keeps the jamming from going too far off the mark.

Horns take up Improperly Dressed. The chorus shows off her higher register warbling nicely, though it's a bit too out-there and chaotic, from a melodic standpoint, for my taste.

Life on Earth is decidedly ominous. Ari goes into higher register, backed by a far from heavenly choir. They sound a bit tormented, forming a strange contradiction to the more playful main vocal. It dissolves at the end into what sounds like a tribal funeral lament, and all the instruments fall away.

Then it's the English version of Earthbeat. And it's just as odd as the Japanese. Driven by that same drumming, it's somewhat shorter.

It took me a few listens to really even begin to appreciate the various and sundry oddities Return of the Giant Slits has to offer. The Slits are not for everyone, and I wouldn't blame a person for being far less enthusiastic than me over this album. It was the last thing the band did, and far from an all-occasions CD. I've described it to the best of my ability. Now you'll just have to track it down yourself.

And in the end...

Let It Be. Four and a half stars.

Iconic, isn't it?

It's my pet theory that 1970 was a dismal capstone to the public who'd been through the golden era of the 60s. New talent was rising everywhere you turned, yet many of the "old gaurd" as it were, failed to make it through. Woodstock had already failed to change the world, or even the music festival, as the recent Isle of Wight indicated. The Stones had lost Brian Jones. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were both casualties of the rock lifestyle and it must have looked like Eric Clapton was following suit. Dylan had turned his back on everyone, releasing the outrageous Self Portrait. Even the endearing team Simon and Garfunkel, who were at the peak of success and had just won a Grammy, couldn't keep it together.

Then there were the Beatles. The beloved Fab Four who had started it all. And they broke up amidst much public rancor. It was common knowledge that McCartney was suing his former band mates, Lennon was busy exorcising his demons and Harrison was assembling a regular rock orchestra in preparation to blow everyone's mind with a triple LP success. Amidst all of this, Let It Be was released.

Let it Be is a curiously maligned Beatle disc, perhaps because everyone heard it after the production marvel of Abbey Road, though it was actually recorded first. It was designed to sound rough - their intent was to distance themselves from the tricked out studio releases of the past few years. So there's a lot of studio chatter (provided by John Lennon) and a lot of throwaway tunes.

Unfortunately these plans went awry and Phil Spector got his hands on the tapes and did overdubs, leaving the record to swerve between overproduction and simple roots rock.

John opens the record with a mock intro, then Two of Us kicks off. It's one of Let It Be's crowning achievements; a lovely acoustic duet (impeccably harmonized) between John and Paul. It's got a beautiful refrain from Paul and a laid-back, almost pastoral feel.

One false start later and Dig a Pony starts. It's a guitar dominated rock tune, with a lyric that John later dismissed as rubbish. You can see why. It's such nonsense it might have been written in a day. That doesn't stop it from being enjoyable, of course. It has a rough charm to it.

Across the Universe is a classic, despite the Spector treatment it gets. From this era, it is Lennon's signature tune. Has an out-there lyric and an haunting delivery. It sticks with you.

I Me Mine is a Harrison contribution. Considering what he had in storage, this is a curiously light offering. I've never been a fan of the chorus, but the plaintive verses about human self-centeredness ring true. It's only two minutes long, but that's an epic compared to the next one.

Dig It is a tiny excerpt from a massive jam. It fades in with John leading the charge, so to speak, and then fades out at less than 50 seconds... It adds character to the album, of course.

Let It Be is a masterpiece. Paul's finest moment for the foreseeable future. Spector doesn't damage it, as the sweep and grandeur of the song smothers him, not the other way around (See The Long and Winding Road). It sounds religious, but it isn't at all. Listen to it when you're down. You'll feel better.

Maggie May is a traditional song. Lennon adopts a thick accent and proceeds to knock out about thirty seconds of it. Impossibly, it's shorter than Dig It. Again, character...

I've Got a Feeling is an interesting experiment. It starts as a McCartney throwaway, a not quite finished heavy rocker. Then, without missing a beat, it morphs into an even more incomplete Lennon bit. They'd done this sort of thing before (notably A Day in the Life), but never quite like this.

Another experiment is unveiled with One After 909, a song written in the early years of the Beatles, then brought out and dusted off for inclusion on this disc. Were they short of material? Perhaps. But the end result is a success.

The Long and Winding Road, a sad piano ballad from McCartney's pen, is next. It's awful. Spector finally saps the Beatles. Any emotional power it might have had is smothered underneath strings and a choir. Paul was furious, and damn, I don't blame him at all. Where was Martin when you needed him?

For You Blue is another Harrison throwaway. It's memorable for the woozy slide guitar. I Me Mine is the better contribution. It bears repeated listening better. Not that this is a bad song, especially if you like George.

So...the last track it the adored Get Back, a bouncy, instantly catchy little number which for some strange reason I have never warmed up to. It's a foot stomper, roots rock in action...I just don't like it very much.

Lennon ends the record with another bit of tongue in cheek mockery. Really, more than ever, you can hear the group splintering on this record. It's a constant tug of war between John and Paul, with George sticking his nose in when he can and Ringo minding his own business behind the drum kit. None of the rampant dislike going on behind the scenes makes it onto the record, but just viewing all the throwaway songs included, and the cover, where each of the four gets their own solitary portrait, and it's plain to see that as a band, things were over between them.

That they shelved this admirably messy LP and set aside their differences long enough to craft a cohesive swansong is another story. For what it's worth, I have always liked Let It Be, warts and all, far better than Abbey Road.

The troubadour's odds and sods album

Thanks for the votes from last time, people....This image is a bit smaller than the last one, partly for economical reasons. But it's not at all a good cover, and like Odessey and Oracle, it is not a good representation of what you'll find inside.

Mellow Yellow. Four stars.

Donovan Leitch really is in some ways the epitome of the sixties hippie ideal. By combining light folk leanings with trippy pop tunes and heavy brushes of psychedelia he manages to completely sum up one whole aspect of the counterculture of the time. He's also light, whimsical, twee. Naturally a bit dated.

Yet these are not bad things. They add to the music's charm, certainly. And Donovan has a lovely Scottish lilt to his voice and is a capable songwriter.

Prior to listening the only song I was familiar with on this 1967 album was the title track, which as it turns out was not at all representative of sound or quality. Mellow Yellow sports a punchy brass band and a lyric that is complete nonsense. There's a school of thought that believe Paul McCartney is doing backup vocals but (unless he's the one whooping it up in the background) I think that's a hoax. I don't really like this song, to be frank.

But that's no problem, because with Writer in the Sun quality goes way up. A gentle, swaying song, featuring a pastoral flute or two. It was written several years earlier when Donovan had believed his career to be over. The resignation and sorrow come across beautifully and the lyrics are far beyond the previous offering.

Sand and Foam has a dark, elegant guitar and the lyrics are so highly poetic as to be nearly incomprehensible the first time. This gives the whole thing a mysterious vibe and it's another highlight.

The Observation is very short, more memorable for the jazzy backup band than either melody or song. But it still gives proof of what an odd lyricist Donovan really is, as he uses the simplist rhymes imaginable (hustling and bustling, mellow yellow, trip out skip out flip out, etc) and can turn around and deliver something really accomplished and poetic - sometimes in the same song.

Bleak City Woman is another light moment. Innocuous and not at all memorable, but there you have it.

House of Jansch is the opposite. Instantly memorable with a very interesting lyric. Why? Because while nothing about it indicates it's a happy song, there's nothing especially sad about it either. Two minute pop songs are usually more overt than that. The title has nothing to do with the song contents, and seems to be meant as a tribute to one Bert Jansch, another Scot, one who founded the band Pentangle.

The real tour de force comes with Young Girl Blues. The voice is way too loud in the mix, and the fadeout is a bit too quick, but other than that! It gets your attention right away, more so with the pauses after every dour verse. "Blues" in a title is usually misleading, but this track is actually quite harrowing and dismal.

With Museum it returns to typical Donovan. A hip, swinging number to enjoy.

Hampstead Incident. Now listen to that guitar. Doesn't that sound a lot like the acoustic passage opening Babe I'm Gonna Leave You? Otherwise it's another dark track, this time featuring strings and an evocative lyric. I really like Donovan's darker work.

But it ends with Sunny South Kensington, a name-dropping, fast paced song. Donovan ditches his Scottish croon for a rather harsher voice, the sort used on his famous Sunshine Superman song. Good music anyway.

Oh, keep in mind, not one of these songs rocks, not even slightly. That really wasn't his forte. Some of them bounce a bit, is all.

Extra facts: Mellow Yellow is in fact not a proper recording at all, at least not from one complete session. It combines leftovers from the Sunshine Superman album, a single or two, and other odds and ends. This may explain the continuously shifting lineup of incidental instruments, or that may just be part of Donovan's style.

However, it does explain the lack of information about the session players. I've heard that it's Danny Thompson on double bass, and that John Paul Jones did arrangements. Based on the McCartney rumour, I'll take such info with a grain of salt.

Otherwise, all I have to say is that this is a nice little record. Fun and moody by degrees, and a good candidate for my list of afternoon tea comfort CDs.

Now in technicolour

Okay, this is an experiment, to see if I can jazz up my Blog by adding pictures and fancy elements...

Odessey and Oracle. Five stars.

Most people are unfamiliar with the Zombies, so here's a bit of background for their only proper album. Released in 1968, after the Zombies had been together for years, releasing single after single that went nowhere. They were never popular in England, though they did get two number one hits across the pond in America (one of which is included here).

In '68, they were ready and willing to call it quits. They were on a new label (CBS), had booked time in Abbey Road, produced themselves and broke up with minimum rancor upon completion.

Ironically, the track Time of the Season became a huge hit when released in America and there were calls for the band to reform. They refused, perhaps not wishing to exploit their success, and as Rod Argent said "it would have been a real downer if we had regrouped and then failed."

Argent was one of the two songwriters of the group, the other being Chris White. Colin Blunstone took distinctive lead vocals for most tracks. Hugh Grundy was the drummer, Paul Atkinson the guitarist, White the bass player. Argent played everything else.

I've never done the whole music history lesson before, but I thought I'd give it a try. Vote on whether you like these changes, please. Now, what about the music?

It's Mellotron heavy, very British pop songs, impeccably crafted with superb harmonies and backups. And surprisingly strong songwriting.

The opener, Care of Cell 44, is a bright, jubilant number about how happy out narrator is that his girlfriend is soon to be released from prison. Just listen to those backing vocals. They put the Beach Boys to shame, almost.

A Rose for Emily is a simple, melancholy piano tune. Without any experimentation or psychedelia, making the story a rather odd theme for a pop song, added to by the matter-of-fact voice.

Maybe After He's Gone is in more familiar territory, a poetic broken-heart song with a surpringly optomistic chorus.

Beechwood Park is a beautiful, elegant ode with some surprising quirks and a gentle melody.

Brief Candles also manages to carry a good melody and a thought-provoking lyric. It's quite beautiful.

Hung up on a Dream turns to describing hippies. It sweeps along almost thematically and is highly poetic. Most of these tracks are, yet none of them come across as pretentious.

Changes (how many songs are called that, anyhow?) juxtaposes a harmonised chorus backed by spare drumming with a certain music hall set of verses that have an infectious melody. It feels a little half-baked, but it makes for a great curiousity.

Everything perks up with I Want Her She Wants Me. It's a jaunty song, featuring gentle verses that clash with a slightly grating harmonised chorus. The rest of the the harmonies are beautiful, of course.

This Will be Our Year is also cheerful, or as cheerful as Colin Blunstone can sound with his voice. It's a bit hammy, like a showtune, but the overall quality is very pleasing.

Which makes Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914) all the more shocking. It's a stark view of war, sung by Chris White in a raw voice free of harmonic backups. There's spooky tape loops and organ instead. A sore thumb on the record but a damn good one.

Everything gets sunny on Friends of Mine, a sweet little song about having one's faith in life reaffirmed by seeing friends in love. The chorus listing off half a dozen couples is so charmingly twee that I smile everytime. Even back then, people avoided such bubblegum tendencies in the hopes of being taken seriously...

Time of the Season is the icing on the cake, a soulful, sultry gem. It is immaculate. There isn't a a flaw in the song. The Zombies knew what they were doing in the studio, and again, just listen to the backup voices. It's perfect and deservedly a monster hit.

Okay, it's art/baroque pop with a British slant, and naturally a bit light. But if you like The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society or Deram era Bowie, there is a good chance you'll enjoy this. I know I do.