Ellen Foley - Spirit of St Louis and Poly Styrene - Translucence

I rarely make blind buys but both these albums fall into that category. I knew Ellen Foley's Spirit of St Louis was considered like a spin-off Clash album, and I was also familiar with X-Ray Spex's Germ-Free Adolescents, so I suppose they weren't entirely blind. Both are pretty good albums but not superb enough to make me feel more adventurous about not trying before buying.

Ellen Foley was dating Clash guitarist Mick Jones, which apparently also meant not only would Mick produce the album but he'd get some of his bandmates to play on the album and even write a few songs for it, too. Any gaps left by the Clash were filled in by members of Ian Dury's band the Blockheads, so there's pretty good pedigree here. But Ellen's singing isn't too grand and these songs end up sounding like Sandinista! B-sides (if you can imagine what B-sides of a triple album would sound like). So even though Sandinista! is probably my favorite album, the association doesn't quite help boost Foley's album as much as she probably hoped.



As for Poly Styrene's album Translucence, I expected something like the awesomeness of X-Ray Spex but this is quite different. Instead of X-Ray's bombast, Translucence is muted and often unexpectedly pretty. There's the kind of instrumentation (mainly the use of horns) that I associate with Sandinista!-era punk copping Lovers' Rock, so that's all good. A few songs suffer from the 'repeat the title way too often' curse but otherwise this is an interesting enough album.

Yellow Magic Orchestra

Coming across something like Yellow Magic Orchestra vindicates this dumb effort to keep finding new music.

As much as I enjoy Krautrock, I never really want to listen to much Kraftwerk; I find it too uptight. YMO is like a Japanese Kraftwerk, but fun to listen to. This, their self-titled debut, is considered the first computer-themed album. This came out in 1978, the same year as Space Invader!

I came to YMO in a fairly roundabout way. Basically I got to this through Destroyer, via Japan. Destroyer came out with Kaputt either early this year or late last year. In an interview with Dan Bejar about the album, he mentioned something about David Sylvan records. So that got me to his solo career as well as the band Japan. On some of those records, Ryuchi Sakamoto was listed as a collaborator and YMO in general was considered an influence.

Pitchfork: Back in your twenties, would you ever imagine that you'd make an album like Kaputt?

DB: No, not at the time. When I got into the American scene, I put aside a lot of stuff that was dear to me. There was this 10-year period where the idea of putting on a David Sylvian record was ludicrous because it was just too lame. I banished Morrissey from my life in favor of Sun City Girls, so I only really discovered Your Arsenal in my thirties. It's embarrassing.

Pitchfork: Do you think your 25-year-old self would think Kaputt sounds lame?

DB: For me to bother with it at 25, someone would have had to sit me down and said, "No, you should actually listen to this." Maybe I'm selling myself short. At that time, I was almost exclusively listening to classic rock records from the 60s and 70s.

Yeah, that's where I am, or where I have been for the past five years, listening to classic rock records from the 60s and 70s, really in need of someone to sit me down and tell me to listen to stuff. You'd think the internet would make it relatively easy to find where to go next, but it's not that simple. If anything, it provides access to too much. It would be overwhelming to take that much in.

Anyway, this is definitely one of the better finds. Last weekend I was giddy when I saw the translucent yellow vinyl version for under 10 bucks at the local record store. I fully expect to check out some more YMO and related stuff like Sakamoto's solo work.

John Foxx - Metamatic

After leaving Ultravox, lead singer John Foxx debuted his solo career with Metamatic. It generally occupies the same space as Ultravox's Systems of Romance, perhaps a bit more sparse and unfeeling. In many ways, this is stylistically similar to Gary Numan's The Pleasure Principle, released months before Metamatic, but Numan has admitted his debt to Foxx and 'Vox.

I think when it comes to synth pop, I need a bit more emotion than these guys want to conjure up. They're more in the meat-locker cold, Kraftwerk aesthetic with JG Ballard-inspired lyrics. Also, just way too repetitive. Come up with a song title and just repeat it a lot, huh.

Which isn't to say this is a terrible album; it's just not something I ever really want to listen to unless it's winter, much like Magazine's Secondhand Daylight.

Japan - Tin Drum

Japan's Tin Drum is nothing like the glam swagger of their debut, Adolescent Sex. Their trajectory across albums seems to run parallel to that of Talking Heads. Around 1980, when the Heads turned to Africa for rhythmic ideas, Japan turned to, well, Japan. Really, this is the only thing I've heard outside of the Eno-related sphere that comes close to what the Talking Heads were going for at the height of their arty new-wave, taking-funk-seriously success. But in the decades since, Remain in Light has achieved mythical status while Tin Drum is lucky to get an honorable mention among the best albums of the '80s. Granted, there's no "Once in a Lifetime" here, but "Ghosts" is pretty phenomenal.

Part of the eastern influence here is credited to lead singer David Sylvian's connection to Yellow Magic Orchestra's Ryuichi Sakamoto; I expect I will seek out some YMO and Sakamoto solo work later on.

Suburban Lawns - Suburban Lawns

Hey, this one's fun! Their sound is a bit like Devo, but with Mad TV's Ms. Swan on vocals. The hype was strong with them early on, with Jonathan Demme directing the video for their debut song "Gidget Goes to Hell," which was premiered on SNL, back in the pre-MTV era. This is their sole album, but the lead singer Su Tissue later came out with a solo album which I acquired a while ago but have not gotten around to checking out.

The best song here is "Janitor" which plays on a mis-heard response to the question "What do you do for a living?"

Ultravox - Systems of Romance

This was Ultravox's last chance, having previously struck out (in my mind) with their debut, which I think is called David Bowie's Players, and their Vienna which, other than the phenomenal title track, didn't seem like the New Wave statement I was searching for.

Systems of Romance was produced by German Conny Plank, who is better associated with Krautrock and early electronica.  Here, Plank grafts Ultravox's guitar lines onto a more synthetic backdrop.  Indeed, take out the vocals and some of these tracks might as well be a Neu! outtakes.  Basically this is a sound that others would put to better use on some of the best albums of the coming decade.  (Gary Numan in particular credits this album as his Polaris for Pleasure Principle; Julian Cope hints that Numan's 'inspiration' was closer to 'duplication'.) 

So Ultravox finally delivered on the kind of album I was looking for.  It's unlikely to displace anything in my list of favorite New Wave albums, but Systems of Romance works as a bridge between two genres I severely enjoy: German motor-tik Krautrock and New Wave/Romantic.

Ultravox - Ultravox!

Two strikes so far for Ultravox. I'll try Systems of Romance before I call it quits, though. The two Ultravox albums I have tried seem too inconsistent. Most of this album (their debut) sounds like Space Oddity leftovers, so if there's something special here, I'm missing it. Brian Eno is credited as a co-producer on the album, but as far as I can tell, only the closing track "My Sex" has his touch. Compare that track with what Eno did two years prior on Another Green World:

The Art of Noise - Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise?

This is a bit frustrating, but I'm trying to remember how I came across this band. I know I had seen a few of their albums when flipping through the 'punk / new wave' sections of record stores, but unless an album has a very distinct cover and I made a note of it, that's typically not the way I find things that might be worth exploring.

Every now and then you come across something that sounds as if someone made a mistake somewhere and perhaps time and space are not one-way vectors, as surely for an album like this to have existed in 1984 is evidence of a rift in the space-time continuum. It's not that it sounds way ahead of its time; it's just that assigning this to any specific point in time seems arbitrary.

Who's Afraid is best described as a sound collage, two words that normally translate to 'stay away'. But what a mistake that would've been--I wouldn't have heard the full 10-plus minute version of "Moments in Love," a beautiful, chilling opuses of avant-garde synthesized goodness. Of course it has been sampled numerous times since then; even the band made dozens of different versions of the song.

(Ignore the video; it's the only full-length version of the song I could find on YouTube)



But really, most of the album isn't really like that. The remainder is closer to the other big hit from this album, "Close (to the Edit)." By no means is that a bad thing; it's just been copied so much that it's hard to separate the original from the cliche imitations. Witness the fables of the deconstruction:

Japan - Adolescent Sex

YES, how did it take so long to come across this. An album from 1978 that straddles funkish punk or glam-rock of the 70s and the synthesized New Romantic movement of the 80s, confidently dipping its essence square on your head. It's as if Nile Rodgers of Chic produced a David Bowie album...except that actually happened in 1983 and it's not as good as Adolescent Sex. Or if Gang of Four sang about sex instead of politics, although Japan does have a song about "Communist China." Maybe I'm not good at analogies. At any rate, this album is swagger incarnate. Witness halfway into "Performance," when those high xylophone notes hit. YES.

Ultravox - Vienna

When exploring synth-pop, Ultravox was a name that came up often. I believe I briefly tried their best-of, Dancing with Tears in My Eyes but I don't remember. Any anyway, if a band is worth a damn, their albums are usually better than best-of compilations. So I started their 1980 album Vienna, as it was rated the highest on AllMusic. Because iTunes is generally worthless, my first few listens to this album were with an out-of-order tracklisting, and I was not impressed.

It's amazing what a difference the tracklisting can make, but even upon correcting the mistake, I still feel like this is a pretty inconsistent album. The opening track is great, as are the two penultimate tracks, "Western Promise" and "Vienna"; really the album should've ended with the title track. The remainder of of the other songs are cringe-worthy ripoffs of other synth-heavy bands, like Kraftwerk ("Mr. X") and Devo ("All Stood Still"). Vienna ends up as a slight disappointment, as this album easily could be sliced down to a very solid EP.

Still, I expect I'll try some other Ultravox albums and will hopefully have better results. If not, then I guess it's back to Dancing with Tears in My Eyes.

In the meantime, I could live in this song for quite a while:

The Monochrome Set - Strange Boutique / Love Zombies

Some members of the British art-school punk band the B-Sides became Adam and the Ants; others formed the Monochrome Set. I'm not familiar with Adam and the Ants, so perhaps this wasn't the best place to start with these guys. Anyway, the compilation Colour Transmission is basically their first two albums, 1980's Strange Boutique and 1981's Love Zombies; the latter being the better of the two.

I'm not 100% sure of the chronology, but my impression is that these guys heard The Feelies' "Fa Ce La" when it was released as a single by the Monochrome Set's label Rough Trade in late 1979, and generally ripped that off, as much of their sound reminds me of Crazy Rhythms. Apparently the two bands did tour together in 1980, so perhaps it's unfair to say either stole the other's sound, even though they're nearly identical. At any rate, I think The Feelies did it better.

Here's the Monochrome Set's song "RSVP" where they sing in French, a la "Fa Ce La".

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Dazzle Ships

OMD's glistening run of top-flight singles and chart domination came to a temporary but dramatic halt with Dazzle Ships, the point where the band's pushing of boundaries reached their furthest limit. McCluskey, Humphreys, and company couldn't take many listeners with them, though, and it's little surprise why -- a couple of moments aside, Dazzle Ships is pop of the most fragmented kind, a concept album released in an era that had nothing to do with such conceits. On its own merits, though, it is dazzling indeed, a Kid A of its time that never received a comparative level of contemporary attention and appreciation. Indeed, Radiohead's own plunge into abstract electronics and meditations on biological and technological advances seems to be echoing the themes and construction of Dazzle Ships. What else can be said when hearing the album's lead single, the soaring "Genetic Engineering," with its Speak & Spell toy vocals and an opening sequence that also sounds like the inspiration for "Fitter, Happier," for instance? Why it wasn't a hit remains a mystery, but it and the equally enjoyable, energetic "Telegraph" and "Radio Waves" are definitely the poppiest moments on the album. Conceived around visions of cryptic Cold War tension, the rise of computers in everyday life, and European and global reference points -- time zone recordings and snippets of shortwave broadcasts -- Dazzle Ships beats Kraftwerk at their own game, science and the future turned into surprisingly warm, evocative songs or sudden stop-start instrumental fragments. "Dazzle Ships (Parts II, III, and VII)" itself captures the alien feeling of the album best, with its distanced, echoing noises and curious rhythms, sliding into the lovely "The Romance of the Telescope." "This Is Helena" works in everything from what sounds like heavily treated and flanged string arrangements to radio announcer samples, while "Silent Running" becomes another in the line of emotional, breathtaking OMD ballads, McCluskey's voice the gripping centerpiece.

(Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Dazzle Ships)

Life Without Buildings - Any Other City

The numerous comparisons drawn by Life Without Buildings are across-the-board positive. Through the music and sleeve design, they come across as refugees from Rough Trade's class of 1979. Liliput, the Fall, Delta 5, and even the Slits occasionally come to mind. These female-fronted groups have certainly inspired LWB, but this quartet -- simply a drummer, a bassist, a guitarist, and a vocalist -- offers much more than nostalgia and post-punk plundering. They're more of a pop band, which is just fine. The jagged, economical rhythms of late-'70s and early-'80s post-punk are prominent. Robert Johnston's guitar playing is melodic and pleasant, differing from the cut-and-scrape methods of his forebears: think of Talking Heads' or Throwing Muses' first albums. Unlike many post-punk rhythm sections, the bass of Chris Evans and the drums of Will Bradley aren't reggae-influenced. They provide a plaintive, professional surface for firecracker Sue Tompkins to glide atop, throwing in the occasional, non-jutting shift in tempo that also avoids predictability. Tompkins' scat-speak singing is the band's main attraction, a youthful chirp that never pierces. Her repet-pet-petitive repetitive style might be at odds with the ears of some listeners, but it's just as unique as the exuberant vocals featured on records by any of the bands mentioned above. The set is remarkably cohesive, with the differences in each song taking a few listens to sink in. Only six of Any Other City's ten songs will be new to those who purchased the band's trio of 2000-issued singles. The overlap is reworked, usually with slight improvements made over the original. Only "The Leanover" suffers, losing some of the raw thrill of the single version. If there's a gripe to be had with the record, that's it. An ex-excite-exciting, phenom-enom-phenomenal debut.

(Life Without Buildings - Any Other City)

Magazine - Secondhand Daylight

Secondhand Daylight, the second Magazine album, sounds like it must have been made in the dead of winter. You can imagine the steam coming out of Howard Devoto's mouth as he projects lines like "I was cold at an equally cold place," "The voyeur will realize this is not a sight for his sore eyes," "It just came to pieces in our hands," and "Today I bumped into you again, I have no idea what you want." You can picture Dave Formula swiping frost off his keys and Barry Adamson blowing on his hands during the intro to "Feed the Enemy," as guitarist John McGeoch and drummer John Doyle zip their parkas. From start to finish, this is a showcase for Formula's chilling but expressive keyboard work. Given more freedom to stretch out and even dominate on occasion, Formula seems to release as many demons as Devoto, whether it is through low-end synthesizer drones or violent piano vamps. Detached tales of relationships damaged beyond repair fill the album, and the band isn't nearly as bouncy as it is on Real Life or The Correct Use of Soap -- it's almost as if they were instructed to play with as little physical motion as possible. The drums in particular sound brittle and on the brink of piercing the ears. Despite the sub-zero climate, the lack of dance numbers, and the shortage of snappy melodies, the album isn't entirely impenetrable. It lacks the immediate impact of Real Life and The Correct Use of Soap, but it deserves just as much recognition for its compellingly sustained petulance. Even if you can't get into it, you have to at least marvel at "Permafrost." The album's finale, it's an elegant five-minute sneer, and as far as late-'70s yearbook scribbles are concerned, "As the day stops dead, at the place where we're lost, I will drug you and f*ck you on the permafrost" is less innocuous than "All we are is dust in the wind."

(Magazine - Secondhand Daylight)

Trees - Sleep Convention

Taken from Ian at Zamboni Soundtracks.

A one-man synth army from San Diego, California, Dane Conover (here dubbed Trees) offers a wonderful collection of modern musical ideas and clever tunes that efficiently combine up-to-date electronics with old-fashioned rock instruments, tossing in inventive production and intelligent, provocative lyrics. Sleep Convention is a stunning debut which shows remarkable originality and talent. That this record died the commercial death is not just incomprehensible, it's criminal.

(Trees - Sleep Convention)

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Architecture & Morality

If there was a clear high point for OMD in terms of balancing relentless experimentation and seemingly unstoppable mainstream success in the U.K., Architecture & Morality is it. Again combining everything from design and presentation to even the title into an overall artistic effort, this album showed that OMD was arguably the first Liverpool band since the later Beatles to make such a sweeping, all-bases-covered achievement -- more so because OMD owed nothing to the Fab Four. All it takes is a consideration of the three smash singles from the album to see the group in full flower. "Souvenir," featuring Paul Humphreys in a quiet but still warm and beautiful lead role, eases in on haunting semi-vocal sighs before settling into its gentle, sparkling melody. The mid-song instrumental break, with its shifted tempos and further wordless calls, is especially inspired. "Joan of Arc," meanwhile, takes the drama of "Enola Gay" to new heights; again, wordless vocals provide the intro and backing, while an initially quiet melody develops into a towering heartbreaker, with Andy McCluskey and band in full flight. If that wasn't enough, the scenario was continued and made even more epic with "Maid of Orleans," starting with a quick-cut series of melancholic drones and shades before a punchy, then rolling martial beat kicks in, with Malcolm Holmes and technology in perfect combination. With another bravura McCluskey lead and a mock-bagpipe lead that's easily more entrancing than the real thing, it's a wrenching ballad like no other before it and little since. Any number of other high points can be named, such as the opening, "The New Stone Age," with McCluskey's emotional fear palpable over a rough combination of nervous electronic pulses, piercing keyboard parts, and slightly distorted guitar. "She's Leaving" achieves its own polished pop perfection -- it would have made an inspired choice for a fourth single if one had been forthcoming -- while the heartbreaking "Sealand" and "Georgia" hint at where OMD would go next, with Dazzle Ships.

(Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Architecture & Morality)

Slits - Cut

One of my favorites, now expanded and remastered!

Almost as well-known for its cover (the three Slits are half-naked and covered in mud) as for its music, Cut is an ebullient piece of post-punk mastery that finds the Slits' interest in Caribbean and African rhythms smoothly incorporated into their harsher punk rock stylings. Ari Up's wandering voice (a touch like Yoko Ono) might be initially off-putting, but not so much so that it makes listening to the record difficult. Six tracks are revamped from earlier Peel Sessions and sound better for the extra effort (especially "New Town" and "Love und Romance"). With its goofy charm, gleeful swing and sway, and subtle yet compelling libertarian feminism, this is one of the best records of the era.

(Slits - Cut)

Delta 5 - Singles & Sessions 1979-81

Considering the interest in all things post-punk in the 2000s, not to mention the reissues of work by contemporaries like the Au Pairs, Slits, Raincoats, and Liliput, attention to the Delta 5 seems long overdue. Indeed, it wouldn't be surprising if many people who had heard of the band in recent years knew of the Delta 5 only because of Chicks on Speed's cover of their definitive single, "Mind Your Own Business," and although some of their tracks have popped up on compilations here and there, it hasn't been easy to hear their music. Kill Rock Stars' collection Singles & Sessions remedies this by serving up the A and B sides of their classic singles, BBC Radio sessions with John Peel and Richard Skinner, and a previously unreleased live 1980 set recorded at Berkeley, CA's Berkeley Square. Meanwhile, the liner notes offer two different perspectives on the band: Greil Marcus' in-depth 1980 piece for New West magazine, and a new essay by friend and collaborator Jon Langford. Most important, though, is the band's music, and while this leftist post-punk outfit from Leeds -- which belonged to the scene that also spawned the Mekons and Gang of Four -- was part of a movement that tended to shun glamour, there is an undeniable, distinctive style in the group's sound. On "Try" and "Now That You've Gone," the Delta 5 are as precise and aloof as any of their better-known post-punk peers. However, along with their economical rhythms and alternately taut and bristling guitars, the band's layered, interjecting vocals -- which turn many of their songs into playful but pointed debates -- and their unique dual-bassist lineup add an extra bit of flair and sass to their music. The icy, disdainful wit of "Mind Your Own Business" is emblematic of the band's attitude on many of the tracks here, but "Anticipation" and "Colour" allow the Delta 5's joyful and brooding sides to shine through as well. "You" is downright funny and liberating; with lyrics like "Who likes sex only on Sundays? You, you, you!," it sounds like someone realizing, all at once, everything that's wrong with and then getting rid of a lover, with pleasure. The tracks from the sessions are nearly as sharp and tight as the singles, with "Make Up"'s lyrical ambivalence ("Do you wear it? Does it wear you?") underscoring the Delta 5's uniquely feminine vantage point and songs like the spooky, evocative "Train Song" and "Final Scene" sending off more sparks than they did on the band's first (and last) album, See the Whirl (which, hopefully, will be reissued as well). Singles & Sessions does the Delta 5's music justice; even if they weren't the most radically inventive group of the post-punk movement, their best work still captures the sound and feeling of that era perfectly.

(Delta 5 - Singles & Sessions 1979-81)