V SINGLES
IThe Dyians: Godlike (Situation 2) This week‘s prize for magnificent Central Station-esque sleeve design. A very juicy apple adorned by The Dylans‘ incredibly cool lemon logo: Total Art. As forthe record—a veritable club sandwich of a single. Potentially dour and semi-gothic but perked up by a cavorting bass. towering drums and leetle beet of Hammond cheese as garnish. Nyummy. (CMcL) I The La's: Feelln' (GolDiscs) A skiffling. uncooked rattler revelling in the cocksure cockiness that makes the album so utterly compelling. And the thrills continue - flip over for two re-run album tracks and an ancient B-side. They sure know how to give us a wee treat. eh kids? (CMcL) I "7: Saturday's Angels (MCA) Wow! Ex-Jo Boxers in trendy record shocker! Gone are the braces and bovver boots in favour of club culture and a singer who sounds (a little) like Ian Brown. And, hey. it works. Four pages in one week‘s music press and favourable comparisons with The Stone Roses are proofpositive ofthat. The hype is growing. But. are they worth it? Well. .. yes. actually. ‘Saturday‘s Angels‘ is trance dance with guitars and whale noises, a piece of vinyl genius which skips between indie and dance categories with a blatant disregard for both. Baggy? No. but sexy. (A Mair) I Carlton: Love and Pain (itrr) Fantabulous! Four versions ofa dark. smokey. chocolatey kinda ballad. ’Love and Pain‘ oozes just that — em. love and indeed pain. Love is the smoocherama soul sway. pain is the nasty paper cut the sleeve gave me. Anyone for a Radio Version? Or even a Drum and Bass Mix? Smashing V.F.M. (CMcL)
ITricla: He'sa Rebel (Ariola) Atrocious massacre of a (very poor) Gene Pitney number. featuring bubbly-cute anonymous vocals and a laughably thin funky-drummer backbeat. The gal‘s from Scotland. but Obviously more aligned to the Aneka tradition than to anything decent. ()ne for the bargain bins. (PWH)
8‘2 39W 338 "MM 39 01 Slillflll :l0 “MOM 00%" “HEN
MUSIC
V FOLK
Clive Gregson and Christine Colllster
Their new record, ‘Love is a Strange Hotel’ is sitting happily at Number Eight in the ‘Folk Roots' album charts, the tour is going well and Christine Colllster, one oi the greatest voices in British popular music, is weighing up the advantages and disadvantages oi working in a duo with her partner Clive Gregson.
‘We’d love to tour with a band - alter .all, we used to do it a lot when we were with Richard (Thompson). But it’s expensive, though we are working up to it. We really need to move to a big record company though. Our label Special Delivery is great, they’re really behind us, but they leel that they cannot give us that push, so we'll see. But at the moment it’s just the two at us, or ratherthree, we’ve got a pal who drives and ro'adies, mixes, everything. But there is a lovely ireedom singing as
a duo. With Richard’s band we couldn’t do enough oi our own songs. Nowi like the lact that we’re versatile and can sing all sorts oi stutt.’
Gregson and Colllster’s acoustic roots rock, or whatever you want to call it, is an expression ol the subtler play at vocal harmony and rocking rhythms than would normally have been be considered ‘lolk’. The lact that the couple can play iolk clubs is more a reilectlon oi how much the music and the venues are escaping irom the old deilnltlons.
‘We’ve got quite an array oi
. instruments. Clive has been playing
quite a lot oi piano, and then at course there's his guitars, three at them, and a twelve-string. it’s just about all acoustic though, a little purely electric guitar and one song with a rhythm track, sequenced, but that’s really a percussion backing.
‘it's dlllicult to lit Scotland into a tour schedule. We don’t play there much, so people perhaps don't know us as well as in England, but i especially like coming up. Clive’s irom Stockport. but I’m irom the isle ol Man,’ she laughs. ‘l’m a Cell myseli.’ (Norman Chalmers) Clive Gregson and Christine Colllster play the Riverside, Glasgow on Tues 19 and the Cale Royal, Edinburgh on Wed 20.
am:- The sun kings
As we sit in a pub in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, a girl comes round handing out leallets advertising lorthcoming gigs in these here parts. ‘Makes a change from us having to do that tor our own gigs,’ says Ian the guitarist irom Ayr. Above a blurb about The Farm and overleal irom The La’s, here is the panel that concerns us. ‘Hailing from Edinburgh, these boys are the lirst to sign to the incredibly hip and trendy Factory label since Northside.’ The Wendys’ day at reckoning has arrived.
Last summer, something strange started happening in The Wendys’ house. Rumours oi enigmatic AGR men travelling by planes, trains and omnibuses to their gig in Galashiels; a support slot with Peter Hook’s Revenge at Calton Studios, where a Mr Wilson was spotted getting on down to the delights at said support band. Next thing we knew, Factory had signed The Wendys, the greatest sensation since Super Mo signing to the ’Gers. All this irom a band long seen as mere members oi the valiantly struggling Edinburgh Musicians' Collective, a band whose greatest claim to lame was appearing on the Mcl’ape compilation at local hopeluls.
‘We’d taken that demo we sent to Factory round to Negoclants, and they told us it wasn't the sort oi thing they were looking ior,‘ says drummer Johnny irom Scone (hey! same as me), illustrating the gull that The Wendys straddled with apparent ease last year - one minute they couldn’t get a local
The Wendys
gig, the next lan Broudie was producing their lirst album in Stockport.
The Wendys' first single, ‘The Sun’s Gonna Shine tor Me Soon’, ls out this month. The Manc element is there, though not in the guise of the loping, gormless dance lixation ol late, but a shadowy intensity born of the lirst generation at Factory bands. More overcoats, less hooded tops.
‘We know some people will buy the record initially cos ol the Factory tactor,’ admits Johnny. ‘But we know line they’ll love it when they hear it. So basically we can’t complain.’ (Craig McLean)
The Wendys play The Venue, Edinburgh on Wed 20 and King Tut’s Wah Wah Nut, Glasgow on Fri 22.
need to fret
Martin Taylor had to endure some frustrations before his new record saw
the light ofday, but Kenny
Mathieson discovers that the wait has been worthwhile.
If Martin Taylor very definitely considers himself to be a guitarist first and a jazzman second. his new album on Linn Records is a positive indication of his immense affinity for the music. Don 't Fret is comfortably the best work he has yet produced in the recording studio. and marks the end of a period of frustration for the Ayr-based guitarist.
While his standing as a performer has continued to increase steadily, the business ofgetting his music down on record has proved rather more awkward. His last release. Sarabande (Gaia), was recorded in California over three years ago, but fell victim to record company
32 The List 8- 21 February 1991