MUSIC RECORD REVIEWS
L_____-_ 32 The Lis
Philip oorward rounds up the new releases.
A taste of two halves: well-intentioned but no- hope Scottish croonings. and the early contenders for the much coveted Chn'stmas No 1 slot. As it is Santa-time already. it‘s only right that Eugenius should release a record about the. erm. 'Easter Bunny’ (August)!? It‘s a sad fact for Eugenius that they have less life than River Phoenix. but if they want to sound like a retarded Teenage Fanclub. on their wee West Coast heads be it.
Now, over to the independent studio engineers who want to be pop stars. Finiflex engineer Fred Parson slaps and tickles some bloke called Boomerang into a sonic trance frenzy and the result is the aerodynamic ‘Do What You Like‘ (Triumph): and Hubba Hubba fullback Robert Aitken. who has already had plenty of success with the Dub Commission but is likely to have more with his Cotillion ‘Soft Drinks E.P.‘ (Hubba Hubba). in four fabby house flavours. ‘Orange'. ‘Ginger Beer‘. ‘Cola' and ‘Lime' they make perfect consumption for fruity kids.
Staying effervescent. Soma are currently circulating a dandy. nay. randy. little romper stomper called ‘On The Right Trax' by Sidetrax (Soma). It‘s housey. it’s trancey. it’s progressive. it‘s aggressive. it‘s not in your record collection.
Neither are the stunning Morales and Perfecto remixes ofUZ’s ‘Lemon‘ (Island). of which there are only 1000 DJ copies. I‘ve got one. though. and I'm accepting offers of over £50. You could console yourself by buying the brilliant ‘Stay‘ (Island) but it‘s not really the same. is it? Neither is
M-People‘s cover of Dennis Brown‘s classic ‘Don‘t Look Any Further‘ (Deconstruction) because it doesn't contain a club mix. It does. however. bear the traditional Irresistible M-People Chorus. which is bound to see it there or thereabouts come 25 December. My tip for the Christmas Number One is The Taxi Gang. aka Chaka Demus and Pliers. They‘ve released an unreal reggae version of. wait for it. ‘Twist and Shout' (Mango).
. manages to activate her blithe spirit
wind to a halt. But as for the rest of l ‘The lied Shoes’, Kate Bush is wearing
KATE Bus" her blue hat for a blue day. ; Kate had done her growing up by the ' "‘9 Red Shoes (Em) time ‘llounds Of Love’ appeared in
The quirky dementia is long gone. It’s been replaced by insanity of a different, more universal kind - a feeling of displacement and loss gnawing away at her sense of awe and destroying what naivety and inquisitiveness she had left. She only
1985; now she has grown weary too. The banshee yowl and precocious talent of her first four albums are a musty memory, probably locked up in an old photo album, and exhumed only briefly on ‘Big Stripey Lie’ where a
muted tribal chant recalls ‘The
l Dreaming’. Otherwise, Kate can barer I muster the will to do anything other
than sigh her way through a catalogue I of melancholia, relying on the shiver
factor of ‘And So Is Love’ and the
g heartfelt new single ‘Moments 0f
; Pleasure’ to redeem this mature
T collection from the ignominy of coffee ,3 ; table listening. (Fiona Shepherd)
on a few occasions here. ‘Eat The Music’ is a fruity iaunt but an irritating one, and on the Prince collaboration ‘Why Should I Love You?’ the sex dwarf steamroliers his stamp over the arrangement. Only the title track dances a feverish tarantella - it really sounds like the song is possessed by a sprite that won’t let it
t 19 November—2 December l993
' < " THE LOST SOUL BAND 3 The Land Of Do As You Please ’ (Silvertone) Edinburgh’s gun Youngs go for it with ; a rattler of a record. From the opening chords of ‘Looking Through The Butcher’s Window’, this is grin- inducing gritty rock with enough edge to make you wish the songs lasted longer. Producer Callum Malcolm builds up the Lost Soul sound into a feel-big swathe of noise for the first half of the album, culminating in the easy eloquence of ‘Goodbye You Beautiful World’. For the sparser ‘These Old Clothes’ and ‘oh Your Eyes’, singer and songwriter Gordon Grahame proves
. that May’s quickfire album, ‘Friday
The 13th . . .’ was no mistake. Given a full stadium of lighter-wielding lleil
1 Young fans and he’d have them in the
: palm of his plectrum. But what really
stands out, notably on balladeering tunes like ‘Everything’s Going To Be Fine’ are Michael llall’s keyboards. The solid lament of ‘God’ is particularly fine, pared down to voice, acoustic guitar and piano for the album’s most haunting, if not its most original, track.
Lyrically, we are on the mellow side of wistful here. ‘llappiness is a job that’s never done. llothing lasts quite as long as you think it will,’ observes
, Grahame. 0n strength of this album, ; The Lost Soul Band deserve to last 3 longer than you might think. (Thom
Dibdin)
‘llush Sweet Lover’ and ‘In Perfect Breams’. liootin’-tootin’ send-offs are found in the shape of an old lang live favourite, ‘oon’t Be A Lemming Polka’, and the closing banjo ’n’ fiddle romp ‘Cowboy Pride’. When country moments come, they come excellently and traditionally: The Shadows-like instrumental ‘Bide 0f Bonanza Jellybean’ and the drifting strum of ‘Curious Soul Astray’ and ‘Sweet Little Cherokee’. Throughout, of course, ms lang is astounding.
As Wild West visions go, ‘Even Cowgirls Get The Blues’ is like no other. But then that’s what you get when you combine such maverick
I talents as k.d. Iang, author Tom
Robbins and director Gus Van Sant. And true talent can never be second- guessed. (Craig McLean)
._ 5 K.D. LANG
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (Sire)
3 As if we needed reminding, k.d. lang
; was never one to be fenced in. Hot on
i the heels of the country belter/torch
‘ song crooner’s high-vamp disco
version of ‘llo More Tears (Enough Is Enough)’ with Andy Bell (find that on the ‘Coneheads’ album) comes her cowboy soundtrack. But don’t expect that the big-boned gal from the plains of southern Alberta has come full circle, gone back to her country roots.
In the Wild West of lang and co-
writer Ben Mink, the opening track is
a bubbling, lithe sub-‘Shaft’ funk-out (‘Just Keep Me Moving’). Campfire moments are jazzy and cool, as on
PHIL COLLINS i Both Sides (Virgin)
There’s two sides to every story. Sparse/bald. Confessional/self-pitying. ; Intimate/cloying. Soul-searching/ wallowing. Phil’s gone spontaneouSI Phil’s got the runs. Phil played all the instruments/l never knew the Mattel drum machine and the Tonka synth could be so versatile. Phil’s style is . unique and without peer/Peter Gabriel must be laughing his socks off.
3 Recording only took six weeks/and
‘ writing only six minutes? It was delivered six months early/he should have got six years. These songs are
: the sounds of the heart/these songs
f are the whinges of the self-obsessed.
Those bagpipes at the end of ‘We Wait
And We Wonder’ stir primal emotions
and evidence true musical eclecticism/those mechanised é likenesses of the ’pipes stick in the craw and evidence true musical naffness. ‘Both Sides’ is candid simplicity, Phil turned inside out/‘Both Sides’ is trite dreariness, Phil displaying pure inspirational bankruptcy. Phil, everyman, is stunned by terrorism and poverty/Phil, £12 m‘illion-a-year man, is moved to respond by respectively ‘waiting’ and ‘wondering’ and listening to ‘both sides of the story’, wrapped up in 67 minutes of asinine, directionless fluff and puff. Mind, it’ll make a good Christmas pressie/Fair enough. (Phil’s bank manager/Graig McLean)
Q l