The last time Whale were on Top Of The Pops, Singing hit single 'Hobo Humping Slobo Babe’, children, elderly ladies and music journalists had to be coaxed out from behind the settee with offerings of Tunnocks Tea Cakes and assurances that ’the scary people have gone now, dear.’
So, are they a bunch of Walter Softies at heart?
'Uh huh, says guitarist Jon Jefferson Klingberg knowingly. 'Henrique is scary Whale. I'm actually Posh Whale and the drummer is Sexy Whale. We had a bus driver who said we made less mess than a really yOung Swedish troubadour, a little religious flute-playing girl.
’She was a bigger swrne than us. I think that’s a big compliment. Like Bobbie Gillespie said, it will never be rock ’n' roll to trash a hotel room as long as somebody's mum has got to come
~i . +9;- :
Whale: never accept their offer of a dance
and clean it up for a quid an hour.’
Wise words and Surprisingly so coming from Bobby G, the man who would have hired Keith Moon as his interior decorator. Meanwhile back in Whale land, we find the allegedly clean living Swedes, on one track on their new LP All Disco Dance Must End In Broken Bones, attempting to get into the disco at 5.30am . . .
’I think that might have been a post- production rationalisation,’ claims Klingberg.
Of the record as a whole, he says: 'It’s more rootsy, less machine-based. As soon as you establish an image, you want to kill that image and do something different. It’s the same with every artist. It’s pathetic in a way . . . so maybe on the next album we’ll be singing about sex and using cheap loops again.’ (Rodger Evans)
I! All Disco Dance Must End In Broken Bones is out now on Hut.
ROCK
SflverSun
Glasgow: King Tut's, Sat 31 Oct; Edinburgh:Venue, Sun 1 Nov.
'We’re a cross between The Monkees and the guy out of the 13th Floor Elevators who went mad.’ Not William
t Hague on the current state of His
Majesty’s Opposition but James Broad on Silver Sun, the mild-mannered power-pop melody-friendly quartet he fronts. ’We don’t set out every day to destroy someone’s house or take crack — we Just GHJOy running around and shouting at people and annoying each other.’
And, as it happens, making pretty decent cover versions, as amply demonstrated on the band’s top twenty EP Too Much, Too Little, Too Late, a release which signalled the band's return to the fray. Rush, The Muffs, My Bloody Valentine and Johnny Mathis were all taken to the Sunnies' slaughterhouse of sound and chopped into very new shapes.
'lt was supposed to be a limited edition,’ confesses Broad. 'But when
Silver Sun: not house-wrecking crack fiends
we had done it, people said “no, you really have to release this" so I had a long night getting really pissed thinking "what would Todd Rungren do at a time like this?" And I decrded
that he wouldn’t do it but I’m gomg to
anyway.’
Going their own way could be Silver
Sun's motto. Suggestions for the title
of the new album (finally named Neo .
Wave) came in loads of barrows but once again, the final upping of thumbs was theirs.
’It was going to be called Switzerland because a guy at the record company who listens to reggae and stuff said he felt like he was in Switzerland when he listened to it because he JUSl didn’t know what to think,’ recalls Broad ’But when I looked at it on the screen with all the artwork and stuff it didn't look right so I thought "fuck that, got to change it". This is more like a pun on the fact that while it's retro, you can’t pick where it’s all coming from so we could pretend that we're the most modern band in existence.‘
(Brian Donaldson) I Neo Wave is out now on Po/ydor
music
record reviews
POP
Various Artists
Gotta Get A Message To You (Polydor) *
Even approaching this album with the ambivalent feelings of cynicism and pointless hope that tribute ventures inspire, the lameness of this Bee Gees tribute cannot be overstated. Boyzone, with their abysmal version of abysmal 'Words’ are jomed by a host of their peers — Louise, Steps, 91 1 ~ engaging in a competition to see who can turn in the unfunkiest versron of a track by the group voted disco top dogs during Cd's Disco Inferno night. Elsewhere, Robbie Williams continues his barefaced bid for credibility—by- association with his Orb collaboration on ’I Started A Joke’, Space and Monaco let down the indie pop side with woeful versions of ’Massachusetts' and 'You Should Be Dancing’ and Cleopatra emerge as the dubious highlight, if only for the incongruin of their chorce — the portentous ’l've Gotta Get A Message TO YOti' (F8)
The Cardigans
Gran Turismo (Stockholm Records)
sis 162’ a
Nary a film compilation goes by these days without those perky Scandic popsters The Cardigans cropping up. The Malmo rnusos have been heard on everything from Romeo 81 Juliet to A Life Less Ordinary and their soundtracking qualities are apparent on this latest offering, their fourth album, Gran Turismo. Synthy nursery rhymes and mid to uptempo dance numbers mask the fatalistic lyrical content. The album's opening line, 'This is where your sanity gives in', is about as smiley as it gets. Always worth a listen ~ leSi don't let them pull the wool over your eyes. (80)
ROCK ldlewild
Hope Is Important (Food) air * fr it
It’s a funny old world and the definitive proof maybe in this album. Hardcore wrth all its attendant ferocity, drums like the roar of a missile taking
record reviews MUSIC
off, speed guitar and screamed vocals — has always been a minority preserve, but Edinburgh band ldlewild could be the one to introduce some of its charms to a wider audience. Tempering hardcore’s more unpalatable extremes with a pop sensibility and some wickedly infectious hooks, Hope Is Important has all the cracking tunes of 3
Lightning Seeds’ album but performed by Satan’s psychotic torture team when they’ve been starved of red meat for a week. As beautiful as it is brutal. (JT)
Combustible Edison The Impossible World (Bungalow)
Jr 75: 1k ‘k
Martini cocktails, first class travel, futuristic retro decor . . . so much for all that James Bond shtick foisted on any band with a modicum of imagination (see also Pizzicato Five, Stereolab and Saint Etienne). Combustible Edison make a wonky noise for sure: tastefully textured, coolly kitsch, and shamelessly sophisticated. lt’s cinematic, certainly; cerebral, sure; groovy, granted; but enough with the glamour image overload. The best thing about the delectable follow up to 1996’s The Progressive Sounds Of Combustible Edison is the mighty suspicion that this lot actually know diddly about the high life and probably live in a hole in the road in Camden. More Leonard Rossiter than Joan Collins. (RE)
The High Llamas Lollo Rosso (V2) tar
There’s a worrying tendency among the trendier purveyors of contemporary music to regard modernity as an end in itself. High Llama Sean O’Hagan may have a well- documented Beach Boys obsession but, as a part—time Stereolab assistant and pop theorist for The Guardian, there was always a danger that he would trip that misguided wire. Lollo Rosso, seven Llamas’ songs reworked by various fashionable chin-strokers including Mouse On Mars and Cornelius, is less a thrilling album and more an exercise in good taste, less ‘You Love Us’, more ’I Love My Record Collection’. This ain’t rock ’n’ roll, this is homework. (PR)
Continued over page
ldlewild: hope is important. apparently 22 Oct—S Nov 1998 THE LIST 51