Understated-classics

Lifeforms is the 1994 album from the Future Sound of London. A double album (just), it also features the talents of Robert Fripp, Ozric Tentacles, Talvin Singh, Toni Halliday, and Liz Frazer. It reached number 6 on the UK album chart and went silver.

At the new year, thoughts and spare time for writing point me toward writing some new posts for my understated classics series. Expect some new ones soon.

I don't know about you, but lately I've been in need of some music that:

Doves are a band from Manchester who traded dance music for rock yet never left their former genre behind. Starting out as Sub Sub, they scored a worldwide hit in 1993 with "Ain't No Love (Ain't No Use)": a timeless dance tune that immediately owns whatever room it plays in. However, subsequent releases by Sub Sub did not catch on and people started to think of the band as a one-hit wonder.

Perhaps in today's modern age of streaming and such, The Coral would be a bigger band and may have survived their eventual burnout. Their work ethic was evident from the start, as rumours swirled in the NME about a fantastic new band from Liverpool who were going to blow everybody's socks off. I went to see them live in Bristol after they'd released three EPs and they were incredible. Their sound, a bit like the movie "Holy Mountain" set to pop music, imagined a Merseybeat channelled from an alternative universe in which Lennon and McCartney took their acid in the Mojave desert rather than in the English suburbs. Yes, it was derivative but somehow it also managed to be utterly new and compelling.

I came late to Orbital's work. I knew of them through a few remixes and because as a mad Orb fan, they could not have avoided my notice could they? Apart from that, one of my college friends tried to get me into "In Sides" just after its release in 1996. The same friend got me into "Second Toughest In The Infants" by Underworld. I cannot now understand the reason, but "In Sides" just left me cold.

The next instalment in my understated classics series is "Stray" by Aztec Camera. Released in 1990, it features two hit singles and the cover is my favourite colour: green.

I give the impression of planning these posts but to be honest I came across an article about Maxwell a few weeks ago and fondly remembered my cassette copy of this album. The joy of Spotify is that it's easy to dig up old favourites. The recent warm weather makes for a good opportunity to enjoy the sultry embrace of "Embrya" once more.

As it is Halloween, I'm writing about a spooky understated classic. Liars' second album "They Were Wrong, So We Drowned" is a concept album about witches. It was the first of their albums that I owned having heard their name mentioned among those in the New York Post-punk revival scene at the start of the 00s.

This little masterpiece was released in 1991. I got my copy on cassette for Christmas that year, but by May in 1992 they'd already "retired" and split up.

The thirtieth understated classic is by a band named after a fish. There isn't a great deal for me to say about "Our Aim Is To Satisfy"[^1] apart from the usual insistence that it is quite good. There's no overarching theme to write about, and no deep personal story attached. It was bound to happen eventually.

I listened to Let It Come Down by Spiritualized for the first time during a difficult time in my life. I think this will always affect my feelings towards it. For me it's a great big comfort blanket of a record. Coming after one of the all-time best break-up albums (in an artistic sense) in "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" perhaps it's not that much of a surprise. Layered in orchestras, horn sections, and gospel choirs, it's not understated at all but hopefully I can persuade you that it is a classic.

One of the first lines of "The House That Guilt Built", the soft cricket-laden lament that opens The Meadowlands by The Wrens, is "I'm nowhere near where I thought I'd be". The last line of the whole album is "this is not what you had planned". These bookending lines set the tone for this shimmering, ramshackle masterpiece - a fatigue and careworn pride in failing to meet impossible standards writ large over its first and last eighty or so seconds. "The Meadowlands" is probably the best record you've never heard, and once you have heard it, you will never be the same. Even better, it changes and you change with every single listen. If you're living your life and you really mean it, then this is the record for you.

I have already given some of the personal background to why I love this album and now it’s time to give a bit of love to the music itself so I’ll stick to giving a track by track account of “A Ghost Is Born”.

I'll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and ah... and ah... heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it and it's a... it's a term that's based on contempt, it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism and everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll. I don't know Johnny Rotten but I'm sure... I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius, myself . And that music is so powerful that it's quite beyond my control and ah... when I'm in the grips of it I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever felt like that? When you just couldn't feel anything and you didn't want to either. You know? Like that? Do you understand what I'm saying sir? (Iggy Pop, Canadian TV, March 11th 1977.)

The single biggest fact of life is that you are always going to be alone, you just might not realise it. Listening to The Cardigans' excellent 2003 "Long Gone Before Daylight" will help you see that all our relationships are essentially screwed -- but at least it sounds great while it does so.

I have written a lot in these posts about how music gets indelibly tied up with places, events and feelings. For me this album by Fanfarlo is tied up with all three of these. It makes me happy and sad at the same time in memory of great times that are now gone but are fondly remembered. I am aware that this is the youngest album on the list so far and so it might be a bit early to endow classic status upon it, but "Reservoir" is a fine album and to my ears it stands up really well. Listening to it again in the course of writing this post I found that I remembered every note and musical phrase, and yet somehow I also managed to delight in hearing new features in the production that I'd not noticed before.

It was quite hard to choose an 808 State album for the understated classics series for two reasons. The first is that I was introduced to 808 State quite late through a friend's sister's cassette copy of The Shamen's En-Tact (the original version recorded from vinyl that had a thirteen minute version of "Evil Is Eden") that also had -- to fill out the C90 -- the full length sweary version of "What Time Is Love?" by The KLF and four tracks: "Cubik", "Pacific", "Olympic" (I think...), and "In Yer Face".

“Walking With Thee” is the second album by Liverpool band Clinic. It was released in 2002, which seems like an age ago now. Even longer ago they released the single “The Return of Evil Bill”, which was got me interested in them in the first place.

The second Woob album (AKA “Woob 4495”) is probably the greatest ambient album ever made and is certainly the best one you have never heard of. Originally released in 1995 on the em:t label it is also a rare record. I don’t have an actual copy but I have seen one! I downloaded it off the internet and even that is quite difficult to do. My friend is an avid collector of all the em:t releases and it is easy to see why: all the albums are titled in a specific way that is very appealing to people who like to collect things and they also have very striking nature photography on the covers. In a strange way, the label was able to create an identity for its releases in a way that many artists would try to.

It’s rather spooky but shortly after deciding to write about Nelly Furtado’s “Folklore” as the next understated classic, I found out that she has a new album out this week. As a result, I have been listening to a lot of her music while writing this post, and I’ve been enjoying it too.

“I see the people working and see it working for them.” (Sat In Your Lap)

Say what? We’re allowing compilations now?

Sit back and let it happen, / Let us take your time away.

Among Fields of Crystal / Wind in Lonely Fences

I got into Début via a cassette from the library, much like I did with Together Alone by Crowded House. I suppose it is less obscure than many of my choices for this strand but I do think that Post is more well-known (because of It’s Oh So Quiet, which we shall mention here only briefly) and that Homogenic is probably more popular among her fans.

I think it’s time to discuss your philosophy of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavour…

FUN FACT: It was because of the artwork to this album that I obsessively scrawled onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome onourwayhome on my pencil case at school. I also had a very passable u.f.orb logo drawn on it too.

Happy Birthday!

Your rails, your fins, your thin paper wings

I admit that it was the artwork that got interested in Tubular Bells II. Trevor Key's wonderful icon of the twisted tubular bell is even more mysterious rendered in yellow and blue. It aroused my curiosity when I saw it one day in Woolworth's in Leigh Park back in 1992. The huge display must have been part of WEA's massive publicity drive for an album that represented huge potential for sales even though Mike Oldfield's stock had then been dwindling for a long time. At that point Oldfield had not made a good album since his soundtrack to the movie The Killing Fields in 1985, the end of a hot streak (perhaps 1980's QE2 aside) that had lasted since the original Tubular Bells back in 1973.

Background

In the understated classics series, I try to alternate between pop/rock and electronic albums. Keeping with this trend number eight is the wonderful dub-infused album Second Light by Dreadzone. Released in 1996 it was well-received critically and four of its tracks featured on John Peel's best-of-year list that year. Little Britain received a lot of radio play, a popular choice for that flag-waving period of britpop and assorted other demons.

Idewild are a solid band who have released four or five albums that I could consider for this series. I'm even in the sleeve credits of one: Post-Electric Blues, if you're asking.

Background

A Weekend In The City: Background

When is understated not understated?

I discovered The Aloof while listening to the Top 40

This week Arcade Fire released their hotly anticipated third album "The Suburbs". I loved "Neon Bible" but critics found it preachy, as overbearing as the religious folk it sought to satirise. I do not agree and think that it was an impressive continuation from an exciting debut. "The Suburbs" steps on from their previous two albums, both in subject matter and tone. It's sad, thoughtful, resigned, angry and tetchy - among other things. “The Suburbs” isn't the understated classic that I want to discuss though: with all the praise and plaudits, it may never suit this new thread of posts. I want to write about Together Alone by Crowded House.