Lemonheads - 'Lick' (Taang!)

The Lemonheads mean way more to me than they should, but I suspect a lot of people of my demographic cohort (white middle class American born 1980) feel the same way. None of this has much to do with Lick, or their other earlier records, but everything to do with the one that comes next (in this project, not Creator). But Lick has stuck around in my collection for awhile because I get a kick out of it, though there's only a few songs to justify keeping it. I think Ben Deily's songs are generally OK though the Lemonheads of course improved when he left and the Juliana Hatfield lineup happened. Some early Deily punkers such as  'Second Chance' are pretty great, and 'Ever' is his gem here; but Lick starts to bring in the jangle on Dando's songs, which are reaching towards the beauty he'd find later, so the distance between the two as songwriters is really made more evident. Deily's are just kind of a mess here – the Italian language 'Cazzo di Ferro' is bad throwaway soft metal, sounding like what happens when pop-punk bands try to get heavy (the post-Descendents band All is often guilty of this); '7 Powers' is driven by his reedy voice and a savage guitar solo, which disguises the fact that it's not so well-writtenng.  'Anyway' approaches replayability, but it's a stretch as well; we have to wait to 'Ever', the closer, for his peak. But Dando here really starts to shine. His gentle drawl, when combined with the amped up energy behind opener 'Mallo Cup', makes instant punk bubblegum magic; that's one of the best Lemonheads songs and the best song on the album, so it's a shame it comes first. This is the one with their cover of Suzanne Vega's 'Luka' on it, which starts with a 'noise' guitar intro and gets pretty crunchy during the choruses; it is not one of my favourite Lemonheads songs, but I guess the one that people remember most from this record. After 'Luka' though, it's hard to get through the next few songs until 'Ever' arrives, but maybe I'm just excited to get through this LP so I can write about the next one that's on deck. The real joy of Lick comes from flipping over the cover and looking at the band photo on the back, which sums up the Lemonheads perfectly. They're young as hell, and cute, and just a little bit of faux-tough there too; they could be a youth crew band or a Christian rock ensemble, and that also sums up the musicianship – they could have gone in a lot of directions, and on this record they started to.

Gleaming Spires - 'Songs of the Spires' (Posh Boy)

This is why I love the alphabetical approach - because we can go from Philip Glass to this, back-to-back. I bought this at a charity shop years ago solely because of the cover - it screamed out that this was a self-released experiment, possibly even a school project. But Posh Boy isn't a vanity label - they also released stuff by Red Cross and TSOL, and the Spires were actually the backing band of an early 80s Sparks lineup. You can hear that clearly on the record itself - these are clever pop songs in the mode of early 80s Sparks, with lots of synths and sequenced beats, and a very white male (and, I hope, ironic) viewpoint. Plus, both Maels wrote the liner notes on the back, silly screeds that don't indicate they actually listened to the record - the ol' backhanded compliment. The Gleaming Spires are remembered for their one hit song, 'Are You Ready For the Sex Girls?', track two here, which I must admit is a stomper. It's just on that border of novelty music, a wave I often enjoy surfing on. I'm sure it's being played right now in a strip club somewhere, as it will at strip clubs everywhere until the end of time - hopefully these guys had their publishing rights sorted out properly and they are still living comfortable on royalties. Whatever you may think of this song, 'they are women without any faults' is a line so brilliant it could have been penned by Ron and/or Russell themselves; the Spires clearly apprenticed well. The other cuts are hit and miss strong, and none too far from the Sparks formula. 'When Love Goes Under Glass' has a double tracked guitar line to lift the war imagery of the lyrics to a feel-good place; 'How To Get Girls Through Hypnotism' is amazingly predatory and it's hard to even sense the level of irony at play. Lines about 'make them do what you want' are stomach-churning, but then the verses suggest this is written from the perspective of a guy with serious fears and issues; regardless of its political correctness, it's just not a very good song, with the bridge, verse and chorus sounding like they came from three different places. The last two cuts are by far the best - the bouncing, peppery 'Talking in the Dark' and the maudlin, gorgeous 'Big Hotels'. A lush, romantic vision sung over synth string pads with a Euro-gazing perspective, it's my favourite song on the album and pretty much the reason I keep it.This electro-pop sound is back in style now and I can't help but wonder if a track like 'Blood Beat (Watch Your)' would be popular today. The darker tunes could almost be written by Tuxedomoon, if you squint, and that cover art is fucking amazing.