Faust - 'IV' (Virgin)

The Nurse With Wound list taught us that Faust was not so singular; there were plenty of demented Euro-freaks throughout the entire wonderful 1970s making music that defied logic or categorisation. What made Faust so special was their impact - as a high-profile act, with records on Virgin and singing in English, their brand of madness could seep into a larger market than the so-called 'underground'. IV is really where you hear that - at times their most accessible record, with plaintive ballads such as 'Jennifer', and pop-skews like 'The Sad Skinhead' (which actually makes me think of the Homosexuals and their deconstructed song-based genius), but also opening with the 12-minute blast of 'Krautrock'. Tongue-in-cheek title aside, this track more or less invented the 'ecstatic drone' genre, or whatever you would call artists twenty-plus years later such as Skullflower, Total, Sunroof, Double Leopards, etc. It's not like any of the other dark, dense jams of its time apart from maybe some Japanese artists - the horizontality is more akin to minimalist composition, but the edges are poking out everywhere, nothing sanded down. It's somehow an entirely different beast than 'Sister Ray', too; there's less affect, if that makes any sense; it's muddy and fuzzy and endlessly replayable. The rest of the record is no slouch - 'Giggy Smile' is a jam of jams, and 'It's a Bit of a Pain' is a beautiful way to go out.  The rock parts have a warm, wooly recording and when there's electronic fuckery ('Picnic on a Frozen River') it sounds as soft and encompassing as the glowing guitar amps. If this is a summation of the first three records' experiments, so be it; IV is as cohesive and complete for Faust as Led Zeppelin's fourth record is to them. Why we don't have posters of this hanging in university dorms instead is a true shame. And this is it, really - the end of Faust proper. I know there's the Munich and Elsewhere record and the Tony Conrad collab and then the 90s and beyond, but this was the end of Faust in the 70s; four perfect albums and then they disappeared. As much as I love Rien and some of the later stuff, you can't help but wonder what the legacy would be if they had stayed defunct. There's always been something occult about Faust, even if they were actually more like absurd art-school kids in person (as I suspect); the word 'occult' does come from 'occluded' so maybe that's how it should have stayed.

Elvis Costello - 'This Year's Model' (Radar)

I always thought that my copy of this was rare, because the cover was misprinted, wrapping the spine around to the back, cropping the title to His Year's Model and leaving ugly printing registration marks on the right. But when I googled for an image to put here, I found a few versions of this look, suggesting this edition, if not intentional, was at least pretty common. At my peak of enjoying Elvis Costello records (approximately 12 years ago), I was happy to find this UK issue because it contained '(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea' instead of 'Radio Radio' and the former is a far better tune. Yeah, this is the best of the first three Elvis Costello records, of course containing the most hits and far better production and confidence than My Aim Is True. Here, as throughout these pages, I'm gonna express the same awkward uncomfortable approach towards writing about such "classic" records. I don't have a lot to say specifically about these songs - yes, 'Little Triggers' is a great and surprisingly nuanced look at dating, 'No Action' is a stomping side-1-track-1, and 'Chelsea''s guitar lick is like a biting razor. But I don't want to go into a deep analysis of late 70's British masculinity, cultural tropes, or any of the other things that could probably be written about here. I'm sure someone's done a PhD on Elvis Costello already, anyway. What does strike me on this revisit is how rooted in 50's and 60's rock and roll these songs are - 'You Belong to Me' could be Cliff Richard, and some of the keyboard riffs seem so obvious, but maybe that's cause I've heard these songs a million times. 'Living in Paradise' and 'Lip Service' are really great songs too. 'Lipstick Vogue' is a good fast stomper. I don't know what else to say; just enjoy this!

Lindsay Cooper - 'Rags' (Arc)

Lindsay Cooper's one of the less famous members of Henry Cow, no doubt due to having fewer extracurricular activities than Frith and Cutler, etc. But she's pretty fucking integral to their sound, and her list of other projects is not a short one. This is all I really know about her solo work, unless you count Western Culture, which is pretty much dominated by her touch. So Rags comes as a unsurprisingly satisfying blast of RIO, which of course stands for Rock in Opposition, which was a stupid name given to a group of bands that came out of the Cow. There's actually nothing rock about Rags, which isn't surprising given that it's based around Cooper's bassoon, oboe, and other reed instruments, often overdubbed into very somber, beautiful harmonies (the 'Woman's Wrongs' tracks in particular). Rags is of course intensely political, based around the concept of sweatshops and labour exploitation, which a specific indication of the woman's role in such things. Of course this is drenched in that 70's British Marxism, which I can't get enough of. This inevitably means a Kurt Weill influence in the songs, and when they're sung (by either Sally Potter or Phil Minton) it is a wee bit instructional in nature. Potter, who I know mostly as a filmmaker, is stunningly beautiful when singing 'Prostitution Song', and can also bash out la française in '1848'. She overdubs with herself on the eerie 'Stitch Goes the Needle', and it's haunting in its simplicity. Frith and Cutler are here, of course, sometimes doing the slowly unfolding Henry Cow style which makes this feel very familiar. Frith's acoustic interlude on 'General Strike' is delicate and beautiful, which sets the emotional resonance for the whole album. 'The Charter' is like being in history class, but the 'Chartist Anthem' duet is a little more lively, ending with a segue into the intense 'Cholera'. 'The Song of the Shirt' appears to tie everything together, really transcending any agit-prop content and finding a rolling, almost pastoral beauty in it's rising and falling piano runs. These pages will show how influenced I am by these RIO things, even though I hate the term and find a lot of it to be too pedantic. Rags is actually really compelling, though it's influenced by nothing of its era (and 1980 had a lot of great stuff going on); it's interesting how these artists look to the earlier precedents of the 20th century as a basis for their radicalism; such musical gestures could be seen as reactionary were it not for the lyrical and cultural associations. I've always personally had a strong feeling that the innovations of today have to reflect the classics, even if by 'classics' I mean the anti-traditions of the post-war avant-garde, etc. So maybe that's why I spent my 20's seeking out late 70's political art-rock instead of the hits of my own era. My particular copy has some black piece of paper glued over one line of the liner notes, as if to correct or redact something; I'm tempted to peel it back, but the 30 year old glue will surely rip up the record sleeve and I'm too prissy for that. Anyone else want to tell me what it says?

Captan Beefheart and His Magic Band - 'Trout Mask Replica' (Reprise)

It feels like the Underbite has hit on a bunch of classic/infallible/etc. albums lately but looking back it's really just this and Pet Sounds. But I should stick to my policy of trying to actually say something new, worthwhile and (I guess) personal about these rather than repeating clichés and foregone conclusions. So what can I actually draw from listening to this, for the millionth time? The words flow by like a river, albeit one very familiar; pause button edit techniques recall Gyson but i think of Anton Bruhin dancing with Charles Olson. I used to listen to this and be amazed at the logical patterns that emerge, for example the ending rodeo of 'Pachuco Cadaver'. Now I just try to feel it - it's all about Drumbo for me tonight. The Captain may have been pissed off at John French (leaving him off the credits) but at least he was smart enough to keep him prominent in the mix. The date printed on the back of this cover reveals this to be a late 70's reissue, and it's in great shape so I can hear every wispy cymbal flick and thud-thud. About midway through you need a break, which is why I can't imagine listening to this on CD. It's not the most demanding record ever made - I am listening to it quite casually - but it's such a complete vision that it feels like one complete symphony in 28 movements. Yeah yeah yeah, this'll get the "changed music forever" tag of course, but what's remarkable is listening in sequence cause I just did Strictly Personal and Mirror Man - even though those are 'transitional' works, blending between the edgy 4/4 stomp of Safe as Milk and more open, damaged compositions -- it's still a giant leap forward from that stuff to Trout Mask Replica. It helps that everything gel'd into a summit of personal expression and power - not just the utterly demented approach to rock songwriting, but the artwork and lyrics have stepped it up a few notches. 'Martian blues' is what they always call this stuff right? Sure, you can hear the remnants of that tradition especially in stuff like 'China Pig' but really, entire genres of music and thousands of musicians have still never progressed past this album. And no one has ever really equaled it as an accomplishment either. The raw sexuality of Beefheart's lyrics has always seemed like the perfect fit for music at least somewhat based in the blues - and it's pretty flagrant here, like 'My Human Gets Me Blues' and 'Big Joan'. The soprano sax that spits out all over this album makes sense too - I mean, that's the load he's shooting right? Also, 'Veterans Day Poppy', with it's awesome half-time bridge and Vietnam-era lyrics is a hell of a closer, and one of the most underrated Beefheart songs in general. Raw, primitive, insert whatever adjectives you usually read here -- it's all true, and it's maybe one of the pieces missing from earlier records. The story that's emerged from Drumbo and the others, about how this record was created through a brutal cult-like regiment, should make the bleeding hearts among us reevaluate Trout Mask's greatness, but I don't really care. Does anyone believe something this intense could be created through normal conditions? I like how certain songs reveal more traditional music characteristics, for example 'She's Too Much For My Mirror' has chord changes that remind me of Steely Dan or something. This is probably not the point, but rather a bad habit that I gravitate towards when trying to re-evaluate the very familiar.

Art Bears - 'Hopes and Fears' (Random Radar Records)

Art Bears are the cream of the crop from that whole scene of musicians that are sometimes called R.I.O. I mean the intellectually-motivated, politically strident, highly prolific gang that stemmed out of Henry Cow (represented by one of those rock music "family tree" diagrams in an insert that came with the first Henry Cow CD boxset many years ago). And oh, what a crop to be the cream of. I don't need to list the many accomplishments of Messrs. Cutler and Frith, and Dagmar Krause is a figure who will pop up several times on this blog. And when I say Art Bears are the best, I don't mean to slight the Cow, the Work, the Lowest Note on the Organ, Lindsay Cooper solo, the Catherine Jauxniaux stuff, Aksak Maboul (who I'd probably have to say are worthy of joint 'cream' crown-sharing), La Societe des Oiseaux etc. It's just that Art Bears were particularly revelatory to me. Prog is a great egg to start chipping away at, and Henry Cow were one of the first prog bands that appealed to me, but Art Bears were ultimately more my thing. I guess it's because they adhered to song structures while maintaining an uncompromising approach to experimentation - not that they are the first band to ever do this, but they do it in a way that blends their incredible eclecticism with their own personalities. There are enough artistic brushstrokes to tickle under the testicles of the sublime, yet still with a coherence that is very direct. Hopes and Fears is their first album, and it actually emerged from Henry Cow sessions. It's funny that this is thought of as being a Henry Cow album since it feels like the most stripped down and simple Art Bears record to me (while Winter Songs, recorded as a trio, feels much more dense). Maybe that's because the songs on HaF have a somewhat folky feel, with a lot of guitars and keyboards, though they occasionally explode into anthemic, driving rock (check out 'In Two Minds', which Wikipedia claims is influenced by the Who but I think that's just cause the piano line is stadium-rockish). This album feels really pomo-rustic to me, like you're walking the Yorkshire Dales but still thinking about the contradictions of capitalism. The lyrics touch on self-reliance ('Labryinth'), surrealist feminist narrative ('Joan'), media ('The Tube') and I think romance though maybe just relationships between humans -- yet the whole album feels infused with someting distinctly British. It's like there's a current that drains through the whole history of music from the British Isles and Hopes and Fears is just another stone in that stream. Dagmar's German accent doesn't alter this, but maybe I just associate her with this sound so much that I've given her an honorary U.K. passport. The bouncy instrumental bits make distinct overtures to these antecedents, though I really feel it more in the lyrics, which often strike pastoral chords in me. Also, most of these songs could be set in any period in history; there are few words that indicate that this record was constructed in the late 1970s. The more wild musical adventures are really going to come on the next two albums, though there are some chilling effects on the instruments. 'The Tube' in particular is a clawing, braying maelstrom of dark drones, and if you mixed out Dagmar and told me it was late Shadow Ring I'd never doubt you.