Simon Joyner - 'Songs for the New Year' (Sing, Eunuchs!/Shrimper)

Songs for the New Year is a record of quiet, intense songs; its lyric sheet takes up two full pages and it's not in a large typeface. Joyner often pens lengthy tracts, never at this point in his career content to repeat a simple mantra or let less do more. This isn't a criticism, nor is it meant to convey that he is some radical experimentalist in form – there's still verses and repeating choruses, the basic building blocks of the song. But a tune like 'Parachute' shifts through so many different ideas over a few minutes that it needs to be listened to again to be fully absorbed. And even after almost twenty years I still haven't fully digested Songs for the New Year. The title would indicate that this album has a theme of newness and rebirth, and I suppose it's there, but it's really about winter and coldness taking over. I can imagine the Omaha winters are stark and harsh; here, it's just beginning in Helsinki so it's a perfect soundtrack to watch the snow fall. The album opens with 'The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll', a song that was not on the album of the same name and wouldn't have really fit there anyway, but here it's perfect. It functions as a gateway to the rest of this record, with Chris Deden's echoey piano notes and Joyner's gentle voice providing the foundation for this song of journey and escape. So many of Joyner's songs seem to be about travelling, or at least trying to get somewhere, and this is almost like a meta-tune, a skeleton key to the rest. The song I've gone back to the most over the years is 'Two Friends Take a Bow for the Record', describing just what its title indicates. Distance is again a theme, though here's its emotional distance, and this requiem for an ending friendship is complex without being bitter, grimacing through pain without resorting to irony. It's a feeling we've all lived through, yet has rarely been chronicled in 4/4 (or any other) time. The slow, plaintive pulse of the music allow Joyner to inhabit the narrative, and his voice sounds less warbling than on previous records, driven by the honesty and conviction of what he's singing about. Loss, again, is a recurring concept; these friends are certainly from the same Joynerverse of characters that narrate 'Born of Longing' or 'I Wrote a Song About the Ocean', who yearn to escape from their own memories. 'Disappear From Here' closes the record and is the most stripped down, just Joyner and his guitar, and the way it proceeds through a line of verses reminds me of Neil Young closing On the Beach with 'Ambulance Blues'. The rural themes so prevalent on Heaven's Gate return, with winter explicitly discussed, and the final moments really feels like a man trying to intentionally fade into nothing. This record is so quiet and it's also recorded in an intimate way, with carefully chosen arrangements - the accordion playing that I raved about on the last record returns here, and is just as beautifully understated. I wouldn't call this lo-fi, hi-fi, bi-fi or any other kind of fi - it's merely plain ol' fidelity, and when you turn it up, it doesn't sound richer or more complex; it's like this was meant to be listened to quietly, while a candle burned. Songs for the New Year is the end of an era, for after this Joyner began his more heavily orchestrated Truckstop era, another rewarding period of his insanely prolific career. Unfortunately I never managed to acquire physical copies of any of that stuff so we have to end the discussion of Mr. Joyner's output here, but this is a beautiful and precise place to do so.

Bert Jansch - 'Moonshine' (Reprise)

Another promo copy - Reprise must have really been pushing Jansch hard back then - and a record that splits the difference in two axes, those of solo/band, and traditionals/originals. This is the Tony Visconti record, taking Jansch's songs and arranging them in full-fledged styles that mostly suit the material. For a guy who did classics such as "Heroes" and Indiscreet, Moonshine probably ranks fairly low on his list of accomplishments, and he doesn't try to reinvent the wheel here. The full-band arrangements mostly hew close to the nature of Jansch's character, which is warm, intimate and romantic. If anything, the arrangements lack a bit of teeth; there's an 'adult contemporary' feeling to a lot of this, even the solo guitar pieces, but maybe that's just musical maturity. Jansch never came off as brash or impetuous in the earlier record, but I keep thinking back to that song 'Soho' on Bert and John, which isn't the most ragged vocal line, but it bursts with youth and energy. There's nothing like that here, but instead lengthy, thoughtful meditations on loneliness and the passing of time. And if you like putting music into the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy (I don't, though I frequently do on these pages because I'm a lazy and unscrupulous writer) then this feels extremely Apollonian, at least compared to the band arrangements on Birthday Blues. This isn't a criticism; the harp on 'The January Man' is lovely and always just escaping Jansch's guitar, and the medieval leaning  arrangements on the title track are kinda fun. But the title of the record doesn't feel like it should refer to a Bacchanalian revelry (if that's what the cover art is trying to suggest), but rather literally the light of the moon. 'Night Time Blues' is probably the best cut here, a long Jansch original that uses the fiddle and Danny Thompson's probing basslines to cradle and support the vocal, which wonders through all manner of solipsistic thoughts during a sleepless night. It's both comforting and a tiny bit unsettling, and a case where the arrangements and production really benefit the material. There's drums throughout but they're always a bit mellow, mostly Laurie Allen but with Dave Mattacks on 'Yarrow' (a steady, almost military rhythm which fits the song, a tale of quarrel and death) and the great Danny Richmond on 'The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face'. Jansch must have been super excited to work with Richmond, given how much he wears his love of Mingus on his sleeve, and this is a really harmonious and beautiful jam around an insanely romantic lyric (by Ewan McColl). Richmond sounds like he just showed up and played a standard 'jazz' pulse behind it, I daresay phoning it in a bit, and he's mixed oddly low given his stature - but the result works well. The final cut, 'Oh My Father', contains an electric guitar (by Garry Boyle) against Jansch's standard cow-stick, and Visconti on electric bass. It's some out of place here, though it situates this record firmly in the world of 1970s pop-rock; the buzzing electric airspace makes this sound almost like a bizarro Steely Dan track or something. I'm not sure how I feel about it, and I bet Jansch wasn't sure either.

Gunter Hampel and his Galaxie Dream Band - 'Broadway/Folksong' (Birth/Jubilee Edition)

Hampel had a productive summer in 1972; several of these 'Jubilee Editions' are recording sessions from that time, spent in New York obviously in collaboration with many American musicians. This is recorded in July, two months after Angel, and in a studio this time. It's mostly a different cast though John Shea and Jeanne Lee are still present, and there's no drumming this time. The compositions are more strongly felt - this is a heavily melodic album, built around plucked and bowed strings. 'Folksong' with flute and violin together, teasing each other towards a theme before the other musicians creep in. It finds a form, a circular, rolling melody, not extremely 'folk'-based to these ears but meant obviously as people's music. 'Broadway' is the main piece, split over two sides, which works in several movements of variously tight compositional form. There's two bassist, a cellist and violin to support the flutter treble core of Hampel & Lee. There's a feeling of Tin Pan Alley, with the basses working to keep the rhythmic centre, and I suppose the title comes from this throwback feeling. This isn't 'Oklahoma!' but unmistakably tied to jazz's past era, with bouncy swing moments and call and response themes coming and going. Just after side two starts, it shifts to the most formal melody yet heard on these Hampel records, and Lee is a delight here, whisking over it all like a tiny hummingbird trying to feed. 

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.

Family Underground - 'Familiar Places' (Into The Lunar Night)

So many contradictions here! These Danes are about the sweetest, kindest people you'll ever meet, but their music often sounds like the devotional chants of a murderous cult. The title is 'familiar places' but the only familiar imagery this will conjure is an imagined nocturnal bender with distant, ever-ungraspable shrieks in the distance and a pulsating ur-drone throughout. That is to say, this is a pretty great album that somehow transcends the ecstatic drone scene it was birthed from and has lots of peers (Double Leopards, Birds of Delay, etc.) while still somehow retaining a distinct quality. The centrepiece, 'Valley of 1xxx Smokes', sounds a bit like the mid-fi horizontalism of Newcastle's Culver, though with extra members to sweeten the deal with melodicas, tinkering bells and other not-quite-identifiable sounds. It's not too obvious, but works up enough steam that having to break in the middle to flip the LP is actually a detriment. Family Underground seem to flirt between organic, pastoral drone and darker, industrial-tinged rattling; it's a delicate balance than shifts its weight even in the same track. And when 'Hellish Design' rolls around to close up, it feels sufficient, a band that hasn't outstayed their welcome and knows exactly what they are converging on.

Dead Kennedys - 'Plastic Surgery Disasters' (Alternative Tentatcles/Faulty Products)

Plastic Surgery Disasters, with it's Michael Wells cover, for some reason actually horrifies me. I'm fine with other great gross-out covers, including the original Big Black Headache, but something about this really upsets me. But the music? Well, it's underrated, at least by me. I always forget how good Plastic Surgery Disasters is, as it's overshadowed by the fresh fruit of Fresh Fruit and the cohesive controversy of Frankenchrist. Middle DKs is, well, confident. The surf-lick guitars are moving slightly more in the heavy metal direction (listen to 'Bleed for Me' if you don't believe it), and the hardcore thrash edges of the In God We Trust EP are toned down (though the production/mastering not much better). Jello's voice has never sounded more waddly-good, and the opening cut, 'Government Flu' is majestic. By this point he's mastered the ability to ratchet up the hysteria, and it saves otherwise mediocre songs like 'I am the Owl'. Some of the vitriol might be misplaced - 'Terminal Preppie' feels more like material Descendents should be covering, and 'Trust Your Mechanic'/'Well-Paid Scientist' are back-to-back assaults on expertise. I almost want to accuse Dead Kennedys of subtlety here, as 'Moon Over Marin' is more poetic than an environmentalist rant should be. It's also one of the best cuts of the DKs career, with an anthemic guitar line that belies the sarcasm everything else is rooted in. This LP is either played to death or again mastered badly, but do I really want a Dead Kennedys record to sound like a booming arena-rock masterpiece? Let the buzz and distortion wash over everything like a, well, 'Buzzbomb'.

Leonard Cohen - 'Recent Songs' (Columbia)

I suspect that Recent Songs is not one of the best-selling Leonard Cohen records, which is somewhat of a shame because it's a solid work with some songs you haven't heard a million times (because I, for one, will strangle myself if I hear 'Suzanne' again, as great as it might have been once to me). Part of Recent Songs' sleeper status is just timing - by the late 70s, the zeitgeist of ten years past was no longer present infuse these songs with the profundity that keeps us coming back to songs like 'Who By Fire' forty years later. Instead we get a somewhat older, more restrained Cohen focused perhaps a bit more on songcraft than before. Some songs are directed to specific people, such as 'The Traitor', while the more familiar grandiose poems ('Ballad of the Absent Mare') might be outtakes from a previous record. It's a longer record, with some stretched out jammy bits and a definitive placement into the 70s folk-rock mileau. Maybe it's just me, but on 'The Gypsy's Wife' I feel the bassline has just a bit of boogie-funk to flavour it, and it wouldn't be out of place on a Fleetwood Mac record of the same time. Likewise, there's a lot of electric piano to flesh things out. This musicality, sadly with all musicians uncredited on my copy (except for background vocalist Jennifer Warnes), is a nice addition, when sounding 1970s. There's also some elements that are more retro in approach, though the violin solos are lively and exciting; any guitar noodling stays focused. This LP came after the Cohen-disavowed, aborted Phil Spector album Death of a Ladies' Man and in some ways the music feels like a reaction to that gross, plastic sheen -- occasionally with uneven results. I find the retro parlour feel of 'Came So Far For Beauty' to bit a bit too slow for me, and the French-language cover tune, 'Un Canadien Errant', is just too close to Edith Piaf for me. But the "back to his roots" Cohen, at one time the Cohen I wanted, lacks the bitterness and desperation that makes Death of a Ladies' Man so amazing (even if it took me a good 15 years to come to that conclusion). When I do end up with a vinyl copy of that one, I will probably pull out Recent Songs even less frequently (and I already barely play this one).