Family Fodder ‎– 'ScHiZoPhReNiA pArTy!' (Fresh)

I rarely spin this 12" EP, mostly because it opens with 9 brutal minutes of 'Dinosaur Sex', a raveup that has energy and spirit but is just too utterly stupid for me to fully enjoy. There's the same creative pop production techniques at play here as on Monkey Banana Kitchen, though maybe a bit less vocal or structural experimentation. The dub/reggae influence is more subtle here, just being the undertow of 'Emergency' as opposed to an out-and-out rave. The flipside contains a few songs that predate fast, guitar-based indie rock, as well as the percussion blowout 'Silence', a memorable gem from the Savoir Faire greatest hits disc. There's a few songs that aren't that CD, and thus hearing gems like 'Tea with Dolly' (feeling like This Heat goes pop, with ascending and descending melodic steps keeping everything just off-kilter) and the closer 'Better Lies' (a tense hybrid between dream-pop and indie soul, with the line 'I am the sex pistol of dreams'). Schizophrenia may be appropriate, for that's the condition most associable with the tape-splice technique, though to be honest, there's less overt splicing and fuckery present here than on the full-length. It sounds great at 45rpm though!

The Cure - 'Three Imaginary Boys' (Fiction)

I'm not a huge Cure fan but I love these early records - the evolution from edgy, distant post-punk into lush, romantic goth-pop is interesting to follow, and it's hard to stop enjoying 'Grinding Halt' or '10:15 on a Saturday Night' even after all the times I've heard it played in clubs and bars. There's not any track titles to be found here, but the artwork has great iconography - the domestic, middle-class isolation comes through in the brilliant cover and the collage of oddities on the back. This is really reflected in Robert Smith's voice, which is honest and strained. Listen to his whispers on 'Subway Song', his fingersnaps -- these barely post-adolescent artistic gropes are beautiful in their fragility. They actually can play though - even though the drumming is the weak link, it's there and unwavering, which is all we should ask for. The 'Foxy Lady' cover sees the link between the shard-like guitar of the Cure's peers and the Hendrixian antecedents. And while we're gonna visit most of these songs again immediately because I also have Boys Don't Cry, I'm not dreading it - these are anthems of their era, and they're almost overlooked by the later shadow of the Cure's black-lipstick teenage followers. The guitar playing is absolutely great here, whether slicing ('Accuracy') or chorus-laded ('Three Imaginary Boys') -- it's angled and strident without being too heavy. Actually, the space left between the notes is my favourite thing about early Cure - there's so much hesitation, a reflection of the boredom and frustration that characterised the times, though without resorting to teenage aggro tactics.

Camper Van Beethoven - 'Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart' (Virgin)

The big sound of Dennis Herring rips out of the speakers here. This is Camper Van Beethoven's major-label debut, the last record with Jonathan Segel, and the first time the band will stack the cards in favour of non-funny songwriting. This is also the first Camper Van Beethoven album I ever heard, and I was lucky enough to check it out from the public library some fateful day in the early 90s. This is a damn solid set of songs, though it pains me to realise now that they are a bit less meaningful to me than they used to be -- despite being probably more meaningful to D. Lowery, get it? For while 'The History of Utah' might be a bit of nonsense, it's was dramatic, inspiring absurdity at one point in my listening days. And now it's easier for me to recall than feeling than to connect with songs like 'One of these Days'. It's like stepping halfway towards true expression - but don't worry, we'll get here. There's still surrealism all over Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. 'Eye of Fatima pt. 1' is an 80s reinvention of Blegvad's 'Casablanca Moon' and 'She Divines Water' is maybe the most perfect merging of sentimental acoustic-janglestrum and epic nonsense. The instrumentals are decent enough - sounding not a million miles away from Telephone Free's sound but with far more baroque production - the power-folk of 'Eye of Fatima pt 2', the rolling 'Waka' and the dirge-like 'The Fool' are all excellent (and the traditional 'O Death' fits better with these than the other vocal songs). 'The Devil Song' has a meandering modal guitar line that makes it a keeper, and the stunning gypsy stomp of 'Tania' (a song for Patty Hearst that's just as much history lesson as fingerpicking madness) is still breathtaking. 'Life is Grand' seemingly addresses their major label sell-out in the same chuckling way that all of their other albums end, bearing a structural resemblance to 'No More Bullshit' but with the maturity of a few more years packed in. The horn sections are the most obvious sound of WEA/Virgin/Atlantic's investment, but on 'Turquoise Jewelry' they sound kinda cheap and fake, like some thin ska-core tune. It's when the band slows it down a notch that I enjoy this record the most -- 'Change Your Mind''s lyric of 'How far can you walk/in a night so restless?' presages the beauty to come one album later. But don't worry, we're almost there.