Durutti Column - 'LC' (Base)

I never became a fan of this band but this record, which I just blew a decade of dust off, is pretty intriguing. Durutti Column probably have a place among the most psychedelic side of new wave fans - they seem like the type of band to get a cult around them, though I never really got it. This is instrumental music built around ringing guitars, throbbing basslines, and thoughtful, exploratory song structures. The notes ring out with chorus effects, not oversaturated and not at all hazy. The structures are deceptively simple, and the good nature of these tunes calls to mind acts like Young Marble Giants, making great things with careful brushstrokes. When there are vocals, such as on 'Sketch for Dawn (2)', they're as cryptically buried as you'd expect; these guys are clearly too shy to lay down some confident rock caterwauls. There's some adventurous jamming, of the clean-channel fast-strum type, and while it's easy to take this as a big 'guitar' album, this is really just as much about the bassist and drummer. The keyboards are a presence as well, whether contributing to the sky or being thrust, sharp detail notes (as found on the other vocal track, 'The Missing Boy'). I think LC is one of their more well-regarded records though it's the only one I've ever listened to, and I admit that by the end, I'm quite taken by their sound. There's a subtlety to this, a quieter vein of the 1980s that I also find in bands like Tirez Tirez; the production is important, the tones are carefully chosen. This is a new type of guitar god - one that paints on gauze instead of canvas. 

Dif Juz - 'Extractions' (4AD)

This was it, really - the only proper Dif Juz record -- but a confident step forward it is, especially when compared to the EPs, which are more like sketches. The opening cut, 'Crosswinds', is built from saxophone drenched in wet reverb. It looks towards New Age music as well, but also is an early beacon towards the pop side of British electroacoustic music from later in the decade (I'm thinking O.Rang for example). 'Crosswinds' is lovely - the timbre of the saxes makes waves, a beautiful blanket of wet ear candy. This atmosphere is but a tease - the rest of Extractions is significantly more upbeat, driven by live drumming which is mostly free from the studio effects and processing which seem to affect every instrument. Yet Extractions is not an artificial chunk of computer love - it's welcoming and tries out musical ideas within the framework of this genre. 'A Starting Point' has quick-moving counterpoint; 'Silver Passage' is a quest.'Echo Wreck' feels like the major statement, with it's quick tapping drumming, soaring keyboards, and crafty melodic structure. The Cocteau Twins' vocalist makes an appearance on 'Love Insane', and her voice is a beauty; the vocal treatment sits much better with Dif Juz's music than the vocals on Vibrating Air, but it's good that most of the record stays instrumental. The tempo is somewhat uniform, and the sound is a pretty major step away from not just punk but from new wave at all. But while a lot of music like this - which later gets labeled as post-rock - becomes a bit too mellow, Dif Juz somehow stay energetic throughout. A whole lot of what I think of as the '4AD Sound' comes from music like this - this strain of (mostly British) 1980s musicians looking at texture, tension, ad soundscape instead of vitriol. The path leads though the Durutti Column and all the way to Talk Talk before the Americans started paying attention.

Deerhunter - 'Halcyon Digest' (4AD)

A disturbing, matte cover. White vinyl. Many typefaces. Sadness lingers, sticky from the residue of Microcastle just a few hours earlier. When it bounces, it bounces, but I keep going back to brittle suburban concrete, the sounds of parking lots strewn with tire streaks. Darkness always doesn't make much sense, or is it since? So many typefaces in conflict, but that's the errant afterthought of language which flows through this and so many other Cox-penned platters; words blow across this parking lot, carefully chosen as they are, and different bits stick. Bright lights, dim glows; it's not a contradiction. Memory is everywhere - it seeps through the cracks in the guitar arpeggios, dripping down like oil over every surface. Explicitly called in titles and lyrics, but that's always been there. Let's leave the death trip behind for the real pain is in living. Or something likethat. And yet this is done with so many major key uplifts, the delicate taste of building soundramps, a band coming together to create a vision with less reliance on the wet, processed soups and a strange drive towards, well, accessibility. It's not just a teenage nostalgia at play here; it's movies, shot on super-8, of dusty rooms slightly out of focus, with no people to be seen. There's an absence of affect at times, despite the strains of emotion in the voice ('Basement Scene')!  And when it's pointed - 'He Would Have Laughed', dedicated to Jay Reatard who after all covered 'Fluorescent Grey' so brilliantly - the loss is just all the more bigger, cast over with a withdrawn pallor. Halcyon it is, the next great step forward. The 'other guy' wrote two songs here, and my god are they great - 'Fountain Stairs' rings out like complex bubblegum, magic and delicate. It's Deerhunter at their best, and perhaps their masterpiece they'll never top. But I wait.

Blue Öyster Cult (Columbia)

I love staring into the three point perspective of this album cover. The way everything tapers into the fake occult symbol, recalling question mark, crucifix and swastika - the three most essential symbols of humanity right? And the strangely repetitive geometric architecture, mirrored on the back by a set of railroad tracks. If I were Greil Marcus or some other great pontificator I could probably draw allusions to 'Mystery Train' or the underground railroad or something, but really I just see this as motion. This is a band with an idea, with direction, and yet there's something vaguely sinister about it all. Opening up your debut album with a song about Altamont certainly makes it clear which of rock's spiritual forces you intend to draw on; what I also think BOC's whole shtick suggests (at least early on) is some sort of fascistic undertone to rock and roll. After all, something can light 'Cities on Flame' and you can burn down the Reichstag too. Or maybe that's just what I think when I see umlauts. If you actually pronounce the Ö, well, it sounds fucking stupid so that was obviously mean to look cool, but not sound cool. The music, well, it's awesome riffage from start to finish, with a few weird stylistic bumps that shows these guys haven't found their footing yet. 'Redeemed' has an edge of Vegas crooner to it, and 'She's as Beautiful as a Foot', while great, feels more akin to Christian cult-rock, the type that's been the reissue rage lately. Thank Richard Meltzer for that. This is a somewhat manufactured band though, and the vaguely fascistic imagery I think also suggests a less individualist approach to rock music than the classic big names of the Stones, the Who, etc. None of these guys ever becamse a household name, right? Even after they landed a few hit songs years down the road, knowing the name of Joe Bouchard is more likely to win you a pub quiz than a spot in typical 'rock' conversation. Eric Bloom sings on almost every song with this weird raspy echo behind his voice, and the guitars all have a pretty similar crunch at least until side 2. Keyboards are there, ocasionally in a Doorsy way ('Before the Kiss, a Redcap') but usually felt not heard. And the album in general feels like an album. This is AOR, after all, a term that probably didn't exist yet by this point but here's a record to lead you to it. I remembered 'Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll' being a much better song than it actually is, but I totally forgot about the greatness of 'Workshop of the Telescopes'. True story - when I was really young, like 12, there was something that made me uncomfortable about the idea of this band and I hoped I would never actually hear them. Years later I found the first three albums all at once and I've never regretted that purchase, not even once. Rock music plus theatrics can walk a thin line but these guys are all hints and suggestions, and they deliver the goods as a band too. It's weird how they are sorta manufactured -- what's the 00s equivalent, the Strokes?