Chris Knox - 'Not Given Lightly' (Flying Nun)

I went through a Chris Knox period in college and those first couple of solo LPs are great, something I'd recommend to everyone (and strangely, I don't have any of them as physical copies to place under analysis here). This is a 12" single with a slim (but technically existing) spine, which means I never remember it's here as it doesn't catch my eye when browsing (and the Ks are right in the middle of my line-of-sight when standing). It's the only Chris Knox vinyl I own, so I'm grateful for this project to remind me to listen to it. Side A is Knox's biggest hit, rendered here at 45rpm, a tune which actually even charted in some countries, though possibly only southern hemisphere ones (not that there's anything wrong with that). But Knox, being the generous genius that he is, surly figured 'Why have one B-side when you can have 10?'; this side is labeled Guppiplus!! as it's mostly made up of  material from Knox's very rare 1982 solo LP Songs for Cleaning Guppies, which I've never heard in its entirety. The ten songs here lean towards the more experimental side of early-80s Tall Dwarfs work, with a home-studio sound not too far off from the vibe of Seizure and Croaker. The more experimental parts come to the forefront in the way Knox treats his voice; 'Jesus Loves You' uses a processed silly baby voice as a harmony over a clanging percussive loop with backwards effects; it recalls early 80s UK electronic/industrial underground music, which may or may not have actually been an influence then. 'Indigestion' is a heavily rhythmic song approaching rap; 'Sandfly' is totally a-capella and calls out Bobby McFerrin in the liner notes. I can imagine people who bought this for 'Not Given Lightly' and the sweet romanticism of it would find little to enjoy here on the flip. Even the closer-to-pop songs, like 'Over and Out' or 'I Wanna Die With You' have more art-school swagger to them than 'Not Given Lightly', which is a wonderful song for sure but not one with any element of being damaged. My pick of Guppiplus may actually be 'More or Less [Lethargy]', which creeps through a sludgy guitar strum and has a great, classic Kiwi drone-melody. Rendered in Knox's cheerful croon, it sounds absolutely wonderful, but I do love the sound of his voice. The song stops and sputters but stays within the bedroom aesthetic; it's the shining example of what Knox does. 

Simon Joyner ‎– 'The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll' (Sing, Eunuchs!)

My copy actually has a white sleeve, but it's so much easier to steal these images than to scan them. I hope that this brief excursion into early Simon Joyner records is as rewarding to read about as it is for me to listen to; this is an intensely beautiful body of work from a gifted songwriter whose talent only further expanded over the subsequent two decades, though for some reason I only have his early ones. The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll is a nice hybrid of the ragged approach found on his Iffy cassette and the somewhat most contemplative singer-songwriter vibe of the subsequent Room Temperature cassette. This is his first LP release and it's spread across different sounds and styles, with some band work and scarring electric guitar playing, perhaps by Joyner or perhaps with a band - no one else is credited but I'd guess Chris Deden is the drummer. Joyner is a natural with an acoustic guitar but over his career he has resisted attempts to pigeonhole him into the coffeeshop/open-mic genre. Here, electricity brings a darker cadence, especially on songs like '747', 'August (Die She Must)' and 'Fallen Man'. There's a lot of personal pronoun work here, and it's neither intensely soul-baring nor character work, which is maybe one of the reasons that Joyner's never found major commercial success. Instead, he writes songs that are rich in imagery, oblique enough to have an air of mystery, and relatable in fleeting passages. 'Appendix' is a long and somewhat surreal travelogue, which is quite compelling in it's manic strumming; it's the acoustic mirror of side one's 'I Went to the Lady of Perpetual Healing', which seems to describe a mystical experience but is maybe a bit tongue-in-cheek. These are great, ragged indie rock accompaniments, Omaha style, and they perfectly complement Joyner's unorthodox voice; the scratchy violin on 'Cole Porter' can act as a symbol of the whole scene he came from at this time, which stretched to the West Coast to include the Shrimper label and artists like Refrigerator and the Mountain Goats, who Joyner shares an obvious musical affinity with. It comes to a head with the final track, 'Joy Division' (where have we heard that name before?), which is an electric guitar and voice tune, sung to a father and with the same sense of mild desperation that rings through the whole album. It crescendos into a brief moment of cathartic rocking out, before ending with a tape splice. It's sudden, but suddenly moving as well, and there's still a glimmer of teen angst despite the more sophisticated approach to lyric writing. This style of arrangements is right up my alley but it set these artists aside from more commercially-minded songwriters; I clicked with it as an adolescent in the mid-90s because it felt intimate, homemade, and inviting. If the songwriting is pure then there should be no need for big studio production, and I think I still believe that today.

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.

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!

Egg (Deram Nova)

Egg occupy a space somewhere between power trio and prog-rock. Dave Stewart's organ is the lead, and it sounds like an organ, mostly eschewing effects and other processing in order to construct creative, intelligent rock music where the keys are the lead instrument. The vocals are actually I've always liked most about Egg - Mont Campbell signs earnestly, with a deep reverberating voice and with lyrics, printed on the sleeve, that exhibit an honest creativity. His bass playing is essential though, being sinewy enough to push against Stewart's changes without being dominant. The structures are tight, but it doesn't feel overly rigid - maybe it's the jazz influections of drummer Clive Brooks, but it's responsive. This is Canterbury in a nutshell - the thinking man's rock, and a fairy early entry, from 1970, that avoids pompousness for the most part. Somehow they manage to cover Bach's 'Fugue in D' and it comes off as charming and cute instead of stuffy classical wanking. Egg are clear to separate their vocal-based songs from their more experimental instrumental excursions. Overall, they don't get too out there - this is definitely on the safe prog, so we have no completely free sessions or white noise blankets or musique concrete or anything like that, except for one dazzling movement of side 2. 'The Song of McGillicuddie the Pusillanimous' (and that's only half the title) is the best song on the album, with slicing organ riffs recalling 60's garage and a fairly intense lyrical bend. Side two is given over to the 'Symphony No. 2', where the Bachisms come to the forefront again, as well as the more atmospheric excursions as previously mentioned; sometimes the bass is just a low gritty hum, and the noisy passage just before the last movement has a great, chunky organ that does finally step on the ring modulation. It works a cohesive piece and ends a pretty solid album, I think Egg's only one - they soon went on to do Hatfield and the North and National Health, where a more strident professionalism stagnates things slightly. But we're still a few years away from the H's, let alone the N's.

Deerhunter - 'Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.' (Kranky)

I fell in love with Microcastle while falling asleep to it every night on earphones, during a tumultuous period of my own life. Bradford Cox's subtle songs really spoke to me then - I began to imagine deep rivers of melancholy underneath what would otherwise be simple, even gothy lyrics. This is a 'mellow' album, akin to low-key classics like Mekons Journey to the End of the Night or Big Star's third album. That's not to say Deerhunter doesn't function as the exploratory rock band they established themselves as in previous releases - especially on side 2 - but that there's less of a bass-led groove here, and this is a record more concerned with melody, lyrics and texture than jamming out. Maybe this explains my love for Microcastle - even though it's a 'breakout' album, it's somewhat of a departure. The record opens with 'Cover Me (Slowly)', a slow instrumental intro, starting the theme that's expanded in 'Agoraphobia'. This immediately marks a distinct change from Cryptograms-era Deerhunter - it's much more dry, more precise, and almost overly mild. Actually, it sounds just like the song 'AT&T' by Pavement, and this might also be why I fell in love with it. Microcastle veers between songs of desolation and strange, missing nostalgia, always rooted in pain and loss. 'Little Kids' is a built around an addictive melody, with a guitar riff that could be sing-song cute in another context. It's a song that paints a dark portrait of adolescence, which slowly ascends into a thick sheet of soundhaze without ever letting go of it's sing-along chorus. Most of the delivery on Microcastle is slow and restrained; the image of death lingers over everything, but you have to really work for it. The title cut is a beautiful minimalist sketch built around Cox's voice and an electric guitar which, when it finally explodes into the full-band stomp, has quite a payload. 'Calvary Scars' continues this wobbly, sparse delivery, letting the guitar overtones quilt up behind the voice; 'Green Jacket' fades to almost nothingness. The flipside starts with the melting shimmery 'Activa' before breaking into 'Nothing Ever Happened', the clear 'single' from the record. This twisting tune is driven by a strong bassline and it feels like a holdover from Cryptograms - not the waxed-paper vision of the rest of the album, but an appropriate inclusion anyway. The tune ends with a dizzying, descending guitar line that has traces of the Feelies around the edges. The jangle creeps in throughout the album, sometimes just as colour and sometimes as structure. 'Never Stops' and 'Saved by Old Times' both employ a confident 4/4 drive around their moaning, yearning tales of seasonal affective disorder and living in the past. A great album,yeah, but it's only half the package; like Cryptograms, Kranky is making sure I get my money's worth of Deerhunter for this purchase. Weird Era Cont. was thrown into this as a second LP, intended to be some sort of bonus album to combat leaked mp3s, or something like that. It's a bit of a Dead Letter Office, consisting (I guess) of Microcastle outtakes, but it's still pretty solid. The most successful tracks are fast rockers, such as  'Focus Group' and 'Operation', yet they're still holding a more stripped-down feel than anything on the regular album, which suggests that these tracks are unfinished. But a less polished Deerhunter is still nice; the sketches are lovely. 'Cicadas' attains a nearly free-jazz clatter; 'Ghost Outfit' is little more than a synth experiment, but interludes are lovely; see side 2's 'Slow Swords' for a real mood piece. These instrumental jams recall the ambient/song dichotomy of Cryptograms, though 'Weird Era' sounds more like No Neck Blues Band and 'Moon Witch Cartridge' is kinda goofy. 'Vox Celeste' brings out the more shoegazer qualities of their work, with vocals melting into a sea of reverb (but the vibe is still good, good). It's brother, 'Vox Humana' starts with big Phil Spector drums, which slowly recede into the distance as the mid-range gloom takes charge, subduing Cox's semi-spoken vocals under the warm reverb. The whole thing ends with a bubbly, melting version of 'Calvary Scars', thus tying the two LPs together into a conceptual whole.

Dead C - 'DR503 / The Sun Stabbed EP' (Ba Da Bing)

It starts off with another version of 'Max Harris', a bit shorter this time, and then segues into 'Speed Kills', as close to perfect as the Dead C could ever be. Because there's something contradictory about the idea of perfection here - this ain't Dark Side of the Moon, with it's overly-worked, carefully-EQ'ed guitar tracks. Yet the Dead C aren't a bunch of tossed-off nonsense, despite what many listeners might think. "Deliberate" is maybe a better word; everything you hear is done for a reason. These slow moans from the south island of New Zealand are as radical and distinct of an aesthetic vision as anything by, say, Black Sabbath or Van Morrison. There's nods to their predecessors, the Velvet Underground of course the obvious one (though I make the mistake of associating any spoken vocalisations with 'The Murder Mystery' - see 'The Wheel' here). But the interplay and dialogue of the guitars and the rhythms is so masterful that I actually put the Dead C on a level with artists like Can or the Miles Davis band - a total mindmeld of communication. This is another lovely Ba Da Bing vinyl reissue, combining the DR503 album (which is different, partially, then the DR503C compact disc that will be shortly addressed on Glass Mastered Cinderblocks) and the great, great 'Sun Stabbed' EP (which spins here as a separate 45rpm 12"). 'Three Years' appears on both, but I'll take the epic version of it from the EP. It's significantly more spacious, allowing Morley's voice to soar as only it can. Also notable is 'Bad Politics', a sloppy, awkward punk rock song that foreshadows the vs. Sebadoh 7" (which will be shortly addressed in Denial Embriodery soon). In between we get booming, lush guitars - how did Ba Da Bing manage to master these so well?  It's hard to believe this could even be possible given the source materia. 'I Love This' could work as a masterpiece of minimalist guitar composition if presented as such, but here it's "mere" filler. DR503 ends with 'Polio', which sounds like a remnant from Morley's association with This Kind of Punishment. Maybe that's just the sound of the south island, but these gloomy chord progressions are iconic of some lost mysterious soundworld and still speak volumes to me today. And this release just absolutely slays; there's enough of a song basis that we haven't merged into the territory of The White House yet, let alone Tusk (though those are also great records); and there's little details like the use of the acoustic guitar in 'Polio' and 'Speed Kills' that situates this in an ambience that is absolutely magical and odd.

Colleen - 'The Golden Morning Breaks' (Leaf)

I never understood why Cécile Schott uses the stage name Colleen - it's kinda like if someone named Dave went by a stage name of Kevin. But that's totally her right, just as it's her right to put out a record with such a ludicrous album cover. If Colleen is going for the 'fey, fairy girl who talks to unicorns' vibe then I guess she chose well; the music on this record is certainly a green, expansive pasture of delicate miniatures, and it's about as far away from the Paris city where she is based as one could imagine. This is her second album, which moves away from the reliance on looping pedals that the first LP used, though there are still several electronic-rooted tracks, such as 'The Happy Sea'. But the waves of digital soundbliss here are layered with quietly plinking natural sound. This is a great record to listen to on vinyl as it's warm and engulfing, with lots of close-mic'd zither, particularly on side one. The zither is really the star of the album, or at least something zitherlike; 'Mining in the Rain' is a classical example of a sound miniature, balancing a zither melody with the creaking of chair or some other room ambience. The hesistations between each note are exquisite; there's a genuine fragility that speaks heaps through it's economy. Compositionally, everything stays small and horizontal; I guess these sketches are really just improvisations that have been worked over. Leaf is a good label for her as she's midway between mild, beatless electronica and Jeweled Antler-style sound-drawings. Fidelity-wise, though, she's a world away from the lackadaisical approach of the Americans, and I think The Golden Morning Breaks is a strong record for it (despite occasional digital clipping, used as a texture). By the end of the first side, I'd adapted my own listening to the slow pace of Colleen's work, and found myself enraptured by 'I'll Read You A Story' as it undulates. The longest track is the closer, 'Everything Lay Still', which layers cello and twinkling bells into a blanket of calm. It rises to a narcotic state, stops to look around, and then steps back into the horizon. I sort of feel like Colleen's style of constructed, low-energy soundworld has become a common thing, though I can't really think of many other examples, and certainly in 2005 this felt really fresh and original. The Golden Morning Breaks really is a coherent album, a story in some ways, which begins with the delicate twinkles of 'Summer Water' and ends with 'Everything Lay Still's inverted currents.