HEAD OVER HEELS

TREASURE

VICTORIALAND

ALL 4AD

The cocteau twins were the most incandescent yet impenetrable of the post-punk bands. The contrast between Robin Guthrie in particular and the music he made, with its gossamer showers of guitar, was always marked. No effete dandy, his truculent refusal/inability to shed light on the Cocteaus’ creative process was always coupled with jeering derision at critics’ attempts to fill the void with their own, adjective-laden praise (“‘Gossamer showers’? You wanker!”). Liz Fraser, meanwhile, always seemed strangely disconnected from her own wordless, ethereal offerings, as baffled as the rest of us. For those who demand a strict, nutritional quota of ‘content’, the Cocteaus were always problematic, and there were some who condemned them as an airy confection. Yet while it’s hard to grasp what their music signifies, and despite its whimsical titles (“Fluffy Tufts”, “When Mama Was Moth”), it’s still rapturous and manages to pull you in deep.

Garlands, their 1982 debut, sees the Cocteaus in the thrall of post-punk’s first wave, the Banshees and Public Image Ltd. There’s also a black streak, a disturbing undertow running through their work, in songs like “Blood Bitch” and “Blind, Dumb, Deaf” which were in accordance with those more abrasive musical times. But there’s an ambience to their music which set them apart.

1983’s Head Over Heels was an affirmation of Guthrie and Fraser’s romantic bliss, to which titles such as “My Love Paramour” and “Sugar Hiccup” attest. It’s an ecstatic affair, guitars blazing like Van Gogh sunshine, with all the toxins of the debut album banished. A snowblind-white counterpoint to Siouxsie’s dark, gothic hauteur.

Treasure (1984) saw Simon Raymonde fully on board, and was a thing of pre-Raphaelite splendour. Made in a year when post-punk had all but withered away to be supplanted by the peroxide mediocrity of mid-’80s new pop, its remote, crystalline beauty was all the more conspicuous.

If this was the Cocteaus in full flow, 1986’s Victorialand saw them ebb a little?it’s subdued, more like buoys bobbing out at sea than crashing waves of guitar.

Whether you regard The Cocteau Twins as analgesic or stimulant, they are the still-vital link between the post-punk of their own era and the post-rock which they anticipated.

FREAKY STYLEY

THE UPLIFT MOFO PARTY PLAN

MOTHER’S MILK

CAPITOL

It’s a curious quirk of fate that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are at their most musically potent when they’re least innovative. Last year’s career-topping By The Way succeeded with a fairly traditional brand of Californian rock. But back in the ’80s, they invented the kind of smutty, jittery rap-rock that’s still so lucrative?and unappealing?today.

A good time for this extensive reissue programme, then, if only to confirm our old prejudices about the band. The eponymous 1984 debut is a tinny opener, dominated by Flea’s savagely irritating bass style. The following year’s Freaky Styley is an improvement, with the funk quotient upped by producer George Clinton and a surprisingly tolerable cover of Sly’s “If You Want Me To Stay”.

The more metallic Uplift Mofo from 1987 finds their trademark style fully formed: extreme masochists are directed to the desecration of “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. By 1989’s Mother’s Milk, MTV-boosted mega-fame and attendant drug disasters (including one dead guitarist) had arrived. Some live Hendrix covers tacked on the end provide scant reward for the diligent.

On the point of celebrating their 10th anniversary, Mouse On Mars remind us of their legacy of quiet brilliance, which began with the subtly wrought polyrhythms and distressed tones of 1994’s “Frosch” EP. What’s strange about the pristine and media-neglected likes of, say, 1997’s “Schnick-Schnack” is not that it hasn’t dated but that it still bubbles like it’s fresh and steaming in the soundlab, future sounds still awaiting wider development and distribution. As relentlessly inventive as Autechre, yet less daunting.

APOCALYPSE DUDES

BURNING HEART

A bunch of carefully unappealing Norwegians styled as gay bikers, Turbonegro achieved a certain notoriety in the mid-’90s thanks more to song titles like “Rendezvous With Anus” and “I Got Erection” than their fairly grim musical hybrids of Judas Priest and The Ramones.

In the wake of numbskull contemporaries The Hellacopters finding international success and guyish tributes from Queens Of The Stone Age and The Hives, the inevitable reformation and reissue programme is well underway.

Forced to choose, Apocalypse Dudes is infinitesimally more varied and accomplished than Ass Cobra. But after a while, it’s hard to decide what’s more boring: the hairy-palmed musical slogging, or the risible attempts at outrage.

This Jimmy Page-era gem captures The Yardbirds in their hard psych-blues pomp, mixing bought-in British hit factory items like the Fabulous Flakes’ “No Excess Baggage” with pre-Zep blueprints like the trance-rock “Glimpses” and “Only The Black Rose”. Fans will gravitate quickly towards the sessions, which include bizarre covers of Nilsson’s “Ten Little Indians” and Manfred Mann’s “Ha Ha Said The Clown”. The Beeb cuts are equally intriguing as the band tackle Maurice Chevalier chanson, Bobby Dylan and the riffy blitz of “Dazed And Confused”. Listen up, all you White Stripers.

Hank Williams recorded around 170 songs between 1946 and his untimely death at the age of 30 in 1953. Subtitled “An Introduction To Hank Williams”, this album isn’t a greatest hits, omitting, as it does, many of his most successful releases. Instead, it concentrates on the poetic and reflective side of his output, ultimately the touchstone for his reputation as “the hillbilly Shakespeare”. As such, it succeeds in conveying the essence of a unique talent and a classic of country music.

Before the demons got the better of him, the esteemed Peter Greenbaum was Bethnal Green’s answer to the hard Delta blues masters. His version of the Mac were as influential in their day as any crossover rock band. Singles hits like “Albatross” (the original and a Chris Coco remix both figure here) and the autobiographical “The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)” turned Green into a transatlantic superstar who could write his own material and do justice to Little Willie John or Elmore James. Chuck in the ineffable “Oh Well?Parts 1 & 2”, add some “Rattlesnake Shake”, and you could be back in the Roundhouse circa 1969.

Coming up with a comprehensive history of the music that led up to Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88”?widely regarded as the first true rock’n’roll record?is a virtually impossible task, but this compilation makes a damn fine stab at it. Concentrating heavily on the blues but also taking in country and bluegrass, jug bands, vaudeville, gospel and old-style R&B, this boxed set features exemplary sleevenotes, painstaking track remastering, and stunning covers. One hundred tracks including Leadbelly, Sonny Boy Williamson, Alberta Hunter, The Carter Family, Frank Crumit, and Little Richard spread across four CDs?soon to be available individually.

Crucial to the development of the “Canterbury Scene” and British progressive rock in the late ’60s, Soft Machine quickly developed into a semi-improvisational, jazzy avant-rock outfit. Featuring material recorded by several different line-ups, including the classic Dean-Ratledge-Hopper-Wyatt quartet as well as the short-lived, brass-augmented septet, Backwards (so-called because the tracks are presented in reverse chronological order) does not contain any exclusive material but does capture the band at its most creative. Several of the tracks suffer from questionable sound quality, but there’s no denying the warmth and energy of these performances.

If the story is true, Nilsson conceived of this album during his first acid trip. Working on what was ostensibly a children’s project freed this sometimes over-precocious maverick from his sardonic contrariness, resulting in a work of genuine warmth and humour.

Pitched to a well-lubricated ABC executive on a long-haul flight, The Point became an animated television feature narrated by Dustin Hoffman, eventually evolving into a West End stage show featuring ex-Monkees Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz.

Completing the first cycle of Nilsson’s albums, within a year Nilsson Schmilsson had been recorded and a brand new career begun.

Recorded in 1963 but suppressed until now for needless legal reasons, this angelic album of 10 ballads represents Scott at his peak. His Kallman’s syndrome arrested his hormonal growth, so his voice is literally androgynous. With his troubled life, he has every right to self-pity in songs like “Why Try To Change Me Now?”; that he avoids it completely is testament to his artistry.

He is an outsider who seeks love (“They Say It’s Wonderful”), and when it comes (“I Didn’t Know What Time It Was”) trembling elation has never been captured better by a voice.

This record is vital.

Following the big star Third Album aka Sister Lovers, a fine example of the art of soul-baring with all veins showing, the ever contrary Alex Chilton decided that was his dry run at a proper solo disc. Recording with James Luther Dickinson and various peripheral Big Star alumni at the legendary Sam Phillips and Ardent Studios, Chilton gathered the pieces of his occasional forays into Tennessee bars and constructed a typically bizarre burnt offering.

This 1980 album, Chilton’s solo debut (unless you count 1975’s Bach’s Bottom, which you should), starts with a lazy version of KC & The Sunshine Band’s Florida funk epic “Boogie Shoes”. Thereafter, Chilton wanders further into the dark recesses of dirty disco during “My Rival”, a gloriously splenetic counter-attack delivered with a quill full of poisoned skewers. Big Star-like in places?”I’ve Had It” and “Hey! Little Child” were leftover morsels?Sherbert also dipped into spooked Southern country on Ernest Tubbs’ “Waltz Across Texas”, “No More The Moon Shines On Lorena” and the title track, which resurrects Hank Williams’ corpse and wakes it up with a blast of Spectorish noise.

Disc 2, Live In London, is a relic from the old Dingwalls daze, 1980 to be precise. Punchy, punky and patchy, it benefits from raw takes of Chilton’s old Box Tops hit “The Letter”, a blowsy “Train Kept A Rollin'” and the inevitable “September Gurls”, knocked out impromptu with a local pick-up crew. Eager for the recognition, but never keen to have his hem touched too hard, Alex Chilton remains an enigma. Which is why we love him, presumably.

PRINTS

STEP ACROSS THE BORDER

ALL RER

Three more in a series of Frith releases. Guitar Solos is an album of guitar solos that confound all received notions of guitar solos, whose limpid abstraction and furious determination mark an imaginary mid-point between Hendrix and John Cage. Step Across The Border is a film soundtrack to a “celluloid improvisation” located at the other end of the musical stratosphere to John Williams. Prints, meanwhile, is the most accessible of these offerings, a collection of rarities including an extraordinary version of Burt Bacharach’s “Trains & Boats & Planes”.

PARACHUTE

FREEWAY MADNESS

SNAPPER

The second of three tranches of three Pretty Things reissues in gold numbered limited editions begins with the group’s most celebrated album, SF Sorrow (1968), often cited as the first ‘rock opera’ and the model for The Who’s Tommy. It’s remarkable chiefly for its conceptual prescience. Parachute (1970) is a fair-to-middling concept album about city and country. Freeway Madness (1972) picks up where Parachute left off, and is about equal in quality. These albums, all three of which come with bonus tracks, are very much for fans.

Marmalade

KALEIDOSCOPE

BOTH CASTLE

Once they’d parted company with Brian Poole, the Tremeloes not only matched their beat output, they outstripped it. This selection will appeal to lovers of the Bee Gees or Paul and Barry Ryan. Hugely influenced by The Beatles, the Trems were more than mere copyists. “Willow Tree”, “You” and a version of “Good Day Sunshine” indicate the general direction. They played with the experimental mood of the era before going into cabaret, but their toytown psychedelia sounds great now.

Another entrant in the excellent Psych-Pop series, Marmalade (originally called Dean Ford And The Gaylords!) graduated from the cheesier pop side of the time into a pretty fair hippie act with CSN&Y leanings. Fixed somewhere between the irksome Dave Dee style and Badfinger, Marmalade did punk rock (“Hey Joe”) and freaked out politely in the manner of the Moody Blues. Tuneful and never too taxing, Kaleidoscope is a colourful summary of their fine cut preserve.

TRAVELOGUE

BOTH VIRGIN

Of all the post-punk industrial groups, The Human League were always the closest to pop. Their 1979 debut, Reproduction, remains musically futuristic but lyrically dwells on the past (“Almost Medieval”) and inadequacy (“Empire State Human”). Bonus tracks include the original “Being Boiled” single and the Dignity Of Labour EP.

Travelogue, released in 1980 and recorded before the departure of Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware to form Heaven 17/B.E.F., contains still highly pertinent commentaries on the increasing commodification of pop in “The Black Hit Of Space” and “WXJL Tonight”. Extras here include the “Holiday ’80” EP and the League’s brilliant foray into avant-disco, “I Don’t Depend On You.”

In the wake of Jam Master Jay’s murder, there have been effusive tributes to Run-DMC, and rightly so. These combative, dressed-down homies did knock down walls the way they did in the video for “Walk This Way”, establishing a strangely logical and enduring coalition between hip hop and heavy metal. They were also responsible for stripping away the degrading sequins’n’starsigns bullshit that hampered early rap. Their street-tough approach on “It’s Like That” reconnected rap with the sidewalks, while their minimalist backbeats established the early template for hip hop. Grandmaster Flash had been the last of the ’70s funky show people. Run-DMC was where it really started.

Cuts like “Sucker MCs”, “King Of Rock” and “Can You Rock It Like This?” were formidable exercises in muscle flexing and turntable technique, ripping the cut like no one else. “Peter Piper” was a brilliant piece of rap virtuosity, while “My Adidas” set the new sartorial tone.

Run-DMC were rap revolutionaries on various fronts. In 1987, at the height of their powers and having conquered MTV, they blew the Beastie Boys away on their joint UK tour. Yet, by 1988, as this collection demonstrates, they went into steep decline. There were other acts on the block?Eric B & Rakim were slicker, Public Enemy were dropping polemical bombs, NWA upped the gangsta ante. Meanwhile, Run-DMC gave us “Mary, Mary”. Their work was done and the world was done with them. They’d built the chassis for hip hop but it would be for others to provide the interior and upholstery. Cruelly, they were dispensed with, and the ’90s would prove a grim decade for the band. Run became suicidal, DMC battled alcoholism. Sadly, it’s taken Jam Master Jay’s death to remind us of Run-DMC’s achievements.

From the same Sub Pop stable as fellow Seattlites Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden, The Walkabouts’ black strain of elegiac country roots and avant folk immediately branded them sore thumbs among grunge contemporaries.

With string-laden moodscapes more akin to noir cinema, they found European ears more receptive, releasing often superb albums through Glitterhouse and others. The breadth of their appeal is highlighted by the guests here?R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, Mary (Madder Rose) Lorson, Brian Eno, the Warsaw Philharmonic?while the music, despite underselling classics Satisfied Mind (1993) and Setting The Woods On Fire (1994), captures perfectly their haunted experimentalism.

Not just the perfect antidote to the McCarthy witch-hunt era, Lenny Bruce destroyed the false moral majority. A jazz age counterculture hero, Bruce’s scattergun approach demolished smug ideas about race, sex and the politically-correct taboos we take for granted. His so-called ‘sick’ humour was the stand-up rap of its day?he took the N and F words and beat them to death with wit. His own life balancing on the edge, Bruce simply went further with berserk interior monologues.

This second volume of carefully improvised verbal mayhem includes “The Palladium”, which fuses dope, porn and disease into an abbatoir for scared cows.

Crazy and unique.