A second chance to go wild about Harry... While the stoned and tie-dyed hordes were overrunning the West Coast during 1967’s Summer Of Love, Harry Nilsson was holed up in Hollywood’s RCA Studios with Jefferson Airplane producer Rick Jarrard and an assortment of top LA session musicians working on his debut album. The 26-year-old was one of an elite coterie of literate, relatively short-haired iconoclasts that included Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks. These were the true radicals of the era, beholden to no trends or movements, each conjuring up his own visionary world while simultaneously keeping alive the values and conventions of American musical tradition from Stephen Foster to Tin Pan Alley. But even among these buttoned-down renegades, Nilsson stood apart, with his three-and-a-half octave vocal range and childlike sense of wonder, his refusal to be ingested into any genre or to perform in public. This studio rat was rock’s Wizard Of Oz, enchanting listeners from behind a shroud of mystery. He comes into focus as never before on The RCA Albums Collection, which contains the 14 LPs he recorded for the label between 1967 and ’77 in accurate reproductions of their original sleeves, adding 123 bonus tracks, 55 of them previously unissued, the whole of it filling 17 discs. That first album, Pandemonium Shadow Show, and the two that followed, 1968’s Aerial Ballet – containing his first hit, a shimmering cover of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” that was memorably used in the film Midnight Cowboy, along with his signature song “One” – and 1969’s Harry, form a pop trilogy as facile, melodious and inviting as the early works of McCartney and Elton John, while predating both by several years. Listening now to his wildly clever Beatles medley titled “You Can’t Do That” on the first album, followed two songs later by a spot-on cover of “She’s Leaving Home”, it’s easy to see why John and Paul named Nilsson as their favourite artist and favourite band during a 1968 press conference. He then threw three straight change-ups – Nilsson Sings Newman, his exquisite LP of Randy Newman songs, with Newman accompanying him on piano; the resolutely whimsical soundtrack to his animated TV movie The Point!; and Aerial Pandemonium Ballet, a radical reimagining of his first two albums – before aiming his next pitch right down the middle. For Nilsson Schmilsson, he cannily turned to commercially successful producer Richard Perry, resulting in his best-selling album and lone chart-topping single, a nearly operatic rendering of Badfinger’s “Without You”. Schmilsson streamlined the qualities of his earlier records, presenting them more directly, alternately appealing to the listener’s heart (“I’ll Never Leave You”), head (“Gotta Get Up”), sense of rhythm (“Jump Into The Fire”), sense of whimsy (“The Moonbeam Song”) and funny bone (“Coconut”). But on 1972’s Son Of Schmilsson, the follow-up to his biggest commercial success, he began the pattern of self-sabotage that beset his later work in what some critics saw as an act of self-loathing, like a petulant child carefully making a series of drawings, only to scribble all over them. The abrupt shift in tone and intent was exemplified by the refrain of “You’re Breakin’ My Heart” (“…so fuck you”) and the close-mic’d belch that opens the kickass rocker “At My Front Door”. To be sure, the LP has its share of Nilsson’s trademark romantic/ironic refinement, including the gorgeously elegiac “Remember (Christmas)” and the Newman-like ballad “Turn On Your Radio”, but bad-boy humour and hardcore cynicism drive most of the songs and performances. The change transformed Nilsson almost at once from a major recording artist into an oddity – a sideshow to the main stage of popular music. A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night (1973) – his sublime album of standards, arranged by Sinatra stalwart Gordon Jenkins and produced by Nilsson’s Beatles connection Derek Taylor – gave way to the confused, largely abrasive Lennon-produced collaboration Pussy Cats, recorded during the ex-Beatle’s 18-month “lost weekend” in LA, his once-angelic voice sounding ravaged by the abuse he put it through. Then came Duit On Mon Dei, an album’s worth of largely uninspired originals, which arranger Van Dyke Parks ornamented with the requisite marimbas and steel drums. Two more wayward and maddeningly self-indulgent albums in Sandman (1975) and …That’s The Way It Is (1976) followed. Owing RCA one more album, Nilsson pulled himself together, reined in his latter-day tendency to go off the deep end lyrically and vocally, and made the most accessible, least off-putting LP since Schmilsson. Knnillssonn’s 10 songs were self-written, their keys comfortably in his mid-range where the vocal damage was less apparent, the arrangements centred on elegant strings. The overtly romantic “All I Think About Is You”, the achingly candid “I Never Thought I’d Get This Lonely”, the big-hearted, irony-free “Perfect Day”, were genuinely beautiful, and he sang them with the understated sophistication he’d perversely abandoned four years earlier. But this inviting, sophisticated and redeeming record appeared too late for RCA, for the fans he’d let down and for his career as a whole, the wayward years in effect eradicating the collective memory of the great ones. Nilsson died of a massive heart attack in 1994 at the age of 54, having recorded nothing of note after leaving RCA. But he left an enormous amount of music in those 10 years, the bulk of it gathered in this much-needed career overview of the forgotten solipsistic genius of rock’s golden age, in which the strike-outs turn out to be as fascinating as the home runs. Extras: Demos, alternate takes, single mixes, outtakes, mono versions, Italian-language versions, studio banter, radio spots. Bud Scoppa Photo credit: Tom Hanley

Diane gives away a lot more with a lot less... The world, one might reasonably observe, is not presently parched by shortages of either ruminative heartbreak ballads or acoustic troubadours from the Pacific north-west. In parts of that region, indeed, such creatures are thicker on the ground than the buffalo before the white man came, grazing in vast gingham-clad herds, their whimsical lo-fi lowing audible for miles. About Farewell, Alela Diane’s fourth album, might therefore seem an unenthralling prospect. It is, unmistakably and unabashedly, a collection of introspective love-gone-wrong laments, composed in the choppy wake of divorce; the titles which weep from the sleeve include “The Way We Fall”, “Nothing I Can Do”, “I Thought I Knew” and “Before The Leaving”. And Alela Diane is, unmistakably and unabashedly, a quirky singer-songwriter from Portland: she personally drew and sewed the sleeves of her first self-released albums, is generally photographed in impeccable vintage apparel, is by her own admission given to hobbies including “collecting old things to arrange in the house” and “making soup”, and dwells in Oregon’s hipster Jerusalem with a cat named Bramble Rose. In such circumstances, the sensible reaction is generally to gather some perishing vegetables and limber up the throwing arm, but About Farewell swiftly neutralises and overwhelms scepticism. It helps that Diane is a proper singer, as opposed to a twee warbler – though this will not be news to owners of her previous works, which demonstrate a voice as easy with Gillian Welch-ish croons as it is with Sandy Denny-esque trills. It helps more that Diane relates and arranges these confessionals with a commendably light, cool touch. While heartbreak can indeed inspire great art, it is also a peculiarly personal calamity, one which will never be half as interesting to the world as it is to you, not that you’ll realise this at the time. There’s a distance, even a diffidence, about these songs – which, rather counter-intuitively, makes them all the more gripping. The exemplary generosity with which the departing paramour is waved off in the title track is characteristic: “I heard somebody say/That the brightest lights cast the biggest shadows/So honey, I’ve got to let you go.” The music behind this leave-taking is also emblematic. “About Farewell” is – this observation applies to both song and album – as pretty and brittle as sculpted icing, a confection of gentle guitar arpeggios and mourning flutes representing a substantial scaling down from the more orthodox backing band she fielded on her previous outing, 2011’s Alela Diane & Wild Devine. The approach suits her, and it suits these songs, which remain understated even when ambitious. The five-minute/two-movement “The Way We Fall” segues unobtrusively from Suzanne Vega-ish deadpan observation to a country-folk ballad which would not disgrace any given Emmylou Harris album. “Nothing I Can Do” is a terse, unsentimental rebuke to the folly of attempting to save someone from themselves. “I Thought I Knew” is nonetheless a highlight for its brevity, the tune swooping gracefully across a backdrop of sobbing strings, the words a bleakly amusing summary of the struggle between optimism and experience: “I took to the sky/With that knowing, sinking feeling”. Diane’s judgement is not altogether infallible. “Hazel Street” feels rather less than it might have been, the melody keeping her voice on too short a leash, swerving away briefly seems a glorious opportunity for a soaring middle eight. Closing track, “Rose & Thorn” is a disappointingly ineffectual conclusion, limply thrashing what must be the most overused metaphor in the lexicon of romantic vexation. But these mis-steps are so jarring largely because they’re so unusual. “About Farewell” is a gentle, rueful, often beautiful record. She should get divorced more often. Andrew Mueller Q&A ALELA DIANE Why pare the sound back so far? It was very circumstantial. I made the record while I was going through a divorce, and my ex-husband was in my band. I didn’t want to share the process of making the record with everyone we’d been touring with. How nervous or otherwise were you about revealing so much about something so personal? I wrote most of it before I left my husband, hiding in a corner of our house singing these songs, praying he couldn’t hear them. It was like the lyrics were telling me my own truth about how I was feeling – almost like the songs were telling me I needed to get a divorce. The songs were part of the process of realising I had to leave. Has your ex-husband heard it? He has. But only very recently. We’ve managed to remain friends, which is a real accomplisment. He said it was hard to hear but he said he was proud of me. He likes it. He’s in a country band in Portland, called Denver, and a lot of theirs are about me. And you can hear it in his songs – clearly he wanted out, as well. You should do a duets album. There’s a vacancy, now that George has gone to join Tammy. We did discuss a double A-side. But I think we were joking. Did you find making the album cathartic? Definitely. Some people might not believe that the songs are as autobiographical as they are. You have to let go, let the stories be what they’re going to be for people to gather what they will. But when I sing them, they still hurt. INTERVIEW: ANDREW MUELLER

The reunited group’s undeniably impressive peaks, blighted by band politics and Auto-Tune... These are interesting times to be a Beach Boys fan. Last year, after much speculation, Brian Wilson officially rejoined the lineup – which also included David Marks from their 1962-’63 days – for an album and a 70-city world tour to mark their 50th anniversary. The tour was something of a triumph, a carnival of togetherness that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The album (That’s Why God Made The Radio) trundled along in a mood of easygoing nostalgia, but ended wistfully, it was noticed, as if the group sensed that autumn was foreclosing on their endless summer. Then, after the tour’s London finale in September, some bad feeling resurfaced. Mike Love announced that he would assert his legal rights to The Beach Boys’ name for forthcoming appearances with Bruce Johnston, leaving Wilson, Marks and Alan Jardine stranded and disappointed. Currently it’s hard to know what’s happening. The Love-Johnston Beach Boys are touring America, playing casinos, fairgrounds and wineries, but despite this bleak development, a new studio album featuring all five of them, with Wilson as the dominant songwriter, is apparently not out of the question. The mystery deepens with Live – The 50th Anniversary Tour, recorded last summer at various unspecified locations believed to include Colorado, Texas and Japan. The 41-track setlist, divided across two CDs, goes back as far as their second single (“Surfin’ Safari”), tackles all the obligatory hits (“I Get Around”, “Good Vibrations”, “Barbara Ann”, “Help Me Rhonda”), touches briefly on the late ’60s (“Do It Again”), pays a surprise visit to Holland in the ’70s (“Sail On, Sailor”, “California Saga”) and mostly avoids the ’80s (“Kokomo”). The Beach Boys are backed by a nine-piece band, many of them strong singers in their own right, resulting in a potential 14-man spread of voices. Particularly delicious are the harmonies in “When I Grow Up (To Be A Man”), “Add Some Music To Your Day” (from the 1970 album Sunflower) and “In My Room”, a delicate ballad that they handle like a child holding a butterfly. The first disc, heavily slanted towards the early years, is a cavalcade of surfboards, hot rods, high schools and Hawaiian girls. It wasn’t a terribly serious vision of the world back then and it certainly isn’t one now (at least until “The Little Girl I Once Knew” brings a higher degree of musical complexity), but the 57 minutes roll by with ease and good humour. The second disc, beginning with the instrumental title track of Pet Sounds, takes a less travelled road – while still containing nine of the most famous songs in American history – with a long and satisfying sequence that includes “In My Room”, “All This Is That” (from the 1972 LP Carl And The Passions – “So Tough”) and two selections, “Forever” and “God Only Knows”, in which the present-day Beach Boys harmonise behind isolated vocal tracks recorded years ago by the late Dennis and Carl Wilson, respectively. You may feel it’s cheesy, or even ghoulish, but it’s more emotional than it sounds. Produced by Brian Wilson and longtime studio partner Joe Thomas, Live – The 50th Anniversary Tour does, however, have a major problem that will ruin the album for some listeners. Several songs are saturated in Auto-Tune, seemingly added at the post-production stage at Wilson’s behest. The weakest voices in the band are those of Wilson himself and Mike Love, whose lead vocals – and between them they sing a lot of lead vocals – are treated by pitch-correction software to iron out what were presumably bum notes. This means, alas, that horribly metallic noises emerge from their mouths instead. It’s so unfortunate. The pardonable human flaws of a ‘naked’ Beach Boys concert would have been far better than sitting, teeth clenched, through “Surfin’ USA” or “Sail On, Sailor”, which aren’t so much Mike and Brian as Ralf and Florian. Bottom line: listen to samples before deciding whether this album is for you. In the final analysis, fabulous music will prevail over robotic voices, as it does (just about) here. Even the usual corny monologues (Johnston is introduced to the crowd as a “Grammy Award-winning songwriter” – like they’d care) have an ironic charm. Everyone now sits tight for the six-disc, career-spanning Beach Boys boxset due in August. And hopes they get it right. David Cavanagh Q+A Bruce Johnston How did the 50th anniversary tour compare to previous Beach Boys tours? Well, it couldn’t even come close, because there’s no Carl and no Dennis. I can tell you my favourite night was the Albert Hall (September 27), which would have made a great live album. We did all of two shows in England. I don’t know what was in our brains. We should have done more, but you had the Olympics and it was a pretty big year for Queen Elizabeth. Was it the longest you’d ever toured with Brian? God, I’ve toured with Brian many times. But that was when he had his handlers and he was overweight and disconnected. This tour was really cool. We were on a bus going to an airport somewhere, and I went up to about four inches from his face and said, “I know you’re in there.” He laughed so hard! There’s still a lot of pressure on him. When I joined the band [in 1965], I used to watch his behaviour. He was like Rachmaninoff as an army general. He was sharing his art and protecting it with his leadership skills. He was so red-hot, so hip. So young. Where do you stand on the issue of Auto-Tune? We don’t use it onstage. You’re telling me they used Auto-Tune on the album, after the fact? You know more than I do. I had nothing to do with the production of this album. Well, I’m sorry to hear it. We seem to be living in pitch-corrected times. Perhaps they should start a Grammy category for Best Pitch-Corrected Recording. But take it from the horse’s mouth: we don’t use it onstage. I generally think I have decent pitch. Of course, I still see a 30-year-old when I look in the mirror. INTERVIEW: DAVID CAVANAGH

Julian Cope and co.'s second is an overlooked classic... The Teardrop Explodes were victims of one of pop’s weirdest years. Their leader, Julian Cope, began 1981 as unlikely pop beefcake, vying with Simon Le Bon and David Sylvian for the hearts and wallets of a new glammed-up teen audience after the huge January success of the blaring, brass-driven “Reward” single. Then, while Cope, guitarist Troy Tate and drummer Gary Dwyer toured America, and entered George Martin’s Air Studios to make their second album, British pop went gloriously nuts. The Specials had hit No.1 with an Arabic reggae protest song that soundtracked the Summer’s riots. What followed was not more of the same, but a lurch into archly synthetic escapism, care of new romantics, synth-poppers, white disco and gender-bending. Meanwhile, U2 and Echo And The Bunnymen, the latter led by Cope’s former bandmate and bitter rival Ian McCulloch, were quickly finding a way to transform post-punk’s anti-macho anxiety into a new kind of arena rock. By the time the Teardrop Explodes released Wilder in November, their record-collector mix of Beatles and Love-quoting ‘60s psych, discreet funk and military brass sounded like four bookish hippies on magic mushrooms adrift in a nightclub full of narcissistic peacocks on ecstasy. Wilder bombed spectacularly and The Teardrops Explodes never made another album. Of course, Wilder’s commercial failure never made it a bad record. This is its second reissue – the first was in 2000 – and Cope’s long journey from pop eccentric to modern antiquarian and national treasure has only increased the cult cachet of his first magnificent failure of a band. But it’s still some shock to rediscover just how great, brave and strange Wilder sounds now, mercifully free of the desperation to cross over that even post-punk puritans like Scritti Politti and Gang Of Four fell for at the time. Wilder’s melodies sound timeless and deliciously free of conventional logic. Its rhythms, inspired by the returning David Balfe’s love of David Byrne and Brian Eno, reject straight time for adventures in syncopation and globe-trotting experiment. Its lyrics – packed with in-jokes about the Liverpool scene, Ian McCulloch’s sister, and Cope, McCulloch and Pete Wylie’s legendary six-week band The Crucial Three – are full of dark winks and unlikely connections between Palestinian freedom fighters and characters from David Copperfield… and that’s just within the prowling, spooked “Like Leila Khaled Said”. “Bent Out Of Shape”, “Passionate Friend” and “Colours Fly Away” are flawed but fabulous attempts to cemulate “Reward”. “Tiny Children” and “The Great Dominions” are the show-stopping ballads, Cope at his man-child best on the latter, somehow making the “Mummy, I’ve been fighting again” refrain poignant rather than pathetic, as Balfe’s Prophet 5 synth percussion throbs ominously beneath him. Conflict and breakdown are the album’s themes, as Cope’s band, drug-addled brain and first marriage were collapsing simultaneously. But Cope is quintessentially English, so the mood is stoic, playful, self-mocking. In poptastic 1981, Wilder made little sense. In 2013, where the musical landscape is full of well-read Dirty Projectors and Wild Beasts and Vampire Weekends, artily fusing psychedelic mindsets and world music motifs, the Teardrop Explodes’ final album sounds entirely contemporary and reveals itself as way ahead of its time. But the clincher is its embrace of the sadness of ending things, and our knowledge that Cope would leave Liverpool and The Teardrop Explodes far behind and go on to bigger adventures. “I could make a meal/Of this wonderful despair I feel”, Cope croons, soft and throaty, on “Tiny Children”. Wilder does exactly that, and then swallows, belches and looks to the future. Extras: Excellent second disc comprising B-sides, the final, posthumous “You Disappear From View” EP (most of which also appeared on the 2000 reissue), and BBC sessions. Plus revealing, self-deprecating sleevenotes from Messrs Tate, Balfe and Cope. 7/10 Garry Mulholland Q&A David Balfe Were the Wilder sessions as acid-fried as legend insists? No! Acid was hovering in the background and influencing a certain adventurousness. But you can’t live your life on it. In your sleevenotes for the reissue you state that Wilder isn’t as good as debut album Kilimanjaro. Why? We were trying to fuck about with things and throw funk in with trumpets and cinematic concepts of music, and I don’t know whether we pulled it off. I went on to spend the next twenty years being an A&R man (Balfe mentored Blur and was the subject of “Country House”) and I look at a song like “Bent Out Of Shape” in terms of adding this and taking away that and it could’ve been a big hit single. Is it true that you locked Julian Cope and Gary Dwyer out of the sessions for the third album? Or that Dwyer chased you through the grounds of Rockfield Studios with a loaded shotgun? No. One of the things Julian does – which I admire enormously – is mythologise everything. Julian has always been adamant that The Teardrop Explodes will never reform. Is this a good thing? I think he’s totally right. The part of me that would love to get onstage and play those songs with me old mates would quite like to do it. But I do admire Julian’s integrity. .