Reissue CDs
Kieron Tyler
How much of someone else’s despair is it possible to take? What are the limits on putting a sense of desolation or isolation into a song? Can such naked expression be mediated by a glossy production or crowded instrumental arrangements which distract from the core essence of the song?All three questions are raised by the new Television Personalities archive release Beautiful Despair. Rather than being an unreleased album, it is a collection of 15 previously unheard home recordings taped in 1989 and 1990 between the albums Privilege (1989) and Closer to God (1992). This was a period of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The critic Simon Reynolds characterised Butterfly Child’s debut album Onomatopoeia as the sound of “vitrified everglades in J.G. Ballard’s The Illuminated Man, where some kind of entropy has slowed down time, so that living creatures are literally petrified, encrusted and crystal.”Such circumlocution was unsurprising as Onomatopoeia was originally issued by Rough Trade in August 1993 during a between-time moment for independently minded pop. Britpop hadn’t yet taken off, grunge was a clichéd bandwagon and the first flush of shoegazing had run its course. It hit shops around the same Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Now that the 40th anniversaries of 1976 and 1977 as the years which birthed punk rock have themselves become history, surveyors of rock’s rich tapestry will inevitably turn to what came next. The year 1978 and what followed punk are easy targets and, in terms of labels, post-punk is accepted as a next wave out of the traps. Stylistically, of course, it’s a meaningless designation: all post-punk really signifies is that something came after punk and here’s a handy handle for it.Proof of the five-CD set To the Outside of Everything's issues grappling with this amorphousness is acknowledged by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1972, just 2000 copies of Bright Phoebus were pressed. Half were off-centre and unplayable. This year, the first conscientious reissue of the album hit 31 in the British album chart. Although it has been a cult favourite for the last couple of decades, the success was nonetheless surprising. Sales and an imponderable future were unlikely to have been on the minds of anyone involved in the recording of this folk-rooted singer-songwriter masterpiece.Bright Phoebus was credited as an album showcasing the songs of siblings Lal & Mike Waterson – it was not strictly by Lal & Mike Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The official reissue of The Beatles’ Christmas records is a major event. Since Live at the BBC was issued in 1994, archive Beatles’ releases have fallen into two categories. There have been releases devoted to or drawing from archive disinterments: Live at the BBC and its 2013 follow-up, the Anthology series, the unreleased studio sessions included in the recent Sgt Pepper’s package and so on.Then, there have been reconfigurations of existing releases: 2003’s Let it be…Naked, the egregious Love compilation, the satisfying Magical Mystery Tour box, a box set of mono albums and this year’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities Volume 6 suggests this 24-track compilation might be a rag-bag; a collection of random musical floor-sweepings which couldn’t be collected under any other heading. Not a bit of it. Instead, every contribution is a gem. Anyone into soul – Northern, or any of its forms – will get a buzz from this collection.“High-quality dance records from across the Northern Soul spectrum – floor-fillers, chin-strokers, the esoteric and the sometimes obvious” are the words summing up the contents on the back of the package. This nails it though it’s hard to see how Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A nineteen-minute adaptation of “Jack Orion” took up the whole of Side Two of Cruel Sister, Pentangle’s fourth album. It's the highlight of the smart but blandly titled 115-track box set The Albums 1968–1972. Up to this point in 1970, British folk rock had not spawned anything comparable to the epic “Jack Orion”. Extending a traditional song to this length in such spellbinding fashion was ambitious and while some of John Renbourne’s electric guitar suggested the fluidity of Quicksilver Messenger Service’s John Cipollina, the overall effect was of a band magnificently pushing what they did to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Until now, the easiest non-bootleg way to hear the early Rolling Stones live was via the various home cinema editions of October 1964’s T.A.M.I. show. Otherwise, although they employed backing tracks for broadcast, the American DVDs of their Ed Sullivan Show appearances caught the band in thrilling full flight. The new BBC sessions collection On Air fills out the picture by collecting 32 tracks they recorded between October 1963 and September 1965.Decent Decca-era archive collections of the Stones barely exist due to their poor relations with ABKCO, the organisation which owns their rights Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1976, Polydor Records was actively considering signing the Sex Pistols. The label’s Chris Parry checked them out live in Birmingham during August. In September, he had a prime spot behind the mixing desk at the 100 Club’s punk festival from which to consider British punk rock’s figureheads. However, the band’s manager Malcolm McLaren signed them to EMI. Moving on, Parry began pursuing The Clash and recorded demos with them that November. They went on to sign with CBS.Despite being led up the rock ‘n’ roll garden path by the Pistols and The Clash, Parry didn’t give up on punk and, following Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Precious to me” is a high-carat gold nugget. A guitar-pop song with cascading, lush Everly Brothers harmonies drawing on The Searchers’ version of “When You Walk in the Room”, its immediate tune instantly lodges itself in the head.Instead of being from the Sixties, “Precious to me” was a US hit in Spring 1981, a period when punk had given way to the acceptable face of new wave. The commercial door for concise, classically styled songs was open. Phil Seymour, the song’s writer and singer, had a pre-punk résumé, knew all about pop and rode the moment. His music fit the power pop profile: the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In early 1965, Birmingham’s The Moody Blues topped the British charts with a forceful reinterpretation of Bessie Banks’ R&B ballad “Go Now”. In early 1968, after some line-up changes and a radical musical rethink, they hit 19 with “Nights in White Satin”. Although as moody as “Go Now”, this was a different Moody Blues.“Nights in White Satin” is a staple of oldies radio and, as such, has been robbed of much of its power to astonish. Nonetheless, it was bold. As was its parent album Days of Future Passed. At one stroke, The Moody Blues invented orchestral pop and pointed the way to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In terms of cinema history, 1969’s Les Chemins de Katmandou is a footnote. Directed by André Cayatte, whose most interesting films were 1963’s interrelated marital dramas Jean-Marc ou la Vie Conjugale and Françoise ou la Vie Conjugale, it was a period-sensitive immersion into the world of a group of Nepal-based hippies. Though ostensibly a crime drama, a focus on drugs and free love brought an exploitation allure.For French cinema goers, the titillation was supplemented by Jane Birkin featuring alongside Serge Gainsbourg at the time they were establishing themselves as the nation’s couple to Read more ...