1980s
Kieron Tyler
“I See Your Face” opens with a short burst of Phil Spector-ish tambourine rattling. The sort of thing also employed by the early Jesus & Mary Chain. Then, a cascading folk-rock guitar paves the way for a disembodied voice singing over a spooky one-finger keyboard line and chugging, reverbed guitar. Occasionally, what sounds like a syn drum goes “pff.”“Gorgeous Weather” is equally remarkable, equally other-worldly. A spiralling, distant-sounding creation, its subterranean feel suggests an oncoming storm rather than what’s usually thought of as gorgeous weather.Then there’s “There's A...” “ Read more ...
joe.muggs
Somewhere in dance culture or other, the Eighties revival has now been going on more than twice as long as the actual Eighties did. Starting around 1998, it reached an initial peak in the early 2000s as the dayglo-fashion led electroclash, but though the eye of the press moved away, it never really died away. European or Europhile fusions of electropop and industrial, taking in more obscure styles like coldwave, new beat and EBM (electronic body music), have been current and fully functional on one dancefloor or another ever since. It’s squarely into this milieu that Louisa Pillott – “ Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Joerg and Anna Winger’s gripping drama of East Germany, a loose portrait set over the final decade of that country’s existence, has reached its culmination, and this first episode of Deutschland 89 landed us right in the unpredictable maelstrom of history. Following on from Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86, the thriller and espionage elements of those two predecessors have been folded with true aplomb into the real-life events that reached their unforeseen conclusion with crowds of East Germans breaking through the Berlin Wall – or the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”, as it’s occasionally Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Witless punk” was the weekly music paper Sounds assessment of Disco Zombies’s first single “Drums Over London”. NME’s Paul Morley was more measured, declaring it “ill-disciplined slackly structured new pop but the chorus alone makes up for it.” That was March 1979. Heard now, “Drums Over London” comes across as energised pop-punk with a sing-along chorus and a wacky bent.The band’s next release followed in September 1979. Considering when it shops, the Invisible EP’s second track “Punk a Go Go” made little sense. Issuing a punk novelty when the world had moved on was perverse. However, the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Three plus versions of the same album. It’s ridiculous, but I’m glad.” The first paragraph of Richard Hell’s text in the booklet accompanying Destiny Street Complete lays it out. There are, indeed, three versions of his and his band The Voidoids’s July 1982 album Destiny Street on this double-CD set. It seems excessive.Reviews of Destiny Street at the time of its release were positive. Creem said “Hell himself has hit on a style – part Nuggets-era basement rock 'n roll, part speed-balling protest (not in content, but in attitude) rock, part confrontational CBGB psychodrama – that gives the Read more ...
Owen Richards
Frank Marshall might not be the biggest household name, but his footprint on Hollywood is unrivalled. He has produced hits ranging from Indiana Jones and Back to the Future to Jason Bourne and Jurassic World. He also takes occasional forays into directing, such as the madcap Arachnophobia and cannibalistic rugby tale Alive. Who better then to chart the career of The Bee Gees, a band far more influential than ever given credit for?How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is a top-tier music documentary, filled with world tours, lost demos and family drama. Marshall expertly balances the band's history Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Scars’s tour de force album Author! Author! has been out of sight for too long. Originally released in 1981, it first reappeared on a swiftly withdrawn CD in 2007. Apparently, there were issues about where the rights for its reissue lay. Now, it has re-emerged.Author! Author! was great. On the surface it was poppy, but a darkness coursed through its ten tracks. “All About You”, the March 1981 single trailing its release, sounds like a hit (its promo video is on YouTube). Driving, melodic and mysterious, it suggested Scars as an artier, more subtle counterpart to the U2 of “I Will Follow”. It Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The third film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe quintet (BBC One) took for its subject the real-life story of Leroy Logan, the Islington-born son of Jamaican parents who joined the Metropolitan Police in the early Eighties. Despite encountering racism and prejudice, and having the local West Indian kids calling him “Judas” and “coconut”, he rose through the ranks to become a Superintendent.However, this account by McQueen and co-writer Courttia Newland omitted that last bit and focused on Leroy’s early days on the force, after he’d taken the decision to abandon a promising career as a research Read more ...
joe.muggs
Miley Cyrus has always been, broadly, A Good Thing. A Top Pop Star. A sassy, funny, puritan-scaring, omnisexual chaos monkey at the heart of pop culture, doing pretty much whatever she fancies when she fancies. Not that this has always meant she’s made good music, mind you. Over her six previous albums, she’s swerved through bubblegum pop, EDM, trap, Broadway showstoppers, raging dubstep, faux-lo-fi psychedelic chillwave (with The Flaming Lips in tow), straight country, and the rest. And while there have been gems at each stage of her career, there have also been quite a few hot messes along Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“During 1975, 1976 and the first half of 1977 punk was the future but, after the highpoint of ‘God Save the Queen’, London punk already seemed spent. By the time that the Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ was tumbling out of the charts in early September, there had been two huge hits that changed the way I heard music. Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and ‘Magic Fly’ by Space made it clear: electronics were the future. And it didn’t matter whether it was post-punk or the despised disco.”So begins the titular writer’s essay accompanying Do You Have The Force? (Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Read more ...
Katie Colombus
For her fifth studio album, Paloma Faith decided to boldly ctrl-alt-delete the first version, and re-do it in lockdown.The new-new one is a little bath bomb of an album – it fizzes with funky pop, 80s sheen and emotional nuance than speaks of her long term relationship and being a mother to teenies (she’s currently pregnant with no. 2).If you need any further explanation about her headspace in re-versioning Infinite Things and generally how it’s been going in lockdown, fast forward to “Me Time” which practically yells about “I need some me time, figuring out who I want to be time, saying what Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Following the break-up of The Jam in 1982, Mick Talbot (b 1958) was chosen by Paul Weller as his sparring partner in a new band, The Style Council. Talbot, a keyboard player from south London, had flourished amid the late-Seventies Mod revival, initially in the Merton Parkas, with his brother Danny, but also in The Chords, and even appearing on a couple of The Jam’s records.Weller’s plan was to escape the lad-friendly guitar sound of The Jam. With The Style Council, he and Talbot explored soul, funk, jazz, R&B, easy listening, and more, resulting in a golden run of Top 20 hits that lasted Read more ...