1988 was the year that E-culture hit big time, with parties and raves mushrooming along with the associated panic and crackdowns. Violence-happy police forces hadn’t had as much fun since the miners’ strike. Dance music was still strictly a singles business in ‘88, so doesn’t figure very highly in my selection. Before the half dozen I’ve chosen, here are a few others: If I Should Fall From Grace With God, the last consistent Pogues record;From Langley Park to Memphis by Prefab Sprout; If’n by Firehose, Surfer Rosa by the Pixies and House Tornado by Throwing Muses, two amazing records that came out on the same day; Here Comes The Snakes by Green on Red; This Note’s For You, Neil Young’s return to Reprise and return to form; Life’s Too Good by the Sugarcubes; the House of Love’s eponymous debut; Imaginos, a surprising late gem by Blue Oyster Cult; Introspective by the Pet Shop Boys; Today by Galaxie 500; Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth; Amnesia by Richard Thompson; Fisherman’s Blues by the Waterboys; Green by REM; Isn’t Anything by My Bloody Valentine; and Fugazi’s self-titled mini LP.
“First We Take Manhattan” with its burbling, bubbling synths sounds perfectly natural now, but it was actually quite extraordinary how Leonard Cohen ditched the traditional singer-songwriter tools of guitar-bass-drums almost unnoticeably. This was his best set of songs for two decades, and suited the new depth of his baritone. “Everybody Knows” and “Tower of Song” are also brilliant, darkly comic pieces. “Jazz Police” is mince, though.
Not just one of the most influential hip hop albums of all time, but one of the most influential records of any genre. The sound palette, that industrial-sized aggression was unlike anything heard before in rap. The lyrics were political, angry and intelligent, but with Flavor Flav acting as comic foil to Chuck D’s stridency, it never comes across as preachy. It’s 36 years old now, and yet is as relevant and exciting as it ever was.
The doomy portentousness of “Host of Seraphim” rides a fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous, but stays on the right side. It’s a stentorian start to the album where Dead Can Dance really found their feet. Their combination of Classical themes (in the original sense) with medieval and world music, prog and neo-classical saw them lazily shoved in the envelope marked ‘goth’. But they were Gothic in the way the Notre Dame de Paris and York Minster are Gothic, not in a Bela Lugosi sense. The contrast between the Byzantine stylings of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry’s lyrical romanticisms was actually complementary. And “Ullyses” (with its very odd spelling) is possibly the latter’s greatest ever song.
There was a brief time when Mark Eitzel was feted as one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, and AMC seemed to be on the cusp of REM sized success. It never happened. I think part of the reason was that the arrangements got too fussy on later records, and the songs couldn’t breathe. California is pretty simple. A dozen songs ranging from the country-esque Firefly, to the gonzoid bile-fest of “Bad Liquor”. Mostly, though, they are quiet, reflective and sad, without the histrionics that marred later albums like Mercury. Western Sky is the best song Nick Drake never wrote, and there are half a dozen as good. A band that has undeservedly fallen through the cracks.
One of the greatest theatre productions I ever saw was a version of Tom Waits’ The Black Rider at the Barbican in London twenty years ago. It starred Marianne Faithfull and Mary Margaret O’Hara. I had no idea the latter was even in it until I sat down in the theatre! It was an unforgettable night. Already by then it had been sixteen years since Miss America, her only real album. I assume she had no interest in making another, as I find it hard to believe that no label would fund one. The album veers from sweet, nocturnal ballads, to tumbling, stream-of consciousness stuff, like Kristin Hersh stretched to extremes. Many of the arrangements would probably appeal to Nora Jones and Medeleine Peroux fans, but others would probably make them wet their pants. O’Hara is a one off. I doubt whether she’ll ever make another record, but we’re very lucky she made this one.
Small Parts is, in some ways, NoMeansNo’s most extreme record. Bar the two minute thrash of “Theresa, Give Me That Knife” this is a long way from hardcore punk. Hardcore it is, though. At ten minutes “Real Love” makes the Melvins sound like Blink 182. It’s slow, but punishing, almost Swans-like in its intensity. The title track is a weird math-rock, jazz-punk beast that flails around at about a dozen different tempos. The next album they did, Wrong, toned down the idiosyncrasies, trimmed down the lengths and got them the most plaudits, but I don’t think it quite has the combination of maniacal mayhem, and brooding calm that they exuded here.
Music Musings and Miscellany 