Getting People Over the Beatles: A Series Examining the Greats of British (and UK) Pop Music (part 34)

by Jamie
Looking at where we’ve come from and what we still have to cover in the post-punk grouping do you start to understand the importance and incredibly prolific output the sub-genre had. Usually this series takes movements 5 at a time, but seeing as how we’ve already covered 9 acts in this grouping, with 2 coming today and one closing out next week the usual count has more then doubled. Plus, several acts commonly associated with the movement have either already been covered (Teardrop Explodes and Echo & the Bunnymen in the Liverpool grouping) and several others remain under more applicable banners (such as ‘Female Acts’, ‘Madchester/Factory Records’, etc), meaning that about 15 acts—or three times the normal number for a grouping— would and will be necessary to accurately discuss all the important post-punk acts. When it’s thought about a bit more and understood that several of these bands made at least 2 masterpiece level albums do you understand how fruitful about a 5 year stretch was for this particular strand of music in Britain (plus you could add many bands from other genres made ‘post-punk inspired’ records in this era too, such as the Clash’s Sandinista! and the Jam’s Sound Effects to name just two).

This is more a statement just quickly looking back, not really meant to thrust us into any particular direction today. If anything it’s just numbers as each band we’ve covered is remarkably different from the selection that has preceded it, with todays being no different. Perhaps it’s just a better opening that saying, “Here’s two more:” then diving right in, perhaps I’m also trying to debunk the commonly held notion that within chaos only more chaos can come. Here without any rules for once, young musicians on a tiny island (relatively speaking) produced an inordinate amount of masterpieces in an incredibly short amount of time.

Birmingham’s Swell Maps formed in the mid 70′s by brothers Kevin and Adrian Godfrey (who worked under the monickers Epic Soundtracks and Nikki Sudden respectively) influenced by what now is essentially assumed of all these post-punk acts, early 70′s glam rock (T. Rex, Roxy Music, etc) and German progressive proto-noise (Can, Kraftwerk/Nue!, etc). It wasn’t until punk rock blew all the doors down that the band began earnestly working as a creative force. 1977 saw their first release, the single ‘Read About Seymour’, whose nervous energy and catchy wordplay drew enough attention for the band to record their debut record, 1979′s A Trip to Marineville.

A Trip to Marineville gained a nice cult following with it’s innovative melodies, creative experimentation, and nice mix of ambient atmospheres and full fledged hard rock punk explosions. Like many post-punk acts it (the debut I mean) proved to be the most musically visceral and raw release of their career (their incredibly comparable to Wire’s Pink Flag here) perfectly setting the stage for the boundary shattering second album.

Jane From Occupied Europe arrived in 1980 and proved to be just that album. Brilliantly titled, with a sepia drenched cover seemingly from Petit’s great post-punk dystopian film Radio On (which was released a year prior in 1979), Jane is a creative onslaught of styles, textures, speeds, and tastes. It opens with the ambient march of ‘Robot Factory’, which is a great way to segue to the off-kilter bass hiccup of ‘Let’s Buy a Bridge’. Within the songs short 1:54 it moves from that to almost vocal gymnastics where they sing seemingly as many words as they can over an ever increasing tempo. It all culminates into almost thrash free-jazz with strumming guitars and random horns (mostly saxophones I’d think) blasting away. ‘Border Country’ seems more ‘normal’, a relative term here, but it’s a somewhat familiar pop song structure perhaps a bit more distorted then usual. Its break is pretty inventive; a piano that sounds almost out of tune is struck with the virtuosity of a nonprofessional. It’s easily one of their most enjoyable moments as a group.

‘Cake Shop Girl’ shows the lyrical creativity and irreverence they seemingly had in spades. Lampooning sacred images and messages of typical romances it’s almost their attempt at a ballad, and it’s quite a success. ‘The Helicopter Spies’ is the albums first real stomper, vocally delivered in the same manner as early Wire (angular chanting essentially, actually early Wire seems to be these guys most apt comparison for anyone needing a starting point for recommendation purposes), ‘Big Maz in the Desert’ is the height of musical atonality experimenting on the record, essentially 5 minutes of driving clang and stutter that’s remarkable exciting. ‘Big Empty Field’ is shimmery new wave acoustics, the stuff you’d see on early MTV by brooding fellows singing on aircraft carriers or deserted factories in the driving rain. ‘Big Empty Field’ starts the experimental portion of the record with ‘Mining Villages’ (fantastic studio experimentation on that one) and ‘Collision with a Frogman’s first half.  It eventually settles into a familiar pop vein about halfway through, which ‘…Vs. the Mangrove Delta Plan’ sort of picks up and does the opposite with; it’s poppy the first half then experimental the second. It’s quite clear at this point that they’re making a cohesive record not just a collection of great ditties.

‘Secret Island’ is a glorious pop droner, something that must have been incredibly difficult with just one chord to work around. It’s the sort of thing that many noise bands would kill for (the whole album really), anarchy and chaos with melody (!), a noble idea to be sure. ‘Whatever Happens Next…’ almost feels like the moment the whole album has been working towards, garage band thunder to rival Mark E. Smith’s experiments with The Fall. ‘Blenheim Shots’ continues this strumming garage fury almost sounding like The Fall actually have inserted a track on a Swell Maps record. ‘A Raincoat’s Room’ closes the album perfectly, sweetly closing the bar, driving us home and safely tucking us into bed. It works as almost a carbon copy antithesis of album opener ‘Robot Factory’, which is obviously the album’s intent.

While many post-punk acts diversified or evolved as they grew, just look how virtually every band we’ve discussed has been their second, or third (or even later) releases, this next act does the opposite. This usual evolution seems to be quite natural for two reasons, first this is simply experimental music, obviously the more time a band or artist has to play together or become seasoned with working within a studio will its ideas best germinate. Secondly, all these bands released their initial recordings during the first wave of British punk. Meaning that the first records will be different, but different within an already different world. The year or two that these bands had after that initial boom period slowed everything down essentially letting ideas finally catchup and contextualize, which thusly led to later albums generally being the most innovative in their respective careers.

This is all essentially what makes The Pop Group such an interesting group. They formed in 1978, and released their debut single in 1979 (the great Nietzsche inspired phrase of a love song ‘She is Beyond Good and Evil’), effectively the forming of the group was the time period other post-punk groups were releasing their first (and sometimes second) offerings. It’s this difference that makes the Pop Group’s debut their most interesting and adventurous record (and this isn’t meant to slight the brilliance of their second and last full length For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? from 1980), exactly opposite from most bands in the era and genre.

Y, released in 1979 is a landmark recording to which you can hear its echo and influence everywhere. It’s a mixing of noise, industrial, dub/reggae, and straight riff based punk rock that is also always nervous and confrontational. It’s a record that frankly needs this many styles and shifts because otherwise it would wear itself out too quickly if it didn’t; as soon as a killer riff is discovered and echoed off the speakers it’s dropped, rhythms are trance like but similarly played with, alternated and  quickly advanced upon. Echo basslines both reverb and entomb and do their best to hold everything together, but even they constantly change or drop out. It’s almost post-punk ADD with no ritalin in sight. Somehow all these normally discordant ideas and adjectives work to create a great, cohesive, and strangely enjoyable record.

Smartly opening with the catchiest thing they’d ever do, ‘She is Beyond Good and Evil’, the group then experiments with Hot Rod dub music on ‘Thief of Fire’, then ‘Snowgirl’ weaves in and out as it seemingly acts as their wild take on a romantic bar ballad. ‘Blood Money’ is an intense drone that is perhaps most indicative of their abrasive nature, whereas ‘We Are Time’ is remarkably melodic with its repeating and catching low end and reoccurring hooky guitar part. ‘Savage Sea’ finds them in pure fantasy mode working around downright pretty piano parts, ‘Words Disobey Me’ is angular dub, and probably a good choice to introduce anyone to the group after ‘She is Beyond Good and Evil’ as been properly digested. ‘Don’t Call Me Pain’, and ‘The Boys from Brazil’ are searing nightmares that act as album climaxes (‘Brazil’ features an impressive vocal performance in its second half) before ‘Don’t Sell Your Dreams’ closes the album as tranquil as they can probably have played at the time (it’s incredibly comparable to the Swell Maps ‘A Raincoat’s Room’ in this regard that was discussed earlier). Compact disc editions will contain the extra track single ’3:38′ which though it shifts the tone of the albums close to probably not what the group wanted (why else would ‘Sell Your Dreams’ have been written as such), but it’s essential dance dub industrial pop. The sort of thing that Portishead and Massive Attack would look to replicate about a decade later.

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Happy listening see you next week when we (finally) put post-punk to bed with its last act. As usual, head to youtube for the tunes.

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