Speaker 1Hello and welcome back to another of the sporadic editions of The Album Years. It's been another gap longer than we intended, but not as long as it was last time, at least. So last time, Tim, we did 2006, and you suggested this time we go back 20 years and do 1986. Is that correct?
Speaker 2I did, yeah. I thought, I mean, the idea was we were going to choose a couple of years that we thought were stinkers, that we thought we'd find about one or two albums we liked, and the rest actually made us physically sick. And 2006, as we found out, it really did. I mean, there were stains on the carpet after that podcast. 1986, it turns out, we actually loved.
Speaker 1Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I'm looking at this list and I'm like, wow. I mean, some of my favourite albums of all time came out this year. It's funny because I was doing an interview recently, well, not so recently, but back when I was promoting the Future Bytes. And I remember doing an interview with one of the rock magazines. And one of the questions was, why do you think the 1970s was so much? Much better for music than every other decade. And I thought to myself, well, I don't think that's true. I mean, I grew up in the 80s and, you know, you kind of did too, a little bit older than me. But basically the 80s is when you were discovering most music, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's just such a fantastic decade for music, isn't it? And I think it's fair to say that some of the music, some of the production sounds haven't dated as well as those from the 60s and 70s, which have a kind of timeless organic quality, don't they? Yeah. The 80s was very much about, you know, the introduction of digital. Digital recording and sampling. So a lot of it sounds a little bit dated. But in terms of creativity, I would argue that it's, you know, even above the 70s. I don't know how you feel about that.
Speaker 2I think it's equal at the very least. I think 60s are as well. One of the problems with the 80s is that there were certain production styles that determined everything. And whether that be sort of indie, rock, mainstream pop, R&B, they were the same instruments and technology being used. And so there were certain kind of things. There were certain kinds of thinner sounds in the 80s that, you know, made, I don't know, a Wham! record sound like a Neil Young record. There were certain problems with it, but creatively, I think it was an amazing decade. And like you, it was the one that I probably came of age in and maybe in some ways still connect with more. But, you know, when I go back sometimes, I'm amazed at listening to recordings from about sort of 54 onwards that are so beautiful that in some ways we've never bettered certain jazz and classical recordings from the 50s. So I think there are strong points in almost any of these sort of decades, classic decades we're covering. And obviously now, I think if you're prepared to look a little bit harder, there's some fantastically creative music going on.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think the difference is it's just not in the mainstream as much as it used to be. Absolutely, yeah. Some of these albums on this list that we're looking at, which I would say are, you know, amongst some of the greatest records ever made, are both creatively ambitious. And? You know, not all of them, but some of them were also tremendous, you know, mainstream pop successes, you know, commercially very, very successful records. And I don't think that's something you can say so much these days. Very rarely you can say that about a really creative record. But what you've just said about the 80s, you know, having there being a certain signature sound that was common to whatever genre. Isn't that also true of every decade? I mean, I think that's true of the 70s as well, isn't it? I mean, there's certain sounds, whether it was the Hammond organ or the Fender Rhodes. Or, you know, whatever it was, you could hear it in a folk record, a country record, an R&B record, a progressive rock record. So I don't think that's necessarily peculiar to the 80s either. Anyway, I'm sure we'll come on to that. Yeah, no, I was going to say, I
Speaker 2think it's an interesting point. But I think the difference is that maybe a folk band and a rock band and a soul band, you know, so let's say if a Stylistics and a Pink Floyd album to an extent deployed the same technology, they sound very different. Partly because that music in the 70s. It was very reliant upon the playing of a band. The difference, perhaps, in the 80s is that sometimes the technology took over. So if you take a band like the Stranglers, for example, in the 70s, they're a brilliant quartet. By the mid 80s, you know, they've got an album in 86 out, Dreamtime, which isn't their best, but it's not a bad album. But by that, Jet Black is almost replaced by a Linn drum. You know, he's replaced by machinery. Some of the bass parts are. So I think that maybe 70s, 60s, 50s. 50s music could breathe more because it depended more on instrumentation than it did technology and programming.
Speaker 1Yeah, I take your point. I take your point. In fact, it's interesting. There's another band on this list, Wire, that that's also true of. I mean, Robert Gotobed from Wire was essentially reduced to being a drum programmer, you know, on the 80s Wire albums. Whereas, of course, he'd been a very creative drummer, stroke percussionist on the classic 70s records. So let's jump right in. I mean, you've actually, you know, in kind of testament. To the fact that this year is so strong, you've created a category here called Career Defining Classics. Yeah. And in this category, you have the Smiths, you have XTC, you have Talk Talk, you have Peter Gerben, you have Paul Simon, all of whom made what you might call tremendous creative crossover records. And some of their most ambitious records came out in 1986. So let's start with. With the Smiths. I mean, a lot of people say The Queen is Dead is the greatest alternative, you know, indie record ever made. I love it. It's not even my favourite Smiths record. My favourite Smiths record would actually be Strange Ways. Yeah. Or maybe one of the compilations, Louder Than Bombs being one that springs to mind. But it is an amazing record, isn't it? It's a group that are kind of just peaking. Well, what are we saying? Three albums into their career. They're really hitting a peak, aren't they?
Speaker 2I think it is one of the best. I mean, like you, I actually prefer. Strange Ways. Strange Ways is more of a mess in some ways, but it's a really fascinating mess. And it's got a couple of, for me, the most creative and moving songs.
Speaker 1But the Smiths, this is The Queen is Dead is an album where the Smiths still sound like the Smiths, isn't it? I mean, I think Strange Ways is an album where they're kind of reaching out. You know, there's even a track on that record where Johnny's not playing any guitar on it at all. In fact, the first track on the record. But here it's still very much an indie guitar band, quote unquote. But making. One of the definitive indie guitar records of all time and some of Morrissey's funniest, wittiest and darkest lyrics as well, isn't it? On this album.
Speaker 2I think it's definitely where they come together. You know, it's a great studio album. There's a little bit of filler. You know, frankly, Mr. Shankly is never going to be my favourite Smiths track, but it does have some wonderful, powerful moments. And yes, some of his most affecting lyrics. And the thing, again, that we've always said about Morrissey is that he will. Undercut this seriousness. There's almost kind of adolescent modelling quality with some fantastic jokes. So, you know, he was always.
Speaker 1There are some great jokes on this record, aren't there? Yeah. And also, obviously, you kind of referred to, frankly, Mr. Shankly being a slighter piece, shall we say. But I mean, the album finishes with something that arguably could be perceived as even slighter. Some girls are bigger than others. I really like that. It's so beautiful. I know it's so beautiful. It's so affecting, isn't it? Even though it's essentially a. It's a one gag lyric, you know. Yeah, yeah. You know, it does feel like they sort of were struggling to come up with Tyrion and just knock that together at the last minute. It's tasteless. It really works.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's tasteless. It's childish. There's nothing to it lyrically. But there's something about it that completely works and floors you. Yeah, I agree. And in a way, it's a kind of a brilliantly nonchalant ending to what is their big statement.
Speaker 1I mean, it's basically a band that could do no wrong, no matter what they did. It just sort of happened to come off. Yes. In a positive way, didn't it? So then we go. Now, we've talked about this band many times. I don't think they've quite made the, you know, the David Sylvie and Robert Fripp, Brian Eno list. And there I go naming all three straight off to get them out of the way. But Mark Hollis and Talk Talk have certainly been regular touchstones on this show. And I think we might have even talked about The Colour of Spring, which for me is their masterpiece, which came out this year, when we were talking about some of the other records. Because I think we both feel. That there is. And again, this is something we've alluded to several times in the show. There is a point sometimes with a band when they're in transition, where they have the best of what's been and the best of what's to come in perfect balance. Yeah. And this is absolutely the poster child for that phenomenon for me. The Colour of Spring. They're still writing pop music, but they're also moving towards that more organic, more spiritual quality that almost comes. You know, you. Mentioned those 50s jazz records, that jazz 50s jazz aesthetic that's going to come in on the spirit of Eden and those kind of. And that isn't here, but there is something else here, something with much more integrity, much more ambition, much more. We couldn't give a fuck if people like this. Yeah. And in doing so, it seems like they make their masterpiece. And this record, of course, still has some big hit singles on it. Life's what you make it. This for me is one of the greatest records ever made. Talk Talk still being a pop band, but one of the most sophisticated pop records, I think.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. This is a great fusion of the best of what they've done beforehand. which was being, you know, a sort of earworm, electropop band and the poetic, organic masterpieces that, you know, certainly Laughingstock is perhaps the pinnacle. Yeah, I mean, the one thing they get right on this, I think, is the sound. As you've said, I think there are a couple of albums around this time that are reclaiming that kind of 50s, 60s, 70s organic quality. And this is one of them. And of course, they go on to develop that far, far further on the next two albums, Spirit of Eden and Laughingstock. But the drum sound on this is immediately compelling and immediately different from everything around it. Because, you know, as we said, even the indie albums of the day were sounding remarkably processed and artificial. And suddenly they come up with this album that is bursting with organic flavour, but also, and I guess, this is what you're saying about the transition and using the best of what came before and what comes afterwards, is it has a kind of digital purity, which is very 1980s, but it has a really rough, organic heft to the sound of the drums, to the sound of the double bass. And they're bringing in some quite exotic instrumentation as well, aren't they?
Speaker 1Yeah, and you're right. That's interesting to note, the drum sound, because the drum sound on The Colour of Spring is completely dry and very organic in contrast to almost everyone else's adoption of the big 80s gated reverb sound, you know, big stadium reverbs, you know, you listen to something like Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears, for example, massive, massive arena reverbs on everything, especially the drums. And here we have a record which strips the drums right back to a very dry, very close sound, which has more in common with the 70s and even some of those 50s jazz recordings. The palette of sounds, we've got Hammond organ here, we've got choir, we've got harmonica, we've got a lot of things that you wouldn't associate with the 80s in that sense. And yet you're right, there is something still quintessentially quite 80s-like about it, but all the best in the best possible sense for me, creativity, ambition, but still in the service of great pop music. And I think another great example of this, so we can come straight onto this, Peter Gabriel's So is exactly the same, isn't it? It's another artist, that's kind of transitioning from being perhaps more ambitious to being more accessible, more commercial, more mainstream, but getting the balance exactly right on this record. I mean, this record blew me away. I remember hearing Sledgehammer, the leading single off the record. I said, wow, that's Peter Gabriel. But my goodness me, he really pulled it off. It's a really great piece, basically soul R&B with, you know, put through the Gabriel filter. There's still use of the Fairlight and stuff in there, which is a very, very signature sound for him. So this is another record that kind of fits into that Colour of Spring mould, isn't it? In the sense that it's sort of a perfect point to get both the pop sensibility and the ambition from
Speaker 2an artist. And I think as well, you're right, that there is an R&B soul quality in both of those artists. I mean, Gabriel, in a sense, was making his work more accessible. And I still think three and four are, along with passion, his masterpieces. And he was moving towards some more natural. I think you can tell this in his voice that when he's singing certain tracks on three, a bit like Bill Nelson on Red Noise, there's an aspect of aping that kind of new wave vocal style on certain pieces. And on So, you can tell that this is just Peter Gabriel. It's almost like, again, that Mike Yarwood and This Is Me. And he's actually pulling from all of the influences that excite him and singing incredibly naturally. Whereas I think Talk Talk, if anything, I think they'd come from a much more commercial background. I mean, what was interesting about Color of Spring is they could have gone anywhere. Because actually, you're right, Tears for Fears is a good point, that they could have gone songs from the big chair just as easily as down what eventually became Laughingstock. And so you're right that these two artists coming from completely different backgrounds make quite similar albums, in a sense, in terms of the sort of sonic vocabulary and that brilliant fusion of a natural accessibility and still some quite experimental, exploratory ideas.
Speaker 1See, that's interesting, isn't it? Because Songs from the Big Chair, which came out the previous year, which is a masterpiece in its own right. After that record, I think Roland heard the Color of Spring and was very influenced by that when they made the follow-up, Seeds of Love, which again, is bringing in live instrumentation, more of an organic sound. There's Harmonica on that record, there's Hammond Dorgan on that record. So I think the Color of Spring became a very influential record for the sort of thinkers, the people that were really listening to music and thinking about music. And in the same way that band like the Blue Nile did, you know, in their own small way, they were never a big success in terms of commercial sales, but they were influencing a lot of the other musicians around them. And I think Hollis and Gabriel both were examples of that. So there's three, you know, three masterpieces straight off. The Queen is Dead, The Color of Spring. And so here's another one, Skylarking by XTC. You know, we're both big XTC fans. We both talked about XTC on the show before. This is a, this is a bona fide masterpiece. And, you know, it came out of a very sort of turbulent relationship between Todd Rundgren, as famously documented, a turbulent relationship between Todd Rundgren, the producer, and particularly Andy Partridge, the primary songwriter. But what came out of it was something, again, which sounds like it almost doesn't belong to the 80s, does it? It has an almost 60s summer of love, idyllic kind of quality to it. And, you know, just some of the band's greatest songs and that conceptual continuity the record has, the way Todd structured it, almost like the passing of a day, starting in the morning, moving through the and then ending with Sacrificial Bonfire at the end. This is just one of the great records, I think, regardless of when it was made, one of the great records and arguably the greatest XTC record of
Speaker 2all. Yeah, well, I think once more, if we're going to compare it to Color of Spring and so, I think why this works is because it's a band who seem comfortable with their influences. They released Dukes of Stratosphere, I think, a year earlier. And in some ways, people were expecting perhaps a more psychedelic pastiche album. Which they didn't get. And this is a fusion of the best of Rungren, the best of XTC, Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge are on wonderful form as songwriters. It seems kind of more relaxed and more honest and more open. And as you say, Rungren has given them this framework that actually makes it appear all the more profound, actually. You know, this is a work of blissful pop on occasion, but it has a real sense of it. You know, quite an emotional song cycle. And, you know, Dave Gregory's arrangements as well. I think we've got to give him a lot of credit for the way this album sounds. And what's interesting about it for me is that it sounds better than any Todd Rungren album has ever sounded. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Never the greatest high fidelity, his records. No. And this actually sounds great. So it is quite interesting. And yes, once more, it kind of hits this thing where they're fantastically melodic, but they are not flinching in terms of being honest to their influences, whether that be avant-garde jazz or certain beach boys or certain progressive elements. Everything seems to be coming together. And obviously, whereas I think Color of Spring and So were made in slightly more joyful circumstances, I know that this was a real struggle to make.
Speaker 1Well, it's interesting. Also, you kind of alluded to this is that I think two things, have kind of conspired to take a lot of the more angular aspects out of XTC on Skylarking. Firstly, Todd, I think, is influenced, but also the fact they have done the Dukes of Stratosphere in the meantime. And they've almost legitimized to themselves the influence of the 60s. So if you listen to the previous album, The Big Express, it's still very angular. It's kind of very easy to admire, but harder to love. And all that changes with Skylarking, maybe because of the fact that this is a very warm, embracing, inviting record. Immediately, you're kind of sucked in. And I think that's what makes it such a masterpiece in their catalog. And it's such a shame the timing for it, of course, was not right at all. It was largely ignored at the time, but it has gone on to be seen in many ways as the crown jewel in the band's catalog, which is interesting.
Speaker 2I think it led, I mean, obviously, Dukes did phenomenally well. I think it kind of led to America embracing XTC. I think it did better in America. Dear God, yeah. Yeah. And Oranges and Lemons, of course, was huge in the States. So I think that's where they dial up their American audience. I mean, I really like the predecessors. I mean, Big Express, and in particular, Mama, which I think is a beautiful record. It's a masterpiece. Now, Mama does have that kind of slightly pristine 80s sound. But, you know, Loving a Farm Boy's Wages, regardless of how it sounds, it's still one of my favorite pieces, you know. So I think.
Speaker 1Oh, it's a brilliant record.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think those albums were unjustly neglected and sky-larking. You're right. I think coming from a British perspective, it was neglected in the papers. Suddenly, you know, I remember Andy Partridge's interviews at the time, and he said, well, yeah, to Virgin, we're now just their resident eccentrics, like Henry Cow were in the 70s. You know, it's almost like, okay, we got them on the label. And there were, you know, artists like David Sylvia and XTC, who'd suddenly become those slightly more difficult, willful artists that Virgin would keep because they sold just about enough and had a relatively good reputation. But they were not going to be given the budgets that other bands were.
Speaker 1Here's four masterpieces. Here's another one. Graceland, another career-defining classic masterpiece. Graceland, Paul Simon's Graceland. Now, I only, I must admit, I only know the singles. I can't say I've ever listened to the record all the way through. Hopefully you have, Tim, and you can speak with some authority about this. But I also know it's considered, and probably rightly so, considered to be a career-defining masterpiece. So tell us about Graceland.
Speaker 2You see, I can't really go into great depth, but I do have the deluxe version of Graceland, and I did buy it at the time and like it. Partly because, again, what's interesting is, you're entirely right, these are career-defining masterpieces. And going back to a couple of previous albums, what's interesting, I think, with Colour of Spring and So, is that actually those albums defined, in I think So's case, if you listen to any number of albums from about 86 to probably 1992, in the more mainstream pop M.O.R. field, Sting, for example, everything has got the stink of So on it. And the same, I think, with Colour of Spring, when you're listening to Stink of So is on it. You know, you listen to Sting, Nothing Like the Sun, that's got the stink of So on it. And then when you listen to, say, Colour of Spring, you can hear where other, you know, Raintree Crow, you can hear have heard this. And you're right, I think, Seeds of Love, Tears for Fears, is another group. Now, the XTC Skylarking, I think, was important for their reputation, not necessarily in terms of influencing other artists, maybe because it's so difficult to imitate Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding. Graceland, a little like So, was one of those albums that had this massive impact on the sort of mainstream creative pop. Graceland is very good, but what my point was, I've just gone all around the houses to say, my point was, these are all creative. You really have, yeah. I've really gone all around the houses to say this.
Speaker 1You're going to say it's the introduction of world music into mainstream pop. Is that what you're going to say? It's the introduction of world music into pop, is what's happening in places. Which it kind of is, isn't it?
Speaker 2No. But it kind of is, isn't it? No, because Neil Diamond on Rooty Toot Manuscript, or whatever it was called, he was working with Afro Rhythms in 1970.
Speaker 1No, come on, let's get real to him. Come on, Graceland suddenly made world music very, very, very popular. In mainstream culture.
Speaker 2Joni Mitchell hissing a summer lawns.
Speaker 1Okay, forget it. Forget it. Peter Gabriel. You're not taking my point.
Speaker 2Peter Gabriel 3. No, you're right. In mainstream, I remember, because I had an argument. Thank you. Thank you, I'm right, yes. In the 80s, I had this very argument, as this woman said, oh, I mean, we wouldn't have heard all of these things if it weren't for Paul Simon and saying, but what about Kate Bush's The Dreaming? What about Peter Gabriel 3 and 4? What about Beaver and Krauss? What about Neil Diamond?
Speaker 1Neil Diamond. You already know the answer to your own question, Tim, here. You already know the answer to your own question. Graceland definitely made these things popular on daytime television. Yes. The Richard and Judy of their generation would have probably been listening to Graceland by Paul Simon. They wouldn't have been listening to Gabriel's 3 and 4 or Dreamland. What about. The Dreaming, sorry.
Speaker 2Yeah, what about Crispy Ambulance? Would you have heard them? No. Okay. No, they wouldn't. So, yeah. What my roundup I point was, was that these are career-defining masterpiece pieces and they're all good. You know, Boy in the Bubble, one of the best lyrics that he's ever written. And what Simon has this ability to do, I think Simon is like Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, probably one of my favourite lyricists ever, that he manages to make complicated ideas flow effortlessly. You know, a track like America from his Simon and Garfunkel days. And the lyrics on this, the lyrics on this, as somebody might say, are top-notch Simon. And his use of. He's using more kind of a township African, you know, South African influence. It's fantastically well integrated. So, it's a really enjoyable album. One of his best. But this is my point that I'm not making. All of these career-defining masterpieces, I actually kind of prefer some of the ones before it or after. So, for example, Laughingstock, I probably prefer Talk Talk. 3 and 4 and Passion, I probably prefer Gabriel. I really loved Hearts and Bones. Hearts and Bones by Paul Simon, the album before this, which is more of an 80s singer-songwriter album, but really touching to me. It's perhaps closer to Hijira by Joni Mitchell. It's a more timeless album. And, yeah, the same with The Smith, Strange Ways, I prefer. So, weirdly enough, these are all career-defining masterpieces that we're talking about. Mama might just about have the edge for me, just in terms of its emotional impact. It's emotional impact. Not in terms of it being a better album.
Speaker 1OK, well, that's just you, isn't it? That's just you. No, I mean, I see what you're saying. I mean, for me, The Colour of Spring and Skylarking are probably my favourite records by both of those artists. But anyway, you've got another one on the list here and another one I don't know. An artist I'm constantly embarrassed to not know more of the catalogue of, which is Macca, Paul Macca, Paul McCartney, Press to Play. I've never heard it. Is that the one that Eric
Speaker 2Stewart from 10cc was involved in? Yeah. I mean, to be fair, I actually put this in partly as a joke because of your response to McCartney 2. It is not a career-defining masterpiece. It was his lowest-selling studio album up to that point. But it is a good album. You know, it's better, I think, than Tug of War and a couple of the preceding albums. And it's Macca's most 80s-sounding album. It really is that 1980s Macca album, in the same way that Neil Young's Landing on Water is his 80s-sounding album. But a little like Neil Young, a little like Neil Young's Landing on Water, it's actually pretty good. There's some good songs. Macca seems to enjoy it. So no, I would not call this a career-defining masterpiece, but it is one of those albums that's definitely worth hearing and not putting underneath the carpet with all of the dirt.
Speaker 1So it occupies an interesting and unique place in his catalogue. I mean, you know, I love this idea of seeing an artist's whole, you know, career as a continuum of work and every record kind of has its own, has its own personality and its own signature and its own reason to exist. What would be more boring than if Paul McCartney was still making records that sounded like he was making in the 70s in 1986? I mean, that would be just more of the same, isn't it? And the point is that this may not be a complete artistic success, but it is something different. It is something that reflects the time it was made in and it has a unique, you know, kind of position in his oeuvre, in his catalogue. And I, you know, I like, I sometimes like that about albums that I don't necessarily love, but I love the fact they exist. It's, you know, it's a good album.
Speaker 2I mean, arguably it's as good as the, is it Flowers in the Dirt? The one that followed that got a lot of press. I don't know. Which is good. Flowers in the Dirt is one of those things where it was hailed as his comeback because he'd co-written some songs with Elvis Costello. And half of the album is good. Half of it is in the press to play territory. It seems as if he's not quite so sure where he should go. Whereas press to play is 100% in for a penny, in for a pound. This is my 1980s art pop statement.
Speaker 1Okay, great. Press to play, the album the Beatles could have made. So we move on to there. I mean, there are some more masterpieces coming up. I'm looking down the list here. You've got different, you've got some, some in other categories, but there are more masterpieces from this year. No question. But let's go through some of the, some of the other categories you've got here. Post-punk evolutions, you have Album by Public Image Limited, which was kind of a reinvention in its way, wasn't it? I mean, that was John, John basically left on his own, but he didn't hook up with a bunch of faceless, you know, sort of session musicians and producers. He was hooking up with people like Bill Laswell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Steve Vai, I think is on this album. But it's, it's a fantastic, I remember thinking the single From It Rise was a, was a wonderful sort of comeback. A comeback track, you know, really putting back on the map. And it's a slicker sound. It's a slicker kind of aspect of Public Image Limited, but it's a, but it's one that again, really seems to adopt the sound of the times. Yeah. And very successfully, you know, redefining public image in a sort of 1986 way and really pulling it off. I remember in its own way of loving it just as much as I'd love Metalbox and the first album. And well, maybe not as much, but certainly in the fact that it was a more kind of accessible side, to John Lydon without necessarily sacrificing, you know, again, the creativity.
Speaker 2No, I mean, Sakamoto's on it as well, I think. I mean, you're right. What's interesting about this album. You said that. Oh, did you? Sorry. Did say that. Yeah. Listen. I apologise. Listen when I'm speaking.
Speaker 1Back of the class.
Speaker 2Yeah. Anyway, sorry, carry on. So yes, Saka is on it, as I believe he's known to his friends. Saka. Yeah, it's great. I mean, what's interesting about this album, I think it links with another album from this year, actually. The The's. Infected. In that it's a real state of the art 1986 big production. But actually it's got its roots in sort of early 70s heavy rock. You know, and I think that when he was talking about this, Lydon was alluding to the fact that he loved things like Cream, Led Zeppelin. And in some ways you could argue this is like a sort of, because the album sounds massive. And it's a bit like a 1980s, remake of Kashmir seven times over. There's that real sense of pummeling it's got
Speaker 1the john bonham it's got the john bonham big drum sound yeah that's for sure
Speaker 2yeah and and the same i remember when you know when matt johnson uh did infected he was saying that he was going back and listening to things like led zeppelin and jethro tolle things that got him excited about music in the first place and although you can't necessarily hear those influences on infected it does have a certain pummeling rock quality and it's almost as if and johnson were kind of rediscovering their youth but totally reinventing it within the framework of 1980s yeah infected
Speaker 1also another fantastic record that came out this year yeah
Speaker 2even on the periphery artists were producing interesting stuff you know they were still at some kind of creative high and as i said before you know something like the stranglers dream time it isn't their greatest album but they're still writing some fantastic songs and they're still evolving with the time and i suppose why i had this post-punk evolutions is that in particular with public image and maybe big audio dynamite some of the punk pioneers really were throwing away their own rule books and making totally fresh eclectic sounds and i always thought big audio dynamite you know very underrated band
Speaker 1from that era and also you've got wire on the list although this isn't an album this was their comeback ep the snake drill ep i think ideal copy came out the year after that's another band you know in some senses were you know they made the most intelligent quote-unquote punk record of all time uh at the time of punk but here they're coming back and redefining themselves for using using a lot of technology i think they were very conscious of the fact they weren't going to rely on their past that they were going to reinvent themselves so this is a terrific kind of like statement of intent in this in this four track ep that comes out the fall now the fall basically is a band that didn't necessarily respond to the times are they but or did they i think they were very conscious of the fact that they weren't going to rely on their past did they because the records did become a little bit slicker didn't they and a little bit more uh they didn't have that shambling quality that some of the early records had had you know uh ben sinister from this year i'm not familiar with that record but i know some of the other records from the late 80s which i really like you know curious orange and and the friends experiment so did they respond to the 80s what do you think yeah i think they did i think
Speaker 2the productions again became far glossier and as you say far smoother and so what markie smith's doing is becoming more accessible and i think this is the thing isn't it that that production in a sense was a great leveler that you could almost listen to the fall in the same way you could listen to tears for fears on the radio because of the dynamics and the production and a certain smoothness um so yes to a degree i think there is um an argument that the four were kind of responding to the times and they got more commercial as the decade went on and obviously they kind of collided quite nicely with madchester because i think happy mondays always had a slight element of the fall to their sound and of course they sort of emerged as a real creative force and you know i think their masterpiece is going to be bummed in 1988 but you can see that the falls suddenly kind of have a more commercial context to bounce off so i i think their records kind of did evolve i mean snake jaleepi i mentioned it on the list because it was one of my favorite records of that entire year and i still think it's possibly my favorite wire release of all and controversially perhaps my favorite era of wire is that snake drill ideal copy a bell is a cup um because i think they were just as inventive as they'd been in the late 70s early 80s um but they really made their mark on the technology of the 80s they didn't seem diminished in any way to me on those albums
Speaker 1is that controversial i think those records are pretty highly rated aren't they particularly ideal copy yeah i thought they were
Speaker 2considered in the same vein as mccartney too but maybe i'm
Speaker 1wrong well nothing is considered in the same vein as mccartney too in this house i can tell you that but anyway well i think we it's probably worth pointing out that when tim says the fall became more commercial radio friendly this is a relative concept of course um so moving on we've also got elvis castello and the attractions released two albums this year king of america and blood and chocolate one
Speaker 2of the best gigs i ever saw i saw this today it's one of the liverpool empire one of the best gigs i've ever seen i mean the attractions are a great band very musical very responsive blood and chocolate is certainly one of his most dissonant and experimental records and well worth listening to we've also got
Speaker 1new orders brotherhood this year um killing joker you referred to earlier bryson the thousand sons so things are in pretty rude health really in terms of the the post-punk groups you know transitioning through uh into the 80s certainly you know bands like bryson the thousand sons and the thousand sons and the that wire and public image really you know hitting a hitting a new peak in that sense so then you've got the category um ztt now i think it's fair to say that ztt that they were on the turn weren't they uh i mean ztt were a couple of years earlier all dominant with you know frankie propaganda the first art of noise record i mean they really changed things up the whole trevor horn production aesthetic and steven lipson to really change the way people were listening to music i mean people would make jokes about it and they would make jokes about it not being able to get trevor horn to produce their record on their in their you know the credits of their of their albums because he was almost ubiquitous but here we've got what i think were pretty much considered to be underachieving records at the time liverpool by frankie goes hollywood as the follow-up to to the massive welcome to the pleasure dome record or at least the singles of it were massive and invisible silence which was the follow-up to to who's afraid of the art of noise which unfortunately was a record that had no contribution to the from trevor horn or or paul morley and it's not a bad record it's not a bad record it's just a less unique and innovative sounding record isn't it yeah i think the
Speaker 2art of noise album i think you're right you know there was the element there was a slight sort of mold on the surface of ztt certainly in the public perception in this era but it arguably more than even perhaps gabriel three and four defined the sound of the 80s you know those ztt productions frankie goes to hollywood and so on and art of noise certainly their use of samples was ubiquitous at this stage um i like invisible science i think it is a strong album and i like liverpool too well i'm about to say liverpool i love i don't like liverpool i think it is the best frankie hollywood album and one of the great neglected albums of the 80s you know whereas welcome to the pleasure dome got all of the attention and it's a good album this is a really good album you know they sound much more like a band and it's a really good album and it's a really good album and it's a really good album everything is epic it reminds me a bit of public image album in that it's got a massive sound sound throughout but this one also has gorgeous textures you know this is a rock album filtered through slave to the rhythm grace jones i just think it's really powerful stuff and i know it's
Speaker 1i like it i mean i i don't think frankie goes to hollywood ever really ever made a great record they made great singles just phenomenal sing you know some of the greatest flashbulb moments in pop culture you know and i think it's a really good album and i think it's a really good album and things like relax and two tribes and there are some great singles on this record i love rage hard i love i love warriors of the wasteland and all the various mixes i don't think half the record is really as good as the other half um but um you're right i think it gets a bad rap obviously because it came at a time when obviously their star was massively in decline the knives were out so it was kind of doomed to failure and also the fact that trevor horn kind of basically washed his hands of the band and just said stephen lipson you go you go and make this record with him i can't be bothered with them anymore so there is a sense of trevor kind of distancing himself from both frankie and the art of noise here but they're both as you say they're both good records if if not great records electro pop industrial we have got well the pet shop boys first album came out this year i had forgotten that please what a great record what a great sound that was how does one explain how a we talked about this before didn't we this kind of combination of archness with incredibly emotionally bare uh touching that very touching sentimentality and they just somehow pulled it off and it was all there wasn't it right from the very first single well i think a bit like brian ferrier is going to
Speaker 2say there's a connection with sort of roxy music in the sense that roxy were there from the beginning although they that debut album is quite raw and wildly inventive they were there in terms of their identity and ideas and they were there in terms of their identity and ideas and they were there in terms of their identity and ideas and they were there in terms of their identity and ideas and i think pet shop boys were for the same reason that they were actually slightly older that tenant had been a journalist for many years you know smash hits and um had quite a lot to draw on and i think that what they did they made electro pop quite fashionable again in an era when it had really sort of faded and i think partly it's because there's a very frail organic quality in his voice you know his voice is closer to al stewart and roy harper than it is to the other artists is mark olman and he has this very sort of affecting frail singer-songwriter quality and although they used all of the tropes of electro pop there was nothing that relentless i don't know why even in the the use of strings electronic strings there was something quite sweeping about their music so i think there's something more sweeping something more frail and maybe as simple as just something more mature about them yeah
Speaker 1and i think you're right the the songs almost have that kind of observation of the music that they're playing and i think that's relational quality that you would associate more with generation of singer songwriters from the 70s isn't it i mean songs are opportunities let's make lots of money i mean it's a very 80s subject matter but the way the lyrics are constructed has got that very kind of 70s singer songwriter bed sitter observational quality and still to this day um their music has got the pet shop boys kind of blueprint behind everything that they do still that quality in his lyrics and in his performance and also in the music we got black celebration by depeche mode this year which i know is your favorite yeah um depeche album it might be mine i mean i love i love music for the masses and i love i love um violator too but this is the beginning of a real purple patch for them isn't it they're really hitting a peak aren't they with being the sort of cerebral electro pop industrial crossover kind of band that we kind of think of them as now
Speaker 2yeah and like talk to it they kind of reinvented themselves because you could argue that depeche mode and talk talk really certainly in the early 80s were perceived as much more standard electro pop artists and by 86 they are artists and you know this is is as dark and brooding as it is accessible and exciting and it's quite funny because i've got i've got personal stories around certain albums and i remember once listening to it and headphones and a blind man was coming across the bridge and slipped and i saved him from falling into the river while listening to black celebration so that's what i always have in mind when i listen
Speaker 1to it well there you go it's funny how certain albums can always bring back you know things that are not related to the album but you you kind of remember exactly where you are i remember buying peter hamill's nadir's big chance in virgin megastore in the mid 80s and it was pissing down with rain that day and by the time i got home into hamill hemstead i had a terrible cold and i spent the next two weeks in bed taking this awful kind of pink medicine which i hated and i i just loathe having to take it and i always associate that album still to this day when i hear it and it's a brilliant record i still associate that record with feeling like shit and having to drink this awful sludgy pink medicine which is a shame because it's a joyous time
Speaker 2next time i listen to it i'm just gonna have gloopy pink medicine in exactly mind so you've
Speaker 1you've managed to mention david sylvan about five times already in the podcast so let's let's go on so probably people playing the drinking home again they will be well and truly hammered yeah so let let's push them over the edge and actually talk about the album this year now we've got some more masterpieces so in the art pop category gone to earth it's a great record it's for me it's part of a again that idea of it being part of a continuum of work i think i prefer brilliant trees before it and i like um songs from the beehive that came after it also more yeah but this is a again it's a wonderfully unique entry in his catalog yeah in some respects it is a little bit him kind of coasting doing the sort of sensitive ambient soundscape thing but we've also got the second record of this album which is this uh complete instrumental ambient record i love this record it's a great record i wouldn't say it wouldn't be a top three sylvan record for me but it's a great record and i think but again i love the facts in the catalog and i'll very often reach to put this one on and really enjoy it what's your take on
Speaker 2it yeah and i mean i loved it at the time and still love it and i thought it was kind of a continuation you're right there's brilliant trees and there was the um ep in between brilliant trees words of the shame and this and they kind of form i think a great trilogy and this kind of took ideas from brilliant trees even further into even more epic territory so things like before the bull fight and wave i think are amongst his best pieces yeah
Speaker 1i think i think i think the problem i have sorry to interrupt you soon the problem i have with this record maybe what's not as strong as the albums that came before and after it is there's no songwriting rigor on this yeah at all it's very it's very runny and very loose whereas i think there's still great songs on brilliant trees and of course some of the best songs he ever wrote on on yeah no i think you're entirely
Speaker 2right i think the pieces were providing the foundation for brilliant trees and i think it's a really good piece and i think it's a really good piece and performances from the likes of nelson robert fripp if we can get in the drinking game get your victory gin down your gullet on that one well he is on the record to be he is yeah kenny wheeler steve jansen and richard barbieri of course i think do you know them
Speaker 1i've heard of the second guy yeah yeah so i think
Speaker 2everyone listens to he listens to
Speaker 1this podcast by the way so we should give a shout out to richard oh no we can never say anything never say anything rude about richard on this podcast because he he's he's the biggest fan ever and he's the biggest fan ever and he's the biggest fan ever of the album years it's true yeah yeah two albums this year essentially two albums from cocteau twins including i think my favorite victoria land yes um but they also released the album the moon and the melodies which is a collaboration with harold bub which is a nice record but i think victoria land for me is again i i find myself grasping for the word masterpiece i absolutely think this is a beautiful genius record that again pays lip service to the 80s but also exists completely without you know outside of time in a way it's a completely timeless record um it has an otherness and otherworldly quality i mean they always did they always did but here they are four albums into their career and they've ditched i think what's really interesting about this album is they've ditched the kind of things that might have dated the previous records the drum machines and things this record is almost beatless isn't it it's got an it's got a sort of floating ambient textual quality that i think i'm guessing probably would stand up better than things like treasure and and and even heaven or las vegas which is commonly seen as their masterpiece for me victoria land is that kind of beautiful ambient weightless masterpiece that just exists outside of everything that was going on at the time so how do you feel about that well
Speaker 2it might be my favorite of their albums as well and actually especially for the podcast i got a violin vinyl copy of victoria land a brand new one and i still love it and i think it's for the reasons you mentioned that i really like what comes before treasure is great i actually think garlands i think they're very early stuff with that kind of razor edge suzy and the banshees influence but on this they are the cocktail twins it's like on the earlier albums you can hear aspects of bow house suzy the cure house
Speaker 1yeah yeah they're
Speaker 2coming out of that they're making it their own they're great albums this what the hell is it other than cocktail twins it's their own universe after this and i don't you know bluebell knolls a really lovely album having all this vegas is fantastic but you can see them maybe blending slightly more with the sounds of the era that's surrounding it and also getting slightly more consciously accessible this album is them in a state of timeless bliss and i think they've only got one collaborator on it's the guy from diff jazz i think might be on it that's right yeah yeah i think
Speaker 1that's interesting is is you kind of alluded to there is that there there's almost a point at which certain artists achieve their sound they kind of throw off all of their influences and they just arrive at a point where they sound completely like themselves but the downside of that can be the rest of the career seems almost to be in you know coasting and is there a sense that that is what happened to the cocktail twins that the victoria land they they kind of arrive at the quintessential sort of recipe the set of ingredients for what makes a cocktail twins album albeit this record doesn't have the the stronger rhythmic element that subsequent records have and the previous records have but after this every record is just oh it's a cocktail twins record very beautiful and i never really got excited i liked the records but i never got really excited again about the cocktail twins after victoria land which i was really excited about because it seemed again a step into something else for yeah but at this point at this point the archetype was created the blueprint was there and everything else culminating in those fontana records which i thought were quite weak and of course shortly after they broke up so i think there was a sense they may have felt the same thing themselves is that fair or is that unfair i think no i
Speaker 2think it's perfectly fair i mean i think you know bluebell knoll i would rate very strongly i mean i liked that a lot when it came out but this is the quintessential cocktail twins and there was a sense that they come from quite a arguably by degrees up to those Fontana records, it sort of becomes a bit mushy, indistinct. They become what people think the band are, perhaps, by the end. They're still really, you know, it's one of those things, isn't it, that if you were to listen to Heaven on Las Vegas or even the Fontana albums, if they'd been the only albums that Cocktail Twins ever made, we'd still be talking about the Cocktail Twins. We'd still think they were great. Similarly, if they'd have split up at Treasure, we'd still be talking about the Cocktail Twins. But I think this is the point where they. And the odd thing about it is I don't think Simon Raymond appears on Victoria Line, because he's an essential part of the early sound and later sound.
Speaker 1No, you're right. You're right. That is true. It does feel almost like a very intimate guitar and voice record. At least that's my memory. I haven't listened to it for a few months now, but my memory of it is always as a very intimate, essentially guitar, Robin and Liz basically making that record together. I think it's quite succinct. It's like 30. 31 minutes or something.
Speaker 2It's a perfect length for that experience. It's one of those albums that you play again and again and again. I think at this point you're still in classic album time. territory where lots of albums are 31 to 43 minutes it's absolutely perfect for certainly my taste and what i think that a lot of this music needs you know the cd age is yet to impinge on these artists where they feel the need to add six tracks for the sake of it which often dilutes the impact of the statement and of the music there was a book i remember reading around this time i think something new sounds by a guy called john schaefer and he was talking about you know talking about how suddenly this era things were just fusing naturally so philip glass paul simon laurie anderson cocteau twins it was all creating this kind of wonderful genreless world of music i mean the bad thing about the book the one thing it did do was the usual of of course in the 60s and 70s artists tried to combine jazz and classical but in such a clumsy naive and juvenile way that's kind of a truism
Speaker 1isn't it that the what always sounds the most dated is what was happening almost exactly 10 years or 15 years before it takes 20 25 years for things to come around again so progressive rock and psychedelic music possibly one of the reasons skylarking was so ignored by the british press is that it did kind of very clearly where it's 60s psychedelic influences on its sleeve and it wasn't a sort of a cynical pastiche it was actually doing it in a very loving you know way and i think that's true also of this next record on the list which is um also a 4ad record for filigree and shadow by this mortal coil which is unashamedly pretentious it's a double album you talk about the maximalism of cd the cd era that's just about to come well here it is you know already coming around the corner in this massively ambitious double album made by over what's russell of 4ad who's basically the the person who ran 4ad records and he had his own kind of musical conceit which was this mortal call and they made three wonderful records and this is the second of those records this is progressive rock isn't it i mean we talk you know we've talked about this before haven't we about how certain things are progressive rock by any other name yeah this is exactly that we both know ivo so we know he was really into that stuff too of course so uh you know it makes perfect sense doesn't it but of course it sneaks in under the radar of the press and the media and gets away with it it does it differently
Speaker 2i i think what is it you're entirely right i think progressive rock was a it's lowest esteem at this point and yet many of the greatest albums you could argue from this particular year i mean i would say aspects of color of spring certainly aspects of gone to earth and victoria land and especially philly green shadow they were progressive in all but name in terms of what they were doing with music the eclecticism the pretentiousness and the reveling in their eclecticism and pretentiousness and being unashamedly themselves so i think that quietly the music had reasserted itself but under different guise and in a different format yeah i mean i think
Speaker 1you're absolutely right i think you're absolutely right and and i think that's still true today actually that some of the most creative music doesn't you know owe a debt whether it admits it or not to the sort of great explosion of ambitious creative music which was kind of creating hybrids you know you talked about the idea of fusing jazz and world music and classical music and blues and all of that folk music altogether which is very much the hallmark of you know what the beatles were doing in the late 60s but then moving forward into the 70s what the great progressive rock artists were doing and here we have other artists still doing it but very much in an 80s context yeah and very successfully you know as some of these records we talked about for doing it very successfully but let's talk about the elephant in the room tim you talked about this invisible touch by genesis where does that fit into this thing because for all these so-called cool cool kind of reinventions of ambitious and ambition and creativity some of which were by the original generation of so-called progressive musicians you gabriel's and hamels what of genesis themselves invisible touch how do we rank how do we write i mean i remember hearing at the time quite liking it as a kind of pop record great pop record um i haven't heard it for 30 years i must admit but how how does it fit in now to the canon not just in genesis but in the canon you know in terms of just rock music in general it's difficult
Speaker 2one isn't it i mean it was incredibly popular and one of the things i remember at the time was i think it was richard cook who's an enemy journalist who went over to sounds he reviewed so an invisible touch together and actually gave so one out of five and said that he hated what indeed he hated gabriel's man child voice and gave him a visible touch three and said well at least his old band they remember tunes and pop bizarrely richard cook a fashionable journalist he'd worked with the enemy seemed to review these two albums rather differently from how i think they'd be perceived today i think the thing with genesis in the 80s it's not a favorite band for me but actually i really respect what they did i think they very convincingly reinvented themselves streamlined the sounds and were honest to their influences remember these were guys that grew up loving pop music loving r&b loving the beatles loving the beach boys and evolving that sound to always kind of compete with the era and it's an interesting thing i think from we were talking about artists that thrived in the 80s and died in the 80s you know someone like neil young died in the 80s i mean he came back at the end you know with freedom made some great records but he had a pretty rotten 80s same with the rest of crosby stills and nash lots of the artists seemed creatively adrift and all credits of genesis they were absolutely on top of what they did reinventing themselves and i don't think it was a sellout because i think they just loved pop music i mean it's not going to be anywhere near you know my top 50 albums of 1986 but kudos to them great record that sold a lot and influenced a lot of mainstream sound i i
Speaker 1pretty much agree with you on that i mean again it's not an album i would particularly care to hear again but i remember thinking it was a great pop record at the time and phil collins is a great musician and i think it's a great song and i think it's a great song and i think it's a great song and i think it's a great song and i think it's a great song and i think it's a great song and the 70s generation of progressive rock never pulled it off the way genesis well maybe yes briefly with 90125 with a bit of help from the the two trevors but yes i think that went that went wrong pretty quickly didn't it after that whereas and they were kind of having to use outside forces to help them reinvent themselves and genesis weren't no they weren't they were completely relying only on themselves and they still managed to pull off this reinvention of a very 80s centric slick pop group that patrick bateman from american psycho would would listen to you've got i was
Speaker 2about to mention american psycho there's for those who don't know that in american psycho there's the brett easton ellis book there's this great section where patrick bateman the psycho talks about his love of contemporary genesis and how the earlier work you know far too quirky far too strange but but this has a certain perfection and this is the key to him being a psycho path that he likes invisible touch we've moved on to the section
Speaker 1which you'd call mainstream you had invisible touch in the mainstream section there's another bona fide masterpiece coming up here and i know we both agree i know we both agree on this record as being a masterpiece and arguably this artist's greatest i call him the artist he actually referred to himself as the artist at one point too the artist formerly known as but at this time he was still prince oh i think he meant on the
Speaker 2beach by chris ria sorry not on the
Speaker 1beach by chris ria or controlled by janet jackson or enya by enya although i'm although i'm a bit of an enya apologist actually i think her sound is incredible uh the way she layers voices absolutely i'm a big fan of the watermark anyway lots of people don't let him talk about dirty mind they talk about purple rain they talk about sign of the times diamonds and pearls the classic prince albums for me it's parade it's always been parade i think that album is his masterpiece it's genius it's genius in every respect it's got the funk it's got the songs and the production you know we talked earlier on about how the hollis production approach from color of spring was very much out of keeping with the 80s but still somehow defining it that's totally true this record too isn't it what a strange sound this record has doesn't it i mean you know the just the use of drums and strings and an almost ersatz kind of music aspect coming into some of the songs as well i think the greatest prince work always had that sort of sound of it almost being like a demo that he just thought was too good to better and he just left it exactly as it was i mean you listen to things on purple rain and dirty mind some of the best tracks of prince they sound like things that he just never finished or never did quote unquote properly yeah and that's what we love about them because they have all the quirks they have all the quirks that they have and they're all the quirks that they have a slick overproduced record which to be fair some of his later records have that for me they're too slick they're too overproduced a lot of what i love about prince the grain the quirks isn't in those later records but it's on these records in the 80s and parade for me i mean what a bunch of songs mountains girls and boys kiss um sometimes it snows in april one a great if not his greatest ballad uh it's just a masterpiece for me from beginning to end i think it's clocks in under 40 minutes unlike the sort of more bloated i think song Sign of the Times, which, again, I think is a masterpiece. But there's definitely more filler on that for me than there is on Parade. Tim, wax lyrical about Parade.
Speaker 2Totally agree with you. I mean, again, Sign of the Times, I think, could have been as good as this. But it's two times the length it should be, I think. You know, got some amazing stuff, but there's a lot of filler on it. What preceded this? You know, Purple Rain is great. Around the World in a Day is great. But when he was trying to be psychedelic or rock in those earlier albums, it was more pastiche. With this, I think it is genuine 1980s psychedelia without a reference to the 60s. The production's all over the show. And actually, two of my favourite Prince albums are his soundtracks. And I think they get dismissed because they're soundtracks. So I really like the Batman soundtrack as well. I think that's got some great stuff on it. But this is, for me, the best Prince album because it is definitively 1990s. Yet it's got a real air of psychedelic madness. It has aspects of pure groove R&B funk. It has also aspects of kind of 20s kitsch music that sort of flavours it. And yeah, you know, his most affecting ballad in Sometimes It Snows in April, Kiss, is such an innovative single.
Speaker 1It's almost like that song is so ubiquitous now. It's hard to remember. What it was like hearing it for the first time. And I was just gobsmacked. Again, you know, it's like he's done it again. He's done it again. You know, what an incredible sound. So dry in an age where everything had big reverbs. You know, all the big pop records had big reverbs on everything. This track comes along, which has got no reverb on anything. It's like everything is close up. The drum sounds, the vocal, the guitar. It's all completely dry, like a demo. And yet it sounds like nothing. And it still sounds like nothing else on earth, which, of course, was his genius. One thing I have to pick you up on, Tim Prince. When Prince did rock or psychedelic, it was pastiche bollocks. OK, let's move on. You've got a section here. Minimalism, ethereal and experimental, which obviously is quite quite a wide brief here. But I see why you things like Philip Glass, Songs from Liquid Days, Sex, Debt, Six Marimbas, Steve Reich, who we adore. And we've talked a lot about on this show. Arthur Russell, we haven't talked about. On the World of Echo. Now, he's an interesting guy. Now, I don't know this record. Is this one of his disco records? Is it one of his experimental chamber classical records? Is it one? What is it? What is this record?
Speaker 2This isn't one of his disco records. It isn't one of his classical records. It's that beautiful in between where it's almost like he's got a very hazy voice, a bit like John Martin's in a way. So it's a bit like if John Martin had tons of echo applied to his voice. And then he's got this minimalism. Minimalist cello underneath it. So it's more of a singer songwriter album, except the arrangements, a minimalist cello and his very dreamy voice. And it's great.
Speaker 1Sounds great. Sounds great. I'm going to check. I mean, I have some Arthur Russell albums, but Russell albums, but not this one. So I'm going to check that out. So we've also got Jazz from Hell by Frank Zappa, which is one of his Sinclavia records. I have it. It's not one of my favorite Zappa records. It basically depends how much you love the sound of synthetic orchestras playing ridiculously complicated. Music. Not my favorite aspect of what Zappa does. But again, you know, going back to this idea that what we love about an artist catalog is the fact that every record in it is different. And again, this is something different. Again, in the Zappa catalog that those Sinclavia albums obviously have their have their place moving on. Now, here's another masterpiece. And I've got a feeling you're not. This wouldn't be one of your favorites, Tim. Master of Puppets by Metallica is an absolute fucking masterpiece. Masterpiece, which has cast a shadow, along with Rain in Blood by Slayer, has cast a shadow over the metal world ever since. Never bettered, arguably never bettered, including by Metallica themselves. Catching lightning in a bottle on this record. I just remember, you know, one of the stories I love to tell is about how when I was about 12 years old. Forgive me if I've told the story already on the podcast. I don't think I have. One of the stories I remember is buying Saxon's Wheels of Steel when it came out. And I was 12 years old. 1980. Saxon's Wheels of Steel, an Iron Maiden's debut album and really loving them. And I remember putting on Motorcycle Man, the first track on on Wheels of Steel and listening to it and thinking, wow, 12 years old. I've got to remember I was 12. Wow. This is the heaviest music I have ever heard. There's no way. There's no way music could ever get heavier than this. This is the this is the ultimate metal heaviness. And within five years, you've got albums like Master of Puppets. And Cop by Swans, which make them rather a mockery. And of course, even Master of Puppets now sounds quite tame compared to a lot of extreme metal music. I mean, listen to a band like Full of Hell, for example, you know. But Master of Puppets is great because it's metal. It's heavy. It's fast. But it's also and I hope the heavy metal fans are not going to be disgusted by this. It's also a great pop record. It's fast and it's heavy. Yes. But songs like Battery. The title track, the thing that should not be. These are great songs with great riffs like those early Sabbath records. The riffs are just like, OK, you've just written all the best riffs. There's no riffs left to be written. Whatever riffs were left to be written. Metallica just wrote them all on Master of Puppets. Whatever ones Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi had left unwritten. Now they've been written. And there is that element when you listen to albums like Reign in Blood and Master of Puppets. These seminal metal records from the 80s that completely changed the course of metal. Metal music to an extent. Tim, have you got anything to say about Metallica as Master of Puppets? Have you even heard it?
Speaker 2I've never heard it. That's what I've got to say. The only Metallica I've heard, I've heard Enter Sandman, which I really liked, actually. And I've heard Lulu with Lou Reed, which I quite liked. It's a very strange record.
Speaker 1And yeah, I like it too. And again, that idea that it's something different in the catalogue. For both of them. Which is really interesting. Which are for both of them, yeah. So there's another masterpiece for me, Master of Puppets. Right. What else? Let's sort of. Let's sort of try and wrap this up, Tim. So now, Van Morrison, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. Van was going through a bit of a purple patch in the 80s, wasn't he? He was, yeah.
Speaker 2Well, he sort of rediscovered his Astral Weeks muse, that timelessness, that search for the. Spiritual, yeah. Exactly. And yeah, there are sort of three or four albums in a row. I don't think they're as good as Astral Weeks. I don't think they're as good as Common One. But they're really gorgeous, heartfelt pieces of work. And No Method, No Guru, definitely. One of the best of those.
Speaker 1I agree. I absolutely agree. I love that whole run of records from Inarticulate Speech up to Avalon Sunset, particularly. Yeah. Also on this list, you've got It's Immaterial, Life's Harder Than You Die. Now, I know you're a big fan of this group, Tim. Yeah, yeah. I've liked what I've heard. I remember the single from this record, Driving Away From Home, is it called? Which I remember thinking was really good. They occupy a similar place in the history of music to a band like Blue Nile. They never really kind of broke through to the mainstream. Did they? But they made this sort of very, they were very much out on their own and creating their own little world. And I guess they have their, I guess they have their sort of fairly obsessive advocates, of which you're one, I'm taking it.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. I'm a huge fan. Well, they started off in a much more sort of quirky post-punk pop way. But by the time of the album, they've got their sound. It's unusual. You know, it's the lyrics. I always described as if Raymond Carver lived in Skelmersdale, this is how he'd write, you know. Okay. Aspect to a lot of the work. Lifeside is a very different album in that they're drawing from anything from sort of country. They wanted to create an English country and Western road song. So they're drawing from sort of country music, post-punk, almost a kind of talking heads groove. J.J. Campbell's voice actually has an ethereal quality, a little like Kevin Godley. You know, he's got a very Northern pronunciation, but has that kind of Kevin Godley sweetness. This is the one. This is the one album that sounds like nothing that came afterwards and had the hits. So it had one big hit, one minor hit. After this, they've done two albums. One is called Song. One is called House for Sale. And they are just very beautiful, very consistent, ambient. They're one of those, one of those,
Speaker 1one of those bands, a bit like the Blue Nile that make an album every 10 years. Yeah. If you're lucky. If you're lucky.
Speaker 2Yeah. But the last two albums, they're companion pieces and they're very much in that. Kind of timeless Blue Nile space. This album is very eclectic all over the shop. You know, some of the B-sides as well. They'll have, you know, bizarre little pieces of them with banjos or what have you. So it's a very playful album, whereas what came after it is quite morose. Some of the lyrics are quite playful, but the overall feeling is quite sad. You know, they really are masters of melancholy. Whereas on this, it's quite funny in parts and it certainly is very playful. And, you know, a lot of. Weird, almost kind of flamenco guitar passages as well. It's, you know, a very musical piece of work and doesn't sound like anything particularly surrounding it really then or now.
Speaker 1I was going to, I was going to say they sound like a band that didn't really fit in then and probably still wouldn't now, but they're very ripe for rediscovery. If, you know, if you're interested in very emotionally, very quirky, very touching music, you know, again, the Blue Nile would fit into that category, wouldn't they? So, New York. You've got a New York category, only two entries in this. True Stories by Talking Heads, Home and the Brave by Laurie Anderson. Neither their best, in my opinion. No. But obviously both phenomenal, phenomenal artists. You know, still good, I guess. I mean, I can't say I remember much about True Stories, but Home of the Brave, I remember. It's got Language is a Virus on it, on that album, hasn't it?
Speaker 2It has, yeah, which is great.
Speaker 1Yeah, which is a great song, yeah. Indie. So the last category we need to cover is Indie. Again, some really amazing sort of records coming out from some of our favourite artists this year. Standing Up Straight by the Wolfgang Press. We should talk a lot about the Wolfgang Press on one episode. For me, this isn't the album to talk about. I like this album. I totally agree, yeah. But I would like to, because I think that, again, a bit like you were talking about, It's Immaterial, they're a band that always kind of existed outside of everything, but managed to carve out this really fascinating catalogue of work. I think when we get to talk about an album like Queer or Birdwood Cage, I think it was called, those records are really going to be interesting ones to talk about. Throwing Muses. Is this their first album? I guess it's self-titled. I think it is, yeah. Very logical, yeah. They sounded like nothing else on earth, did they, when they came out? Still don't. How would you describe Throwing Muses?
Speaker 2It's really difficult, because they've got that kind of post-punk angularity that you hear in sort of early XTC and Talking Heads. They've also got some kind of yearning quality that you hear in Patti Smith. But, you know, we're just kind of using these references to give people a bit of a framework to understand it, because it doesn't really sound like that, because it doesn't. It does have quite a dirty, mid-80s indie sound. You know, it's something, I guess, what they are, I think they might be the missing piece between Patti Smith, Talking Heads and The Pixies.
Speaker 1But they've also got something which you're not alluding to, which they've got the kind of math rock thing going on as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very complex, rhythmically complex sort of arrangements going on, which are kind of almost. You almost don't notice it when you first. You listen to the music in a very superficial way. You don't realise the complexity. So it's got that kind of Troutmast replica. It doesn't sound like Troutmast replica, but that's also true of an album like Troutmast replica, which you're not necessarily aware of the complexity of the music until you really listen closer, because you're so drawn into Christian Hirsch's voice and her lyrics and her delivery that you're not necessarily aware that the music is actually very mathy and quite technical and complex, isn't it?
Speaker 2Yeah, and I think she's part of the key in the sense that she draws you in. It's quite a sort of passionate, alien voice. And so, therefore, that's your focal point rather than the complexity of the music. I mean, I saw them when they were headlined and the Pixies were supporting, and it was interesting because there were strong similarities between the bands, but the Pixies had a much more kind of outgoing rock identity and live were tremendous. You know, Joey Francisco, great guitarist, whereas Throwing Muses, oddly, in a live context, were as sealed as they sound. There's something quite enigmatic about Throwing Muses.
Speaker 1So, other records this year from the alternative indie scene, Billy Bragg talking with the Taxman about poetry. Felt released a couple of records. We should talk about Lawrence and Felt at some point too, I think. Again, maybe these are not the records to talk about, although they're both good. REM, Life's Rich Pageant, Strange Times by the Chameleon. Chameleons, I beg your pardon. Your Funeral, My Trial, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Sound of Confusion by Spaceman 3, Evil by Sonic Youth, Ditto. I can't remember if we've talked a lot about Sonic Youth. Again, this wouldn't be the album I would choose to talk about.
Speaker 2I mean, the Chameleons, it's arguably their best, actually, because this was the one where they were signed to Geffen, so they had a lot of money, a lot of promotion.
Speaker 1I know nothing about this band at all. I know nothing about this band, so I apologise for not giving you a chance to talk about it. But in my defence, all the titles on this, you've put Stars by the One, you wanted to talk about. You didn't put a bloody star next to the Chameleons, did you? Oh, didn't I?
Speaker 2Did you? Oh, I forgot that. No, well, this is, all I said was the Chameleons. It's arguably the best album. They'd signed to a major label. They had, finally, money promotion. And it got played to death, certainly on sort of local Northwest radio. And it's great. You know, they don't squander the opportunity of the big budget and the big label. This is not about. Because we had a lot of this with indie bands who suddenly softened their approach as soon as the money came near them. And I guess the best way to describe Chameleons is that they're coming out of that kind of sort of almost Cocteau's echo guitar post-punk, you know, the passions, if you know them, and factory. They've got that aspect to their sound. But you can actually hear how Happy Mondays and Stone Roses have also borrowed aspects of their slightly psychedelic guitar influences. And this was just a really, really strong album for them, I thought.
Speaker 1Okay, Tim, so that wraps it up. What are you. No, it doesn't. We haven't done jazz. Kind of an important jazz record is 2-2 by Miles Davis. I think it's dated quite badly, but I think at the time it was seen as a very, very important record for a jazz musician to be making. It's essentially a pop-jazz crossover record, isn't it? Produced by Marcus Miller. Very 80s sounding, which is why I think it hasn't, in the worst aspects of 80s production. And he's doing cover versions of things like Scritti Politti's Perfect Way. So he's kind of, you know, doing that jazz thing, which is that the jazz, great jazz musicians would always look to popular standards of the day and reinterpret them in their own way. And that tradition had kind of fallen out of fashion, hadn't it, for a while. But here's Miles. Here's Miles taking contemporary pop songs like the Scritti song. And I think there's another one around this time that isn't on this record, which is his version of Time After Time. Yeah. How is this record dated, Tim? I don't think it has very well, but how do you feel about it, Neil? I mean, like you,
Speaker 2yeah, like you, I liked it at the time. It did have a slight sort of Miami Vice cop show funk quality about it. Yes. Even then, you know. But I didn't mind that. It was more spacious and mysterious. It was a bit like if Miami Vice had a dark episode, in which the devil appeared.
Speaker 1As Miles Davis.
Speaker 2As Miles Davis, in the form of Miles with his horn. Yeah, I still like it, but it has dated because it's got that very airless, treated 1980s production. This is an interesting thing about 86. Maybe we're getting to a point here that these are great albums. It actually is, you know, on its own terms, he's reinvented that sort of jazz thing that goes back to the 20s, where jazzers did standards or podcasts and pop songs and made them their own. But it has such a 1980s sound. It's almost like an end in itself. And a lot of albums from this era, they are almost like ends in themselves because you can't see, actually, did anyone take this further? Did anyone take that further? You know, beyond Miles Davis and Mandler, I can't think of many albums that sound like Tutu. There's almost that sense of it being an end in itself. But I think, yeah, in itself, it's a good 1980s album.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was, I think, yeah, I think it was a good 1980s album. I think, as I said, it was a very important record at the time. Yeah. And sometimes records that are important in their own time, for that very reason, end up dating quite badly. And of course, the opposite can be true. Records that kind of made no impression at the time turn out years later to be the most influential and the records that have the most longevity of all. Yeah, exactly. So this is a record, this is the opposite example of it. It's a record that's very important at the time. It kind of brought jazz back into. Yeah, yeah. You know, the consciousness of people that were listening to pop music. One of the great icons of jazz had made a pop record and a successful pop record. Yeah, sorry, I was going to say, you know,
Speaker 2front cover of The Enemy, The Face and so on. This was really widely publicised. And just to go on to your point, I think you're right, because, you know, you could argue that what Invisible Touch did for mainstream pop, this did for jazz at the time, yet neither record were remotely influential. Arthur Russell, World of Echo, nobody probably bought at the time, but you can hear it in a lot of Indian singer-songwriter,
Speaker 1music now. At the other end of the spectrum in jazz, Keith Jarrett, who never embraced 80s production techniques, as far as I know, released one of his most intimate, homemade, beautiful records of his entire catalogue, which is a fascinating catalogue anyway. Again, you know, going back to the idea of every record having its own kind of sound. Right through the 80s, Keith Jarrett was making records. One minute he'd be making an orchestral record, the next minute a record on a clavichord, the next minute a four LP box set of solo piano, improvisations, the next minute a record of standards. And this is another record completely different. Again, Spirits, which was a record he made in his home studio, on his porter studio, playing hand percussion and recorders and African flutes. And I absolutely adore this record. And I think for jazz purists, it was seen as beyond the pale. I think it got very bad reviews at the time because it's not really a jazz record at all. It's an improvised, it's almost like a world music record. Okay, great. So let's wrap up, Tim. As we always do at the end of the show, we should, well, first of all, I just want to say what an amazing year that was. I mean, it's like I said to you at the beginning, I was really pleasantly surprised by how many great records came out this year and in what rude form, you know, pop music, not just pop music, so many different genres were in such great form in the mid 80s. And what a wonderful decade, you know, again, testament to the fact the 80s was this incredibly, creative time, and obviously it's the time you and I were kind of really discovering music. We weren't around at the time to buy records in the 70s, but we were around to buy records at the time in the 80s when they were coming out. And every week it seemed like there was a new revelation and certainly what a great year. So what would you pick, Tim, as your favourite record from 86 and the one that you feel has been the most influential in the long term? It's tough, I know.
Speaker 2I think this is going to be one of the most tough years. And another album I left, or an EP, is Operating Theatre, a band who were on Mother Records, U2's label, and they produced this indefinable combination of Kate Bush, Björk to come, and so on, this kind of electronic art pop, which was exceptional. Yeah, in terms of favourites, I'm absolutely struggling, I have to say.
Speaker 1Do you want me to go first then?
Speaker 2Yeah, go first, because I just don't think I can do it.
Speaker 1Well, I'm going to have to hedge my bets on my favourite because there are so many. The Colour of Spring, definitely. Sky Larking, definitely. Parade, definitely. I'm not sure if I could get it down. I couldn't pick one of those three above the other two, really. And again, so many other great records, The Master of Puppets, Queen is Dead. But I'm going to go with those three on a tie. Influential, I'm going to need a moment to think about. So you pick your favourite, Tim.
Speaker 2Well, I will go with your three, and I will add Gone to Earth and Victoria Land to it, you know, just as things that gave me a great deal of pleasure then and now. So I've got a top five there. And I'm just going to go with two for influential, really. I think Arthur Russell has quietly become very influential because this was DIY music recorded, you know, possibly in his bedroom in New York City in the mid-80s. There's a great fragility to it that you can sort of hear in the lo-fi, singer-songwriters of today that people like Angel Olsen and many others. And then I'd say the Prince album, because it was so extraordinary. It really did define a lot of production for a few years to come. And people are still kind of utilising his combination of sort of R&B, contemporary psychedelia. You can hear him in a lot of the contemporary rap and hip-hop music still.
Speaker 1Still. I agree with you about Parade. That was going to be one of the ones I would say, you know, most influential just in terms of, as you say, the kind of combination of influences and also the production style. Also, it would be remiss to not mention what Shadow, well, I did already mention in the programme, what a Shadow master of puppets has cast over the whole world of metal music ever since and continues to do so, along with Slayer's Raining Blood. I think Raining Blood is the following year it comes out, Raining Blood, anyway. It is 86, in which case we should have really included, I'm going to look this up on the internet now, I'm going to cut this bit out. It was 86. It was 86, Tim. Good God. So, we should have talked about Raining Blood.
Speaker 2Can I confess, I've never heard Rain of Blood or Raining Blood or Raining of Blood. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1Where were you doing your research that didn't have Raining Blood on the list?
Speaker 2I think I was doing it for my record collection initially.
Speaker 1Yeah, okay. Fair do's, yeah. Well, there we go. That was a good episode, that, I think. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please listen to some of the others if you haven't already. And give us a good review if you can. If you like what you hear and you enjoy the podcast, you can tell everyone else how wonderful it is listening to two middle-aged men bickering about pop music of days gone past, which is what we like to do. So, we'll call it a day there, Tim, and look forward to the next show, which hopefully won't be so long in coming along, as they seem to get increasingly longer, the gaps. No, actually, this is only two months. The gap before that was like six months or something ridiculous, wasn't it? So, we're speeding up again. We're gathering pages. We're creating some momentum again. For now, it's goodbye from me and goodbye from Tim. Bye-bye.
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