Speaker 1Hello and welcome to another episode of the Album Years podcast with myself, Stephen Wilson and my co-presenter, Mr. Timothy Bowness. Hello. Hello. People hopefully by now know the drill here. We talk, each episode, we talk about a particular year in the history of the classic album. And we figure the classic album era runs from roughly the mid-60s to the end of the millennium. So we're talking about a period of about 35 years. Now, when we first decided we were going to do this podcast, we kind of pretty much randomly selected three years, didn't we? One from the 70s, one from the 80s, one from the 90s. And for whatever reason, I can't remember, we came up with 1992, didn't we? We did. It was entirely random. We pretty much threw a dart ball, didn't we, when we came up with this year. And that was before we realised how, well, and certainly in terms of our own tastes, I hesitate to add, there's probably some great albums from this year that other people love. But as far as we're concerned, we discovered there wasn't a lot in our collections from this year, was there, when we sort of looked into it?
Speaker 2Well, there wasn't. I mean, the previous years that we've dealt with, 1973 and 1980, I really did have well over a hundred albums from each of those years. And we could have discussed so many. You know, every time we do one of these shows, I think, my God, so many albums that both of us like that were released at that point. And 1991, I've got a tremendous number of albums. 1993, equally, I've got a lot of albums. 1992, for whatever reason, it's a wilderness. And even the artists that we like are producing what we might consider to be mediocre or weaker albums.
Speaker 1So, but we decided we'd stick with the plan, didn't we? Because we thought maybe it would be interesting, because we're three podcasts in now, we thought maybe it'd be interesting to talk about a year where perhaps there wasn't a lot of stuff that was kind of resonating with us. Well, it's what can we do with the sound
Speaker 2and look of Tumbleweed? Well, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1Either we're going to make this into an interesting discussion or we're going to end up with a 10-minute podcast where we have nothing to say. But why is that? I mean, what is it? About 1992, what's going on in 1992? I guess it's the kind of peak of American rock and American grunge music, isn't it? Which is something that doesn't really appeal. I guess it never really appealed to either of us very much, did it? So maybe that's one of the reasons. But then that wouldn't explain why 91 and 93, there was lots of records. I don't know. What's your theory?
Speaker 2Absolutely. I mean, part of my theory is that it was one of the first years where the CD had really kicked in. And I think that. New formats often dictate music itself. So, you know, to a certain extent, the LP format dictated the nature of the album. This is why you got themed albums by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis in the 50s. And I think the CD had really kicked in as a major seller at this stage. And artists were working to the CD. So I actually did my statistical bit here and I took down the length of the album. You're such a nerd. You are such a nerd. I thought I was a nerd. Thank you. So I did. I took down the length of the album. And it sort of, with one exception, backed up my theory. You know, a good example being one of my favourite bands during this time, American Music Club. Their 1991 album, 37 minutes long, ever clear. Beautiful piece of work. Great dynamic range. 1993 album, arguably just as good, but a little tiring. Too long. About 53 minutes. Yeah. The album after that, 64 minutes. We mentioned Nico in the last podcast. And if you can imagine. 80 minutes of undiluted Nico.
Speaker 1Yeah, we're driving mad.
Speaker 2I mean, this is when I might actually believe that suicide is possible.
Speaker 1For me. Yeah. Yes. Well, I mean, so let's start. Let's talk about the first album. Now, I'm looking at the pile here and I'm thinking that is, that's not, that's a pretty meagre, meagre pickings in terms of what I've taken from my own collection that is on the list. And there are a few things on the list that I don't have, that things you've picked. I don't have them at all. So you're going to have to talk about those. But I'll pick one now that I do have in my collection. And I think this is a great example of exactly what you're talking about. It's because for me, it's a potentially great album, but it's far too long. And it's by an artist that obviously had been around for a while by this point. And this is Roger Waters, Amused to Death. Obviously, Roger Waters, originally a Pink Floyd fame. And this is his third album. And he wasn't exactly churning them out. I mean, I think his first solo album proper had been about 10 years before and he'd only made three. And I think after this one, it was about. A gap of about 25 years or something. Anyway, so this is Amused to Death. And okay, you could say, well, Pink Floyd's The Wall is a great album and it's 80 minutes long. But I think there's a difference there is you have the kind of yin and yang. You have the melodicism of a Gilmore alongside that kind of biting, lyrical wit of Roger Waters. And the two kind of balance each other out. Now here, you've just got Roger Waters basically out of the state of the world for close to 80 minutes. And I just, I just can't get through
Speaker 2it. Exactly. I mean, I think when it works, it's one of Waters' best albums ever. I think some of it's incredibly touching. It's very creative, sonically.
Speaker 1Well, it's produced by Pat Leonard, who I think, I believe at that time was most famous for working with, you know, more mainstream pop artists like Madonna.
Speaker 2Madonna, wasn't it?
Speaker 1Yeah. And I think he was a big Floyd fan. He'd always, you know, dreamt of producing, you know, Floyd
Speaker 2and. I mean, it sounds great. It does. It's undoubtedly a very strong Roger Waters album, but I think, yeah, it's, it's just far too repetitive, far too long. I mean, I'd put Final Cut as one of my favourite Roger Waters, Pink Floyd related albums. And once more, you know, that is about 42 minutes long. It's a perfect balance. I think certain music, there's a level of intensity that just cannot work over that timeframe. And we found this, I think, with some of our music as well. And I think, you know, when I'm writing my solo albums, every single one of them has been between 38 and 44 minutes long, because even for me, you know, I'm reaching the knife at the end, if I take it beyond 44 minutes.
Speaker 1I admire you for that, because most of my albums, I have to admit, are too long. And I battle against my own instincts. You know, when you've got a body of work that you're very proud of, you almost like want to, you don't want to, you don't want to cut anything out. But I'm beginning to realise more and more now that there is something about my overlong albums. It doesn't matter how good the music is. It doesn't matter how engaging it is. There is a point at which people will begin to lose focus and lose concentration. All but the most hardcore fans are going to, their attention is beginning, it's going to begin to wane. And it's around about the 40 minute mark. And I think there's no coincidence that most of the classic albums are in that kind of time, you know, ballpark.
Speaker 2Absolutely. Almost all of them are 35 to 40 minutes long. And I think one thing to say here is that you talk about the White Album, or you talk about Pink Floyd's The Wall, and everybody has an opinion as to what would make those albums more focused, more effective. Whereas when you're talking about something like Revolver or Sgt Pepper's, very few people actually will take songs off or think, okay, it would be much stronger without this. Whereas the White Album is constantly up for debate in that respect, as is The Wall.
Speaker 1Now, but that's interesting also, because something I touched on is that The Wall, the difference in The Wall, and indeed the final cut, is you do still have the presence of David Gilmour. So let's just briefly address the million dollar question, which comes up time and time again with post-Waters Floyd, and indeed comes up time and time again with post-Beatles McCartney and Lennon, is there is an element, a strong argument, isn't there, to say that these two individuals, Gilmour and Waters, and in the case of Beatles, McCartney and Lennon, were much stronger together than they were apart because they created that light and shade that kept you listening. So in the case of Waters, it's the over-reliance on the lyrics and the bile just becomes wearing after a while, doesn't it? And in the case of Gilmour, conceptually, he doesn't have the strength of a Waters. So some of his stuff can come across as a little bit kind of anodyne, can't it? And the two of them together just produced incredible music, even on the final cut, which is very dominated by Waters. You have some of the most sublime Gilmour guitar solos, I think, that he ever committed to. A Floyd record, even at that stage.
Speaker 2Absolutely. I mean, you know, it's something that both of us have discussed over the years. And for me, Gilmour sweetens what Waters does. Waters gives Gilmour a greater sense of depth and focus.
Speaker 1So let's move on to another record that I think in many ways, I'm sorry to start off with in such a negative, you know, I wasn't completely negative about the Waters album and I do like that, but this is an album I want to talk about now that I don't have much to say about positive, really. It's an artist I'm a massive fan of. And so in a sense, it is symptomatic of 1992. Again, it is too long, but it's also a bit bland by his standards. And I'm talking about Peter Gabriel's album from this year, Us, which I suppose also suffered, correct me if I'm wrong, this is the sort of, this is the proper follow-up to So, isn't it? Which was a massive mainstream, you know, commercial success. So this, I guess, also suffers a little bit from. From being the belated follow-up to a massively successful, commercially viable, experimental art rock record. pop record sell this record to me tim i think you're a bigger fan of this record than i am i i'm not a fan you know
Speaker 2once more it does suffer as we said it's 50 i mean look at this one now got my little chart up it is um 58 minutes long and i think it's probably 10 to 13 minutes too long i think that judiciously edited this could be one of the best peter gable albums i think that it is i think it's quite a strong follow-up to so i just don't think it's quite as disciplined um
Speaker 1as i say i probably haven't listened to it as much as you over the years but nothing has stuck in my mind at all from this record uh i vaguely remember the singles which i'm not a fan of kiss that frog and so i'm not sure that i can agree with you there but anyway carry on yeah i'm actually getting it up on my computer now so you can't remember any of the songs either can you without looking okay give me yeah give me a song give me a song without looking you've looked now well steam i just said that one yeah steam is
Speaker 2interesting because steam actually there was a better version of it he did two versions it's called sledgehammer one was b-side quiet steam you've probably not heard this i haven't um it's one of the b-sides from this period which is a fantastic piece of work and it's um far closer to an updated gabriel 3 or gabriel 4 so he did two versions i you know love to be loved as great washing of the water is one of his best gospel ballads is it um i think secret world the closing track is incredibly affecting i mean one argument i would have with piece of gable which you'd probably disagree with is that he's never made a bad album you know this may be his worst album true but it's actually still consistently interesting um and i also think it was perhaps too dense a production i think at this stage he had his new studio and it was a bit like i've got 190 199 tracks and i'm going to use every single one of
Speaker 1them yes but you could you could you could level the same uh accusation at up uh which is another album that's very very overproduced some might say overwrought but i love that record because i think the material is much stronger and i think so i would kind of agree with you i think there are two problems with this album firstly the length but the second problem i say again is that it suffers badly from being clearly an attempt to recreate the mad the commercial magic and appeal of so and i think by the time you get to the next album up he's kind of in a way because us wasn't a big success he's kind of gone back into his peter gabriel world where he's like you know what i don't want to be a pop star anyway i'm just going to make an amazing record again and i think this album does suffer well i think this
Speaker 2also had the misfortune of coming after passion which i think is one of gabriel's most underrated love that record yeah love it very inventive production and i think it suggested for people like us that he was going to pursue that direction with more of a vocal orientation so there was a slight disappointment but i still feel it's um a heartfelt album lyrically wonderful vocal performances um as always interesting
Speaker 1guests yes and i and i think i mean i am playing devil's advocate here and the big caveat here for me is of course i'm a massive gabriel fan so it's all relative and so when i look at his catalog it's it's you know it's a consistent string of incredible records masterpieces i would say passion is a masterpiece so is a masterpiece in its own way three and four masterpieces up i think is a master so this kind of pales it so it's all relative it pales in comparison for me but you're right you're right you're right you're right i think you're right i think you're right i think you're right i think you're right i think you're right i think you're right i think you're right well that we both agree that we love now so 1992 wasn't a complete washout because the first album by a band that i know means a lot to both of us uh came out this year august 1992 it's even written on the sleeve first edition august 1992 and we're talking about red house painters first album down colorful hill uh which is a great album and it's a great album which to me uh is still one of the most incredible discoveries of my entire music loving life was hearing this band for the first time and i think i was probably in 1992 i was probably a bit bored with you know music coming from america the kind of grunge bands i wasn't really into it it all seemed very meat and potatoes it to me it all seemed like just going back to sort of heavy rock cliches uh okay so they didn't play guitar solos but it was still quite boring you know three chord riff based guitar music and then suddenly this band came out of nowhere signed to 4ad and it was one of the most miserable musics i'd ever heard and i loved it for it you know and absolutely i connected with so melancholic so melodramatic and slow and it's kind of what we now think of as slow core music it's like how slow can the tempos get but with this incredible singer songwriter mark koshelek i don't know how he's still to this day don't really know how you say his name mark koshelek um this incredibly strong personality that just seemed to be on the verge of slitting his wrists at every moment but here we have you know some of the most beautifully affecting music i think of the decade certainly in pieces like medicine bottle well i
Speaker 2think we both yeah we both fell in love with it and i don't even remember how we came across this it was um it was derrick at one little indian it was when we were signed to one little indian in across the table when we're having a meeting and it was along the lines of this is a miserable shit you two will love it he was right he was right i adored it and this was before the album came out so we heard this before the album came out and immediately fell in love with it and um it's interesting over the years because you learn more about the story but this seemed to come out of nowhere i remember my initial um feeling was that this had almost come out of morrissey and the smiths it was a kind of epic slightly classic rock influenced american version of the smiths to an extent my first ever impressions but
Speaker 1but with the tempo but with the tempos about quarter of what they would be on a smith's record i mean that's indeed yeah that because that's the thing about red eyes painters isn't it they'll take 10 minutes to play a song that most other bands would play in two because the tempo and the pace of it is like snail pace isn't it
Speaker 2yeah i mean it was it was a smith's 45 on 33 it was a smith's 78 on 16 conceivably um and yeah i think it was something that immediately had um a big impact and partly is because it was such an emotional piece of work and an honest piece of work and i think that we'd come out of the 80s where affectation was far more prevalent and this seemed searingly honest in a way that if again we take the smiths as being a reference point here the smiths always had an archness this didn't this was defenses down and musically it just allowed the songs to go wherever they wanted so quite often you would have 12 minute pieces that went from whisper to a scream but in a non cliched way you know as you've said the grunge movement whenever they did the whisper to scream nirvana you'd heard it before in we'd heard it in the pixies yeah as i say you'd heard it before in the pixies and tin machine no you know arguably there david bowie's tin machine the most influential album of the 1990s you know 1989 tin machine comes out 92 nirvana take the tin machine blueprint dominate the world poor old david bowie right well
Speaker 1you're kind of rewriting history there because as we all know tin machine was a piss poor pale imitation of the pixies itself but listen anyway and i speak as a big bowie fan myself but i i have to be honest tin machine was well anyway so listen well it's also interesting isn't it that because you talked about having this kind of uh fascination for uh for things like progressive rock and it you know you you only have to look at the songs he covered over the years he also was a massive fan of very middle of the road some might say schmelzy pop he did an album of john denver covers he covered silly love songs by wings on on the last uh or the last but one red house painters album i think we talked about this in some of the previous episodes people who don't give a shit about looking cool you know this is what i like i'm not ashamed to say i love this and this is going to come through in my own music and it's going to come through in my own music and it's going to come through in the music i choose to cover and the music i choose to enthuse about and i think we both maybe we both subconsciously kind of understood that early on about him and it kind of made us feel even closer to the music this guy wasn't afraid of unfashionable reference points because we never were either i mean when we were when we were starting as no man we were listening to donovan you know we couldn't care less about bob dylan you know we loved bob but we loved donovan didn't we he was so uncool it was unbelievable this is before the happy mondays kind of you know slightly made him cool again anyway let's move on um another record another artist that we we had discovered a little bit earlier and you introduced me to this artist a few years earlier uh with an album he met i think his second album uh the tender pervert and i'm talking about momus um and he was pretty much in a in a period where he's making he was knocking out an album a year at this point so and i'm sure you'd agree with me you know momus for about seven or eight albums in a row didn't really put a foot in there and he was pretty much in a period wrong as far as we're concerned did he uh and his album from this year is an album called voyager which i think is one of his one of his stronger records actually um but those albums he made for creation records between when was it 86 87 the tender pervert uh and then the album following this time lord which was his first for for creation i i will take them to the grave with me i i still think these are some of the most again distinctive singer-songwriter records but in a way that couldn't be more different to to mark koshelek this is a great album that's very pleasant playful, very funny. He's a perv, isn't he? Let's face it. He's a bit of a perv. I still love that sequence of albums, sequence of songs on the Don't Stop the Night, the second side of Don't Stop the Night, where there's a song about female masturbation followed by a song about paedophilia followed by a song about necrophilia. But he manages to get away with it, doesn't he? So Voyager, Tim, Momus' album from this year. Tell us about Momus because a lot of people probably won't know Momus.
Speaker 2Well, Momus is one of those artists I was kind of lucky to discover because his first EP, the one, the Borel EP, was about 20 pence in Piccadilly Records in Manchester.
Speaker 1Not his first EP, Schoolboy Error. Beast with two backs. I apologise, I apologise.
Speaker 2It's terrible. It was 25 pence. That doesn't excuse the error.
Speaker 1Picked it up.
Speaker 2I fell in love with it. And I think, again, at a time when artifice was prevalent, he had this incredibly natural voice. Momus reminded me of Donovan. It was almost like an intellectually charged Donovan who'd actually spent too much time reading John Updike had been releasing records.
Speaker 1Well, he definitely refers to himself as an intellectual, doesn't he? I mean, you know, again, going back to the literary thing with Mark Koscielak, there's so many references, isn't there, to literature in Momus. I think what I love about the run of Creation Records is he is also trying to be a pop star as well, isn't he? And there's almost a sense that. I think there was a description of him around the time of his classic single, Hairstyle of the Devil. He's like the intellectual version of the Pet Shop Boys. You know, there almost seemed like a moment, didn't there, where Momus was going to cross over, you know, with Hairstyle of the Devil. That's such a classic single. If you don't know that single, go and listen to Hairstyle of the Devil. It is like a pervy intellectual version of the Pet Shop Boys. I don't know how else to put it.
Speaker 2Well, I think he came out of a singer-songwriter tradition. And I think in some ways it was folk music, folk music in the purest sense, in that he was using what was the folk music of the day, which was electro-pop. Kind of see him as a Paul Simon figure or a Donovan figure, but adapting to the era in which he was, you know, using the pop vocabulary of the time. So a lot of his albums do have his creation work anyway, has a kind of New Order, Pet Shop Boys quality, but he's bringing something very, very different to them. And I think that the argument is that if you were a singer-songwriter or a thug, or a folk artist of any day, you use the popular medium of your day. So I kind of see him as a latter-day folk artist in that he's using what was the sort of appropriate pop language he could work within. -
Speaker 1We've always been big fans of Omer's, myself and Tim. Very, very underrated. So I wanted to talk, we kind of already touched on this when we talked about Roger Waters and Peter Gabriel, but this seems to be a year. And I think you alluded to this in the beginning of the show. There's a year here where a lot of artists that we really hold very dear were producing perhaps not their best work. So, you know, I mean, I'm looking at our list here. We've got Brian Eno, producer of an album called "The Shoot-Off Assembly." You kind of feel like you've been here before with that record, don't you? - Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2I mean, other artists, Leonard Cohen's "The Future." - Lou Reed, "Magic and Loss." - It isn't bad, but again, I've got the lengths here. "The Future," 60 minutes long. Lou Reed, 59 minutes. - 60 minutes long. One of the odd exceptions to this, it's an album we weren't very keen on because I know that we loved his predecessor, which was "Kill Uncle," and that was Morrissey. And of course he gets in the studio with Mick Ronson and you expect something quite special. But for me, it was our Morrissey album. It was Morrissey going- -
Speaker 1Isn't that odd because that album, "Your Arsenal," is considered by most Morrissey fans to be one of his better records. Whereas "Kill Uncle," the album we both loved the previous year, is considered to be the album with the absolute low point of his catalog. - It's the nadir. - And I love "Kill Uncle," which is I think about 31 minutes long, if I'm not mistaken. And I love the fact that "Kill Uncle" was a much more playful record. The arrangements were much more unexpected. And here we had Morrissey, as you say, doing a pretty much boring, to me, a very boring guitar, bass, and drums album. Who else have we got producing? "Run of the Mill" albums this year, or this is all obviously just in our opinion, but albums that perhaps were by artists that we love that didn't produce their best work. Well, "The Cure." Okay, "The Cure." You're going to go on to "The Cure." What was the album this year? It was "Wish." -
Speaker 2I know, I was going to say that I wasn't going to go on to "The Cure." I was going to say you said he's producing "Run of the Mill" albums. And for me, "The Cure" was "Wish." Again, 63 minutes long. - Too long. - It's not a good follow-up to what was one of their greatest albums, "Disintegration." There's some wonderful material on it, actually. But again, make it 40 minutes, take the better material. You've got a good "Cure" pop album. -
Speaker 1I don't, personally, I don't ever want to hear "Friday I'm in Love" ever again, as long as I live. It's one of those songs like "Walking on Sunshine" that instantly comes on any movie, any rom-com where they've just fallen in love, they've just met, they're walking on sunshine, it's Friday, they're in love. I don't want to hear that song. -
Speaker 2Even if it's a Sunday, it's "Friday I'm in Love." -
Speaker 1Yeah, "Don't Stop Me Now," another one, classic song. Don't want to hear it ever again, as long as I live. But I would say "The Cure." - I was going to talk about Tom Waits' "Bone Machine." Actually, I do think it's a really good record. Now, you've made the point that, this is interesting, you've made the point to me in the past that this is the record that you concede is really good, but it's also the point at which you fall out of love with Tom Waits. And I can kind of understand why, because there is a sense that this is the archetype for everything that people think Tom Waits' records sound like. It's almost like this is the point at which he becomes a parody of himself, the kind of trash can percussion, the grizzled voice, the kind of blues licks recorded, like they're recorded in a barn, you know. And this is, I think, is a great record, but I can also concede that this is the one where perhaps he kind of began to imitate himself. -
Speaker 2It definitely is. I mean, I fell in love with him on "Swordfish Trombones." - A masterpiece. - I still think it's a great album. Tremendous light and shade. - Yeah. - A shade in that record. - Yeah. - And going back, there are albums like "Blue Valentine," which meant a lot. - Masterpiece. - And "Raindogs" was a superb follow-up. -
Speaker 1"Heart of Saturday Night," masterpiece, small change, masterpiece. -
Speaker 2I think the problem with "Bone Machine" is it's a bit charmless. It's a bit of a racket. The thing with Waits is that it's a persona. He's an actor. And at this stage, I think also, he was becoming quite well-known with cameo appearances in films as well. I could see through this persona. He was always a persona. You know, he was always playing the hobo. You know, this is somebody who'd led quite a charmed Hollywood life with his wife being a screenwriter for a number of major directors and so on. And I think that there's something about his reveling in low life in a way that sounds as if it's, you know, stealing from a Steinbeck novel from the '30s rather than lived experience. And I don't know why. It was just this album was a tipping point for me that whereas I could take all of that on "Blue Valentine," I could take it on "Swordfish Trombones," this tested my patience to the point where I questioned my love of
Speaker 1Waits' work overall. - See, this has always been a trait of yours. And there's certain artists where one album, I don't have this, but you seem to have this. One album can turn you off, can make you fall out of love. I remember you selling me your whole Marvin Gaye. You know, very early on, you had all these Marvin Gaye albums. And you sold them all to me for like next to nothing because I think you'd heard one record that you'd heard that made you question your love of Marvin Gaye. So you got rid of all your Marvin Gaye. I'm like, really, what's going on? Let's get it on. And I never quite understood that about you. I mean, I still hold the top, the run of Tom Waits' albums from his debut closing time, probably through to "Bone Machine" as one of the most flawless, you know, continuums of extraordinary music ever produced by anyone with "Heart Saturday Night" and "Swordfish Trombones" right up there amongst my favorite albums of all time. But you say, you don't listen to Tom Waits. You don't listen to Tom Waits anymore. Is that what you're saying? Because, almost because of this. -
Speaker 2I can still listen to "Swordfish Trombones" occasionally and the title track of "Blue Valentine", but I find it difficult because in my mind, it's somebody faking. It's an actor going through the motions. -
Speaker 1Okay, but would you look at an actor, let's say, you know, Robert De Niro. I mean, Robert De Niro is kind of an actor who's made his career by basically playing variation. This is a generalization, but let's just say for the sake of argument, he's made his career playing variations of the same kind of character. Now that may well not be him at all, but that doesn't mean he's not a great actor. I mean, some of his, you know, performances are amazing. - Absolutely. - So why is that okay with a real actor, quote unquote, but it's not okay with a musical voice like Tom Waits, for example? -
Speaker 2Well, I think sometimes even with real actors, real directors, once the veil's taken away, it becomes, it's difficult to take them quite as seriously in the role. It's just when you have that little ray of insincerity. - Makes you question everything, okay. - It makes you question. -
Speaker 1Let's move on now to a band that never made a bad record as far as I'm concerned. You know, again, another band that for me rarely made anything less than, if not a masterpiece, a very, very, very good record. And I think this record they made this year, kind of falls into that category. I don't think it's one of their masterpieces, but I think it is, Very, very, very good record indeed. And it is XTC, one of the greatest bands of all time, as we all know. I'm sure listening out there, folks, I'm sure you all agree with us on that. One of the greatest bands of all time. Also one of the most underrated bands of all time. And probably 1992 was another time they released an album to the sound of Indifference, which seems to have been a constant throughout most of their career. Although many of their albums have been subsequently discovered and rediscovered by subsequent generations of music lovers. And I think they are appreciated now as one of the greats. Now, their album from this year, Nonsuch, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. Again, I don't think it's one of their very strongest, but it is a brilliant record. Tim, Nonsuch, XTC.
Speaker 2I mean, I'd agree with everything you say there. I think it's a great album, but it lacks the focus of their greatest albums. Yes. And partly that is to do with the length of it. So there's quite a lot in there that I think is really quite interesting. Actually, there's one piece there that you may or may not agree with me on. Whenever I heard it, there were a couple of tracks in this era where I think they've had some kind of profound impact on your songwriting, yet are never particularly discussed. One of them, I think, is when I listened to Tears for Fears around this era, Raoul and the Kings of Spain. There are certain chord sequences that I associate. But with you as much as anything else, they've almost dug deep into you. And one with this is The Smartest Monkeys, which is a Colin Moulding track. And when I hear that, I can hear certainly some of your porcupine tree writing in it. This is probably something that shouldn't be on the podcast, but that's just a question. No, no, why not? It was an accidental.
Speaker 1No, why not? I mean, you know, I think we're talking about this music from a very personal perspective. And by the way, folks, obviously it goes without saying, this is just our opinions. And I'm sure many people will. Will love some of these albums that we're not so hot on and vice versa. Maybe not be interested in some of these albums that we're waxing lyrical about. But I mean, you're absolutely right. I think XTC have been one of my. Definitely one of my biggest influences. I think for me, in many ways, they have been my Beatles. Because I was never. You know, I was never a member of the Beatles congregation, you know, worshipping the Beatles. I guess I was from a different generation. I wanted to find my bands, you know. That I could be excited about. And there is so much that the Beatles and XTC have in common. Without, you know, without XTC being derivative of the Beatles, unless it's in a very knowing way through, obviously through the Dukes of Stratosphere. But XTC just have written this body of work which stands up there with, I think, any body of work. The Beatles included, in terms of its diversity, its musicality, its smart music. Every song. Kind of has its own little musical universe. And that's something I love about XTC. You know, there are many artists where they kind of have a sound. So every song that they write inhabits the same kind of musical universe. And that can be the kind of sounds they use. And here's a band where it's almost like, OK, every song we're going to create a whole different musical universe for. And that, of course, is. That's the Beatles thing. That's what the Beatles did. Every song they wrote. Every song they wrote, it's like we're going to create a whole different musical world here for it.
Speaker 2Going back to the beginning of the programme, what XTC have, what Steely Dan have, what Pink Floyd have, what the Beatles had, is the songwriter that has that slightly more acidic, bitter quality. And in this case, it's Andy Partridge. And the songwriter that has this incredibly sweet sense of melody, which obviously in the Beatles, McCartney, Floyd, Gilmore, and in this case, moulding. And I think that it was one of the things that made XTC work. It worked very well. Although I'd kind of argue that one of the things that's interesting about XTC is that as the band went on, Andy's melodic gift became greater. His voice became sweeter.
Speaker 1I was just about to say, I mean, a bit like the Beatles, it's oversimplification, isn't it, to say that? Because, of course, McCartney produced some quite biting material and Lennon produced some, you know, some quite mawkish material. I'm not a fan of Imagine, for example. I think it's one of the cheesiest, mawkiest songs ever written. And here on this. Here on this album, Andy, Humble Daisy, Wrapped in Grey, Rook. These are some of the most beautiful songs in the XTC catalogue.
Speaker 2Well, I think by Apple Venus, he's completely got that down. You know, for me, Apple Venus has the sweetness of Joni Mitchell, Brian Wilson, Judy Sill.
Speaker 1Absolutely. So there we go. XTC, you know, I think it's one of those things with almost XTC, you almost begin to take them for granted because every album is great. And maybe there was an element. There was an element of that with this album that it's just, oh, it's another great XTC album.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think that is its flaw. Basically, I think actually I might even prefer it to Oranges and Lemons, but it doesn't have a stronger visual identity as Oranges and Lemons. And it doesn't have a stronger focus as Skylarking, Oranges and Lemons, English Settlement.
Speaker 1Apple Venus seemed more like a development, didn't it? It's like, oh, this is XTC, but it's something new. Whereas I think Nonsuch felt in a way at the time, I remember buying it and feeling like this is a great album, but it feels like, oh, yes, it's like Oranges and Lemons. It's the next record after Oranges and Lemons. But, you know, the beautiful thing about albums like that sometimes is they just stay with you for years and years and years. And you go back to them and you're like surprised, constantly surprised. I mean, I remixed this album. And again, when I was remixing it, it was such a joy because I was like, oh, yeah, that is a great song. And then the next song. Oh, yeah, that's also a great song. And just, wow, this album is just full of great songs. But I kind of took it for granted as part of the continuum of their work in a way.
Speaker 2I think it's part of the continuum, but also, isn't it, where it actually fell? To a certain extent that they picked up momentum, especially in America throughout the 80s and Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons reinforced that. And I think that coming into the 90s, there's something about coming into a new decade that suddenly artists seem old. They're rendered old either by the new movements or by the media or even by the releases. And I think there's something actually about us going back to us and this album where they were just albums. Albums by artists who'd had their day in the sun in the 80s. And somehow, especially the media perspective, in the light of something like grunge and post-Manchester, they seemed out of time.
Speaker 1Unless it was someone like Neil Young, who actually embraced the kind of grunge sound and made albums with Pearl Jam or Bowie, who kind of, you know, well, to less success. Well, Tin Machine obviously defined grunge, as we know. Tin Machine or Neil Young's Ragged Glory, Tim.
Speaker 2Pick one. Oh, such a hard choice.
Speaker 1No, it really isn't a hard choice, Tim. It really isn't a hard choice. Right, listeners, it really isn't a hard choice. Listen, let's try and talk about a couple more albums. You wanted to talk about Robert Wyatt's Don't Understand. Is that the album from 92? Yeah, Don't Understand. I mean, is this another artist that falls into that category?
Speaker 2Maybe it falls into that category to an extent in that it's another Robert Wyatt. I love it. It's not necessarily one of his best, and it's certainly not one of his worst. And in some ways, it kind of carries on from his 80s work. It's a good album. It has a few great tracks, like Catholic Architecture.
Speaker 1But you wouldn't pick it as one of your Robert Wyatt Desert Island discs?
Speaker 2You know, whereas the Leonard Cohen album from this year, The Future, sounds like a come down from I'm Your Man. And this is an interesting thing, isn't it? Because Leonard Cohen, a bit like Peter Gabriel, probably had his. Day in the Sun in the mid to late 80s with radically fresh music. And I'm Your Man propelled Leonard Cohen to new fame. And the same with So and Peter Gabriel. And so to a certain extent, us and the future seem like come downs from those great party days of the mid 80s. And while Robert Wyatt didn't have those, it just seems like the XTC. It's another good Robert Wyatt album.
Speaker 1They're albums that are certainly not going to disappoint the fan base. But they're not going to go beyond that fan base, are they?
Speaker 2Absolutely. You know, if you didn't like him before, you're not going to like him now. So it's another 1992 album. But I love the fact at this stage that he's still producing what are effectively glorified demos. And everything about them is beautifully quirky.
Speaker 1I was going to say there's one more album I want to talk about. It's actually a pair of albums. They came out on the same day. They both involve the same collective of musicians. And these are albums in a very different musical genre. But one that I was very, very influenced by, particularly, you know, on those early No Man records, particularly things like Wild Opera, which is Meat Beat Manifesto and Consolidated. They're both, I guess, what you would put in the category of industrial hip hop in the sense it's hip hop music with a very aggressive but experimental musical bent. Now, Consolidated were, I remember being in a shop with you on the day that No Man played in Manchester late in 1992. I forget the name of the venue in Manchester. Do you remember what that venue was? PJ Bells. PJ Bells. PJ Bells. I remember going to the local record shop, which would have been Piccadilly Records.
Speaker 2It would indeed. But do you not remember I bought Us on that very same day? Did you? Because I took it back to the hotel room. Yeah. And Richard Barbieri said, come on, let's have a listen. Let's have a listen. Yeah. And I had my portable ghetto blaster with me. Put it in. I liked it. I can't quite say what Richard Barbieri said.
Speaker 1Well, you can't because he's not here to say himself. He's not here to defend himself. But it wasn't as positive. Wasn't that positive? Well, I'm probably with him on that then. But this I remember hearing coming over the shop sound system. I remember hearing this song called Tool and Die, which is basically the first track on the Consolidated. I'm playing my music and it just ripped my head off. I'd never heard anything like it. It had all the aggression and bile and energy of a public enemy or something like that. But it was right on. It was it spoke to me much more as a, you know, as a middle class white man. These guys were talking about gun control. They were talking about vegetarianism. They were talking about sexual politics. They were talking about gay rights. They were very, very politically motivated to the point that half the tracks on this album, Play More Music, are basically them. At their shows, they would open the floor up to their audience to get people up on stage to talk about some of the issues. And they would then use the recordings of these kind of interactions with their audience to create tracks out of them, which is fascinating. I have to say it doesn't bear a lot of repeat listening. That's that side of the band. But basically, if you like hip hop in the most aggressive, in your face way, with really strong, positive messages behind it, this is a band for you. Consolidated, some of the most inventive. I mean, they're sampling stuff like Cabaret Voltaire, Miles Davis. They're putting it together with hip hop beats in a way that I personally adore. This is an example of a band that you do not try to water down. It does not work when you try to water down Consolidated. But Meat Beat Manifesto is still going strong to this day. Jack Danger's actually from Swindon, ironically from the same city as XTC and for Andy Partridge produced. Do you remember that band called Perennial Divide, Tim? Pre-Meet Beat Manifesto? Yeah. So that was the pre-Meet Beat Manifesto vehicle for Jack Danger's. And Andy actually produced one of their early singles. So there's a connection there. I have to say this isn't one of my favorite Meat Beat Manifesto albums, but they're another band that never really made a bad record. Every record is kind of a variation. It's cut from the same cloth, shall we say. Okay. So I don't know. I mean, are you familiar with these artists that much, Tim?
Speaker 2Meat Beat Manifesto, yeah. And I always quite liked, I mean, in some ways I always saw Meat Beat Manifesto as being an English version of what Nine Inch Nails became.
Speaker 1Yes, also. Well, in fact, he did a lot of remixes. He did remixes for Nine Inch Nails.
Speaker 2Yeah. You can really see the connection. And I think it's partly because it contrasts a lot of violence with delicacy, but also it has some kind of root in 80s electro pop. It's as if electro pop has exploded into industrial music. Also. And with Consolidated politically, what you're talking about with the veganism and so on, obviously reminded me of Skinny Puppy. Yes. Yeah. The Meat Beat Manifesto album I liked and I could see, as I said, connections with Nine Inch Nails. Perhaps they never made a statement quite as grand as the downward spiral. I think the thing about Reznor is that he always had quite a cinematic conceptual scope. And although the Meat Beat Manifesto albums are equally ambitious in their own way, they don't quite have that overriding theme in terms of the artwork or the concept that you get with Nine Inch Nails.
Speaker 1Yeah, I can see that. I think there was a great, there was a great, I think the point is around about this time, there was a great generation for me of musicians that had grown up, white guys, essentially, that had grown up listening or being surrounded by, you know, things like a, a public, public enemy, rather than things like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. And that was coming through in the music. And they'd also explored industrial culture and they'd explored things like Miles Davis and the early 70s fusion records. There was a great song that came out around about this time by an artist called MC 900 Foot Jesus called Falling Elevators, which is still one of my favourite songs from the whole era. And again, you know, a young white guy that had grown up with hip hop music and rap music, but also had obviously listened. And so it's really interesting to hear the influence that that generation of hip hop music from the 80s is beginning to have. And, you know, about this time, you also have the first Rage Against the Machine album. So that's another really interesting record. And I think partly, again, it's because it has that, you know, that sense of something that's come as much from hip hop as it has from Led Zeppelin.
Speaker 2I think for me, I was kind of fascinated by the way in which hip hop worked as a production tool.
Speaker 1Correct me if I'm wrong. But certainly from my point of view, things really gelled when you got to stuff like Portishead and Massive Attacks, Metzenina. I think that's when that trend really came of age. The white guys that had grown up listening to Public Enemy, but had also grown up listening to John Barry and grown up listening to Pink Floyd. And you could hear and all of those things which I liked, all of those things which I liked, I heard them all coming through in this new form of music. Of course, that's still a few years off, although Massive Attack had released their first couple of records, I think, by this time.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. Unfinished Sympathy, I think it's 1991. I mean, that's amazing.
Speaker 1I still love Unfinished Sympathy, but I didn't love their first album. And I didn't love their second album, but I loved Metzenina. OK, Tim, so let's pick one album from 1992 that we personally hold dearest. And let's pick another album that we think maybe points towards the future. You go first.
Speaker 2Well, I think the favourite, really the only album that I repeatedly played at the time and still play with enthusiasm is Red House Painters' Down Colourful Hill. It's ultimately not my favourite Red House Painters' album or my favourite Kozilek album, but that year was dominated by it because it was a fresh singer-songwriter voice that, as I've said, just seemed extremely open, almost to the point of defencelessness that I responded,
Speaker 1responded to. And an album that you think points to the future?
Speaker 2An album that points to the future. Is there one?
Speaker 1Maybe there isn't one. I don't know.
Speaker 2This is, you know, I'm looking through here and, you know, maybe Consolidated to a certain extent in the sense that Consolidated sounds more 2020 than any of the other albums that we're talking about. And that's obviously because, I suppose, hip hop, rap, has come to define a lot of contemporary music far more so, you know, R&B influences over the last sort of six or seven years have dominated the upper echelons of the charts, certainly.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I think I would pick exactly the same two albums. I know you're not a fan of the Consolidated album, which I genuinely am, but I think you're right. Red House Painters' first album for me is an album I still absolutely adore. And I think, you know, in terms of pointing to the future, as we just discussed, really, you know, the way that you can hear the beginnings of hip hop culture really beginning to change and mutate British music. And I think also, again, an album, I don't love it, but I can totally see how it did point to the future, is the Rage Against the Machine debut album, which was this year. I'm just looking up on the internet now. It was 1992, and it did feel like a bolt from the blue when it came out. This is an unashamedly rock and roll band, who have got as much in common with hip hop culture as they have with classic rock. And that is a very, very 1992 thing, isn't it? That's it for another podcast of the album years. So thank you very much from me, and we'll see you next time. Thank you, Tim. Bye-bye. ♪ music playing ♪
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