Idlewild, my favourite early EBTG album, has been re-issued, and arrived from Amazon this morning. I'll get the other three when my self-imposed CD rationing scheme permits, but this provides enough to be going on with. Idlewild is an important album to me. I'd been aware of EBTG prior to then --- they're about my age, an acquaintance of mine had been a contemporary of theirs at Hull which provided some vague link, and I admired their unashamed literacy and musical competence --- but for whatever reason I hadn't quite got around to buying their albums. Younger readers won't remember the 1980s, when actually listening to new music required it to be on the radio or a friend to have a copy, but actually committing to slapping down the price of an LP was quite a big deal. But I read a review that raved, heard a track on the radio, and bought Idlewild on vinyl. To me, Idlewild sums up the dog days of the late 1980s, in the manner of Stephen Poliakoff's 1991 film "Close My Eyes" (although, obviously, without the incest). A tired government, a country unsure of what it wanted as industry died all around us, the personal uncertainty that came from leaving university and having to make a living, long hazy summers. I bought it at the same time as Nanci Griffith's Little Love Affairs, and I still think of them as a strange double album, vignettes charting the end of Thatcher and Reagan, with no clear idea of what would come next. It's impossible to divorce music from the context you first heard it in, of course, but those two albums sum up 1988 to me far more than
Over the steady tick of drum machines, clipped guitars and synths --- like The Blue Nile would sound if Glasgow were sunnier --- Tracey spins stories that feel true, no matter if they are or are not.. Perhaps because of the Hull connection, The Whitsun Weddings never seem far away ("It becomes still more difficult to find // Words at once true and kind // Or not untrue and not unkind" could be from Idlewild or Larkin). "The Night I Heard Caruso Sing" gently worries about nuclear war with infinitely more subtlety than most of the agit-prop of the era, "Blue Moon Rose" (amazingly, written and recorded in a day) reminds you why your best friend is your best friend and "Oxford Street" has to be amongst the best songs ever written about growing up and leaving home ever written (having mentioned Nanci Griffith, I have to mention her "There's a Light Beyond These Woods, Mary Margaret"). The remaster sounds fresh and bright --- the Warner CD release, complete with the unnecessary addition of the cover version of Danny Whitten's "I Don't Want To Talk About It", always sounded like it had been done quickly from a production master --- without having the compressed to death feeling that mars so many re-releases these days. The sleeve notes are interesting, the bonus CD of B-Sides and demos is charming and the whole thing has obviously been done with a lot of love and care, as befits an album that you feel was made with a lot of love and care. I suspect that to a new listener, this album will sound slightly dated: nothing places a record in its time more than drum sounds, especially synthesised drum sounds. But if they get past that, the songs are superb, the production elegant and tasteful and the vocals precise and nuanced (and let's tip our hats to Ben for "Caruso" --- a live performance of that in, of all places, Warwick Arts Centre stays with me). It's a great album, well-deserving of a proper re-master and re-issue, and should be heard by everyone. ian
Over the steady tick of drum machines, clipped guitars and synths --- like The Blue Nile would sound if Glasgow were sunnier --- Tracey spins stories that feel true, no matter if they are or are not.. Perhaps because of the Hull connection, The Whitsun Weddings never seem far away ("It becomes still more difficult to find // Words at once true and kind // Or not untrue and not unkind" could be from Idlewild or Larkin). "The Night I Heard Caruso Sing" gently worries about nuclear war with infinitely more subtlety than most of the agit-prop of the era, "Blue Moon Rose" (amazingly, written and recorded in a day) reminds you why your best friend is your best friend and "Oxford Street" has to be amongst the best songs ever written about growing up and leaving home ever written (having mentioned Nanci Griffith, I have to mention her "There's a Light Beyond These Woods, Mary Margaret"). The remaster sounds fresh and bright --- the Warner CD release, complete with the unnecessary addition of the cover version of Danny Whitten's "I Don't Want To Talk About It", always sounded like it had been done quickly from a production master --- without having the compressed to death feeling that mars so many re-releases these days. The sleeve notes are interesting, the bonus CD of B-Sides and demos is charming and the whole thing has obviously been done with a lot of love and care, as befits an album that you feel was made with a lot of love and care. I suspect that to a new listener, this album will sound slightly dated: nothing places a record in its time more than drum sounds, especially synthesised drum sounds. But if they get past that, the songs are superb, the production elegant and tasteful and the vocals precise and nuanced (and let's tip our hats to Ben for "Caruso" --- a live performance of that in, of all places, Warwick Arts Centre stays with me). It's a great album, well-deserving of a proper re-master and re-issue, and should be heard by everyone. ian