Serge Gainsbourg – Intoxicated Man: 1958-1962 (El Records)

 

Intoxicated Man is a comprehensive look at the first five years of Serge Gainsbourg’s recording career, covering his first four albums plus a host of singles, soundtrack work, live recordings, and covers of Gainsbourg material by other singers. Although best known for his later acts of public provocation and musical sleaze, these recordings are far less radical than anything else in Serge’s lengthy canon. While it may be better as a historical record of his formative years, it’s still a highly enjoyable romp through his roots of jazz, chanson, cha-cha, and orchestral pop. As the chronologically ordered set crosses into ’62-’63 recordings on the second disc, you begin to hear some of the touchstones of Gainsbourg’s later sound peaking through, especially on his fourth album (given the highly imaginative title of No. 4) from 1962. It ends with fourteen same-era Serge covers from artists like Juiliette Greco, Pia Colombo and Petula Clark which are nice enough, but I’d trade them in a second for more Gainsbourg originals.

The Mighty Diamonds – Planet Earth and Planet Mars Dub (Hot Milk)

Although the Mighty Diamonds aren’t among the most highly regarded reggae groups ever, they were responsible for a slew of strong singles and albums during the genre’s golden age. Originally released back in 1978 on Virgin Records (and mysteriously credited to “The Diamonds”), Planet Earth takes full advantage of the major label recording budget with a slew of Jamaica’s finest studio musicians working together on a set of richly-layered and well recorded backing tracks. As for the Diamonds themselves, they split their time between Rastafarian odes (“Where Is Garvey”), lovers rock (“Sweet Lady” and “Just Cant Figure Out”) and social commentary (“Planet Called Earth”). Perhaps some songs are marred by simple lyrics and repetition, but the trio’s harmonies are always strong enough for the track to go by without annoying.

Hot Milk’s reissue of the album tacks on its dub counterpart Planet Mars Dub, credited to “The Icebreakers with The Diamonds”. Usually bonus material is a welcome addition, but here it gets in the way, since the album has been re-sequenced so that each song on Planet Earth is followed by its Planet Mars Dub version. The dubs are OK, but hardly groundbreaking, and having to sit through back-to-back versions of the same rhythm gets tiring. My recommendation: just play the vocal tracks.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Push The Sky Away (Bad Seed Ltd.)

 

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are one of the few remaining groups for whom every new album feels like an event. That they’ve stayed relevant for thirty years is no small accomplishment – one achieved by always adding new elements, whether through shifting musical styles or swapping out band members. Push The Sky Away is their 15th studio album, and it too is heavily marked by changes in musical presentation and line-up. The most glaring change is the departure of Mick Harvey, Nick Cave’s right-hand man and musical director going all the way back to the late-’70s when they formed The Boys Next Door. Harvey’s presence is definitely missed, as his gruff backing vocals and bluesy style were an important part of the band’s sound. With Harvey gone, wonderfully-bearded multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis steps into the role of musical director, and his vision for the band, at least on this album, is based on development of the soundtrack work him and Cave have been increasingly involved with in recent years. It’s a more restrained and impressionistic sound than The Bad Seeds have ever gone for, and at first listen I was devastatingly underwhelmed by it. Sure the songs were pretty, but where was the thunderous intensity? The humor? The guitar and drums? Even Cave himself sounded a little tired and weary, perhaps even struggling a bit to lock in with a version of the band that dealt more in Ellis’ looped sound-scapes than driving rhythms. However, with each successive listen your mindset changes, and you stop listening for what isn’t there, and begin connecting with what’s there, and what’s there is quite good.

It opens with the first single “We No Who U R”, and everything that is different about the album is quickly established. It’s lyrically menacing, but the sound and performances are both surprisingly relaxed. “Water’s Edge”, a story of seaside prostitution, and “We Real Cool” are the strongest songs on the album, with Marty Casey’s downright filthy bass notes providing a solid bedrock for Cave to sing over. Fans seem to be divided over “Finishing Jubilee Street”, which breaks the fourth wall of songwriting as Cave recounts a dream he had after finishing writing the song “Jubilee Street”. I can understand why its off-kilter lyrical stream of consciousness is a turn-off for some but for me it fits the dream-like quality of the album perfectly. Clocking in at just under eight minutes, “Higgs Boson Blues” has the same cracked “dark night of the soul vibe” as Neil Young’s On The Beach, and that’s always a good thing – and yes, Nick really does mention Miley Cyrus in the lyrics. The album ends with the title track which is a bit slight, both lyrically and musically, and probably would work better a shortened coda than as its own song. I’m left feeling that Push The Sky Away is hindered by its restrained approach and is one of the weaker Bad Seeds albums. However, it’s by no means a bad album and weak Bad Seeds are still better than just about everyone else’s best.

 

Tracklisting:

 

1. We No Who U R

2. Wild Lovely Eyes

3. Water’s Edge

4. Jubilee Street

5. Mermaids

6. We Real Cool

7. Finishing Jubilee Street

8. Higgs Boson Blues

9. Push The Sky Away

 

Mudhoney: I’m Now (King Of Hearts Productions)

The market for niche music product must be bigger than I thought. How else can you explain the flood of biographical DVD releases in recent years from cult acts like The Circle Jerks, The Monks, Big Star, Rodriguez, and Mudhoney? As a fan of these and other under-appreciated bands, it’s great to see their stories getting the treatment usually reserved for mega-successful acts, but in the case of Mudhoney: I’m Now both the story and the way it’s told are a little too familiar. Co-Directors Ryan Short and Adam Pease are clearly big fans of the band, but the combination of talking head interviews and archival footage has been done a million times before, so even someone as enterrtaining as Keith Morris (Black Flag/Circle Jerks/OFF!) or Thurston and Kim from Sonic Youth show up on screen to praise Mudhoney it comes across more as expected than exciting, thanks to their appearance in other DVDs chronicling underground music. How cliche has this Behind The Music-style form of storytelling become? So cliche that when Mark Arm discusses his drug addiction on screen he mentions all the cliche ways in which drug addiction is handled in music documentaries.The other problem is that if you’ve read books like Grunge Is Dead and Everybody Loves Our Town or any of the countless articles written about grunge, then you’ll already know pretty much everything about the band that the movie tells you. The movie also misses a few key detours that might have proved interesting - instead of spending so much time rehashing what everyone already knows about Mudhoney why not spend time talking about their many side-projects, or Mark Arm’s stint singing with the reunited MC5, or digging a little deeper into their influences…etc. It’s shortcomings like these that limit I’m Now’s appeal to Mudhoney die-hards.

Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers – L.A.M.F.: Definitive Edition (Jungle Records)

 

L.A.M.F. (an acronym for Like A Mother Fucker) has been a contentious album ever since its release on Track Records in 1977. It should have been a victorious moment for Johnny Thunders and his band of hard-living New York street rats, but a muddy mix blunted its impact and led to a rather cool reception from audiences and critics (although guitarist Walter Lure states in the liner notes that the sub-par sound stemmed from the tape-to-vinyl transfer, and not the mix). How bad was the original mix? Well, it drove drummer Jerry Nolan out of the band, and the album has been remixed several times over the past few decades. That bad. It’s a shame too, because the songs are great. In the ’90s a version of the album called L.A.M.F.: The Lost ’77 Mixes showed up and the sharpness of these mixes confirmed what people who saw the Heartbreakers live already knew – the band were a mighty juggernaut, deeply steeped in rock’n'roll history but playing it with enough amphetamine-aggression and attitude to put them at the forefront of the punk movement (both in the US and the UK). Each song is a classic, with “Born To Lose”, “Chinese Rocks” and “Pirate Love” among the most iconic tracks of the entire punk era.

The new version of L.A.M.F. from Jungle Records is given the subtitle “Definitive Edition” and it’s a robust package, with a whopping four discs, a 44-page booklet, and four pins. The first disc is the “Lost ’77 Mixes” version of the album (which is the best way to hear it in my opinion). The second disc is original mix of the album, remastered and with the “mud” removed, although it still sounds pretty muddy to me. The third disc collects 13 demos from three different sessions. There are two songs – “Flight” and “Take A Chance” – that didn’t make the final album, as well as four songs from an early-1976 session with Richard hell on bass, making this a nice companion piece to the original album. The final disc is yet another 21 alternate mixes of the same songs. While simply buying the “Lost ’77 Mixes” might be a more economical choice, and the seemingly endless variations on the same 13 songs is overkill, L.A.M.F.: Definitive Edition is a handsomely compiled set and hopefully the final word on a great album.

Tracklisting:

Disc 1:  ‘L.A.M.F. – the lost ’77 mixes’

Born To Lose, Baby Talk, All By Myself, I Wanna Be Loved, It’s Not Enough, Chinese Rocks, Get Off The Phone, Pirate Love, One Track Mind, I Love You, Goin’ Steady, Let Go, Can’t Keep My Eyes On You, Do You Love Me.

Disc 2:  ‘L.A.M.F. – the Track LP restored’ 

Born To Lose, Baby Talk, All By Myself, I Wanna Be Loved, It’s Not Enough, Chinese Rocks, Get Off The Phone, Pirate Love, One Track Mind, I Love You, Goin’ Steady, Let Go.

Disc 3:  ‘L.A.M.F. – the demo sessions’ 

I Wanna Be Loved (mix 2), Pirate Love, Goin’ Steady, Flight, Born To Lose, Can’t Keep My Eyes On You, It’s Not Enough, I Love You, Take A Chance, Do You Love Me, Let Go, Chinese Rocks, Born To Lose.

Disc 4:  ‘L.A.M.F. – the alternative mixes’ 

Born To Lose, Born To Lose, Baby Talk, Baby Talk, All By Myself, All By Myself, It’s Not Enough, It’s Not Enough, Chinese Rocks, Get Off The Phone, Pirate Love, Pirate Love, One Track Mind, One Track Mind, I Love You, Goin’ Steady, Goin’ Steady, Let Go, Let Go, Can’t Keep My Eyes On You, Do You Love Me.

Françoise Hardy – Françoise Hardy (el/Cherry Red Records)

On paper Françoise Hardy’s music shouldn’t work nearly as well as it does. After all, when was the last time an attractive female teenager made lighthearted pop music that was not only worth a listen, but that stood the test of time decades later? Hardy was just 18 when she burst onto the international scene in 1962 with her self-titled debut and it’s a surprisingly assured first foray into the world of music. Hardy wisely stayed away from making cheap and disposable music aimed at the youth market, and instead sung her songs in a voice that was soft, low and full of intimacy. The music that her backing group (unfortunately credited just as Roger Samyn and his orchestra) made was the perfect fit for her voice. It’s simple pop, with splashes of jazz, light country and other delights from the pre-Beatles era. Non-French speakers (myself included) will have no idea what she’s saying, since all the songs are in French, but that doesn’t make great songs like “Oh Oh Cheri”, “Le Temps De L’Amour” and “Je Suis D’Accord” any harder to love.

This new 2013 reissue also includes her ten-song 1963 Italian-language album Françoise Hardy Canta Per Voi In Italiano (or Françoise Hardy Sings For You In Italian), which is a step less interesting than the debut (which it shares a few tracks with), due to its flatter mono sound and intrusive production touches like a vocal choir and bad saxophone solos that ruin re-recordings of “Oh, Oh Cheri” and “Je Suis D’Accord”, respectively.

Tracklisting:

1. TOUS LES GARÇONS ET LES FILLES (ALL THE BOYS AND GIRLS)
2. ÇA A RATÉ
3. LA FILLE AVEC TOI
4. OH OH CHÉRI
5. LE TEMPS DE L’AMOUR
6. IL EST TOUT POUR MOI
7. ON SE PLAÎT
8. TON MEILLEUR AMI
9. J’AI JETÉ MON CŒUR
10. IL EST PARTI UN JOUR
11. J’SUIS D’ACCORD
12. C’EST A L’AMOUR AUQUEL JE PENSE FRANÇOISE HARDY CANTA PER VOI IN ITALIANO
13. L’ETA DELL’AMORE (LE TEMPS DE L’AMOUR)
14. IL TUO MIGLIORE AMICO (TON MEILLEUR AMI)
15. E ALL’AMORE CHE PENSO (C’EST A L’AMOUR AUQUEL JE PENSE)
16. UNA RAGAZZA COME LE ALTRE (COMME TANT D’AUTRES)
17. QUELLI DELLA MIA ETA (TOUS LES GARÇONS ET LES FILLES)
18. L’AMORE VA (L’AMOUR S’EN VA)
19. CI STO (J’SUIS D’ACCORD)
20. PER TANTO TEMPO (BIEN LONGTEMPS)
21. OH OH CHERI
22. IO VORREI (CAPIRTI) (SAURI-JE)

The Scientists – Swampland: Birth Of The Scientists (Cherry Red Records)

Birth Of The Scientists is a mighty strange name for this compilation, since it begins with the “This Is My Happy Hour”/”Swampland” single from 1982, four years into The Scientists’ career of recording and touring. If you’re expecting the earlier, more Dolls-inspired Scientists of songs like “Last Night”, “Frantic Romantic” or “Pissed On Another Planet” you won’t find them here. Misnamed it may be, but it’s still worth checking out for fans of psychotic garage-punk. The influence of The Stooges is pervasive throughout, but never more so than on “The Spin” which is pretty much a rewrite of “Fun House” (right down to the almost identical ending), with head Scientist Kim Salmon’s deranged musings layered on top. Even if they were heavily indebted to the Stooges at this point in their career – and that’s never a bad thing – The Scientists added their own sense of adventure and poetry to the music, which often garners them comparisons to contemporaries like The Gun Club and The Birthday Party, both of which are pretty valid. Listen closely and you can even hear a bit of the ol’ Cramps-y voodoo sprinkled into tracks like “Blood Red River” (which features more bass fuzz than should be legally allowed) and “Solid Gold Hell”. Were The Scientists as good as the bands they were compared with? Nah. Their songs weren’t as memorable. However, they weren’t far off either, and if you like those bands then there’s no reason why you won’t enjoy Birth Of The Scientists as well. There are thirteen studio tracks found here, all of which are strong, and eight live tracks which prove that the band sounded equally as demented and powerful on stage as they did in the studio, although these recordings were made on lo-fi cassette tapes so it isn’t likely that you’ll want to revisit them often. Alex Ogg’s liner notes are the perfect icing on the cake, giving a detailed history of the band from 1976 until their mid-2000s reformation.

Tracklisting:

1. SWAMPLAND2. THIS IS MY HAPPY HOUR 3. WHEN FATE DEALS ITS MORTAL BLOW 4. SET IT ON FIRE 5. REVHEAD 6. BURNOUT 7. THE SPIN 8. BLOOD RED RIVER 9. NITRO 10. SOLID GOLD HELL 11. MURDERESS IN A PURPLE DRESS

12. BACKWARDS MAN13. FIRE ESCAPE 14. PERPETUAL MOTION (LIVE) 15. TIGER TIGER (LIVE) 16. WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (LIVE) 17. SWAMPLAND (LIVE) 18. STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT (LIVE) 19. WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (LIVE) 20. THE SPIN (LIVE) 21. REVHEAD (LIVE)