Album Review: New Order - Education Entertainment Recreation (Live 2018, 2021)

I’m probably going to come across like a grumpy old malcontent here. Par for the course, perhaps.

First things first – I love New Order. I’ve got almost everything they’ve ever released in one format or another, I’ve seen them perform live, at their peak, and on any purely non-scientific gut-feel basis, they’re probably the band I’ve listened to more than any other across the past 35 years. Hell, I even named my blog after one of their early minor “hits”, albeit an early minor hit that might just about be the greatest single track ever committed to vinyl. And the band’s debut album, Movement, is unquestionably my number one album of all-time.

And so, all of that said, when Ian Curtis died, and Joy Division morphed into New Order across the second half of 1980 and into early 1981, I really wish the band had taken some time to find a new vocalist who was a naturally “gifted” singer. I completely understand why that didn’t happen, obviously, and I also understand that the passage of time and an ongoing familiarity means that Bernard Sumner’s vocal is now intrinsically and irreversibly linked with the band’s sound and all of its most memorable landmark tunes. My issue is that he’s just not a particularly good singer. That is all too painfully obvious on the band’s latest live release, Education Entertainment Recreation.

(It’s probably no surprise then, that Movement, the album where Peter Hook takes care of a chunk of the vocal duties, is the one right at the top of my own pile. Despite Hooky having vocal limitations of his own, his voice gels masterfully with Movement’s more downbeat feels.)

Try as I might, as much as I don’t want it to be the case, Sumner’s vocal frailty is the biggest takeaway I have after listening to Education Entertainment Recreation. A frailty which is far less obvious - although still evident - on much of New Order’s studio-produced output.

Right. Now for the positives, because wherever you find New Order, you’ll always find a positive: Education Entertainment Recreation was recorded at London’s Alexandra Palace (the “Ally Pally”) back in November 2018 and it contains one of the most comprehensive career-spanning setlists found on any of the band’s live releases. And the music itself - beyond those vocal shortcomings - is absolutely stunning in every respect.

All of the big guns are fired – ‘Regret’, ‘Crystal’, ‘Sub-Culture’, ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’, ‘Plastic’, ‘The Perfect Kiss’, ‘True Faith’, ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Temptation’, et al. Amongst many others – there’s 21 tracks in total, a double album (2x CD/3x vinyl), including a few gems from the Joy Division cannon, notably ‘Disorder’, and the three closing tracks ‘Atmosphere’, ‘Decades’, and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. Sadly, nothing whatsoever from Movement.

There’s a bit of Sumner stage banter as he interacts with what sounds like a massive crowd, and there’s the occasional crowd singalong also in evidence at various points. There is a certain rawness to the whole deal, a sense that the band remain a tremendous live proposition, with an off-the-cuff, unscripted spontaneity, even. It is everything a decent live album should be.

Except for that one small but still very important (aforementioned) detail.

Then again, it is perhaps a little churlish to ever expect a perfect live album.

I did warn you.

The Strummer Files: Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Live at Acton Town Hall (2002/2012) & Assembly (2021)

Craig Stephen digs deep to come up with yet another addition to The Strummer Files, the blog’s extensive overview of Joe Strummer’s post-Clash musical legacy …

Live At Acton Town Hall (2012) would turn out to be the last-ever gig for Joe Strummer and his band. And suitably it was recorded for posterity.

Strummer and the Mescaleros played the inconspicuous Acton Town Hall in west London on 15 November 2002. But, on 22 December, Strummer was cruelly taken from this world following a massive heart attack at his Somerset home, aged just 50.

This release captures that gig beautifully and it was one that is significant in ways beyond the fact it was the former Clash frontman’s final ever gig.

Firstly, in fitting with Strummer’s solidarity with the working man, even when Clash riches took him into a different financial sphere from those he was defending, it was a benefit for firefighters who were striking for an improvement on their dismal wages (firefighters save lives FFS). The Fire Brigades Union-led industrial action was the first nationwide strike in the UK since the 1970s and didn’t officially end until June 2003 with a pay rise that was below the FBU’s demands, which would have seen firefighters paid fairly for their heroics.

On the stage too, there was a momentous moment when Strummer was joined by former Clash man Mick Jones for the encore, the first time the pair had performed live together since the last classic line-up Clash gig in 1983.

Thankfully, someone at the mixing desk had the foresight to press the record button, and initially the set was released in a limited vinyl run in 2012, and five years later it was released again on vinyl, for Record Store Day. Those responsible didn’t bother with any artwork, sticking a flyer into the transparent plastic sleeve. Regardless, what a treasure this is.

Strummer splits the material roughly half and half between Mescaleros tracks (much underrated) and Clash classics.

This allows recent Mescaleros material such as ‘Shaktar Donetsk’, ‘Tony Adams’, ‘Cool ‘N’ Out’, ‘Bhindee Bhagee’ (about a New Zealander who’s just got off the plane in west London and wants to know where he can buy mushy peas) and ‘Mega Bottle Ride’ to be performed. ‘Johnny Appleseed’ is an absolute standout and there are even a couple of works in progress played for one of the first times – ‘Get Down Moses’ and ‘Coma Girl’, both of which would appear on the posthumous Streetcore.

I got on the Mescaleros bandwagon quite early when I received and reviewed the debut album Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (1999) for a Scottish newspaper. I never felt in any way disappointed in any of the trio of Mescaleros albums. They weren’t meant to sound like The Clash. They traversed the globe for sounds and ideas; the band were worldly-wise and clearly enjoyed themselves making these records.

But in reality it is The Clash tracks that people mainly want to hear and there’s plenty of those, foremost those with a reggae tinge, such as ‘Rudie Can’t Fail’, ‘Police and Thieves’ and ‘(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais’. The band rachet up a gear for ‘Police On My Back’ (which appeared on Sandinista!) and ‘I Fought the Law’.

Then Jones appears for the encore to join in on ‘Bankrobber’, ‘White Riot’ and of course (given it’s in aid of firefighters) ‘London’s Burning’. I imagine the place was buzzing by the end, you can sense that on the record.

Thoughts thereafter naturally turned to a Clash reunion and rumours are that it was being considered with Strummer seemingly contacting Paul Simonon just before he died about reforming. Simonon, apparently, was dead against it.

Assembly (2021)

Coming three years after Joe Strummer 001, a double album of Strummer solo tracks from studio albums and obscure sources, Assembly is a compilation of, well, much of the same. The focus though is more on the three solo albums with tracks such as the Wailers’ ‘Redemption Song’, ‘Yalla Yalla’ and ‘At the Border, Guy’. Most fans will have these albums anyway.

What it does offer pre-Mescaleros is ‘Love Kills’ from the Sid and Nancy soundtrack and ‘Sleepwalk’ from 1989’s somewhat underwhelming Earthquake Weather. It would’ve been better to have included ‘Gangsterville’ from the same album or one of the tracks from the Walker soundtrack which was entirely-Strummer contributed.

There are unreleased gems in live versions of ‘I Fought the Law’ and ‘Rudie Can’t Fail’ performed at Brixton Academy the year before the Acton Town Hall gig, and a home recording of ‘Junco Partner’.

It’s a sturdy compilation of the critical tracks in the Mescaleros cannon, which was shorter than it should have been. But that’s life.

What we really need now is a compilation of Strummer’s post-Clash tracks that includes film material and stuff on low-selling and now hard-to-find singles.

Classic Album Review: Wings - Wingspan (2001)

I’m breaking some rules by listing yet another compilation as a classic album, but you know – my blog, my rules, no rules, guilty pleasures, etc. 

Sir Paul McCartney has worn many hats over the years. Beatle, Wings commander-in-chief, and prolific solo artist, just for starters. For many he was the outstanding “composer” of the 20th century, and alongside John Lennon, Macca was one half of the most commercially successful songwriting duo of the Rock n Roll era. 

Even today, in 2021, he continues to attract all manner of critical praise for his work on the late 2020 album, McCartney III. I haven’t visited that release as yet, and to be perfectly honest I probably won’t. But I do want to share some love for McCartney and offer some thoughts on one of the very best compilation sets in my entire music collection.

Just as the album title suggests, Wingspan offers a comprehensive overview of McCartney’s post-Beatles career from 1970 through to the turn of the millennium, featuring 40-odd* tracks spread over two discs. So much so, it actually goes a little beyond the music of Wings and includes material from a few of McCartney’s solo efforts. 

(*As I understand it, there’s a slight difference between the UK and US versions of the album, and apparently the Japanese edition features a bonus track). 

I’ve always had something of a massive soft spot for the music of Wings. The band was one of the staples of my childhood - always there or thereabouts in the charts, and always on the radio. 

So I was pleased when Wingspan was released in 2001. Offering a 2-album set that included a number of unheralded gems and album cuts beyond the obvious hits. Which was a lovely bonus at a time when I had no other McCartney compilations in my collection and had long considered buying the far less expansive Wings Greatest (1978) just to tick that box. 

The two discs are quite distinct: one contains the band’s biggest hits, the other contains the less obvious stuff and wider coverage of McCartney’s solo work. 

I can’t really add anything about Paul McCartney’s music that hasn’t already been said, but I would dispute the notion - one I’ve seen punted often - that the Wings period of his career was something of a low ebb for McCartney. Yes, there were some patchy or uneven albums, but the same is true of late-career Beatles work, and certainly true when it comes to assessing the “solo” output of the rest of the fab four. 

I just think the music of Wings deserves a lot more love.

Just a few of Wingspan’s highlights: ‘Listen To What The Man Said’, ‘Band On The Run’, ‘Another Day’, ‘My Love’, ‘Silly Love Songs’, ‘Goodnight Tonight’, ‘Mull Of Kintyre’, ‘With A Little Luck’, ‘The Lovely Linda’, ‘Maybe I'm Amazed’, ‘Every Night’, ‘Junk’, and ‘Take It Away’ …

Album Review: Celt Islam - Acidanarchist (2021)

Sometimes when you follow an artist’s work closely for a decade or so, there is often a tendency to notice a subtle - or not so subtle - softening of that artist’s original sound. It might be due to compromises made on account of some sort of commercial breakthrough (often termed “selling out”), adapting to more recent musical trends, a change of environment, or simply a natural mellowing that comes with the irreversible passage of time. 

On Celt Islam’s latest release, Acidanarchist, the opposite applies. If anything, the UK-based electro dub maestro keeps ramping things up a notch (or seven) on each and every release – and there’s been a few releases. Celt Islam’s vibe just seems to get heavier and more hardcore each time out.

The Baghdad release (here) of some ten years ago was the album that first drew me into Celt Islam’s artistic vision. It was the perfect fusion of east meets west, an album which connected so many diverse global musical strands, and it appealed as a borderless, meditative blueprint for a better world. A couple of years later, as the Analogue Fakir, he released an IDM-geared album called Worlds We Know (here), which I absolutely loved, but with the benefit of hindsight, I can now view these early works through a slightly different lens … he was just getting started, still at the simmering stage, and slowly but steadily, over the course of the past decade, as world events descend into an almost farcical state, a cesspit of fakery, false information, and twisted narratives, Celt Islam has reached boiling point. Which is where we find him on Acidanarchist. 

As a Sufi Muslim based in Northern England, as a political activist and social justice campaigner, it is impossible for Celt Islam to separate his art from the environment or political climate in which it is made. That goes without saying. When forwarding the pre-release copy he noted … “this is a manifestation of our times, and where dance music needs to be, instead of the same carbon copy of everything boring, no depth, no meaning, void of any form of spirituality or real consciousness” … 

Or, anger is an energy, as someone else once claimed. Etc. And so we get drenched in a relentless high-bpm form of electronic punk (minimal vocal, often buried deeper in the mix), with track titles like ‘Vendetta’, ‘System Reset’, and ‘Resurgence’, progressively building in tempo to a reach a distinct DnB-style climax on closing tracks ‘Dominator’, and the majestic ‘Hikam’. 

And yet, for all of that forward pulsating electro momentum, my own favourite cut (of 13) is perhaps the most mellow of all, without being mellow at all … the Mark Iration collab, ‘Born As An African’ (“sufferer”), which for some reason taps into my love of On-U Sound/dub, and its bouncy swaggering skank would be absolutely begging for an Adrian Sherwood makeover if it wasn’t already near perfect in its current form. 

Other collaborators on Acidanarchist include Shahin Badar, who, amongst other things, is well known for her vocal work with The Prodigy (‘Smack’), Aki Nawaz (Fun-Da-Mental), and of course, regular and longtime Celt Islam collaborator Inder Goldfinger (percussionist extraordinaire, producer, TransGlobal Underground, far too many others to list). 

Acidanarchist will be released on 24 May, and can be found on the Earth City Recordz Bandcamp page (here).