Classic Album Review: Guy Chadwick - Lazy, Soft & Slow (1998)

Craig Stephen looks at House of Love frontman Guy Chadwick’s all too easily overlooked solo debut …   

“Is it today I’m going crazy, come and help me lose my mind, who knows what we might find, maybe ourselves.”

So begins Lazy Soft and Slow, and with it the start of Guy Chadwick’s solo career, a project that promised so much but petered out rather abruptly and would ultimately be a one-album adventure.

The story up to this point is this: the House of Love fizzled out following the underwhelming Audience With the Mind in 1993, and Guy attempted new projects in The Madonnas and then Eye Dream, neither of which managed to take off. However, The Madonnas’ gigs had featured a number of new songs, which would later find a new lease of life on the solo album, notably ‘Crystal Love Song’ and ‘One of These Days’.

The logical next move for Chadwick was to establish himself as a solo artist. Could he become a Julian Cope who’s post Teardrop Explodes career was startlingly successful for a decade-and-a-half, or would the project go the way of Ian McCulloch’s?

Just getting to this stage had taken a considerable effort with Keith Cullen of Setanta Records instrumental in prompting the evidently reticent frontman to record an album.

So, over four years after the band split, Chadwick was ready and motivated to do his own thing. Country music and Leonard Cohen were on the speakers in the house at the time and inevitably rubbed off during the writing and recording sessions.

Suitably, an acoustic guitar was used for the demo sessions. The intention was to go back to a more mellow, softer sound - as the title testifies. 

Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins was roped in as Chadwick’s producer and mixer, with Giles Hall the engineer. Guthrie was the perfect choice: Chadwick didn’t want to make a House of Love record, while Guthrie didn’t want to make a Cocteau Twins record. Two birds, one stone, as it were. Guthrie would also play bass on the new album.

The first fruits of Lazy, Soft & Slow was the single ‘This Strength’, released in November 1997, backed by ‘Wasted In Song’ and ‘Faraway’. The latter B-side also featured on the album, re-recorded and slightly shorter.

A few months passed, bypassing the traditional compilation and big star albums for Christmas and the January fallow period. Then, in February 1998, Lazy Soft & Slow was piled onto record store shelves. Since this was a period when CD was king, there was no LP version. Sadly, that remains the case.

It is not an album that jumps out of the speakers on first listen, or even the second. It’s for those moments when you don’t want robust vocals, or amped-up guitars. It requires the kind of mood as you would be in for a Nick Drake album. ‘Close Your Eyes’ and ‘One of These Days’ fit very much into the aura of the album; languid and beautifully written songs with final track ‘Close Your Eyes’ taking the listener into a hypnotic state.

There are, however, some more athletic tracks, notably ‘You’ve Really Got a Hold of Me’, which celebrates a strong relationship as Chadwick paints a picture of that special someone. “I’m a passenger on a ship of dreams, on a course of love, I think I’m going down.”

There’s a surprise version of Iggy Pop’s ‘Fall In Love With Me’ which first appeared on 1977’s Lust For Life. The original is upbeat, captures the essence of 1970s decadent west Berlin, and has the magical Bowie touch – he co-wrote it after all. Chadwick strips it back by a more than two minutes (gasp!), and turns it into a campfire and toasted marshmallows type of song.

With such ravishing words throughout Lazy, Soft & Slow, Chadwick was reminding the world that he was one of the most talented writers of the era. Of any era, in fact. The entire album displays his knack for lyricism, and despite perhaps not having the dry humour of Morrissey, Chadwick matches the moody, and sadly now conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Mancunian, for captivating vernacularism.

If I’m honest, Lazy, Soft & Slow is an album I have jumped into less regularly than the House of Love albums. Partly due to it needing a certain state of mind, but also because vinyl is now played more commonly to my cat and child.

This is something that needs to be rectified. Many CD-only releases of the 1990s and noughties have been given the vinyl treatment. So should LSS.

Yes, it’s an odd one and it may not be to everyone’s taste, but with it being out of print since 1998, surely someone in the world of music can give it another airing, complete with outtakes, B-sides and what-have-yous. It deserves nothing less.     

Guest Post ... Party Fears Ten: How Scottish post-punk saved the world (sort of)

Following our hugely popular (no need for the BS – Ed) list of Aussie bands that weren’t shit, the bard of Montrose, Craig Stephen - the contributor formerly known as Porky - removes his porcine disguise to uncover 10 of the finest Scottish post-punk bands …

But, what, no Altered Images? Gasp.

The Scars

This Edinburgh band was formed in early 1977 by brothers Paul and John Mackie. A window ad in a record store roped in idiosyncratic vocalist Robert King and drummer Calumn Mackay and away they went. Long after their first gig at Balerno Scout Hall, the four-piece signed for fabled local label, Fast Product, which was notable for issuing early releases by The Human League, Gang of Four, The Mekons and Joy Division. Their debut album, Author! Author!, arrived in 1981 and earned five stars in Sounds and a rave review from the NME’s Paul Morley. I can’t disagree with either of those writers: it wasn’t always an easy listen but it was a magnificent piece of work; a kind of post-punk goth menagerie. Ahead of their time some say, and despite leaving a back catalogue of excellent singles and the album, The Scars were gone by 1982. 

Josef K

They lasted two years (if that), released one album during their existence, and scrapped another - a decision that is almost universally regarded as one of the biggest mistakes in pop history - but Josef K are one of the most feted and cultist bands to emerge from the post-punk era. Franz Ferdinand, for instance, love ‘em. Josef K were formed in 1979 and after one single on the obscure Absolute label signed to Alan Horne’s Postcard Records. Two singles were released on the legendary label and in late 1980 they were preparing to issue their debut album, Sorry For Laughing, when it was suddenly shelved, apparently because it was “too polished”. It wasn’t till July 1981 that a Josef K album came out. The Only Fun in Town featured reworked versions of five of the songs on the Sorry for Laughing album. A month later they broke up. You can get both albums on a combined release and make up your own mind which should have been issued first.

The dizzyingly esoteric Associates

The Associates

Anyone who had had the pleasure of visiting this writer’s previous enterprise, Porky Prime Cuts, will be familiar with my love of The Associates, who were responsible for the most lavish and extraordinary album of the entire 1980s, Sulk. It was a hugely ambitious effort, in terms of sound, attitude, and lyrics, with Billy MacKenzie’s spellbinding octave-scaling voice to the fore. It even spawned some hits – Party Fears Two, Club Country, and Love Hangover, leading to some fantastically over-the-top TV appearances. Other contemporary former indie-experimental bands like the Human League and Scritti Politti achieved success but they did so by embracing a commercial sound and swanky clothing/dashing hair-dos. In contrast, The Associates told the world through their third studio album: this is us, take it or leave it. Sulk was both opulent and strange. MacKenzie's lyrics were dizzyingly esoteric, with Skipping’s infamous couplet "ripping ropes from the Belgian wharfs / breathless beauxillious griffin once removed seemed dwarfed", baffling everyone. Their year of magnificent triumph was also their last as MacKenzie and Alan Rankine parted ways before Christmas. MacKenzie revived The Associates two years later, but other than the operatic pop opus of Waiting For the Love Boat it was never quite the same.

Simple Minds

Clearly we’re not talking of the Don’t You Forget About Me-era Minds, or frankly any version of the band after 1983. In the cavalcade of mediocrity that Jim Kerr et al have subjected the world to over the past three decades, it’s easy to forget how sublime the Glaswegians were in a frighteningly glorious spell from 1979 to 1983, with seven albums running the gamut from euro electronic to proto-stadium rock. Empires and Dance (1980) is long forgotten but is memorable for the futuristic single I, Travel. A couple of albums released on the same day in 1981, and effectively siblings, developed the prog rock meets new romantic sound. The zenith was New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), released in the second of those years. Margaret Thatcher was in power and there was war, mass unemployment, and inner city decay, but there was a feeling that music shouldn’t be dragged down by it all. Kerr’s vocals are masterly, bridging the great divide between the new romantic era and crooners. Three singles from New Gold Dream became unlikely hits, including Promised You A Miracle, but it was the lumbering, neo-experimental tracks like King Is White and In the Crowd and the title track that shone brightest. By 1983, the Minds were moving in new directions and while that would end in U2-esque stadia glitz, there was life in the old dog yet, and Sparkle in the Rain straddled the synth pop Minds with a beefier sound.

The Cocteau Twins

They weren’t twins nor they were from one of the main centres. They hailed from the unlikely oil refinery town of Grangemouth. Initially, they were dismissed as dour, sun-hating goths, which wasn’t entirely dispelled by their opening records. They cast out a spiky, dissociative sound with Liz Fraser’s ethereal, high-pitched vocals and nonsensical lyrics. A committed fanbase propelled them into the UK top 30 in 1984 with Pearly Dewdrops’ Drops, and there was plenty of critical acclaim (one tale is that Prince ordered their entire back catalogue), but they remained very much an acquired taste until 1990’s Heaven Or Las Vegas opened them up to a new audience. There is now a massive reissue project taking place so there’s no excuse for not seeking them out.

An early Orange Juice line-up

Orange Juice

A Glasgow mob that had a monster hit in 1983 in the shape of Rip It Up, which broke free from the synth coterie of New Romanticism to smash into the UK’s top 10. Orange Juice were founded in the ever-so-pleasant suburb of Bearsden, originally as Nu-Sonics by Edwyn Collins, Alan Duncan, James Kirk and Steven Daly, with a name that immediately eschewed the macho posturing and pseudo rebellion of punk. They released a handful of promising singles, including Blue Boy and Simply Thrilled Honey, during 1980 and 1981 on Postcard. Polydor Records snapped them up and released the You Can't Hide Your Love Forever album in 1982, but Kirk and Daly left that same year. There would be a few more line-up changes before they split in 1984. Edwyn Collins went solo and would record a Northern Soul tinged epic A Girl Like You that was so huge it could only be avoided in the UK during the summer of 1995 by hiding in a cupboard.

The Skids

The finest thing to come out of Dunfermline since steel tycoon and public libraries proponent Andrew Carnegie. The Skids were formed around the nucleus of Richard Jobson and Stuart Adamson, who would go to form Big Country, a band that, for very good reasons, were never going to get onto this list even if it was expanded to 97. They had several top 20 hits - Into The Valley and Working For The Yankee Dollar, as well as Masquerade, and there was the excellent album, The Absolute Game, released in 1980. And there was The Saints Are Coming, which was so good it had to have the tag team of U2 AND Green Day to cover it. They had songs about the conflict in Ireland and signing up to the British army because Fife’s traditional industries had been decimated. And there was also a song about Coronation Street’s uber curmudgeon Albert Tatlock.

That Desperadoes compilation you've probably never heard of ..

Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes

A little twee, perhaps, but no list should ever be fundamentally entrenched in their ideals, and therefore this Edinburgh act, formed in the mid-80s sneak their way in on account of their slightly subversive singles and for being, well, damn fucking good.  Their sound was typical of the mid-80s, with scratchy guitars, melody, and a male-female vocal dynamic. A string of singles and EPs, such as Splashing Along and The Adam Faith Experience, saw the light of day, but no studio album emerged – although there was certainly enough material for one. That would be rectified in 1989 through the compilation, A Cabinet of Curiosities, which reunited their early singles and EPs to splendid effect. It was not all love and lust and breaking up: a later single, Grand Hotel referenced the IRA’s bombing of the Brighton building that nearly killed Mrs Thatcher. And there was no Jesse Garon in the band: the name was appropriated from Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley. Ain’t that just sick? But brilliant.

The Fire Engines

Ingrained in that same Caledonian post-punk movement of Postcard Records, The Skids, and a smattering of short-lived but no less brilliant acts, the Fire Engines, irrespective of their seemingly squeaky clean name, were more abrasive and discordant than their peers. The Engines (named, in fact, after a 13th Floor Elevators’ track), packaged their debut album, the manic Lubricate Your Living Room (Background Music for Action People!) in a plastic carrier bag. A subsequent non-album single, Candyskin, was an about-face that accentuated Davy Henderson's nasal vocals and introduced a string section. They had ideas aplenty, but despite another illuminating 7-inch, Big Gold Dream, disbanded in late 1981. Henderson and Russell Burn would seek chart success and world domination (neither succeeded) in Win which this blog has explored in the very recent past.

Cartoon punks, The Rezillos

 

The Rezillos

Their cartoon punk sound earned them a tour with The Ramones and a deal with Sire, but after only two years and one album, they were gone-burger. That was some album and they even featured on Top of the Pops, with the cheekily named single Top of the Pops. Guitarist and songwriter Jo Callis helped the Human League achieve mega-success, while co-singers Eugene Reynolds and Fay Fife formed the Revillos, a sort of continuation of the Rezillos, but with a bigger 60s pop sound. The Rezillos have recently reformed and unlike many of their contemporaries, aren’t being laughed at. The Rezillos are alluded to twice in The Bridge by the well-known Scots author Iain Banks. So there you go.

The Jesus and Mary Chain

Who’d have thought a new town could spawn such a magnificent monster. The Jesus and Mary Chain were formed in East Kilbride, a Glasgow overspill. Their coruscating debut single, Upside Down, scared children and grannies alike. They played notorious gigs at which pissing off the audience wasn’t an issue, and unleashed Psychocandy, one of the most anti-pop but brilliant albums of the 80s. Brothers Jim and William Reid and two mates made a record that was one part bubblegum pop and three parts lacerating guitar feedback. It sounded like Abba covering The Birthday Party while locked in a mineshaft. They never did quite match those feats thereafter, but a sensible move towards the mainstream resulted in a good few pop albums, like the follow-up, Darklands. They’re still going and are still very potent.

And with that final inclusion, Craig offers up not 10, but a distinctly OCD-defying 11 great Scottish post-punk bands. Let’s be honest, he’s done well to stop there. Thanks Craig.