Classic Album Review: Half Man Half Biscuit - Back Again in the DHSS (1987)

Craig Stephen’s route to Biscuits fandom wasn’t through the seminal debut album, Back in The DHSS (which Craig reviews here), but through its bastard sequel which was released after the band had split up due to “musical similarities” …

Back Again in the DHSS is a compilation of sorts … in the sense that it contains mostly new songs and some previously released singles tracks.

The unreleased tracks are all taken from three sessions for the John Peel Radio One show recorded and aired between November 1985 and September 1986. Peel was a huge fan and gave the band an audience that could never be attained through droll mainstream daytime radio. It was crucial that these tracks were given a release as every one of them is a gem.

Take ‘Rod Hull is Alive … Why?’ for example. A death has occurred (of a “doyen of topiary”) and the grieving relative/friend/acquaintance asks why someone else couldn’t have died instead … such as Rod Hull, the man famous in the 1970s and 80s for a double act involving a toy emu. It would require a long and tedious explanation of the strange workings of the British comedy system to elucidate why he/they were so popular.

Singer Nigel Blackwell manages to also incorporate Jacques Laffite, The Wrekin, Helen Keller and the birch in one song. Again, and as ever with the Biscuits, Google is your friend here.

From that same Peel Session recorded in the British autumn of 1986 came ‘I Was A Teenage Armchair Honved Fan’, to which my naïve friend asked at the time what was a teenage armchair honved, as if it was some sort of new appliance or sexual position only tried by S&M “enthusiasts”. The answer was rather mundane, as Honved were a Hungarian football team.

Eastern European football was also acknowledged on ‘All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit’. This is a particular favourite for its references to Scalextric and the issues setting it up: “But it always took about 15 billion hours to set the track up/ And even when you did/ The thing never seemed to work”, and table-top football game Subbuteo.

Surely, this is greatest song about sport toys ever. Another reference to European football of the 1970s is a magnificent merger of the longest song title ever, and the most ridiculous club name: “Supercalifragilisticborussiamönchengladbach”.

The Biscuits were never a singles band per se, but ‘Dickie Davies Eyes’, released in 1986 and almost a chart hit, of all things, was an exception, and is included as are its two B-sides – ‘The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman’ and … ‘Dukla Prague’.

The A-side is a play on Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’, and is a familiar trick of the band – ‘Reasons to be Miserable (part 10)’ is a tweak on Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 3)’, while ‘Arthur’s Farm’ is a play on George Orwell’s Animal Farm novel.

As well as referencing football - strictly a no-no at the time - ‘I Was A Teenage Armchair Honved Fan’ excels primarily for the segue into a section ruminating on where the song should go: “Is this the bit where we're supposed to make guitars collide, and / Is this the bit where we release all that raw energy, and / Is this the bit where we go crashing through those barriers / Like what they do in music mags?!”

Elsewhere we have references to Siamese cats, a kitchen appliance manufacturer, spa towns, a disbanded English football trophy, double glazing adverts, Turkish Delight, Roger Dean posters, Arthur Askey and dozens more.

Back Again in the DHSS, like all HMHB albums, mimics those institutions almost sacred to the English: B-list television stars and their gimmicky shows, small-town life, sport outside the top leagues, life in cul-de-sacs, and working-class eccentricities.

And to think that these songs were hidden away on Peel Sessions, played late at night, with only insomniacs and students listening in. Releasing it in 1987 as I reached out to the Jesus and Mary Chain and Echo & The Bunnymen was perfect timing.

Most of this album was released two years later with a host of live tracks as ACD.

Gig Review: Dennis Bovell @ Meow, Wellington, 21 October 2023

I had no idea what to expect when I rocked up to Meow on Saturday night for the Dennis Bovell gig. Would it be a simple DJ set, or a performance set from the prolific UK dub producer? I was not fussed either way, and as it happened, it turned out to be a little bit of both.

The truth is, as an MBE-toting 70-year-old master of his craft, Bovell can do whatever the hell he wants. He has nothing left to prove. The man’s a legend within dub and reggae circles, and the vast majority of us present - the venue was around seventy percent full - were there simply to share the same rarified air as Dennis Bovell. To be in the same room. And to bask in the privilege of it.

So we got Bovell the selecta, Bovell the toaster, Bovell the performer, and morsels of Bovell the man, especially on those almost stream-of-consciousness moments when - often mid-track - he decided to share a short anecdote or memory with us. Which was more than occasional, and this gig was easily one of the more artist-chat-friendly interactive sets I’ve attended.

Musically it was mostly about Bovell playing selected tracks he’s been associated with across his long and fruitful career. Whether that involvement was as a vocalist, as a guitarist/musician, or more commonly, as a producer. He’d play those tracks, toast over the top, freestyling along, spontaneously singing the intro to one tune, or joining in on another song mid-chorus or part way through. It appeared random and unplanned, carefree and unproduced, which very much added to its charm.

As a selector, Bovell has impeccable taste. A taste honed by years of grassroots involvement with his genre of choice. His set was a hybrid concoction of reggae, rocksteady, ska, soul, and dub.

You know the drill: a selection of big bottom-heavy bass-driven tunes that at times had the venue shaking at its structural core. The best of which, for me, included tunes from Toots, Sly & Robbie, Gregory Isaacs, and Dennis Brown. But there was plenty for everyone.

There was a cool story about how Bovell had beefed up and reggae-fied a Sade track from the artist’s Soldier of Love album, after Sade herself had requested it upon sending Bovell the vocal stems. And there was some high praise for a kindred spirit of sorts, Linton Kwesi-Johnson, when offering up an LKJ gem he’d collaborated on.

We even got the odd Matumbi track, with Matumbi of course being the UK-based 1970s reggae act which gave Bovell his initial exposure.

The dub production and technical side of Bovell’s wider skillset was far less obvious - mostly only identifiable with the odd tempo or pitch change, and there wasn’t much in the way of the extra effects or wizardry Bovell would otherwise have at his fingertip disposal inside a studio.

I was later informed Bovell played for “three hours” or more, but my own lethargy and relative sobriety meant I managed only around two hours of the set, happy enough just to have experienced Bovell up close and personal, even if only briefly.

 

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.     

Boots and Bombs

If you’re a regular everythingsgonegreen reader then the chances are you’ll be reading a lot of Craig Stephen’s words and not so many of my own (as the actual “supposed” blogger). I hope one day to reclaim the blog as my own but in the meantime, Craig’s doing just fine. As I’ve said previously, Craig takes the page places I wouldn’t dare to take it, simply because his knowledge of indie or alternative music is varied and vast, whereas my own is somewhat more limited and mostly retro pop-based. He’s the windswept and interesting one. I’m the lazy boring one.

Anyway, Craig’s just finished writing a book about New Zealand football called Boots and Bombs. It focuses on the New Zealand national team’s visit to war-torn Vietnam in 1967, to play in a football tournament, during the height of the Vietnam war (!), but it also offers a potted history of the code in New Zealand. I did some proofing, fact-checking, and research for the book, and offered Craig encouragement along the way – in addition to our mutual love of music, we also share a passion for the beautiful game. And since the book’s publication a little over a month ago, I’ve also been helping him out with some promotional stuff in a sort of auxiliary publicist capacity.

As part of that, I submitted a review of the book to a website called Friends of Football, a site which can rightly claim to have the widest reach of any website that concerns itself with football in this otherwise god-forsaken rugby union-obsessed land we call Aotearoa. It certainly seems to have the most active local social media presence. Since Craig has been doing almost all of the recent heavy-lifting for everythingsgonegreen, I thought it only fair that I reproduce that book review here:

 Friends of Football Book Review: Boots and Bombs ‘a bloody good yarn’

A newly-published book explores the state of football in rugby-mad New Zealand in the 1960s and 1970s.

Boots and Bombs: How New Zealand football grew up in the 1960s and 70s, by Craig Stephen (2023, ISBN 978-0-473-67266-9).

Reviewed by Michael Hollywood

1967… the year of Sgt Pepper and the original summer of love.

The year of decimalisation and the introduction of our dollar. The year we mercifully stopped dishing out free milk in New Zealand schools.

The year our feted All Blacks became the first team to complete a grand slam-winning tour of Britain since the great invincible side achieved the same feat way back in 1924.

And it was the year, somewhat incredibly, when a group of largely amateur footballers from New Zealand were sent into the heart of war-torn Vietnam to represent their country in a football tournament.

Life was clearly very different in 1967.

You could say it was another world, and it’s a world revisited in some detail in Boots and Bombs, a new book by first-time author Craig Stephen.

A book that has that Vietnam trip at its core, and it’s quite some tale.

The notion of playing international football in war-ravaged Saigon while battles raged all around the South Vietnamese capital is worthy of analysis in itself, but that part is merely an otherwise scarcely-documented centerpiece for the book, or one part of a much bigger story; the story of how New Zealand football finally came of age.

1967 is simply the focal point of that wider story, not just for the drama surrounding the Vietnam excursion, but because it represents the year the national team played its first full international fixtures in five long years.

It was a kick-start, if you will. It was also the year of other tours of interest to these shores — by soon-to-be European champions Manchester United and the visit of a Scottish FA selection.

Plus there’s some coverage of that year’s trip to New Caledonia, which rather curiously coincided with the Saigon tournament, and featured a second national team made up of an entirely different squad.

You wait years for a municipal transport bus, and then two arrive simultaneously.

Highlights include the chapter on the disastrous and questionable 1964 World tour (no full internationals played).

Coverage of the various British clubs who toured here during the period, especially across the 1970s. Coverage and comment around the evolution of club football in New Zealand. Critique and analysis of our three pre-1982 World Cup qualifying campaigns, a forlorn process which commenced in 1969 with New Zealand’s first attempt to qualify for the world game’s global showcase.

And, of course, for an unrepentant anorak like myself, Stephen’s potted history of the code here, across the early chapters, is invaluable.

We tend to view history through rose-tinted glasses, and it can often be difficult for younger generations to really comprehend how different things used to be.

Small things like leading footballers being forced to work in their day jobs on the day of a big game so as not to lose income.

Footballers paying their own way, absorbing their own travel costs, and buying their own kit.

Anecdotes around coaching, and coaches — there’s a tidbit or two around the eccentricities of national coaches like Juan Schwanner and Lou Brozic — that illustrate both the extreme gulf, and at times, the fine line, between amateurism and professionalism.

We already know all about 1982, and about 2010; those stories don’t need to be told again.

And no book can possibly cover the same amount of ground or level of detail that mainstream media and indeed, social media, offer to today’s All Whites.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that Boots and Bombs wraps things up around 1982 or at the very least the early 1980s.

Stephen’s book is all about how we got there, not to Spain specifically, but the journey to credibility itself through the 1960s, through the formation of the sport’s first-ever National League, and right through the 1970s.

It provides a snapshot of history, and as ever, the really good oil is in the grassroots, the local, and the peripheral.

Local football luminaries such as Earle Thomas (who writes the foreword), Brian Turner, Dave Taylor, Owen Nuttridge, John Legg, Ray Mears, Alan Sefton, Paul Rennell, and coaching guru Barrie Truman all contribute extensively to Boots and Bombs.

Along with many others — too many to mention in a single review. Offering reflection and tales from those who were there is priceless, more so given their advancing years and the inevitable decline in access we’ll have to their words of wisdom in the future.

Bombs and Bombs offers both context and perspective around all of those things. It is a compelling resource for history obsessives, every bit as much as being a bloody good yarn.

Stephen employs an easy, almost conversational writing style, and at just short of 250 pages, Boots and Bombs is a very digestible read.

There’s a decent photo section with a few gems relevant to the stories, and the era overall, and this book will appeal not only to local football fans but to football fans of all tribal colour and creed, whatever their poison.

Recommended.

This review was originally published here: Book review: Boots and Bombs 'a bloody good yarn' - Friends of Football (friendsoffootballnz.com)

You can read an excerpt from the book here: Special feature: The teenage All White left to die in a war-zone hospital - Friends of Football (friendsoffootballnz.com)

You can purchase the book here: Boots and Bombs: How New Zealand football grew up in the 1960s and 70s | Trade Me Marketplace

Classic Album Review: Transglobal Underground - Psychic Karaoke (1996)

Craig Stephen revisits a lost classic …

It’s the mid-90s, and the British and international media are all over the phenomenon that has been labelled Britpop. Oasis and Blur have battled for the number one spot, Pulp are unlikely glam stars, and any band with a guitar and a love of The Beatles are being played ad nauseum on mainstream radio.

What chance has a band like Transglobal Underground got?

Playing diverse sounds from South London to South Asia in a variety of languages, they can’t be dubbed “retro opportunists”. That may have been too much of a challenge for the music critics of the time.

In the midst of this Britpop banality, Psychic Karaoke was released and was easily one of the albums of its year. It shouted at the Britpop bands and their media lackeys: “this is the future”.

I picked up the album on sale in Auckland and played it a little in the City of Sails before heading to Fiji. On a relatively remote island group it was on a regular spin cycle as it served as the perfect soundtrack to a country full of culture, friendly people, pristine beaches and palm trees. 

Psychic Karaoke, TGU’s fourth album, released on Nation Records and entirely self-produced, evokes visions of the Middle East and India with electronic rhythms and atmospherics.

It serves up cinematic textures and global grooves, mixing dance-friendly exotica, that utilised tablas, dhols, ouds, and djembe as well as guitar, violin/viola and cello. It features the magnificent voice of Egyptian-Belgian superstar Natacha Atlas and British-Asian singer Nawazish Ali Khan.

Hip-hop, dub, electronica, pop, and art rock are all here - and more.

The seven-minute ‘Chariot’ is the entry point to Psychic Karaoke. It’s a magnificent, meandering track featuring Middle Eastern percussion, a string section and breakbeats. It’s not until the three minute mark that Atlas comes in, working in tandem with an English language pseudo rap. It sounds like there’s far too much going on here, but it works and the instruments add an extra exotic element.

Atlas performs on half of the 12 tracks, a favourable number as she had released her debut solo album Diaspora the year before and her solo projects have significantly diminished her ability to record with TGU, and the various other artists she has collaborated with.

One of the tracks she doesn’t appear on is ‘Scully’ towards the end of the album. Instead, TGU’s Neil Sparkes takes on vocal duties and has a style similar to Barry Adamson, which is uncanny as part of one line is “Something wicked this way comes”, which happens to be the title of a track from Adamson’s Oedipus Schmoedipus album released the year before. It may well be a homage to the Mancunian singer, but they are very different songs.

Transglobal Underground have released many albums since 1996, all exploring different musical elements, cultures and genres. Some have worked and some haven’t but respect is due to a band that works outside the box.

Album Review: The Chats - Get Fucked (2022)

Craig Stephen on fair dinkum lucky country battlers, The Chats …

Three middle fingers directed at the camera on the cover. A title with a naughty word. A back cover with a schoolboy-esque penis picture. And the c-word dropped mid-song. Yes, The Chats tick all the boxes of renegade bovver boys/bogan rebels with badly-strung guitars and home-made haircuts.

Yet, I’ve never quite twigged since I discovered The Chats about four years ago as to whether this Brizzy trio are middle class rogues pretending to be from the tougher end of town to annoy their parents (while making money to invest in metals) or genuine working-class ruffians ruffling a few feathers (while making money to invest in beer n cigs). I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. They’re Australian, after all, a land where not giving a damn is the virtual national ideology. And it’s hard to be a Tarquin or a Hugo and be serious with a pudding bowl haircut or a love of souped-up boy racer motors.

Which brings us to the opening track of second album Get Fucked, named after a car, ‘6L GTR’. It’s brief and fast – pretty much like all Chats songs – and eschews a love of the road. Just a shame about all those cars on the road too.

“Pulled in at Beefy’s/ Got a steak and cheese/ Hoonin' down the Bruce now/ As fast as I please/ Late arvo congestion/ Every day’s the same/ So I pulled left around 'em/ And drove up the bike lane.”

 Ah, that wonderful Chats sense of humour, which seemed lost when they lost a guitarist by the name of Josh but brought in another Josh to replace him. It’s still there and in top gear. There’s the tale of a jobsworth ‘Ticket Inspector’ on that eponymous track, a man (presumably) who lives to catch out the larrikins trying to escape his clutches and catch a ride for gratis. “Short fuse, I'm 'boutta lose it/ Got a bit of power, ain't afraid to abuse it.” And you know he certainly will.

On the debut album High Risk Behaviour (2020) they revelled in being lager louts on such songs as ‘Drunk and Disorderly’, and continue the trend on ‘I’ve Been Drunk in Every Pub In Brisbane’. I imagine in a city of 2.4 million people that that would be a considerable achievement. It sounds like a challenge worth taking up.

“I've been legless at the Breakfast/ After a few they told me to leave/ I've been banned at the Grand Central Hotel/ And I've been pissed like you wouldn't believe/ I love relaxin' at the Caxton/ But they never like the look of me/ I've been off my face at the Stock Exchange/ They gave me a couple beers for free.”

‘The Price of Smokes’ meanwhile turns to the art of the ciggie. There’s pretty much two refrains in the entire song – one, the price of smokes is going up again, and secondly, the conclusion that “Those bastards in parliament ought to be hung by their necks.” Other than a lament to poor workplace safety on ‘Dead On Site’, it’s pretty much the only outreach to modern toils and troubles.

Clocking in at about half an hour it’s not going to challenge the concentration-lagging youth among us, but its 13 songs are sharp, pointed and frantic. You get your money’s worth.

In an age of insipid music in which middle class values are to the fore, it’s refreshing to have my ears blasted about alcohol, grunty cars and fighting. You don’t have to empathise with any of that to appreciate that The Chats play it their way: it’s part punk, part old style rock and perhaps even a bit of pub rock too. It’s also very much of a recent Australian trend, in line with similar contemporary bands like Amyl and the Sniffers and Drunk Mums. In an age of mediocrity and blandness in the music scene, that’s pretty much all you can ask for.

Blog Update and some Linky Love

Contrary to outward appearances, this blog isn’t dead. It has merely been on extended sabbatical. A bit like Monty Python’s legendary parrot, I’ve been resting. Pining for the fjords. A sabbatical which began in early 2022, interrupted only by the odd gig review and the irregular – but thoroughly welcomed – contributions of my good friend Craig Stephen.

Thanks Craig. I appreciate your enthusiasm and those album reviews. As on-point and insightful as those reviews have been, I’ve been struggling with the idea of adding any of my own; in these days of free-music-for-all and a surplus of streaming services, does anyone really need to know my opinion on any specific album or artist when they can listen elsewhere and preview it themselves? And besides, Craig takes the blog places I wouldn’t have the nous to go … which can only be a good thing.

In terms of adding any other sort of post, beyond those gig reviews, I’ve also become quite lazy in my dotage, and truth be told, I probably need something resembling a rocket to get my own arse into gear.

I’ve actually been a little in awe of Craig’s capacity to keep finding words. As if having a day job in the media wasn’t enough, in addition to contributing to everythingsgonegreen and multiple other publications, he’s also found the time to write a book on New Zealand football (near completion, publication pending) called ‘Boots and Bombs’. The book’s central theme is the New Zealand national team’s hugely unlikely but scarcely documented trip to Vietnam in 1967. To take part in a football tournament. In the middle of a warzone. In Saigon, with the Vietnam war raging at something close to its horrific peak. Quite a thing.

I have had some involvement with that project – making connections, doing research, and doing some editing. It feels like I’ve read and re-read raw work-in-progress versions of the manuscript a dozen times. It is, admittedly, fairly niche subject matter, but football is a shared passion of ours, as is history, and it has (mostly) been a pleasure to help him out where I could.

Another reason for blog inactivity is that I simply lost momentum after a decade of relatively prolific blogging (700-plus posts). 2022 was a challenging year in so many ways – not least because I spent a large chunk of time in the middle of that year taking in the sights and sounds of Europe – visiting places like Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Venice, and Rome. Plus, I caught the dreaded Covid thingy - whilst holed up in a sweltering Amsterdam apartment amid record breaking mid-summer temperatures, sans the chilled comforts of home. So yeah, blogging just became all too hard for a while and even the idea of it seemed a little bit frivolous.

2023 has conjured up a lot less drama so far, so there’s probably less excuse for the lack of more recent posts. I can only refer you to the “lazy arse” disclaimer offered earlier.

That’s not to say I can offer any certainty about where everythingsgonegreen goes from here. I may post more regularly, I may not. The last thing I want is to feel obligated or for it to become anything resembling a chore. We’ll see.  

So anyway, that’s the update, and here’s the linky love bit:

With New Zealand music history site AudioCulture (aka “the noisy library”) celebrating its tenth birthday during May, I found myself the subject of some scarcely anticipated attention. It turns out that some nine years after its initial publication, my history/scene article on Wellington nightlife in the 1980s (link here) remained the most visited or read article across that site’s ten-year lifespan. Out of some 2000-plus submissions. It proved so popular, AudioCulture had its technical staff investigate to ensure all those visits were legitimate. According to Russell Brown, referencing the article in the New Zealand Listener magazine, checking “there wasn’t some bot in Russia delivering all the hits”. In the end they determined “the traffic was real and organic” … (thanks comrade Botolovski, my wire transfer is in the post. Or something).

The article also received a mention on Radio New Zealand no less, when Jesse Mulligan interviewed AudioCulture founder Simon Grigg about the site’s ten-year history. If that was an unexpected surprise, I was more than a little shocked when the local student radio station, Radio Active, asked to interview me for ‘The Vault’ segment of their breakfast show. That weekly segment of the show being dedicated to “the past”, where a life-weary greybeard comes on to reflect or to preach to “the kids” about life during wartime – or in my case, a life lived amid the seedy underbelly of Wellington’s nightlife in the 1980s. I took them up on that offer (link here).

The “follow-up” article referred to in that interview is this one (link here), where I choose and then dissect ten Wellington club bangers of the 1980s. Specifically New Zealand-produced tracks only, which, to be fair, probably accounted for less than five percent of tunes played in clubs during that era. That was a fun piece to write, and I make no apologies for its heavy synthpop bias.

Right, so that’s pretty much all I have for now. I may be back. I hope to be back. I may not be. Who ever really knows anything about anything?

 

Album Review: The House of Love - A State of Grace (2022)

Craig Stephen waited such a long time for the latest House of Love album to arrive he started to fear it never would …

It had been a long time since House of Love released She Paints Words in Red (2013), but in that intervening period gig-goers were teased with some new material that they rightly expected to form a new studio album. It would have been the third LP featuring Terry Bickers since he returned in the early 2000s following his acrimonious departure in 1989. But in 2021 Bickers was off again. This time there wasn’t the friction or enmity of the initial split, with a band statement blaming the pandemic for Guy Chadwick’s decision as he prepared for rescheduled dates in the United States. In a later interview the frontman suggested Bickers declined his invitation as he was loyal to Matt Jury and Pete Evans who had been sacked from the band because Chadwick didn’t want to work with them anymore. It seemed that the new album was in jeopardy.

 But, then, Chadwick announced a new line-up with ex-Idlewild man Keith Osborne on lead guitar, Harry Osborne on bass, and Hugo Degenhardt on drums. Degenhardt had previously worked with, ahem, Rod Stewart and Robbie Williams. These guns for hire would appear with Chadwick on the UK tour of autumn 2022 and the US tour soon after.

The album with the new line-up is a radical departure from the comeback album Days Run Away (2005) and its morose follow-up She Paints Words in Red. I’m actually being quite diplomatic about the latter, it was a stinker, very pastoral, placid and far removed from previous House of Love albums. Chadwick was keen to return to the sound of the band in its earlier days.

State of Grace was recorded in Hastings on England’s south coast and among the guest musicians are John Pilka, who was in Chadwick’s first significant band, Kingdoms, in the mid-80s. The cover is somewhat grainy and industrial and it looks suspiciously like a goth album with its font and monochrome style.

If Chadwick’s intention was to return to the band’s past sound he has largely achieved that, especially on the guitar-driven single ‘Clouds’ which is a call to someone to “Get your head outta the clouds”, a refrain that is repeated ad nauseum for the final minute and 40 seconds in majestical rock’n’roll style. The accompanying video features a greying Chadwick walking around a seaside town including along a pier and through a games arcade. There’s little in the way of politics or diatribes on the way of the modern world on the dozen tracks – that’s just not Chadwick’s style – and love and how it spins a web around our hearts and minds are instead front of house.

Any suggestion this might be a solo album is augmented by the resurrection of a song from Chadwick’s brief turn as a solo artist in the late 1990s. ‘Laughter and Honey’ was a beautiful, mainly acoustic B-side; as the renamed ‘Into the Laughter’ it is a full minute shorter but has electric guitars and a full band. That clearly is the intention: to turn a very much one-man effort into a team endeavour. And it certainly benefits from four pairs of hands working in unison with Keith Osborne’s guitar playing very much to the fore. Another highlight is the album opener ‘Sweet Loser’ which begins with harmonica playing which is superseded by a drone riff that builds into something quite stunning.

‘Melody Rose’ is quite grungy. If there is a past reference in this song, it is to the critically panned Audience With the Mind (1993), an album that probably should have been re-recorded or released as an EP. Nevertheless, like that particular work, I have come to love this in its own way. The bassline parties with the drums in a manner I never thought possible.

It is certainly a ubiquitous album, and there’s a couple of numbers in ‘Queen of Song’ and ‘In My Mind’ that suggest Chadwick has been listening to authentic Americana music. The former has touches of blues; the latter a tinge of country music. Curiously, Chadwick’s languid vocals on ‘In My Mind’ remind me of Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit. Without the deadpan humour.

State of Grace is a varied album that takes the listener on a trip across the Atlantic. Yes, it certainly sounds like peak House of Love from 1987 to 1993 but there’s traces of more recent work at times. It has the sound of four people gelling fairly quickly, but also of one man in charge and make no mistake this is a Guy Chadwick-fuelled project. How this record would have eventuated if Terry Bickers and his two mates were on board is impossible to determine. I suspect it would have been different in good and bad ways. But we have an album I think the House of Love can be proud of.

Album Review: Half Man Half Biscuit - The Voltarol Years (2022)

 Craig Stephen on the prolific Half Man Half Biscuit …

Half Man Half Biscuit never stop. Four decades on and the albums keep a-coming. Just as I wonder if Nigel Blackwell has dredged the well of humour dry, the world churns out more merde for him to get his teeth into. As it were.

The Biscuits have been around since 1985 when the world was first introduced to their love of minutiae on the seminal Back in the DHSS album, a period piece of observant, wry tracks that cast an eye over everything from unemployment to table football to the galling awfulness of children’s TV presenters.

Every two to three years the Biscuits relaunch with a new album, and The Voltarol Years is their 15^th studio album (on top of numerous EPs and a few compilations). The previous 14 masterpieces were all released on Probe Plus but with that cult label’s closure through its owner’s retirement, they’ve released this on R M Qualtrough, a name so anti-rock’n’roll I’ll assume it’s their own set up. That change may explain the gap of four years since No-one Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fuckin' Hedge Cut.

 The Voltarol Years contains the usual cutting edge sarcasm and satire, railing against the worst elements of society: football fans who aren’t really football fans, middle class aioli-consuming moaning minnies, pedants, grumpy online chess players, C-list celebrities and what have you. If there were ever a political statement in a Biscuits track it would be about the bickering at parish council meetings over poorly-devised pavements.

This is all delivered in a manner that defies musical norms, none of which is more evident than on ‘Grafting Haddock In The George’, where, mid song, Blackwell deviates into a monologue about Martin, one of those people who want to be at the centre of everything and who like the sound of their own voice. As he does so the band pares back to a single bassline: 

“He was at Knowsley Safari Park one day where he saw a monkey with a banana in one hand and a tin-opener in the other, and he shouted over: ‘Hey, you don’t need the tin-opener for that!’ To which the monkey replied: ‘It’s for the custard, dickhead!’ …”

In the 1980s and much of the 90s the Biscuits could drop in obscure references knowing that fans would need to ask their mates what it meant or remain befuddled. Now, all you need do is search Google. So what exactly is Urbex or buskins of mottled cordovan? Who is Anthony Power or Chicory Tip? And where exactly is Haverfordwest and why is it named so? Do I even care? That, perhaps, is the entire point.

‘Rogation Sunday’, meanwhile, reveals how a man finds a curious note from his other half that brings a double-whammy of bad news:

“I came downstairs and found your note / The greater knapweed near the mugwort by the buckthorn tree is dying / P.S. Yes, I have left you”

The preamble to all this merriment and mirth ‘I’m Getting Buried in the Morning’, is the tale of a murderer about to meet his maker, and who wonders how he’ll be remembered (not fondly obviously). Our anti-hero cheers that: “Yeah, I’m getting frazzled in the morning/ So get me to the chair on time,” sung in the manner of that ol’ cockney classic ‘Get Me To The Church On Time’.

The music is a varied mash of standard rock and indie-pop, sometimes grating, often enthralling, as on ‘Awkward Sean’, a personal favourite due to the breezy pace it takes. The narrator wonders what has happened to his old pal and tries to find out from others who knew him. Some say he died a long time ago, some say he’s alive in a small town in Pembrokeshire, west Wales (hello Haverfordwest!). We discover that Sean was a little bit different: while his mates liked the flamboyant footballers such as Best, Pele and Cruyff he was an admirer of more functional German players. In the pubs: “We would play pool/ He would arrange beer mats into a tower.” 

Amongst the jollity and scornful mocking, The Voltarol Years does contain some bleakness, as on ‘Big Man Upfront’ where another ratbag hits his dog cos he’s “hard as nails” and crashes his car but survives – “I cursed the airbag when I heard” bemoans our storyteller.

The Voltarol Years won’t be picked up by global radio, trend on Spotify or be listed in the Top 75 Albums of the Year by Mojo magazine. They don’t even try to go beyond their fanbase nowadays, and never really did – after all they eschewed a TV appearance that could’ve boosted their profile in the 80s to instead see local side Tranmere Rovers. But, in age of increasing cultural tediousness and AI-generated music, bands such as Half Man Half Biscuit are needed more than ever. “What side of the indie war were you on Grandad? I was on the side of Tess of the Dormobiles, lad”.

Gig Review: Fontaines D.C. @ Shed 6, Wellington, 29 January 2023

During a weekend where extreme weather events saw the cancellation of mid-summer gigs and events right across Aotearoa – most notably in Auckland where Elton John was (twice) cancelled and the popular Laneway Festival belatedly canned – it was of some relief that Sunday night’s Wellington leg of the Fontaines D.C. Australasian tour went ahead without any disruption.

 It helped of course, that the Irish band’s gig was scheduled at an indoor venue, Shed 6, on Wellington’s waterfront. Although to be fair, the weather in the capital city – sporadic showers – was in no way as catastrophic as the torrential rain Auckland and the far north was battered with. Flooding was so severe, a Civil Defence State of Emergency remained in place in Auckland across the entire weekend and beyond. Whisper it, but the word is, there’s more to come.

Having been relieved of Monday Laneway duties, there was a sense that the Fontaines were doubly keen to whip up a storm of their own in the capital, and that’s exactly what they achieved. With a 90-minute onslaught of pure state-of-the-art post-punk. The band reeling off a set which covered most of the key tracks from each of their three album releases to date.

There was a brief but poignant blast of Television – in tribute to the newly departed Tom Verlaine (R.I.P.) – just before the band arrived on stage, sans regular guitarist Carlos O’Connell, who is on “expectant dad” duties, replaced on this trip to the antipodes by The Altered Hours’ guitarist Cathal MacGabhann.

A terrific opening double whammy of ‘A Lucid Dream’ and ‘A Hero’s Death’, off the band’s 2020 album of the same name, set the scene rather nicely, before a run through highlights like ‘Sha Sha Sha’, ‘I Don’t Belong’, and ‘How Cold Love Is’, propelled us to something of a mid-set peak featuring a raucous ‘Televised Mind’ and ‘Jackie Down the Line’.

 Personal favourite ‘Roman Holiday’ offered another mini peak ten minutes later, by which time I’d abandoned the heaving throng closer to the stage for a sedate spot with more breathing room somewhere near the back – the venue was at about ninety percent capacity, if not fully sold out, and it was uncomfortably hot and sticky once the band were in full flight and the crowd fully engaged.

A punked-up take on ‘Nabokov’ followed, before an equally snotty version of ‘Too Real’ notionally closed the show … but you just knew there was going to be an encore, nobody was leaving, and naturally Fontaines D.C. were able to oblige with a couple of hitherto overlooked bangers in the form of Dogrel favourite ‘Boys in the Better Land’, and ‘I Love You’, off last year’s Skinty Fia album.

The band was tight throughout (makeshift guitarist and all), driven by a take-no-prisoners rhythm section, and in the form of Grian Chatten, the Fontaines have a front man who one hundred percent believes every single word he throws at you in that unmistakable and rather compelling thick Southern Irish brogue.

 Chatten kept interaction with the crowd at a minimal level (ie. barely at all) and whilst there will have been many in the crowd who prefer a band to connect with idle banter, I personally think there was enough of a stage presence about the undeniably charismatic Chatten, who bounces around not unlike a nervous child on the first day of pre-school, to still make a firm connection. And really, why bother with obligatory conventional triggers when the mostly unconventional music largely speaks for itself?

The support was provided by local indie rockers Wiri Donna, who played a short set of solid tunes from their recent EP plus the odd new track. I’d like to see them again, if only for the hugely entertaining bass player, who's in-the-moment facial expressions and (mock?) rock-star posing was a joy to behold.

Photos: Thanks to @nothingelseon for the pics.