Volume please: This band changed my life (period) and as they are touring in the spring, playing this album in its entirety (a notion I still haven’t tired of) and even though the aesthetic portion of our program won’t truly be up to snuff – well… tough shit: This needs to be said.
At a time when I was fronting a band that was equal parts Big Audio Dynamite and The Smiths (think EMF – but maybe a little wimpier in my delivery, if that can be imagined) David Gedge ripped through my ears and reminded me what it was like to feel at a gut level again. When I saw them live at the old 930 and he strode on stage, slipped on a battered acoustic that was hastily wired up, and then proceeded to play as fast as is humanly possible with a manic slide, and managed the dense howl and slash of the six strings on record, for the first time in my life I actually pressed forward so a man could sweat on me and christen me with his songwriter greatness.
I soaked it in for 12 songs in 45 minutes, and with no encore and a crowd panting for more – he was gone.
He was on to the next dank club to test his baritone against the roar of the amps, but we were never the same. I remember rushing to read the few paragraphs from Mark Jenkins (had to be Jenkins) the next day in The Post and grinning as I read lines of praise like “I could barely hear a word of his wonderful lyrics as the guitars raced, but with The Wedding Present now it’s all about the guitars. Always those amazing guitars.” I am sure Mark was more eloquent – but that is how I remember it.
The man made more noise and set about creating a historic guitar sound with a beat up acoustic. That’s right, a beat up acoustic. And not avant noise mind you – but wrapped around breakneck pop gems. It still boggles the mind.
Let me really break it down for you: The man had Steve Albini record the “Brassneck” EP at this time, even though they were best known as a jangly C86 act up until this point. How many people had done this type of career-defining move previously? Exactly NONE. How many heard this record and it’s follow up and forever changed their destiny by doing the same? The list will bury you in a rundown of legends, but it starts with Nirvana and runs on and on. The “Bizarro” record showed that they didn’t need Albini, but his choice was certainly genius.
On the aforementioned EP, the group covered an unknown California act that virtually NO ONE HAD HEARD OF on either side of the Atlantic. The song “Box Elder,” was slight in comparison to the other tracks, but interesting enough to make me track down the original composers. This is how I (and so many others) was introduced to Pavement.
Are you catching on yet?
No?
Fuck it. Just listen to the damn record then.
The crucial item I still haven’t covered is the lyrics. Gedge had already mastered an economy of words in his bits and pieces of stolen dialogue – like listening in on a painfully stilted argument – before “Bizarro.” You can just hear lines like “that was my favourite dress you know” and ache for days inside. But here he whittled it down even further and placed his delicate phrasings squarely in a conversational bent. It makes it all the more effecting (and disturbing.)
Now back to the roar:
Gedge is certainly the star, but the contributions of the other members shouldn’t be taken lightly. Peter Solowka keeps pace with Gedge’s manic jittery playing and new drummer Simon Smith gives a mighty push to the proceedings. The biggest change is the new prominence (inspired by American noise bands) of bassist Keith Gregory at times.
It is the wiry sound of Gregory’s runs and Smith’s bash and stomp that smash you in the face when “Brassneck” starts us off. God that song is still so amazing. “Crushed” seems to try to outrun itself at every turn, while “No” is more in tune with their melodic past, save for the muscular bass. “Thanks” is back to the races, with a monumental noise lurking in the back of the crisp slashing.
Then we are faced with “Kennedy,” a track so monumental (and amazing that it went top 40 in the UK) that no one would ever think of the band quite the same way again. I hope I don’t have to tell you to turn it up as loud as you can manage. It is brutally simple in it’s lyrical approach to the JFK assassination and America in general (turning such sticky phrases that I slip one into my current songs 20 years later.) The guitars seem to be locked in to a nervous battle of trying to out do one another while hopelessly trying to hold serve with the crazed backbeat and a bassline pulsing like Gregory is playing a thick coiling cable as opposed to strings. It is wonderful.
“What Have I Said Now?” is a letdown, but then again, anything would be following “Kennedy.” They return to the formula, throwing in a hiccupping slipped beat amongst the buzz for “Grandaland” and then stretch the guitar noise for “Bewitched” (truly staggering live.) “Take Me!” winks with a clean little guitar strum before going haywire for the big ending (no record has better outros.) “Be Honest” closes out the album proper with the false start and jazzy drums wrapped around classic Gedge – “if we’re really really going to be honest – we might as well be brief.”
Now, I should stop there, but the record came to me via cassette, which meant the “Brassneck” EP was included so I can’t dismiss it (although I will do so for the three additional tracks on the reissued CD.)
The blueprint for everyone in a guitar band was fully available at this point. You could compare Albini’s work on his version of “Brassneck” and see where things were headed. The rawness was jarring at the time (and the drums sound dulled a bit) but the guitars were raw, from the dirty lead just off time, to the piercing strum of the naked strings. Music would never actually be the same afterwards. “Don’t Talk, Just Kiss” continues in that vein while “Gone” has an almost SoCal punk rock bash to it before the thrashing end. “Box Elder” one ups Pavement with it’s pronounced crackling lead and thumping percussion, leading the way to where that ramshackle outfit was headed, once it tightened up, and showing the pop genius at their core. When you realize that they camped out in Minnesota recording Pavement covers with Albini and saved guitar music from the e’d out Madchester shuffle, all on RCA’s dime – it is pretty damn amazing.
Landmark release still holds up. We get it. But what does it look like? Well, this is the part where I take the shorter road than usual; the original, designed by The Designer’s Republic, was a bracing take on that studio’s use of simple imagery and symbols. The slashed charcoal burst, black on orange, was a brilliant distillation of the music inside, practically in logo form. If the Nike swoosh was the equivalent of running and speed, than this was slashing guitars and snapped shut relationships.
It was one of the few times that I wasn’t disappointed to see only clean black text on a wash of color for the rest of a package.
The problem is that most people now know the reissue (and as I own two copies of the worn through cassette, it is even the CD version that I own.) For reasons known only to the folks at BMG, they switched the colors to have the burst in orange and the background an ugly charcoal green/grey. It negates all of the power the slash held in black and the intensity the orange provided.
They couple it with an ugly layout for the booklet and little done to the disc label and it turns into a bigger headscratcher.
Don’t even get me started on the polar opposite covers for “Seamonsters” that followed… At least save that for another week.
Keeping Score Are You? Music 9.0 Design 8.0 (original) 6.0 (reissue)
Be sure to catch the band bringing back the strum and joy at the Black Cat on Friday April 9th.
John Foster puts his money where his mouth is at his very own design firm: Bad People Good Things. He has brand spanking new book out as well with Dirty Fingernails (Rockport). Those publishers went mad and also let him author For Sale: Over 200 Innovative Solutions in Packaging Design (HOW), New Masters of Poster Design (Rockport), Maximum Page Design (HOW) and a monograph on Jeff Kleinsmith for Sub Pop Records.
love this album. i take it you’ll be seeing these guys at black cat
January 27, 2010 at 4:25 pm