The Vaselines
Enter the Vaselines

THE REVIEW

This is what the Vaselines are: a cognitive tool. They can serve as support for musical thinking. Kurt Cobain knew this too.

The mathematical proportion is:

Carneade : Don Abbondio = The Vaselines : Nirvana

Nothing more than a cult Scottish indie (power) pop band.

Guitarist and singer Eugene Kelly (1965) and singer and guitarist Frances McKee (1966) formed The Vaselines in 1986 in Glasgow. More officially the following year, in Edinburgh.

No nightly hypothermia. Just a boy and a girl from an Edinburgh collage who loved smearing themselves with vaseline. Especially her. He loved Pastels, Jesus And Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr., Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, and punk rock. She loved Soft Cell so much that she wanted to be "Soft Cell, but without keyboards" one day.

The Vaselines are a perennial bulbous plant, swamp lilies, white pop flowers, trembling candor, milk drops from Era's breast. Purity and innocence that are all within their disarming sound approach.

Their music is essential and direct. It has enticing bubble gum melodies and the raw guitars of punk. The writing is light, silly, and licentious. The adolescent, concise, and terse lyrics are marked by a bawdy allusiveness and the absence of intellectual pretensions. The approach is amateurish with straightforward or rough performances.

In terms of singing, Kelly is baritone and straw-like, whereas McKee is slender, sweet, sensual, almost like ophthalmic cream. The two chase each other diligently, like in a love dance of exotic birds.

A style that is therefore shabby, naive, disengaged, syrupy, but also abrasive and versatile: a perfect and original pop music product that for some was the Holy Grail of indie pop, while on this side of the ocean it was ignored.

Overrated or underrated? What's the difference? Who cares?

They were the darlings of the Pastels (from Glasgow), Beat Happening (from Olympia, WA), and then Nirvana (from Aberdeen, WA). Kurt Cobain would point to Kelly and McKee as "his favorite songwriters of all time," name his daughter Frances Bean in McKee's honor, and cover three of their songs: "Son Of A Gun", "Molly’s Lips" (in "Hormoaning," then "Incesticide") and "Jesus Wants/Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam" (in “MTV Unplugged in New York”).

In this regard, McKee will say: «It was typical of the Vaselines to be recognized because someone else covered our pieces. What’s better for slackers like us than to have another band do all the dirty work for you?».

"Enter The Vaselines" is a 2006 collection that includes the entire catalog of the band, acquired by Sub Pop and already released as "The Way Of The Vaselines: A Complete History," but additionally aligns a second disc with demo tapes and live recordings in Bristol (1986) and London (1988).

In the first 87 EP, "Son Of A Gun," there are typically English humor and twee-pop, vague singer-songwriter and folk roots, the influence of the Pastels, '50s rock ‘n’ roll, and '60s garage, the indie update of Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra duets.

In the second EP of 88, "Dying For It" (also produced by Stephen Pastel for 53rd & 3rd), the American lessons of alternative/indie rock of Velvet genealogy emerge, Sonic Youth first and foremost.

In their "only" LP, "Dum-Dum" (released by Rough Trade in 89, with the lineup stabilized with Kelly's brother Charles on drums and James Seenan on bass), the sound is solid and powerful but still sinuous (frenzied screams, passive-aggressive iteration of choruses, shuffling drumming) and devoted to the lo-fi aesthetic (amateurism, scattered noises, and pseudo-metallic guitar solos).

The bonus disc boasts the demos for "Son of a Gun", including the never-realized pieces "Rosary Job" and "Red Poppy"; it also includes the December 1986 live set testimony of a shabby performance of the duo accompanied by a drum machine in front of a more than distracted audience. In the subsequent London live set, they play once again raw and amateurish, but this time because they have achieved their artistic figure and with success.

The experience of Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee ended soon, without fanfare, just as it began. After the appearance alongside Nirvana, the withdrawal, the Suckle, the Eugenius, 20 years, an unexpected reunion arrived, prompted by the collaboration with two Belle & Sebastian members, Stevie Jackson (guitar) and Bobby Kildea (bass), resulting in two honest albums: "Sex with An X" (2010, close to the original sound) and "V For Vaselines" (2014, inspired by the Ramones).

Let’s look at some of the memorable tracks from "Enter The Vaselines".

"Son of a Gun" is a twee pop piece with guitars alternating punk distortions and jingle-jangling over a regular drum and boogie piano. The folksy "Rory Rides Me Raw" was described at the time as “a cross between Leonard Cohen and the Butthole Surfers”! "You Think You’re A Man" is a dry cover of Divine's disco piece, where fake orgasms overlap the duo's pantomimes (resulting from a binge of jam doughnuts!). The fast-paced "Dying for it" has an allusive and biting lyric: “I’m dying for something,/ oh what will it be/ I’m dying for you/ to do something to me”. "Molly’s Lips" is a rockabilly with a bicycle bell trill and an impassive voice. If "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam," which replicates a children's hymn ("I’ll Be a Sunbeam"), features electric violist Sophie Pragnell paying homage to Cale’s Velvets, then "Monsterpussy," whose title speaks for itself, pays homage to Reed's Velvets with Kelly's interpretation. The power-pop "The Day I Was A Horse" spins the Ramones' verb in an openly sixties version. “He said I was a mourning/ And that it would be better coming/ And he turned into a horse”. It essentially begins with the riff of “I’m a Yesterday Man” by Chris Andrews. The two versions from "Live in London" are slightly altered: less hyperkinetic, the first features overloading echo in the male section. The lyrics highlight the addition of the satirical rhyme “The day I was a Horse/ Was very nice of course”.

But in the end, what remains of this power-indie-pop?

An impression of disconcertingly inconsistent greatness or intelligent simplicity.

Where does this music take you? Nowhere. Or rather, exactly where you are. It is so popular. It is pure everyday life, a daily ticket, a bit of irony, and some melodic flickers in the shadow of noise.

Jesus don’t want me for a sunbeam,
Cause sunbeams are not made like me,
And don’t expect me to cry,
For all the reasons you had to die,
Don’t ever ask your love of me