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Rating: FIFTEEN SONGS.
ON THE PLATE.
by odradek
A few nights ago, I was listening to Lou Reed praise the technology applied to music, burying the past and the nostalgic.
Something along the lines of: “Old records are stuff for maniacs, today you can walk around with 5,000 songs in your pocket, who wants vinyl, who wants the crackle of vinyl?”
How can you disagree with that, I thought.
Sure, Lou, at 64, is young.
A rock icon is young by default.
And then, embracing these new endless possibilities seems to extend the condition even to mature gentlemen, constituting a sort of widespread youth in the enthusiasm of discovery, a colossal youth.
But as I got up from the sofa to approach the records and choose the one I wanted, I realized I was thinking: “But who wants 5,000 songs in their pocket? I am irredeemably old. For me, now, 15 are enough.”
And, waiting for the needle to meet the grooves producing the unmistakable crackle, I watched the image on the large cardboard cover. An old record, a 25-year-old record.
Because at 25 years old, a record is old, right?
Indeed, ripped from the state of blissful rest in which they lie most of the time, among hundreds of their kind, the Young Marble Giants need a little time to acclimate (and I with them) once they reach the plate, in the bare rotating and crackling vinyl.
Because that poor electronic drum seems impossible, little more than a toy, with its sparse patterns.
And that bass... a sound with the year stamped on the strings, a 100% early '80s bass.
Then comes the thin, but sharp and unmistakable, line of the voice.
And I am once again in the tiny kingdom of the Young Marble Giants.
Colossal Youth, the only album from the Welsh trio, came out in 1980, the year of the Feelies’ “Crazy Rhythms”, Pere Ubu’s “Art Of Walking”, Tuxedomoon’s “Half Mute”, Talking Heads’ “Remain In Light”, and Joy Division’s “Closer.” And many others (because for the beginning of such a much-maligned decade, 1980 brought forth a lot of good things). And yet, despite such crowded competition, I always find a way to awaken them, for a few spins on the plate...
Inside are 15 songs, held together by the frugal use of sparse instrumentation (bass, guitar, organ, and the drum machine box) immersed in a suspended atmosphere where, each time, what strikes me most is the space that opens around those few elements.
As if their little songs purify the air around them, adding a special quality of surrounding silence, isolating the listener in a small box with natural reverb.
Where nothing else is needed.
Least of all the infamous “expressive urgency”.
There is no emphasis, in fact, in Alison Statton’s voice, only superficially diaphanous, but in reality softly surgical.
Capable of tracing melodic paths of apparent simplicity in which words sometimes flow even harrowing and ruthless.
And her two companions act in the same direction, with the same frugality, declining in different forms ingredients that often emerge only as evoked, in a “western” line of the bass, in the vaguely retro stride of an organ, in a mechanically pulsed rumba.
Songs constructed almost like haikus, with an average duration just over two and a half minutes. Singly different from almost everything heard in those years, and still unique today.
Minimal songs, I would say.
But better to clarify: I’m not referring to the musical trend often cited improperly, rather to Carver’s stories.
Who, regarding his writing, his subtractive process, used to say: “Others dig to the bone, I try to reach the marrow.”
Someone else, around the web, has used the term “stripped down” about their songs.
It sounds a bit brutal, too aggressive.
Far from the gentle nature of these microscopic giants.
I gladly leave it to you to choose the most suitable adjective, along with a handful of samples pulled from the CD, to draw some fleeting impression.
Yes, because though I may not be as young as old Lou, I thought it wasn’t a bad idea to also get the CD version, printed in 1994 by “Les Disques du Crepuscule.” Which naturally contains the proverbial bonus tracks.
Perhaps they will find a place in someone’s pocket among thousands of others, compressed in some diabolical format.
For me, tonight, the 15 original little stories are enough.
Not a second more, not a crackle less.
Served fresh and clear as ever.
On the plate.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Include Me Out (02:01)
Re-arranging the atoms in my hairdo
Gets me thinking 'bout
good times I had with you
Back in the Sixties when love was free
Never need to worry bout my G.C.E.
Dying of boredom in your plastic home
Pretty the pictures, work to the bone
Don't be depressed,
you can just pick up the phone
But it won't answer 'cos
there's no-one home
Count your possessions out one by one
Include your lovers, include the one
You threw away in nineteen sixty three
Include me out, don't label me
04 Eating Noddemix (02:04)
Staring at the mirror on
the steamy bathroom wall
eating a Noddemix
As the people are running
the highrise starts to fall
While she neatly wipes her lips
The reporters pick up
their pads and pens
As they rush to the scene
And the cameras wink on the gory views
How the Editors agree
Putting on her makeup
she glances at the clock
Next she'll paint her nails
The train has collided
the driver didn't stop
As she slips onto the scales
Looking for her car keys
she finds them in her shoe
Lift the magazine from the floor
That long-ago mystery
has revealed another clue
As she quickly shuts the door
Yeah, man, they just pulled over now,
And it looks like it's gonna be an all-night job tonight, you know.
If you could send a few cars, it would sure help a lot.
And I should sip wine in front of the TV tonight
Because there's a program I wish you to see.
I'll start making a few inquiries already.
Ok, that's all for now.
06 N.I.T.A. (03:31)
It's nice to hear you're
having a good time
But it still hurts 'cos you used to be mine
This doesn't mean that I possessed you
You're haunting me because I let you
Shape up your body "Let's be a tree"
Visual dynamics for you to see
Nature intended the abstract
for you and me
No rain outside but tears in my eyes
Out on the rooftop for a surprise
Call you at teatime
In off the street
Sit down at table, Mummy is neat
08 Music for Evenings (03:02)
I don't need you to love me
I don't need you to care
Take your body from by me
Be yourself over there
Though you think you adore me
Secretly you just bore me
When I'm thinking of something
You always come up nothing
Now I'm not a neurotic
Or my business spasmodic
And my only excuse is:
Everything comes from chaos
Keep your music for evenings
And your coffee for callers
Say goodbye to your freedom
Don't come here with your wallet
10 Choci Loni (02:37)
Eaten out of house and home,
Choci Loni starts a roam
Putting on a bandolier,
hearing through a nudie ear
Choci Loni roams
11 Wurlitzer Jukebox (02:45)
Parrish is dancing, his feet are a bIur
Comes to a standstill,
I ask him a question
He doesn't hear
Wurlitzer jukebox
Fingers are pointed in my direction
Words fly around me,
everyone's chanting
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