Monday's Long Songs

The Cure's comeback with their latest/ last album Songs Of A Lost World was been one of last week's major musical news. On Friday night they played a live streamed gig at The Troxy and then on Saturday a similar one for Radio 2, a mix of songs from the new album and Cure classics. Both were stunning. 

In the 80s I wasn't a massive Cure fan. Things then were very tribal and The Cure fell on the other side of a line that sometimes seemed to be drawn between them and other bands. I liked many of their singles and bought Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me in 1987, a seventy five minute double album led by what may be their best single- Just Like Heaven- and crammed full of singular album tracks, but never went the full hog. Since then though their songs and music have become more and more important and I've found myself loving their songs more as time has gone than I ever did back in the day. Robert Smith's songs and voice, his sweet melancholy and  those post- punk guitars coupled with Simon Gallup's Hooky inspired basslines, have sounded more and more relevant. In early 2022, in the aftermath of Isaac's death, Pictures Of You became one of those songs that broke me into tiny grief stricken pieces. Watching the band on TV on Saturday night that song did it all over again. It's a song that I'm sure could reduce perfectly balanced and obscenely happy people to tears so it's impact on me isn't too surprising; it's got a sadness to it that is Smith's crowning moment- the song was written on finding some photos of his wife Mary in the ashes that were left after a house fire in the late 80s. For me, it's become about all the photos I have of Isaac, and that are now all we have of him, the photos and the memories. It's one of those songs.

Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix)

The new Cure album is the first for sixteen years, a majestic eight song swansong that places grief, loss, mortality and reflection at the centre of Robert Smith's late middle aged world. Both his parents and his brother died during the recording of the album and his thoughts on mortality are the centre piece of the record. The playing and the songs are all as good as anything anyone of that generation of bands has made in recent years, better than anyone else maybe. It's a beautiful, emotive album- black and white and shot through with all the shades of grey, desolate and windswept but magnificent and enveloping. It feels like a eulogy- in the best way, a celebration cut with loss. At the end is Endsong, a ten minute masterpiece, an exercise in closure and wonderful, bleak beauty. 

The Greatest Motherfucker You're Ever Gonna Meet

I spent Thursday night at New Century Hall in Manchester with John Grant, courtesy of my friend Darren. John Grant's solo career goes back to 2010 and his Queen Of Denmark album which was followed in 2013 by Pale Green Ghosts. This year he has released another, The Art Of The Lie, his sixth. There's a lot going on with John Grant, on stage, in his background and personal life, and in his songs. Growing up in some fairly conservative parts of the USA, his growing realisation he was gay brought conflict with his parents (his mother told him as she was dying he was a disappointment and in his song Daddy he sings 'You don't like what I am/I have come to understand What I am is a sin') and he spent much of his adult life struggling with anxiety, alcohol and drug issues. In 2012 he announced he was HIV positive, something he wrote about in the song Ernest Borgnine. 

The seriousness of some of his songs and the heavy duty nature of his life isn't necessarily reflected in his gigs. He takes the stage to Ennio Morricone in baseball cap, big sunglasses and carrying a keetar and launches into the mid- 80s MTV electro- funk of All That School For Nothing, a stream of consciousness single from earlier this year and after handing the keetar to a roadie sings the next two songs at the front of the stage with occasional slut drops. It's big and brash, a little camp, the three musicians around him on bass/ drums, synths and guitar creating a wall of  sound. There's an 808 suspended from a rack, various vintage synths including a Korg that John points out to us as if its a band member. 

He goes to the baby grand piano for a slower, more reflective set of songs including Daddy and the wonderful, with its lines ' I felt just like Sigourney Weaver/ When she had to kill all those aliens' and 'I felt just like Winona Ryder/ In that movie about vampires/ And she couldn't get that accent right/ And neither could that other guy'. He's a master at writing about big topics but coming in sideways, undercutting things with one liners and droll humour. After the piano section he starts wandering round the stage, switching on various bits of kit for the Vangelis- like majesty of Pale Green Ghosts and then the band re- appear and a very respectful audience get song after song from the current album and his back catalogue. It finishes, as all John Grant gigs probably should, with GMF...

GMF

Recorded in Iceland in 2013 after he moved there, with Sinead O'Connor on backing vocals, GMF is a loner/ outsider anthem, a dissection of his own anxieties and a song directed to a lover, 'I over analyse and over think things/ It's a nasty crutch', he sings- but the punch comes with the killer line, totally unexpected on first hearing it, 'But I am the greatest motherfucker you're ever gonna meet/ From the top of my head to the toes on my feet'. 

V.A. Saturday

Various artists Saturday reaches Northern Soul today. I'm sure that in the ultra obsessive world of Northern Soul that various artist compilations are if not absolutely verboten then at least frowned upon. A Northern DJ turning up with a bunch of various artists CDs would be laughed out of the building surely- these songs are to be listened and danced to on as God intended, on 7" vinyl, original pressings (re- presses permissible under certain circumstances). But in a world where the casual Northern Soul fan has limited resources and other genres of music to spend money on, original 7" singles from obscure 1960s and 70s labels are a luxury that must sometimes be foregone. 

In 1998 a Northern compilation called It'll Never Be Over For Me came out on EMI's Stateside label, on both CD and double vinyl. The twenty song compilation seems to me to be a cut above the rash of cheap, supermarket Northern Soul CD compilations that came out a decade or so ago, built on TV adverts suddenly deciding northern Soul was the best way to sell fried chicken and mortgages. It'll Never Be Over For Me has some familiar names including Timi Yuro, Irma Thomas and Dean Parrish, and this song by Dean, the last song played at Wigan Casino before it closed its doors for good in 1981...

I'm On My Way

How good is that? Gnarly lead guitar intro from 1967 (re- released in the UK in 1975) and then one of those thumping Northern rhythms, horns, Dean's vocal stop- start dynamics, buckets of echo and a rousing chorus.

It'll Never Be Over For me also has this solid gold banger from Chuck Wood also from 1967, opening with a blast and Chuck declaring 'huh!' and then immediately following with 'First time I called you girl/ They say you wasn't at home...'

Seven Days Too Long

Seven Days Too Long was famously covered by Dexys Midnight Runners in 1980, a 7" that has become as sought after as many Northern Soul 7" singles. 

I may sound like I'm being a bit snobbish about supermarket compilation CDs and I'm not (really). I have bought many, back in the days when supermarkets still sold CDs. One of them, Northern Soul: 20 Original Classics, is as good a way to spend 80 minutes as you're going to find during daylight hours, an album that may not be imaginative in its title but is accurate. R Dean Taylor. Dusty Springfield. Marlena Shaw. Gladys Knight and The Pips. The Impressions. Chris Clark. Frank Wilson...

Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do)

The Flirtations...

Nothing But A Heartache

Viva the cheap CD compilation album. Also, in this age of streaming and playlists, RIP the cheap compilation CD. 

Voyager

Marshall Watson featured earlier this week as one half of Causeway and their dance- goth/ synth pop song Dancing With Shadows. Marshall's a busy man though and as well as a solo tracks he's got an EP out today in collaboration with Cole Odin, Voyager, on Leng. Last year Marshall and Cole released Just A Daydream Away, one of my favourite releases from last year, a song adorned with an indie dance shimmer and some superb remixes by Hardway Bros and Joe Morris. 

Voyager marries Marshall's Balearic synths and hands in the air pianos with Cole's dub basslines and chilled dance/ psychedelia and  comes up with a song that makes the gloom and darkness of November wither away, an open minded, sky scraping, cosmic adventure with a piano riff that'll crack the sternest of faces. There are three mixes, the Original Mix, the Extended Guitar Mix and the Cosmic Rave Mix, and while all are exactly what you need today, the Cosmic Rave Mix is the one you need the most, the low slung bassline of the other two mixes replaced by a Patrick Cowley inspired sequencer that has setting the controls for the heart of the cosmos- and when that piano hits at two minutes twenty you'll be at the exact centre. You can find Voyager at Bandcamp. 

If you need a reminder of Just A Daydream Away's beautiful sun dappled, indie- dance splendour, here's the Space Flight Mix. The whole EP is here.