The Armoury Show
Waiting for the Floods – The Armoury Show (Cherry Red 564)
A welcome CD re-release of The Armoury Show’s 1985 LP ‘Waiting for the Floods’ dropped through my door one morning, as if I’d called out for it personally. Formed from the smouldering ashes of The Skids and Magazine, the Armoury Show seemed destined for greatness on the strength of their history and collective will. That their hard work and talent would not prove enough to propel them to stardom is one of the sadder tales of thwarted ambition from that varied, often confused and arguably rudderless musical decade.
Even if the 80’s are either a distant memory or curious pre-history to you, there’s much to enjoy about this 2-CD collection. The signature sound of the mid-decade is brought to full, exuberant life by the seamless blending of John Doyle’s steady pounding drums, Richard Jobson’s joyous, rangy vocals and John McGeoch’s relentless, charging guitars, making every song like a triumphal march. ‘Castles in Spain’, their 1984 debut single, is a standout, even by the high standard they set, and their follow-up, ‘We Can Be Brave Again’, another vociferous battle hymn, is a hint that the band may have been better off spending their talent more sparingly.
Remixes were practically mandatory for any young band of the period, and the second CD is packed to the edge with these expanded variations. The thumping, rattling ‘New York City’ seems the product of a master class in how to produce US-style urban dance music in the 80’s style. It was one which bands as diverse as New Order and Yes benefitted from. That it didn’t do The Armoury Show a bit of good is a crying shame. If only more bands of the era could have put as much effort and imagination into their work, our later musical landscape would have looked and sounded very different. Buy HERE!
The House of Love
She Paints Words In Red – The House of Love (Cherry Red)
The House of Love seemed to have everything going for them in the late 80’s / early 90’s; their gentle, melodic 60’s inspired rock was the signature sound of the era. Fashions in music change as quickly and completely as the sartorial, however, and they, like many others of the same stamp, were left marooned on Indie Island whilst seemingly the rest of the world turned on to some sort of addictive Mediterranean dance rhythm, the poor fools.
Their reformation in 2003 may have passed some of us by, but their new album is unlikely to suffer that fate. Old fans will be delighted at the return of those lullaby-tone vocals, languorous, country tinged melodies and driving rhythms. Guy Chadwick’s compositions revisit the ever-fertile territory of life’s challenges, love and relationships with his characteristic confessionals and deft turns of phrase all intact. Other original members Terry Bickers and Pete Evans, together with bassist Matt Jury, provide classic backing to Guy’s meditations on the twists and turns life presents to us.
Predicting what a generation raised on televised mediocrity festivals like Britain’s Got Loads of MOR Singers will think of the finer side of indie rock is surely impossible, but if they have inherited the innate curiosity and restlessness that informed their parents’ musical journey, they’ll give She Paints Words in Red a listen. If they do, they’ll find soaring guitars, melancholic moods, sensitive phrasing, and a depth of feeling that may just awaken in them the same emotions that enlivened even the rich music scene of the late 80’s. Buy HERE!
Kim Fowley
Wildfire -The Complete Imperial Recordings 1968-69 Kim Fowley
(Tune In 009D)
Those resourceful folk at Tune In records have come up with a remarkable double CD reissue of the recorded works of one of the East Coast rock scene’s true originals, Kim Fowley. Squeezing these three untamed, lysergic emanations from the analogue age onto two mirror-rainbow’d digital age discs means that the instrumental ‘Born to be Wild’ is split over the discs. It makes as much sense as anything else on here.
That ‘Outrageous’ actually sold in respectable numbers, and is revered by some as the real deal of psychedelia, will come as a surprise if your only knowledge of Fowley is as producer to legendary all-female band, The Runaways. With a capable backing band doing their damnedest to hold all together, Fowley rants and raves, whispers and howls, and drawls and drools his way through some of the most libidinous, incoherent, hallucinary, rambling wig outs ever committed to tape. Never straying too far from the sleaze of Sunset Strip, this LP contains more Haight Ashbury than Haight Ashbury would have been comfortable with.
‘Born to be Wild’s unremarkable covers of popular fare are seemingly aimed at a more relaxed sort of rock fan , more supper club than full-on freak out, and in some dank, festering parallel world, could even be termed easy listening. The LP is well worth persisting with for ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ alone.
‘Good Clean Fun’ lives up to its obviously ironic name, but has its moments of nervous tension, abject terror even, but still manages to sound like something that could be played without trying the patience of its audience, unlike the more lurid moments of ‘Outrageous’. File under ‘Strange, surprising journey’ rather than ‘For students of the macabre only’. Buy HERE!
