XTC—Mummer

XTC—Mummer

Mummer—The second phase of XTC's career—arguably their defining one—came about due to something almost unheard of in the world of popular music: stage fright. They had been playing for around ten years before Andy Partridge suddenly broke down on stage in 1982, the tipping point being withdrawal from Valium that had been helping him deal with the stress of life in a touring band (Partridge says via Twitter that memory loss and limb seizures were worse aspects of his withdrawal). These facts are well-ingrained into the band's legend, and the incident helped to usher in a new era with a different approach.

English Settlement (1982), though eclectic, was still very much the work of a rock band, with Terry Chambers' drums still mixed in front and generally spare arrangements. Mummer would be the last album to feature him, and only on the first two songs at that; a founding member of the band, Chambers found himself in a tough spot with many of the band's new compositions not being conducive to his straightforward style of drumming. Peter Phipps from Gary Glitter's band played on the other eight songs, as he would on the following album, The Big Express (1984). Ironically, the sounds that open the album on "Beating of Hearts" are Chambers' drums, with Partridge's message summed up by the line, "For a heart without love is a song with no words/And a tune to which no one is listening." Bassist Colin Moulding's scathing "Wonderland" juxtaposes its sugar-sweet melody and synthesized beats with a criticism of someone who is "caught in [their] superficial, non-existent, fairy story/Wonderland." Partridge opined in the notes to Coat of Many Cupboards, "I think this is one of Colin's more beautiful melodies, and so complete, that my only suggestion to help it on its way, was the addition of tropical bird sounds for the finished article."

The idyllic "Love on a Farmboy's Wages," which by some accounts was the straw that broke the camel's back for Chambers due to its stranger rhythm (Partridge tweeted the real reason was "an emotional ultimatum by his new wife"), may be one of Partridge's veiled references to life as a professional musician ("People think that I'm no good/Painting pictures, carving wood ... But the only job I do well is here on the farm ... And it's breaking my back"). The catchy and hilarious "Great Fire" ("I'm animal and panicking") continues Partridge's ongoing fascination with avian creatures as he imitates a bird's cries with the saxophone. Moulding balances out Partridge's clumsy-love with "Deliver Us from the Elements," which is something like a green or naturalist anthem and fits well with Moulding's general political aesthetic or is perhaps reminiscent of, say, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.

Partridge's ghoulish "Human Alchemy" is one of his great forgotten songs, which ostensibly looks back on the slavery imposed on native Africans by whites, but might also be a coy reference to record companies' exploitation of black hitmakers ("To turn their skins of black into the skins of brightest gold," or that is to say, a gold record). The simpler "Ladybird" sounds like a song about a fleeting romance that could never be, though it predates Partridge's infamous, up-and-down relationship with Erica Wexler (later the subject of "Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her" from The Big Express and "Another Satellite" from Skylarking [1986]). The lamentful yet pejorative "In Loving Memory of a Name" is one of Moulding's smartest songs, striking at the banality of surrendering propriety to the military ("Covered in moss/You may have died for your country/Forgotten not lost/You're laid to rest where you're wanted"), ultimately being reduced to "a name," and the indoctrination associated with Christian society ("The sermons attended when you were young/Still echo round these churchyard walls"). "Me and the Wind" is Partridge's token end-of-toxic-relationship song; in the notes for Fuzzy Warbles Volume 5, he noted that "Lots of you seem to think that this song is about Terry Chambers leaving XTC. I can see your logic. Words like ‘snare,' ‘stool,' ‘imprisoned in your drumbeat’ ... Now you've got me doubting my own intentions." "Funk Pop a Roll" is an arch harangue of the record business, which he says is "a hammer to keep/You pegs in your holes" and "Big money selling you stuff that you really do not need," while admitting to the grave notion that he's "already been poisoned by this industry."

A common criticism of Mummer is that its songs are obscure, which is true—it's easy to miss the irony of songs like "Wonderland" and "Funk Pop a Roll" on a casual listen—but that's also the point. A mummer is a person in disguise who puts on a play with dualistic themes; the band can be seen wearing the traditional shredded-paper costumes in the album's inner sleeve. Mummer is a rich album from start to finish, with the exception of some overcooked Partridge moments on side B, but that's par for the course, and never before it did XTC so concisely and beautifully achieve their vision.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds—Tender Prey

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds—Tender Prey

Tender Prey—The late 1980s were a busy time for Nick Cave. He and the Bad Seeds appeared in Der Himmel über Berlin as themselves, playing "The Carny" from their latest album, Your Funeral... My Trial (1986), he co-wrote the script and music of and starred in Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, and published both a book of collected works (King Ink, named for the Birthday Party song) and a novel (And the Ass Saw the Angel). The stress from all of it plus steady recording and touring took its toll on Cave and the band. Interviews from that time period paint Cave as paranoid, drug-addled, and nasty, and while some of it was certainly editorialization, Cave's long affair with heroin has been documented. Thus, Tender Prey came out messy, but ironically, it produced some of the band's most iconic songs.

Cave played a prison inmate in Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, and so being in that mindset wrote a number of prison songs for Tender Prey, though the subject was not entirely new for the band, whose prior album The Firstborn Is Dead (1985) was influenced by outlaw country. One of these songs is Cave's signature song, "The Mercy Seat," which is presented here in its original extended format, played at nearly every Bad Seeds concert since its creation. It's almost impossible to distinguish the instruments from one another at first—the ongoing march of Thomas Wydler's drums is surrounded by the weeping strings and Blixa Bargeld's barely audible slide guitar, occasionally flooded by Mick Harvey's and new member Roland Wolf's murderous guitar leads—to say nothing of Cave's lyrics, which make at least one offhanded reference to And the Ass Saw the Angel (or perhaps vice-versa) and depict a Christ-like figure who is set to die in the electric chair. The creepily sultry "Up Jumped the Devil" is quintessential Cave ("My blood was blacker than the chambers of a dead nun's heart") that takes its name either from Robert Johnson's "Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)" or the lyrics to "The Devil Went down to Georgia" (likely the former, considering Tender Prey's heavy blues context).

Bad Seeds standard "Deanna" is a reworking of "Oh Happy Day," which is better exemplified by the acoustic version that was later appended as a bonus 7" to The Good Son (1990). Its unclear story combines crass sex with crass murder; in live shows, Cave sings with more venom: "She was my fuckin' friend/She was my fuckin' partner," making it sound scornful rather than jaunty. "Watching Alice" is something of a murky failure, whose languid arrangement is even less interesting than the banal lyrics. The toiling "Mercy" is one of the better forgotten Bad Seeds songs, as is "City of Refuge," based on Blind Willie Johnson's "(I'm Gonna Run to) the City of Refuge" (itself based on the traditional "You Better Run"). "Slowly Goes the Night" is a quiet highlight, sending up schlock balladry Bad Seeds-style while retaining a certain charm in spite of itself. The clopping "Sunday's Slave" and onrush of "Sugar Sugar Sugar" are two of the album's more understated moments, although the former is stronger than that suggests. The waning drunkenness of "New Morning" bids farewell to the hellish themes of the album and foreshadows the direction of The Good Son.

The first phase of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' career (pre-The Boatman's Call [1997]) is often referred to as Cave's Old Testament period; never was that more fitting than with Tender Prey (Birthday Party albums aside). Although it's a messy record, and many of the songs were not performed or arranged optimally, as a sort of blueprint, it's rather solid. Some of the group's (and the Birthday Party's) earlier work was unfavorably circumspect, and the relative straightforwardness of Tender Prey was refreshing. It's not the best LP of that aforementioned period, but it's close, and it was the most rock and roll the band ever got during the Blixa Bargeld era.

More Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds reviews by The Old Noise:

From Her to Eternity (1984)
The Firstborn Is Dead (1985)
Kicking Against the Pricks (1986)
Your Funeral... My Trial (1986)
Tender Prey (1988)
The Good Son (1990)
Henry's Dream (1992)
Live Seeds (1993)
Let Love In (1994)
Murder Ballads (1996)
The Boatman's Call (1997)
No More Shall We Part (2001)
Nocturama (2003)
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008)
Push the Sky Away (2013)

R.E.M.—Chronic Town

R.E.M.—Chronic Town

Chronic Town—Oft-forgotten in the wake of Murmur (1983), R.E.M.'s American classic, is their actual debut record, Chronic Town. Technically, their first recorded and distributed item was "Radio Free Europe"/"Sitting Still" (one of only eight recordings released on independent label Hib-Tone), featuring a frenzied version of the former; both songs would later appear on Murmur, rerecorded. Before the single, even, R.E.M. was turning heads in their native Athens, Georgia. A concert review by William Barnes dated May 7th, 1980 for The Red & Black, University of Georgia's student newspaper, stated that in the band's third-ever concert, the set list included Johnny Kidd & the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over," "Secret Agent Man" (theme from Danger Man), and Paul Revere & the Raiders or the Monkees' "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone," while their "original material was even more amazing ... They switched tracks from funky R&B to pulsating reggae with an ease and speed that belied their short history."

R.E.M.'s members, both individually and collectively, have been known to have wide-ranging influences. Their B-sides (collected later for Dead Letter Office [1987], the CD release of which includes Chronic Town) showed eclectic stylistic origins: the Velvet Underground, Aerosmith, Roger Miller, and fellow Athens natives Pylon. Rather than put this sort of originals-plus-covers mix to their EP, however, they submitted five idiosyncratic pieces that did not sound quite like anything that came before it. At the same time, it all has an archetypal familiarity that's hard to pin down. "Wolves, Lower," which was also the band's first music video, is typical of this. Lead singer Michael Stipe inverts and plays with idioms ("put wolves out the door" rather than "wolf at the door") in an interpretive manner that would become his hallmark for the rest of the band's career. "Gardening at Night," the EP's only major-key song, as explained by drummer Bill Berry (liner notes of And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S Years 1982–1987) was written for this reason: "We were driving at night after a show ... One of my three passengers aimed a directive at me. Rather than inform me of his desire to evacuate his bladder, he instead suggested that I pull over so that he might engage in the task of roadside 'night gardening.'"

"Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)," a strange, vestigial yarn, repeats the line, "don't get caught," from "Wolves, Lower," which establishes a theme of secrecy, combined with fragments of rural imagery. That song also originates the names of the album and its sides ("Chronic Town" and "Poster Torn"); the "Poster Torn" side begins with "1,000,000," conjuring near-Lovecraft visions of ancientness and esoteric threats ("Secluded in a marker stone/Not only deadlier, but smarter too ... All along the tomb, secret in the ruin ... I could live a million years"). "Stumble" reads like a journal pastiche, evoking small-town sensibilities and the confusion of youth.

Although it was not quite at the level of the records to follow, Chronic Town showcased four musicians with an uncanny sense of what it takes to make music as a band. Its songs are marginally too slight to be considered classics, but it was leagues ahead of what most bands of the time were doing, even established ones. Its force of personality and inspiration make it a fresh listen even years after the band's retirement.