As The Stone Roses’ debut is remastered and reissued, Matthew Horton and Ed Whatley reassess its place in rock’s firmament.
It was 20 years ago today… well, give or take. The August reissue of The Stone Roses’ debut album is at least a few months late. I distinctly remember buying it in May 1989, a hot handful of three in a Milton Keynes record store. The other two were Madonna’s Like A Prayer and Soul II Soul’s Club Classics Vol. One, two more albums that would benefit from a box set of demos, heftier bass, 200gsm booklets, hand-carved USB sticks and bronze busts of the artists.
Still, this reissue’s delay at least has some pertinence. Any perception of The Stone Roses is tainted by procrastination, the gruesome four-year gestation of Second Coming surely grist to the debut’s hype mill. Would that debut have grabbed classic status if we hadn’t had half a decade to whip up its legend? Um, yeah.
From I Wanna Be Adored’s bone-dry fuck you to the freewheeling baggy freakout of I Am The Resurrection’s funkadelic coda, The Stone Roses is a swaggering, monkey-walking, ecstacy-faced bullet of a record. That bullet buried itself in the limpid shoulderblades of Smiths copyists scrabbling about for some kind of position in the late-80s indie scene, freeing the Roses to remodel the landscape in their own image. It’s not their fault this meant siring Oasis.
Revisit She Bangs The Drums to hear how C86 jangle can carry a bit of muscle, Waterfall for psychedelia’s coyest dance shuffle, (Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister to believe The Byrds can glide again. Lazy John Squire spirals let Shoot You Down coast deceptively, Reni and Mani flex and groove their way through the closer (warming up nicely), Ian Brown gets enough studio time to pretty up his drone. Once no-hopers, the Roses had no right to sound so confident here, but let’s be thankful they didn’t care. Brass balls made this record golden.
MH
A 20-year anniversary can go two ways. A celebration of a beautiful beginning that heralded a whole load more happiness alongside the normal amounts of heartache and hackery most bands have to wade through. Or the other side of the coin - an opening moment so heads, shoulders, knees and toes above everything the participants have done since that it actually renders the album faintly depressing. A relationship that started off all late-night romance and quickly turned into bickering in the dairy aisle in Tesco.
This is a quicksilver record, delicate and effortless, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, with a fluttering hopefulness shot through. All the things you want.
But all it does is make you think of what followed. Spike Island birthing Oasis’ Wetherspoons Woodstocks. Independent music as something to be consumed rather than participated in. Ian Brown still grinding out dull-as-Tuesday “beats” and stoner wisdom (that he managed to sustain the Byrdsian beauty of something like Mersey Paradise is shocking, now). John Squire’s cod/mock/cock psychedelia in the Seahorses. Those sodding hats. Boys frugging at student discos. The Inspiral Carpets.
Maybe this is too harsh. Had they gone down the Lee Mavers route and made One Perfect Thing before hiding in a haze for 20 years, we might be remonstrating with them for wasting their talent. Maybe it really doesn’t matter what you do once you’ve done something this good. This is why we love records - whatever happens after, they keep the moment perfect.
Too awkward to end up in a mobile phone advert, but too
good to go unnoticed, Trembling Bells have made something unique with Carbeth.
Alex Neilson, a Scottish drummer/musician/clever sort (who has played with
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Alasdair Roberts) has pulled together a band to play
a tripped-out folk music which is more 2009 than the 1964 you’d assume if you
heard it down the hall. I’d have to know a hell of a lot more about British
folk music and the continuums of that world than I do to tell you who they
sound like without cheating and reading their Myspace page.
Songs start off sounding like a tumbledown mess, find their own logic then fall
back apart again. The band play broken-up and unobtrusive, or big, brazen,
rolling and tumbling. Lavinia Blackwell’s effortless folk-queen singing
reaching up for the highest points of the odd world Trembling Bells inhabit. Neilson
and Blackwell share the leads pretty evenly, his scratchy, Will Oldham at his
wildest vocals spitting out any number of intriguing lines and melodies. When
Blackwell sings Neilson’s bawdy lines like “I was knuckle deep in love with
you”; “She was writing a prescription on a rizla for my king-sized mistake” it
catches you off-guard, but like everything else on this record, makes its own
perfect sense.
Carbeth might be a few people’s favourite folky thing this year. It might
tumble into nowhere. Or it might be a big deal. But it won’t end up on a mobile
phone advert, and it could well make your day a fair bit better.
Asher Roth is the latest flavour of post-Kanye rapper. Not exactly conscious but not without a conscience, and almost certainly seen more killings on HBO box sets than on any slingin’ corner.
No shortage of ego (“Yes son, you should be worried/Actor, I’m rap’s Bill Murray” – big claim – have you seen Groundhog Day?), no shortage of friends (the mixtape is presented by southern rap mixtape doyens DJ Drama and Don Cannon) and no shortage of lines (“You know the world’s gone mad when blacks wear plaid and Maria has married Nick Cannon”). He’s currently floating about the top 40 with his one hit wacky wonder/ticket to the big time I Love College.
He could only be releasing this record now, in an American music scene which seems to be constantly folding in on itself via the internet, where everything is leaked MP3s, PR-driven drama for an oscillating landscape of quasi-celebs twittering and jibbering their way from party to studio to photoshoot to blog, upload, repeat ad nauseum. US rap beefs are now played out not with rhymes but with cringey YouTube insult posts from men who 10 years ago were ostensibly selling raw and pimping whores.
So, faced with the empty pointlessness of still engaging with the gangsta drivel lexicon from men as ensconsed in the blog/star system as the last generation of big rappers, the new breed’s show is about... nothing. Asher likes fit girls. Asher talks about “what does a rapper look like?” (an argument someone surely put to bed in the last 30 years – whatever it wants to). How he likes sex with fit girls. That he has a good side and a bad side. That religions are a bit silly, and maybe we ought to smoke weed instead. It’s not good enough. Using a format or art form that is populated with bad and juvenile ideas doesn’t mean you’re up to scratch just because you’re slightly smarter than most of the people doing it.
You need a team of smart kids writing lines to sustain this sort of scattergun parody of modern modes and mores – Family Guy or 30 Rock. One nice blond boy with a half-decent flow doesn’t cut it. Maybe he’s saving it up for his real album?
Eight years on from Bow Down To The Exit Sign, David Holmes has taken a break from movie work to record “solo” again.
Thematically and structurally, however, The Holy Pictures is a soundtrack in all but name. It's essentially a concept album which, although billed as a 40-minute paean to Holmes' Belfast roots, is steeped at least musically in the New York underground of the 70s. Gone is the swish funk of the Ocean's 11 series to be replaced by reverberating bass and gorgeous, fuzzy tunes. Suicide's Martin Rev co-writes the chiming I Heard Wonders and The Velvet Underground's Sunday Morning hangs heavy over Story Of The Ink. Holmes himself handles most of the vocals, revealing breathy Bobby Gillespie tones, but mournful instrumentals are the heart of a convincing record, particularly the gentle tribute to his parents, The Ballad Of Sarah And Jack.
After kicking
around the fringes of hip hop for some 10 years in the wake of minor solo hit
Legend Of A Cowgirl, Imani Coppola has teamed up with studio whiz Adam Pallin
to fashion an R&B/pop hybrid, stuffed with fat soul samples and girl-group
swing.
Recent
single The World Should Revolve Around Me sets the pace, all brassy Jackson 5 delirium and a
lyric that slides between bombastic and self-deprecating. The pair then pull
off the nifty feat of matching its catchy-as-a-fire chorus 10 times over in an avalanche
of likely smash hits, as Coppola lays down her family values in Go Hard Or Go
Home or sends Amy Winehouse packing with the glorious Cryin' For The Queen.
The
Stoop’s not just a feast of hooky joy. Quotable lines ping by at dizzying rate
– from SMS treachery on LOL ( “Next time check the safety’s on/Trigger-happy
fingers can expose a con”) to Liked You Better Before’s wry dissection of
relationship breakdown (“Now your new ringtone is the theme of the Wicked
Witch”) – with Coppola revelling in her decision to step out of the margins and
embrace pop music. Witty, sassy and sweetly tuneful, she deserves her moment in
the sun.
