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Liam Carey reviews
V o l u m e # 2 1 9 F e b r u a r y 2 0 0 3
YOU DANCE TO DISCO AND YOU DON’T LIKE ROCK In 1986, Pet Shop Boys released Disco, a budget-priced collection featuring extended mixes of their four hits up to that point plus a couple of B-sides. Though now a commonplace practice, at the time it was quite an innovative move. Eight years later Disco 2 repeated the trick, but it wasn’t as successful in either commercial or artistic terms. Disco 3 differs slightly to its predecessors by having no fewer than five unreleased songs among its ten club-oriented tracks, and the presence of just two A-sides (in remixed form, naturally) actually positions Disco 3 closer to the duo’s 1988 album Introspective.
Unfortunately, EMI have royally messed up on the manufacturing front. Much to the annoyance of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, not to mention their loyal fanbase, initial UK copies not only included a fault 2 minutes and 17 seconds into the opening track but the barcode proved troublesome with many stores unable to register a sale. The result was a disappointing #36 entry on the chart, and a lot of extra work for EMI’s customer service department who, to their credit, have acted quickly to offer replacement discs free of charge. If your copy is affected, send an email to customer.services@emimusic.com
Next up for the Boys looks likely to be a Greatest Hits collection, sometime in late 2003 or early 2004. Whether it will pick up where 1991’s Discography left off, or reprises many of their earliest (and biggest) singles in its tracklisting, is unclear at the moment.
WORD UP
Just when it seemed there was no respite from the music press’ inexorable decline into sensationalist, arrogant, and loutish irrelevance, along comes Word. Hardly the most arresting of names, perhaps, but delve a little deeper and all becomes clear.
Brought to us by the people who originally changed the face of music publishing when they launched Q in September 1986, namely Mark Ellen and David Hepworth (of Whistle Test fame), Word is a much-needed breath of sanity and decency in a depressing, homogenised market. For those disillusioned and ostracised by Q’s steady repositioning as a cross between the NME and a lad’s mag, Word harks back to that tome’s refreshingly literate, honest and open-minded early years.
Discerning but not po-faced, contemporary without needing to compete for dubious “exclusives” and get in first with news of tomorrow’s big thing before yesterday has even happened, this is a magazine worth its salt. Many names familiar to erstwhile Q readers, such as Paul Du Noyer, Andrew Collins and Miranda Sawyer to name just three, are reunited, begging the question of where these people have been for the last few years, and how long messrs Ellen and Hepworth might have been trying to get Word off the ground.
Ellen, in his inspirational opening mission statement (itself a far cry from the hyperbolic, self-serving bullshit of most Editorials), alludes to the difficulties in launching an uncompromising, old-fashioned magazine in terms of limited advertising and funding potential. One can only hope that nefarious market forces don’t force Word to abandon its unique approach. Word magazine is published on the first Thursday of each month, with Issue #1 now on the shelves.
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
Reduced to one founding member, Robert Del Naja aka 3D, Massive Attack have laboured over their fourth studio album for what seems an eternity. Finally, it’s here. 100th Window is a claustrophobic, sonically intense record, light on genuine tunes or hooks but heavy on atmosphere and multi-layered rhythms. Exotic, eastern-tinged sounds dominate, especially on the first single Special Cases (out next week) which features a mesmerising guest vocal from Sinead O’Connor.
Nine songs clocking in at an average of more than 7 minutes each is perhaps excessive, with a “hidden” track contributing to the 71-minute running time. Reviews have been mixed, but as their first new material in almost five years 100th Window unsurprisingly debuted at #1 in the UK.
R.E.M.EMBER US
The forthcoming Greatest Hits from R.E.M. meanwhile, due this autumn, will definitely concern itself with the band’s Warner Brothers catalogue. So that’s everything from Green (1988) through to Reveal (2001), taking in the albums that sent their stock into the stratosphere, namely 1991’s Out Of Time and the following year’s multi-million selling Automatic For The People. A brand new album – possibly even two, according to guitarist Peter Buck – will follow, tentatively scheduled for 2004.
HAIL MARY
The Smashing Pumpkins called it a day in 2001, signing off with the Rotten Apples compilation. Mercurial mainman Billy Corgan has now resurfaced with a new band, Zwan, on a new label, Reprise. Their album Mary Star Of The Sea is just out, full of lovely alternative rock often reminiscent of Corgan’s former group at their most persuasive. A single, Honestly, is officially released in the UK next Monday, although import copies have already been filtering through in enough quantities to score a chart position in the lower reaches of the Top 200.
WE LOVE THE 80S, PART DEUX
The last column highlighted a current trend for Eurotrance makeovers of songs from the 1980s. In fact, the full extent of this onslaught is greater than I previously mentioned, with three other recent cover versions in an identical vein also doing the rounds. Flip & Fill‘s I Wanna Dance With Somebody causes minimal damage to the Whitney Houston classic (all things being relative, of course), but the less said about Soda Club‘s Heaven Is A Place On Earth the better. There ought to be a law against these things. Likewise Shake B4 Use‘s ruination of Addicted To Love and Novaspace‘s completely unnecessary update of Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time, which has already been covered pathetically in the last 12 months.
FUTURE SOUNDS
The best music on the horizon:
- TURIN BRAKES – ETHER SONG: Second set from Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian, following on from 2001’s slow burner The Optimist.
- DANIEL LANOIS – SHINE: First solo album in 10 years from the enigmatic French-Canadian known mainly for his work as producer for U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel and Robbie Robertson.
Page Content copyright © Liam Carey, 2003.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.