Young Marble Giants - Disc of the day

Young Marble Giants
Colossal Youth

(Rough Trade, 1980; reissued on Domino, 2007)

Enigmatic Cardiff trio’s post-punk benchmark. Still exquisite after all these years.

Ground-breaking records rarely retain their shock value; after all, that ground can never be re-broken. So what is it about Young Marble Giants’ Colossal Youth? Despite the post-punk tics (Phil Moxham’s “funk” bass, brother Stuart’s sour, clipped guitar) and the girlgroup echoes of Alison Statton’s thin, dear-diary vocals, it’s a record without genre, arguably outstripping The Slits in its disdain for rock structures or Wire in the way the songs appear to exhaust their ideas then stop dead, perfectly sated. The absence of drums creates portentous spaces, a lo-fi organ adds unexpected beauty. Meanwhile, the songs do the alienation thing without a nano-gramme of melodrama. As the title track has it: “If you think the world is / A clutter of existence / Falling through the air / With minimal resistance / You could be right, how would I know?” Genius only enhanced by Domino’s 3-CD reissue: 11 quid for the lot, with The Final Day single, the instrumental Testcard EP, the Salad Days outtakes ’n’ demos album and Peel Sessions mini thrown in. For once quite literally, cheap at twice the price.

Danny Eccleston

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 17/07/2008