Disc of the day
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
Features Disc of the day
Shack
Waterpistol
(Marina, 1995)
Liverpool brothers pre-empt Britpop on ill-fated second album.
Losing the master tapes of a record in a studio fire must be galling, leaving the sole remaining DAT tape in the back of a hire car even more so. However, to finally retrieve said tape only to discover your label has just gone bust would see even the hardiest of bands crumble under the weight of their misfortune. Regrettably for Shack’s Mick and John Head this is precisely the fate suffered by their masterful Waterpistol – originally slated for release in 1991. Although the influence of Madchester is apparent in places (most notably on Sgt Major and Dragonfly) there’s a smoky haze lingering over Waterpistol, and a woozy, jazz-flecked lightness of touch that places it closer to the output of the Heads beloved Arthur Lee than the sounds then emanating from across the Pennines. Yet despite its debt to West Coast folk-rock and psychedelia, Shack’s second LP is very much a record rooted in the inner cities of a post-Thatcher Britain. Painting a picture that is almost Dickensian in its list of characters and reprobates – the trackies, wreck-head girlfriends and under-classes lost to heroin that populated the streets of the Heads’ native “Kenny” loiter on the corners of every song - Mick writes with an awareness that he’s drifting steadily towards his city’s murky underbelly, yet too enchanted by its damaged beauty and clouded by his own opiated romanticism he appears unable, or perhaps unwilling, to change course. Who knows, if Shack had been a little more fortunate we might have had more bands sounding like Love in the mid-‘90s and less like over-amplified versions of Herman’s Hermits.
Chris Catchpole
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 07/10/2008
Further Listening
Love – Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967)
Previous Disc of the day
-
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
6:00 AM GMT 20/11/2009
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Isley Brothers - The Brothers: Isley
The Cincinnati siblings bed into their heavy period.
6:00 AM GMT 18/11/2009
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Lee Morgan - Search For The New Land
The trumpeter's most soulful excursion entrances MOJO messageboarder.
6:00 AM GMT 16/11/2009
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