Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Associates
Sulk
(WEA, 1982)
Luxurious sound overload from braw ’80s pop individualists.
In the annals of great Top Of The Pops appearances, a big hand should go to the Associates’ August 1982 performance of 18 Carat Love Affair (always a part of this LP really, and finally appended with the 2000 CD reissue). While unique singer Billy MacKenzie emotes and teases the dilemmas of carrying on a secret, possibly gay affair, instrumentalist Alan Rankine strums a guitar made of chocolate, which he eventually gives to the audience to chomp on. Par for the course for this Dundee group, who once opined that the best way to make an album was to “start with a climax and then go further”. As Sulk indubitably does; mixing soul, film music, disco, Burt Bacharach and a post-punk sensibility, its sound is one of European psychedelic pop, not American rock’n’roll. With unorthodox song structures that scorn verse-chorus-verse and every instrument sonically manipulated with overdubs run wild, it seems at first like an album playing in reverse, starting with an instrumental, and following with an experimental sequence that includes the languid, intoxicated No, where spy film moodiness meets impending hysteria in some undersea cavern. The strangeness shifts with the old-money side two, which includes chart hits of heightened sensuality Party Fears Two and Club Country. Biographer Tom Doyle calls these pop moments “kaleidoscopic”, and it is like they’re dazzlingly refracted through stained glass; similarly, MacKenzie’s operatic voice is an astonishing instrument – as near as dammit black and female when they cover Diana Ross’s Love Hangover (again, a single added to the reissue). The duo would split the same year, and Billy’s story would end tragically when he killed himself in January 1997, which gives this LP’s curiously Smiths-like take on the infamous “Hungarian suicide song” Gloomy Sunday sombre extra resonance when listening back. But hear Sulk to see him in all his glorious, unique, out-to-lunch vitality.
Ian Harrison
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 20/01/2009
Further Listening
Associates – Fourth Drawer Down (Situation 2, 1981)
ABC – The Lexicon of Love (Neutron, 1982)
Kate Bush – Hounds Of Love (EMI, 1985)
Previous Disc of the day
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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Comments
Comment on this post
"Smiths-like take..." for fksake there was no such thing at the time. Try not to confuse future readers with this trite reading of such an important album. Still nener read a decent review even from a 'proper' journo.
Posted by Anonymous at 2:35 PM GMT 24/08/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
"Sulk" is a true one off. Outside of Tim Buckley, there has
never been a more astonishing male vocalist than the late great Billy MacKenzie. The earlier albums hinted at an
index of possibilities, but it all came to fruition in "Sulk".
It sounded truly alien in 1982, and now nearly thirty years
later with the ghastly drivel promoted by the abhorrent
Simon Cowell, it sounds otherwordly now. It certainly
would not be a chart success in today's bland pop market.
Along with Buckley's "Jungle Fire", "Skipping" is a rare
example of what the human voice is capable of. Billy is speaking in tongues on this astonishing track and not surprisingly, he never matched it again.
It is very hard to listen to his eerie version of Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday", with the knowledge that he would be eventually overtaken by the darkness expressed in the song. But in 1982, there was no hint of this, just an
explosion of utter joy.
"Sulk" remains a class act.
Posted by Rob J at 10:58 AM GMT 06/11/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
"Sulk" is a true one off. Outside of Tim Buckley, there has
never been a more astonishing male vocalist than the late great Billy MacKenzie. The earlier albums hinted at an
index of possibilities, but it all came to fruition in "Sulk".
It sounded truly alien in 1982, and now nearly thirty years
later with the ghastly drivel promoted by the abhorrent
Simon Cowell, it sounds otherwordly now. It certainly
would not be a chart success in today's bland pop market.
Along with Buckley's "Jungle Fire", "Skipping" is a rare
example of what the human voice is capable of. Billy is speaking in tongues on this astonishing track and not surprisingly, he never matched it again.
It is very hard to listen to his eerie version of Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday", with the knowledge that he would be eventually overtaken by the darkness expressed in the song. But in 1982, there was no hint of this, just an
explosion of utter joy.
"Sulk" remains a class act.
Posted by Rob J at 11:03 AM GMT 06/11/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Comment on this post