Disc of the day
The Neil Cowley Trio - Loud... Louder... Stop!
Brit threesome's second LP serves up jazz for Radiohead fans.
Features Disc of the day
St Vitus Dance
Glypotheque
(Probe Plus, 2008)
Belfast combo return unannounced, go sardonic pop-folk.
Fate has decided; music fans will likely always know Noel Burke as the frontman of the Ian McCulloch-less formation of Echo & The Bunnymen (he later told Bunnysite Villiers Terrace that he was "practically dancing round the room" with happiness when his tenure ended). But before that he sang with Belfast's St Vitus Dance, whose smart, tuneful Love Me Love My Dogma came out in 1987. 21 years later and completely out of the blue, the follow-up arrived. A folkier listen than its predecessor, with bouzouki, accordion and mandolin augmenting the drums and guitars, it melodically articulates things that good-time rock is generally uncomfortable with: there's failure, ageing, ambivalence about the past and irritation with stupefying popular culture and positive go-getter types (the narrator of the languorous The Stakeholder's Lament speaks for millions when he says "I'm just a naysayer / I'm not a team player"), with Burke sounding forbearing and slightly pained like a grumpier Roddy Frame. There are also just-out-of-shot feelings of doom, as on closer Longfinger, which begins as an Ennio Morricone pastiche and ends like Strangeways-era Smiths. Like bigger histories, rock'n'roll can be a triumphant story when written by the winners, but this marginalia's still worth investigation. The title, incidentally, is an in-joke invented to mean a disco for the sheep-minded.
Ian Harrison
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 09/03/2010
Further Listening
St Vitus Dance - Love Me Love My Dogma (1987)
Echo & The Bunnymen - Reverberation (WEA, 1990)
The Beautiful South - 0898 (GO! Discs, 1992)
Previous Disc of the day
-
The Neil Cowley Trio - Loud... Louder... Stop!
Brit threesome's second LP serves up jazz for Radiohead fans.
6:00 AM GMT 02/09/2010
-
Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills
Soulful, jam-filled rave-up, not as revered as it should be, say we.
6:00 AM GMT 01/09/2010
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Boscoe - Boscoe
It came from the South Side of Chicago. And it was baaaaad, reckons MOJO messageboarder.
6:00 AM GMT 31/08/2010
-
Gong - 2032
Messrs Hillage and Allen's first studio collaboration under the Gong banner since 1974...
6:00 AM GMT 30/08/2010
-
Gang Of Four - Entertainment!
"Remember Lot's wife. Renounce all sin and vice."
6:00 AM GMT 18/08/2010
-
Fotheringay - Fotheringay 2
Lost album from British folk collective portrays an artist in transition.
6:00 AM GMT 16/08/2010
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