CROOKED
MILE (LP)
ALTERNATIVE REVIEWS
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CROOKED
MILE (LP) |
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is a place on the site for alternative reviews, which with a bit of luck
will be better than mine. Please send in your reviews- the more the merrier. |
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This
review was written by Jeff Whiteaker. Many other reviews of his (composed
while whiling away his time in a 'dead-end job') can be found on the Amazon
website under the name of 'Thoutah'. Of course one of the more serious flaws to this theory was that with Johnny Marr being one of the most brilliant and versatile songwriters/guitarists of his generation (and possibly the entire history of rock), the Smiths didn't need to be glossed up for radio acceptance. Plus, at this point bands like R.E.M. and the Church were arguably in the process of losing what made them unique in the first place, coming up with radio-friendly hits, but by this point failing to make albums of any real lasting import. But what's truly criminal here is the painfully poor judgement certain labels exercised when trying to replicate this formula with their own bands. Two bands that come readily to mind here are Microdisney and the Go-Betweens. (Lloyd Cole and the Commotions' "Easy Pieces" is another overproduced case in point, as is Prefab Sprout's "Langley Park to Memphis," and Aztec Camera's "Love." Hell, even the Fall's 1988 "Frenz Experiment" was pretty damn slick). By 1987, both bands had gradually built a devoted cult following, playing genuine, heartfelt, stunningly original, beautifully melodic pop songs, releasing albums that were critically praised for their tremendous depth and sophistication, yet commercially ignored for more or less the same reasons. Both the Go-Betweens and Microdisney seemed potentially on the brink of something bigger at this point, and both made fatal blind stabs at chart acceptance with their respective '87 releases "Tallulah" and "Crooked Mile." The end result was both bands greatly compromised their unique, distinctive visions to have a go at the charts, and we ended up with albums that only hinted at their past glories, not to mention records that failed to get anywhere near the damn charts in the first place. For me personally, both "Crooked Mile" and "Tallulah" left a funny taste in my mouth upon initial listens, yet they each still had something to offer (proof that even glossy, ill-advised productions couldn't completely hamper either band's well-established brilliance). But after repeated listens, I was able to make peace with the flaws, look past them, and hear what the sterile, icky gloss couldn't completely mask. But, cutting to the subject of this review, for all its flaws, "Crooked Mile" is still a phenomenal record, and although it may not be the best place to start, it still has more than enough going for it to warrant attention. But I can't emphasize enough how important it is to NOT go into "Crooked Mile" without first possessing some knowledge of what previous Microdisney albums sound like. In case I haven't already made it abundantly clear, my main issue with "Crooked Mile" is its dreadfully slick and colorless production. Eschewing the subtlety that made their earlier stuff so distinctive, "Crooked Mile" shows the sound being streamlined in a big way. Sean O'Hagan's guitar is no longer the focal point in the arrangements, and Cathal's smooth, atmospheric Brian Wilson-inspired keyboards are no longer filling out the sound. Instead, O'Hagan's guitar takes a back seat, noticeably downplaying his richly melodic tendencies in favor of a more accessible, traditional style, often simply giving the songs just enough of what they need to get by. Sometimes this works fine, but it's still frustrating to notice the lack of melody. And at this point Cathal was no longer playing the keyboards, that duty having gone to newcomer James Compton. The chords Compton plays aren't radically different from what we'd come to expect, but it's the garish, plastic-y synth sounds employed here that seriously help to sabotage the record. Check out "And He Descended into Hell," "Angels," or "Our Children," and notice how hopelessly 1987 the stuff sounds. And I'm really not sure who to blame; was producer Lenny Kaye on strict orders from Virgin to milk some "hits" out of these boys, insisting that these were the "now" sounds that just had to be used? Or were Microdisney already dabbling in this grotesque realm, bent on using tacky Thomas Dolby sounding synth settings to achieve world domination? Even Cathal's voice sounds like it's been re-shaped for mass consumption. With his thick Irish brogue mysteriously absent, he sings much of the material in a higher register, which sounds more accessible than the lower register crooning on stuff like "Loftholdingswood" or "Before Famine." Not that this is a bad thing; I'm right there with John Peel when he says he could listen to Cathal sing the phonebook. It's just that it does sound like it'd be easier on the ears for the casual, top 40 radio listener, so perhaps this may have been a calculated shift in the sound. Like something that, to the untrained ear, could potentially sit comfortably next to Bruce Hornsby or something. Despite all these depressing production issues, many songs do manage to have a more straight-forward, sometimes more charged feel than previous work. With less emphasis on O'Hagan's playing, the tunes rely more on the basic, underlying chord progressions, as well as the sheer energy and rhythmic thrust of the band. And this brings up an important point: the band is actually playing extremely well here. Throughout they manage to exude a good amount of energy, especially drummer Tom Fenner, who's pounding the drums in ways one wouldn't think possible going off of "Clock." So, you won't find anything here like the atmospheric dreaminess of stuff like "Moon" or "Dreaming Drains," or the weak in the knees melodicism of "Dolly" or "Liberal Love." But the newfound sense of energy is quite compelling. And the album does contain a number of should-be classics, like the incredibly well-written, hook-filled standout "Bullwhip Road," or the soul-inflected "Give Me All Your Clothes," the gorgeous "Rack," and the lilting "And He Descended into Hell," and the beautiful and hilarious closer "People Just Want to Dream," to name a few. But in the end, regardless of how much money is thrown at them, Microdisney could never in a million years sit up at the top of the charts with the big boys. The main reason, of course, being Cathal's increasingly unrelenting, caustic wit, his insightful, poetic and perceptive observations about the world around him, and his passionate fits of rage. Perhaps frustrated with so many people just not getting his lyrics, or maybe feeling the need to pick up the slack left by the overly compromised production, it seems Cathal's writing here is more direct. Still every bit as poetic and profound, but the anger seems more overt, the irony and sarcasm more prevalent, with lines that may initially seem a bit easier to grasp for those who don't want to think too much. One can't help but remain in total awe at the conviction with which Cathal belts out lines like "When the daily parade of the trouble you've made gets you down/Just consider the fate of the wide open space from town to town" over a catchy, uplifting pop melody in "Town to Town" (a song about yuppie indifference to war's aftermath). Other songs are just brimming with sarcasm, painting spot-on portraits of some truly grotesque people that most of us have had the misfortune of encountering. "Give Me All Your Clothes" (an attack on yuppie art student types) in particular, contains some milk-out-of-the-nose funny, acutely observant lines, like "Art student dressed in chains/Yankee pawn Wiemar fashion self-hate Berlin/Disapproval pushes out your chin/I am your brother though I'm living in sin…. Come and visit my exotic home/Got Fleetwood Mac on the stereo/Take lot's of acid, have some altar wine/Please understand me and just one more thing/Won't you give me all of your clothes…" "Rack," unquestionably one of the album's highlights, is a passionate rant that paints a depressing portrait of an Aids patient grappling with society's treatment of him. Sung over weak-in-the-knees beautiful music, Cathal runs through the grim realities of the situation, with lines like "I must not do this thing/I'll wreck my social life/They'll disinfect my chair and/Claim some uncivil rights/They'll say you son of a gun/Old lovers pleading/Why?", and later "The doctor is a fool/He's just a callous snob/He spent 15 years in a Jesuit school/And now he's not fit for any job/He just sneers and he drives a big car/Is this my savior?" Probing much deeper than the usual, simplistic "make the public aware" angle, the song works on several levels, examining various scenarios where people exploit those infected with the disease for their own personal or political gain. "And He Descended into Hell" deals with evicting the poor, something which anyone encountering gentrification in any given city can relate to. "Just pack your things and go/This room is now on show/That's the reason he descended into hell/Where the cry babies come out from padded cells/And the human race just turned and said farewell/On the morning he descended into hell". A bit later, Cathal then reminds us that any valid frustration at the injustice of the situation will be ignored: "When screaming in the street/Use a disco beat/Or your audience will flee/And you'll be all alone." He then ends the song brilliantly with "So there it is, complete/Say what you want but at least I know who I am/And I'm gonna leave you now, so you can go knee jerk, knee jerk, knee jerk, knee jerk…" What
I'm getting at here is that despite the fact that every attempt was made
to create a unit-shifting, radio-ready product, the essence of Microdisney
couldn't be entirely erased. You've still got beautiful melodies lurking
beneath the effluvia. And perhaps more significantly, Cathal's lyrics
leave no punches pulled, and he actually sheds some of the more subtle
aspects of his writing to make certain people cannot ignore what he's
saying. So you've got a band with a message, but didn't most bands at
least pretend to have messages back in the 80s? Remember, before 90s indie-rock-slacker-cool
promoted brain-rot in the fashion conscious college kids of the West?
Well, yeah, but unlike the Stings, Bonos, and Geldoffs, Cathal understood
quite clearly the mundane and bleak everyday realities, conflating personal
struggles with the broader global struggle, with an irony, conviction,
anger, and eye for detail that remains unrivaled to this day. That anyone
at Virgin thought the mainstream listening public was ready for this was
obviously a gross miscalculation; obviously someone wouldn't be fetching
that promotion he was banking on, instead coming home to his wife, slouching
in utter defeat, realizing he'd have to hold off on that Porsche for another
year. Silly man, you honestly thought you were gonna make some money off
this band??? Well, perhaps we'll get it right with the next one. Maybe
I'm being too cynical, but it's like when Robert Forster said recently
when looking back on the Go-Between's, struggle during the 80s "We
were too good for the bloody charts". Microdisney were simply too
deep for a public that normally subsists on machine-generated flotsam.
In hindsight, it'd have been much better had they steered clear of the
majors, and they perhaps might have enjoyed greater cult success, similar
to that which prompted the Go-Betweens to reunite a few years back. But
when faced with the prospect of actually living comfortably off the music
you make, not to mention being given an infinitely more visible and public
platform from which to scream your polemical tirades at an unsuspecting
public, it's all too easy to see how anyone, and I mean anyone, could
give in to the temptation. |