Tag: 1992

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love (revisited): Barenaked Ladies “Gordon”

(I started my Vinyl Love posts pretty much right after the launch of this blog to share photos of my growing vinyl collection. Over time, the photos have improved and the explanations have grown. And looking back at a handful of the original posts in this series, I found myself wanting to re-do some of them so that the posts are more worthy of those great albums. So that’s what I’ll be doing every once in a while, including today…)

Artist: Barenaked Ladies
Album Title: Gordon
Year released: 1992
Year reissued: 2017
Details: Black vinyl, 2 x LP, 180 gram Gatefold sleeve, 25th anniversary edition

The skinny: My original ‘Vinyl Love’ gallery on this record was posted back in November three years ago. In that piece, I blamed my pre-ordering of it during the prior summer on my friend Patrick, who is a pretty big fan of the Ladies and had alerted me to its reissue. I think it funny now that I had actually had to think about purchasing it. “Gordon” was a pretty big deal, especially in Southern Ontario, when it was released back in 1992. The rest of the world wouldn’t officially catch on to the four-piece from Scarborough until a few years later and by that point, I (and a lot of their other early diehard fans) had moved on. This debut, however, remains a classic and I had forgotten how great it was until I received this 25th anniversary reissue on two 180-gram discs in the mail. I feel like I’ve listen to these 15 songs more in the last three years than I had in the previous two decades. And yeah, I still know every word to every song. Every word. Every song. Classic.

Standout track: “Brian Wilson”

P.S. Those of you who are aficionados of early 1990s Canadian alt-rock might appreciate a photo I am planning on posting to my Instagram account tomorrow. Watch out for it.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1992: #3 R.E.M. “Nightswimming”

<< #4    |    #2 >>

“Automatic for the people”.

It was indisputably R.E.M.’s finest hour and I’m not just talking commercially. Sure, the album spawned six singles and went gold and platinum for sales in pretty much every country. However, it was also universally acclaimed. And for very good reason: There’s not a single bad track on the album.

For me, though, and as I mentioned back when I wrote about “Sweetness follows” when it came in at the number twenty spot on this very list, it’s the less obvious tracks, not the hit singles, that have become my favourites on this album. And yes, I know. “Nightswimming” was actually released as a single but I didn’t actually know that until about three years ago when I wrote the piece counting down my top five favourite R.E.M. tunes on which this song appears at the number two spot. I am thinking that the single might not have gotten a wide release here in North America because it didn’t make the charts here, only placing in England and Australia, and a track this great should definitely have placed, given the chance.

It was originally recorded as a demo for “Out of time” but was used instead for the following album. The original recording had Michael Stipe singing over top Mike Mills’ piano and was augmented by a string arrangement put together by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, along with a forlorn oboe to seal the deal. Mills’s piano doesn’t meander or dance or tiptoe. Instead, it eddies in place, like a whirlpool to get caught in, a bit of danger that might be heightened if the swimming hole was ventured upon at night.

“Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago”

The penultimate track on “Automatic for the people” is a quiet wonder, Mills and Stipe without Buck and Berry. A song about memories and remembering. A track that brings back many memories. Many of them driving in a car at night. In the city. On a backroad. Memories that are mine and memories that aren’t mine. But could be.

“Nightswimming, remembering that night
September’s coming soon
I’m pining for the moon”

There’s a sadness in Stipe’s lyrics and in his plaintive voice. Perhaps there’s regret in those memories, a sentiment never expressed, a kiss never stolen, a nakedness needlessly covered up. Yet there’s also the heavy weight of nostalgia, the excitement of youth lost forever. It’s something one can never forget. And never should.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1992 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1992: #4 Catherine Wheel “Black metallic”

<< #5    |    #3 >>

It’s kind of funny now seeing the term bandied about and used (and perhaps misused) to describe a lot of today’s bands and indeed, a lot bands describing themselves using the word and carrying the banner for ‘shoegaze’. Especially since, back in the day when it was coined, it was used with such derision and the bands affiliated with the sound did their best to distance themselves from it.

Catherine Wheel was one of these bands that hated the term. And yet their debut album, “Ferment”, was a textbook case in the sound – the effects pedals, the hazy and droning guitars, the uncertain vocals buried deep in the mix – and the advance single, the seven plus minute, “Black metallic”, has been called by many to be the “Like a hurricane” or “Stairway to Heaven” of the genre.

Catherine Wheel was formed in 1990 by guitarist Brian Futter, bassist Dave Hawes, drummer Neil Sims, and frontman Rob Dickinson*. They released a couple of shoegaze-informed EPs before signing to Fontana Records and re-recorded a bunch of tracks from those EPs to form the basis of “Ferment”. However, if you listen to the other four of their albums after the debut, you can hear Catherine Wheel slowly but surely beating the shoegaze out of their music. With each successive album, the alternative rock got a bit harder and more pedestrian and my own interest in them ebbed and flowed as they toyed with their sound. They did quite well in North America, though, a success outside of their native England that not many of the original shoegazers were able to achieve.

And it all started with this one, “Black metallic”, after its music video got picked up and was thrown into heavy rotation on MTV. The video was filmed using the 7” version and at just over four minutes, much shorter than the 12” version and the one that appears on “Ferment”. I prefer the longer version and I can’t imagine I’m alone with this opinion. It can almost be called a ballad and is definitely a love song. Or a falling-out-of-love song. The swoon-inducing line that is repeated throughout, comparing his lover’s skin to that of a car, could actually be Dickinson’s way of painting the love as gone cold.

“I’ve never seen you when you’re smiling
It really gets under my skin“

The reverb drenched guitar intro is quickly joined by a lazy beat and the chiming, swirling guitars. It all blends together like a dry ice fog, even in the quieter moments, where Dickinson’s vocals should be clear as day, they are still somehow obscured, the white noise, a figure in the room, a fifth player, a silent observer. These, of course, have their counterpoint and in the messy guitar rave outs and they are given plenty of room to breathe. The length of the song expands and exhales and yet still somehow doesn’t feel self-indulgent in the least. It’s beautiful and sleek, like the line of a fine muscle car and just as dangerous, when all revved up. Why don’t you take it out for a drive right now?

*Who some might be interested to know was the cousin of a certain Bruce Dickinson

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1992 list, click here.