Tag: British rock

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Clientele “Music for the age of miracles”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Clientele
Album Title: Music for the age of miracles
Year released: 2017
Details: standard black vinyl

The skinny: Returning back to my series, spinning all of The Clientele’s long players from my collection, I thought it pertinent to quote part of the post (with some updates) I wrote when I shared the band’s sixth studio album as my favourite from 2017. “When I purchased [this standard black copy of the album] from my local record store Compact Music, Tyler, my favourite vinyl pusher*, noted the album with a grin and said it was a good one. He used all the usual adjectives dragged out when describing their music, but assured me that when that “hazy, epic tune backing a spoken word monologue” (“The museum of fog”) came on, he said to himself, “oh yeah… these guys”. And he nodded slowly in a way that suggested he was hearing the song again in his head at that very moment. When I put on “Music for the age of miracles” for my own first listen, it didn’t disappoint at all. It was like returning home and sitting in your favourite comfy chair and watching the greatest movie you’ve never seen before but with all your favourite actors and characters. Familiar yet mind blowing and new.”

Standout track: “Lunar days”

*Compact Music used to have two locations Ottawa. The location I purchased this record at in 2017 was on Bank street, sadly, now closed down and Trevor has moved on to other pursuits.

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Tunes

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #77 Morrissey “Interesting drug” (1989)

<< #78    |    #76 >>

Song #77 on my Eighties’ best 100 list is Morrissey’s fourth solo single, “Interesting drug”.

Stephen Patrick Morrissey was quick in releasing his first solo album, “Viva hate”, less than a year after the dissolution of The Smiths. “Interesting drug” was released the following year in 1989 as a non-album single, though it would be included on the 1990 compilation “Bona drag”. The song features three former members of The Smiths (Rourke, Joyce, and Gannon) as Morrissey’s backing band, as well as the lovely, inimitable backing vocals of Kirsty MacColl*.

I’m near certain that “Interesting drug” was my introduction to Morrissey as a solo artist. It was track number two on a mixed tape (simply titled “Mixed tape”) that my friend Elliott made for me a very long time ago, a friend whom I haven’t seen or heard from in years, but who played an important part in my discovering my own personal musical tastes during my teen years**. I still have said mixed tape packed away in a shoebox in my basement, and though it hasn’t been played in decades, and likely wouldn’t play even if I could find a tape deck to play it on, I doubt very much that I could bring myself to part with it, like the other tapes in that box.

The song, notwithstanding the nostalgia piece, is one of my all-time favourite Morrissey tunes. Likely because it is also one of his more upbeat songs, the music, I mean, not the lyrical subject matter. “Interesting drug” sounds like it could have been a late Smiths track, given the jangly guitars, though the drumming is a bit heavier handed and funkier than most songs by that earlier band. It jumps and cavorts, getting deep under your skin and crawling up and down your spine, while Mr. Morrissey warbles and croons, giving it to the right. He’s defending the use of drugs for release and accusing the conservative government of the day of clamping down on drug use as a means of control.

It’s definitely an… interesting point of view. I didn’t know any of this back in the day but I did appreciate the anti-establishment sentiment. And of course, it had a great beat and I could dance to it.

 

*Spoiler alert: Despite not having her own song on this list, MacColl will likely get a couple more mentions in relation to other songs.

**Indeed, Elliott’s name has appeared a few times on these pages over the years and likely will again.

Original Eighties best 100 position: 80

Favourite lyric: “On a government scheme / Designed to kill your dream ” Does this really need a comment?

Where are they now?: Morrissey is still performing and making music but unfortunately, his career has been sidetracked by controversy of late, much of it of his own making. He just last week announced the upcoming release of a fourteenth studio album, his first since 2020.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Clientele “Bonfires on the heath”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Clientele
Album Title: Bonfires on the heath
Year released: 2009
Year reissued: 2017
Details: standard black vinyl

The skinny: Happy new year everyone! I’m starting off my blogging year by returning to the series I started back in November, sharing the copies in my vinyl collection of The Clientele’s LPs. Originally released in 2009, “Bonfires on the heath” was the London-based dream pop quartet’s 5th studio album. It continued moseying on down the beautiful road they’d been thus far paving, mixing jangly atmospherics with hazy, technicolour psychedelics. I purchased this bare-bones Merge records reissue back in 2017 from Amazon’s UK platform*, a few weeks after I ordered the 10th anniversary reissue of The Clientele’s previous album. “Bonfires” is a total mood record, one that I am always ready to face.

Standout track: “Bonfires on the heath”

*Something I was doing with regularity back in those days because they had access to records more in line with my tastes and it was still relatively affordable, even with the shipping across the ocean and the exchange rate.