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Best tunes of 1991: #2 Chapterhouse “Mesmerise”

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“Pearl”, the standout single from Chapterhouse’s excellent debut album, “Whirlpool”, appeared earlier, at number 15 on this list, and now we have what is easily my favourite track by this band at number two.

Yes. “Mesmerise”. Let’s paint that picture.

Circa 1993 or 1994, the heaving dance floor is packed at the Dance Cave, the upstairs floor of one of Toronto’s more infamous concert venues, Lee’s Palace. The cheap $2-a-glass mystery draft has been flowing freely all night long. In the middle of the crowd, a tall, stoop shouldered, and ridiculously skinny young man is dancing to Adorable’s “Homeboy” or perhaps, Catherine Wheel’s “I want to touch you.” He is breaking a sweat under his extra large Wonder Stuff t-shirt and baggy green corduroys, requiring him to periodically remove his bucket hat to gather his shaggy thick brown hair, roughly the same shade as his long sideburns and goatee. His friend Tim, who is just back in town on break from Waterloo university, joins him on the floor, handing him a glass, his portion of the ‘next round’, just as the song ends and a new one begins with an unfamiliar, yet inviting piano melody. The young man hesitates a moment, should he stay or should he go, his friend definitely shows no sign of leaving the dance floor. Indeed, he has already started into his trademark sway, eyes sliding closed. So our protagonist finds the groove and starts moving, slipping easily in with the delicious beat, washes of synths, and hazy vocals. Two minutes in and he is in love. He wakes Tim with a nudge on the shoulder and yells the question in his ear above the din. “Who is this?” Tim responds but he is not sure he heard him quite right so he repeats it. “Chapterhouse?!” To which, Tim nods and continues dancing.

I can’t be certain now but I’m reasonably sure that this is as good an approximation as any as to how it went down. That skinny young man, realizing that “Mesmerise” didn’t appear on either of Chapterhouse’s full length albums thus far, because he had them both on CD, immediately went out on the hunt for the EP of the same name, finding it used at the long closed down Penguin Music. And yeah, I’ve still got it. It’s one of the few CDs I may never get rid of.

As an EP and single, “Mesmerise” bridged the chronological and philosophical gap between their first and only two albums, from the guitar-heavy shoegaze majesty of “Whirlpool” to the synth-driven dreamy dance of “Blood music”. This track shades heavy on both and is just so… damned… beautiful. Yes. “Mesmerise” is beautiful.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1991 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 1991: #3 Primal Scream “Loaded”

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“Just what is it that you want to do?”

“Well, we wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we wanna do
And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time
And that’s what we’re gonna do.”

These are the lines, sampled from the film “The wild angels”, that kickstart a revolution.

Prior to this song and the album on which it appears, Primal Scream were just another holdover from the C86 scene that was quickly losing steam. The only discerning difference being that they were led by the former drummer of The Jesus and Mary Chain. Bobby Gillespie and his group approached DJ Andrew Weatherall to remix one of the songs from their self-titled sophomore album, a relatively forgettable track called, “I’m losing more than I’ll ever have”. After two aborted attempts, he came up with what we now know as that hit single and dance floor anthem “Loaded”. Weatherall’s remix essentially remade Primal Scream into a bunch of neo-hippies in the acid house age and set a template for the album that would be “Screamadelica”.

The video for this single would be my introduction to the band. Like so many other songs on this list, I first saw it on CityLimits. But this was one I didn’t record myself but my friend Elliott had caught. We watched it together over and over again, our minds literally blown.

The track is the embodiment of bombast, throwing together sampled horn blares, big bass and drums, gospel choirs and slippery bass lines, piano flourishes and funky guitars and granola crunching bongos, and shaking it all up in a gigantic mixing bowl. Yet somehow it all works as a song for closing your eyes and letting loose, for wiggling and waggling your fingers in front of your eyes and losing yourself in the neon trails, for losing control of all your bodily functions and not caring in the least. A song to replay over and over again as you write incoherent words in a drunken frenzy.

Whoops. Did I just write those words out loud?

No matter. We just wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1991 list, click here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2011: #14 Elbow “With love”

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As a long time fan of British rock, I’ve always known there was a difference between the music scenes of Scotland, Ireland, and England and those here in North America. I had long imagined and romanticized that everyone over there listened to the same music I loved and other stuff I hadn’t yet heard because I knew that my favourite bands that I saw in tiny clubs in Toronto played to much larger crowds in much larger venues all over their native countries. However, my friends Tim and Mark, after spending a few years living and working in London shortly after the BritPop explosion, returned to Canada with news that most of the people they encountered listened to the same pop music consumed in North America. Still, they conceded, the radio played a lot of stuff that wasn’t played here and as we already knew, the press was very much different and more involved in exploring indie music.

I’ve gotten to learn more of these differences and similarities since starting in on this blogging gig almost eight years ago and in conversing with fellow bloggers from out that way. What hadn’t occurred to me but probably should have is that some of the bands I listen to that get little to no air play in Canada are so overplayed and overblown in England and as hated or ridiculed as Nickelback might be in some circles here.

And so it apparently is with Elbow, whom I love and have done since I happened upon them since the early 2000s. They’ve graced these pages a few times in the past couple years and comments have been decidedly mixed but leaning more towards the negative. I’ve had to forewarn a certain blogging colleague (I’m looking at you Vinyl Daft Dad) that another Elbow post was coming. But I think I can safely say this might be their last appearance for the foreseeable future.

“With love” is track three off the English rock band’s fifth album, “Build a rocket, boys!”. The album was less melancholy than its predecessors, mining the happier memories of youth for subject matter, but this one has frontman Guy Garvey pleading his case for a friend to join him on a night out for drinks. “I give my liver to see you, abide and ride shotgun. A Bacchian scandal awaits me, just can’t do it alone. Your sweetheart probably hates me, but I’ll send you home your dome filled up – with love.” To help Garvey in this Herculean effort, he’s got his bandmates chiming in with a heavy beat and bass accompaniment, ringing guitars and twinkling piano flourishes and encouraging handclaps. The devil has even enlisted the Hallé youth choir to add a big oomph at the chorus, an exclamation mark on the love!

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.