Tag: British rock

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1990: #1 Depeche Mode “Personal Jesus”

<< #2

Happy new year all!

I figured the first post of the year was a good time to finish off the first series I started this blog with and this song certainly ends it with a bang. Back at number eleven, I proclaimed “Enjoy the silence” as one of Depeche Mode’s biggest hits. Well, at number one, we have what is surely their biggest: “Personal Jesus”.

And I’m well aware that it was technically released as a single in 1989 but I feel it belongs more in 1990 for two reasons. Number one, it was the cornerstone for their 1990 smash hit, “Violator”, a near perfect album, and touched off a string of great singles and pure magic the band hasn’t been able to replicate. Number two, the use of guitar as primary instrument and the driving force behind the song signalled a turning point, a seismic shift for the group from their new wave/synthpop roots into alternative rock, a path they would tread throughout the 1990s.

By all accounts, the song was inspired by Martin Gore’s reading of Priscilla Presley’s memoirs, “Elvis & me”, and the idea of that when you love someone, that person can be your everything. Another twisted love song then. Gore certainly has strange ideas about love but he’s honest, and this alone, this ‘honesty’, is how classics are written. That iconic opening line, “Reach out and touch faith”, for instance, evokes so many ideas about how scary it can be to open up and totally trust someone. Is it as religious as he infers by invoking the idea of your partner being your personal Jesus? I suppose it could be.

Or maybe I’m reading too deeply into what is really at its heart a great pop song for your liking? I sense that could possibly be true as well.

When this song was released, I was in high school. My musical tastes had yet to mature and so I hadn’t yet become the music geek whose words you read today. And I definitely wasn’t reading too deeply into the words sung by the ever enigmatic David Gahan. The title smacked of religion, something I was starting to rebel against at this time, my parents’ enforcement of church attendance each Sunday, and so something that sounded even vaguely sacrilegious was appealing. The heavy beat of the song also didn’t hurt. It made my step fall in line with it whenever it came on over my Sony Sports Walkman ear phones and got me up to dance whenever the DJ inevitably played it at our high school dances.

Yeah, I don’t mind saying that “People are people” was my first introduction to Depeche Mode but that “Personal Jesus” was my real gateway drug. It’s the reason why “Violator” was among the first compact discs I ever purchased, even before I had my own CD player. And it’s likely one of the main reasons why “Violator” was among the first of my vinyl purchases when I started collecting records again, even before I got my new turntable. It’s all rhythm and twangy guitar. It’s rage without the anger. It’s sadness without the tears. It’s passion without the physical touch. “Lift up the receiver, I’ll make you a believer.” It’s like new age blues. But these are all just words. It’s a great song that should be danced to, rather than be written about.

So press play and dance away your first day of 2018.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1990 list, click here.

Categories
Albums

Best albums of 2017: #1 The Clientele “Music for the age of miracles”

Those of you who have been following along and paying close attention will notice that each of my top three albums of the year could be considered comeback albums of a sort. The National’s “Sleep well beast” at number three was their first album in four years, which isn’t a long time when you consider the album at number two was Slowdive’s first in 22 years, but in this day and age, The National’s inactivity felt like a hiatus nonetheless. And of course, the span between Clientele’s last album and this year’s “Music for the age of miracles”, at 9 years (8 years, if you count the mini-album “Minotaur”), pales in comparison with Slowdive’s too.

That there are all these ‘comeback’ albums at the top of my list could say something about my tastes in music and might suggest that I tend towards nostalgia when making my picks. However, there are a bunch of “comeback” albums that are not on this list that could also easily slide into the nostalgia category. No. These three are all fine albums, by some of my favourite bands, and the fact that they didn’t disappoint, given the lofty expectations heaped upon them as soon as they were announced, is a good part of the reason they are ranked so high.

The Clientele has been one of my favourite bands since I first heard their 2003 album, “The violet hour”. Between then and their announced hiatus in 2011, they put out a string of beautiful, and delicate releases that slanted towards 60s psychedelia. And never did creative force, Alasdair MacLean allow his group to stray from this course. But don’t mistake this as stagnation, as my friend Andrew Rodriguez did when he stated that all their albums sounded the same. When listened from end to end, you can definitely hear the progression in their sound but you will always recognize them as The Clientele.

When I purchased the record 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. For those new to The Clientele, prepare yourself for a heavenly backdrop that will make you forget whatever menial task you are performing and for your face to hurt from the smile that will be permanently pasted there the whole while. It’s an album rammed full of beautiful songs that beg for repeat listens but here are the three I’ve picked for you to sample from. Enjoy.

“Everything you see tonight is different from itself”: This first track here definitely backs up my point on the band’s evolution. I could be wrong but I don’t remember drum machines being Clientele tropes, nor do I associate horns too much with their music. At six and half minutes, “Everything you see tonight is different from itself” is as much of a mouthful as its name, the length giving itself space to grow and yes, evolve from one thing to the next. The end sounding nothing like the beginning. Heady stuff.

“Lunar days”: After the intro that is reminiscent of children’s windup toys or a midway carousel, “Lunar days” settles into something that more resembles The Clientele we know and love. Gentle guitar plucking piggyback on peppy but understated snare and rim drumming, the strings tease, and Alasdair MacLean’s breathy vocals lilt upon them, like a falling leave upon the breeze. It’s all so easy and free that you feel you could easily just step back into childhood in the late summer, replaying the same dog days, never to return to school.

“Everyone you meet”: Here were are! A pop number! The melody even actually reminds me oddly of something Neil Diamond might have sung. There’s horns and strings and peppy drumming and of course, MacLean’s vocals that are impossible not to love here. He actually sounds like he might be smiling as he sings them. Interesting, then, that he appears to be singing about depression “Everyone you meet breathes low, moving soft and slow, blue very blue. I can’t sleep at night, I don’t know what to do.” I feel like maybe he should just listen to more of his own music. So beautiful.

For the rest of the albums in this list, check out my Best Albums page here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1990: #2 The Charlatans “Sproston green”

<< #3    |    #1 >>

Here we are at number two on this best of 1990 list and we find ourselves back on the dance floor. But we must’ve travelled back in time because it’s “Sproston green” by The Charlatans, their second appearance (the other being “The only one I know” at #14) on this list.

I mention the time travel bit as a personal joke between me and my friend Tim. We wandered into one of our old haunts, The Dance Cave in Toronto, after a bunch of drinks on my birthday a few years ago. After a few more, Tim went up to the DJ booth to request this tune, or any Charlatans tune, really, and was denied. The DJ didn’t care that it was my birthday and that we had danced many times to that same tune on that same floor, a decade or two earlier. He wasn’t having any of it. He gestured to the crowd of millenials that made up most of the drinkers that night and said that there was no way they would dance to it.

Now maybe I’m getting old and stubborn but I disagreed then and still do today. This is a song that can’t be ignored, you just have to dance to it. It’s a song so immense in scope that the band has continued to use it over the intervening decades to close out their live shows, much to the joy of their fans. It is definitely a personal favourite. And why not? At just over five minutes, “Sproston green” builds perfectly from the echoing, just beyond earshot guitar intro to a more a solidified onslaught once the rest of the band joins in the fun, led by that muscular bass and crazed, swirling organs, all the way to its crashing, ecstatic finale.

I’ve read somewhere that the words are based on the frontman’s first sexual experience and I suppose that could be true: “This one knows she comes and goes, and when she goes she goes.” It’s as deep as they get… But you don’t really listen to the Charlies for the lyrics, do you? No, no, no. It’s all about the groove and this particular tune has that bit down solid.

Go ahead and disagree. I’m ready for you.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1990 list, click here.