Tag: Celtic Folk

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Best albums of 1990: #5 Spirit of the West “Save this house”

Spirit of the West are one of my favourite ever bands.

And I know what you’re thinking: This guy’s probably got thousands of favourite bands. Which is probably true. However, SOTW have been with me for a very long time, almost 35 years. A Canadian band with a unique sound that I got into at a time when most Canadian bands were trying to sound American. For a while, they were the band I had seen the most times in concert. In fact, my wife and I officially ‘got together’ after seeing the band at our university pub. I could go on and on but I’ve already tread this ground on these pages a number of times, most notably when I counted down my top five favourite tunes by the group back in 2017.

Having said all this, “Save this house” isn’t my favourite Spirit of the West album. Yes, it’s got some of their classic tracks (see below) and it’s got a great and unique folk rock sound but they were still finding their true footing here, being one album removed from being a fully formed band. Multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalist Linda McRae had just joined the trio of Hugh McMillan, Geoffrey Kelly, and John Mann and their drummer Vince Ditrich had yet to join. The songwriting is very strong here for the most part but as a whole, the album is likely a couple tracks too long.

Still, as you can see, I’ve placed the group’s fourth album and first on major label, Warner Music Canada, in my top five for the year so you know I believe the album is worth your time. The songs are a bit of their time and place but can also be considered out of time. The band sings from a perspective with which I am very familiar and their instrumental prowess is understated but markedly better than some of their peers at the time, effortlessly sliding Celtic folk into an alt rock context. It’s an album, much like the rest of their catalogue, that deserves to be placed amongst the pantheon of great CanCon records but unfortunately, feels to me, largely forgotten.

So indulge me, if you will, and have a listen to “Save this house” in its entirety but if you are lacking the time, check out these three picks.

“Puttin’ up with the Joneses“: “Lock ’em up, and throw away the key, boys / The Joneses are not like you or me / Lock ’em up tight, ’cause if they had the chance they might / Show us that we’re wrong and that’s the one thing we can’t be.” My father got me a summer job working in the recycling plant division of the steel factory he worked at in the summer of 1995. For the first couple of weeks that I worked there, they didn’t know what to do with me and the other summer student that they had hired, so they had us scouring the barren fields on the property picking up scraps of metal that had floated down out of the air while they ran flattened cars through the ‘shredder’. I’ll always think of this song when I remember that summer because I sang the words to it to myself the whole time I was picking up these scraps. A song with a peppy rhythm put together with a non-stop acoustic strum, a popping bongo beat, and call and response vocals, words invoking everything I was feeling about the world in my youth. Questions of normalcy and what it all means, the relevance of life events, toeing the line or rebelling against it. A punk song that sounds more folk than The Pogues and that puts a smile on your face everytime.

“Save this house”: “The welcome mat’s worn out, the roof will never mend, the furniture’s on fire, this house is a disgrace. Someone change the locks before we trash this place.” The title track on the album is a three minute wonder that is very much relevant contextually to its era but is also quite prescient of the world events of the last few years. Starts off funky and haunting but at each chorus the guitars lose their effects and run at a straight ahead strum, racing at a pace that the bongos have a hard time keeping up with. The gang vocals add to the immediacy and invoke images of random and spontaneous jams at protest afterparties, a moment where everyone joins in, not just because they all know the words but more because there is a shared belief and conviction behind them. John Mann and company are bemoaning the state of the world, the politics and the environment, wondering aloud and not so conspicuously as to how we all got to this point and how we all let it happen. I’m still wondering the same.

“Home for a rest”: If, like me, you attended university in Canada in the 1990s (or in the years immediately following), you likely know this song or have drank and danced to it at some point whether you knew it or not. If you were not part of this cohort, you really don’t know what you’re missing. “By the light of the moon, she’d drift through the streets / A rare old perfume, so seductive and sweet / She’d tease us and flirt, as the pubs all closed down / Then walk us on home and deny us a round.” With universal, drinking song lyrics like this, “Home for a rest” has been considered by many an alternate Canadian national anthem, though it was never technically released as a single. I certainly love it and probably know the words just as well as I do “Oh Canada!”. I ranked it number two when I counted down my top five favourite by the band and placed it at number four in my Best tunes of 1990 list. I’ve danced to the wild music and have breathlessly sang along to all of these words so many times, in my room, at their shows, and on packed dance floors. And as I’ve written on these pages before, I was even coaxed up to a microphone by friends on a long ago green-beer-soaked Saint Patricks day at my old college pub, The Open End, to provide the slurring vocals when the entertainment for the evening couldn’t do it. This one has left an indelible mark on my life.

We’ll be back in a handful of days with album #4. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:

10. The Northern Pikes “Snow in June”
9. Jane’s Addiction “Ritual de lo habitual”
8. Sinéad O’Connor “I do not want what I haven’t got”
7. The La’s “The La’s”
6. Concrete Blonde “Bloodletting”

You can also check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

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Tunes

100 best covers: #39 Great Big Sea “Run runaway”

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Great Big Sea has long since been a household name here in Canada and is relatively well-known elsewhere as well, counting amongst their fans actor Russell Crowe. They are likely the most famous band to come out of Newfoundland and for a while during the late 90s and into the 2000s, were one of the best-selling groups here, their high-energy folk and updated interpretations of traditional sea shanties obviously finding a home in the hearts of good Canadian youth.

It certainly found me on first listen with this very cover of Slade’s* “Run runaway”. I remember catching the video at some point in the summer of 1995 or 1996 on MuchMusic, right around the time their video for “Mari Mac” also caught my attention. It wasn’t long at all before these two songs could be heard from open residence room doors and through the open windows of student apartments all around Toronto. Both are excellent tunes but it was this re-interpretation that first sold me.

Slade’s original came out around the time that I was just finding my own feet with music, branching out from my parents’ oldies radio listening in the car and regularly watching the chumFM top 30 countdown on CityTV. I didn’t, of course, know this at the time, but this was Slade’s second go round and comeback venture, their biggest inroads into the North American market. They had been flirting with glam rock throughout the 70s and were quite popular at home in England. It took a cover by metal band Quiet Riot of their 70s hit “Cum on feel the noize” to finally drum up interest in the US, leading to a signing with a US label, and the first single released was, of course, “Run runaway”.

Recorded for their 11th studio album, “The amazing kamikaze syndrome”, “Run runaway” was very much of its time. It has soaring guitars that put together a stadium-ready hook and there’s those shout-along vocals that had me along for the ride, even though I didn’t understand them. But it was far from a sellout. Slade didn’t stray far from their roots, employing electric violin and adapting traditional Scottish jig elements for a hard rock world.

Then, more than a decade later, Great Big Sea, removed the rock and upped the traditional. Their cover has flutes, accordions and fiddles and is sung like a shanty. They even made it more upbeat, which I wouldn’t have thought possible as a pre-teen.

And though the original has the nostalgia factor going for it, I gotta give the edge to the cover here.

Cover:

Original:

*This is, I believe, the second cover of a Slade tune to find its way on to this list.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #88 The Pogues “Sally Maclennane” (1985)

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(So it’s been a very long time (almost six months!) since we’ve seen a post in this series and the band featured today is the very reason why. The death of The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan last November hit me hard, perhaps harder than any other musician’s death in recent memory. When I saw that this song was the next on the list, I wondered whether I should use this space to commemorate how much MacGowan’s songwriting meant to me and how special he was to so many and I wondered whether I was up to the task. In the end, I decided to keep this post about the song at hand and of course, about the (entire) band that wrote and performed it.)

The Pogues were originally named Pogue Mahone when they formed in 1982, which is an anglicized play on a phrase in Gaelic meaning ‘kiss my arse’. The band sanitized and shortened it to their more popular name just as they were releasing their first album, “Red roses for me”, in 1984. The band and their unique celtic folk-infused punk sound drew international attention and success with their next two albums, 1985’s “Rum, sodomy, and the lash” and 1988’s “If I should fall from grace with god“. After which, the band began to fall to pieces due to the unreliability of the aforementioned founding member and frontman, Shane MacGowan, and his penchant for drinking. He made only cursory contributions to 1990’s “Hell’s ditch” and was finally sacked in 1991. The band carried on without him for a while, without the same success, but called it a day 1996.

The Pogues are still considered one of the more influential bands of the eighties. They practically invented the Celtic punk genre by fusing politically-charged lyrics and punk ethos with the use of traditional Celtic instruments and song structures. Without their existence, we likely wouldn’t have bands today like The Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, and The Mahones. And this song here is a perfect example of the template those other bands use.

“Sally MacLennane” was the second single released off “Rum, sodomy, and the lash” and incidentally, the second of the band’s singles to crack the UK singles charts. It is a drinking song that was reportedly inspired by a bar owned by MacGowan’s uncle. It’s upbeat with a machine gun drum line that punctuates each line, a hammering bass drum pace, swirling accordion and tin flute, and MacGowan’s inimitable debauched delivery that is oft answered with shouting backing vocals. It tells the story of a promising young man that leaves a home that he feels is impeding his potential. After years of absence, he realizes he misses his home but then, it isn’t the same upon returning. It’s about memory and loss and nostalgia, all things that often surface after a few pints.

Original Eighties best 100 position: n/a

Favourite lyric: “I’m sad to say I must be on my way / So buy me beer or whiskey cause I’m going far away.” It’s not so much the words, as cool and heavy as they are, but the way they are sung or shouted and make for meaningful drunken memories with friends.

Where are they now?: In 2001, The Pogues re-formed, including Shane MacGowan, and toured sporadically until 2014, but there was never any new music released. MacGowan’s death seems to have put an end to any talk of another reunion for now.

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