(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: Concrete Blonde Album Title: Bloodletting Year released: 1990 Year reissued: 2017 Details: standard black
The skinny: Well, it’s All Hallow’s Eve again and though it’s been years since I’ve celebrated it in any traditional sense and double that since I dressed up in costume as the holiday warrants, I know it’s an important one to many people and I do try to observe it every year in my own way. This year, as I often do, I’ll spin some gothic rock tunes, perhaps some Sisters, some Joy Division, or this album by Concrete Blonde. “Bloodletting” took the alt rock trio from California into gothic rock territory, their frontwoman Johnette Napolitano having been reportedly inspired by Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles novels, and scoring the group their best-selling album* in the process. I purchased this bare bones reissue when I saw it come up for sale on Amazon back in 2017 because it’s one of those albums** that I knew I needed in my collection, a total mood record that is playable front to back and to front again. And every time I do spin it, I get the urge to light some black candles and crack a bottle of full bodied red wine. Happy Hallowe’en everybody!
Standout track: “Tomorrow Wendy”
*This mostly on the back of their huge radio-friendly hit “Joey“.
**It ranked number six on my best albums of 1990 list when I counted it down earlier this year.
A couple of posts ago, I initiated a new mini-series focusing on my favourite albums of 1990. I shared some words on the concept, the fact that 1990 was the year with which I started out this blog, focusing then, on its best tunes, and finally, providing a handful of album honourable mentions. So I’ll not blather on too much today for preamble. If you’re interested where I was musically and in life in general that year, have a looky-loo here. Otherwise, I’ll dig right into albums 10 through 6 of my list of top albums for 1990*.
Enjoy!
#10 The Northern Pikes “Snow in June”
The Pikes’ third and best-selling record feels inextricably tied to my DNA sometimes. It’s not one I listen to often anymore but whenever I do, it instantly transports me back to my teenaged bedroom, where listened to this cassette tape on repeat, constantly flipping sides, while playing hours upon hours of ‘Pool of radiance’ on my C64. It’s way more than just the ubiquitous CanCon classic, “She ain’t pretty“. There’s thirteen solid rock tracks that are tempered by folk leanings and varied in sound according to which of the three vocalists wrote and led the singing on each. Perhaps the nostalgia is strong here but I stand by my love for this album. It’s unfortunate that the Saskatchewan-based quartet couldn’t keep the momentum up for their next album.
#9 Jane’s Addiction “Ritual de lo habitual”
Jane’s Addiction’s second proper studio album was handed to me on cassette tape by a friend and fellow new initiate to the alternative music scene, calling it industrial and comparing the group to Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, both bands I was just getting into. Of course, Jane’s weren’t really industrial but they had that similar rage and wild sound and perhaps even more so in a sense. There’s so many great tracks on ‘Ritual’ and I’ve always thought that what set them so apart was that the songs are all slightly unhinged, as if the whole ship could all fall apart at any moment. This orchestrated chaos was what made the American quartet led by Perry Farrell so great but it was also their undoing**. They broke up at the end of the tour for the album, the finale of which also saw the group headlining the very first Lollapalooza festival.
#8 Sinéad O’Connor “I do not want what I haven’t got”
I remember buying this album on cassette tape as part of Columbia House’s 9 albums for a penny, way back in the day, and for the longest time, only listening to “Nothing compares 2 u” because that was the song I knew from my weekly viewing of the Chum FM 30. Once I moved past that one tune, though, I grew to appreciate Sinéad’s other material. I later migrated away from listening to her, not because of her infamous photo burning appearance on SNL or her outspokenness on many topics, but because my tastes took me in a different direction. However, I’ve since returned to this album many times over the last couple of decades. Sinéad was a great songwriter. Not just a lyricist but also in the way she created a sound, sometimes infusing Celtic folk sounds with funky drum beats and sometimes leaving it all bare, singing a capella and including her inhalations of breathe as another tool in her tool belt. Such a legendary voice and polarizing persona.
#7 The La’s “The La’s”
You’ve heard about one hit wonders, right? Well, how about one album wonders? The La’s were a five-piece Liverpool-based rock act led by Lee Mavers that were active from 1983 to 1992. They released a handful of singles throughout that time, including one of my favourite one hit wonders, “There she goes”, but only ever managed the one studio album before disbanding***. But what a great album it was. The self-titled debut is filled with short and jangly rock gems that dig their way into your head and root themselves in there for good measure, much like another act from that same England town. It’s another one of those great rock ‘what if’ stories. Who knows what a second record would have meant to the band and perhaps rock music as a whole.
#6 Concrete Blonde “Bloodletting”
Concrete Blonde’s third album was oh-so-close to breaking into my top five for 1990. Previously, the sound of the Hollywood-based, indie rock trio led by Johnette Napolitano was mostly pedestrian rock and yet, their following was meagre, being picked up mostly by the college radio kids. With “Bloodletting”, they ventured into gothic rock territory and surprisingly, found commercial success for the first time. I remember listening to this album around my wife at one point early on in our relationship and she was surprised that I was listening to a band that she knew. But this album is so much more than “Joey“. Every track is dark and haunting and full of soul and drenched with meaning for me. I could listen to this album all night long.
*With each album in this post, I’ve tried to choose a representative track that was not featured on my Best tunes list for 1990, partly to show the breadth of each and partly to avoid being repetitive.
**I’ve often thought that it could have been Jane’s and not Nirvana that broke alternative to the mainstream, had they managed to survive the touring cycle for this album.
***There were a number of attempts at reforming over the years but none have really stuck up to now.
Stay tuned for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.
I have always been an avid reader and in my early to mid teen years, it was all about the horror fiction. “Different Seasons”, the collection that included the story upon which “Stand by me” was based, was my gateway into Stephen King and by 1991, I had read most of what he had published. I had also sampled a good portion of the works by John Saul and Dean Koontz, and then, my friend John suggested I check out Anne Rice. I was only about a hundred pages into “Interview with a vampire”, the first book of her Vampire Chronicles series, when the lyrics of the title track off Concrete Blonde’s 1990 album “Bloodletting” started to make a whole lot more sense.
Indeed, Anne Rice’s works seemed to serve as a sort of spirit guide to the entirety of Concrete Blonde’s third album, if not lyrically, definitely in mood and scope. This album took the American alt-rock trio into gothic rock territory and strangely, served the band up their greatest commercial success (as already mentioned in the post on “Joey”‘ which appeared at #21 on this list). Every song is tight and fit cohesively into the album as a whole, evoking the New Orleans of Rice’s books, like a gloomy, romantic, and steamy graveyard with violence lurking in every dark corner.
The lyrics of the title track are more an inference than a retelling of the first book, that dark and empty house where the vampire Louis recounts his story to a journalist, along with that of the enigmatic Lestat. In case you’ve never read the book, nor seen the film adaptation that starred Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, I won’t say much more about it but if you’ve listened closely to the lyrics, you can probably guess how it all ends. However, you don’t have to be an Anne Rice fan at all to enjoy this track, just a taste for the macabre. It’s all eerie screeching sounds that hint at bats and howling winds that rustle decaying leaves. The bass is evil and deeply foreboding, the guitars are a scratching at your bedroom window, seductively asking to be let in. And then, there’s Johnette Napolitano, a deeper and sultrier-voiced Siouxsie Sioux, her delivery sending chills all up and down your spine.
I got the ways and means
To New Orleans
I’m going down by the river
Where it’s warm and green
I’m gonna have a drink and walk around
I got a lot to think about
Oh, yeah
A great, great track, but definitely not one for the faint of heart.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 1990 list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 