Here’s another song by a band whose introduction came by way of a sampler. Yes, they really did work!
Back in the latter months of 1994, I was living in a basement apartment just north of Toronto while attending my second year at York University. Although it was definitely a shorter commute from that apartment than it was in my first year driving in from my hometown, it still meant hanging about on campus, killing time between classes, haunting the library, the student centre, the arcades and games rooms, and the pubs. At some point nearing the end of the fall term, I was in the campus general store* in the York Lanes Mall, perusing the magazine section for music mags. I came across one that I’d never heard of before called CMJ New Music Monthly and flipping through, saw names of artists I knew and respected, names I wouldn’t always see in the mainstream press, outside of the British music mags. I got to the end and saw a sampler CD was included and was impressed by the artists featured there as well. I was sold**.
The first track on the CD compilation was the Brauer mix of “Shining road” by Cranes and it hooked me right away with its haunting minimalist approach and the trademark childlike vocals of Alison Shaw. As it would turn out, my friend Tim*** was discovering the band concurrently while attending Waterloo university, about 100 kilometres away. The lucky jerk got to see them in March 1995 in Toronto and covered their show for his university paper. Granted, Cranes certainly fell neatly into Tim’s gothic, dark, and heavy musical oeuvre, which also included bands like Sisters of Mercy, New Model Army, KMFDM, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Indeed, though the English alternative rock band has often been labelled as ‘Gothic’****, the band has not been happy about it. Cranes was formed by Alison Shaw and her brother Jim all the way back in 1985 and save for a brief hiatus near the end of the 90s, they were active until the end of the 2000s. They reformed again a couple of years ago for some shows and a new album in 2024. In all, they’ve released nine full-length studio albums, a couple of mini-albums, and a litany of EPs.
“She’s been making plans to go (you know)
Hit the bright lights, hit the road
To the city lights this time
Just don’t worry I’ll be fine”
“Shining road” is the opening track off Cranes’ third studio album, “Loved”. It catches your attention right away with those thumping ritualistic beats. The guitar strumming is restrained and taut, ominous and foreboding. At the chorus, though, things rev up considerably, to almost evil sounding levels. Yes, it plays the quiet-loud-quiet game, alternating between traipsing amongst dark clouds and stomping heavily through muddy puddles. Set all of that against the aforementioned childlike and haunting vocals by Alison Shaw and its pure magic. Pure black magic.
*Probably not the right name. I’m sure it’s long since closed.
**And blew a third of that week’s grocery budget in the process.
***It’s actually Tim’s birthday today. So this one goes out to you Tim!
****I included the very song that is the subject of today’s post on a “Goth” playlist I created and posted to these pages almost seven years ago.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 1994 list, click here.
(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.
As I’ve written on these pages before, it was my friend Tim that introduced me to the iconic gothic rock band, Sisters of Mercy, way back in high school. To start with, I would hear the group playing in his parents’ borrowed car whenever we went out somewhere. Then, it was the mixed tapes or the second side of a blank cassette, on the first side of which I asked him to record some album or other. A Sisters of Mercy song would always appear. Finally, I bit and asked him to record me one of their albums and this is how I first came to
“Vision thing”.
This was the Sisters’ third and final proper studio album that they ever released, even though the group has continued to ‘exist’ in some form or other ever since Andrew Eldritch put them together back in 1980. We saw a couple of singles released in the first few years after the 90s began but even those dried up. Eldritch has continued to write, though, and these songs have appeared on set lists as the group continues to tour, right up to today, but nothing has been recorded and released officially to the public. There have been rumblings over the years of possible releases and Eldritch himself had posited half-jokingly that it might take a Donald Trump presidential win for them to get motivated but that was for the first time around and of course, Trump won twice and still no new music.
Interestingly, I’ve heard that “Vision thing” was inspired by the Sisters’ frontman’s thoughts surrounding George Bush (Sr), another polarizing republican American president, and his policies, which also had a worldwide impact. The album is eight epic songs*, all requisitely dark and foreboding, and that in spite of Eldritch, only furthered the group’s place in the pantheon of goth. It followed the tradition of the previous two albums, of being recorded by a completely different set of musicians that had worked on the previous. Joining Eldritch and his trusty drum machine, Doktor Avalanche, for “Vision thing” was Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s Tony James on bass, a young Andreas Bruhn on guitar, and Scottish vocalist Maggie Reilly provided backing vocals to many of the tracks.
Apparently, it was a difficult album to make, many different versions of each of these tracks were recorded, and the personnel themselves have publicly wondered how much of their contributions made the final cuts. What we know for sure is that the final versions settled upon were actually ones that came out of the early sessions, being rawer and more immediate.
“Vision thing” did reasonably well on the charts and have hit sales certifications in both Germany and the group’s native UK. It is my favourite complete album of their three but this is likely because it is the one with which I am the most familiar.
I have spent lots of quality time and have loved all eight tracks on “Vision thing” so it was hard to pick the requisite three for you but I have endeavoured. I recommend you wait until dark, light a solitary candle, and pour some red wine before pressing play.
“Vision thing“: The opening track title (which was also the namesake for the album) was taken from a phrase George Bush (the sr.) used during his 1988 presidential campaign. And this isn’t the only reference to things said by the former American president or thoughts on his policies. “Vision thing” is the song that most overtly takes to task the subject that many have said inspired the record. “It’s a small world and it smells bad. I’d buy another if I had back what I paid, for another motherf*cker in a motorcade.” Andrew Eldritch pulls no punches. It’s raw and aggressive and angry. The guitars chug along and Doktor Avalanche does its thing, sure, but the frontman is what makes this song. His vocals snarl and roar, takes layered upon each other, as if there were an army of him, ready to take on the world and take down everything that angers him about it. It’s a great song to bash about and stomp your feet too. A real (goth) punk song.
“Ribbons”: I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the first song I’d ever heard by The Sisters but it was definitely the song that sold me and got me into them. I’ve told the story before but it begs repetition. I distinctly remember it being on in my friend Tim’s car stereo when he was driving a bunch of us home after a high school theatre event. I was in the back seat and Tim took one of our school’s infamously high speed bumps too quickly and much of the contents of his open coke can was transferred to yours truly just as Eldritch was shrieking “Incoming!” The carload of us found the coincidence way too funny so we repeated the song a few times while he dropped the lot of us at our homes and in those repetitions, I gained an appreciation for the uncompromising chainsaw guitars, the equally foreboding drum machine, and Eldritch’s evocative lyrical imagery and singular delivery. “Her lovers queued up in the hallway, I heard them scratching at the door, I tried to tell her about Marx and Engels, God and Angels, I don’t really know what for.” Is it about a one night stand, sex with a bewitching prostitute, or is it an anti-war, anti-nukes song? Could be be all three and probably is. “Incoming!”
“More”: I fully admit that I am going to plagiarize myself a bit here since I’ve already written about this last song on these pages a few times already. It was the first single to be released off the album and features heavy handed piano, synth washes, muscular, machine gun guitars, and the backing vocals of Scottish singer Maggie Reilly. The version on the album is epic long at just over eight minutes, making full use of its Jim Steinman production. It is big and menacing, riffing on the love as a drug theme, dangerous and painful and wouldn’t be traded for all the world. “All I want, all I need, all the time is more of your sweet love. Too much just ain’t enough. I never needed a fix like this before.” It is equally perfect for blasting while driving down dark country roads or dancing to in packed and sweaty clubs while the strobes make you question your reality. I have memories of doing both, many times over the years.
*It was of course, coproduced by Jim Steinman, famous for his work with Bonnie Tyler and Meatloaf on “Bat out of hell”.
We’ll be back in a handful of days with album #3. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:
My (life in) music lists 