Cocteau Twins - Evangeline

I was totally disappointed when Four-Calendar Cafe came out in 1993. What happened to the sublime? Why were they sad instead of ecstatic? Why were they trying to sound like they wanted to be on American radio? Why were there so many more recognisable words than usual? Why did they release such a pissweak album? Less than seven listens in I gave the cd away. I tried to wipe it from my memory. I mean the recent-one-two punch of Blue Bell Knoll (88) then Heaven Or Las Vegas (90) was so glorious. I just wanted to live that vibe. And the Sugar Hiccup (83) to Love's Easy Tears (87) run of 45s vibe and the other one two album punch of Head Over Heals (83) and Treasure (84). I would forever just hold on to them as the 4AD group. Whatever they did after that on another label we'll just ignore. Just try to quietly forget the fact that they'd fallen from grace and faded away into artistic inconsequence. 

I was forgetting something though. The Cocteau Twins had slumped before, you know with Victorialand (86). An LP I've listened to many times but couldn't tell you the name of one track. This was an easy album to overlook though as they released so much good music between 1983 and 1990 there was enough great stuff, you could forget a record and it didn't matter. 

By 1993 though we had been waiting for three years for a record. In the mean time a bunch of kids had stolen their sounds and made them less good in their shoegaze groups Slowdive, Lush etc. So you know you don't wanna release an album so inferior that a band of b-grade imitators are going to outdo you. Some might say Slowdive's Souvlaki is better than Four Calendar Cafe and historical consensus does seem to favour that narrative. By late 93 I couldn't have cared less though as I didn't like either. Recently though I've come round to Souvlaki so I know in all fairness I need to reassess Four-Calendar Cafe.

Evangeline keeps popping its head up in my world and yeah guess what? I've become somewhat enamoured by it. I've had to compartmentalise the Cocteau Twins into their two distinctive record company stints though. So you've got the supreme golden era of the 4AD years 1982 -1990. Then you've got the less incandescent Fontana twilight years 1993 - 1998. 

In the 90s I did end up getting the final LP Milk & Kisses (1995) and those Fontana EPs probably twelve or eighteen months after release when they were cheap and in the 2nd hand bin. I recall liking some of the material, the more dubby out there type of stuff. When a seminally influential band becomes a chaser of a sound though, it seems a bit sad. Even if the sound they're following was influenced by them in the first place. Anywhoo I could'n't name or hum a tune from Twilights or Violaine. Perhaps I've underestimated the twilight years era. I hope that I've been absolutely wrong for thirty years. We'll see...

Anyway back to Evangeline the 1993 single. This is like an answer song to the dream pop they helped create (Julee Cruise, Lush etc.) except it's better, more emotional and in a class of its own. It's like they're saying yeah thanks that's flattering and all but we've got real emotional depth beneath the pop sheen. Plus they just up the ante don't they? with a preposterous key change that before you have time to throw your hands up in exasperation you realise it works just perfectly. BAM the masters have nailed it, goosebumps jackpot and the acolytes should be sheepish. Can't deny thirty years later Evangeline is one of the great Cocteaus moments.

Tommy Cash - Six White Horses

(1969)

I must admit the RFK assassination is intriguing to me. I'm currently reading another tome on the subject. I gotta say I know very little of the JFK & MLK assassinations outside of their historic news story synopses. I assume the CIA was behind the death of MLK too (?). Anyway these three men are the subject of this tune. They had peace on their minds which made them a radical threat to the American money making war machine establishment. How revolting is it that the deep state has ruled American politics and their foreign policy for over 60 years. So much for the Church Committee. 

Anyway this is all kinda fitting as American hegemony has taken some severe blows in the last few weeks. Look out peace is starting to break out due to diplomatic deals being made that America isn't a part of. I reckon it's time for Australia to realise it doesn't have to be a suck job ally to America anymore either. Lets hope CIA meddling in international affairs is on the way out because lets face it, it's always been totally fucked up. Gross. I mean sure it's been a good thing for American arms manufacturers and dealers, just not so good for living people who happened to be citizens in countries America liked to war with. Perhaps it's time to develop a Peace-time Industrial Complex while hopefully the military industrial complex finally dies. Although over a hundred billion dollars to arm Ukraine and Finland joining NATO seems like peak times for reprehensible corporations Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing etc. 

On another note the CIA, FBI and all the other nonsense American security bureaus colluding with the White House, big tech and establishment media to quash the free speech of the citizens has been a frightening turn of events in the past decade. Truth was being censored during covid, that's bloody outrageous...oh but it was all done out of concern for your safety. Sure. The Twitter Files have been an incredible revelation. It's a wake up call for all Americans and the rest of the west. We are not the free societies we once were. Sure perhaps that was mostly an illusion but we used to be able to make jokes without fear of going to prison.

I'm pretty sure Australian intelligence agencies like ASIO, ASIS etc. were doing the same thing here in Australia. They're all in cahoots with the CIA in The Five Eyes anyhoo. The thing is we don't actually have freedom of speech enshrined into our constitution so we're fucked because everybody likes to conform down under. Full totalitarianism is going to be a cakewalk here over the next year or two.

...anyway how good is Tommy Cash? Poor son of gun never had a chance, spotlight-wise, with a big brother like Johnny Cash but hey I like him. He seems to have had some moderate success over the years although I think he had to maintain a day job as a real estate agent to pay his bills. Terrific singer.

Van Morrison - Summertime in England

(1980)

One of the few musicians didn't put all his critical thinking skills aside to become a conformist shill for the globalists during the covid era. Then there were all the covidian turds: Neil Young, Joni, Rage Against The Machine, Louder magazine, Noam Chomsky, the majority of corporate news media... the list is endless. The masks were bullshit and the faux vaccine was almost fully useless too. I mean they literally had to change the definition of vaccine and everyone just went along with it. Nothing to see here. How's everyone going with the lies three years on? 

Anyway...

If you get to a point where you're at the end of your tether and the bad thoughts are spiralling in at 3AM, give this tune a shot. It might just save your life.

Sprawling...when he hilariously starts listing authors, how on earth do we let him get away with that? But we do, well some of us do. Then he can do what he pleases, so it's incantation time. The spell is cast upon you for fifteen fabulous minutes. I don't know if he's high on the Jesus juice or the cocaine or just high on life or all of the above and does it really fucking matter? No... it just is! Can you feel the light in your soul. Soak up the lord shining through in Summertime In England.

David Thrussell

This recent Snog tune is from last year. Some things change, some stay the same.

Here's a weird connection to the previous post. David Thrussell, of legendary Melbourne electronic act Snog not to forget Black Lung and Soma, once released a Porter Wagoner album or maybe two on his Omni Recording Corporation label. Snog of course were not that well liked here despite being signed to Universal but they garnered cult followings in Europe and America in the 90s. I think they even had a top ten hit in Germany. 

In the 90s Thrussell was host of the brilliant Rude Mechanical radio show on Melbourne's 3PBS FM. In the last couple of months it's been great to discover Dave is still around, not only with his music but as part of the podcast The No Goat Show. I'm kicking myself I didn't discover this podcast during Victoria's insane totalitarian lockdowns. Yes rubber bullets were deployed by Victoria's militarised police. The other voices on the show are playwright Michael Gray Griffith, Melbourne legend of Hellfire Club and Melbourne Underground Film Festival fame Richard Wolstencroft and Ryan Etherington a young Melbourne comedian. Anyway this motley crew of wrong thinkers are Aussie freedom fighters raising a ruckus because of the tyranny of Melbourne lockdowns. 

My favourite discovery though is Thrussell's solo show The Forbidden Book Club on the All Out Of Bubblegum channel which can be found on Rumble and youtube. He discusses controversial, underground and even blockbuster books from history. Many of which have forewarned us for many years about the oncoming authoritarianism in western democracies that has now arrived as well as stuff that's outside of the establishment narrative. It's amazing to think Robert F Kennedy's book about Fauci sold over a million copies and yet the good ole New York Times would not list the book. Anyway the latest episode of The Forbidden Book Club is one of the best as it features The Day Of Saint Anthony's Fire by John G Fuller. That is an incredible story of mass hallucination in a small French village in 1951.

Wikipedia is so fucking retarded they are referring to David as her because he did an album 10 years ago where apparently they thought he was pictured as a woman, so they all now think he's trans and are falling over themselves to conform to the groupthink rules.  

If you went to an industrial disco in the early 90s you know this tune, it made Snog (in)famous. Nothing has changed except now everybody wants to conform and please the government. The government serve you not the bloody other way round!

Porter Wagoner - The Rubber Room

The original Frankie Teardrop innit. 

Judee Sill - The Donor

Judee Sill - The Donor (1973)

If I recall correctly Judee Sill had been a teenage delinquent who was sent to a Christian reform school where she ended up playing the church organ. Later she became enamoured by hymns and channelled all things mystical into her music. At some point though I think she was even in some kind of new age cult. Sill was a fascinating woman, an erratic genius and a rock'n'roll outlaw. How has she not been on the cover of Mojo magazine ten times by now? However her infamous notoriety and ultimate tragedy usually overshadows her artistic achievements which is a shame because THE real story is her exalted music. This stuff is just elevated higher than the rest.

Judee Sill is a musical messiah offering up her divine gifts to we who are not worthy. The Donor outdoes the peak sublime moments of Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, Linda Perhacs, David Crosby, Gene Clark, Dennis Wilson et al. and foreshadows the delights of His Name Is Alive, Liz Phair, Panda Bear, Grouper etc.

The consensus in the youtube comments is that The Donor is "heavenly" and "a masterpiece" One thing I love about comments sections under great ye olde songs is that you usually get some oldies who heard the music back in the day and still can't believe how good it is. Then you have the young folk, who heard it for the first time the day they left a comment and they also can't believe how good it is. Anyway it seems everyone who hears this track is totally moved by it. Sill was aware of the effect of her music stating "my music is really magnified four part choral style. It gets to people's emotional centres quickly"

This is just one song, sure it's her most divine and epic effort but she has two LPs worth of enchanting folk pop with cosmic, classical and ecclesiastical overtones. Judee Sill came up with a term for her deceptively simple yet complex music "country-cult-baroque" which is perfectly succinct.

Speaking of perfection. It does not get better than this.

Johnny Cash - They Killed Him

Johnny Cash's influence on the whole hypnagogic chillwave scene has been underestimated. The heavenly reverberating production on this is just gorgeous. Plus that ghostly kids choir moment is an unexpected creepy delight. It's a shame he didn't do an entire double LP in this style. It would have been the best album of the 80s. I dedicate this to the only holy son of man I know me. How this was not a number one smash across the globe in 1984 still puzzles me.

They Are Gutting A Body Of Water

Kmart Amen Break (2022)

Well I guess I was expecting some kind of of retro Amen smasher 94 style with a dash of shoegaze but that's not really what we get exactly. Actually I'm not even sure what we've got here. TAGABOW are another group from the the current Philadelphia scene. I can hear hints of their forefathers like Blue Smiley and early Spirit Of The Beehive. This is noisey shoegaze jungle (There's some kind of breakbeat science submerged under that racket) goes slowcore hypnagogia with a chipmunk choir singalong. As far as song structures go this is anarchistic. The kids might have a name for this kind of genre mash up, who knows? It's something you might have imagined James Ferraro doing once upon a time instead of whatever crap he's actually doing right now. Unpredictable, strange, psychedelic and ultimately quite fabulous.  

Menthol Box (2021)

This one has an audible assemblage of breaks jungle stylee. I can't make out if it's an Amen or not. Anyhow it's a pretty faithful facsimile of a 93/94 jungle rhythm with added My Bloody Valentine-esque noise. It's as good as anything Third Eye Foundation ever did... only thing is they did it in the 90s when it was, you know like... a happening thing. Nevertheless it's pretty infectious. Back to the future.  

Stephen Kilroy

ON XPRESSWAY

Stephen Kilroy - When Planets Align (1991)

Killing Capitalism With Kindness: An XPRESSWAY Compilation - Various 

I wanted to show an example of the "no-fi diy psych drone ambient noise" that had been going on in New Zealand before Flying Saucer Attack renamed it rural psychedelia and called it their own. These are peak examples noise-y psych drone from the late 80s/early 90s. 

Kilroy is mainly known for being an engineer and producer. He's recorded some of NZ's most legendary artists like The Clean, Snapper, The Terminals, The 3Ds, The Cake Kitchen, Sandra Bell et al. Naturally he has engineered some of Roy Montgomery's most well known music as well as being a fleeting member of 90s Flying Nun groups Chug, King Loser and a duo with Peter Jefferies.

Anyway he really could have had a promising tiny career as a cult guitarist doing these little noisey psych-folk/space-rock jamz but that was not to be. He only ever had a few tracks released.   

Stephen Kilroy - 45 Degrees Below Frozen (1988)

5 Xpressway Pile=Up - Various (cat no. X/WAY 5) Cassette

Full Body 2

Full Body 2 - Mirror Spirit (2022)

I wonder if the members of My Bloody Valentine realise the enormity of the spell they have cast over generations young regional guitar bands. They are more popular and adored than ever before. Go on youtube, bandcamp or spotify and you will find a gazillion kids from all corners of the globe doing spirited replicas of all things shoegaze-y. 

Full Body 2 are a relatively new group on the Philadelphia scene. It's hard not to like Mirror Spirit's electrifying buzz.

 

Full Body 2 - 2g ether (2022)

This one's even better. A jubilant sonic sherbet bomb.

For the shoegaze nut who lives in a perpetual 1994, this is what we would have really preferred instead of the disappointing bullshit of Slow Buildings, Carnival Of Light, Souvlaki etc. and the non arrival of any new My Bloody Valentine material.

*I must admit I've now come round to Souvlaki. Only took 30 years. The other two records? Fuck off. 

Full Body 2 - Dancer's Theme (2022)

93/94 style ambient jungle meets the fizz of Glass Swords era Rustie. I like how Full Body 2 have no qualms about mixing in all these elements so long as an ecstatic goal has been reached. They get the mission statement of My Bloody Valentine. 

Another influence on the more adventurous of bands in this milieu seems to be Sweet Trip whose dream-pop, shoegaze, IDM, drill n bass,  ambient, glitch and noise amalgam seemed a bit too obvious and clunky when those early records appeared on Darla at the turn of the millennium. However, as is often the case, the next generation has picked up on these ideas, particularly 2003's Velocity:Design:Comfort, and found them useful. 

  

Full Body 2 - Sprite Ocarina (2021)

Quite the impressive sound design, Sprite Ocarina goes off the beaten path into some glitch-y gloomy doomcore and ends up in some strange Steve Reich goes ambient techno jam or something. A lot going on here.