By Brian Kelly and Fergal Murphy
By Brian Kelly and Fergal Murphy |
Razorlight Razorlight It seems all the partying and the rock and roll lifestyle that was found in their debut Up All Night has taken its toll on poor aul Johnny! This is a much more sombre album, maybe the girl with the golden touch got to Johnny! This album is full of catchy pop/ rock songs but you get the feeling if more effort was put into it, it could’ve been a hell of a lot better. As it is, it’s still an excellent album with Johnny’s emotion-filled lyrics dragging you into his soul and making you realise that even geniuses get hurt! The standout tracks on the album are the up-tempo single In the morning. ‘In the morning you know we won’t remember a thing’ which sums up lyrically the come down theme of the album. Who needs love which sees Johnny totally disenfranchised with love and romance and proclaims himself ‘tired of love’ and ‘sick of love’ but, there’s light at the end of the tunnel for all us romantics when he announces that he ‘just won’t give up without a fight!’ Definitely one for the morning after you’ve been up all night! Born Sandy Devotional The Triffids To celebrate the 20th anniversary of their third and most successful album, Born Sandy Devotional has now been reissued and remastered with 9 bonus tracks as extras. Singer Dave Mc Comb takes all the songwriting credits on this album and the dramatic, almost epic quality of his voice dominates almost every track here. There is a real storytelling quality to his writing, a Jacques Brel-like lyricism transferred to a sun-bleached city on the edge of the desert. It’s an album of great power and poetry; you can almost see the heat haze coming off the soundscape on tracks like The Seabirds, Lonely Stretch, Stolen Property and the majestic Wide Open Road, which has become almost an unofficial anthem for Australian backpackers touring the globe. A superb collection from one of the great 80s bands. Bande A Part Nouvelle Vague The result was a debut album, which sold over 200,000 copies worldwide and brought a smile to the face of many people who never heard Love Will Tear Us Apart played like that before. Bande A Part continues the winning formula from the 2004 debut. Ever Fallen In Love by the Buzzcocks is sung to great effect as is Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself, but it is the reworking of less obvious songs like Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi’s Dead and The Cramps Human Fly which really impress. It’s all very knowing and ironic of course, but it is also matched by a genuine love of the originals and a great deal of musical accomplishment. To quote Fun Boy Three and Bananarma, it ain’t what you do; it’s the way that you do it. Golden Smog Another Fine Day The standout tracks are the opener You Make It Easy which grabs you in with it’s rocky piano intro and the opening phrase ‘I want you to understand, I’m gonna be your man’. No confidence issues for singer Kraig Jarret Johnson then! By far though the album’s highlight is Listen Joe, a mournful reminisce to a dead friend where you can feel the sense of loss through Jeff Tweedy’s vocals. Armed also with some excellent Spanish style acoustic guitar this track is head and shoulders above the rest. I can’t help thinking if Tweedy had more input this album would’ve been a hell of a lot better!
R.I.P. TOTP 1964 - 2006 We couldn’t wait for ‘Tomorrow’s World’ to finish (and all those useless inventions which never saw the light of day anyway) and Top Of The Pops to start. For half an hour on a Thursday night, our adolescent lives would be as bright and as luminous as the sound and vision coming from the TV screen in the corner. Happy days. Back in the late 70s and early 80s when I religiously watched the show it was always a great thrill to see one of your favourite bands on TOTP. There was no other music show on television at the time, so when you were young and just starting to appreciate music like I was, the show was simply unmissable. There was lots of crap on it of course, but when one of your favourites came on, it made the whole show worthwhile and of course you would rush out to buy the 7 inch single that weekend. The single was everything then. An appearance on TOTP would virtually guarantee a higher chart placing, which would mean more sales and a higher profile for any performer. Millions of vinyl records were bought on the strength of a performance on TOTP. At its peak, more than 15 million people watched TOTP every week. Almost every band wanted to be on it, because such was its popularity that one appearance could be enough to propel a band’s career into fast forward. Jarvis Cocker of Pulp said he considered his band a failure if they didn’t make an appearance on TOTP. Sadly, Top of The Pops has gone the way of the Dodo (or should that be Dido) and the 7 inch single. I long since gave up watching the show, as has everyone else who used to watch it. Its demise can be attributed to the death of the single as a musical commodity and the fact that kids now have access to music programmes and music channels on a 7 day a week, round the clock basis. TOTP’s last broadcast went out last month and few can be surprised at its passing. In these days of instant gratification and limited attention spans, nobody is prepared to wait a week for a thirty minute music programme. Here are just a few memories of my favourite TOTP moments over the years: Bono and the boys first appearance on TOTP in 1982 with a performance of ‘Fire’. Bob Geldof in 1984 with Midge Urge and a cast of famous pop stars for the ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas Time’ single. Pan’s People followed by Legs & Co, the TOTP dancers. Dexy’s Midnight Runners appearing in front of a large backdrop of the dart player Jocky Wilson while performing ‘Jackie Wilson Says’.
SATYRIX Tell us a bit about the history of Satyrix as a group? One day Ron called us round to show us a song he’d written. We all thought it was hilarious and immediately the rest of us wanted to join in. From there we moved on with the comedy element in our music and taught ourselves to make our own original music without the use of samples. Mainly because you don’t get paid as much for samples! The first video we made brought it back to what we used to do before music, it was shot in Meath and included a helicopter! We played our first gig in the Sugar Club and now we play there regularly and sell the place out. What goes into writing your songs? What’s it like to come from Dublin 4 area? Where do you see yourselves in five years? Tell us a bit about the new EP? Do you think because your lyrics are so raw it’s stopped you getting airplay? Live, we have a set where we know what songs go down well and what ones don’t. We only know what a gig was like from the people who come and their feedback as to what was brilliant and what was awful. When people come to see your gig you have to compromise a bit. There’s a difference between selling out and being clever! Anything you’d like to say to the readers before you go?
FOURTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS October November |
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Upon us is the so called ‘difficult’ second album from the one man band and self proclaimed genius that is Johnny Borrell (also known as Razorlight).
Like their contemporaries and fellow countrymen The Go-Between’s, the Triffids were a band more admired by the critics than the general public. From Perth in Western Australia, they produced six albums from 1980-89, then broke up frustrated at their inability to reach a wider audience.
Here’s an intriguing idea. Two hip young French composers take a bunch of 80s new wave songs (everything from Blondie to Visage). They slow the tempo down to a jazzy Bossa Nova beat, then add a bunch of breathy chanteuses who never heard the originals in the first place to sing the vocals.
This is the third album from the country rock supergroup Golden Smog, made up from members of Soul Asylum, The Replacements, The Jayhawks and Wilco. I was a big fan of their second album Weird Tales, so this album’s a bit of a disappointment. 
After ‘Tomorrow’s World’ on a Thursday night it used to be on TV. It was essential viewing for me and my brothers and sister, all music fans and all excitingly awaiting what would be announced as the No. 1 single in the UK that week.
Satyrix are a four piece rap group from the Sandymount/Ringsend area. I caught up with Graham and Lorcan from the group recently to find out a bit more about them.