Flipsides & Otherwise: FAO #20

No introductory thematic connection-making spiel this time around, just some notes on three semi-obscure oddments that might otherwise slip through the net, fall through the cracks, go under the radar, get lost in the crowd, slip overboard, become needles in haystacks… yadda yadda yadda.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glen Johnson – Institutionalized EP (Secret Furry Hole, cassette)

When it comes to obsolete musical formats, a chunk of extruded plastic with magnetic tape running through it is almost up there with the wax cylinder, but perversely it’s making a small exclusive comeback just as the digital world tries to bolt the door on physically-manufactured musical products.  Certainly, the cassette’s brand new retro DIY aura appealed to Piano Magic’s Glen Johnson – as recently confessed in his endlessly illuminating blog – for encasing this follow-up EP to the recent Details Not Recorded album.  But as much as we all like to fetishise mediums old and new, it’s the contents here that make it worth dusting off a Walkman or boom-box to playback.

Whilst much of the material was cut during the home-recording sessions for Details Not Recorded, its five tracks don’t feel like flimsy outtakes.  The opening “Kill You” is possibly the creepiest and scariest song Johnson has ever cut in any of his guises, with a literally murderous lyric (“I know you never liked me/But I stretch out my hand/You may be foolish to take it/Cos I will kill you if I get the chance”) and a harsh lo-fi industrial coda that will probably cause the tape to self-destruct after a few spoolings.  “Ageing” is far less unsettling, at least sonically-speaking.  Set on top of antique percussion-loop patter, that recalls the imaginative soundscapes of ’60s BBC children’s TV music composer Freddie Phillips, Johnson contemplates the body-corroding cruelty of our mortal coils (“Oh, my bones are done/They barely hold the flesh/The seams have come undone”).  The doom-heavy drones and synths, redolent of early-Kraftwerk and the Clockwork Orange soundtrack, on “Come Back” frame a two-line lyric that merges Johnson’s unshakeable romantic streak with the bleakness of the surrounding songs; “Why don’t you come back?/Why don’t you bring back the love you gave to me?”  A ghostly serene yet faithful cover of Sonic Youth’s “Secret Girl” (excavated from 1986′s atmospheric Evol, as only the third re-interpretive piece in Johnson’s vast catalogue) almost acts as a moment of levity, with its elegiac guest piano from Piano Magic and Klima’s Angèle David-Guillou.  The acoustic-guitar-led finale of “I Can’t Help It” finds Johnson back in the Leonard Cohen-like clothing scattered within Details Not Recorded - albeit refracted through the austere prisms of early-Red House Painters albums – to deliver a message to an ex-lover; “I read the letters you wrote to me/Some would say I should’ve burnt them/The words do not work without the love/Those kisses, now only crosses.”

Knowing that the EP was part-inspired by the tragically-afflicted Joseph Carey Merrick (AKA ‘The Elephant Man’) certainly only adds to the all-pervading Victoriana gloom that grips this 5-track set from the sleeve image inwards, but as with other desolate Johnson wares, chinks of light always bleed-in via subtle beauty and unpretentious compassion.  Another release then, for Glen Johnson and Piano Magic fanatics to fight over, to add to their already-overloaded obscurities treasure chests.

Wilco – You Never Know b/w Unlikely Japan (Nonesuch, 7′ vinyl)

This soon-to-be-collectible seven incher (only available mail-order and through Record Store Day-affiliated US indie stores) near-perfectly represents the split-personality powering latter-day Wilco.  On the A-side we have the lush harmony-dripping “You Never Know” (one of the four or five essential tracks from the new Wilco (The Album) platter) highlighting Jeff Tweedy’s seemingly uncontrollable urge for imagining a Steely Dan & The Heartbreakers collaboration album.  With its somewhat ‘hey, stop worrying, man’ lyrical vibe that indirectly recalls John Lennon’s White Album-era radicalism-abdication anthem “Revolution,” it could stray close to baiting eco and economic protesters with couplets like “All you fat followers get fit fast/Every generation thinks it’s the last” and “I don’t care anymore/It’s a fear to transcend if we’re here at the end.”  But that’s just crude conjecture and Tweedy could just as well be copping a feel of the mischievous wordplay of his on/off creative foil Jim O’Rourke.  On the flip, there’s a more curious and previously unreleased 2003 version of “Impossible Germany” (which eventually appeared in re-recorded form on 2007′s Sky Blue Sky).  Substantially different from the previously-known official version, the alternatively-named “Unlikely Japan” peers much closer into the post-rock vortex surrounding 2002′s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and 2004′s A Ghost Is Born; moving from fractured piano lines and electro-acoustic strumming to a Krautrock throb and a vocoder-treated vocal conclusion.  Ultimately, the smoother Sky Blue Sky version is more assured but fans of Wilco’s wilder streak will be happy to hear it – that is if they can find this slice of wax before the eBay vultures do.

The Cure-Ator/Terry Edwards & The Scapegoats – In Between Days b/w Boots Off!! (Sartorial Records, 7″ vinyl/download)

As a long-serving accomplice to the sleazy Gallon Drunk and the debonair Tindersticks (amongst many others), with his adroit brass, woodwind and keyboard skills, Terry Edwards has earned himself the luxury of sneaking-out a steady stream of deeply eccentric solo records over the years; and here’s another one.  Originally conceived but shelved in the ’90s as part of the fourth instalment in a series of EPs sardonically reworking the works of The Jesus & Mary Chain, Miles Davis and The Fall, Edwards’s refashioning of The Cure’s much-loved “In Between Days” finally makes it out officially under the punning pseudonym of The Cure-Ator.  Whilst there’s been a bizarre glut of Cure tributes in the last couple of years – with three different covers compilations in circulation just for starters – Edwards’s wordless absorption of “In Between Days” into his own ’70s TV cop-show theme shtick is rendered with enough affectionate wit to induce both amusement and euphoria.  Even better though, is The Scapegoats-backed “Boots Off!!” on the AA-side (extracted from 1997′s soon-to-be-reissued I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today album).  With its squelchy freewheeling sax, splattering garage-rock drums and careening vintage keyboards, “Boots Off!!” could in a parallel world be Terry Edwards’s signature tune and hit-single rolled-into one.  But in this dimension, it remains a joyfully infectious instrumental nugget that will be cherished by the handful of us lucky enough to know one of the true British eccentrics worth (re)discovering.