That Music List: LIST 258

Hello again,

It's a pleasure to be with you once more today, and a grateful thanks is extended to you all for dropping in for last weekend's Feature Fest #2 (List #258), which has followed its predecessor in being one of the most viewed pieces I've put together since reactivating the blog.

I think there's probably mileage in doing these three or four times a year, at appropriately spaced intervals. Let's see what the autumn brings in that regard, eh.

By the way, bringing forward the A Loved Album treatment of Tim Smith's Extra Special OceanLandWorld to last week has not proven to be a mistake per se (how could it be regarded as such?); but having been reminded that Cardiacs' Sing to God turned 30 years of age on this Thursday just gone (the 11th), I wonder whether I should have done that one this week and held out for a bit longer with the solo project after all!

It's probably not giving anything much away to confirm Smith's absolute magnum opus was always going to be covered as A Loved Album at some point; astonishingly, of 16 appearances of Cardiacs in this blog's entire lifespan, just two selections have ever been taken from Sing to God, and neither of them its most revered track of all.

For the time being instead, it's a trip back to 1989, and four tracks from Kite, the astonishing second album from the late and much-missed Kirsty MacColl.

A greater sufferer by turns of record company interference, indifference or intransigence than most, Kirsty had to wait eight years between albums one and two (the next two would follow in little over four years, albeit even then for two different labels, one of whom could hardly have promoted their artist less).

That alone could have helped fuel the mood so palpably evident in Kite, fundamentally a more angry, determined and strident record than its Kinks-covering breakout single might have led casual listeners to assume.

Angry, that is, but never screaming, as that was never Kirsty's wont. It's hard for me to recall another performer so capable of conveying so many emotions in just the one broadly consistent deadpan delivery. Kite's lead single, not actually the cover of Days but the self-penned Free World, would have been artlessly, over-aggressively spat out by less disciplined practitioners, whereas Kirsty's straight bat voice (and, for the greater part, straight face in the accompanying promo) handled the coruscating attack on the greediest and most unscrupulous amid the political classes most adroitly.

Disappointment, pity, boiling fury, wry amusement (and Kirsty was always far from humourless - everything from There's A Guy Works Down the Chip Shop... to the television appearances with French & Saunders and Raw Sex tell you that much), despair, feistiness. Kite runs the gamut of these and more, with not the faintest recourse to jarring vocal cosplay.

Nobody's fool, but on occasion up to that point marginalised as if regarded as one, Kite stands as a vital, defiant piece of work and significant personal accomplishment by Kirsty MacColl. I need hardly add that there is not a single track on it that she ought to be remembered for less than That Duet That's Out Every Xmas.

1980s contemporaries of Kirsty, if perhaps not all that frequent sharers of a stage given their respective distinct musical orbits, Vince Clarke and Neil Arthur remain pleasingly prolific into their dotage (genuinely: look at how many new Blancmange albums have seen the light of day in the past 15 years).

I wouldn't know whether Vince still harbours hopes of laying to rest one of pop music's longest standing hoodoos and finally write and perform a number one British hit single (Only You having reached the top as a cover, of course, and Vince having reached the summit in person performing an EP of ABBA covers), though he won't be doing that with the debut eponymous album of Clarke/Arthur/Benge analogue synth supergroup Doublespeak, consisting as it does entirely of covers.

It's still a fascinating artefact, the temptation simply to reinterpret the work of their familiar charting peers among the UK synthpop landscape eschewed pretty much entirely in favour of covers ranging from Fad Gadget to Laptop via Young Marble Giants and The Magnetic Fields.

Doublespeak the album is respectful, inquisitive, bright-eyed, open-hearted, true unto itself (Neil's voice seems to become more determinedly authentically Lancastrian with each passing year) and playful enough to whack in a David Essex number, because why not. I've plumped for the trio's interpretation of the title track from ABBA's The Visitors, at least in part for its chilling resonance even today.

Much else besides these, naturally, and you may particularly like:

A personal highlight from the first Alvvays album, which I've somehow managed to overlook including on here until now. Remind me, fellow Sheffield indiepop travelers - was it Molly Rankin of Alvvays or Tanya Donelly of Belly whom we had to spend part of a Leadmill gig convincing that Glossop wasn't a made-up town name? I'm not sure whether we succeeded.

Further new or at least halfway recent stuff from Genesis Owusu, Tamikrest, Faith Eliott, Sulk Rooms and Pink Breath of Heaven. The last-named, essentially the San Franciscan-based treat you can enjoy between My Bloody Valentine albums, were in fine form in Todmorden two nights back.

Sulk Rooms, actually based in West Yorkshire rather than passing through it, may be seen to occupy broadly similar immersive electronic territory to those other present-day List favourites Craven Faults, though I appreciate I run the risk of doing either or both splendid projects a disservice. A Hidden Life's parent album Songs Of Soil promises musical ruminations on the vastness of the Yorkshire landscape. It delivers.

One additional newish track that, among the many fabulous new discoveries I owe to listening to Joel Rigler and Steve Vickers' peerless Saturday afternoon Sheffield Live radio show The Breakdown, I've fallen for particularly hard in recent weeks. Sweetly, simply put, Remember Monday might actually have gone a lot closer to winning Eurovision last year had they pulled off what Symphony for a Queen by Haute & Freddy does far more skillfully.

I do like opulence in pop, though the tendency to throw too many flourishes and adornments into the mix to the detriment of the greater whole is always a risk. Owen Pallett got the balance so right over a decade ago. Army Of Lovers always did, too (and Massive Luxury Overdose as an album title left little to the imagination either). Add Haute & Freddy to that list. There's a lot going on; but whilst some of the most obvious theatrical 1980s acts have been cited as touchstones, might one suggest also some trace elements of It's My Party era Stewart & Gaskin, or even Hazel O'Connor?

Not the last-named Coventry punk actress and performer, but rather an Australian Franciscan missionary namesake. The early-1970s albums of Sister Irene O'Connor, subject of a long-overdue reissue late last year, are genuinely extraordinary - amalgams of (highly) devout and contemporary synth/acoustic guitar/primitive drum machine-driven folk tracks played in full by Sister Irene and devoid of any other involvement save for fellow Sister Marimil Lobregat's rudimentary production and engineering.

You may have heard Fire (Luke 12:49) soundtracking Villanelle's baptism late in the run of Killing Eve. However, you will definitely have heard its influence in plenty else before or since, perhaps nowhere more since TML returned than in the Katie Alice Greer track shared in List #241.

Finally, a Long Goodbye from Cornershop, and a further failure to rack my brains successfully in compiling this week's write-up. I know that I saw Tjinder and company play the rump of Woman's Gotta Have It (still my favourite Cornershop album) live, concluding with an utterly mesmeric and even longer version of 7.20am Jullander Shere than the one shared here, whilst living in Germany. I know I usually write down the details of every gig I go to in minute detail, too.

Did I do so on that occasion, however? Did I fudge. I blame the quantities of ebbelwei in my bloodstream that year. It must have been during the winter of 1995-6, and the chances are it was at the Kulturzentrum KFZ in Marburg, as many such British bands of the time played there. Setlist.fm draws a blank, however, and the accursed Gemini's attempts at gaslighting me into believing the gig date was April 6th (when it was Stereolab that night) are just reminder enough again of the perils of entrusting these factual recollection requests to AI. I don't suppose any of you out there were at the gig?

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 11/06/2026).

Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.

Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

POINTER SISTERS - Pinball Number Count (DJ Food Re-Edit) (2003)