That Music List: LIST 268

(Helen McCookerybook - Going Up the Country, Church House Inn, Congleton 14/06/2015. Picture is author's own)

Hello again,

First up, a very big thank you to everyone who has continued to support That Music List with your patronage right through high summer.

This is actually the first time since 2012 (season four) that I've kept the blog going throughout August, instead often opting to end a season right after the Indietracks festival in July; and the comparatively low number of visits for the last two Lists in particular presumably speak to people's competing priorities at this time of year (outside activities, holidays, etc.).

Your interest in the music I like to share on here is nothing which I take for granted, and it's a pleasure to serve you. Thanks again.

In terms of listening pleasure this week, the return of Teenage Fanclub rates an inevitable personal highlight, if one virtually impossible to condense into just the four songs - including the brand new Day in the Sun - for A Session of Sorts.

As well as that one, plus a favourite from 2023 and a splendid Thirteen era out-take, the irony of including a b-side by departed bassist and co-founder Gerard Love entitled Please Stay is not lost on me.

Comments left with practically each and every one of the band's videos on YouTube, Facebook posts, etc. suggest that some fans are taking longer than others to forgive the nature of Love's departure all of eight years ago now (predicated on an aversion to regular global air travel, if memory serves); and a musical shift, subtle but tangible nevertheless, has indeed come upon the band since.

I'm more inclined to give thanks for the almost two decades of Love's work with Teenage Fanclub than lament what has followed, especially as what has followed is still exceptionally good by most standards.

Yes, the power-pop hooks and greater immediacy of a lot of Love's work are missed, and I'm not sure a Sparky's Dream or Star Sign would or could ever come from one of his erstwhile colleagues. Nevertheless, Norman Love's killer ear for classic '70s American songwriting and Ray McGinley's often more cerebral wordplay and structures are still two tricks executed expertly when many bands barely manage one.

Long may they prosper. Incidentally, A Session of Sorts is already the second of our raft of new features to have included Teenage Fanclub since TML returned (the occasional series of instrumentals featured them back in List #246) and, spoiler alert, they'll be back again in another before the year's out.

Going even further back to That Music List's earliest possible history, I was reminded when fixing its links the other week that TML #1 included the characteristically smart, quirky, catchy Knickerbocker by Brighton electronic / nu-disco favourites Fujiya & Miyagi. Lo and behold, what should turn up within days of that but the lead track from the tenth - count them - studio album New Shiny Object, due out during autumn half term week.

Very much business as usual here, but that usual business is of course usually very good, David Best's familiar repeated, almost whispered vocal style, the Krautrock tinged keys and all. The well is in no danger of running dry 26 years into the band's existence on this admittedly limited evidence.

(An aside of I suspect limited interest, but still; of all of the acts to feature on that very first List back in February 2009, I've realised that every one of them has made further appearances in these pages over the ensuing years bar two - Circulus and Robotnik. I'm sure that can probably be put right, and probably ought to have long before now).

Among the myriad (or slightly fewer) other highlights this week, you might also like:

New, or at least not ancient, releases from Hollow Hand, Tony Bontana and Robber Robber.

Among the best-known tracks by former Chef and very much present-day academic and writer Helen McCookerybook (Dr Helen Reddington). She's at the Controls, Helen's 2021 work on female producers and engineers (feel free to follow this Bookshop.org link), grows ever nearer the top of my to-read pile.

Following on from an old-but-new theme of last week, November 89 is a newly reissued piece from Wolfgang Voigt, perhaps best known whenever featured on these pages for his dark techno/ambient vehicle Gas. It is perhaps less bucolic or hallucinogenic and more harsh than what was to come in seminal Gas releases such as Pop and Königsforst, and if anything gives off a horror soundtrack vibe, but that makes it no less fascinating an historical artefact.

Also old-but-new, The Offs meet WrongTom sees the south London DJ/producer give some tracks from the 1970s/1980s San Franciscan punk-reggae pioneers his particular band of dub treatment. The route to getting these to see the light of day has been tortuous, The Offs' initial momentum four decades ago chopped at the legs by lead singer Don Vinil's unexpected passing, and WrongTom's The Offs in Dub project subsequently left album-less for a long while by label boss David Ferguson's own demise. Here at last on Bandcamp, however, are at least some of the fruits of their labours.

The one top 40 hit - eventually; it required some reissuing - by Latin Quarter, whose Modern Times debut album from 1985 remains a favourite in this household. For the life of me I can't find the Bluesky post repeated not so long ago when the relevant 1986 edition of Top of the Pops was last repeated. The gist of it, however, was that nothing summarised the eighties more perfectly than Steve Skaith observing there are more tanks than food in the Ogaden one minute, followed by a pink woollens-clad Su Pollard singing a TV wedding show theme the next. Yep.

A terrific, empowering number by radical San Franciscan industrial hip-hoppers Consolidated, this time in league with self-styled vaginacore slam poets The Yeastie Girlz. It was always fascinating to watch this getting a spin at Oldham's alt. nightclubs of the early-mid 1990s - and many spins it got - and see the colour drain out of the faces of certain lads when they realised what they'd just sung along to. YouTube footage suggests vocalist Adam Sherburne performs this one himself at Consolidated gigs to the present day.

J xx

KILLING JOKE – Eighties (1984)