That Music List: LIST 266

(Stealing Sheep - Indietracks Festival, 28/07/2019. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

This List comes to you live from my own attic study for the first time in four weeks, following the recent extended jaunt to see friends and family in Germany. It's nice to be home, certainly; though as the only linguist in the house, I suddenly find myself a bit less needed and valuable once more. Everyone here is quite good at ordering food, buying museum tickets and following instructions in English, y'see. Ah well, roll on the next foreign jaunt.

I haven't returned from overseas with armfuls of (or indeed, any) vinyl and CDs, as it's not all about me these days in the same way as it might have been three decades ago. I'm not sure they'd all have survived the trip back in the car, anyway, given the prevailing ferocious heat - not all of the chocolate gifts did.

I did, however, pick up a few leads as to where to look online for the present-day equivalents of all of those wonderful German language alternative/indiepop/DIY/everything else compilations that had so fired my enthusiasm for Germany's non-mainstream acts twenty to thirty years ago (the likes of Tapeta's five volumes of Müssen alle mit, Trikont's ...Mama series and Mermer's all female-fronted sampler Bleib gold, Mädchen).

If those leads take me to anything new and wonderful, I'll be certain to share them on here in the fulness of time.

More immediately, an afternoon spent waiting for successive loads of holiday washing to complete granted me a few unexpectedly free-ish hours, which I spent updating another trio of the older Lists in the back catalogue.

Thus newly reformatted and with all of the (at least) 17-year-old links repaired are Lists #05, #06 and #07, all from spring 2009.

#05 is most noteworthy to me for featuring a pre-fame, pre-full band, pre-everything else performance by Elizabeth Morris of List #253 stars Allo Darlin' on the roof of her flat. What an adventure both the band and its fans enjoyed subsequently. #06 and #07, meanwhile, are the two halves of an Annie Nightingale Request Show special, as the name suggests featuring some well-loved - and in some cases pretty frequently played - tracks from the since deceased godmother of Radio 1's cult Sunday evening show of the 1980s and early 1990s. Yes, Fish Heads is in there somewhere...

***

Be all that as it may. What of this week's actual selection?

It's a joy to be able to include something from the forthcoming first bona fide album by The Yummy Fur this century, interest in the band in most recent times having been upheld - bolstered, even - by Rock Action's release of the Piggy Wings career retrospective in 2019 and a gradual increase in live activity since.

Unity Over Europe sounds like one would hope a new Yummy Fur track would, in the way that the new Prolapse album of last year similarly met expectations - revisiting familiar fertile ground without ultimately offering only a pale facsimile of previous glories.

It's a muscular, abrasive, addictive number with as much of a nod to early (say, circa Warm Jets era) Eno as post-punk musically and some suitably surreal, recondite art and literature references in the lyrics over which to chew.

The set lists of this year's gigs to date suggest that this new material can sit cosily alongside some of the 90- to 120-second bursts of art/cinema/nightclub-themed punk-pop of yore - the likes of Kirsty Cooper and Plastic Cowboy happily survive. I'd certainly like to see them again, John McKeown having generally made for a sarcastic but winning frontperson whenever our paths crossed back in the day ("I have a cold tonight, so you'll have to forgive me for sounding like sexy Tom Waits" is one particular remembered favourite from a Manchester gig).

It's amazing how things come full circle. My first encounter of The Yummy Fur was at the Slampt Recordings 540-Minute Festival in Newcastle almost exactly 29 years ago - August 23rd, 1997, to be precise. As far as anyone was designated the headliner among the thirteen acts that day, it was probably them.

Ten acts and many hours prior to that, however, the Cumberland Arms venue had been hushed into enraptured silence by the achingly beautiful, lovely, sad, funny, poignant tales of one Nev Clay, at the time operating under his alias of Brenda System (a reference to the psychosocial intervention framework one assumes he may have used to treat substance and alcohol abusers during his time as a mental health nurse).

That, too, was my first experience of Nev's work; but as those of you who have been following That Music List since its reactivation in January may remember, Nev's solo gig in York last summer helped light the touchpaper under my return to seeing, writing about and generally falling hard in love with music again. Whether he realises it or not, I've a lot for which to thank him.

Hence the inclusion of Leaving Do in the first List back (q.v. #237), and hence also the flagging up of two things this week. First, a new Riley and Coe session by Nev this coming Wednesday (August 12th). Second, a new mini-LP, Until I Forget, limited to 200 vinyl copies and featuring the previous BBC session from autumn 2024 plus three revisited tracks and a new one.

That newie, a track evidently conceived and realised almost in its entirety at 4.30am one day last year, I find just as heart-rending and affecting as I did the likes of Demons in that initial live encounter all those years ago. A gifted, humble, lovely man, a fine storyteller and a gregarious stage presence, Nev is a national treasure hidden from view more than many, which is a pity.

***

Among the many other nice things this week, you might also like:

Stealing Sheep, for me one of the absolute highlights of what turned out to be the final in-person Indietracks festival just over seven years ago now (sob). A riot of gold capes, funky tunes and winsome choreography, I could easily have seen them being invited back repeatedly judged solely on the crowd's reaction, had circumstances permitted. My quest to find a full version of the plinky electropop reboot of early track Shut Eye with which they concluded their set goes on.

The latest rummage around in the Scrabble bag of indiepop royalty, from which have been pulled out two Heavenlys, a Dolly Mixture and a Trashcan Sinatra to form Railcard. Unstable Neighbour is a thing of joy, beguiling harmonies, propulsive two-chord chugging, echoey brass and all. That all augurs well for the forthcoming album.

More new, or at least not ancient, stuff from Phoebe Bridgers, Test Card, This Is Lorelei, Argonaut and Vanishing Twin (in the case of the last-named, those echoes of peak Broadcast are very much still tangible, even without former Broadcast alumnus Phil MFU among their number these days).

As with Hubert Kah in List #240, an act in Inker & Hamilton to have benefited significantly for a small part of the 1980s from a collaboration with crack producer and musician Michael Cretu, he later of Enigma fame. We'll be seeing Michael performing in his own right on these pages before the month's out, too.

Another fascinating artefact from Sheffield's indie/pop/punk/etc. prehistory. B Troop would have been around at the same sort of time as Chris Sievey's pre-Frank Sidebottom combo The Freshies across the Pennines, and with my eyes closed I could almost imagine Junior passing as one of Chris's mini masterpieces, allowing for Kevin Donoghue's less adenoidal vocals.

A song by The Colorblind James Experience which doesn't concern a relocation to a city in Tennessee.

Something from Black Uhuru briefly but heavily played on the likes of Piccadilly Radio in the mid-1980s. I had always assumed that this fine single, plus the parent album Brutal, was a Sly & Robbie production, but a re-read of the sleeve notes credits no less significant a figure in Arthur Baker. Major international hits eluded them still, but from a critical perspective this was the band's imperial phase nonetheless, Brutal joining 1984's Anthem in being Grammy nominated, if not quite matching that one's award victory.

A tribute to the recently departed Jennifer Finch of L7, and a track very deliberately chosen for the fact she created, wrote and performed lead vocals on it. And for the other fact that it absolutely spanks.

To finish, my favourite track from the whole of 2019, a decision not due solely to having seen Bilge Pump performing it live at Delicious Clam in Sheffield earlier that year, but at the same time done no harm by that either. It's probably not hard to imagine how those guitar and bass riffs, pounding over and over for north of eight minutes, gradually commanded that small venue.

J xx

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ARETHA FRANKLIN - (Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone (1968)