Library Records

Every few weeks a handful of CDs gets thrown into the Harrods bag alongside the several hundred children’s books we regularly take home from the local library. It’s a hit and miss exercise, you never know if the disks are even going to work, and the liner notes are often missing or destroyed, but at least it doesn’t cost anything.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Your Funeral ... My Trial”: a record I listen to less often than most “good” Cave records, mainly on account of it coming out as two 45-rpm 12” records, necessitating a leap from the couch after every second song and thus falling victim to my inherent laziness. At the time it seemed like a disappointment after “The First Born Is Dead”. But in retrospect, it is easy to see the record as a collection of either off-cuts from or prototypes for his novel; the scent of Southern gothic is all over it. It still has the faults I saw in it back then: mostly to do with Cave’s delivery; he sounded like he wasn’t sure which Nick Cave was supposed to be singing (and I still reckon he stumbles over one of the lines on the title track: quaint and “humanising” to leave it in, maybe (or perhaps too much of the recording budget had gone on "other things"), but after a couple of listens it becomes an annoying blemish). But what also comes through now is how alive the Bad Seeds sounded: what originally appeared to be an absence of Barry Adamson now sounds like an opening up; we might never have had “The Good Son” if this hadn’t explored the new territory first. And it is impossible to lightly dismiss a record containing “The Carny”, and in particular the moment when Blixa Bargeld, cast as Boss Bellini, delivers a couple of lines in worse-sounding English than Roberto Benigni in "Down By Law": “Bury zis lump off crow bait.” I will never come to terms with “Hard On For Love”, which I think is one of the few mis-steps in Cave’s career, but the CD makes up for this by offering us “Scum”, the flexidisc-only bile-a-thon directed at the NME’s Mat Snow, set to a steamrolliing rhythm track that recalls the last gasps of the Birthday Party.

Loose Fur “Loose Fur”: Jim O’Rourke and Jeff Tweedy toss off six songs that are neither a little bit country nor a little bit rock and roll, but somewhere off to one side. O’Rourke has been quietly working on his pop side for a while now, and this can be seen as the latest development. Nevertheless it is possibly the least likely record to turn up at a local library. If you didn’t look closely you wouldn’t even know who was behind it. It will most likely survive as nothing more than a footnote to each of their careers, but that’s no reason not to notice it at all.

Jay Farrar “Terroir Blues”: by strange coincidence, this appeared the same week as the Loose Fur disc; Farrar being the other arm, with Tweedy, of the Uncle Tupelo alt-country axis, a genre that passed me by at the time. Thus I have no context in which to place this, but even on its own it stands up as a quietly compelliing set of faintly country/folk songs. It actually comes across at times as if he was sitting in the same bedroom as Nick Drake (but who isn’t these days?).

John Coltrane Quartet “Live in Stockholm”: by another coincidence, this appeared the week of Elvin Jones’s death. There has been plenty written about Jones; I am sorry to say my acquaintance with him starts and ends with this quartet. Listen to something like “Africa/Brass” and you realise how Trane wasn’t the only elemental force in his music. This live recording is notable for the fact that the sound quality, while generally appalling throughout, improves as the record progresses. And it’s not just that your ears get used to it; go back to the first track, “Mr PC”, straight after listening to the record right through, and it still sounds awful. McCoy Tyner was either late for the set or is lost somewhere in the maelstrom. There is some overlap with the “Live at the Village Vanguard” set, and a smart guy would set the two up side by side to note the differences. Shame I’m not that guy. I’m still waiting to find the live version of “My Favourite Things” performed with a fifth player (Dolphy?) that I saw on a TV documentary a few Christmases ago.

Dead Can Dance “Into the Labyrinth”: the follow-up to “Aion”, which is still to my mind their masterpiece, but this is also extremely good, as you would expect. Someone at work overheard this and pointed out how much Brendan Perry sounds like Jim Morrison. And blow me if he isn’t right. Now I have “issues”.