Author: David Allison

So I thought I was done with Vampire Weekend. I bought and enjoyed the first two albums, but as with many albums I’ve bought in the last decade, they didn’t feel like they sustained my interest and eventually I stopped listening. I was ready to file ‘Oxford Comma’ and ‘A Punk’ under tunes from a certain era, and then move on. And when I first heard new single ‘Diane Young’, it confirmed my waning allegiance. It sounded irritatingly hyperactive, like a throwback to their first album. One trick ponies that got found out, I thought to myself.

And then the reviews started coming in. Huge leap forward, they said. New maturity, they said. Surprisingly introspective, they said. And I listened to the minute long previews on iTunes, and within 5 minutes I’d bought it.

The reviews are right. This is an album that states that Vampire Weekend are not just preppy boys playing Graceland-style pop. It starts off with with the downbeat Obvious Bicycle (still need to work on those titles now and again, boys), with its repeated imploring to ‘listen’, as if the band are insisting we reconsider them. And then we go on really quite an odd journey, that feels both like a crisis of identity set to pop music (Ya Hey, surely one of the album’s highlights, appears to be a bleak exploration of  faith and Jewishness), mixed with beautiful tunes (Step’s brilliant Bach steal, the gorgeous Hannah Hunt – probably my favourite song – and the album’s small, melancholic closer, Young Lion) and in amongst them, some reliable bops from the old school Vampire Weekend – such as Unbelievers and the single, Diane Young. The latter suddenly makes so much more sense in the context of the album as a necessary shot of fizzy sugar in amongst all that wistful existential angst.

And its funny that the band started off with Paul’s Simon’s Graceland as a template, because it’s Simon’s songwriting that most comes to mind – both his late work with Garfunkel and his early (brilliant) solo albums. That’s quite a comparison, but I think the songwriting on this album is that good.

So yes, a great leap forward and a sign that these boys are hear to stay. I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

Of all the hard-luck stories in rock – and there are many – you’d have to go a long way to beat Big Star. Perhaps only Badfinger (look em up on Wikipedia – a properly tragic tale) have a more depressing backstory. Big Star are one of those quintessential rock fables: a band with ridiculous talent who made 3 astonishing albums, who made no impact at all and fell to pieces – and who are now lauded by all and sundry as one of the great rock bands. Indeed, if you ever do a search under ‘Power Pop” (that is, rock music influenced by Brit invasion bands that are strong on melody and jangle, but are definitely crunchy rock pop rather than pop), Big Star will invariably be mentioned as one of the finest exponents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_pop

And yet none of you own a record by them or have heard of them. Cruel old world, eh?

Big Star were formed in the early 70s in Memphis by Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, once of the teen-pop Box Tops, whose song The Letter you’ll remember:

Never have a band sounded less like they were from Memphis or from the early 70s. Bell and Chilton were both obsessed with The Kinks and The Who and I think Chilton even sings with a bit of an English accent! They certainly don’t sound like they were from the US South. And therein lies their tragedy. Their first album, the brilliantly titled Record #1, garnered amazing reviews, but Big Star were signed to Stax, a soul label who had no idea how to deal with them and seemingly underinterested in marketing them. The first album bombed. Bell’s drug use got out of hand. He and the band fell out and by the time their second album, Radio City, came around, he’d left – though the record bears some of his playing and songwriting. The second album fared as badly and the band only managed one more record, the bleak, harrowing Third/Sister Lovers, before disbanding. Soon afterwards, Bell died in a car crash.

Over the years, successive generations of musicians have discovered and their reputation has grown – R.E.M. were hugely influenced, as were The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, Wilco and so on. They’re the basis, really, of melodic American college rock, except that makes them sound so-so when they’re so much better than that. I first came across them via 4AD’s supergroup This Mortal Coil, whose albums feature several covers of what I later realised were Big Star songs. You’ll also recognise September Gurls from The Bangles, who scored a hit with a cover. In the 90s, Chilton reformed the band with some success – he at least, got to see what the band’s reputation had become. Sadly, he died in 2010.

As with Bowie, there was a temptation to give you the most obvious album, which in Big Star’s case is their first album. It’s probably the most accessible, though their music is hardly difficult. But I think Radio City tells us the most about the band: despite Bell’s absence, it’s a band at the top of their powers making a bunch of quite incredible songs that burrow under your skin the more you listen to them. But you can also hear the strain on Chilton and a sorrow and tension in his songwriting and in his voice. Despite the chiming guitars, exquisite melodies and crunchy rock, it’s somehow quite a melancholy record. I also think it’s a beautiful piece of production. So much space between the instruments. Somehow both stripped back and yet really full. The guitar sound alone I could wax lyrical about endlessly. For me, it’s where chiming 60s pop meets 70s rock. It’s been often copied but never equalled.

Big Star have become a very, very important band to me. They’re one of the few bands whose work I can’t live without. When people first ask me who I’m into, I mention the three Bs: Beatles, Bowie, Big Star. I hope you feel the same.

So. We’re kicking off a 4 month classic album stint with Talking Heads. Ah, Talking Heads. The band that everyone knows but no one knows. The band who’ve influenced everyone and yet so many people are a bit wary of. I think it’s the fault of the A word.

ART. It’s that rock meets art thing. Maybe Bowie has that reputation too. And when people here about art-rock, they start thinking about concept albums or high-minded dense songs with no tunes or lyrics about Tibet or women in art galleries with dark lipstick and loud voices. And you end up thinking THIS ISN’T ROCK MUSIC. Where’s the sex? Where’s the grit? Where’s the dirt? WHERE’S THE FUN?

Choosing a TH album was always going to be tricky – like Bowie, they’ve had a long career in many guises. And as with my Bowie choice, I could probably have gone for something ‘easier’. Their debut, Talking Heads 77 is probably their most poppy, or perhaps their swansong Naked. But you want the best, right? Well I reckon you’re looking at it right here.

OK. Two rules to this album:
1) You read the Wikipedia page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remain_in_light
2) You listen to the whole thing 3 times before responding.

Why? Well, it’s an album you need to invest in, like so many of the best are. And the unusually excellent Wikipedia gives you a really fantastic sense of how this album came about. This is a band who were pushing at the musical straitjacket they’d made for themselves and suddenly found a whole new sound. I still think that marriage of African rhythms and the edgy New York paranoia of the band is so fresh, it’s startling. It was a sonic leap forward like nothing else for the band and that sense of excitement comes right off the songs.

The other interesting thing to note is the presence of Eno. He’s such an influence on this album. What a presence he was in the 70s and 80s on so many musicians, pushing them into new territories. He is of course the link to Bowie, with whom he also worked during his Berlin period.

Before I fell for this album, I knew Once In A Lifetime but none of the rest of the album – maybe as you do right now. You’d think there was nothing to add about the incredible awesomness of that song, an astonishing record that manages to be a party favourite that questions your entire existence. But when I first heard in the *context* or the rest of the album, I suddenly got it in an entirely different light.

I hope you too find the light and remain in it. 😉