Get ‘Round Town… The Pastels and Scottish drone pop… December 8, 2007
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Minor Left Parties.trackback
I probably can’t convey the enthusiasm I felt some weeks ago when I discovered that the Pastels album ‘Up for a Bit with the Pastels’ from – gulp! – 1987 was available for download. That enthusiasm was only very slightly dented by the discovery that it had been remixed and it returned once I had a chance to listen to the album.
The Pastels were one of those strange breed of Scottish pop bands which appeared during the 1980s. I hesitate to suggest that they were in some respect a point on a line drawn between Orange Juice and the Jesus and Mary Chain. But in their shambolic, jangly, noisy and sweetly melodic post-punk style they certainly were everything that was hinted at by the essential disintegration and slow reworking of traditional 1960s pop into something that was hardly recognisable in its formal attributes but at conceptual core retained all the vitality of the original.
Stephen Pastel – the frontman (and yes, it’s a pseudonym) – was, and remains, a key individual in Scottish music and his label 53 and 3rd was instrumental in bringing an array of luminaries to an unsuspecting world including The Vaselines, the Soup Dragons, the aforementioned Mary Chain and BMX Bandits. Unsurprisingly some of Teenage Fanclub later turned up sort of in, sort of out, of the group.
Remarkably they managed to entice Shop Assistants keyboardist Aggi Wright on board in the mid-1980s and subsequently ‘Up for a bit…’ appeared.
So, what’s it like?
Well, how to describe the vocals… monotonic, drone-like, fey, hesitant would all cover them – here’s an example…
To say they were underproduced would be overly kind. Set them then against a background of strummed guitars, slightly wonky drumming, rudimentary keyboards, some kind of found noises and you have a sound which combines a certain strand of sixties pop with the sonic excess of the Jesus and Mary Chain. Except, the dial is tipped closer to the former than the latter. I see they’re referred in various places as ‘drone-pop’ in this phase of their career, and that is as good away as putting it as any.
To suggest that some of the lyrics were simple-minded beyond belief is to be both accurate and simultaneously to do them a disservice. As we know (and if you don’t why are you still reading this?), when you’re 21 there is a depth of meaning in even the most throwaway phrase, and even their lurches towards what one presumes was a sort of irony…
‘…you can get around town in a bus… you can get around town in a train… you can get around town in a taxi… but you can’t get around in an aeroplane…’ seemed more wittily profound than any phrase which rhymes train and aeroplane has any right to be…
They weren’t all like that. They referenced sex and S&M and owed no small debt to the Velvet Underground.
The fast songs were fast… and noisy… and sounded just like pop should in 1986, which is to say nothing like what pop actually sounded like in 1986. I’m Alright with You, Get ‘Round Town and Baby Honey (close to the JAMC in sound and thought, but filtered through a warmer somewhat less misanthropic conceptual filter – this wasn’t just the Velvet Underground redux, more like something from the blissed out and happy west coast mixed with the hint of the Beatles and classic pop) were sufficiently melodic to stick in the memory for years afterwards. Supposedly they influenced both Sonic Youth and Nirvana. Perhaps.
And there was a real sense of heartache and longing in the slower compositions, like the opening Ride which has a monolithic wall of sound, and the softer If I Could Tell You (which in the remix version has unnecessary orchestral additions and a slight diminishing of the keyboard sound). What is interesting is that whereas in the JAMC it was the guitars which constructed the wall of sound in the Pastels much of it was assembled from keyboards. Yet due to the shambling aspect they remained entirely organic…
Here, for your viewing and listening pleasure is the video to Crawl Babies from the album – a song which encapsulates the jangly guitars, the Shadows-like lines, the spoken sung vocals and the sheer lunacy of the project. Twee? Well, yes, of course. But with a bit of grit in there. Note the sexual and S&M undertones of the video:
The Pastels, perhaps unfortunately, were featured on the C-86 Collection issued by New Musical Express, a collection which some suggest promptly killed off a promising scene. Certainly the ‘anorak’ aspect of the bands, including the Pastel’s was pilloried afterwards – not helped one suspects by the feyer than a very fey thing indeed antics of Bobby Gillespie and the earliest incarnation of Primal Scream (admission, I love that first album of theirs too)…
In the early 1990s they released an album, whose name I have forgotten, which somehow wasn’t as good (although this mid 1990s track is pretty good with that odd mixture of innocence and knowing that typifies them… ). For a start Mr. Pastel’s vocals had deepened. A small thing you might say – and perhaps odd since my own musical taste tends towards bands that have deep-voiced singers and away from the likes of Radiohead with their reedy tenors… But somehow it seemed to symbolise a sense that they had ‘grown up’, as it were, and that ineffable sense of expectation that comes in the late teens and early twenties had gone for good. Or perhaps that was me… (and perhaps anyone who writes ‘ineffable’ in a piece on The Pastels deserves whatever he gets…)
Which leads to some more thoughts. There’s a lot of nonsense written about a Celtic fringe and its cultural prowess. If true one wonders what’s our excuse in Ireland (bar – curiously the pop gems from the North)? But looking at Scotland in the mid 1980s there was a remarkable flourishing of groups which really had something, and this lasted well into the 1990s (with the Creation label). And where as Irish rock tended during that period to have a leaden quality to it – perhaps unconsciously influenced by that trans-Atlantic sound I referenced last weekend – there was a much lighter touch to the Glasgow bands, despite their being noisier and more experimental than their Irish counterparts [and lest it seem I'm dismissing all Irish groups I'd refer you to Dublin Opinions great run through of the best of Irish].
They’re still at it along with running a record shop and label. I see that they released a couple of albums in the last few years. There’s something about a soundtrack… I fully intend to get around to to listening to them someday. Perhaps in a bus… but probably not in an aeroplane…
Great band. (I could have burned you a copy of the album
)
I love most of that C86 stuff but I have to say I don’t think the first Primal Scream album has aged very well – although ‘Velocity Girl’ still gives me as much of a rush as it ever did.
Would also point out that the great Scottish pop in the 80s and 90s didn’t only come from Glasgow … I’d point to the Jasmine Minks, Shop Assistants and Trash Can Sinatras for example.
There’s a lot of nonsense written about a Celtic fringe and its cultural prowess. If true one wonders what’s our excuse in Ireland (bar – curiously the pop gems from the North)? But looking at Scotland in the mid 1980s there was a remarkable flourishing of groups which really had something, and this lasted well into the 1990s (with the Creation label). And where as Irish rock tended during that period to have a leaden quality to it – perhaps unconsciously influenced by that trans-Atlantic sound I referenced last weekend – there was a much lighter touch to the Glasgow bands, despite their being noisier and more experimental than their Irish counterparts [and lest it seem I’m dismissing all Irish groups I’d refer you to Dublin Opinions great run through of the best of Irish].
Often wondered about this – why Scotland pisses all over us in terms of decent music produced over the past half century. Same population, spread between two medium sized cities, a few smaller ones and vast rural emptiness……
I think it goes back to the 50s/60s – in Glasgow you had the likes of Alex Harvey and Lulu (don’t laugh, she was a great soul singer in her day) enthusiastically catching the essentials of American music, in Edinburgh you had Bert Jansch taking the blues somewhere else entirely; we had the Bachelors, Val Doonican and Dickie Rock.
As you note Belfast is Irish exception – while Them were rockin’ the Maritime, there was no Dublin – or Cork – equivalent; the only Dublin band who. from reports sound like they could have made it (the Movement) were still born. I reckon if history had taken a different turn, Belfast would have continued producing great bands in the hiatus between the Belfast Gypsies and SLF.
So why are we so bad at it? – is Protestantism and heavy industry a prerequisite for decent music? as you point out, the Pastels, Vaselines and so on – in a mini- version of the British Invasion in the sixites – re-exported their mixture of NY punk and Brill building pop back to the pre-grunge US underground; I can think of only one irish band with any concrete comparablemusical influence -MBV, and they were as much a London band.
Perhaps Glasgow, like Liverpool and Manchester, share something with Detroit and Chicago that Dublin just doesn’t – and perhaps the real Irish musical heritage (from the Beatles to the Smiths and on) is to be found in those cities rather than here?
It seems like the Scots learned to speak the language of Rock and RnB earlier and better – we (exceptions noted) never sounded like native speakers. Still puzzles me why Country became the thing it was here, whereas Black music had such a huge influence in Scotland….. impossible to imagine an Average White Band from Galway, for instance. There seems to be a fatal Irish attraction for the middle ground that goes from Val D through U2 and on to Westlife, a compulsion to entertain at the cost of passion or wit.
[...] on from WBS’s post on Cedarlounge about The Pastels, below are links to the NME’s legendary C86 tape. For information about C86, here’s the [...]
Ach, Wednesday, if I’d known that. My knowledge of the Jasmine Minks, TCS’s etc, is a bit limited.
sonofstan, it is funny, isn’t it, I think you put your finger on it though – that ‘compulsion to entertain’… never to educate or to push the envelope… Perhaps it’s the size of the place and the sense of a metropolitan center being to the east in London. Those who stayed played generally to the crowd… Microdisney though were lots better… and I can think of another band or two who I won’t mention here
Perhaps it’s the size of the place and the sense of a metropolitan center being to the east in London
Maybe the Scottish experience of the Union is/ was less tinged with the colonial than ours was? and therefore they are actually more culturally self- sufficient?
I don’t know enough about Scotland to say. I was only there once. Perhaps as you suggest there is the industrial thing as well..?
On this Scottish vs Irish musical output… When I think of the fantastic output of Irish folk musicians over the last 40 years or so, I’d suggest that a lot of the Irish musical genius went into folk music rather than pop/rock, with a bit of crossing over of course. And few folk musicians ever make it big commercially, so they didn’t get very much notice.
BTW, the Go-Betweens were associated with that Scottish scene. See, for example: http://www.twee.net/labels/postcard.html
OK, I’m definitely burning you a Jasmine Minks CD. There’s just no excuse for you not knowing this band
As for sonofstan’s suggestion of it being a Protestant thing, I would point out – for whatever it’s worth – Alan McGee’s lament that “Celtic have all the cool people supporting them. Rangers have me and Wet Wet Wet” !
Yeah, i kinda agree – meant to mention it in the first comment – Planxty (or Sweeney’s Men?) were probably the Irish Beatles.
that last one was response to Soubresauts, BTW
and Wednesday – the Protestant thing wasn’t entirely serious …..
W, do you have the McLennan/Kilbey tie up of Jack Frost?
soubresauts – as a long time fan of Planxty and Sweeney’s Men, I’d tend to agree. Although do you think that it’s regenerated or sustained itself convincingly to this point?
I don’t have it WBS – any good? Never been too sure about Kilbey.
soubresauts – as a long time fan of Planxty and Sweeney’s Men, I’d tend to agree. Although do you think that it’s regenerated or sustained itself convincingly to this point?
WbS, I fear not. Hope I’m wrong, but it just doesn’t seem possible that Irish folk musicians are currently producing material as significant, exciting and timeless as Planxty and their many associates and friends did in the 70s and 80s. That’s my impression anyway. It would take me some time — years! — to make a considered judgement on that (and, unfortunately, I’m not paid to listen to the recordings…). There is a sense of the passing of a golden age.
Coming back to Scotland, Andy Irvine (whose father was Scottish) made an album with Scottish folk maestro Dick Gaughan in 1981, called Parallel Lines. Highly recommended, and hard to find now. Among other gems, the album features a fabulous electric(!) guitar solo by Gaughan. I have a weird hunch that it influenced Tom Verlaine (whose father was Scottish!) in the brilliant title track of his 1982 album Words from the Front. Video here (but poor quality and cut off):
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=N36Pk8CYjXY
(Actually, all of Verlaine’s other 1980s albums are better than that one! Truly great in fact.)
We know that Verlaine influenced the Go-Betweens, and I think it’s fair to suggest that he influenced some of the abovementioned Scottish bands. Here’s a curiosity: Verlaine live on The Tube TV show in 1987 backed by the Scottish band Love and Money, singing his most doom-laden (if not Bin-Laden) song “Bomb”:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=jtZYdVNflsA
Kilbey is good and bad – and as the years pass I’m more critical of his solo material. But the albums the two did are very highly regarded… by me especially.
soubresauts. That’s not very heartening. But those links are amazing. Who puts this stuff on the net? Philanthropic, that’s what I call it!
Kilbey’s blog is rather interesting, and unlike any other I’ve seen. It seems he has serious ear problems at the moment, maybe career-changing. Anyway, I particularly liked this blog entry:
have ya ever sat down n banged around on a piano?
can you imagine how much time n love
one has to invest to have yer own style n sound
that people can pick instantly?
the day i met tom verlaine in 1988
he walked in my room
picked up an acoustic guitar
played 2 notes
n i could hear it was him immediately
his relationship with the guitar
was totally unlike anybody else i’d ever seen
and i seen a few…
(http://stevekilbey.blogspot.com/2006/11/mother-yesson-i-want-to.html)
Not tinnitus is it soubresauts? I think I’m getting that too… I’ve read K’s blog, and in part it’s endearing, in another part he comes across as wedded to a sort of arrogant hippy like approach. Still, I’d be sorry if he is pushed out of what he does. He’s created some gems…
Tinnitus it is, along with an ear infection. On Wednesday he wrote:
im alert and in no pain but i cant hear a fucking thing
and my left ear going down i realise how bad my right ear is
rehearsals friday n i’m feeling pessi-mystic
no pristine silence neither
but the roar and ring and shriek of tinnitus
from one million guitar chords ringing on for ever
Folk music has certain advantages over rock music.
It sure does. For myself I’ve noticed recently a very slight hiss at the quietest times. It’s near inaudible, but not quite. My general hearing is pretty good, but I don’t like this…