Bulldog

And here are a few more for ya. First mixtape coming soon...


Divinyls are one of a few bands you'll catch me mentioning here who started off from relatively rougher-edged, hard-rock beginnings who made a move as their career progressed into much more accessible pop territory. This here Sydney six-piece is another one of those kind of success stories, such to the extent that virtually everyone who hasn't been living under a waterfall's heard their uber-cool mega-hit I Touch Myself before (if not, watch the first Austin Powers movie again, as if its being one of the funniest movies ever isn't reason enough). As far as I know, they still tour without any plans for a comeback, making Underworld here their last album.

In essence, and for the sake of those who've never heard of this bunch before, what we're dealing with here is good old, unabashed pop music with a sharper, hard-rock edge - pop-rock when all's said and done, this album being among the finest of its sub-genre. In the faster, rougher-edged parts of this album Divinyls do sound a little like a prehistoric Yeah Yeah Yeahs, although with much more of a leaning towards melody. Plus I reckon Amphlett's a much better singer than Karen O but, then again, I'd be lying if I said I was a die-hard fan of the latter's anyway. Comparisons aside, throughout the length and depth of the album, we're simply presented with a load of absolute belters of tunes - nothing that challenging and definitely nothing to turn someone's musical world upside-down, but just an album's-worth of deliciously melodic pop-rockers to stick on when you're not really in the mood for listening to Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, Pere Ubu or whoever (at least that's how I feel about this). Plus, Amphlett's great vocals and trademark falsetto swoops make this one all the more special. Apologies in advance for the lame SQ on the below video clip...


And here lies the first of a few moves into electronic pop that the albums I've deemed appropos for this thread that we'll take. Saint Etienne, a name I'm sure a lot of us on these boards have already heard somewhere before (whether or not we were watching England get dumped out of France '98 on penalties there), as they're a band who aren't without their own extensive little back story, seeing as they've been kicking about the scene since well into the early 90s. Five albums after their heady entrance into the commercial music industry, they deliver us this, something of an artistic two-in-one package as this particular album saw Saint Etienne release a film of this same name, which provided their lucky customers with a narrative-based short movie that stemmed from all the nice, jazzed-up visual accompaniments for each song upon live performance. This little added quirk also gave the bunch a good opportunity to revive a certain standout feature of their earlier work, that being the presence of spoken-word interludes between songs (which in this case were taken from the accompanying film).

Slapping a dance-pop label on this album would be a gross over-simplification of the whole thing and would probably put a few of you off (with good reason), so I won't do it here. It'd hardly be justified if I did, as not only is the overall vibe of this album a little bit too chilled to be blared out at that party you were thinking of holding in your kitchen and inviting that bird you fancy to, but also there are plenty of live guitars which add to the atmosphere of the whole thing nicely, not to mention the stoned kind of vibe you get from some of the heavy basslines and pounding, robotic rhythms. To put all that into plain English for you, you may be familiar with female-fronted trip-hop bands like Lamb, Hooverphonic or whoever? Imagine all that, just waaaay more accessible. Trip-pop if you will, and where you can't say that you get a bunch of instrumentals that are just lively enough to keep your head nodding and just chilled enough not to get that little bit too rowdy for the album's overall mood. Another fine album then. The only dud is the pretty lame Soft Like Me, but what's perfect eh.


I've mentioned this album a few times lately, so I'll try not to keep this long. I did have this album for about four or five months before it properly clicked with me as the classic it is (not just in the 'oh, this album's nice' sense), and since that happened fairly recently, I guess I couldn't help it. Anyway, little bit of back-story before we get to the album itself, Scritti Politti (for those who've never heard of them) started out as one of the finest post-punk bands to emerge from the north of England (sunny old Leeds in this case), released some EPs of jagged, left-of-centre post-punk on Rough Trade, supported the likes of Joy Division and Gang Of Four on the live circuit before singer Green Gartside had a heart-attack at the age of 23, due to his dangerously-careless lifestyle. That prompted Scritti Politti to go down a slightly more accessible musical avenue with their first album proper; Songs To Remember (some of you may recall a nice, reggae-tinged song called the Sweetest Girl from off of it). Gartside had a vision of pop music though that his current backing band couldn't pursue with him so in short he sacked the lot of them (keeping the name), moved to New York to find the right kinds of musicians and recorded a very very accessible, very very successful album.

This album being, along with the Human League's Dare (and yes, I'll be getting to that one later), not only one of the most influential and defining pop albums of the 80s, but also one of the very best. As I say, I've mentioned it before so I'll keep it short here - where Phil Oakey and the Human League experimented with their vision of pop music by recording Dare entirely on synth, Green Gartside and his merry band of session musicians went about taking that idea further by recording live, funky basslines and guitar breaks over the top of it (the kind of music which was kicking about the New York clubs at the time, necessitating Gartside's move across the pond), all the while laden with Gartside's witty wordplay in lyrical form. In a sentence, it's charming, it's gorgeous, it's melodic, it's cheesy as hell (but ever-so lovable for it), it's Scritti Politti! Maybe not your cuppa tea, but it certainly is mine. Whether or not this is your thing, I'd recommend you check out the Rough Trade compilation of Scritti Politti's early stuff (the aptly-named Early), as that album and this one are simply worlds apart.