Preview – Jon Hopkins

Jon Hopkins releases his new album Singularity next week. This is Emerald Rush.

Chart for stowaways – 31 March 2018

Here are the top singles this week:

1. Simon Mills – Poke EP
2. Ladytron – The Animals
3. Sparks – I Wish You Were Fun
4. Goldfrapp – Happiness
5. The Beloved – Don’t You Worry
6. Sparks – Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)
7. The Beloved – Looking to the Future
8. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – What Have We Done
9. Kylie Minogue – Dancing
10. Moby – Extreme Ways

Advertisement

Coming soon – Ivor Novello Awards

Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago, when I was researching the Ivor Novello Awards, and discovered that we haven’t covered them here since 2014! With that in mind, we’ll spend the next few weeks looking at 2015, 2016, 2017, and of course this year’s ceremony, which is coming up in a few weeks. Then, at some point soon, probably later in the year, we’ll roll back to the very beginning of the awards in the 1950s. Stay tuned!

Random jukebox – Sarah Nixey

Today’s random jukebox brings us Sarah Nixey‘s cover of Françoise Hardy‘s brilliant Le temps de l’amour:

Massive Attack – Mezzanine

It always surprises me somewhat that Massive Attack‘s third album Mezzanine seems to be their best known, and quite possibly also their best selling release. It’s also rather shocking that it celebrates its twentieth anniversary this week.

Horace Andy was always a mainstay of Massive Attack albums, and we don’t have to wait long for his appearance here, as he leads the vocals on Angel. This was the third of the singles from this album, and was pretty much their smallest hit to date, but it’s a good opening track. The mood is clearly much darker than it had been on Protection (1994), but that’s no bad thing.

Risingson had appeared as the surprise comeback single in late 1997, and while perhaps a little unmemorable, it’s easily as good as the opening track, with a similarly all-pervading darkness that gives it a very unusual feel.

But not every track is this gloomy – for Teardrop, Elizabeth Fraser turns up to deliver the vocal, giving it a bit more of a cheery feel than its neighbours. It’s melodic and less spacious than we might be used to from Massive Attack, but no less brilliant. It’s also probably one of their best known tracks after Unfinished Sympathy, as well as being their biggest hit single, although it only just scraped into the top ten at number ten.

The key here, intentional or otherwise, seems to be to try to get all the singles out of the way at the start, and so the fourth track is also the fourth single, Inertia Creeps, released as a non-charting single in late 1998. This definitely represents a return to the darker sounds of earlier.

Exchange is an odd, almost jazzy piece that slows the mood down, but it’s a pleasant piece, but Dissolved Girl doesn’t entirely work. Maybe it’s just because the first few tracks were so different and groundbreaking, but this just feels like a bit of a filler at best.

Still, things pick up again with Man Next Door, with Horace Andy on vocals again. When Massive Attack are good, they’re exceptional, and this is a fine demonstration of that. It’s slow, and full of reverb and atmosphere. By this stage, you’re either deeply seduced by the dark mood of the album, or starting to notice a bit of repetition, as Elizabeth Fraser turns up again to deliver the vocal on the pleasantly trippy Black Milk.

Title track Mezzanine has little new to offer – in the context of the album it helps build the atmosphere, but it’s nothing special. Group Four stands out a little more, but most of these latter tracks are unlikely to be remembered by most listeners. Finally, we get (Exchange), a vocal version of the earlier instrumental, and Massive Attack‘s best-known album finally comes to an end.

This album marks a definite transition between Protection and the follow-up 100th Window, but it does seem difficult now to understand quite why it’s so well known compared to its predecessors. Perhaps it all comes down to Teardrop. Or perhaps I’m missing something obvious here – it’s far from a bad album, but it surely can’t be their finest hour?

You can still find this album at all major retailers.

Preview – The Human League

The Human League‘s eighth album Secrets was marred by record company issues when it originally came out in 2001, so I’m very happy indeed to see that it reappears this week, this time with a whole bonus disc of remixes and bonus tracks! Here’s All I Ever Wanted:

Retro chart for stowaways – 27 March 2004

These were the top ten albums, this week fourteen years ago:

1. Air – Talkie Walkie
2. Goldfrapp – Black Cherry
3. Dido – Life for Rent
4. Pet Shop Boys – PopArt
5. Zero 7 – When It Falls
6. Deep Forest – Essence of the Forest
7. Sugababes – Three
8. Sparks – Lil’ Beethoven
9. Kylie Minogue – Body Language
10. Delerium – Chimera

Greatest Hits – Vol. 11

Time for another selection of reviews that you might have missed in the last year or two.

• Depeche Mode – Playing the Angel
• Faithless – Outrospective
• Heaven 17 – Before After
• Jean-Michel Jarre – Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise
• Leftfield – Alternative Light Source
• Little Boots – Nocturnes
• New Order – Power, Corruption and Lies
• Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Crush
• Robert Miles – Dreamland
• Yazoo – Upstairs at Eric’s

You can also see Vol. 10 here.

Random jukebox – Sisters of Transistors

Today’s random jukebox comes to us from Graham Massey‘s shortlived side-project with four of his great synth-playing sisters, Sisters of Transistors. This is The Don:

Yello – You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess

You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess was Yello‘s third album, released this week in 1983, but it was also the release that saw them start to break the charts for the first time in the UK, USA, and their native Switzerland.

The primary single I Love You was actually the second release from this album, released shortly after the album came out in May 1983. Their first UK hit single (almost – it just missed out on a top 40 placing), it’s a fun, daft track, which fades out much too quickly on the album.

Next is the other big hit, Lost Again, which is truly brilliant. Possibly for the first time in Yello‘s career, they seem to have put most of the silliness to one side and concentrated on just making a great song, and it comes across amazingly – it’s big, atmospheric, and filmic, and really deserves to be known by everyone.

In a way that’s really all they needed to do with this album, and they seem to have been very aware of this – No More Words is fine, but it’s a bit of a daft semi-instrumental piece with vocal samples dotted throughout. Then nothing else on Side A even breaks the three-minute mark – Crash Dance, Great Mission, and the title track all follow, each a bit silly in its own way. You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess was also the first single, released the preceding year and hinting at their future success. It’s fun, and you might enjoy the samples and funny voices, but honestly there’s really nothing particularly special here.

Side B brings us the swing delights of Swing and then dull but pleasant Heavy Whispers, Smile on You, and Pumping Velvet. You’ll probably find your mind drifting a bit somewhere during these tracks. The first two tracks on Side A were great, but nothing else here is really too outstanding. Closing track Salut Mayoumba is pleasant, as many of the earlier tracks were too, but is it really the sort of thing you want to close your album with?

So there isn’t really a lot we can say here. You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess was Yello‘s breakthrough album, but apart from some great singles, it’s generally nothing special. This is really where their history began, and it showed promise that subsequent albums would fulfill, but there’s really not a lot on here to write home about.

As with all of their early material, the essential release is the 2005 reissue with bonus tracks, which is still available.