Here We Going....

 

In some ways Friday 9^th September 2016 is a day that can never be matched in terms of its significance to my life. For a start, it was my partner Laura’s 50^th birthday and all our neighbours threw a wonderful, celebratory, surprise party that made Laura realise just how loved and appreciated she is by everyone. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this gathering as, neither of us being birthday people, I had already committed to attending The Wedding Present’s audio visual tour at the Sage, whereby they would be playing their new album Going, Going in its entirety. You can imagine just how awful this made me feel, but Laura was fine with it.

Also released on Friday 9^th was Teenage Fanclub’s new album Here, which made this not so much a red letter day as seminal rite of passage in my cultural progress through early middle age. The two bands I’ve followed for the longest (more than a quarter of a century in each case) were releasing product at the same time; alright so the Weddoes came out a week earlier, but you get my drift.

Finishing work on Friday, I cycled home and tore open the cardboard package from Monorail Records that contained Here. Having already heard the opening two songs I’m in Love, perhaps the only lyric in history that utilises the word “trajectory” and Thin Air, there was already an element of comforting familiarity about the autographed, clear vinyl album I held in my hands. Reassuringly, the album was rigorously assembled with the trademark democracy integral to the band’s ethos; Gerry, Norman and Raymond, as ever, contribute 4 songs each. This is one of the facets of Teenage Fanclub I love the most; what band other than the Fannies, and I include The Beatles in this, can boast 3 distinctive songwriters whose work is all of comparable quality. Norman with the positive, upbeat, rockier numbers, Gerry with the glorious shimmering, gentle pop sensibility and Raymond with the more cerebral, quirkier, road less travelled songs that reward the careful listener, in contrast to the effervescent immediacy of the other two’s work. It is no surprise that the band sought to make public a Norman and then a Gerry song; more than anything else it reassures and pacifies an anxious Fanclub fanbase. As the late John Peel said of The Fall (when they were good), this is a band who are “always different; always the same.”  However, and this is where things really do take an unexpected gear shift.

Without doubt, the positivity enshrined in Live in the Moment could be seen as the keynote message of the album. We’re all getting older, though some of us are getting better.  Norman and Gerry have come up with the goods as ever, in terms of crowd pleasing singalongs, even if Darkest Part of the Night has an almost sombre undercurrent rarely present in a Blake composition, and slices of dappled beauty, whereby I Have Nothing More To Say is glittery electro pop with a solo that could be a cousin of Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets. The beautifully cluttered It’s a Sign shows a seamless link with Gerry’s Lightships work, while Norman’s songs have little in common with his side projects; both approaches are fine by me.

But let me tell you something; the Raymond numbers are the ones that beguile and fascinate me the most at this point.  Hold On is unexpectedly jaunty in tone, music and words, while I Was Beautiful When I Was Alive is an awesome contemplation on the impermanence of existence with an almost confrontationally rocky coda. At this point, the best track for me is Steady State, which is Alka Selzer for the hangover on the morning after the 60s. It’s reminiscent of Tomorrow Never Knows, but we could equally be in 1972; a swooning, transcendent, proggy, psych anthem that is probably the finest thing he has ever written.  I love it.

TFC album explored, I headed out to see The Wedding Present with my pal Ginger Dave. At the Sage, the venue was approximately 80% full and Mr Gedge was doing his usual gladhanding at the merch stall; I love this about him. He’s genuinely honest and engaging with the people who go to see him. I suppose that’s exactly the same with TFC, or specifically Norman as the others can seem a bit shy. I bought a CD of Going, Going for £10 and had it signed by the auteur himself. Not only did it contain 20 tracks, comprising an impressive 73 minutes of music, but it was accompanied by a DVD of all the promo films the band would be playing along in front of. Now don’t get me wrong, some of the images were quite affecting and intriguing in a quiet way, but when the band really hit form, as they did for most of the night, you simply forgot about the back projection and watched them absolutely tear the place up. The energy David Gedge expends during live shows is something to marvel at.

In total contrast to the Fannies, The Wedding Present are not a democracy, but an absolute monarchy. I’m not saying the man in black is a dictator or an autocrat, but this is his band and he calls the shots. Perhaps this is why he is transmogrifying into a disturbing hologram of Sam Allardyce and Nigel Farage. I’ve long speculated that he may be on the OCD spectrum as so much of the activity related to the band is always rigorously addressed in exactly the same manner, regardless of year or personnel: they don’t do encores (we know that), the bassist is always female, the inflexible insistence on playing the back catalogue in a particular order, the fact Gedge always wears a black shirt and black trousers, his unnerving habit of staring intently at his fretboard. Yet this is not a problem as, rather like the reassuringly familiar nature of Gerry, Norman and Raymond’s style of songs, this provides security and comfort for the listener. We are in our constantly evolving and expanding comfort zone, being guided gently to new horizons by TFC and belligerently shoved on our way by The Wedding Present.

The one way in which TWP really shook things up at the Sage was in not playing the album in the exact order it appears on record. Indeed, they took the stage to a backing track of a poetry recital. The last time I heard something similar, The Manic Street Preachers came on stage to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and proceeded to sound like a pale imitation of The Lurkers. This time, it was my favourite English poet, the one on whom I wrote my dissertation, Philip Larkin reading his 1974 poem Going, Going; a rather vicious, nostalgic barbed attack on big business and the destruction of the English countryside. This was followed by the 4 incredible instrumentals that introduce the album; Kittery and Greenland out-Mogwai Mogwai in terms of the quiet to loud, slow to fast explosions of aural abuse layering over pastoral beauty. Sprague utilises female crooning in a way that makes it achingly reminiscent of a Manga theme tune, Studio Ghibli style.

Don’t ever get the idea these four instrumentals are fillers or self-indulgent b-sides promoted unfairly; they are essential, integral parts of the album that lead delightfully into the songs for singing. Some of the numbers we know already; Two Bridges, an elegant West Coast rock stomp, came out on 7” back in 2013, Fifty Six, which I believe to be Gedge’s age at the start of the recording process has been around on earlier tours and Rachel is simply gorgeous; a mature slice of summer love pop with nary a hint of the sardonic side to which we’ve become accustomed. There are sonic terror assaults like Bear and Birds Nest, weird wigouts like Wales and an efficient pastiche of 78 NYC punk thrash on Secretary. All in all, I’m getting the vibe it’s their best album since the reformation and it simply wipes the floor with 2012’s Valentina that sounds tame and timid in comparison. Is it as good as Seamonsters? We’re getting close.

Live, the Sage was the perfect environment for the new album; the excellence of the sound quality and comfort of being sat down helped with the whole recital ambience. I sincerely doubt that a traditional Weddoes gig would have worked with the seats in, but this did. So far in 2016, I’ve seen The Wedding Present in 3 venues, play 3 completely different sets and make each one a triumph; how I look forward my final glimpse of them in sunderland on Friday 2^nd December, Ginger Dave’s birthday. Although, before that, there’s the beguiling prospect of Teenage Fanclub at Whitley Bay Playhouse on Wednesday 16^th November, and before that Vic Godard with the Band of Holy Joy at the Cumberland on Friday 14^th October. Incidentally, if you ask me to make a choice between Here and Going, Going then the answer is BOTH!!

Finally, on a musical theme, Fledg’ling Records are to be commended for tracking down the incredibly rare 1966 BBC session Anne Briggs recorded for Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor’s Folk Cellar series. The programmes were recorded in the basement studio at Cecil Sharp House, London. Anne Briggs sang three songs during the launch episode broadcast on Saturday 13th August 1966 and these rare, simple, unadorned and intimate performances, aching with poignancy, make their first appearance on record, fifty years after recording and capture Anne Briggs singing at the very apex of her powers. Polly Vaughan and The Recruited Collier are as powerful a pair of unaccompanied ballads as one could imagine; they will provoke you to tears. My Bonny Boy is a more jaunty and optimistic number. Finally, the fourth track, The Verdant Braes of Skreen, recorded live in a Nottingham folk club and rescued from a long, presumed lost, reel to reel tape completes the set. This 4 Songs EP makes a wonderful companion piece to the Fledg’ling re-release of English Songs by Shirley Collins that appeared back in April.

Meanwhile, my reading habits have extended as far as another 2 books. The first of these is The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh. As ever, the characters and plotting in his best work are never far removed from the Leith of his youth, which is the case with the updating of Francis Begbie’s life story, whereby the implausible success the eponymous anti-hero has enjoyed as a sculptor is made to seem plausible. Rather like Juice Terry Lawson in A Decent Ride, there is the hint that Welsh’s deification of violent, heterosexual men from the underclass is a way of cocking a snook at the rarefied American literary demi-monde in which he now finds himself. That said, this is Welsh’s most taut and compelling prose excursion since Crime in 2008. He doesn’t play it for laughs; it’s a tense, affecting tale of death and revenge, with appropriate levels of thuggery and gore to make this revenge procedural a success. I enjoyed it tremendously and hope that Welsh can maintain this level of output in the future, as well as steering away from crass, populist excess such as the execrable Sex Lives of the Siamese Twins.

Having finished The Blade Artist, I found myself in Ireland bereft of holiday reading matter, so took a browse through the always intriguing, always reduced stock in Dalkey News, where I picked up a copy of Patrick McGinley’s curious Bogmail. Set out in the wilds are Inishowen, the book was condemned on its publication by no less of an august publication as The Donegal Democrat as “a disgraceful insult to the fine people of our county.” It isn’t really that; it’s more a kind of Samuel Beckett meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez on the road to Ballyshannon, with an unmistakeable slice of Flann O’Brien’s surreal take on rural Irish life on every page. This is above all, a novel of character; the central protagonists, both present and missing, have their stories told in loving, quirky detail and the intricate relations between the various sub-plots on love, money, revenge and morality, all tie up in an ever so neat ending. McGinley wrote the novel when living in England and the exile’s emotional and physical distance from the hills, bogs and fields he called home make it all the more effective.

I also finally managed to read the 125^th Anniversary book published by The Northern League, Northern Conquest; a long form diary meets potted biography of the major figures involved in the local game in the north east. A thoroughly enjoyable read, where the human interest levels are always higher than the slavish attention to statistical detail, making it all the better for those who regard football as far more than 22 blokes kicking a bag of air about.