Permanent Waves #6

I know it’s out of fashion, and a trifle uncool!

Welcome, or welcome back, to PERMANENT WAVES, a chronological journey through the power pop (and beyond!) of the year 1980.

Bit of a slow week this time around: Eight albums on the docket, with not a lot of big names or big winners between them. Digging through the obscure stuff is what I live for, though, and besides, we’ve got an exciting first to celebrate: approximate gender parity (for vocalists, at least)! Girl power! Let’s mindset.

Martha and the Muffins - Metro Music

This Toronto new-wave-with-sax outfit has a secret weapon, and it’s NOT the aforementioned sax: guitarist Mark Gane has a highly-processed yet resonant-and-rich clean tone on LOCK, like a shimmery space-age Roger McGuinn. The propulsive, arpeggiated riffing for which Gane employs it offers the perfect complement to frontwoman Martha Johnson’s deadpan takes on early-60s rock and girl group music. Album opener “Echo Beach” is an immediate highlight, giving a tongue-in-cheek voice to all the working stiffs toiling away for their yearly vacations, and “Paint By Number Heart” keeps up the energy with some good lyrics about the stifling expectations of a control-freak partner. The tone is firmly set from there: spry, light-hearted tuneage that gracefully balances retro and modern sensibilities, buttressed by social commentary so gentle that the unattentive may miss it entirely. Oh, and Andy Haas actually does kinda shred on that sax at a few points— That skronkin’ solo on “Terminal Midnight” probably makes proud some jazz guy I’m not hep enough to know about. Fun stuff.

VERDICT: NICE

Diesel - Watts in a Tank

Diesel is a Dutch band that sounds disgustingly American. Their debut album kicks off with “Sausalito Summernight”, an infectious road-trip anthem that evokes Hotel California by way of Boston, complete with a tricky little riff that hints at the band’s connection to prog outfit Kayak (via drummer/singer/producer Pim Koopman). Apparently, people say it sounds like the Steve Miller Band; I’ll take it over “Jet Airliner” any day. I like to play up my distaste for AOR, but to be honest I’m probably at least as amenable to the genre as the average person of my age, if not more so. If the rest of the album was as catchy as that opener, I’d give it my stamp of approval only the slightest bit grudgingly. The tunes just aren’t there, though, and “Down in the Silvermine” is so corny it gives me secondhand embarrassment.

VERDICT: SKIP

Suzanne Fellini - Suzanne Fellini

My inner cynic wants to dismiss this obvious Debbie Harry wannabe as little more than immature perv-bait. I mean, the back of the record sleeve has her posed holding a literal teddy bear. Sheesh, have some self-respect, woman. My inner obvious Debbie Harry wannabe, however, feels the tense, impassioned “Permanent Damage” as deeply as she’s ever felt “X Offender”, and can at least recognize “Love on the Phone” as a fair forgery. Despite Ms. Fellini’s strong singing voice, all the kiddish, boy-crazy stuff doesn’t fare quite so well. Maybe the real ‘bad influence’ is whichever manager convinced her that stodgy discount-Ronstadt piffle like “First Kiss” and “Give Me the Light” was ready for prime-time. So, that’s one and a half songs that deserve any better than the discount bins this album is destined for, which puts it half a song ahead of Diesel.

VERDICT: SKIP

The Cretones - Thin Red Line

For some reason, these skinny-tie’ed LA cats remind me a lot of Fleetwood Mac— must be all those gleaming, harmonious group vocals. Opener “Real Love” especially is a total “Second Hand News” homage, and if one of the greatest shoulda-been-a-singles of ‘77 isn’t a fine template to work off of, I dunno what is! This has almost all the ingredients needed to achieve power pop nirvana for me, between the simmering organ, irresistibly singalongable hooks, and splashy, energetic drumming. Band leader Mark Goldenberg isn’t too much of a singer, though, and his lyrics are mostly perfunctory. More than anything, I smell a future career writing songs for other people here. If those songs are half as good (or as mad!) as “Mad Love” or “Everybody’s Mad at Katherine”, you certainly won’t hear me complain.

VERDICT: NICE

Laurie and the Sighs - Laurie and the Sighs

The most powerful of the girl power this week! Sadly for Laurie Beechman and her Sighs, I’m simply not as predisposed to give a second thought to Pat Benatar wannabes as I am Debbie Harry wannabes. I do gotta give her props for sensing which way the wind is blowing, though: Laurie and the Sighs offers a fairly focused and respectable triangulation of the harder-edged lady-rockers of years past; Benatar is an obvious influence, but so is Heart, and the Runaways, and Stevie Nicks, and maybe even Fanny? That last one is probably wishful thinking on my part. I would describe Beechman’s vocals as “unrefined”, a potent yet occasionally quite shrill shout that eagerly contorts, Little Richard-style, around all manner of woah-ohs and oh-oh-ohs. I’m not too much of a hard rock junkie, and I still managed to get “Midnight Love” stuck in my head for a whole day, so if you’re all about the artists I’m comparing her to, you’ll probably have a fun enough time with this. I found it a little short on instrumental dazzle, though, maybe even a touch meat-headed? Girls can do it too, I suppose…

VERDICT: FINE

The Psychedelic Furs - The Psychedelic Furs

Like the Romantics, these guys are wasters, too cynical to truly respect their own talents, and yet the two bands could not sound more different. This is power pop turned inside out, jangly Byrds-y guitars smearing into punk noise and back again, with frontman Richard Butler rasping out druggy, slackerly musings on sex (???) and society (!!!) overtop. Though I have limited patience for Butler’s meaningfully-meaningless style of poetry, and for his band’s aloof refusal to consistently deliver the earworm-y pop sugar I so crave (I know you got the stuff, now GIMME), the moments where they manage to cohere something like a point are special, thrilling stuff indeed. Examples? Opener “India” rambles on about seemingly nothing until, miraculously, it suddenly all adds up to something, something with conviction and romance and maybe just maybe even an appropriate awareness of the legacy of British imperialism (I’m American, ha ha ha). And “Imitation of Christ”? Shoot, that’s as moving and visceral an attack on the hypocrisies of religion as any I’ve heard. Mindset of the week: Jesus is a woman too, He looks like all of me and you / Your money talks, and all your friends will laugh at her pathetic tits

VERDICT: NICE

Squeeze - Argybargy

Sure, they’re too clever by half— but so are most power poppers worth their salt. My holdup is that Chris Difford and Glen Tillbrook don’t really have an interesting dynamic between them, certainly not enough of one to earn their much-touted “Lennon-McCartney of new wave” label. They’re a stable pairing more on the order of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and their music is a bit prone to predictability as such. On their good-not-great third album, Tillbrook’s compositions remember Paul’s pop punch but forget John’s punk venom (just two years ago, both were present and accounted for on their terrific John Cale-produced debut UK Squeeze). Likewise, Difford’s lyrics land less impactfully for his itch to couch his mean streak of sarcasm in so much nice-guy ennui. Because they both worship the Beatles as a singles band above all, it opens with a KILLER one-two punch: “Another Nail in My Heart” earns them the “Lennon-McCartney of new wave” label just on its face.

VERDICT: NICE

Lydia Lunch - Queen of Siam

She clearly wants to be a provocateur, so, uhm, consider me provoked! If this whole “no wave” thing is supposed to be rooted in some kind of iconoclastic, avant-garde, anti-punk rock sentiment, then I think the lady doth protest too much: Lydia Lunch is exactly the kind of snotty malcontent that punk was invented as a jobs placement program for, and Queen of Siam offers only avant-garde-for-punks, jazz-for-punks, and poetry-for-punks. It’s a lot of gutter transgressions and atonal nihilistic headaches for their own sake (AKA not my thing) but if you can manage to meet this album where it’s at, it’s not totally without its charms. She does a great cover of “Spooky”, “Atomic Bongos” really raises the roof, and “Knives in the Drain” certainly got me chewing over the cancer of birth, a helluva turn of phrase any way you slice it. The overall sense of pretension and standoffishness makes me uncharitable, though. She’s still a kid (20 years old as of this album’s release) so she has lots of time left to prove she’s as artsy and dark as she puts on. In the meantime, this reeks of it’s not a phase, mom.

VERDICT: FINE