11 Mag Earwhig!
A notable album in my personal GBV journey, given that it was the first that I listened to seriously in its entirety once my head had been turned (see the introduction). With The Fall, it's often said that most fan's favourite album is the one that served as their introduction to the group; whilst Mag Earwhig! is not my favourite GBV LP, I think I will always think of it affectionately as my gateway...
The Album
Phenomenal stunt kids
...and on that note, I should start with the song that finally kicked me into gear, GBV-wise. Thanks to the enthusiastic endorsement of Paddy Considine, it was 'Not Behind the Fighter Jet' that convinced me that I really should give the band another, proper go. Twenty albums in, and it remains my favourite GBV song.
In many ways, it doesn't do anything especially remarkable. The casual listener might find its driving arpeggio-led verse and rousing chorus to be admirably well constructed but unspectacular. It doesn't have, for example, the aching rawness of 'Smothered in Hugs' or the insanely perfect melody of 'Game of Pricks'; neither does it display the elegant grace of 'Don't Stop Now' or the intense, taut melancholy of 'Jill Hives'.
So why do I love it so much? Is the joyful little rising-melody bridge ('you look like a sniper anyway.. ay-ay-ay')? The deliciously downbeat little coda ('a noseload of prophecies...') to the chorus? The machine-gun snare fills that anchor the whole thing with careful force? Or is the intriguingly impenetrable lyric (favourite lines: 'phenomenal stunt kids in the streets / they're popping out of the black ghost pie'; 'a wounded mercenary bleeds / in the hall of fantastically fine things' - the latter, of course, providing this blog with its title)?
To be honest - and this is rather shameful admission for a music blogger - I don't really know. It may just be the circumstances that led me to the song and what happened as a result. But, whatever it is, I adore it without reservation.
Don't strip off my bark.
With Under The Bushes Under The Stars, I noted that 'nearly all of the tracks are 'proper' verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs... the experimental sound collages and brutally truncated snippets are notably absent.' That's not entirely the case with this album, but there are still plenty of relatively conventional, polished indie/college-rock songs. (I appreciate that 'indie' and 'college-rock' are hopelessly reductive terms, but you know what I mean...)
There is, however, quite a 'rocky' tone to the best of these tracks. The looping riff of 'Little Lines', for example, is punctuated by squalls of aggressive, thrillingly disjointed soloing. 'Bulldog Skin' is a snaking, bluesy barroom stomp that revisits 'Quality of Armor' ('I took a car / drove it far').
Alternating between an insistent one-note refrain and crunchy power chords, the exuberantly frenetic 'I Am A Tree' seems to be narrated by an actual tree: 'I have the leaves that will fall off when wind blows by / don't strip off my bark... so climb up my trunk and build on your nest.' A little more understated and poppy, 'Jane of the Waking Universe' has a dreamily catchy chorus and a features a deft little wah-wah solo.
Mysterious engines run
There are several other relatively conventional songs that are solidly very good, if not quite in the league of those already mentioned. Closing duo 'Mute Superstar' and 'Bomb In The Bee-Hive' are both engagingly pugnacious rockers, the former having a grinding, Nirvana-ish vibe. 'Knock 'Em Flyin'' (which we previously encountered on Tonics & Twisted Chasers) and 'Sad If I Lost It' are pretty but not unsubstantial janglers.
Slightly more left of centre, although the chorus reverts to a more straightforward rock approach, the verse of 'Portable Men's Society' is an intriguing blend of angular post-punk and swirly psych-prog. The latter aspect matches the dystopian/fantasy tone of the lyric: 'Mysterious engines run... the cloak obscures the gun... the ones to remember are crumbling now / the vandals come for rummage.'
No scope in the morning
The rawness of the guitar and vocals give the measured lope of 'The Finest Joke Is Upon Us' more of a lo-fi feel than much of the album, emphasised by the charmingly hesitant, stumbling solo. This is even more the case with 'Choking Tara', where the roughhewn early Billy Bragg style chords and echoey voice create a spare, bittersweet lament that would not have been entirely out of place on Vampire on Titus. Neither would 'Are You Faster', which has echoes of 'What About It?', albeit from a more understated angle, until it briefly erupts into a triumphantly ragged finale.
Also at the lo-fi end of things, 'The Colossus Crawls West' manages, despite its brevity and sparse arrangement, to be as epically dramatic as its title suggests. Over a ghostly, malevolent drone, it veers between fragile introspection ('tears got me drinking / without you, there is no scope in the morning for me') and urgent declamation (once again, with a fantasy-novel tinge - 'we will be skinned alive when full-coloured kings arrive') over abandoned, clangorous chords that remind me a little of the last ever Fall song.
The only purely acoustic track is the fetchingly folky 'Now To War', a disconsolate plea for attention ('If you could only see me... I'll make a mark on you / I'll tell you all that I am.') The more simplistic strumming of 'I Am Produced' is bolstered by another of those ominous drones. A rueful reflection on the machinations of the music business ('I am trapped, tricked, packaged and shipped out'), it recalls The Smiths' 'Paint A Vulgar Picture'.
Layers of delicate, finger-picked guitar and heavily-treated vocals, backed by yet another drone - this time a dreamily shape-shifting swirl - make 'Learning to Hunt' a delicately rewarding experience. The poignant melody is ideally suited to its lovelorn message: 'on the crest of uncertainty you loom... no one will care / half as much as I care about you.'
If Ben Folds jammed with Captain Beefheart
The remaining tracks all have the experimental / interlude feel largely absent from Under The Bushes... 'The Old Grunt' sets out as a rudimentary acoustic dirge before briefly exploding into life with a squall of distortion. 'Hollow Cheek' spends just over half a minute considering what would happen if Ben Folds jammed with Captain Beefheart (and contains the marvellously cryptic line, 'the mightiest tough man leads into the skeleton forest / on coldest western wheels').
Opener 'Can't Hear the Revolution' is a curious blend of glam stomp and twitchy avant-rock that sounds like T Rex collaborating with Slint on a cover of 'Smoke on the Water'. 'Mag Earwhig!' is an arresting enough little interlude, similar in style to some of the shorter tracks on Alien Lanes, although perhaps not distinctive enough to have made the cut on that LP.
Mag Earwhig! has a sense of newness about it: there's a harder rock edge to much of it; often more towards the (relatively) more commercially-orientated end of the spectrum. But it also displays greater variation than Under The Bushes..., with several tracks of a more challenging / experimental nature. In tone and texture, it's closer to Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. However, it doesn't hit the heights of wild invention than was the case with those two LPs. And neither does it have the consistent songcraft of Under The Bushes...
In a sense, it falls between two stools. But it's still crammed with strong material: as you can see below, two-thirds of the tracks made it onto my 'favourites' playlist. And, as I said above, it will always have a special place in my heart.
- Sad If I Lost It
- I Am A Tree
- Bulldog Skin
- I Am Produced
- Knock 'Em Flyin'
- Not Behind the Fighter Jet
- Choking Tara
- Little Lines
- The Finest Joke Is Upon Us
- Now To War
- Jane of the Waking Universe
- The Colossus Crawls West
- Mute Superstar
- Bomb In The Bee-Hive
Album rank:
A strong album, but not quite consistent enough to crack the top four. Its mix of rocky delights and tender diversions were hard to separate from the fascinating abrasiveness of Vampire, so once again I had to let the maths decide...
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