Sinister: Fields In Space

[P F]

Reams of time and ranks of words separate me from my last mail to this list, 
if there ever was one. I could have invented it, while asleep in the back 
seat of a car on that southern-fried road trip that Wawa Woo was going 
about. Water has flowed pink and black under bridges, borne under punches. 
That 'freaky' bloke has changed his mind once or twice.  Captain Marvel has 
had his hair cut a couple of times. Still:

I was heading through some fields of space yesterday, somewhere south of the 
Cutty Sark, when I tripped over a CD. It was blue and had a white pussycat 
on the front. Yes, it was Whirlpool, the first Chapterhouse album, from 
1991. (1990? Anyone want to correct me on this? It says inside 'recorded 
throughout 1990', so I think the release date must be 1991, especially if 
'throughout' includes New Year's Eve 1990. Can anyone remember what they 
were doing on NYE 1990?  Funnily enough, I think I can. I was reading The 
Road To Wigan Pier in a bar a few miles from Newcastle) 1991, the year in 
whose October Chapterhouse declared in the NME, 'Obviously we're socialists, 
but we're not f****** stupid enough to think that Kinnock's going to make a 
difference when he gets in', or something. I disliked this at the time, not 
for its overt political content but for the air of complacency ('Obviously'? 
Was it that easy to 'be a socialist' in the 1990s?) and woozy stupidity that 
somehow 'surrounded' it. That put me off the band, anyway - it was the week 
that they released an ep which I have half a mind was actually called 
'Etheriel'. No, no, that can't be right (it was the Primitives who released 
the 'Etheriel', in Spring 1992, wasn't it, on the 'Spells ep'? I don't 
suppose anyone wants to buy a signed copy of that?); I'll do what Nicky the 
boy D would do and check it out on the 'www' soon enough. A poor start, 
then, for me and Chapterhouse. But when I got hold of Whirlpool I had to 
admit to myself that this was a weirdly substantial piece of work. The - 
here we go - the A-D-Bm-etc rush of 'Breather', all echoes of vocals 
tumbling after one another. The undoubtedly excessively 'baggy' rhythm of 
'Pearl' - but the way it stops and starts in the intro is inventive. The - 
do you want to hear more? No, I know; but get it out and listen to it again, 
and you'll find that this band weren't just the fall-guys they've come to 
seem. Even the Trouser Press Guide To Rock, featuring Ira Robbins Famous 
Rock Critic, rates them, says it's 'a better breed of shoegazing' and they 
'earn bonus points for timekeeping', ie. not going on and on. Then there's 
the fact that the two songwriters' names add up to 'Sherriff Patman', which 
is almost a topical reference in itself.

Anyway, I had that record for a little while, till desperate people stole it 
from me - hey, have you ever had a Chapterhouse record stolen? This could be 
unique, you know - and it wasn't till yesterday that I acquired it again. £3 
seemed a bit much, I was thinking, so the geezer knocked it down to £2. You 
know, it could always be my old copy of Whirlpool we're talking about here; 
that can't entirely be ruled out. The scene of the purchase was only about 3 
miles from the scene of the crime. But I think I'm wrong, I take it back, 
for it almost definitely isn't the same old copy: this one has - get a load 
of this - bits of blu-tack stuck on each inner corner of the sleeve. In 
other words, the previous owner had the little sleeve of the first 
Chapterhouse CD on his/her *wall*. Even I never stooped so high as that. The 
end of the story is that the thing plays great, sounds louder than my old 
copy, and still sounds exciting, fresh, driven, or even, as the Stud 
Brothers said of the Jesus and Mary Chain's 'Automatic' LP in September 1989 
- 'Fired'.

What was I doing walking around with cash on me anyway? I'd had it pressed 
upon me the night before, by a roguishly good-looking fanzine editor on a 
tube train. Go out and buy yourself something nice, he said. (Did he? No, he 
didn't really). Chapterhouse only took a fifth of the sum. On what should 
the rest go? I went looking for a cut-price 'Souvlaki' / 'Going Blank 
Again', etc, without success, then thought of the House of Love. The 
butterfly album, yes, that'd be pretty cool to own. I nearly bought it too, 
then remembered my editor's puritanical reluctance to rebuy anything he 
already had on tape - or, as he would have it, 'the poor old tape'. So there 
was just one £7 option left: 'The House of Love', No, no, not the butterfly 
album, not Babe Rainbow, not An Audience With The Mind of Dave Allen, 
featuring studio guests from EastEnders (your host: Jamie Theakston). No, 
the one that people still call 'The House of Love', or at least the one that 
Melody Maker's guide to the 80s, year by year, in March 1989 (each snippet 
was whittled from the paper's reviews - or was it? re. 'Isn't Anything', 
yes; but 'Duck Rock'? Hmm), called 'The House of Love'. The first LP, that's 
what I mean. I borrowed it from a girl in Geography once, and haven't seen 
my copy for years. Had time given it a rosy aura? Had memories that were 
sketchy as soon as they were drawn smudged into charcoal prettiness?

I'm afraid so. The first House of Love album, I feel bound to tell you - and 
now I know how David Stubbs felt - is a disappointment. Stubbsy, no doubt, 
didn't deliver such a verdict: the kids wanted to hear that it was good, and 
he gave 'em what they wanted. But this LP didn't, in truth - I'm really 
pushing the envelope here, as Michael Bracewell would say, adding that the 
term arose from US jet pilots in WWII -  sound great in 1990, probably 
didn't sound that peachy in 1988, and sounds rather flat now, a sonic 
pancake in need of a second-hand flipper. Specifics. 'Christine' still has 
some majesty, it's fine by me. 'Salomé' - does their version have an accent? 
- is OK, I always rated it, but actually sounds like a bit like an average 
rock D-G-C (whatever) bouncealong now. 'Fisherman's Tale' is a godawful 
title, Mike Scott + Phil Collins stuff (but why do we pin such things on 
such people, when it's actually people like the HoL who perpetrate them?), 
and if I'm not mistaken has the line 'I believe in Jesus' in it. Yes, to 
repeat, it has the line 'I believe in Jesus' in it. That's just not good 
enough, even B&S wouldn't go so far. 'Man To Child' - I don't know - has a 
lyric which suddenly gets all Robert-Lindsay suburban, really out of keeping 
with the rest. But the real problems, perhaps, are:

a) a flatness to the sound. I thought the HoL were meant to be sonic 
architects, Chorus-drenched precursors, cascading moonscapes of sticky 
stalactite snowball cherrycake acoustix. But here I hear bass and drums 
ambling along an unchallenging terrain, Bickers picking out hoary rock riffs 
like 'I'm Waiting For The Man' has made them OK to play, and - oh, here 
comes the letter

b) Chadwick's vocals. I can think of some really good Chadwick vocals. 
Everything on the Best of the HoL, in fact - think of 'DKWI Love You', 'Girl 
With The Loneliest Eyes' (oooohhh! Pick that one out!), even, strangely, 
'Destroy The Heart' (which remains sublime, pure essence of the best of its 
time, or something - which makes this thing all the stranger). But on the LP 
he declaims, he shouts, he 'moans' 'wryly' (but not Vini) - heck, I have a 
mind to say he's been taking the wrong kind of lessons from the Go-Betweens, 
but that forest fire is set to blaze on, let's not stoke it. It sounds - oh 
no, here come the Go-Betweens again - it sounds like student-band stuff, 
like My First Rock Group, with a dash of Cambridge Footlights about it. 
(Many of us have to be forgiven for godawful performances on a regular 
basis, I know, I know. But this isn't you and me in a back garden, this is 
Guy Chadwick, for heaven's sake, in studio 5 for take 74, with as much 
reverb as he likes, as much time to tweak and add as needed - and years of 
good vocals ahead of him, and even, how can it be?, behind him - and he 
sounds like he's fronting a band destined for arrogant oblivion, rather than 
the heights they did reach, before - humble oblivion.)

The songs don't seem good enough; the arrangements don't seem lush enough; 
the vocals don't seem right. Am I wrong? I hope Steady Mike comes out of the 
metalwork and puts me straight on this - but believe it or not, he doesn't 
even own the album. Maybe he has it on tape, OK - or maybe his definition of 
'not owning' includes that cavern of 2,700 slabs of vinyl stored somewhere 
in a sealed compartment at the bottom of the Mersey, to be opened two days 
after the next championship victory - but I'm not expecting to be put right 
on this by him any time soon. I'd expect, rather, to see

a) Ally 1996, agreeing that the LP is a disappointment, and exhorting me to 
go for the only healthy option that makes sense, that of the Go-Betweens;

b) Tim Popkins, breaking a silence in which he's drawn the longest breath of 
his life thus far, violently, virulently, verily agreeing with me, and thus 
wondering why I bought the CD in the first place - which would be 
disturbing, cos I'd have to agree with him. Blimey!

c) David Moore UK, speeding down the highway like Lloyd Cole in 1984, 
driving on nine and cruising all night, listening to the rushing wings of 
birds of prey circling round his onrushing T-shirt, for it has a cow on it; 
all the while dismissing the late-80s blind alley, and backing the Eagles / 
ESB option.

You know the other thing about this HoL album? The sleeve is a single sheet 
with the same goldarned photo on either side (!!!); and the inner sleeve at 
the back is warped. The more I think about it, the more I think it should 
really have cost £5.99, not £6.99. What did you kids pay for it in 1988? I'd 
like to know, one of these years.


________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
    +---+  Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list  +---+
    To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
    send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
    majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students"  +-+
 +-+  "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list"  +-+
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper        +-+
 +-+   "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000   +-+
 +-+       "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named       +-+
 +-+           Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000           +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+