BEATS OF LOVE 

132. Burning World by Loop

GREAT, BEING old and online coz you can order Imagination's debut album with this elusive Loop twelve and not bat an eye. Nobody making a sarky comment or a glancing a disdaining look.  

Before the rift with my father, as a reward for passing tests he set, he played Subbuteo with me. We had the throw-in takers and corner takers and my father actually headed brilliant goals past my shaky defence. I never got to find out how he did that. 

He only ever watched me play actual footy once and, despite scoring a hatful of goals, I got substituted. He simply said to me 'you're a goal hanger and don't know the off-side rule.' Devastated, but he was right. I just lazily marked the most useless defender who flattered my absolute averageness. 

Sacking off the footy and getting truly lost in music gave me my proper sense of identity. Something that went beyond criticism. Realizing Jeff, who up to this point was some plain scruff, liked the Mary Chain, changed everything about our relationship. I had a musical ally. My kid sister and Bob loved a lot of my records too, and this also gave me the confidence to alienate them. 

They'd hate this lengthy hypnotic delight, for example. Less nihilistic and less of a sensory assault than their later work, it instead uses a more colourful bass motif and a tambourine to snake charm effect. The Field Mice cover actually creates a proper song out of it, but isn't as bewitching. I prefer this less energized Loop and have some sympathy with folk who play their later 45s on the wrong speed. I can sit back in a comfy chair and nod out to it. 

Great, being old and online coz every week there's some unexpected wormhole to go down. That I've had to wait until now to get lost in this speaks volumes about the thrill. 

 

BEATS OF LOVE 

131. The Beauty in your Body by The Lilac Time

ALWAYS CHAMPIONED the underdog. It explains why I've got a soft spot for Stephen Tin Tin Duffy, who threatened to take off countless times but spent his musical career bubbling under. Kiss Me was the high point of his underwhelming stab at synth-pop supremacy and made it into my mate's ghetto blaster, but it wasn't until he resurfaced with the Lilac Time he became fascinating. Not that fascinating, so I was buying his records, mind. 

However, when Sifters put their sophomore album Paradise Circus in the racks for buttons, years later, I bit, and discovered this, my perfect comedown track.

Baffling why on a sunny Saturday afternoon I'd get back to the flat and lie star- shaped across the bed and sleep happily, but by Monday night I'd be coated in sweat with insufferable liver cramps, needing countless pillows to support my curled up, aching, body. It was pre-empting this and hating myself that the tune's slowly unfurling beauty came to life. 

Whilst still awake, before I became beset by fear, its pastoral elegance relaxed my tired mind. By the time the banjo and organ really kicked in, I could even pathetically romanticize my sorry state. Someone says it rips off Leonard Cohen, but I don't care. It helped me out big time. 

Only after seeing a fairly famous DJ post-afters curled up in the same discomfort as myself did I realize that there are no better-class drugs for richer folk. That was day one of my determination to knock it all on the head. 

Thankfully, despite now being sat-back in a comfy chair and clearheaded, I still love playing this eminently fascinating tune.   

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

22 JIM BEATTIE: Not God but not half bad

PART 1

MUST ADMIT Primal Scream only came into my orbit because of the Stone Roses in 1989. Bobby Gillespie was simply the drummer in JAMC until I read some articles that made me do some revision. Must also admit that Jim Beattie only came into my orbit because of Snub TV in 1991. Despite liking Chlorine Dream, I stopped short of purchasing a copy when I read he 'hated the Stone Roses.' Yeah, I was that fickle. Ditto Adventures in Stereo. 

What Gillespies' frustrating memoirs Tenement Kid did was colour in Beattie's character sympathetically. The retrospective Reverberations LP gives more than a flavour of the dynamics within the early Primal Scream and after much revision, I can declare Beattie to be the finest exponent of the very short pop song. 

His Glaswegian Scream years feel more than embryonic. Styled on Love's disarming image and sounding Byrdsian, they were to have a greater influence by fashioning the explosive Madchester sounds. Hence why I parted with a pretty penny to purchase their early singles retrospectively. Their Warners related material was easier to find and cheaper to buy. 

The making of which comes alive in Martin St John's equally frustrating memoirs. It's comical to hear the skeletal tambourinist attempt to hide his bitterness. He was dead right about Bewitched and Bewildered, though. It was insane not to work that pearl of a tune onto the album.  

Beattie exclaims that in retrospect being in that wider Scream gang and the early recordings were 'some of the best times of my life.' Gentle Tuesday abandons their very short song manifesto clocking in at over a massive three and half minutes and Beattie's Rickenbacker held the tune together. Had the wider world been ready for sixties spiked indie jangle pop, there might not have been such an acrimonious split. 

Reduced to a four-piece, even with the addition of Andrew Innes and badly compromised in the studio, their anti-climatic debut album would never be a classic. The overworked songs sound less focused and the spikiness of their earlier work was gone. Silent Spring being a case in point as it sounds much better on Reverberations.

Beattie left shortly after its release. Without either the enthusiasm for a move to Brighton or high energy rock 'n' roll or a move back to Creation records.  

PART 2

UNMOVED BY the parallel style of the day, Beattie returned in 1991 when all eyes were on his former band, whose masterpiece Screamadelica was being hotly expected. There could've been some headroom for his new band Spirea X, named after the song solely credited to himself in his time with Primal Scream, had 4AD presented them to us in 1989. To say Spirea X should've set the world on fire would be daft. Shoe-gaze favourites like Ride were shaggable and signed to Creation, which at the time was really happening. 

Keen to escape comparisons with these younger, hipper bands, he was talking Biblical and political but then getting edited right down to tiny snippets and soundbites. When he said his band would succeed through a 'sheer force of ideas', he couldn't have been imaging the album Fireblade Skies. Sure, Chlorine Dream, creates great harmonies that are swept into the air by his 12 string majesty, but shares more in common with the catchier shoe-gaze acts than with the sonic architecture Kevin Shields was stirring up. 

The very short but memorable opener Smile is even better and could've been a part player on Screamedelica itself, but the rest of the album strives for a more direct pop distortion. Signed DC could've been a far earlier Primal's track. Another very short gem of a tune. The album lacks truly catchy hooks and the shuffly drums are at odds with their less linear approach. Making it sound a little uncohesive. Unsurprisingly, once it failed to sell, the label dropped them.  

Adventures in Stereo formed out of the fall-out and were initially a sample based project. Former manager Simon Dine supplied the loops to give Judith Boyle's vocal, less space, which achieved a sugary quality. However, their output was patchy. When We Go Back really hits the spot and sounds not unlike like the 60s girl group miniature, they were striving to achieve, but other songs were disappointing and sounded straight-jacketed by the concept. Their b-side version of Nobody's Scared sounds like Saint Etienne on a budget, but is even more charming for it. 

Despite being the victim of misfortune, his musical story ends on a high. Abandoning the sample only idea, following Dine's departure, the stripped back 2000 album Monomania is great with Beattie distilling all he has learned into wonderfully short warm and woozy numbers that channel Pet Sounds, really bringing the best out of an angelic sounding Boyle. We Will Stand sets a high bench mark but miraculously the quality persists throughout. It's definitely a future classic and a great way to bow out. 

It's not without irony that Gillespie and Innes, after generously unearthing superior versions of Give Out..., and Sonic Flower Groove, then tarnished their own legacy through sheer greed. Downgrading former band mates and making them less than peripheral characters in the story. A story that would read better with everyone, part of the socialist utopia they painted when on E. 

At least Beattie knew that was all complete bollocks from firsthand experience, preferring instead to make some sweet music with his girlfriend. A sensible man.    

BEATS OF LOVE 

130. Mind Bomb LP by The The 

REFLECTING ON the first time, I went back to Jockey Slut's infamous afters and painfully struggled to break into conversation. I kept looking at my kid sister and she kept looking at me whilst looking mainly at the flat itself. I'd just sat in Bugged Out dipping speed into my brandy and coke and was already feeling empty whilst everyone else was bursting full of life.

I suppose the awkwardness served some purpose, as on subsequent nights after the ice broke someone introduced me to a lank-haired dealer who sold E's. I began dipping them into my drinks too, so became happier. Whilst everyone else got involved in relationships and business, I just carried on with this same stifling routine until it finally became too boring. Boring for me, and for everyone else.

I couldn't work over fIfty hours a week, then party for twenty and keep the musical passion I needed to be interesting to myself. What this self indulgent masterpiece is full of, is passion. It drives Matt Johnson's concept album with its intensity and sparkle whilst harnessing a great musical response from a quality team of players. I thought Gravitate to Me was the cut, but listening back now, I can see a cohesion that makes every single track equally enthralling. 

There's his prophesies about America and the Middle East that explode with rich metaphors and his sharp musical vision. It's a shame the label feared him being seen as the Salman Rushdie of song and pulled their weightier first single. He'd gone on a strange diet and forced some of his band to do the same to reach this unsound level of intensity that helped him see into the future. An intensity that speaks directly to our human soul and, for the short while, it is playing, helps us untangle this mess we call life with a lot more passion. 

What is truly remarkable is how utterly now it sounds. That I was in that flat talking up Acid Eiffel whilst forgetting all about this mighty album speaks volumes about the folly of youth.