I think everyone spends about 90% of their time at the age of 15 being an insufferable holier-than-thou prick. It just comes with the territory of being in that stage of life where at once you discover that some day you’re gonna be a wholly (sorta) self-sufficient (sorta) person, but at the same time, you’re having to vigorously figure out all the who/what/when/where/how etc. of that actually coming to pass. (The less you think on the “why,” the better.) I tend to consider myself lucky, because I did a pretty good job of forgetting everything that happened to me between 13 and 17; not that capital b Bad things happened, it’s just more like I was bad and annoying and weird, and it was constantly happening. One thing I cringe about a lot now is thinking about how I related to other people in terms of music; I steadily d/evolved from being a kid who bought Coldplay CDs in 2004 to someone sternum deep in the overpowering thrall of my own smug, lookin’ down my acne-embossed nose at the gherkins around me clutching thrice-microwaved sub-Strokes posters from Smash Hits (Remember The Bravery? That was an interesting fortnight). I was insuffrerably superior about just about everything. Led Zeppelin? Buncha cocks I tell you (though the only song I knew was “Stairway to Heaven,” and I got it confused with “Tales of Brave Ulysses” on at least one occasion — don’t ask). Asshat misogynists! Look, I could dwell on this (don’t ask me about the time someone asked me if I knew who The Smiths were when I was 15), but in any/every case, I was roundly, solidly a jerk.
Yet, if you caught me at a time when I found Young Marble Giants or the family tree thereof you’d find me completely without a smart-ass answer — completely silent — and the frosty solitude of Colossal Youth still reduces me when I am listening to it to whatever is essential about me, and nothing else. There’s something path-breakingly singular about Alison Stratton’s voice; a strange snowglobe, the coldest little warm pocket in the world; I’d come up against something beguiling, in that it made exactly enough space for you, just as you were underneath whatever bluster you wore and allowed nothing more — no ego, no pretension. If you were going to talk about it, you had to lower your voice, get yourself on its terms. There was no other way to experience it, and the same magic persisted with Alison Stratton’s post-YMG band Weekend.
Sorry I took the long way around, but The ‘81 Demos were and are catnip for anyone, and the new reissue on Blackest Ever Black gives these tracks the full ceremony they’re overdue for.
Based on the familiar elements that Colossal Youth was built from, ‘81 is a snapshot of a band yet to explore their more jazzy tendencies, but already excelling at the art of writing songs as heartbreaking as they are simple. “Nostalgia” is astonishing, in the way it bridges Harmonia and the moments of Here Come the Warm Jets when you think Eno doesn’t have his tongue in cheek in a way that’s almost futuristically plain, in a fashion that people are still somehow throwing $15 at Real Estate to streamline into pure bore. If Beach House ever write a line as effective as “And the thoughts will make you pray for old friends/ Some of them you see sometimes/ Some of them are dead,” buy me a Coke; if there’s one that hides a lyrical throatpunch like “Nostalgia” does, I’ll buy you coke. “Red Planes,” with its twisting progression, is like “Skank Bloc Bologna” for people who know there are much wider and larger things than living in a squat, which makes it probably the best thing I’ve heard all year.
“Summerdays Instrumental” might scan on sight as maybe the least essential thing here if you’re a trainspotter, but it throws into even sharper relief the absolute gorgeousness of what Weekend’s sound was prior to their detours into the more Parisian cafe elements of themselves, mapping out a territory between Lawrence and Maurice Eubanks sitting on a spring porch before their working relationship (and Felt) went south. Do you have porches in England? Fax me. The guitar break that sings out of the main melody is too good for words. I’ve hung up on Skype calls to listen to it. I’m sorry, Mum. In any case, the brilliance of everything and everyone associated with Young Marble Giants was the creation of a music that was both too small to be listened to with any degree of attention lower than complete and too deep not to fall into completely. It’s a lesson in art that bears endless repeating, and this is some of the richest evidence on the family tree.
