1st June, 1998


A football song-free zone.

Single of the Week

"Stay Young" by Ultrasound

"Stay Young" is Ultrasound's magnum opus, a seven-minute journey across oceans of swirling magma guitar noises that alternately support and engulf you, as all the while Tiny's distinctive almost-breaking voice carries you along like an asbestos-lined canoe. Inhabiting the same part of the sonic universe as Radiohead, but with a richer vein of humour (the spookily accurate prediction of "Gary Glitter's gone to seed, so who will lead us now?", for example), "Stay Young" explodes in a firework display of genius - light the blue touch paper and stick your face in it.

"Football Meat" is the first b-side, a full-on psychobilly punk rant with some wonderful shouty sweary bits and barked yelps from the wondrous Vanessa ("Football meat, fuckface fuckface") - bless her). The bible according to Ultrasound - "I think football's crap, sport is shit, it's never been the way I choose to get fit". Halleluhah: that's the kind of football song I like.

Last up on this stellar offering is the Neil Young cover "Hey, Hey, My, My", in which Tiny sounds remarkably like ol' grumpy Neil, and the rest of Ultrasound succeed in building a large monument entirely composed of power chords. Fantastic.

This is the closest Ultrasound have got to capturing their titanic live sound on record and you should log right off now, get down to the record shop and buy this, the biggest, most widescreen epic this side of "Ben Hur".

Rating: 10/10 (and then some)

The Rest

"Get Myself Arrested" by Gomez

There's a big buzz around this lot at the moment (they sound like dead bluesmen yet they're still in primary school or something), and "Get Myself Arrested" does its bit to keep that buzz buzzing. Opening with a marvellously discordant mess of guitar - part squelchy funk, part swampy blues - this carries on in lazy laidback Dinosaur Jr style fashion. The Gomez boys obviously want to be American more than most Americans do, but with conviction and style such as theirs they should be commended instead of condemned.

"Flavors" is the first extra track, a strangely subdued number that sounds like the theme tune to a 70s Dustin Hoffman movie, but also manages to seduce you with its warm summer nights down by the river mood. "Old School Shirt" marches up next, a disposable number featuring a distorted toy megaphone and which sounds like Mark E Smith pissed on Jack Daniels floating down the Mississippi. "The Cowboy Song" is another novelty number, a mad little jaunt through Memphis with a casio keyboard and a whip (yes, a whip).

When they're being serious, Gomez are oddly attractive, and you fall into their musical melange as easy as falling down after 18 shots of Tequila. When - as in the last two tracks here - they are being "experimental", they are no more vital than The Woolpackers. Yeehaw.

Rating: 8/10

"I Smell Voodoo EP" by Dawn Of The Replicants

Being prolific isn't necessarily a good thing, as a pile of Dawn Of The Replicants EPs which almost reaches the moon testifies. Hidden amongst the avalanche of material from Galashiel's finest, there are some unmistakable moments of genius (the wondrous drone of "Candlefire" for example), but for every one of those there are at least a couple of misses. The narcoleptic ghost ballad of "Mary Louise" is sadly one of those more forgettable numbers, with its midnight at the morgue production and too close to your ears vocals. Kind of like an anorak-wearing Nick Cave, you can appreciate what it's trying to achieve, but you are unlikely to rush back to it in a hurry.

"Ballad Of A Thin Man" is better, a song that finds itself sprawling on the pavement outside a drinking club at 2 o'clock in the morning with no idea how it got there and indefinable stains on its clothes. "Myrrh Tangle" is better still, with a miserabilist drone sound enveloping a stoned and enchanted tale of pawn shops and bouncing bombs that hypnotises with its intensity. "Dual Converter" is more ill-advised, a trippy meander through sonic swathes of shady malevolence that again - like the first track - is unlikely to take up residence in its Walkman.

But what the hell. It's a damn sight better than Del Amitri or Skinner & Baddiel.

Rating: 6/10

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