30th November, 1998


The last good week for singles this year, if the forthcoming Christmas singles are anything to go by...
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Single of the Week

"Cancer For The Cure" by Eels

It must take a hell of a lot to go through what Eels mainman E has gone through this year and still produce innovative and hypnotic music such as this. This track is as close to catharsis through music as you can get and highlights all those moany Oxbridge angst-merchants for the charlatans that they are. A Beck-like tune with a menacing bass riff rumble, "Cancer For The Cure" is uneasy but essential listening, doubly blessed with fantastic sonic laboratory sounds and great lyrics ("Ol' Blue Eyes is back again, but he was never here in the first place, a heart attack is something to fear, but take a look out the back").

"Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas" is the first extra-track, a power pop carol that - when you wrench yourself away from E's voice and the emotion it carries - is a fun ("Baby Jesus, born to rock") and optimistic track that deserves a place on the "(Fuck Your) Best Christmas Album In The World Ever" double CD pack that I would love to compile...

"Exodus Part III" ends the offering, a bizarre three minutes of birdsong impressions (either that or E going psycho in an aviary) recorded live like some hellish collision between Percy Edwards (ask you parents) and Sooty & Sweep. Hmmm...Seeing as it's Eels, I'll let em off...

Rating: 10/10

The Rest

"Alarm Call" by Björk

My undying love and admiration for Björk is well documented in these pages, and "Alarm Call" does not diminish them one bit. Like being caught in a whirlpool, the beats, sounds and - above all - the vocals, drag you down beneath the song's surface where you discover a whole new world of aural excitement. Also notable becasue it's one of those songs where she does that half-growl/half-purr thing with her larynx; that sound which no other creature on the planet can produce. In a parallel universe, this will be the Christmas number one. (This is the same parallel universe where I am the last of the famous international playboys however - i.e. the one inside my head.)

Remixes abound. The first ("Rhythmic Phonetics Mix") strips away all semblance of melody and puts the track on a production line straight out of Metropolis, gradually bolting and welding new metallic noises onto it until it emerges at the other end, a cross between R2D2 and the Terminator. Most interesting is the "Bjeck Mix", touched by the hand of Beck. Characteristically, he takes a big maverick spanner to proceedings, spooking things up with Mars Attacks theremin noises, sitars, odd percussion and a big healthy dose of madness. Just the sort of sound you would imagine two of the most interesting talents today producing when they meet.

9/10

"The Everlasting" by Manic Street Preachers

This is the one that opens "This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours", the one that slipped seductively into your consciousness immediately, before the rest of the LP hit you with its nihilistic despair and beautiful futility. Skeletal drum machine beats, shimmering guitars that chime like bells in a ruined cathedral, and a chorus that takes your heart strings and plays a concerto on them. "The Everlasting" is an unashamedly emotive and grand epic, a hymn to nothingness that flits around your head like the ghost of someone you can't quite remember. Damn these Manics, they always make me write like this...

New songs on the b-side, the first being "Black Holes For The Young", the collaboration between the Manics and Sophie Ellis Bextor. Pony Girl shares vocal duties with James here, in a duet that has a strange rock operatic quality about it, and as such removing it from the LP seems to have been a wise decision. If it wasn't for the mad scientist style keyboards, this would be another vital track, but something about it just doesn't ring true. A bit of a shame, cos Sophie does quite a good job, sounding quite seductively sinister and suitably alienated and despairing.

"Valley Boy" is the other extra track, and more in style with the rest of the recent LP. James vocals' stand precariously close to the edge of a cliff as the song stares out into an all-enveloping and futile fog ("and now I've lost the power to speak, and now I've lost the power to eat"). The clouds lift and reveal a gigantic chorus, the musical equivalent of one of those monolithic Communist statues, clenched fists raised in proud yet ultimately doomed defiance.

The second CD contains remixes, the first being the "Deadly Avenge's Psalm 315" mix, which gives the song so much room to breathe it almost asphyxiates, beats echoing in the distance like the hooves of unseen wild horses. The second mix is the by now traditional "Stealth Sonic Orchestra Mix", notable mostly because it is the second song this week to have a theremin in it (and is the best use of one I've heard this side of The Bride Of Frankenstein).

Rating: 9/10

"No Regrets" by Robbie Williams

By releasing a single this week, it is almost as if Robbie believes he is the equal of the other artists to drop platters from the sky today. He's not. Accomplished entertainer and crowd-pleasing minstrel he may be, but the Williams boy will never ("Angels" perhaps excepted) produce such jaw-dropping moments of brilliance as this week's competition. Certainly not now, when the success seems to have spoiled him a bit to the extent he believes his own press. That said however, "No Regrets" is one of his better tracks of late, a big lush ballad with a fluid and seductive chorus to which Neils Hannon and Tennant add a degree of camp intellectualism. But whereas the aforementioned "Angels" had what appeared to be at least genuine warmth and romanticism, this is strangely hollow and slightly laboured (especially the spoken outro). It is most notable for the CD cover, showing a half-naked Robbie dive between a young woman's legs...

"Antmusic" (from the forthcoming "A Bug's Life" soundtrack) is next, a joyful six-legged stomp around Adam And The Ants' original, taking the new romantic swagger and rhythms and beating them with rock guitar and histrionics. Fun, but I prefer Adam's version. "Deceiving Is Believing" is last, a powerful and effective soundtrack to splitting up, alternating between acoustic guitar balladry and electric power chord bluster.

Deflate your ego, Robbie, and you'll be worthy.

Rating: 7/10

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