Extracts from Observer Music Magazine 100 Best Albums June 2004

9

BLUE LINES
MASSIVE ATTACK

Wild Bunch, 1991; chart position: 13 Ben Thompson on the West Country’s finest

FROM THE metropolitan angst of‘Safe from Harm’ -‘If you hurt what’s mine, I’ll sure as hell retaliate’ - to the insistent shaken bottle-top rhythm of‘Unfinished Sympathy’, the most striking thing about this album, 13 years on, is how urgent and dramatic it still sounds. The journey-time between ‘bold artistic breakthrough’ and ‘widely accessible lifestyle accoutrement’ has shortened considerably in the interim, but Massive Attack’s universally admired debut has made that trip without forgetting where it came from.

With ex-Rip, Rig & Panic bigshot Neneh Cherry (whose boyfriend ‘Booga Bear’ - alias Cameron McVey - was the record’s executive producer) scoring a co-writer’s credit on ‘Hymn of the Big Wheel’, and a young Enterprise Allowance whippersnapper called Geoff Barrow (later one half of Portishead) working as studio tape-op, it’s easy to see how Blue Lines has acquired its reputation as a kind of West Country Big Chill. But the idea of a ‘Bristol sound’ emerging smoothly from a cider-irrigated chrysalis does not fit the reality of the album’s creation.

For one thing, only five of Blue Lines’s nine tracks were all, or even partly, recorded at Bristol’s Coach House studios: the group - experienced international travellers, having already toured the world as the Wild Bunch sound system - decamped eastwards to London to finish off the rest. What’s more the rapid subsequent departures of Shara Nelson and Tricky Kid, as well as the later, more protracted, break-up of the core triumvirate of Mushroom, Daddy G and Robert ‘3D’ del Naja, suggest it’s a miracle Massive Attack’s alliance held together as long as it did. ‘Safe from Harm’s ominous cast of ‘Midnight walkers, city slickers, gunmen and maniacs’ sets the prevailing tone of unease and imminent fracture.

While Blue Lines’s impact on the music of the decade that followed has been pretty thoroughly explored, its relationship to what came before remains a fertile topic for speculation. A song such as ‘Lately’ can now be heard as the missing link between the prehistoric Brit-funk of Loose Ends or Lynx and a sound we can still think of as contemporary. Yet the looser, more conversational tone of, say, the title track, seems to have come almost from nowhere: splicing together the cerebral hip-hop gene of De La Soul or A Tribe Called Quest with a peculiarly British dub lineage to create a new and exotic hybrid whose inner stresses tore Massive Attack apart at the same time as they soothed the listener’s soul.

Burn it: Unfinished Sympathy, Safe From Harm

HOW IT FELT FOR

Daddy G:

'We were lazy Bristol twats. It was Neneh Cherry who kicked our arses and got us in the studio. We recorded a lot at her house, in her baby's room. It stank for months and eventually we found a dirty nappy behind a radiator. I was still DJing, but what we were trying to do was create dance music for the head, rather than the feet. I think it's our freshest album, we were at our strongest then.'

30

UNKNOWN PLEASURES
JOY DIVISION

FACTORY,1979; CHART POSITION: 71

Mancunian miserabilism par excellence

LISTEN TO ‘She’s Lost Control’ and experience the genuine frisson of hearing a man who knows exactiy what he’s talking about. (CSM)

Burn it: She’s Lost Control; New Dawn Fades

47

HATFUL OF HOLLOW
THE SMITHS

ROUGH TRADE,1984; CHART POSITION:7

Early compilation is a treasure trove of classics

FOR A compilation, this hour-long early showcase hangs together incredibly well. Where John Porter's production on the Mancunian masters’ debut (re-recorded with him at their insistence after an abortive association with Troy Tate) was patchy in places, here it is consistent, crisp and light. Of course, any fan will tell you that there isn’t a duff number among these 16 B-sides, demos and tracks culled from radio sessions but the soaring, monumental loneliness of centrepiece ‘How Soon is Now?’ backed by that extraordinary looped tremelo guitar, the serpentine guitar hook of‘What Difference Does it Make?’ and the album’s closer, ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ with its eccentric, mandolin-laden playout, are worth the price of the album alone. Beyond this the brilliant ‘William It was Really Nothing’, ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ are the essence of early Morrissey and Marr. In fact, even if there is an element of cheating about including this record in the list, there isn’t a duff track on it. It shines from top to toe. (MW)

Burn it: How Soon is Now?; Handsome Devil

62

MEAT IS MURDER 
THE SMITHS

ROUGH TRADE, 1985; CHART POSITION: 1

A local album, for everyone

THEIR MOST northern album, evoking the ‘belligerent ghouls [who] run Manchester schools’, grim nights at the funfair, and the girl in ‘What She Said’ whose eyes were opened by a ‘tattooed boy from Birkenhead’. In that sense, it surely stands as a consummate work of modern folk music - though its abiding themes are a little more universal than that implies. Take the stunning ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’, the embodiment of a despair that would surely resonate with anybody, anywhere. (JH)

Burn it: The Headmaster Ritual; I Want The One I Can’t Have; Well I Wonder

65

POWER, CORRUPTION AND LIES 
NEW ORDER

FACTORY, 1983; CHART POSITION: 4

Out of darkness comes light

ARGUABLY THE first New Order album proper, as Movement was to all intents and purposes a Joy Division album sans Ian Curtis. It was Power, Corruption and Lies - also their first record without Martin Hannett at the helm - that saw New Order finessing their sound as a band in their own right. As showcased on the preceding single ‘Blue Monday’ (still the biggest selling 12” of all time; a reworked version appears on the album as ‘5-8-6 ‘), the band were embracing the New York dance culture that inspired The Hacienda and experimenting with more electronic avenues. The latter is captured most beautifully here on the sparse ‘Your Silent Face’. The case could be argued for the Balearic beats of 1989’s Technique as New Order’s greatest LP, but in fully embracing their dance sensibilities in chase of a fine time in Ibiza, some of the air of mystique somehow disappeared into the dry ice. (LB)

Burn it: Your Silent Face; Ecstasy; 5-8-6

98

RATTLESNAKES
LLOYD COLE AND THE COMMOTIONS

GEFFEN, 1984; CHART POSITION:13

Student favourite defies sniffy critics

References to the likes of Norman Mailer led NME's hipsters to dismiss it as pretentious bedsit music. But Cole's skilfully crafted jangly debut remains fresh and playful. They were quite plainly wrong.

Burn it: Perfect SkiForest Fire