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Alison Moyet was pretty huge back in the eighties. After leaving Yazoo to strike out on her own, she easily eclipsed their chart success and became a really hot property. For a few years. This is one of her big hits, it's called “Invisible”.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

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The worm ain't one for rap music (Yo!) but he does like this one, from Coolio, this is “Gangsta Paradise”.

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Grave dancers union --- Soul Asylum --- 1992 (Columbia)

I only found out about Soul Asylum a little while ago, as I may or may not have gone on at length about, when I learned the song “Runway train” was not sung by Tom Petty (they do sound similar) and so I made it my business to check out some more of their music. As per my usual priorities this led to me downloading their discography and listening to, well, nothing really, until right now. This is the album that single came from, so perhaps a good place to start? Well, you gotta start somewhere, don't you?

It's their sixth album, and played host to a change in drummers, with original sticksman Grant Young playing on about half of the album and the man who was to replace him, Sterling Campbell, taking drum duties for the other half. Don't ask me who plays on what track, unless I can find out at discogs or somewhere: differentiating between drummers is for me an impossible task, no matter how well known they may be.

“Somebody to shove” starts the album in rocking style, hopping along nicely with a heavy guitar sound and thumping drums, and yes I still think vocalist Dave Pirner has a very Petty-like quality to his voice, very gritty and rough. There's a certain sense of punk in the guitars of Pirner and lead guitarist Dan Murphy, and the song is pretty straightforward, but a good opener. More involved is “Black gold”, which opens on a Zeppelin-like guitar line, then explodes into a riot of electric guitar and runs along in a mid-pace tempo, some nice organ coming through courtesy of Booker T. Jones III, Pirner's vocal at times more reserved than on the opener, but at others loud and proud.

This takes us into “Runway train”, which everyone probably knows by now, as it was their biggest hit single. It's a great track though, cataloguing the plight of America's runway children, then “Keep it up” is another hard rocker with a lot of guitar, upbeat yes but not that great. “Homesick” is a lot better, a slower, moodier song driven on guitar and slow percussion with a sort of campfire-style vocal. Presumably about homeless people, the song features the hook ”I'm so homesick, but it ain't that bad/ Cos I'm homesick for the home/ I never had.”

We're back rocking then with “Get on out”, with a big heavy organ sound and busy guitars, but the song quickly seems to run out of ideas. Another nice laidback ballad on acoustic guitar in “New world”, very country-oriented with a gentle vocal, almost relaxed, with a full string section breaking in courtesy of the Meridian String Quartet and taking the song up a notch. Very nice and clever use of the strings indeed. “April fool” is a big heavy rocker that marches along brashly, confident in its own ability, with stop-start guitar and laboured vocal from Pirner, who is, I think, portraying someone who's been or is out on a binge, and “Without a trace” goes somewhat back to the melody and rhythm of “Runway train”, with some nice guitar work; it contains the title of the album in the lyric ”I tried to dance at a funeral/ New Orleans style/ I joined the Grave Dancers Union/ I had to file.”

There's a return to the quasi-punk style of the opener for “Growing into you”, then the weird sound of what seems to be a gate opening at the beginning of “99%”, another stop-start rocker with Pirner's vocals routed through some sort of electronic modulator to make them sound kind of metallic or mono, sort of similar to the kind of sound Matt Johnson employed on The The's “Soul mining” album, particularly on the opening track, “I've been waiting for tomorrow (all of my life)”. We close then on “The sun maid”, a nice little acoustic ballad.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that this album has made a fan of me, but it ain't bad. There are definitely some tracks on it that sound a little contrived, others that feel like they're not up to scratch, but against that there are also some really good songs, and overall I'm impressed enough to consider listening to more music from Soul Asylum, although I have to admit I won't be frantically searching through my hard drive to get the next album up and running.

But I know what I hate, and I don't hate this.

TRACKLISTING

1. Somebody to shove
2. Black gold
3. Runaway train
4. Keep it up
5. Homesick
6. Get on out
7. New world
8. April fool
9. Without a trace
10. Growing into you
11. 99%
12. The sun maid

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What, you say? Another rap record? But we thought the worm didn't like rap! Well, he doesn't, but this is funny! Who says rappers have to sing about bi*ches and guns and gangs and drugs? Great stuff!

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Let's choose three more albums and have a look at the track or tracks that let them down, the ones which, if they were the only examples from the albums you had heard, would discourage you from checking out the rest of the album and which, by their inclusion, threaten to knock the overall quality of the album down a notch.

As ever, this is personal opinion --- mine --- so if I happen to choose tracks you think are in fact great, and you can't understand why I don't like them, well, it's just all part of the wonderful tapestry of life, and one man's poison, and all that. But these are really bad. Well, I think so, anyway. Comment as ever is invited, encouraged and sought, as is reasoned debate.

Quest for fire (Iron Maiden) from “Piece of mind”, 1983

Although it's not in and of itself a terrible song, I really feel this is the one that lets the overall top quality of Maiden's fourth (and significantly, most important after the runaway success of “The number of the Beast”) album. The rest of the songs are well-crafted, well-played, all minor classics in their own right, and though this comes between two real standouts --- the eerie “Still life” and the stormer “Sun and steel” --- it really serves to bring the album to an almost crashing halt, a nosedive in quality that, though it's more towards the end of the album and so less likely to turn you off if you're listening to it in order, it's a real disappointment. It ruins an almost perfect ten, and what's worse is that you can't even blame some other writer, as it's penned by Steve Harris! How, I ask you, how did he come up with this substandard rubbish? Oh well, I guess even genius falters every now and then...

Arrive alive (Pallas) from “Arrive alive”, 1981


This is an excellent album. And a weird one. Originally only released on tape, then on vinyl (which is how I bought it) but with only five tracks, and finally on CD with a much larger tracklist, it's nevertheless let down hugely in my opinion by the opening, and title track. There are a few things I'd like to say about it, though I did very briefly cover these points when I featured the album in my “200 word album review” slot a while back. The first is that, of all the tracks --- on my copy, at any rate --- it's the only one that's not live. Now, with a title like “Arrive alive”, I feel it's fair to say that this is meant to be a live album, and indeed Wiki supports that conclusion, yet here we are with the first track either quite obviously studio or played before a dead audience. There isn't one cheer or sound out of place, and if this wasn't recorded in a studio, I'm a dutchman. I'm not. I'm Irish. Just saying.

But then there's the title. You would expect (well, I would, anyway) that when a band titles a song “Arrive alive” that there's some sort of message to be conveyed, like driving safely, not drinking while driving or somesuch. But there's no message of any kind in the song. It's the tale of the band heading home after a successful gig, which is fine, but there's no actual point to it. Okay, so it's decent alliteration and almost rhymes too, but still. And the way it's sung just comes across to me as flat, uninteresting and devoid of emotion. Since the rest of the album is excellent, it's sad that this is the one that opens and bestows the title on this album, as it could very easily move you to decide against listening to the rest.

But don't. You'll be sorry. It's a great album. Just skip this one.

Heat on the street (Phil Collins) from “... But Seriously”, 1989


There's nothing quite as bad, in my opinion, as someone expressing, or trying to express a view on something about which they have no clue. It gets worse when they trivialise that subject, whether or not it's intentional. This is how I feel about this song, which tries to compress the conflict in Northern Ireland (thankfully, we can now mostly talk about that as history and not current events) to the status of something that can be solved with some singing, dancing and just good old-fashioned friendliness. That's not so bad in itself, but this song doesn't even offer that as a solution, more takes a stance of forgetting your troubles and dancing through the bombs, if that doesn't sound too trite. And of course it does, because it is, but that's essentially what Collins is singing about here.

It's not even like we're talking Gary Moore or someone who has had experience of “The Troubles”! Collins is an Englishman who, to my knowledge, has only ever visited Northern Ireland as a performer, and I very much doubt he used the time there to talk to the polticians on either side, walk down the Falls Road or check out the Unionist side of Belfast, find out what the underlying points of contention are in this bitterly divided province. Okay, maybe he did, but I never heard him mentioned in any connection to Northern Ireland, and so I stand by my original assumption.

That being the case, I think it's highly offensive to reduce the suffering of a people for almost thirty years to a simplistic, unrealistic and pie-in-the-sky solution. Okay, I know it's only a song, but compare it to his insightful take on apartheid, in “Colours”, or indeed his slant on homelessness in “Another day in Paradise”, both on the same album. Or what about the relationship between father and son, explored in the song of the same name? “...But seriously” makes it clear that Collins can treat a subject with respect and insight, so why does he not do the same with “Heat on the street”? And to hammer the final nail in its coffin, the song is a bland, dancy, jazz/disco number that has no right being on any album of this calibre.

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Great, powerful song from Labi Siffre, this is “Something inside so strong”.

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