The Associates:
The Affectionate Punch:
Fourth Drawer Down:
Sulk:
The Very Best Of:
Although recently revisited for reissues not too long ago, these 2xCD expanded editions of Billy Mackenzie and Alan Rankine's key oddball albums of the early '80s serve a greater purpose. Terrific sleeve-notes from Billy Mackenzie biographer Tom Doyle and respected writer Martin Aston and extra discs full of rare or unheard songs only add to the educational heritage. There's also a double-disc compilation on offer for those dipping a toe in the water for the first time - this has a few rarities as well, enough to lure fans such as myself.
Debut-album The Affectionate Punch appears in its original form (it was misguidedly remixed by the pair for a 1982 re-release) and as such stands up as a quirky inaugural journey into the mind-expanded world of Dundee singer Mackenzie and Linlithgow-based studio-savvy musician and composer Rankine. Back in 1980, very few albums were comparable. Perhaps Tuxedomoon's Half-Mute, The Human League's Travelogue, John Foxx's Metamatic and Bowie's Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (as well as his earlier Berlin trilogy), all of which possess rhythmic similarities, lyrical references and evidence of harsh, industrial, urban landscapes mixed with the occasional narcotic dabbling and early member Michael Dempsey (The Cure) filling in the musical gaps.
It's an album of contrasts - A Matter of Gender is classic post-punk disco-funk while Logan Time is a brooding menacing ballad that showcases Mackenzie's gymnastic yelps. Even Dogs in the Wild exudes a surfeit of confidence and hints at the pair's Scottish legacy (fist-pumping anthemic rock, not unlike The Skids or Fingerprintz). By Bounce Back and A, you wonder just how this enigmatic stack of songs failed to crossover (in their original form or reworked). The track Deeply Concerned is The Associates at their most luxuriant and least precocious - a beautiful understated song with references to a missing person and the killer lyric, "Last time we heard she was crying/ We feel for you deeply concerned/ If you needs us, we'll be helpful/ Hopefully..."
Extras include the brave Bowie-cover Boys Keep Swinging, its intense flip Mona Property Girl, some of the aforementioned remixes plus early demoes.
Seemingly not completely concerned at the album's creative successes or its subsequent commercial failure, The Associates set about changing labels (to Situation 2) and recorded a handful of incomparable 12" singles, all of which ended up on the trailblazing and decidedly uneasy Fourth Drawer Down. Referencing the location of the band's chemical supplies, FDD works surprisingly well as a standalone album, let alone as a compilation. Beginning with the impeachable and relentless Eurostompf of White Car in Germany and ending with its brash quarter-speed dubbed version - if Bowie had let Adrian Sherwood retool Low, you'd be someway there - Mackenzie and Rankine's fertile imaginations ran amok and unleashed the stuff of dreams, nightmares and urban paranoia.
If you only bother to stream one track from this strange almanac, head to the funereal weird-by-numbers megalith Q Quarters. Yes, this eerie politically charged romp through a soundscape of ear-splitting drills, echo drums, atonal guitar hooks, coughs (!) and morbid lyrics about 'washing down bodies' really was a single. But then so was the frenetic operatic hopscotch of Kitchen Person and the offbeat syndrum-propelled Message Oblique Speech. Aside from White Car, the only other single from this series that ever sounded like a contender for Top of the Pops was the comparatively sprightly Tell Me Easter's On Friday. That's 'sprightly' in the post-punk sense, you understand. Instrumental highlight The Associate and the slower, spookier take on Property Girl sit alongside other b-sides such as Blue Soap, Kissed and Straw Towels as well as some even more bonkers outtakes, including Fearless which could have been lifted from Talking Heads' Fear of Music.
And so to the rather more lucrative, yet still leftfield Sulk. Packed with three hits in the form of the sublime ear-worm Party Fears Two, the discofied Club Country and the string-driven 18 Carat Love Affair adapted from closing track nothinginsomethingparticular (on the reissue - four if you count its double-a companion Love Hangover), 1982's must-have follow-up to Affectionate Punch continues the otherworldly resonance of before but this time dressed in a lavish, glistening, crystalline silver and gold lamé suit. Back when it was first released some 34 years ago, Sulk's audience could have also potentially been investing in new albums by the likes of previous label-mates The Cure (Pornography), Simple Minds (New Gold Dream), Roxy Music (Avalon), Talk Talk (The Party's Over), Donna Summer's self-titled effort or Cocteau Twin's peerless debut Garlands, such was the duo's appeal musically.
The extras on Sulk include various b-sides (though sadly not the terrific instrumental AG It's You Again - you do get the similar Me, Myself and the Tragic Story, mind) and demos aplenty. The John Leckie-produced rare track Australia is an especially fine nugget from The Associates' canon.
For those seeking a more concise round-up of Dundee's finest, head to the unimaginatively-titled Very Best Of, issued on BMG mid-priced catalogue offshoot Metro Select. Two discs, most of the key Rankine-era singles on the first, hard-to-find outtakes and curios on the other. No nonsense single mixes include edits of the Situation 2 singles, the revered 39 Lyon Street cover of Simon Dupree's woozy Kites and the rarer remix of Tell Me Easter's On Friday.
But it's disc two that steals the show for collectors - there's an unreleased trio of songs that includes an express-paced rattle and roll run through Barry Ryan's theatrical pomp-opera Eloise, the spiky Jukebox Bucharest and a polished version of Double Hipness. The remainder appears to have been culled from the 2000 compilation of the same name or studio sessions.
The Associates became one after Sulk had run its course and Rankine had left to pursue a solo career both as a singer and producer with much of his output appearing on collectable Belgian boutique imprint Les Disques du Crepuscule (surely worth a reissue at some point). Billy Mackenzie saw out two more albums with mixed results before crafting the elegiac Outernational set in the '90s with Yello's Boris Blank at the helm (for most of it) and sadly ending his days in 1997. His star shines on.
All ★★★★★★★★★☆
The Affectionate Punch:
Fourth Drawer Down:
Sulk:
The Very Best Of:
Although recently revisited for reissues not too long ago, these 2xCD expanded editions of Billy Mackenzie and Alan Rankine's key oddball albums of the early '80s serve a greater purpose. Terrific sleeve-notes from Billy Mackenzie biographer Tom Doyle and respected writer Martin Aston and extra discs full of rare or unheard songs only add to the educational heritage. There's also a double-disc compilation on offer for those dipping a toe in the water for the first time - this has a few rarities as well, enough to lure fans such as myself.
It's an album of contrasts - A Matter of Gender is classic post-punk disco-funk while Logan Time is a brooding menacing ballad that showcases Mackenzie's gymnastic yelps. Even Dogs in the Wild exudes a surfeit of confidence and hints at the pair's Scottish legacy (fist-pumping anthemic rock, not unlike The Skids or Fingerprintz). By Bounce Back and A, you wonder just how this enigmatic stack of songs failed to crossover (in their original form or reworked). The track Deeply Concerned is The Associates at their most luxuriant and least precocious - a beautiful understated song with references to a missing person and the killer lyric, "Last time we heard she was crying/ We feel for you deeply concerned/ If you needs us, we'll be helpful/ Hopefully..."
Extras include the brave Bowie-cover Boys Keep Swinging, its intense flip Mona Property Girl, some of the aforementioned remixes plus early demoes.
If you only bother to stream one track from this strange almanac, head to the funereal weird-by-numbers megalith Q Quarters. Yes, this eerie politically charged romp through a soundscape of ear-splitting drills, echo drums, atonal guitar hooks, coughs (!) and morbid lyrics about 'washing down bodies' really was a single. But then so was the frenetic operatic hopscotch of Kitchen Person and the offbeat syndrum-propelled Message Oblique Speech. Aside from White Car, the only other single from this series that ever sounded like a contender for Top of the Pops was the comparatively sprightly Tell Me Easter's On Friday. That's 'sprightly' in the post-punk sense, you understand. Instrumental highlight The Associate and the slower, spookier take on Property Girl sit alongside other b-sides such as Blue Soap, Kissed and Straw Towels as well as some even more bonkers outtakes, including Fearless which could have been lifted from Talking Heads' Fear of Music.
The extras on Sulk include various b-sides (though sadly not the terrific instrumental AG It's You Again - you do get the similar Me, Myself and the Tragic Story, mind) and demos aplenty. The John Leckie-produced rare track Australia is an especially fine nugget from The Associates' canon.
For those seeking a more concise round-up of Dundee's finest, head to the unimaginatively-titled Very Best Of, issued on BMG mid-priced catalogue offshoot Metro Select. Two discs, most of the key Rankine-era singles on the first, hard-to-find outtakes and curios on the other. No nonsense single mixes include edits of the Situation 2 singles, the revered 39 Lyon Street cover of Simon Dupree's woozy Kites and the rarer remix of Tell Me Easter's On Friday.
The Associates became one after Sulk had run its course and Rankine had left to pursue a solo career both as a singer and producer with much of his output appearing on collectable Belgian boutique imprint Les Disques du Crepuscule (surely worth a reissue at some point). Billy Mackenzie saw out two more albums with mixed results before crafting the elegiac Outernational set in the '90s with Yello's Boris Blank at the helm (for most of it) and sadly ending his days in 1997. His star shines on.
All ★★★★★★★★★☆