7 inch singles collection: Prefab Sprout - The Golden Calf

Another Golden record...

PREFAB SPROUT

A-Side: The Golden Calf
B-Side: Venus of the Soup Kitchen

(Kitchenware 1989)

Prefab Sprout are a band that I've always had a soft spot for, and yet although always easy to like, I find them hard to love. Their music often seems to come pre-filtered through a haze of wistfulness and melancholy. Soft is the word that springs to mind when I think of them, and I don't mean that in any kind of pejorative way either. Soft, like a duvet, or like cumulus clouds sky high in the summertime, gentle like a spring breeze, and so often full of yearning. Part of this is down to frontman, Paddy McAloon's voice. He seems to sing in a commanding whisper, that is both fleeting and captivating. The rest of the band plays their part too - instruments are coaxed and caressed rather than thrashed and pounded, melody reigns over riff - in short them seem such sensitive souls. This is deceptive because often McAloon's lyrics are dense and intense with as much passion as they have romance.

Having written all that The Golden Calf is actual a rocky number, but that doesn't invalidate the previous paragraph, because it rocks out in a considered, thoughtful manner, lyrics are lyrical rather than just words that rhyme and fit song. It's got a rock 'n' roll bassline and rhythm section that make it chug along nicely, but somehow it doesn't quite feel right. It may have worked better in context on the album - this was the fifth single from the album (the b-side is also from the album too), which sounds to me like the record company trying milk that Golden Calf dry. Just because it's rocky and upbeat doesn't mean it should be single, particularly when those of us who were hooked in by earlier songs have already got the album. Listening to The Golden Calf I get the feeling that it's not quite all there, there's something incomplete about it, part of that incompleteness, I think, comes from not having the rest of the album around it.

Venus of the Soup Kitchen also shows us something that's missing from the A-side, and that's Wendy Smith's vocal contributions - I didn't really notice them not being there on The Golden Calf, but here where she has something to sing it really helps fill the song out. Although usually her vocals are confined to oohs and ahhs and choruses and other backing vocal duties her tone is helps round out the sound. If Paddy McAloon's voice is like velvet then Wendy Smith's voice is like air - it's light and imperceptible but you notice when it's not there. Venus of the Soup Kitchen is a more complex song, with added choral backing, and following less obvious pop song structures than the norm. It's more like a little character vignette of a show tune. Lyrically it is less obscure, and although about homelessness and destitution it's never maudlin or mawkish, and it never preaches. However it feels one paced removed and you I can stand back and admire it and appreciate the skill and the craft that's gone into it without it ever really connecting with me.

A good band with a record that is likable but ultimately adrift, cut off from the parent album and struggling without that support.

Next time some White (or possibly Green) reggae...

                                                                       

7 inch singles collection: The Stranglers - Golden Brown

A punk waltz?

THE STRANGLERS

A-Side: Golden Brown
B-Side: Love-30

(Liberty 1982)

So, were The Stranglers punk, or not? Certainly they were initially lumped in with that scene despite them being older, and less angry than many of their contemporaries. They had the sneering attitude all right, but they also had something else that set them apart from the others. Dave Greenfield’s organ playing is part of this in a landscape that is normally harsh and often discordant guitars it brings an other-worldy patina to Stranglers records. Beyond this, though, there’s a feeling in their records that they’re men playing at being boys, rather than boys playing at being men like most punk bands. Their maturity comes to the fore quite soon in their career, and songs like Peaches and Grip, (with their “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” style), disappear for more complex pieces, both lyrically and musically. Not that I’m saying that the rest of the punk upper echelons weren’t literate and intelligent, many were as we will find out later, it’s just that they kept to the basic thrash it out sound explosion for much longer than The Stranglers did.

All of which leads me to Golden Brown – for a few years The Stranglers singles had been not reaching the higher chart places of their earlier material, then suddenly this record appeared and managed to earn them their highest ever chart placing (a number 2 no less).  It’s unusual time signature (almost but not quite waltz time) rises and falls, it catches your hand as it waltzes pass and sends you spinning into the song. It feels simultaneously both pretty and subversive – we now know that it’s probably about Heroin, but that doesn’t detract from the record in any way, because the lyrics are non-specific enough for it actually to be about anything you want, some dusky exotic maiden or a new colour of non-drip gloss from Dulux. Take your pick, and let the music take you on a heady magic carpet ride.

Tennis and The Stranglers seem to be an unlikely combination, but they are brought together on Love-30. This is a largely instrumental track that’s full of echo and effect like backwards guitars. The drums provide the most consistent sound, emphasised by the occasional bass twang. Every now and then there’s the sound of a tennis ball being hit, and “out” being called. The pace is quite languid, and none of the frenetic energy that you would normal associate with a tennis match. In truth Love-30 is an inconsequential bit of noise that doesn’t last long enough to be annoying.

So were The Stranglers punk? Probably not, but they were certainly canny enough to allow themselves to flow with that particular stream for their advantage.

Next time another Golden record…