Forever (2000) - Spice Girls

It's 3 for 3 baby. Here's the final part in my little triptych, a review of the Spice Girls' third and (probably) final studio album. Or, to better convey the route I'm about to take, an article called 'How production can make or break an album/band/career'.

With the exception of Goodbye (conceived and released over a year before the rest of the album took shape), Forever marks a departure from the Spice Girls' longtime producers of Absolute and Stannard & Rowe. And, boy, don't we know it. Chasing a more 'mature' image, and to help usher the Spice Girls into the 21st century, they sought the assistance of famed r&b producer Rodney 'Darkchild' Jerkins and his brother 'Uncle Freddie' to help manifest the majority of their third album. Together, the duo doused Forever in their particular brand of lowkey, staccato electronica and faux picked guitar sounds programmed like a player piano, not to mention the arbitrary, rhythmic mutterings from the producer, unnecessarily annotating the lead vocal performances as they occur, presumably aiming to sound like what the singers hear in their own headphones while recording. It is a massive shift in direction, not just in the actual sound, but in the values that brought the Spice Girls to the forefront of pop culture - for nothing the band ever put out before bore such heavy-handed watermarking by a musical contributor other than themselves.

So where do I stand on the issue of production tags? Well, while I feel it is extremely important for credit to be correctly attributed and given where due, I find production tags to be the audio equivalent of a blot on the landscape; a musical eyesore. I just remember what an idiot Jessie J sounds reciting "Coconut Man" and "Moon-head" at the start of Price Tag, and that's really all I need to vote firmly in opposition to them. Ultimately, though I believe in transparency around who is responsible for what in music, it should not come at the cost of the music itself. Therefore, if a producer wants to lay his signature onto a track, it should be done in the production itself, not by branding their name all over the songs.

This brings me to my biggest fault with Rodney Jerkins - Darkchild has such, SUCH a distinctive sound, such instantly recognisable timbres, beats, patterns to his work, especially in the y2k era, that he simply does not need to stamp his name all over it. It's him, clearly, so who the fuck else would it be? Just like how you know immediately when a Hex Hector remix is playing, it is the same with Darkchild. Except Hex Hector manages it with, as far as I'm concerned, a hell of a lot more dignity and integrity.

Add the Spice Girls to the mix, and the can of worms is prised all the way open. These are the Spice Girls, the torchbearers of Girl Power, whose whole career up until this point has been about female empowerment and not relying on men for shit. And here they are, being overtly creatively submissive to a man who is hellbent on plastering his name all over their record. All because they want to pursue a trendy new sound that, frankly, doesn't suit them. The Spice Girls were not, are not, and never will be the British answer to Destiny's Child; they are playing in different ballparks. So collaborating with Darkchild was never going to be the best course of action - they effectively alienated their fanbase. A fanbase that was already raw, feeling betrayed by Geri's exit; if anything they should have doubled down on their trademark pop sound and unique branding, not ricochet off into a world of soulless programming (there are 0 instrument credits for tracks 1-8, not a single one).

And they certainly should not have allowed a man to mumble his own name over the top of their vocal performances. Geri would never have stood for that.

1. If You Wanna Have Some Fun
2. Goodbye
3. Wasting My Time
4. Get Down With Me
5. Oxygen
6. Time Goes By
7. Holler
8. Let Love Lead The Way
9. Weekend Love
10. Right Back At Ya
11. Tell Me Why

Total Points: 38/55
Average Score: 5.09

Rating-wise, it's nowhere near the heights that Spice hit - but how much of this is down to production choices, and how much is just down to the quality of the songs themselves? Well, it's no coincidence that my 2 highest scorers are Jerkins-free affairs, as is the highest scoring of the album's 4 minimalist, down-tempo r&b ballads, Oxygen.

Goodbye features more out of necessity than choice, being the only single without a parent album, and it really doesn't belong. It feels rather tacked onto the end, more like a bonus track on top of their established set menu of 10. That said, its one of the best moments of Forever, with a full-bodied sound, robust harmonies and soulful delivery, encapuslating what feels like a whole CD's worth of truly heartfelt feeling into its 4 and a half minutes runtime. It is topped only by If You Wanna Have Some Fun, a much funkier portrait of stripped-back r&b than what Darkchild favours, here brought about by the far less stoic and systematic Jam & Lewis. Notably, it is the only song on the album with a palpable sense of fun, which feels like a wild thing to say about the Spice Girls. Half of their back catalogue can be filed broadly under the heading 'fun', so what happened? Sophistication and fun are wholly compatible; this track proves it. It's bouncy but not in a hollow, tinny way (see: Get Down With Me), and it boasts the most personality exhibited by the girls since Spiceworld. On top of that, it's also extremely catchy.

Wasting My Time and Get Down With Me are two songs that manage to hold up in spite of their production, though the former definitely suffers less from the stark, dry formula that Darkchild bestows upon the soundscape. Both songs are upbeat and distinct enough to stick in your head after a listen-through, though it can be hard to remember which is which; a lot of the songs have similar sounding names. This is less of an issue with the writing (though it still is slightly; where's the variety of subject matter and distinction of themes?) and more of an issue with the monotonous sound cast over all of Forever by, as I keep reiterating, the production. Don't get me wrong, I love a concise musical vision, but would you rather have many different plates of delicious tapas or multiple plates of the same one type of tapas? Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, and we're here left with quite a bland meal. The Plain Girls, rather than the Spice Girls.

Songs that unfortunately aren't granted the same, slightly more positive fate are Tell Me Why and, the biggest disappointment of all, Right Back At Ya. I literally have nothing to say about the former. I do not remember anything about it, and it was only yesterday that I last heard it. But Right Back At Ya, I know in full, every lyric, every ad lib, the entire rap, because the leaked original pop version, produced by the team behind Say You'll Be There, Absolute, is part of my regular Spice rotation. This version is, in short, the direction that Forever should have been taken in. The sound is familiar but clearly evolved, the content reminiscent but fresh, referencing the past but ultimately saying "we're still here, we've still got it, we're coming back stronger than ever before." And Uncle Freddie's feeble attempt at reimagining it to sit alongside the likes of Holler doesn't cut it. All life has left Mel B's vocal cords in this inferior version, and it falls as flat as a pancake.

Another disappointment is that the incredible W.O.M.A.N, performed live alongside a take on the original (better) version of Right Back At Ya during their 1999 Christmas In Spiceworld concert* is nowhere to be found. The swishiest, most disco-tastic they ever sounded, this would have been a far more preferable and palatable route for them to take than what actually occurred. Lyrics such as 'now we're industry players, wearing g-strings, looking mean and putting music to beats' represent everything the girls had within their grasp for the taking. Furthermore, its middle 8 is one of the best, if not THE best, I've ever heard, in any song, ever. And no, it would not fit in, among what we eventually got with their third album, and that is exactly why I'm so frustrated! It would have added some juice, some charisma, some electricity, some fun, some actual spice back into the Spice Girls - is that so much to ask for?

*These performances are free to view on the Spice Girls' official youtube channel, at long last. I highly recommend checking them out and discovering what could have been. If nothing else, at least check out the 2 audience engagement peaks on W.O.M.A.N for the aforementioned apex of middle 8s and proof that Victoria can sing.

And then there's those 4 minimalist, down-tempo r&b ballads I mentioned, of which Oxygen comes out on top due to it's ethereal uniqueness and the fact it was the second of Jam & Lewis's two contributions. All 4 epitomise a very turn-of-the-millenium niche sound; the quietest of sine leads, the most over-reliant use of windchimes for 'atmosphere' and the meagrest implementation of percussion possible. Once again, it's variety that could have saved these rather similar 4 tracks, and in previous albums it's what helps separate the slower songs and give them each a distinct flavour. Think of 2 Become 1 or Too Much; they're afforded more personality because more personality was put into their creation, and the girls always made room to try different things out and experiment. Here, experimentation is absolutely off the table, and all 4 ballads (to be clear, I'm excluding Goodbye despite its lower tempo due to what I said about it feeling more like a bonus track and its lack of direct relationship to the rest of the album) are the generic and bland type that you can find on any other cookie-cutter girl band's album from this era of r&b. Oxygen is just a little more interesting than the rest.

So is Forever a bad album? I still don't know how to answer that. It is, for me, easily their worst album. I think it was destined for the label of sub-par the moment they decided to put all their eggs in the Holler basket. The switch from what everyone knew and loved was just too much sonic whiplash, no matter how trendy or refined the new sound was meant to be. Sure, it could have been saved if the trajectory that was set by W.O.M.A.N and the original Right Back At Ya had been followed (not to mention the feisty leaked demo Give You What You Want - I sure wish they had!) but then I imagine half the tracks would have been entirely different ones and, at that point, am I really talking about the same album?

That said, declaring Forever as ill-fated isn't entirely fair. It performed well, though obviously not lineup-of-5 well, and features several renowned beloved tracks. I even still count a couple among my all-time favourites. But at the same time, it's no coincidence that their least spicy, lowest energy, most subdued effort is the one that heralded the end. Of course, they would return as a full set of 5 in 2007, complete a sell-out tour and capitalise with a Greatest Hits that featured a highly underrated promotional single (and star in some great adverts for Tesco). And re-return in 2019 without Victoria (which, fair enough to her, she's found her niche in fashion and probably didn't need the stress or the money) for another big tour. So it's not even as if Forever represents a lasting, slightly soured impression of the girls. In reality, it came along only about 20% of the way through the time between their initial formation and their most recent project.

But, for this mini-arc on The Sound System, it is indeed the end! Thanks for sticking with me (if you did) - I kind of just went with the renaissance of a hyperfixation and this is what ensued. Who knows what will happen next!

Spiceworld (1997) - Spice Girls

"Don't you know it's going too fast? Racing so hard, you know it won't last."

The song Stop, from which this line was taken, is notoriously a thinly veiled dressing down of the Spice Girls' manager Simon Fuller, protesting that he's working them too hard, and that eventually something would have to give. By the time Stop was released as a single in 1998, something had given - they'd sacked him. But only 3 months later, something else would give; Geri Halliwell would leave the band mid-world tour, and change the trajectory of the Spice Girls forever. Now, I'm here to critique music, not act as a biographer, so you know I wouldn't be relaying any of this if it wasn't directly relevant to the sound, vibe and overall manifestation of the Spice Girl's second album, Spiceworld.

And yes, I'm following the Spice Girls canon - here comes round 2.

Remember how, in my review of Spice, I talked about the inevitability of its success? How the girls were all so hungry, so adamant and so ready to get out there and do their thing that there was no option but for it to blast the roof off? Spiceworld picks up where Spice left off, with absolutely no gap in the proceedings to digest or reflect. Spice's success directly led to the necessity for Spiceworld; the world wanted more, and they wanted it fast. So the girls did what they had to in order to sustain their momentum. The album was announced before any new songs had even been written, amongst talk of a movie, and the creation of the two entities eventually end up coinciding, songs being written and recorded on-set. I don't believe anything was even demoed - there couldn't have been time. And the result is a selection of bright, tutti-fruity pop songs that very much pertain to the essence of the Spice Girls, and deliver the message the world had come to expect them to deliver.

This is not to say that genuine sentiments don't exist within - in fact, I would argue that the surmounting pressure experienced by the girls, Geri in particular, sparked some of their best lyrics and most cerebral, relevant song topics (see Stop and Too Much). The album also featured a more diverse range of inspiration, with a latin pop influence infiltrating on a couple of songs, as well as Motown, doo-wop and jazz. But these elements don't really diversify what the Spice Girls put out with Spiceworld - they combine into a kind of rainbowtastic showcase of the media's five favourite everyday lasses, never really leaning into the edge that caught the public's eye in the first place. The music isn't bad - there are some excellent, catchy, very on-brand moments of brilliance. But it's clear that the girls were not granted much opportunity to dig deep, and the slightly-too-new, plastic sheen that is omnipresent throughout Spiceworld demonstrates this, as does its slightly colour-by-numbers array of songs.

1. Never Give Up On The Good Times
2. Saturday Night Divas
3. Too Much
4. Stop
5. Move Over
6. Viva Forever
7. Denying
8. Do It
9. Spice Up Your Life
10. The Lady Is A Vamp

Total Points: 30/50
Average Score: 6.0

But, as the upper-mid score indicates, that does not make this a bad album, by any means. It's just not as gritty and daring as the moments I enjoy most within Spice. Thematically, we're in largely familiar territory, plus the girls are well settled into their vocal ability and only more deft at peppering their personalities throughout, even when the material doesn't invite much scope for character definition. It's the Spice Girls themselves that hold up this album - their real voices, girl-next-door personas and genuine input - that make Spiceworld decent; if autotune had been brought forward for 1997 and applied to these songs, it would render them utterly generic.

Take Stop for example. The lines are divvied out in their usual equitable way (a little bit more to Mel C because she can handle it, a bit less to Geri who lacks control and Victoria whose voice is a little hollow), and the harmonies are as even on the chorus and complex on the bridge as the corresponding segments are on Who Do You Think You Are - but the sound is notably tamer. It's only really because Mel B gets to rasp out the bridge and Mel C can do some belting that it's distinct as a Spice Girls song, and not any one of the numerous other 90's-does-60's pop offerings of the era. Similarly, Viva Forever is beautifully performed, but there's no chutzpah within its instrumentation or even its construction. In reality, it's the subtle aloofness in the vocals and the unique timbre of layered harmonies that allow it's simplicity to shine.

But, even with heaps of personality in the performance, the weaker songs tend to be so because their content is too directly interpreted. This is why Do It doesn't quite 'do it' for me; it's so literal. Had more time been taken to flesh out the essence of the song and come up with a way of conveying it that wasn't so lacking in creativity, it would have been much stronger. Just because it acts strong doesn't mean it is - sure, it has a bold, tough kind of sound that exudes confidence and empowerment, but this is a veneer of bravado for a concept that's only been explored skin deep. In fact, it is sonically very similar to the Spice era (but only widely released as a Spiceworld25 extra track) Step To Me, but Do It is comparably sterile in terms of potency and manifestation. Its message, though valid as a message, has merely been superficially churned out, and is recited almost mindlessly, from start to finish, with no adjustment for artistry. It's just straight-up in-your-face jargon, the likes of which the girls could have spewed out on the fly in any radio interview. It illustrates the overarching insufficiency with Spiceworld; that over-saturation leads to stagnation. You get out what you put in, and when you're running on fumes, you end up with a feeble output. If they'd had a decent gap in their schedule, or at least a few days a week to touch down and process things, they'd have been able to get their teeth stuck into the themes they were interested in, and write a whole bunch more songs, and tracks like Do It would never have made the cut.

Spice Up Your Life represents another case of riding the hype-train and delivering what is expected, without really generating anything majorly provoking. Its chord structure becomes tiresome before the midway point, and the sung-in-unison verses and general approach of shouting out catchphrases just don't scratch any itches. Move Over, though just as filled with buzzwords, at least manages some moments of sumptuous and unusually built harmony, with Emma taking the low 'yeah, yeah, yeah's of the chorus to beguiling effect when you notice it. Additionally, it's shorter, snappier and less of a cliche than Spice Up Your Life, with a broader range of influences coming together to produce a more textured listening experience. The same can't be said for Lady Is A Vamp, however, whose jumble of lyrical references are slapped over a track that sounds like a reject from Chicago. The resulting song, though not remotely lacking in vibrance and fun, feels more like a parody than an original song, and does nothing to bring together the rest of the album.

Gentler tracks, like Too Much and Saturday Night Divas, contain a plethora of sultry and stirring elements that award them, as well as the album at length, an ample boost in quality and intrigue. With Too Much, the incremental chord pattern and the luxe string arrangement open up a deep, immersive headspace for the listener to swim in, and it manages the tough task of sounding unlike anything else in the mainstream at the time. Saturday Night Divas is the coolest track on the record, with chilled out, nonchalant verses and bewitchingly limber bridges, where Emma rises to the challenge of swinging her voice around betwixt highs and lows, and pulls it off breezily. The repetitive nature of the refrains are, unfortunately, a bit of a let down on an otherwise sleek and grown-up track that feels perhaps like the most natural successor to the material on their first album; still savvy and chic, but a pronounced evolution nonetheless.

It's Never Give Up On The Good Times which is the true highlight of this record - rather than being comparable and therefore potentially inferior to something on Spice, it goes for something Spice didn't attempt in any way. Third-person story telling, a polished disco beat, an increasingly progressive structure as it advances; it takes the fibre of the Spice Girls and threads them through the eye of an altogether new needle - so we can still perceive their zest and velocity, but the result is an entirely new experience. Perhaps for the same reason, the B-sides of the Spiceworld era are also strong; Outer Space Girls and Walk Of Life are somewhat novelty in nature (probably why they were never considered for the album itself, which tends to eschew anything more gimmicky than the schtick of the girls themselves), but it's their novelty that results in their triumph. It's impossible to come across as a pastiche of your own stereotype if you've switched proceedings up for a kitschy, sci-fi themed song instead of your usual Girl Power stuff. Furthermore, rhapsodising on a subject that's not 'serious' or 'topical' means that it doesn't matter if the lyrics don't get a chance to cut so deep. Even Spice Invaders, the lowest of low-effort filler tracks, has a candid authenticity and overt lack of direction that everything present on Spiceworld was too self-conscious to encroach upon. When the pressure was off, when they weren't expected to be what the world expected them to be, the magic could surface, even through the rigamarole of overwork and constant media noise.

Spice, no matter how you look at it, was always going to be a tough act to follow, and I genuinely believe that Spiceworld fulfilled this task as well as it could given that the Spice Girls were global superstars at this point, so in demand by different channels, radio stations and sponsors that they could barely keep track of everywhere they'd been in any given week. It is by no means perfect, and I'm very much aware that in pointing out its varying flaws, I've probably been hypercritical to make a point of what they are. But anything that feels disproportionately incendiary on my part should be compared to the apex reached with Spice. Spiceworld is a great album, but Spice was subjectively better, and that comparison is always going to be a consideration when looking at this band through the necessary worldwide public lens.

In a way, I'm surprised I've found so much to say about it, because it really did feel like it just happened: like it was almost auto-piloted into existence and that this kind of analysis is kind of moot. Why spend time breaking down a project that wasn't thought-through so reverently from its conception? And there it is again - insulting a perfectly fine album by overdoing the analysis!

The bottom line is this: it is what it is, and what it is did every part of the job it set out to do. It doesn't do to pick it apart any more, it's just a fun pop album by the biggest superstars of its time. And that's all it needs to be.

Spice (1996) - Spice Girls

I've had this review on the back-burner for several years, but have been putting it off and off and off. Given that one of my main objectives with the curation of this blog was to systematically find my favourite album of all time, I always felt it would be a bit of an anticlimax to write up what almost definitely takes that accolade after only reviewing 20 or so records prior. Because, as will soon become apparent, the Spice Girls' debut album Spice comes very close to ticking all the boxes for me, and will almost definitely be my highest scoring album of all time.

So why now? Well, we're on the cusp of unearthing a small bounty of previously unreleased demos, with the release of their 30th anniversary singles collection in November. The first of four, Do You Think About Me, is already streaming (legitimately, rather than the identical bootleg I've already heard countless times) and I feel the need, as an enthusiast, to get this review published before any more thoughts can take root. It's a habit of mine to hypothesise about the various what-ifs that an album's b-sides and demos pose to me, and I need to get my current mind-map out in the open before the potential of any more interference coming along. That said, I'm personally hoping for official releases of demos I already know about - fingers crossed for W.O.M.A.N, Don't Break My Heart and the earlier pop version of Right Back At Ya* - having these to stream would literally make my year!

And, y'know... it's my blog, for me, and I'll do what I want. Who cares if I peak too soon?

*update: it's not. It's demos of 2 Become 1, Love Thing and Mama. Like the real versions of these aren't already widespread. Why can't they give us what we want, what we really, really want?

If you're looking for a full socio-political breakdown of how the Spice Girls played a pivotal role in the Cool Britannia movement and all that bollocks, you can look elsewhere (don't worry, you'll find it very easily). While there are certainly contextual elements that made the group so iconic, a word that I'm not using in a remotely hyperbolic way, these largely do not concern me. My concern is the music, and if anything influences that (it does) then I'll dig a little deeper. But it's important to note that the Spice Girls, as a novelty, as a brand, as a figurehead, never really appealed to me personally. The whole shebang, it's all ancillary to the music. It played a huge part in what helped form the music, but ultimately I never cared about their outspokenness or Geri's Union Jack dress - I cared about their craft, which is often the least considered facet of the Spice Girls' legacy.

Spice is a very important album to me, and it's one that has surprisingly stood the test of time. Year after year I've come back to it, and I've never ceased to enjoy it. In fact, I've only grown to love it more as I've gotten older. Initially, as an actual child who was there to witness the Spice phenomenon, only the lively, upbeat hits caught my attention. Then, giving the albums a whirl, the similar sounding non-singles were all that warranted my time. Even disparaging certain tracks as novelties, throughout the years where I'd fixated on more decorous artists or more underground offerings, I still appreciated the textures and the mechanics of their vocal arrangements and the down-to-earth, instant get-ability of everything. Now, I've grown to love the ballads, the quirkier moments, and the rawness of everything the girls brought to their writing and recording. And that? That's the full package. That is me basically saying I enjoy every part of this album.

Now for the fun part:

1. Love Thing
2. Say You'll Be There
3. Who Do You Think You Are?
4. Mama
5. Wannabe
6. Somethin' Kinda Funny
7. If U Can't Dance
8. 2 Become 1
9. Last Time Lover
10. Naked

Total Points 37/50
Average Score: 7.4

There are no bad songs on this album. The weakest point would be Naked, which suffers from being a little too vague in its lyrics, with an ambience that lacks the sophisticated, sultry refinement of recently surfaced gem Feed Your Love. This understated ode to blowjobs (yes, blowjobs), which featured for the first time in 2021 on Spice 25, the album's quarter-century celebratory expanded release, was surely positioned as the penultimate track - where Naked ended up - before an inevitable last-minute switch being made after the Spice Girls found such extreme commercial success with, in particular, a preteen female audience. But Naked is not bad. It just lacks the vivaciousness and straightforwardness that the girls are known for, and the street-smart confidence that saturates the rest of the album.

Take Last Time Lover, for example: vulnerability disguised in the girls' trademark directness and honesty, and simultaneously savvy and hyperaware.  It's definitely one of the clunkier moments of the album, the melodic refrain of the song's title as basic as they come, and the soundscape crossing the line from bombastic to ham-fisted. But the song, like most of the album's contents, oozes with that je ne sais quoi that we've come to instantly connect with their trademark 'Girl Power'. This unmistakable but barely definable quality takes an unremarkable song with throwaway lyrics and gives it a time and a place, and basically saves it.

But what does it do for songs that don't need saving, due to already being lyrically tight, dextrously produced and more catchy than a cold? Say You'll Be There and Love Thing comprise half of the four songs written with Eliot Kennedy, in the week immediately following the girls chosen departure from the management company that had first scouted and formed them*. This confluence of time, circumstance and people, all the layers of context involved, was destined to bear the juiciest of fruits, and these two tracks are undeniably the best on the record. Slick, effervescent verses full of personality and declarations of independence, thumping basslines alongside raspy, challenging instrumentation choices and uncompromising beats, and some of the best and most memorable ad-libbing from the vocal powerhouse that is Mel C - these songs are confident, confrontational, uninhibited and cool. Everything that defines a Spice Girl.

*The other two would later surface as Pepsi tie-in single Step To Me and the much-bootlegged Strong Enough, all four tracks, incidentally, of a similar style and caliber that would make for an excellent EP release

I went through a brief phase of dismissing Wannabe as cheesy. Which it absolutely is, but I've come to realise that cheese and refinement are not mutually exclusive qualities. Wannabe is so pure in set-up, so uncomplicated by trying to be anything aside from what it is (ironically, given the track's title) that there is an understated elegance beneath the veneer of its brash, fun charisma and bubblegum chorus. Those low piano steps underneath the shouted question and answer segments, the sweetest of line deliveries from Emma on the chorus (really living up to her nickname) and the sheer effortlessness with which the whole thing is performed - it is masterful. It is a living lesson in how to write pop music, whilst at the same time being completely inimitable.

Quieter moments like 2 Become 1 and Mama are structurally the most stable parts of the record, acting as pillars that ground and support the rest of the songs' frenetic vigour. The various ways the girls 'divide and conquer' the vocal work really come to life in these songs, often teaming up in pairs to alternate lines of harmonies, creates such unique layers,  the likes of which just didn't happen (and still seldom do) in mainstream music. The quirkiness of 2 Become 1's chord pattern is its hidden superpower, while Mama's is that the longer it continues, the more vocals layer up like a round and you're swimming in a rich sound bath of pure, unaffected voice. The more tender subject matter of these tracks is perhaps the corniest the girls get, but their candidness carries through and they ultimately just come off as very real.

Perhaps the weirdest track on the album is If U Can't Dance, which is a story of hate turned to love for me. Sampling the droning bass motif from Digital Underground's The Humpty Dance, it first struck me as a massive WTF moment at the end of the album, a baffling note to finish on. But the essence of the girls is peppered throughout, Mel B's chilled, conversational rap over a slow background police siren, the ethnic-sounding overblown flute in the chorus, the message of assertion through a simple proclamation of standards on a night out - it's all so them. The only thing missing is Victoria's slightly flat but very catchy chant throughout the chorus, present in the demo version but inexplicable vetoed from the final article. This, as well as the slightly shifted repetition of the track's title, give the song a little bit more melodic neatness and maybe would have helped acclimatise it to the nine tracks before it if they'd stayed.

B-sides and demos of the era are a little dicey, and ultimately I think that one of the main reasons I gave the album such a high score is because the right tracks made it on. Wannabe and Say You'll Be There's respective b-sides Bumper To Bumper and Take Me Home verge a little too much into r&b to fit in, sonically incongruous with the firm pop vibe of Spice, the latter also uncharacteristically weedy and underdeveloped. One Of These Girls isn't bad as such, but is self-referential in an almost pandering and awfully on-the-nose way, and would stick out like a sore thumb if it had made the cut for the album. As for demos, the aforementioned Strong Enough would easily have been the best addition, funky and exuberant, and in-keeping with Spice's strong message of empowerment. Do You Think About Me, Don't Break My Heart and Walking On Air, some of their earliest demos from when they were still known as Touch (imagine that world for a moment!), are all great tracks but sound a little too primitive in their construction and lyrics, and even with polished up vocals would probably, unfortunately, sound quite juvenile next to the likes of Say You'll Be There.

So it's a score of 7.4, and I can't see that being superseded. I actually feel I've been hypercritical in awarding only two tracks blue status, and leaving If U Can't Dance and 2 Become 1 as yellows. But even with this debatable underscoring, it'll probably beat every other album I listen to. Their follow-up album has decent moments (and better b-sides) but the name of that game with the Spiceworld was always going to be continuing the momentum built up by Spice. It wasn't set up for failure (and it certainly wasn't a failure, commercially or critically) but it lacked the specific terroir that amalgamated to make Spice such a knockout.

While some debuts are fumbled, tentative accounts of artists trying to find their sound or carve out a niche in the music industry, Spice was only ever going to be a steam train hurtling down the track, already full of momentum, vivacity funnelling right out of it. By the time Wannabe was released, the girls had been through the mill with their initial management company Heart, broke away from their restraints and used one another as catalysts for their own success. Their rise was inevitable and, by extension, so was the greatness of Spice.

Generation Terrorists (1992) - Manic Street Preachers

I usually try to write my reviews in a way that 'comes full circle' or reinforces my main observations/talking points, so that they feel as complete as I can make them. During the course of writing this one though, I realised that each of those points were merely a station on a rather linear route - all needed, all wanted, but without an all-encompassing message I'm trying to convey. And the culmination is ultimately an ode to perhaps the greatest song of the 1990s, rather than a reflection of the whole album. So - spoiler alert - this one is going to end with a weird science-project-esque points summary as a kind of round-up, but no actual general conclusion. No problem there, but maybe not what you'd usually expect from me in terms of structure. In terms of polarising opinions and florid language, however, I shouldn't expect to disappoint.

Whereas in the past, I've praised double albums/records with a high volume of content for managing to not to feel bloated, I cannot offer the same assessment for Generation Terrorists, the debut effort of the Manic Street Preachers. This album stinks of an overwrought need to cram songs into what was essentially a musical and political manifesto for the band, in a record where a song omission is effectively a censorship of stance. With a high media profile and long wait in the run-up to its much anticipated release, the band was set up for disappointment from the start. Thematically, the album is generally favoured, and the totality with which the Manics saturate its sound and lyrics with their message is undeniable. But the general consensus is that, despite the commendation, there's just too bloody much of it. And I'm inclined to agree.

1. Motorcycle Emptiness
2. Little Baby Nothing
3. Slash 'n' Burn
4. Nat West-Barclays-Midlands-Lloyds
5. You Love Us
6. Condemned To Rock 'n' Roll
   
7. Tennessee
8. Another Invented Disease
9. Crucifix Kiss
10. So Dead
11. Methadone Pretty
12. Spectators Of Suicide
13. Love's Sweet Exile
14. Stay Beautiful
15. Born To End
16. Damn Dog
17. Repeat (UK)
18. Repeat (Stars & Stripes)

Total Points: 49/90
Average Score: 5.44

A gargantuan eighteen individual songs, almost filling the entire 80 minute capacity of a compact disc, is an ambitious feat for your album debut, and something that hindsight would probably correct if it could. With retrospect comes a refined vision and a more discerning approach, and this was acknowledged by then rhythm guitarist and lyricist Richey Edwards, claiming it would be 'a lot better without the crap'. Daunting to tackle as a listener, the album largely matches expectation upon seeing the tracklist, as a dense and distended ordeal to trudge through. The fact that there are two versions of the same song (incidentally my least favourite song on the record) featured as part of official (non-bonus) album infrastructure indicates just how unnecessarily overpopulated the record is. That said, quality hardly comes into it - in fact, I found many of the tracks nearly impossible to distinguish in this respect (note the vast sea of middling yellow in my rankings). The real problem with Generation Terrorists is that, in sound at least, it's largely the same, more of the same, and then just a little bit more of the same. 

And then, there's Motorcycle Emptiness.

I've written previously about a standout single leaving the rest of the record in the dust, in reference to Cake by Trashcan Sinatras. To say this here would be a slight discredit to the overall quality achieved across Generation Terrorists, and the moderate strength of other reasonably memorable tracks like Slash'n'Burn and Condemned To Rock 'n' Roll. However, I cannot stress enough how fucking good this song is. In a sea of squiggly glam rock refrains and semi-screamed hair metal vocals set over cowbells and run-of-the-mill punk palm-muting, this is an absolute outlier. It doesn't compare - never mind the ballpark, it's a whole other game. It sounds nothing like anything else on the record, to the point where I'm thinking "is this even the same band?". Motorcycle Emptiness is a song that only should have surfaced with 2 or 3 albums under their belt, with the maturity and perspective that usually only comes with time and experimentation. Not on a debut, and not on a debut full to the brim with another very consistent flavour of music.

The instant the twisting, soaring notes of the guitar melody kick in, you're in a different world. The sparser drums and syncopated guitar strumming are so much more relaxed and effortless that it feels almost like autopilot; let the song do the work and the performance will take care of itself. No-one is trying too hard or in a hurry here - with the change of pace, you're given permission to close your eyes and absorb and enjoy as the 6 minutes of perfection drift into your ears. It feels like a dream - time transcends, and you're almost floating as the wondrous momentum propels itself, feeling at once wistful and voracious. Lyrically is the only way it ties into the rest of Generation Terrorists, with aptly critical themes of nihilism within capitalism; musically, however, it is untouchable. There's nothing wrong with the rest, style-wise. It's fine. It feels very within a mould, which is ironic for what is essentially a punk record. This is just a different kettle of fish, and it's for sure the kettle I want my fish from.

I can't really justify making time for most of the album. Little Baby Nothing deserves its flowers, and their cover of the M*A*S*H theme that features later as a bonus track is harrowingly heartfelt if repetitive, but Damn Dog, for example, can get in the bin. I'm not going to waste my time re-listening to or discussing the lowest tracks - why would I, when I could be listening to Motorcycle Emptiness instead? Sorry for being so dismissive, but that's just the power that Motorcycle Emptiness has over me. It is, and I don't use this word lightly, epic.

So, in summary:

• Generation Terrorists is too long and bloated, but not necessarily bad.
• The material is competently played but largely indistinctive.
• Motorcycle Emptiness exists on a higher plain.

Come their next album (which I won't detail here, it may deserve its own dedicated post in the future), many of the 'issues' are fixed - the vision is much more focused and the execution far more easily digestible. But there'll never be another Motorcycle Emptiness which, quite frankly, marks the zenith of my interest in the Manics. Early demos reveal how it's an odd, ramshackle collage of other, far more punky cuts, and I find it utterly fascinating that such a young band were able to mould it into a masterpiece that sits so far apart from the rest of their repertoire. My overall score is not particularly favourable, but let it be known that it's far more a product of quantity over quality, and that the most quality article of all exists there within.

Awakening (1982) - Hiroshi Sato featuring Wendy Matthews

Hiroshi Sato was part of the City Pop scene since its inception, but I never see him attributed with the same prestige or influence as the likes of Tatsuro Yamashita or Toshiki Kadomatsu. That said, his landmark album, 1982's Awakening, is about as classic a City Pop record as one could imagine, but in a far quirkier, organic and individual way than what could be expected from most other artists. Vastly ahead of its time, this work is an unlikely product of Sato's yearning for something he felt Japan could no longer afford him and a magnetism that continually drew him back to his musical roots. To Sato, it really was an awakening, because it represented a renewal of possibility, and the resulting work is one of the finest examples of genre fusion to come out of Japan that decade.

Long-time readers of this blog (who?) will know the value I place on an album with a succinct flavour, whose songs exist as part of a self-contained ecosystem. Awakening is very much one of these albums, but in such an imaginative and unusual way that fuses ideologies and tech to create something quite unique. At one end of the spectrum, there exist within the record slow, after-midnight, smoky jazz-club ballads, full of soul and emotion, centred around the acoustic piano. At the other end, we have the hyper-futurism of the Roland Jupiter 8 and the Linn LM-1 drum machine (I know, I know) which feel to be at the very frontier of music production, sounding almost otherworldly, let alone innovative. Such a fusion shouldn't work, but it's to Sato's credit that he had such inspiration and vision with this record, that he seemed to just make them work. The blend is inexplicably effortless. Even that drum machine, when incorporated with flush production value, choice timbre and carefully monitored accompaniment, can be part of a truly stylish, palatable yet avant-garde soundscape.*

*I maintain that Prince had no place using it in Sign 'O' The Times, feeling more of a convenience in his case, whereas for Hiroshi Sato it feels integral to his overall concept.

1. Say Goodbye
2. Blue And Moody Music (Wendy's Version)
3. Only A Love Affair
4. Blue And Moody Music
5. Awakening
6. It Isn't Easy
7. I Can't Wait
8. Love And Peace
9. You're My Baby
10. From Me To You
    (Exempt from total score: Awakening (覚醒) )

Total Points: 30/50
Average Score: 6.0

Say Goodbye is about as close to a City Pop anthem as you can get, yet its sound actually encroaches more on the contemporary 'future-funk' offshoot from the last decade. Though the staple of funky guitar fills are prevalent, as well as Awakening's signature semi-automated arpeggiated motif, it's the introduction of Sato's robotic vocoder-processed voice and the wobbly low synths that project this song so far into the future. This combination makes for a distorted, submerged-under-water feel that evokes the kind of overproduction that has only really come about since City Pop was rediscovered in the internet age, messing with its bare bones and 'retrofuturising' the music within a new context. Here, the heavy affectation to the tones create a bubble around the relatively simple song, making it the most immersive moment on the record.

Collaborating with Australian singer Wendy Matthews for multiple vocal tracks was a key factor in the album's blanket mood of genre-mashed sophistication. Her clear, high voice performs a careful balancing act with Sato's deep, rich tone, and the whole album feels like the most grown-up of duets. Their two separate versions of Blue And Moody Music act as opposing ends of the electronic-acoustic spectrum - and though both are magnificent, the rendition with Wendy's vocals trumps it for me; the brighter, perkier sound bypasses the literal content of the lyrics and cuts straight to the feeling they're trying to convey. Her voice is an exquisite fit for another highlight, Only A Love Affair, in which she passionately but sagaciously confesses her irrepressible love for someone, as the coolest of electric pianos tinkles around her vocals. The song is restrained, chic and perhaps the most refined on the album, whilst still feeling very much part of the same world as the thick, competing layers of Say Goodbye.

Though it's true that I applaud how effectively Sato was able to marry acoustic jazz with pioneering electronica, I will say that every track errs one way more than the other, and it is unfortunately those jazzier influenced ballads that I feel are weaker. They are undoubtedly beautiful in their moodiness, but that moodiness is a double-edged sword; at worst, they're sluggish, dense and drowsy. It Isn't Easy, when isolated, manages to ride the soul to a greater degree of success than the rest, but is mildly hampered by its positioning directly after the equally-slowly-paced I Can't Wait. Furthermore, its aloofly virtuoso piano solo is offset by the overarching prevalence of a particularly lumpy pentatonic scale motif, feeling a little too remedial of a focus when in such a high class of music production.

While City Pop contemporary Tatsuro Yamashita (who, incidentally, plays guitar throughout Awakening) is obsessed with the Beach Boys, Hiroshi Sato always had something of a hyper-fixation with another western entity - The Beatles. Barely an album surfaced without a slightly awkward cover of one of their more overlooked songs, their original 60's sound rejected in favour of synthesisers and clunky 16-beat rhythms, attempting to update them for the 1980's. Sato always had great melodic and harmonic instincts, a vivid imagination and an excellent grasp of the English language; by this logic, these covers shouldn't be ill-advised disasters. Unfortunately though, these strengths are hard-countered by a frequent lack of restraint, a desire to constantly push the envelope, and a preoccupation with unnecessarily reworking old material (others' and his own alike). The results were often shambolic arrangements full of mad, goofy-sounding synth sounds, that stink of trying to fix something that isn't broken. From Me To You is no exception, sounding rather like a demo playing out of a Casio midi keyboard. Its slowed-down pace renders the music patchy and insubstantial, and the poor choice of song turns the sophisticated and modern vibe from the rest of the album utterly on its head, this track absolutely lacking synergy with the rest of the material.

The aforementioned envelope pushing is perhaps the reason why I don't harbour as much love for Sato's subsequent works, which are far more synth-heavy and clumsy, despite his ever-prevalent skilfulness as a programmer and producer. Awakening marks an interesting juncture in his career, freshly back from America (a point of significance for many City Pop artists), increasingly interested in where technology could take him and the boundaries it would broaden, but still wanting to scratch an itch that existed from a time where his music was more atmospheric and acoustic. It is this in-between-ness that perhaps makes this album such a standout, not just to myself but in the general view of City Pop connoisseurs. Marriage of cultures and genres has always been elemental to City Pop, but never has it been quite so exploratory and to such serendipitous effect. There is, quite simply, nothing else like it.

Short Stories (Remastered for 2022) - Yeah Jazz

In previous reviews, I've gone into a fair amount of detail about where my various tastes stem from. Nostalgia is a huge factor when it comes to informing my musical profile, but it's also a driver that makes me want to continue writing about music. I've explored numerous different eye-opening (or, rather, ear-opening) points throughout my life in the form of musical anecdotes, but I think it's time to go back to where it truly all began. Which is, technically, in 1991, the year of my birth.

In 1991, Yeah Jazz (a relatively obscure band from Uttoxeter, Staffordshire) released Short Stories on cassette. After a few singles and an album in the 80s, this was their first release with new drummer Fred Hopwood, and the addition of a keyboardist, Dave Blant. To those in the know (not a single person reading this), everything is falling into place as to why I'm so intrinsically connected to this album in particular. But for those who don't know, maybe when I tell you that I am the nephew of Fred Hopwood and that Dave Blant taught me music from years 5-8 at Oldfields Middle School in Uttoxeter, where I grew up, you'll understand why these rudimentary facts about a little known indie band are actually relevant to me.

Some of my earliest memories of music are the songs from this album, playing on tape through the car stereo as we drive to a holiday rental in Wales, or blasting out of my dad's sound system on New Years Eve, or even a few nights before, heard live but not really consciously knowing it, as my uncle played with Yeah Jazz and his other various musical outfits at a local village club in celebration of his late December birthday. As my tastes evolved, I started to brush them off as 'just a local band', shunning their lack of clout and embarrassed by my ties to them, but over time I've reconnected. At uni, where I studied photography, they were a big influence for my final project (in which I created work about the tension I feel regarding my hometown), and I was able to draw upon the lyrics with a newfound insight and appreciation. Now, at the age of 34, I can see eye-to-eye with their vision and I feel like this music is in my blood.

A scan of the sleeve for the original 1991 cassette release of Short Stories

So if my intent is to review my first exposure to music, why am I working with the 2022 rerelease and not the original? Well, multiple reasons - strap in! (Or, alternatively, skip to the rankings if you don't give a shit.)

As well as these two 'editions' of Short Stories, there have also been 3 further releases (Songs from Biscuit Town, Distant Trains and a further Short Stories, the latter released by a German label under the alias 'Big Red Kite'), with almost every song appearing at least twice between the 5 total records, but in some cases 4 separate times. Perhaps the purest way to do this would be to review separately the Big Red Kite version and Songs from Biscuit Town, which feature only a single song in common (which, ironically, shows up nowhere else!) - but it was important to me to include all the songs that I have the most nostalgia for in one go. Separate reviews would mean segregating two absolute standouts on Biscuit Town from the rest of the pack on Big Red Kite. This would feel very wrong because I know them together from the original tape (see above). Now, speaking of tapes...

Distant Trains is an interesting one because it never had a release other than on cassette, and it's almost like a revised/abridged version of the 1991 Short Stories tape. The liners, much like the original Short Stories, were printed on assorted coloured cardboard in black toner (the roads in the above scan have been inked in with coloured marker afterward - music doesn't get more artisanal than that!). Eight of the ten tracks on Distant Trains are taken directly from the original 1991 Short Stories, but with two notable additions; Don't Let Me Leave and the title track. These are songs I'm reluctant to bar from my review; because of how much shared content there exists between the two tapes, I think of them as virtually the same album. Ultimately though, I struggle to want to review either of the two original cassettes, because they are the least accessible. Nostalgia or not, I can't currently listen to them in this format.

So this brings me to the 2022 Short Stories remaster. The highest quality audio, most accessible (it's on their band camp, along with Songs From Biscuit Town) and the most comprehensive tracklist. Almost every song is represented from the original two cassettes I knew as a child. Two exceptions are Speak To Me and Times Change (now only on the new edition of Songs From Biscuit Town) - these I can admittedly sacrifice as I'd basically forgotten about them, thanks to relying on CD rips and the original CD tracklist for Songs From Biscuit Town not featuring either (sidenote: this is so convoluted, it's probably not worth the three paragraphs' worth explanation). The final omission is Lorraine and Duane, which is a bit of a blow due to its uniqueness and exceptionally balanced structure, but not worth losing out on Distant Trains and Don't Let Me Leave for. Lorraine and Duane also features (consistently!) on Songs From Biscuit Town. The final consideration I had to make is that the rerelease inexplicably uses shorter edits of two songs (April and Hey Tray) - but I'm happy to take these as their original length counterparts.

My choice of edition effectively makes this something of a compilation review - but at this point, the lines are so blurred that a) it doesn't matter and b) I'm past caring.

1. Billy Comes Of Age
2. Orchids Bloom
3. Thinking About You (aka Don't Stop)
4. Hey Tray
5. Distant Trains
6. Don't Let Me Leave
7. April (We've Changed)
8. Rainbows
9. Speak Softly To Me
10. Brown Eyes
11. The Great Escape
12. Red Hot Polka (aka Lost At Sea)
13. Angel
14. Michael Forgive Me
15. Cathy Smiles (aka A Summer's Day)

Total Points: 51/75
Average Score: 6.8

I'm not normally that responsive to lyrics, but I believe that Kevin Hand is unparalleled when it comes to storytelling - there's a reason it's called Short Stories. He has an ability with his ballads to go beyond simple narration; though the action and detail are definitely there, he's able to conjure such tangible atmosphere and utterly transport you to his headspace and his location, that his songwriting becomes straight-up poetry. And all with such unbelievable brevity. How does such a complete scene exist in my head when so few words are uttered? While it's true that I identify with much of his writing through living my own version of many of his experiences, there's also a lot I don't directly relate to. But through his colloquial yet carefully crafted lines, I really feel like I'm peering through his eyes and understanding his thoughts. Take the second verse of Hey Tray for example:

"Saturday, stuck in the launderette

Not noticing the notices she smoked another cigarette

And that photograph of you by the purple garage door

That coat you found - you'd strut around - do you wear it anymore?

And you know what? It's a funny thing 

The older I get, the less I feel I'm living"

This is actually pretty jam-packed for a Yeah Jazz verse, but it's extremely immersive. Hand frequently manages something I always aspired to do within my photography, which is to make a moment out of nothing. And it's scattered all over this collection of songs. Everything from describing "eyes as blue as blue skies" in Distant Trains, the "smoke from the chimney reaching for the sun" in Billy Comes Of Age, to the goosebumps I get listening to Thinking About You, where "we hit the road at 90 and the sun rose all around me". These lines, alone, have an understated beauty to them; I'm there, I can see it. But drop them into the full context of the music and you hit gold. You truly feel it.

Now, I don't think Yeah Jazz are especially talented instrumentalists, and this is evident in their solos. With the exception of my uncle's drumming, which is exemplary (I'm not being nepotistic I swear!), any facade of virtuosity is undermined by clumsy and unambitious ad libs. Blant's accordion solos are often clearly fumbled, lacking the dexterity and confidence needed to make a competent polka riff, and the constant prattling around the root note of the chord in guitar and keys solos alike feels amateurish and uninspired. But as an ensemble band, to create a mood and absolutely support each lyric with the ideal accompanying sound? It's this synergy that tells you they are a live band before they are recording artists. This is where they excel and actually surpass their individual skill levels.

So with this in mind, let's go back to that lyric from Thinking About You. "We hit the road at 90" is sung to what I would describe as a runaway drum rhythm, the brightest, slightly sharply-tuned piano chiming in the background, and a guttural, Johnny Cash-esque guitar playing the exact three notes to make the whole sky appear to swirl around you as you hurtle down the motorway and the sun hits from what feels like every direction at once. The song is tinted with the warmest of orange hues, and you're almost physically shielding your eyes as golden rays seep in through every window. This is the very definition of atmospheric.

My absolute favourite song is Billy Comes Of Age. This is a damn-near perfect song. Again, extremely simple in overall structure, but the story is told in so many more ways than just the already poignant, empathetic and naively articulate lyrics. The song builds from a lone, low piano, pausing for breath at intermittent junctures, tom tom rolls that remind me of Joy Division's Atmosphere, and a doubling of pace that feels perfectly timed to propel the story and step into Billy's shoes. The music builds with the story, and eventually reaches an apex of absolute liberation. There's a two-second pause, and then it kicks back in, ever so slightly (1bpm perhaps) faster, and you can feel the excitement and freedom filling your body. It is sublime.

My single critique of Billy Comes Of Age (which, in all other regards, is a quintessential coming-of-age song on par with Trashcan Sinatras' Obscurity Knocks, which is of similar vintage) is Kevin Hand's vocal style. Initially, when Yeah Jazz started up in the early 80s, they had a very blanket, undefined sound that blended them in with a million other white male British indie setups doing essentially the same thing. As he established more of an identity in his writing, he did the same with his voice. On the plus, he was able to curate a very distinctive style that exaggerates his midlands intonation and brings an undeniable degree of authenticity to his performance. On the downside, however, he bleats. He literally bleats like a sheep. He ruins the most beautiful lines by trailing off his notes in a stammered, downward glissando, which sounds so affected and performative that it can take you right out of the ambience they've worked so hard to establish. In a song as strong as Billy Comes Of Age, this vocal idiosyncrasy does the least damage - but as soon as you notice it once, you hear it crop up all over the album, and it's like pulling the one thread that could threaten to unravel the entire outfit.

But even with these shortcomings, the songs, generally speaking, work. Order has never really mattered to me - perhaps this is more due to how many configurations I've known them in over the years, or perhaps this is more due to their nature, each one very much being a 'short story' that the album title implies. Orchids Bloom is the most solid individual track, very well balanced and performed, with a brilliant chorus that works as much as a pop record as it does a mainstay in their unique soundscape. April encroaches on this as well, but with a bit more of a swerve into the polka/bluegrass lean much of the music has. The Great Escape and Brown Eyes epitomise this facet of their music, and while this influence can be polarising, I don't think it sounds weird among their less genre-specific work. Don't Let Me Leave contains an ample dose of this influence, and is one of the songs I most identify with as someone who once left that same hometown in search of freedom and a life beyond its confines.

I have the least amount of nostalgia for the newer additions, Michael Forgive Me and Angel, neither of which existed on the cassettes I knew as a child. The former, in particular, I don't especially enjoy thanks to the rolling and slightly limp repetitive guitar strumming and rhyming pattern that verges on twee. The one track I've thrown off the cliff though is Cathy Smiles, which was a favourite of mine as a kid. I used to love its lively, catchy accordion refrain, but now I view it as corny with positivity, and definitely the weakest of bunch lyrically. My dad always liked to pick apart the line "the grass grew around she smiled as she sat down on it" but for me, nothing is more of a cringe than life being "just a bus ride away".

I knew I had a lot of feelings about this album but I didn't know until this review just how much I had to verbalise. I've been extra-critical in parts, but I think these assessments have ultimately been outweighed by the undeniable appreciation for the many, multiple aspects I love. Rather than summarising at this point to the extent I usually would, I'm going to do the unheard of and just straight up plug the band. They found a degree of commercial success in the 80s but this album and everything since have clearly been made to satisfy the creative buzz and for the love of performing, and if there is a reader viewing this who actually goes out of their way to give them a listen and find out for themselves what I'm on about, that will be worth a hundred times more than any review I could give.

So here's their bandcamp, go listen and purchase some music. And don't worry, it's not and has never been actual jazz.

West End Girl (2025) - Lily Allen

Less than a month after my spontaneous Sheezus review, Lily Allen comes off musical hiatus and drops (I hate that term but it really did just 'drop') fresh new album West End Girl. And it's not just any album, but a break-up album (the juiciest kind) - and you just know, with it being Lily Allen, she's not going to hold back. To paraphrase a friend of mine, this girl wrote a song called Fuck You; she was not about to pull any punches. But what proceeded when I pressed play was a much more delicate exploration into her divorce from David Harbour than I had expected, one full of speculations, dwellings on small moments, and frank but understated revelations. It still has it's cutting moments, and definitely draws from a familiar well of honesty and openness, but what really comes across is how thrown off Allen is by the whole experience, and the uncertainty and fragility that ensues.

When I think of great break-up albums, the one that stands out to me is Björk's Vulnicura - a highly meditative and organic excavation into the breakdown of her own marriage, spanning the full breadth of the emotional spectrum from tenderness to despair. While West End Girl certainly exudes similar range, and is arguably every bit as dextrous in expressing specific, subtly divergent micro-feelings (although with less inner confidence it seems), it is actually Björk's fourth album, Vespertine, that I can draw the most comparison with*. This is due to the shared utilisation of small-scale electronic beats and intricate mixing to create a quietly complex yet unostentatious sound, and an overarching lyrical theme of family and everyday home-life that Björk has previously labelled 'domestic'. In West End Girl, Allen is constantly referencing her kids and struggling to work out how to filter her marital situation for them, and which of her family unit is currently at or away from home - it doesn't get any more domestic than this. The household setting becomes the headspace for the dilemmas and musings at the root of her anguish, serving to further amplify her pain because of how trapped within these boundaries the lyrics are. Even in tracks like Dallas Major, where she's clearly trying to move past them, she's ultimately subdued by those oppressive walls and incapable of escaping.

*I still plan to review both Vulnicura and Vespertine at a later date. Indeed, one of my objectives in starting this blog was to finally settle my preference between Vespertine and Homogenic. Spoiler: initial rankings of Vespertine don't exactly make this conclusive.

1. Sleepwalking
2. Madeline
3. Pussy Palace
4. Dallas Major
5. 4chan Stan
6. Fruityloop
7. Just Enough
8. Ruminating
9. Tennis
10. Relapse
11. Nonmonogamummy
12. Let You W/In
    
13. West End Girl
14. Beg For Me

Total Points: 45/70
Average Score: 6.43

Even though I've messed around with the exact placements of these songs incessantly, I always end up with a similar balance of colour distribution and a score with only one point or so difference. This tells me that the strength of this record is in the way the tracks come together to paint the overall pastiche, and not necessarily within the individual tracks. The lack of blue corroborates this - there is no standout, and I think this is largely owing to the small-scale, domiciliary approach that Allen has taken in portraying her divorce. There is very little in the way of sensationalism within the lyrics, and the sound suits this decision. Separately, the songs only say a fragment at a time, but those individual components come together to make, to reference Björk one more time, an army of Lily, that presents a unified front and wins you over in numbers.

The album's overall sound is so chilled out that if you took the vocals away, it would sound like a lo-fi playlist presented in high fidelity. When you listen with headphones, the soundscape is cocooning and comforting, with ambient beats, swelling, woozy-sounding synthesiser fills and the softest of pizzicato strings building up a safe environment for Allen's vulnerable storytelling. Pussy Palace and Relapse epitomise this vibe, the latter reminding me of some of the softer moments I gave a somewhat harsher critique to in Sheezus but, here, succeeding due to the immersive nature of the record. Occasionally, a more acoustic approach is taken; Just Enough is especially delicate thanks to this, while the chord sequence and fingertipped guitar in Let You W/In evoke the theme from Brokeback Mountain, the connection inherently carrying with it a similar degree of emotional weight and an air of reluctant resolve.

Sentimentality aside, the album has its venomous moments too. The bluntest lyric on the record, 'lie to me babe and I'll end you', punctuated with the cocking and subsequent firing of a shotgun, also happens to be my personal favourite. This is taken from Madeline, the song where we see the Lily Allen from MySpace, at her gutsiest and coldest, adopting an active role rather than a reactive, passive one. So many of her lyrics are about working out her feelings and recounting conversations, the kind of introspection that is inevitable in the throes of a break-up, but here she's pursuing, acting on her intuition and sparking a streak of revolt in a sea of contemplation. By the time we get to the final track, Fruityloop, Allen has come to terms with her disillusionment, and a full circle moment occurs when she finally has the revelation that 'it's not me, it's you', to quote the title of her second studio album.

After much debate, I settled on placing the title track and Beg For Me at the bottom. Though the song West End Girl contains the crucial, tangibly awkward and damning 'phone call' where the realisation sets in for both Allen and the listener, the song until that point is admittedly a bit plain and one-dimensional. Beg For Me is one of the severer sounding tracks, the pizzicato coming across much more hostile alongside the frosty sampling of Lumidee's Never Leave You - this track would certainly be a missing puzzle piece if it were absent, but its less exploratory and anecdotal format gives it more of a cookie-cutter materialisation compared to the rest of the album. The most difficult song to score was Ruminating, which could be placed first just as easily as last, depending on what aspect of the song most compels me at the time. As it goes, I've averaged it out at dead centre, weighing its whirlwind stream-of-consciousness highs against its generic, bludgeoned-over-the-head-with-autotune lows. It is an aural assault, but in the best way possible, considering that it possesses pretty much every trait I despise in modern pop music.

I've written all that and I've still hardly touched on several of the most memorable and profound instances, of which there are several many across the record. Lily Allen has done a superb job at hitting everything an artist can hit with a work about a break-up. Condense the story of an entire multiple-year-long experience down into a collection of 14 songs? Check. Remain cerebral enough to catch every emotions in the moment even while in the midst of turbulence and numbness? Check. Harness those emotions to create a concise but poignant body of directly conveyed and digestible content? Check.

All that, and to top it off, the music is banging. It's addictive to listen to. I don't really care too much about her personal life, but I'm somewhat invested in Lily Allen as a musician, and West End Girl feels like the apex of her artistic potential. I feel like I'm riding a zeitgeist, but not the one that's trying to sensationalise the scandal of her divorce (they can try, but the closest they'll get is quoting Tennis when she asks 'and who the fuck is Madeline?', and that doesn't really cut it). No, I'm riding my own personal Lily Allen zeitgeist right now, the one that is gushing over her growth, her ability to process and make art, and her authenticity throughout. And it's assembly is 10% my coincidental foray into a previous work of hers, and 90% this album's showcasing of her talent. I can't see there being another album this year that I end up liking more.

BEST ~Second Session~ (2006) - Koda Kumi

Compilation albums are usually out of contention for my review format. What's the point of fussing over what is already considered the 'best of' an artist's work, in an environment where the contents were never planned as part of the same project, and myriad themes, moods and genres co-exist in aggregate despite never being conceived together? Normally, there wouldn't be a point, because I'd have nothing to observe and write about, and any rating would feel hollow and superfluous. But what if there existed an album that was technically a compilation, but one by design and almost necessity, implemented as the final manifestation of a unique and deliberate project? Well, let me introduce you to BEST ~Second Session~ by Koda Kumi, a 'best of' that turns the 'best of' format on its head.

In late 2005, relatively freshly established J-pop artist Koda Kumi embarked upon her 12 Singles Collection project, where a new single was released each week from December 7th to February 22nd. This plan had 'publicity stunt' and 'cash grab' written all over it, or at least it would have if her primary audience was found in the western world. But for the 'Japanese Christina Aguilera' (I do not remember where I read this comparison, but I definitely saw it somewhere), who was more sophisticated and voice-driven than your typical idol, this was the perfect way to capitalise on a culture who loves their pop icons and amassing a personal collection, but also to show off as a singer and creative talent. With each single's artwork featuring Koda boldly styled in a colourful, avant-garde take on a costume from a different country's culture, the visuals were every bit as beguiling as the idea itself. It could be dismissed as a gimmick, were it not for the fact that the music is genuinely rather good.

1. Someday
2. D.D.D. (feat. Soulhead)
3. Kamen (feat. Tatsuya Ishii)
4. Love Goes Like
5. Lies
6. Birthday Eve
7. Wind
8. Candy (feat. Mr Blistah)
9. Ima Sugu Hoshii
10. Shake It Up
11. You
12. No Regret
13. Feel
    (Exempt from total score: Introduction To The Second Session)

Total Points: 45/65
Average Score: 6.93

Something I love about popular music from the naughties - especially that with an r&b influence - is how instantly identifiable it is; so often, there is such a distinct and incriminatingly dating sound. This certainly shows up throughout, unavoidably so in Candy and Love Goes Like, but because of how all the music is so sweeping and radically unrelated in style, whilst still somehow maintaining its shape as a uniform project, the datedness doesn't set in. Or rather, it is cushioned, by the through thread of Koda's immaculate voice, the ultra-modern (modern but decidedly not futuristic) sound of each track's instrumentation and, to the credit of Koda's management, the image projected through the videos and artwork. Eclectic, vibrant, exciting, but always Koda through and through - that is what this album is, to the eyes and ears alike.

Though D.D.D. borrows its verse melody from the already frequently reimagined western mainstay Lady Marmalade, these are perhaps the least impressive moments of the song. With each other section, it transforms into a whirlwind of a pop track, breathing fantastical life into tried-and-tested chord progressions with earworm melodies and full-throttle, undying energy that make this the absolute pinnacle of all upbeat get-up-and-dance tracks. Even with the occasional r&b moment, pure pop is the predominant sound. But this exists as a spectrum within itself, and D.D.D. sits somewhere in the middle - right between the sugary, squeaky-clean bubblegum of Wind and Birthday Eve and the quirkier, heavily mixed and scratched Lies. All of these songs sound correct in each other's company, becoming a cross section of Koda's tastes and talents, and a real showcase of her dynamism.

My lower rated tracks are among the best known from this era - You, the lead single of the project, remains the best-selling of the individual releases and something of a signature ballad for Koda, while No Regret, which also performed well, found an extra lease of life as an anime opening theme. Though no less competent than the rest of the album, the former is a little on the bland side (especially compared to the heady and indulgent duet Kamen, a far more satisfying ballad) and the latter being rather hard and fast, very constant with its orchestra hits and techno-esque timbres, but without much resolution. Feel seems to combine both of the other bottom songs' flaws, being anomalously bland in an album full of sugar, spice and full-bodied flavour.

Finale track to both the album and the project itself (the orders of original release and compilation tracklist are different), Someday, makes for a dramatic and memorable ending. Rich string flourishes, teeter-tottering piano chord phrases and silky wah guitar bring together elements from disco, house and funk respectively, lending themselves to the most elegant j-pop imaginable. This makes for a timeless and grand sound, that stays with you long after you finish listening. Furthermore, each of these instrumentations feature elsewhere on the album, making Someday the most apt and gratifying way to end the proceedings and consolidate the whole project. It's everything a closer should be, and the perfect way to encapsulate the overall energy of the compilation without repeating anything or being too literal.

The cover photos for each of the 12 separate single releases

This capsule collection of music is an inimitable relic of its time in terms of concept, while the fruits of it are anything but, their overall coalescence managing to straddle multiple sub-genres and transcend time. Such a bold idea surely won't be attempted again, certainly not in the age of digital music and streaming. Because it stands out to me as such a singular entity, I've struggled to get into much more of Koda Kumi's music. Stepping outside the Second Sessions bubble I've somehow found myself within would almost feel a betrayal of my love for it. This probably has a lot to do with how unavailable her music was to me at the time it was made. My CD copy of this was imported from Japan, purchased over eBay for an amount I would not usually feel happy paying for an album I'm buying blindly, and it was almost entirely gambled on the promotional artwork (above) I'd seen online, and the fact I knew of Koda from when she sung the Final Fantasy X-2 theme. This gamble, of course, paid off for me - but, for so long, it was the only access I could really afford myself to her music. Now, of course, I have Spotify, Youtube, full 2025 internet access. I could even follow her on instagram probably. But it's scary to venture out of this project's bubble when I look around from within and see something verging on perfection. Sure, I've been critical, but it really does sparkle to me. When I ranked it and saw the score, I was initially surprised, but when writing about it and breaking down the music, it makes so much sense to me that I rate it all so highly. One day I'll branch out and absorb a wider discography of Koda Kumi, but for now I'm more than happy to stay here and relish in the glory of this incredible and unlikely 'best of' album, that defies the very archetype it constitutes.