|
 |
|
|
|
|
"The soul is much stronger than any technique. That's what we have." -- Adam |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"The soul is much stronger than any technique. That's what we have." -- Adam |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
All This and U2 TooCulture Ireland chooses the 10 greatest Irish rock albums
The Sunday Times,
May 24, 1998
The panel was noisy, opinionated and, like its eventual choice of records, eclectic: broadcaster John Kelly; singer Tom Dunne of Something Happens; MTV's Ireland correspondent, Alan Corr; Darragh Purcell of the Mean Fiddler; Irish Independent music critic George Byrne; author and journalist Tony Clayton-Lea; and Culture Ireland's Mick Heaney. Their task? To consider the 10 best Irish rock records ever made.
Any such list is as notable for its exclusions as its inclusions, and it is a measure of Irish music that the obvious exclusions are so numerous and so hotly debatable. No Shane MacGowan, Sinead O'Connor, Rory Gallagher or Cathal Coughlan...No Divine Comedy, High Llamas, Horslips or Revenants...Nor, though rather less debatably, is there anything by two of the biggest selling recent acts, the Cranberries and the Corrs. But the list combines canonical greats from the Undertones, U2, Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy with albums from the Radiators and My Bloody Valentine which sold fewer copies but were deeply influential. It also includes three bands who were local heroes but never broke through abroad. The Stars of Heaven brought a punk edge to the style of Gram Parsons; Something Happens provided a melodic, self-effacing counterpoint to many overly bullish contemporaries; and the independent republic of A House showed how much can be done without chasing mainstream success. As the first thoroughly modern Irish band, the Undertones richly deserve their position at the top of the list. Strongly influenced by New York proto-punk, they showed little interest in the influences which shaped the major Irish acts before them: Van Morrison's Americana, Thin Lizzy's Irish folk and heavy metal, or Rory Gallagher's electric blues. Nor, happily, were they in the thrall of the David Bowie/Brian Eno art school rock which proved so influential on U2. What the Undertones lacked (though songwriter John O'Neill developed it in his next band, That Petrol Emotion) was a political sensibility, the quality which made the Radiators' Ghostown so impressive and enduring. It may have been over-polished by Bowie producer Tony Visconti, it may have borrowed heavily from German cabaret, but Ghostown's grim vision of Dublin was fuelled by a focused anger previously unheard in Irish rock, and provided a reference point for some of the best bands that followed, notably Microdisney, the Pogues and the Stars of Heaven. U2 emerged in the early 1980s, and although they metamorphosed from gauche Bowie derivatives to blustering Christian soldiers to moody mid-Europeans to American roots reinterpreters, they almost always fitted snugly the mood of their time, never more so than when, exasperated and weary, they reached in deep and forced out their best album, Achtung Baby. However, even after Achtung Baby Bono remarked that his fear was that they would become rock's "horse with the long neck" -- the evolutionary link between the horse and the giraffe which failed to survive even in fossil form. Nevertheless, the panel chose the band's first album, Boy (although it didn't come near the final line-up), as the most influential Irish album, pipping Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and The Undertones. 1. The Undertones (Sire Records, 1979) Though it sprang from the punk explosion, the Undertones' debut album is simply the best pop record ever to emerge from Ireland. The songs of brothers John and Damian O'Neill were shot through with an incandescent energy and performed with a brio that owed everything to punk (not to mention the fevered cauldron of their Bogside home), but their key elements were delirious catchiness and simple-but-wry lyrics. The central moment here is, of course, "Teenage Kicks," but songs like "Girls Don't Like It," "Get Over You" and "I Gotta Getta" captured equally well the fumbling uncertainty of youthful crushes. Their universal pop themes were given more weight by the distinctive whine of singer Feargal Sharkey. That there was more to the band than boy-meets-girl was hinted at in the darkly funny morality tale of "Jimmy Jimmy" and the hilarious frustration of "Male Model," themes explored on later albums like Hypnotised and Positive Touch. MH 2. The Joshua Tree (Island Records, 1987) From the start U2 threatened to be one of the biggest bands in the world. Their fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire, got them to the foothills of global stardom; with the post-Live Aid EP Wide Awake in America they ascended further; and in 1987, with The Joshua Tree, they finally reached the summit, going on to sell 16 million copies of it, making it their best-selling album. For months before its release, Bono was rushing up to friends at parties and shouting, "Wait till you hear what we've written!" before breaking, unaccompanied, into various songs from the album. His enthusiasm was entirely justified. The Joshua Tree was not simply brilliant "considering they're Irish," it was brilliant, period. The goalposts had moved. An Irish band was not aping music trends, it was defining them. To produce music of this quality was the reason we had all started, and with this, U2, the bastards, had won. TD 3. Loveless (Creation, 1991) Im pop's legion of outsiders, My Bloody Valentine secured a special place. Their ambition was hardly a new musical vision, but with Loveless they created a work of beauty, brutality and space that sounded utterly their own, an astounding realisation of emotional bleakness created with a tidal wave of maladjusted sound and melody. Guitarist and songwriter Kevin Shields integrated many influences here, but on his own terms; and the hypnotic grooves which underpinned the record defined the territory traversed by the current beats/guitar crossovers. DP 4. I Am The Greatest (Setanta, 1991) Trailblazed by the stark single "Endless Art," A House's third album was an unforgiving affair, brimful of caustic defiance but with an undertow of vulnerability and self-doubt. Ranging from sorrowful to manic, the Dublin mavericks, deeply wary of their hometown contemporaries and of the wider music business, displayed their maturing talent for combining biting lyrics with complex and innovative music, Dave Couse's unlovely voice crashing through Fergal Bunbury's spiky guitars on a trip that took in religion, envy, rage, despair and grim resignation. AC 5. Astral Weeks (Warners, 1968) With this most influential album, Van Morrison came up with a whole new way of performing songs that seems, at first listen, a long way from Them. There had been certain hints along the way that there was something totally unique about to flow. There had also been earlier versions of some of the songs that were eventually recorded 30 years ago in those two remarkable eight-hour sessions. It was a one-off. Morrison's extraordinary voice exploring itself as if for the first time. Lyrics that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Larry Fallon's strings, those wonderful musicians -- Connie Kay on drums, the haunting sound of vibes. And what is it anyway? Jazz? Folk? Jazz-folk? Stream of consciousness? Those are questions not worth bothering with. It was simply something entirely new and quite brilliant, full of the sheer magic of creativity, and it remains an album that has the same powerful effect on every fresh listen, as still more elements reveal themselves. JK 6. Achtung Baby (Island Records, 1991) The first U2 album of the 1990s heralded the end of the band's love affair with America. Turning their collective gaze from the States towards Europe, U2 did what they always did: plundered their influences, put their own spin on the spoils and created -- with assistance from Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno and Flood -- as much of a template for skewed commercial rock in the 1990s as they did for widescreen arena rock with The Joshua Tree in the 1980s. And despite its superficial, glittering postmodernism, Achtung Baby was a dark and concentrated record of pain. Forget the fly goggles and dayglo Trabants. This is U2's messy divorce album: harrowing, bitter, hardly optimistic. And with some great tunes. TCL 7. Stuck Together With God's Glue (Virgin, 1990) Mistakenly perceived by some as a lightweight pop-rock outfit, on their second full studio album Something Happens seriously upped the artistic ante -- while honing their glorious guitar blast to perfection. Been There, Seen That, Done That had been ill-served by a thin production, but with Ed Stasium at the helm the way was clear for the Happens to dispel all doubts as to their quantum development as songwriters. Despite the presence of such melodic mosh favourites as "Esmerelda," "Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello (Petrol)," "Parachute" and "Good Time Coming," it's in the darker recesses that the greatness of this record lies, with guilt, loss, infidelity, humour and pornography jumbled together through "Room 29," "Brand New God," "Kill the Roses," "The Devil in Miss Jones" and the magnificent opener "What Now." GB 8. Ghostown (Chiswick, 1979) Philip Chevron had written most of Ghostown before the Radiators From Space recorded their 1977 debut, TV Tube Heart. The basic punk blueprint of that album scarcely hinted at the multi-layered musical and lyrical conceits which the band, after shortening their name to the Radiators, went on to record 12 months later. Chevron's and Pete Holidai's songs examined the contradictions of Ireland's emerging youth society in a post-punk musical landscape. Here was where Behan and Bowie, O'Riada and Rotten, McDaid's and the MC5, the papacy and the pogo caroused and collided in a tune-filled decalogue of decay, decadence and drunken logic, balancing a knowledge of the past with a jaundiced eye on the future, Holidai's pop instincts balancing Chevron's sometimes florid flights. No Irish band has ever attempted anything as ambitious as Ghostown, and no one ever will. Why should they? It has been done and, like Pet Sounds, it's a monument forever. GB 9. Sacred Heart Hotel (Rough Trade Records, 1986) Of all the Irish bands who split without fulfilling their potential, the Stars of Heaven provoke the most speculation about what could have been. Not because U2-style megastardom was theirs for the taking -- their music was too low-key and their performances too erratic for that -- but because, as this seven-track debut amply proves, they produced the most heart-stopping songs, but just not enough of them. Guitarist Stephen Ryan (now of the Revenants) and Stan Erraught (currently with the Great Western Squares) both penned songs that drew inspiration from American country rock and the infidelities and betrayals of everyday life. Recorded on a shoestring -- four of the tracks were lifted from a BBC session -- the garage sound none the less best captured the fragility of their music, later obliterated by Stephen Street's thudding mix of their album Speak Slowly. MH 10. Live and Dangerous (Vertigo, 1978) Like a vast number of hard-rock acts, Thin Lizzy's core strengths lay in their live shows, an area where they could combine best-loved songs and greatest hits, deleting the debris that regularly marred their studio albums. In the aftermath of their triumphant Dalymount Park concert, Live and Dangerous caught Thin Lizzy at the height of their powers, with the core of their set culled from 1976's Jailbreak, arguably their best and most successful studio album. Despite the degree of overdubs, Live and Dangerous remains not only the definitive Thin Lizzy record, but also one of the defining rock records of all time: muscular rhythms, copper-fastening riffs, fluid guitar figures and -- unusually for hard rock -- melodies you could whistle in the shower. TCL © 1998 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
||||||
|
||||||||
