Only Solitaire: G. Starostin's Record Reviews, Reloaded c intro Notes
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- The Obvious Identity
- Toy World
- SONGS FOR SHIPS AND IRONS (1991; 1986-1987)
- Big Ship and Theres Too Many Irons In The Fire
- A LITTLE MAN AND A HOUSE AND THE WHOLE WORLD WINDOW (1988)
| Part 6. The New School (1989-1998)
THE CARDIACS 
THE OBVIOUS IDENTITY (1980) 1) The Obvious Identity; 2) Visiting Hours; 3) Pip As Uncle Dick But Peter Spoilt It; 4) To Go Off And Things; 5) Rock Around The Clock; 6) Leaf Scrapings; 7) Unknown; 8) A Game For Bertie's Party; 9) Cameras; 10) Bite 3/a; 11) Piff; 12) Let Alone My Plastic Doll; 13) A Balloon For Bertie's Party. Technically, this is not yet proper «Cardiacs» — in 1980, the band was still called Cardiac Arrest; and also technically, this is not a properly available debut album — it was recorded in a tiny amateur studio, located in some crappy basement in Kingston upon Thames, then copied onto 1000 old tapes and sold at the band's concerts. In the analog era, laying one's hands on this rarity would be a stroke of collector's luck; in the digital era, scooping up a bunch of MP3 files becomes little problem, but, of course, the awful sound quality is inescapable. And it is pretty awful, even way too awful for something that was copied and re-copied several times on magnetic tape; I'm guessing that the original recording equipment was no great shakes, either. Nevertheless, this is a complete long-playing record, in some way, and most importantly, it presents Cardiac Arrest, soon to be simply Cardiacs, as a band that has already worked out its personal style and a clear understanding of what it wants to do — subsequent recordings would obviously kill it in terms of pure listenability, but not necessarily in terms of revolutionary ideas. At the same time, although many of these songs would later be included on various compilations, only one (ʻTo Go Off And Thingsʼ) would be properly re-recorded in the studio; however, the band never really disowned the material, sometimes performing it live, so for the sake of completeness it does deserve at least some mention. For the record, the players here are listed as «Philip Pilf» (band leader Tim Smith on guitar, synthesizer, and vocals), «Patty Pilf» (his One thing that Tim Smith abhorred was pigeonholing; when somebody coined the term "pronk" (a condensed "progressive punk", that is) to define the band's music, he violently refused it, preferring instead older diffuse terms like "psychedelia" or "pop". But "psychedelia" would probably obscure from our view the inevitable influence of punk and New Wave bands, and using the exact same term to describe the music of Cardiacs and the music of, say, the Knack would be a terminological disgrace. Anyway, to hell with terminology. Some things deserve lengthy descriptions to be understood rather than short terms. The Cardiacs play loud, brash music here that makes equal use of crunchy distorted guitars, played in chainsaw buzz mode or in more traditional rock mode, alternating at will, and of pip-squeaky synthesizers that usually like to be playful (as in a Sparks song) rather than cruel and robotic. But sometimes these synthesizers are used instead in Mellotron mode, providing lush (well, as lush as you could get in a dirty basement) orchestrated backgrounds, which sounds particularly strange when you combine these «progressive keyboards» with punky guitar chords: see ʻA Game For Bernie's Partyʼ, which for a couple of minutes sounds as if your local punk band has invaded your local Catholic cathedral during a Mass service. Oh, and did I mention that at any given time the band can erupt into (a) ska, (b) Zappa-like crazyass structural changes every few bars, (c) hysterical Rock God guitar solos, the likes of which seem to have gone out of style with the passing of the early Seventies' glam icons, but make revenant guest appearances here (ʻLet Alone My Plastic Dollʼ) just for some good ol' times' sakes? If this all sounds like a recipe for the best damn album of 1980 (too bad it had to be limited to 1000 old tapes), I must state, for balance, that the actual songs sound too much like overdone brain products of people who had too much talent to burn — there's too much of a desire to show off here for the tunes to make real good sense. The lyrics certainly do not make much sense, even if you manage to decode them, which is hard to do given the circumstances — loud, brash songs sung in Estuary English on muffled tape; but that is nothing compared to the confusion of the music, which really does try to integrate elements of punk rock with elements of progressive (even, dare I say it, «symphonic») rock. Listen to ʻLeaf Scrapingsʼ — one minute they sound like Yes, with a tricky time signature outlining a mystical world populated with astral noises, and then the next minute they sound like the Adverts or the Damned. I can't even say if I like this or not: the best I can say is that they make a brave effort to synthesize something thought to be unsynthesizable, even if the effort carries more of a symbolic than a proper meaning. In any case, no judgement can be pronounced on an album that sounds this much like shit; I do believe that it is essential listening for any Cardiacs fan, but in this world of free-flowing music, any attempt to make it your proper introduction into the bizarre world of Tim Smith may lead to unfortunate consequences. TOY WORLD (1981) 1) Icky Qualms; 2) Over And Over And Over And Over; 3) Dead Mouse; 4) A Big Noise In A Toy World; 5) Trademark; 6) Scratching Crawling Scrawling; 7) As Cold As Can Be In An English Sea; 8) Question Mark; 9) Is This The Life; 10) A Time For Rejoicing; 11) Aukamacic; 12) Nurses Whispering Verses. The Cardiacs' «debut» — since this record was the very first to sport the band's final name change — is yet another cassette-only release, cut and mixed in the exact same shithole (Crow Studios) and featuring equally piss-poor sound quality that reduces even the finest-written songs to tragic sonic muck. There is one significant addition to the line-up: Sarah Cutts (soon-to-be Sarah Smith) on keyboards, sax, and clarinet, further contributing to the band's genre mix-up with a jazzy vibe. But the sound is so bad, really, that you barely notice. Actually, to be honest, I do not like this one at all. Not only does it no longer have the novelty benefit, but it almost seems to be comprised of inferior leftovers from the previous sessions (gut feeling, mainly; however, the recording dates do give you June 1980 as the start, which is the exact date of the Obvious Identity session). The main ingredients all remain in place, but the song structures are not nearly as interesting, and too many of the songs, like ʻDead Mouseʼ, just sound like run-of-the-mill post-punk, without any of the mind-shocking twists that made the first bunch of songs so bizarrely fascinating. There are a few classics here all the same, most notably the final number ʻNurses Whispering Versesʼ that would later be re-recorded for Seaside — not that it is more complicated than the rest, but it is certainly sharper and more desperate than the rest, with a hard-to-forget squeaky guitar line running for its life along the highway, like a scared bunny pursued by a jeep, and Smith rattling off incomprehensible lyrics that are probably about madness (incomprehensible lyrics do tend to be about madness, you know) and generating a nice little atmosphere of paranoia. Another highlight that would also make its way to Seaside is ʻIs This The Lifeʼ, which is essentially a slower variation on the same topic — and also featuring the best guitar work on the entire album, in the form of a glum doom-laden riff and some first-rate soloing. Unfortunately, the rest of the tunes just fall flat due not only to the abysmal sound quality, but also to the repetitiveness — ʻAs Cold As Can Be In An English Seaʼ, for instance, has no business going over seven minutes, and ʻOver And Over And Over And Overʼ... well, with a title like that, you can probably guess for yourself (although, to be fair, that song does consist of two very distinct sections — one fast, martial, and jovial, the other slowed down and more epic; problem is, neither is particularly inspired). At the other end of the axis, the short links between songs are pointless, the silly looped laughing sounds at the end of ʻTrademarkʼ are annoying, and ʻA Time For Rejoicingʼ is two minutes of vocal-and-organ hooliganry that seems to invoke the spirit of Syd Barrett but fails, if not for the hideous sound, then for the off-key singing. In short, if you do want to make a select acquaintance with the band's early cassette-only material, The Obvious Identity is a far better choice — actually, better than Archive Cardiacs, a 1989 compilation of select tracks from the two albums which, unlike the albums themselves, would later be reissued on CD (but presumably with the same lo-fi sound, since the master tapes were either lost or completely unfit for re-mastering). As good as these guys could be, they weren't always good, and there's not enough interesting music here for anybody to tolerate the torture of unintentional lo-fi. THE SEASIDE (1984) 1) Jibber And Twitch; 2) Gena Lollabridgida; 3) Hello Mr. Sparrow; 4) It's A Lovely Day; 5) Wooden Fish On Wheels; 6) Hope Day; 7) To Go Off And Things; 8) Ice A Spot And A Dot On The Dog; 9) R.E.S. Finally! A Cardiacs album that does not sound as if coming to you out of the depths of a concrete bunker — despite also having originally been produced only in cassette form. The original track listing contained 13 titles; however, when the album was finally released on CD in 1995, four of them were omitted under the pretext that the master tapes were lost. More likely, since three of these four songs would later be re-recorded for other Cardiacs albums, the omission was intentional (assuming Smith may have thought of the earlier versions as inferior). In any case, the real early versions of ʻIs This The Lifeʼ and ʻNurses Whispering Versesʼ can be found on Toy World, in all their lowest-fiest glory. Anyway, 9 tracks with a total running length of 35 minutes seems quite appropriate for a record like this, because The Seaside is far from the best that the band has to offer. A key problem here is monotony: most of the tracks are speedy ska-punk ditties with similar-sounding keyboard tones and similar-sounding hysterical vocals, distinguished only by the number of different unpredictable interludes that Smith and co. throw in seemingly at random. And while the speedy delivery makes things superficially fun, sometimes the songs zip by (even the long ones!) in such a flurry rage that you find it very hard to concentrate on the melodic aspect. As you slowly get adjusted to the «jibber and twitch» (name of the first track, but I wouldn't mind if it were the title of the entire record), the fun aspect eventually prevails over the monotony, but the album remains a pretty lightweight affair — like an incessant ping-pong game with occasional detours into other sport areas, or like a corny vaudeville show locked in a state of hyperdrive. I have no idea what the songs are «about» (lyrics are not included, and there's little hope of ever making out Smith's words), but in any case, words are clearly much less important here than the music, and the music does not lend itself to inspired description. Even when you come across something that could be defined as a «catchy riff», for instance, the little bouncy organ phrase that drives ʻR.E.S.ʼ, its catchiness does not matter much on its own, because you could very well encounter any such phrase on Sesame Street or the opening credits to a comic TV show. What matters is that within the same ʻR.E.S.ʼ you also have a couple of tricky jazz interludes with varying tempos and a slow-moving progressive rock part with a moody guitar solo that sounds right out of Steve Hackett's textbook. By the end, as you go into drunk waltz tempo, there's hardly anything left in the world that could surprise you. Essentially, it's all fun, but it's all also rather shallow — once you get over the amazement at how nifty these guys are (and they are still no niftier than Frank Zappa, whose Absolutely Free album from as far away as 1967 could be called a distant ideological forefather), the tunes do not prove much of anything, except that there's, you know, a reason why people do not usually combine ska, punk, jazz, and classical influences within the same track — just as there's a reason why you rarely put meat, fruit, vegetables, and chocolate in the same dish. It's curious and instructive to take a taste, but eventually you'll probably just have to accept that some things don't click too well when forcefully synthesized. That said, there are different ways to synthesize stuff, and The Seaside is, after all, the Cardiacs still in their original stage, youthful and enthusiastic and overdriven and experimental beyond measure. In addition, this is also a transitional album, with Marc Cawthra on his way out and William D. Drake on his way in, so some of the fussiness may be explained by a generally confused state of the band at the time — although, granted, that is a flimsy excuse, because Cardiacs are by their very nature an eternally confused and confusing band. SONGS FOR SHIPS AND IRONS (1991; 1986-1987) 1) Big Ship; 2) Tarred And Feathered; 3) Burn Your House Brown; 4) Stone Age Dinosaurs; 5) Plane Plane Against The Grain; 6) Everything Is Easy!; 7) There's Too Many Irons In The Fire; 8) All Spectacular; 9) Blind In Safety And Leafy In Love; 10) Loosefish Scapegrace; 11) All His Geese Are Swans!. The title of this LP is an amalgamation of Big Ship and There's Too Many Irons In The Fire, a mini-LP and an EP that were both released in 1987. In 1991, the band put them together on one CD, added a few extra rare B-sides and one archive track, and ended up with a fairly weighty addition to the catalog. And I mean «weighty» in an almost literal sense, because this is where Cardiacs finally begin to capitalize on the «progressive promise» and add epic scope, pomp, and symphonism to the still rather lightweight ska-pop-punk exercises of the previous albums. Not consistently so, but enough for symph-rock fans to take proper notice. The very first song, ʻBig Shipʼ, sounds like a cross between classic Queen and some big, brawny arena rock band with a penchant for stomping power chords. Loud, martial guitars, organ a-plenty, vocals that get in your face with a vengeance, and plenty of stops, starts, and tempo changes in between the oratorio-like choruses to ensure that this is Inventive Art. Unfortunately, the song itself just isn't very good: the bombastic sections are too simple and repetitive, relying on hugeness of sound rather than a classy chord sequence. I wish I could get inspired by it, but neither the lyrics nor the melody lend themselves to coherent interpretation. So I start feeling more at ease with the ensuing songs that tone down the seriousness and bring back the playfulness, craziness, and ska-punkish spirit, while at the same time continuing to explore all sorts of novel ideas. ʻTarred And Featheredʼ and ʻBurn Your House Brownʼ leap along like mad, with vaudeville piano rolls alternating with avantgarde dissonances, no melodic section lasting uninterrupted for longer than a dozen bars (10cc said hello), and your head having serious trouble assimilating it all. My only problem is that they are less capable than, say, Zappa to knock all these things together into some surrealist musical — the lyrics make too little sense, and the band shows a very limited sense of humor. As we go on and on, relatively short crazyass romps like these multiply in number, sometimes interrupted by slower and statelier pieces of the ʻBig Shipʼ variety — such as ʻStone Age Dinosaursʼ, a slow, brass heavy hymn; and the instrumental ʻAll His Geese Are Swans!ʼ, which just acts as a foothold for some guitar and keyboard soloing, some of it very psychedelic, but most of it rather uninspired. Also, at least one track, ʻLoosefish Scapegraceʼ, combines both approaches, starting out as eccentric vaudeville and becoming almost a requiem midway through. Nevertheless, even if this may all be a technical advance over The Seaside, emotionally these songs are not much of a departure: still too much of a band that simply wants to be eccentric without presenting enough reasons for this eccentricity. Once the initial wave of amusement or amazement at how effortlessly they weave in elements of symphonism and music hall is over, you might want to ask yourself, "so what was that all about?" and realising that you don't even know in what direction the answer might lie. There's plenty of energy and a lot of fuss, but way too much ado about nothing, if you ask me — «form over substance» in the flesh. Then again, maybe it's all about reaching that other plane of consciousness. A LITTLE MAN AND A HOUSE AND THE WHOLE WORLD WINDOW (1988) 1) A Little Man And A House; 2) In A City Lining; 3) Is This The Life?; 4) Interlude; 5) Dive; 6) The Icing On The World; 7) The Breakfast Line; 8) Victory Egg; 9) R.E.S.; 10) The Whole World Window. Apparently, this album came out at a very wrong time — even though ʻIs This The Life?ʼ ended up being the band's highest success on charts, the album as a whole was critically panned for its attempt to «revive progressive rock». Had the band waited at least a decade longer, after Radiohead inadvertently melted the ice with OK Computer, the critics may have been somewhat more benevolent — but in 1988, it was all about Sonic Youth and Pixies, and Tim Smith's mix of the carnivalesque with the symphonic just sounded like an irritant to most people's ears. Even if direct comparisons to ELP or even to Marillion (!!) that appeared in contemporary reviews were all just blatant idiocy. Not that the record is above criticism, of course. It continues and, it could be argued, brings to the highest possible peak the band's personal relation with unpredictable absurdism — one reason why all these «prog» comparisons fail utterly, because unlike ELP or Marillion, Cardiacs never for one second take themselves literally-seriously. By now, Tim Smith sounds like a helium-inflated quasi-parody on Peter Hammill, and the music alternates between «symphony orchestra» and «circus» modes at will, defying all musical logic, sequencing expectations, and simply common sense. There's but two possible ways one can react to this. You can either prefer to have your mind blown — «wow! what was that I've just heard?» — or to have your mind insulted — «oh no, why did I have to waste time on this meaningless shit?» I will try to combine both ways, because in a relative universe they're both right. On one hand, this is not even an album about madness — this is an album that is meant to make absolutely no sense in our reality. On the other hand, this album invents a new reality of its own, which has certain intersection points with our reality, but largely inverts it. Major is minor, minor is major, happy is sad, funny is bitter, dark is light, black is white and so on. So whenever these guys start whirring and flurring about in a carousel waltz or one of their merry ska interludes, remember that they bleed. Whenever they start playing a shrill, stormy, delirious guitar solo, keep in mind that they thrive. It's an Alice-style mirror world, and you either adapt to it or throw up. It is a little funny that the most popular song on the album, ʻIs This The Life?ʼ, was actually the third recorded version — as you remember, it made its debut already on Toy World, and it really represents an older stage in the development of the band. Granted, this version is at least expertly produced, with the sax, guitar, and keyboard parts in the climactic instrumental passage perfectly separated from each other; but I do believe that the song's modest success, after the single began to be played on UK radio, was largely due to its similarity with contemporary Cure — not only does Tim Smith sound as bleeding-desperate-romantic as Robert Smith here (well, they don't share that last name for nothing; aren't all Smiths a gloomy breed?), but the overall «depth» of the production and the howling guitars are quite Curish as well. This hardly applies to stuff like ʻA Little Man And A Houseʻ or ʻIn A City Liningʼ, though, whose music is way too upbeat, keyboard-depending, and quirky to invite comparisons with The Cure or with just about anybody else in 1988. If there is one serious influence from the classic prog era that the music brings to mind, it is Peter Gabriel in early Genesis — a band that also liked to turn comic into tragic and backward in the blink of an eye (think ʻHarold The Barrelʼ or the "you play the hobbyhorse" section of ʻDancing With The Moonlit Knightʼ), although never taking it to the hyperdrive level of Smith and Co. However, behind all of Gabriel's clowning lay an attempt to create meaningful art rather than mysterious dadaism. Even when, after all the odd clowning, the band winds things up with a slow, stately finale (ʻThe Whole World Windowʼ), all grand piano chords and solemn sax soloing, it is hard to understand what the solemnity is all about. As much as I'd like to identify with the protagonist's emotions, it is hard to do because either the protagonist is from a different planet or he's just a bullshitter. I'd still take this sort of finale over, say, anything stately, anthemic, and utterly trivial by Freddie Mercury, but I'd have to take it on probation — this grandiose soundscape seems to pretend to celebrating beauty, but I am not even sure if we are on the same plane with Cardiacs when thinking about beauty. Essentially, the record is an unlockable puzzle — melodic and listenable all the way through (at least you will not have to struggle with ugly chords and unhygienic rhythms à la Trout Mask Replica), but an emotional conundrum which, for most people, will at best result in an "I don't get it, what do they expect from me?" reaction, and at worst, in a "stop bullshitting me" outburst. But even if occasionally I begin to tend towards the latter, I still cannot help admiring all the creativity, energy, and total dedication; and since even bullshitting can be raised to a form of weird art, I give the album a thumbs up all the same — not to mention the balls it took to release something like that in 1988, when negative critical reaction could be so easily predicted. CARDIACS LIVE (1988) 1) The Icing On The World; 2) To Go Off And Things; 3) In A City Lining; 4) Gina Lollobrigida; 5) There's Too Many Irons In The Fire; 6) Tarred And Feathered; 7) Goosegash; 8) Loosefish Scapegrace; 9) Cameras; 10) Is This The Life; 11) Big Ship. This is possibly the best Cardiacs album available on the market, and I'm not joking. Following a first attempt at a live presentation (Rude Bootleg from 1986), which was somewhat shorter and slightly inferior in quality, the band hit it just right on their second live album, recorded at the Paradiso in Amsterdam on May 15, 1988 with first-rate equipment and capturing the band in all of their visionary-demented glory. Like most pop or progressive bands, Cardiacs tend not to stray away from the original versions of the songs in live performance; at best, they may add a brief atmospheric intro, never allowing themselves to break away into free-form jamming or even a mighty drum solo (this is why the review will be brief, because there are no specific details to discuss). However, they also have that punkish streak, and this means throwing themselves into battle with fiery gusto, pounding the shit out of their instruments and straining the vocals to breaking point where necessary. So, true to the «pronk» moniker, they implement it on stage by combining technical precision and accuracy with increased energy — if you thought the studio recordings were already crackling with electricity, these live performances will blow them away in terms of sheer power. The other major benefit of the album is the high quality of the setlist, making it essentially a «best-of» package without turning it into a compilation. Most of the catchiest highlights from the 1984-88 period make the list, which is as emotionally and stylistically diverse and entertaining as it could possibly get; it is possible to get a very representative overview of what the Cardiacs were really all about from the album — all except the accompanying stage show, uncapturable on an audio record (and the stage banter is also cut surprisingly short, limited to just a tiny handful of quips, jokes, and announcements). Normally, I tend to shrug such records off, as they tend to be cash-grabbers or time-fillers; but much of the band's reputation (and most of their money, I suppose) was really based on live playing, and the total dedication with which they throw themselves into each of these songs is the best proof that they actually took themselves seriously — that their mix of pop-punk energy and progressive complexity was more than just a sarcastic put-on. It does not make the overall enigma any easier to crack, but it brings them a tiny bit closer, and makes them feel a little bit more humane and friendly. An important record, well worth a thumbs up. 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