CARDIACS: 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.
I have "Archive Cardiacs", and the sound is not bad for my ears. At least not to distract me from evaluating the music itself.
ReplyDeleteAnd my verdict is similar to yours - unimpressed, but also not annoyed. Unlike their classic releases where they manage (more than, say, Sparks) both to impress and annoy.