BANGLES: ALL OVER THE PLACE (1984)
1) Hero Takes A Fall; 2) Live;
3) James; 4) All About You; 5) Dover Beach; 6) Tell Me; 7) Restless; 8) Going
Down To Liverpool; 9) He's Got A Secret; 10) Silent Treatment; 11) More Than
Meets The Eye.
We will not be remembering them for ʽEternal
Flameʼ — we will remember them for this album, one of the finest treasures to
come out of the «Paisley Underground» and a fine reminder for everyone that it
is possible to be retro and
innovative, old-fashioned and new-fangled, style-centered and catchy,
formulaic and emotional at the same time. Of course, its national and international
fame did not really come until Prince arrived on the scene and turned them into
gilt-bronze two years later, but who's to be surprised? They don't call it underground for nothing.
All
Over The Place was not the
Bangles' first release: two years earlier, it was preceded by a five-song
self-titled EP, which some critics predictably hail as the Bangles record to abide by — not because it still features
original founding mother Annette Zilinskas on bass (soon to be replaced by
Michael Steele), but because it is still delightfully lo-fi, released on the
aptly titled indie label «Faulty Products» instead of Columbia. However, other
than better production, All Over The
Place does not really represent any fallbacks from the aesthetics of Bangles — both the EP and the LP even share
exactly one cover of an old garage «nugget» (The La De Da's ʽHow Is The Air Up
There?ʼ and the Merry Go-Rounds' ʽLiveʼ, respectively), and are best taken
together, which would only bring the total length to 44 minutes anyway.
So what's good about these Bangles? First, they
really love their guitars: both Susanna Hoffs on rhythm and Vicki Peterson on
lead have rich, thick, powerful, and
colorful power-pop tones. They like to jangle that stuff (ʽLiveʼ), but they can
just as well use it for crunchy purposes (ʽRestlessʼ), or throw in wailing pop
riffs that rival their idols, Big Star (ʽGoing Down To Liverpoolʼ). The two
have just enough technique to think of various interesting things to do over
the instrumental breaks (like the Nashville-influenced guitar break on ʽAll
About Youʼ; or the way ʽJamesʼ starts out deceptively as a funk-rocker, only to
take a completely different turn ten seconds later and never go back again) —
but not enough to engage in empty flash. As light and insubstantial as most of
these songs are, these ladies are musicians, not «babes with guitars».
Second and most important, they are excellent B-rate
songwriters: B-rate, because all the elements are familiar, and they do not
even try to conceal it (ʽI'm In Lineʼ off the EP is built on the ʽTaxmanʼ riff,
and God knows how many Beatles or Big Star chord sequences are less openly involved
in the other numbers), but excellent, because it never really bothers me — the
ingredients are reshuffled expertly and with feeling, the tempos are lively and
exciting, and the singing is... well, always nice to hear some simple, happy,
ringing, innocent-sounding tones in an era when the female intellectual ideal
was defined by the likes of Kate Bush or Siouxsie Sioux — not that I have
anything against either, but there is always room for a Susanna Hoffs as well.
Highlights include... just about everything.
ʽHero Takes A Fallʼ and ʽJamesʼ are probably the most anthemic and easily
memorizable / recognizable songs, although the album as such is more frequently
identified with a cover of Katrina and The Waves' ʽGoing Down To Liverpoolʼ — a
song that the Bangles took up, colored up with less distortion and more treble,
made a little less angry with more melodic singing (drummer Debbi Peterson
carries the lead), and they still
ended up with a credible rocking attitude. ʽRestlessʼ is more in the
blues-rock idiom (with the lead vocal going to the lower-pitched Vicki Peterson
here), but pulled off quite credibly; and their janglier, or their
country-western-er sides (ʽDover Beachʼ; ʽTell Meʼ) are also delightful.
It all works, because there is not only
unbridled love for guitar-based pop rock, expressed here so freely in an age of
dance beats and synthesizers, but there is also one thing that prohibits most
of today's bands from recreating the Bangles' success: a total lack of fear of
being judged too «silly», too «lightweight», too «fluffy» — these songs are innocent and simple in mood and
execution, and they have no double bottom or any other secrets to slowly
unravel over repeated listenings. But neither does any of this sound like an
expertly calculated retro-affair — the girls have been raised on a punk
bedrock, after all, and overall, an album like this would have been impossible
in the pre-Ramones, or, more accurately, the pre-Patti Smith era: as retro as
it is, in terms of character toughness displayed, it clearly belongs to their
time.
Actually, come to think of it, All Over The Place is simply timeless —
unpretentious high-quality entertainment for the ages, even topped off with a
little bit of chamber pop: ʽMore Than Meets The Eyeʼ is a good title to
introduce the accappella opening, the Merseybeat-style harmonies, and the
modest string quartet that form the album's coda, and show an additional side
to the girls' versatility — they not only know their ʽTaxmanʼ but their ʽShe's
Leaving Homeʼ as well. Naturally, it's all «fluff» — no deep insights are to be
gained or previously unexplored paths unlocked from listening to the Bangles
even at their best — but in 1984, it took brains, brawns, and guts to produce
this particular kind of fluff. Thumbs up.
Check "All Over The Place" (MP3) on Amazon
Good album. A pity that Susanna Hoff's ego tripping and the unfortunate liaison with Prince led to a drop in quality and the group's ultimate demise. Eternal Flame indeed.
ReplyDeleteOne great track in "Hero Takes a Fall" – experienced even better with the video – and a few others that are alright: "Tell Me", "All About You", "Restless". A fine album overall, but nothing worthy of extensive praise.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy a lot of their covers. Going Down to Liverpool is my favorite because it best represents me: "I'm going down to Liverpool to do nothing, every day of my life." :)
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