The Boo Radleys: Kingsize

THE BOO RADLEYS: KINGSIZE (1998)

1) Blue Room In Archway; 2) The Old Newsstand At Hamilton Square; 3) Free Huey; 4) Monuments For A Dead Century; 5) Heaven's At The Bottom Of This Glass; 6) Kingsize; 7) High As Monkeys; 8) Eurostar; 9) Adieu Clo Clo; 10) Jimmy Webb Is God; 11) She Is Everywhere; 12) Comb Your Hair; 13) Song From The Blueroom; 14) The Future Is Now.

The very last album by The Boo Radleys was recorded under tense conditions — Sice was alrea­dy disenchanted with the band and all set to leave as soon as the chance presented itself, and very soon after Kingsize came out, Carr phoned him himself and said he was pulling the plug. Nor was the reception for the album particularly welcome. People called, and continue to call it, over­long, lacking focus, and/or just plain boring and uninspired. «Official» reviewers give it as few stars as they can allocate a formerly respectable band, and regular users complain about the lack of big hit singles to serve as anchors.

I would have joined the crowd upon first listen — the most disappointing thing for me, other than the unwarranted length, was too much reliance on mechanical funk beats that seemed to be pre­sent in every second song and reduce the record to an unwanted-unwarranted tribute to the Stone Roses or something like that. The hooks were not immediately jumping out, either, and it seemed all too easy to join the condemning crowds. Then I remembered that, after all, the Boo Radleys always had their way through craft, not genius, and craft may require more time to be appreciated, so I prepared myself for a couple more excruciating listens...

...and you know what — second and particularly third time around, it clicked, or, rather, snapped in place. The critics are damn wrong about this one, and the fans — well, the fans need to have some patience. Kingsize is long, and sometimes slow, and sometimes a little lazy, but I find this now to be easily the single most inspired and convincingly crafted collection of songs in the band's entire catalog. In fact, there is nary a clunker to be found here, and for once, it all works reasonably and logically — the songs are not clumsily collated from uncollatable ideas, as they often were on C'mon Kids, but follow their own natural paths of development and, well, develop into sometimes stunningly beautiful art-pop flowers.

ʽMonuments For A Dead Centuryʼ is the title of one of the songs, and it could, perhaps, have been a good title for the whole album. I have not paid much attention to Carr's lyrics, as usual, and maybe I am wrong about that, but I seriously doubt that detailed analysis of the words could have added to the general emotional impression — an impression of a melancholic farewell to a dream that once seemed so real, yet has always remained out of reach. Throughout the album, they are constantly saying goodbye (ʽAdieu Clo Cloʼ), nostalgizing, drowning their troubles in drink (the wonderfully titled ʽHeaven's At The Bottom Of This Glassʼ), and utilizing a whole array of instrumental techniques, from the usual distorted guitars to lush orchestral arrangements, to create their personal gallery of monuments for a dead century.

There are no highlights or lowlights, so I will just give a few random taps as examples. ʽComb Your Hairʼ is the band's tribute to Phil Spector, starting out like a good Ronettes anthem should, all echoes and big drums — pretty soon, however, we get a distorted guitar rhythm track that would never be seen on a Phil Spector record, and a chorus that throbs with lonesomeness and desperation, with a gorgeous vocal melody that is quite on the level of either the Beach Boys or ABBA. ʽHigh As Monkeysʼ is a psychedelic dance-pop track that gradually builds up tension to «implode» in a near-perfect harpsichord-and-strings chorus from which a dense cello melody smoothly leads it back upwards into the psycho-dance rave. ʽShe Is Everywhereʼ starts out as a quitely subdued rhythmic ballad with jazzy guitar, then somehow manages to become loud, noisy, melodic, and romantic all at once in the chorus (always a good idea to have a melodic guitar part outbalancing your gruff noise). And ʽHeaven's At The Bottom Of This Glassʼ is, simply put, the catchiest song they ever wrote, period. Maybe not the best — but if, by the second time it comes around to say hello to your brain, you refuse to sing along with the tagline, your only excuse is if you've just returned from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

For some reason, they chose ʽFree Hueyʼ as the lead single for the album. It is not a bad song at all, but it is highly atypical of the record — one of its most aggressively rocking funk numbers, with heavily treated, nasty-sounding guitars, Sice screaming most of the lyrics instead of singing, and very little changing dynamics throughout the song. Either they did not give a damn, or per­haps they thought that the lead single needs to have that kick-ass quality — whatever be, this might have contributed to the general sour disposition. ʽHigh As Monkeysʼ could have made a much better choice, or at least the title track, which only was the second single, and whose "how would you like to share, how would you like to share it all with me" chorus could have made a much more warm, endearing first impression. Or perhaps they should have tried it with ʽThe Old Newsstand At Hamilton Squareʼ and its nervous, spooky, James Bond-like horns and strings? Or with the affectionate tribute to Jimmy Webb (ʽJimmy Webb Is Godʼ), which climaxes with yet another mag­nificently engineered piano-and-orchestra arrangement, conjuring up echoes of that old Paul Buckmaster grandeur? See, just about everything here really works.

It is frustratingly ironic that the little mischievous supernatural being finally visited them in their studio hours so late in their career — but apparently, it is possible for the sleeping genius to awaken if you probe it long enough. The thing is, they really went out on a limb here with all the extra overdubs and orchestration, and suddenly, it sort of seems that this is just the way they should have been working from the beginning, and that Carr is much better at overseeing violins, cellos, and harpsichords than noisy guitars (and there are quite a few noisy guitars here, but they almost always take second or third place in the mix). This makes it into some sort of Abbey Road experience — if you know this is probably going to be your last, summon all the spirits so that they can help you make it into your best. Admittedly, I may just be going crazy, but one thing I am not being with you is dishonest — so there must be some rational explanation to why Kingsize, alone out of all Boo Radleys records, ended up affecting my emotional centers so con­sistently, song after song after song. Thumbs up with lots of enthusiasm, although do be warned that the record may well take a couple of intense listens to warm up to — not that this ain't the case with quite a few art-pop masterpieces.

The Boo Radleys: C'mon Kids

THE BOO RADLEYS: C'MON KIDS (1996)

1) C'mon Kids; 2) Meltin's Worm; 3) Melodies For The Deaf (Colours For The Blind); 4) Get On The Bus; 5) Every­thing Is Sorrow; 6) Bullfrog Green; 7) What's In The Box (See Whatcha Got); 8) Four Saints; 9) New Brighton Pro­menade; 10) Fortunate Sons; 11) Shelter; 12) Ride The Tiger; 13) One Last Hurrah.

Browsing through the reviews and reactions on the Boo Radleys in the mid-1990's, I was more than a little amused to see that Wake Up! was constantly seen as the band's «commercial / acces­sible» album and the follow-up was seen as their «experimental / adventurous» release — some even suggested that it was an intentionally «anti-commercial» record, meant to dissipate the con­cept of the Boos as sell-outs. I mean, for God's sake, this is a band that has always stuck to its own thang, at least as soon as they shook off the shoegaze spell, and even then, they weren't really doing it for the money or for the whole bandwagon thing — they were just going with the flow for a while, nursing their chops and looking for the real Boo Radleys.

If ʽWake Up Boo!ʼ was a commercial success, it was so accidentally: the stars just happened to align in a way that the band's rousing gust of pseudo-optimism was understood as modernistic, well in line with all the Britpop anthems of the day. It was a misunderstanding — in reality, Wake Up! (as an album) was merely the band's way of answering the question «what would the Beatles do if they were the Boo Radleys today?», and any good attempt to answer this question has a pretty decent chance of running into some commercial success, be it 1977, 1997, or 2137. Then, quite logically, C'mon Kids was merely the band's way of answering the question «what would the Beatles do next once they'd had released an album like Wake Up?» Well, they would have probably experimented some more, right? Messing around with song structures, trying out different genres and combos, taking risks, making sure the sum would be more impressive than the parts, without forgetting about the parts, right? That's what it is all about; putting it all in «commercial» terms does not make much sense. This is not the life story of Bon Jovi, or even of older bands like Heart or Genesis, that we are concerned about here.

C'Mon Kids is The Boo Radleys at their most ambitious, daring, and diverse, testing their skills and strengths to the limit — which, I guess, makes it their best album, because it is still hard to acknowledge them as anything other than «craftsmen», but «craftsmen» have one big advantage over «geniuses»: unlike genius, craft can be honed and perfected, and if you hone and perfect it long enough, you might find yourself just one small step short of genius, and this is exactly the case of C'mon Kids. There is little about the album that I love, but I admire how they really stretched out on it, with the sincerest of intentions and complete unpredictability.

The title track greets you with some party sounds, some radio waves, a distorted alt-rock riff, and a new Sice who yells his lyrics out rather than croons them. But the message? "C'mon kids, don't do yourself down, throw out your arms for a new sound, pretty face it don't mean a thing if you look so same as your crowd" — in other words, that alt-rock riffage and shouting is not meant by the band as conformism: it just so happened that... well, coincidences happen. Not to worry — already the second song, ʽMeltin's Wormʼ, is in a completely different style, or, rather, it merges elements of completely different styles. I'd call it «grunge-prog», but that's just me, and I even have no idea whatsoever of what the song is about.

It would be quite tempting to describe the album on a song-by-song basis, because it is such a treasure trove for the «classic rock fan» — almost every track has at least two or three different throwbacks, with some of the most bizarre combinations you will ever encounter. For instance, ʽGet On The Busʼ begins with an acoustic line copped from John Lennon's ʽWorking Class Heroʼ, but then quickly becomes a feedback-drenched psychedelic rocker with insane banshee-wailing guitars that could rival the Stooges, then goes back to acoustic mode, but in waltz time, echoes and organs included for haunting effect. ʽFour Saintsʼ is two quarters rowdy trip-hop, one quarter distorted rock and one quarter psychedelic folk-rock. ʽWhat's In The Boxʼ is like the Bee Gees' ʽIn My Own Timeʼ crossed with... well, something much more rough than that.

Weirdest of 'em all is ʽNew Brighton Promenadeʼ — this one starts out as a perfect impersona­tion of Simon & Garfunkel (I daresay that if Sice replaced Art on one of those reunion tours, nobody would have noticed — or, rather, everybody would have noticed, because Art has long since lost his voice completely, so Sice is basically the new Art now), then becomes sunny pop-rock, then throws on some distortion on both guitar and vocals, and finally erupts in an aggressively friendly wah-wah solo — take that, Mr. Simon!

Still, I will refrain from namechecking the rest of the tracks: you already get the drift, and then there's the downside — these combos are creative and diverse, but they do not feel perfectly natu­ral to me: I do not understand why these particular songs have to be sewn together in such in­congruous ways, other than acting out of a general «try anything once» principle. The album has its share of actively rocking moments and its share of beautiful moments, for sure, but as a whole, it is ultimately less than the sum of its parts — somewhat of a mess, really. Problem is, The Boo Radleys are a band who always need to work hard to prove to us the necessity for their existence, and this whirling kaleidoscope does not help — at least when they were still shoegazing, the typical Boo Radley song shared a certain definitive atmosphere, good or bad, whereas here, at­mospheres come and go in the blink of an eye. What does it all mean? What does it all want to make me feel? It's like they try to hit all the buttons at once, and get it all wrong.

On the other hand, the album has growth potential — with so many different things happening, it may well be that a lot of listens are required before the initial confusion starts crystallizing into something more symmetrical and elegant. Criticisms aside, the craft alone demands a strong thumbs up: for an «indie» album circa 1996, C'mon Kids reveals a staggering amount of work, way beyond anything one could have expected from listening to the band's early albums. And I can only imagine, for instance, the reactions of some young teenager for whom this could be one of the earliest exposures to the whole art-pop-rock thing, before he started exploring all those realms from which Carr and Spice loot their influences. At the very least, I guess this is an essen­tial record to get to know for anyone with a «systemic» interest in the 1990's pop scene — and whether or not you will want to keep it under your pillow is a different matter.

The Boo Radleys: Wake Up!

THE BOO RADLEYS: WAKE UP! (1995)

1) Wake Up Boo!; 2) Fairfax Scene; 3) It's Lulu; 4) Joel; 5) Find The Answer Within; 6) Reaching Out From Here; 7) Martin, Doom! It's Seven O'Clock; 8) Stuck On Amber; 9) Charles Bukowski Is Dead; 10) 4AM Conversation; 11) Twinside; 12) Wilder.

The commercial success of this album was largely associated with the rise of «Britpop», even though Carr had gone on record many times claiming that The Boo Radleys had nothing to do with «Britpop» and never tried to jump on anybody's wagon at all. As far as the early Boo Rad­leys sound is concerned, he would be deluding himself and the public, but Wake Up!, indeed, has very little to do with either Blur or Oasis. Instead, it has everything to do with the Beatles: this is as close as the band has ever come to a fanatical show of worship, and even if the results are, as usual, much less than spectacular, the strength of the drive is so ferocious that... well, imagine if the real Beatles would have put out something in 1995... come to think of it, they did, didn't they? well, ʽFree As A Birdʼ got to No. 2 on the UK charts, and ʽWake Up Boo!ʼ got to No. 9, and that's sort of about right, numerically and aesthetically.

For this record, almost every trace of the band's shoegazing past has been carefully removed. While some of the tracks still feature noisy distorted guitars, they are almost never at the center of attention — it is merely to let us know that the band does not have a special intention of «going soft», and besides, it's not as if the Beatles hadn't used any noisy distorted guitars in their life, you know. But the true ambition of these guys is indeed to make you Wake Up! — to offer an album full of beautiful, optimistic, idealistic, life-asserting psychedelic pop songs, recapturing the warm colorful vibe of the 1966-69 period, when it was vibrating all the way from Revolver to Abbey Road (the latter album is even structurally alluded to, either intentionally or subconsciously, on the last track, which cuts away as unexpectedly as ʽI Want Youʼ and is then quickly followed up by an unpredictable-unrelated closing acoustic snippet like ʽHer Majestyʼ).

Like every single attempt to directly «cop the Beatles» that I have ever heard, be it XTC or Ad­rian Belew or Apples In Stereo, Wake Up! is ultimately a failure — predictedly and expectedly a failure, I'd add, for reasons of personal and collective psychology. But like most of these attempts, that does not render the «copies» completely useless or unenjoyable or lacking a sub-identity of their own. Nor am I saying that the «copies» actually rip off any of the Beatles' melodies — that would be much too much of an oversimplification (although there certainly are some direct quo­tations, e. g. the piano chords of ʽThe Long And Winding Roadʼ on ʽWilderʼ). No, the Boos are certainly capable of writing their own songs — and that is where the problem lies: their schooling in songwriting does not agree too well with the Sixties' vibe, or, at the very least, they often have trouble finding the right bits of that vibe to insert in their compositions.

Case in point: ʽFind The Answer Withinʼ is a pretty good upbeat pop song, but for some reason, they find it a good idea to load the last minute and a half with overdubs of backward-recorded vocals. You can almost imagine the studio reasoning: «hey, great tune we get going here, but not enough of that Sixties' flavor!» — «But we've already borrowed everything!» — «Well, you can never borrow everything, really, just give another spin to your copy of Past Masters!» — «Say! What about those backward vocals on ʽRainʼ, did we ever have that?» Honestly, there is no need whatsoever for such a gimmick on this track, not after its encouraging message of "The world is at your feet / Try and make something happen", but no, they had to go out and do it.

Beatlisms are kept to a relative miminum on the album's most commercially successful single, ʽWake Up Boo!ʼ, where they opted for a rousing, almost Eurodance-like, rhythm and a large brass section to complement the impetus of "wake up it's a beautiful morning, the sun shining for your eyes". However, its romantic joy and innocence feels a little too contrived and calculated for me — even despite being lyrically tempered with the less immediately obvious verbal conclusion of "wake up it's so beautiful, for what could be the very last time", it's really a rather silly song, you know, at least for 1995; I feel unable to give in to its mechanical happiness, even if it is very hard to explain why, for instance, ʽGood Day Sunshineʼ feels so natural and easy-going, while this sunny day anthem feels so contrived.

I much prefer ʽMartin, Doom! It's Seven O'Clockʼ, which also stimulates its protagonist to "get out of bed", "the world is waiting just for you", etc., but does that at a slower, more thoughtful tempo and without hammering the repetitive hook into your head. It's a gradual six-minute build-up that could have been better arranged (for one thing, the fake synthesized horns and strings at the end really deserved to be real — as it is, the wall-of-sound approach seems misplaced), but on the symbolic level at least it does a really good job of representing a person's gradual awakening (in all senses of the word), and if any track on the album ever approaches «epic» status, it would be ʽMartinʼ. Also because it is uncluttered with vocal gimmicks: so many tracks here place their complete faith in aah-aah and ooh-ooh overdubs (some of them multi-layered, some of them phased, some of them reversed etc.) that eventually it just becomes boring.

Where they really get their stuff together is the very last song, and even then, not from the begin­ning: for the first few minutes, ʽWilderʼ just rides on a quasi-McCartney piano melody that mimics the form but misses the spirit. However, at around 3:30 into the song, it is transformed into a calm, unhurried, «introspective» jam that unexpectedly reveals a major talent in bassist Tim Brown — ironically, if there is one good thing here that they truly managed to snatch out of the Beatles' backpack and develop further, it is McCartney's bass melodicity, which Brown un­derstands perfectly well and capitalizes upon. Technically and emotionally, the jam is remini­scent of what the Beatles did on ʽDon't Let Me Downʼ — a thoughtful, seriously-playful bass groove against which the guitars and keyboards lay down some stately, economic lines, creating a feel of some sort of «mature serenity» — but here, despite being so derivative, they are also being highly successful.

It is rather weird to talk about an album's existence being essentially justified by its three-minute coda, but that's just the way it is; at least it is a major argument in support of a thumbs up, because otherwise we could get seriously irritated by the inadequacy of the «wake up!» ideology of the album. I mean, it pretends to be giving you a major ʽHey Judeʼ-an kick in the butt, but it just doesn't have enough calories to make it feel like a kick, if you know what I mean. Real admi­rable intention, though, no questions about it.

The Boo Radleys: Giant Steps

THE BOO RADLEYS: GIANT STEPS (1993)

1) I Hang Suspended; 2) Upon 9th And Fairchild; 3) Wish I Was Skinny; 4) Leaves And Sand; 5) Butterfly McQueen; 6) Rodney King (Song For Lenny Bruce); 7) Thinking Of Ways; 8) Barney (...And Me); 9) Spun Around; 10) If You Want It, Take It; 11) Best Lose The Fear; 12) Take The Time Around; 13) Lazarus; 14) One Is For; 15) Run My Way Runway; 16) I've Lost The Reason; 17) The White Noise Revisited.

A little presumptuous, wouldn't you think, to name your LP «in honor» of a genuinely trail­blazing record by one of your predecessors, especially one whose vision, professionalism, and artistic depth you have very little hope of matching. All the more strange since the music of The Boo Radleys owes fairly little to John Coltrane, at least not in any direct way. Of course, if you wanted, you could always trace a credible line of development from Coltrane-era modal and free jazz to the shoegaze movement, but, ironically, Giant Steps is The Boo Radleys' first venture well away from the canons of shoegazing and into the territory of more dynamic, concisely structured, catchy psychedelic pop. A giant step for the Boos, perhaps — a fairly tiny blip for mankind, though, I'm afraid.

Technically speaking, Giant Steps satisfies all the conditions for establishing an intelligent pop lover's paradise. Lovely vocal harmonies, a clever balance between acoustic and electric guitars, an even more clever balance between «melodic» and «noise» components, a delirious mishmash of Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties' influences, enough creativity to fill more than one whole hour of music, and a nice cosmopolitan flavour — no traces of the embryonic «Britpop» with its arrogant accents and hip cockiness. How could this not be recommended? You'd have to be tasteless, heartless, and illiterate not to recommend it.

Yet at the same time, even as Martin Carr and Sice move deeper and deeper into the spicefield of vocal and instrumental hooks, I have a nasty impression that they have relatively little talent for these hooks. Giant Steps sounds good, but the songs do not hang around for long, and it is not really a matter of the album's excessive length (though some have complained) as it seems to be their inability to come up with something that would really truly be «the Boo Radleys sound» and nobody else's. A song like ʽWish I Was Skinnyʼ sounds lovely, with its wooing fusion of acoustic rhythm, «tinkling» electric lead, atmospheric brass and organ doubling and tripling of the rhythm, Sice's seductive crooning, and a busy, steady tempo — but that's about it: «lovely», without getting under the skin by means of some truly striking device.

I almost feel ashamed writing this, because I really want to love Giant Steps: the lack of «theo­retical» innovation should not bother us at all, as long as the songs properly hit the proper emo­tional centers. But they do only twice, at the very beginning and then again right at the end. ʽI Hang Suspendedʼ, lyrically conceived as some sort of answer to some sort of antagonist ("ain't that just you know the facts, but you haven't got a clue about me or my life") and instrumentally presented as an energetic funk-pop rocker, is quite a rousing introduction — and ʽThe White Noise Revisitedʼ, closing the album on a gentle farewell note, has a sentimental mantra for a coda ("hey! what's that noise? do you remember?"), lushly arranged and making for a stately conclu­sion, although you eventually begin to wonder if its stateliness does not come exclusively from its repetitiveness... well, hopefully not.

The basic agenda of The Boo Radleys, now that the noise clouds have dissipated a bit, is clear: they are dreamers, escapists, big fans of Sgt. Pepper, and, like all those Elephant 6 bands on the other side of the ocean, they want to restore its original fifth-dimensional colours to pop music. Their basic failure is also exactly the same as in the case of most such bands — they love their influences so much, they want to make that kind of music, but everything that comes out is spi­ritually, if not technically or intellectually, inferior. As an experiment, I have listened to the song ʽBest Lose The Fearʼ, which seemed like a worthy candidate, three times in a row — all I hear is half-hearted McCartnyisms without any real understanding of how it should really work. For one thing, Sice has a beautiful vocal tone, but he doesn't do anything with it — generally staying on the exact same «pretty» frequency, almost as if such a thing as «vocal modulation» never existed. For another thing, the accompanying colorfully distorted lead guitar part never seems to pretend to anything but colorful accompaniment — the humble Martin Carr never lets it develop into a proper solo or even into a particularly flashy, noticeable riff. It's simply there for the color. It's a nice color, but the real nicety of the color always reveals itself when it's organized into a shape.

The big single from the album was ʽLazarusʼ, a densely arranged, epic track into which they really must have put a lot of work — but behind all the overwhelming layers of electronic noise, solemn brass, and roaring guitars, lies a very simple and not specifically attractive or innovative folk-pop melody from God knows back when. They put enough makeup on it to make it into a cosmic anthem, and sometimes, this might work, but for me, ʽLazarusʼ does not work. It seems to be trying to make some big point, and it comes out sounding as heavy psycho muzak.

Despite all these criticisms, I respect sincere craft as much as I worship authentic genius, and be­cause of that, Giant Steps gets a thumbs up. At the very least, it gives us a band that has mana­ged to go beyond the obvious trends and fads of its time and either decide to boldly pursue some eclectic ambitions, or discover its own true colors — or both. In my opinion, The Boo Radleys are mediocre songwriters and unimpressive visionaries, but that does not prevent them from de­veloping a potentially great, colorful, friendly sound, which must have sounded even greater, friendlier, more colorful back in 1993 than it does today, and which still remains well worth revisiting for every serious lover of «psycho-pop».

The Boo Radleys: Learning To Walk

THE BOO RADLEYS: LEARNING TO WALK (1993)

1) Kaleidoscope; 2) How I Feel; 3) Aldous; 4) Swansong; 5) The Finest Kiss; 6) Tortoiseshell; 7) Bluebird; 8) Naomi; 9) Alone Again Or; 10) Everybird; 11) Sometime Soon She Said; 12) Foster's Van; 13) Song For Up!; 14) Boo! Faith.

Formally this is a compilation, but it feels logical to discuss it right after Everything's Alright Forever, since it neatly summarizes and closes the door on the first part of the Boo Radleys' career. This one puts together three separate EPs that the band put out in 1990 and 1991: Kalei­doscope, Every Heaven, and Boo! Up, and throws in two covers for good measure — a Boo Radleys-style transformation of Love's classic ʽAlone Again Orʼ, and a similar re-construction of New Order's ʽTrue Faithʼ (whose title is mutated to ʽBoo! Faithʼ).

The first track, ʽKaleidoscopeʼ, is somewhat symbolic — it is a re-recording of one of the tracks from the unfortunate Ichabod, longer, denser, and in much better sound quality, showing how much the band really cared about «going professional» in those early days. Not only is more and better emphasis placed on Sice's «tragic hero» vocals, but the guitars are brighter and janglier as well, with several «noise patterns» intersecting with each other and genuinely attempting to create a kaleidoscopic feeling.

However, after that there is really very little development: most of the songs on these three EPs sound very much alike, and all the standard complaints about their brand of noise-pop apply here in equal measure, even if repeated listens eventually bring out the occasional flash of psychedelic beauty in the vocal hooks of ʽSwansongʼ or ʽBluebirdʼ. And even so, they make a big mistake by following those two early EPs up with the cover of ʽAlone Again Orʼ — this is one of Arthur Lee's best songs ever, and the tearful gorgeousness of its romantic vocal melody immediately ex­poses the Boos as incapable mediocrities in comparison. The cover is actually quite good — the noise-pop arrangement still preserves the original's melodicity, and Sice's style is ideally suited to imitating and recreating Lee's «plaintive» attitudes. But when the cover is so much better than the originals... well, you know.

A few first seeds of upcoming changes can be spotted on the third EP, Boo! Up. ʽEverybirdʼ places its bets not so much on the predictable noise sections as it does on the quieter, acoustic parts where they sound not unlike Pink Floyd in their post-Barrett / pre-Dark Side days; ʽSome­time Soon She Saidʼ has their tightest rhythm section up to date, with drummer Rob Cieka kicking those skins so loudly and precisely that he just might steal your audio-attention away from all the feedback; and ʽSong For Up!ʼ has a quirky instrumental section where the band's patented noisy jam schtick gradually emerges from a softer, dronier, maybe even jazzier passage. In other words, they are beginning to build up on their original foundation, cautiously testing different possible outlets — still only very cautiously, though.

On the whole, thanks to its chronologically diverse nature, Learning To Walk is a less difficult record to assimilate than Everything's Alright Forever, and it may give a slightly more favo­rable impression of the band — on the other hand, it still does not prepare you for the artistic transformation that they would very soon go through, and I can only heartily recommend it for all those who love their pop standards to be burnt to a crisp in carcinogenic feedback, and decline to take 'em any other way.

The Boo Radleys: Everything's Alright Forever

THE BOO RADLEYS: EVERYTHING'S ALRIGHT FOREVER (1992)

1) Spaniard; 2) Towards The Light; 3) Losing It; 4) Memory Babe; 5) Skyscraper; 6) I Feel Nothing; 7) Room At The Top; 8) Does This Hurt; 9) Sparrow; 10) Smile Fades Fast; 11) Firesky; 12) Song For The Morning To Sing; 13) Lazy Day; 14) Paradise.

If I understand my terminology correctly, The Boo Radleys' second album should not be properly categorized as «shoegaze», something that presupposes very static, droney, (preferably) hypnotic / trance-inducing music-making. The Boos are no enemies to the drone ideology, and Sice's lulling vocals may certainly be hypnotic, but in the end, Everything's Alright is primarily a pop record — noise-pop, psycho-pop, whatever, but the songs have verses, choruses, different melo­dies, even colorful guitar solos that rise above the din to provide some climactic heights, none of which really ties in with the «atmosphere-above-all-else» guideline of generic «shoegaze».

The problem is different: these verses and choruses are insufficiently engaging for me to state that the album survives on its melodic potential rather than its atmospherics. Either, at this point, Carr's songwriting was still in its infancy, or perhaps the atmospherics clashes with the melodies, but very few individual moments stand out — not a good sign for a pop album. Even when stuff is quite objectively different, like ʽSpaniardʼ, an acoustic ballad that eventually explodes with a merry Castilian brass section, it still feels merely like a slightly nuanced part of one big dreamy continuum. And this, in turn, brings back the «shoegazing» associations.

The band's experimentation in the area of «loud vs. quiet» is unsatisfactory: the marriage between abrasive feedback and acoustic jazz chords on ʽI Feel Nothingʼ is conducted very crudely — now we're playing these soft swingin' notes and now we go BOOM! and it's My Bloody Valentine all over the floor again; anyone could do that, really. ʽMemory Babeʼ, where the build-up from all-out acoustic to buzzy-electric and then to a huge psychedelic crescendo is handled more efficient­ly, is better, but still has nothing in particular to recommend it — no single special touch that would make us easily understand what it was, exactly, that the band was bringing to the table.

Nothing remains, eventually, but to lower our expectations and understand that The Boo Radleys simply wanted to generously contribute their own share to the world of noise-pop, without taking any particular care about putting a «special» stamp on that share. Once expectations are lowered to that level, songs like ʽFireskyʼ and ʽParadiseʼ will appeal to all those who yearn for another Loveless or at least an inferior copy, as long as it shares similar textures. Prospectively, too, with Sice's capacity for «angelic» singing, we could say that Everything's Alright (especially on such moody-mournful compositions as ʽSmile Fades Fastʼ) predicts Radiohead, at least in their early, pre-OK Computer stage.

Arguably the best, most evocative and memorable, track is ʽSong For The Morning To Singʼ, where they finally come up with a solid, no-nonsense, lyrical, old-school melody, George Har­rison-style, but produced through a lo-fi psychedelic filter. In addition to the blow-your-mind attitude, this one just seems to hold a big sackful of pure love, rendering both the singer and the lead guitar player more humane and vulnerable than everything else put together. But precisely because of this, the song, short and barely noticeable in its second-to-last position on the album, is an exception to the rule — it does point the way to the band's future progress, yet nobody could really tell this back in 1992. Ultimately, Everything's Alright Forever is just a diligent exercise in studying, copying, and honing production skills.

The Boo Radleys: Ichabod And I

THE BOO RADLEYS: ICHABOD AND I (1990)

1) Eleanor Everything; 2) Bodenheim Jr.; 3) Catweazle; 4) Sweet Salad Birth; 5) Hip Clown Rag; 6) Walking 5th Carnival; 7) Kaleidoscope; 8) Happens To Us All.

Listening to and looking at the Boo Radleys' not-too-promising debut album — shorter than half an hour and only ever released in LP format — one can hardly get rid of the feeling that these well-meaning English lads are far more literate than they are talented. Quite possibly, some kid, or maybe several kids, may have looked at the album cover and asked themselves the question: «What is a Boo Radley?» and «What the heck is an ichabod?» and consequently discover Harper Lee and Washington Irving. (Nothing wrong about a little idealistic dreaming! and I am not be­ing condescending here — hell, I should probably confess that I had no idea who was Bodenheim before stumbling upon the second track here, either).

The songs, however, do not offer much of interest, and the band themselves have tagged these 28 minutes as a purely formative stage, way too much influenced by contemporary noise and grunge bands to have anything close to its own identity. Lo-fi, overloud, and looking as if most of the melodies were thrown together in about two minutes each, Ichabod And I simply does not stand a chance against... well, anything, but most importantly, it explores the same territory that was already thoroughly explored by My Bloody Valentine on their debut and would be explored even more thoroughly on Loveless next year — namely, the idea of marrying «dirt» with «beauty» and turning them into an unseparable Holy Duality where one does not exist without the other.

The idea of combining tenderly lyrical «flower power» vocals of Sice Rowbottom with the jar­ring, crushing guitar drone of Martin Carr is not at all original, but it could work — provided they had discovered how to make the experience memorable, or at least engineered the right balance between these two extremes in the studio. The latter task is tremendously hard (and constitutes, for instance, my biggest issue with the already mentioned Loveless), but it doesn't seem as if they even began worrying about it. The guitars simply stomp in, killing everything that moves (ʽEleanor Everythingʼ and ʽHappens To Us Allʼ, bookmarking the record, are extreme examples of this approach), and the vocals are buried so deep that, by the time you have finally dug them out, your shovels will be dented and your interest dissipated. It does not help that the guitars do not play any interesting melodies and are, at best, sloppified variations on classic Black Sabbath riffs (e.g. ʽBodenheim Jr.ʼ = ʽAfter Foreverʼ, much tortured and disfigured).

Even if the song starts out with a nice little Sixties-style jangle-pop riff (ʽCatweazleʼ), within a matter of seconds it gets drowned in sludge; only ʽWalking 5th Carnivalʼ escapes this cruel fate by reaching a compromise — there will be a nasty-sounding, but distinctive wah-wah riff here, as well as several acoustic-based sections, apart from the regular distorted stuff; ironically, it is also the song with the most boring vocal part on the album...

To put it bluntly, Ichabod And I largely sucks, and the band's decision to bury it right there in Sleepy Hollow is understandable. Now that the era of the Holy Download is upon us, it is not a big problem to bring back the ghost, but there is really no need to hunt for this obscurity unless you happen to be a really big fan of the band and have a scientific interest in their roots. Well, this is one of those «roots-obsessed» high school-level debuts that deserves all the severity of a thumbs down; fortunately, the band's CD-era output would soon prove that the Boo Radleys were ready to work hard on their image, until that whole «scary on the outside / beautiful on the inside» thing actually became real.