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(2020) Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth (40th Anniversary Edition)
Review:
As we all know, in the late 70s the punk movement thankfully arrived and rewrote the musical and cultural landscape by rejecting much of what had gone before and renouncing rock n roll. Almost anything that had its roots in the 60s and 70s was consigned to the waste bin and new bands looking for a break had to do away with their rockisms if they wanted to ride this new wave. While the music made by these early punks may be looked back on as essentially stripped back rock n roll, the message of rejecting rock music is one that was picked up wholeheartedly by the generation of bands who were to come in their wake. As an example of this artistic arc, Subway Sect’s scrapped debut album was eventually released under the name We Oppose All Rock N Roll. For their next trip into a recording studio, Goddard went past rock for inspiration and came up with an album that took early Sun-era Elvis as a starting point, before going even further back for album No 3, which took Swing as an influence. This demonstrated the problems involved in rejecting rock music, namely where should musicians now look for their influences. Many took to funk for inspiration, which led to the sound of much of post punk’s catalogue of emerging bands and albums. Others however seemed to decide to invent something new, to truly try to create a music that owed little to the past. This is the path followed by Cardiff’s Young Marble Giants. Maybe Cardiff was so remote from what was going on in the rest of the UK that Young Marble Giants were forced to evolve on their own in some kind of musical Galapagos or maybe the people who made this music were inherently brave, forward facing and idealistic. Whatever the reason, they made music that had few references points. Consisting of brothers Stuart and Philip Moxham along with singer Alison Statton, the music Young Marble Giants made was sparse and introverted. There was no grandstanding, a refreshing lack of musical ego and a love of negative space. Their songs are deliciously understated and contain many parts where either bass, guitar or keyboard are simply not being played. The guitar, when there is any, is usually played in an extremely dampened manner, where it gives more a suggestion of chords and a basic musical skeleton. The bass often carries the song’s melody but could also drop out for the majority of a song, playing a few notes here and there. A primitive drum machine adds what percussion there is and Statton’s voice gives us something tangible and recognisable to hold on to. Young Marble Giants’ music firmly subscribes to the less-is-more school of thought, but outside of this adherence there is a sense of established rules being gleefully and deliberately ignored. As well as being minimal musically, Young Marble Giants’ songs tend to be also minimal with regards to their length. Most songs on their debut album are under three minutes with the longest, N.I.T.A being a positively epic 3:31. Their most famous song, the single Final Day clocks in at just 1:43, but in that time, it does everything it needs to do and says everything it needs to say. And if that’s the case, why hang around wasting time? Their recorded output was also similarly slight, leaving just one album and two EPs behind them. Their album, Colossal Youth turns 40 years old on 27th November and, to celebrate this milestone, Domino Records are releasing an anniversary version consisting of a double album, a double CD or a CD and DVD box set. The tracklisting takes in the original Colossal Youth together with the Final Day and Testcard EPs, selections from the Salad Days compilation and a track from the Cardiff compilation album Is The War Over that first brought the band to the attention of label Rough Trade. The impact of Young Marble Giants though has carried on down the ages and has some surprising fans. Initially, their audience was perhaps largely made up of people who could relate to the introverted nature of the songs, an audience demographic that the likes of The XX and Belle and Sebastian would also draw on in later years, but Kurt Cobain chose their album as one of 5 most influential records he had heard, a choice that may sound surprising when comparing the sound of these two bands. Cobain however was a fan of UK post punk…
Tracklist:
1. Searching For Mr Right (3:04)
2. Include Me Out (2:01)
3. The Taxi (2:07)
4. Eating Noddemix (2:04)
5. Constantly Changing (2:05)
6. N.I.T.A. (3:31)
7. Colossal Youth (1:55)
8. Music For Evenings (3:03)
9. The Man Amplifier (3:15)
10. Choci Loni (2:37)
11. Wurlitzer Jukebox (2:45)
12. Salad Days (2:01)
13. Credit In The Straight World (2:30)
14. Brand – New – Life (2:55)
15. Wind In The Rigging (2:26)
16. Have Your Toupee Ready (Taken From The Salad Days Album) (1:10)
17. The Man Shares His Meal With His Beast (Taken From The Salad Days Album) (4:25)
18. Hayman (Taken From The Salad Days Album) (1:26)
19. Loop The Loop (Taken From The Salad Days Album) (3:00)
20. Ode To Booker T (Taken From The Is The War Over Compilation) (3:03)
21. Final Day (Taken From The Final Day Single) (1:44)
22. Radio Silents (Taken From The Final Day Single) (1:53)
23. Cakewalking (Taken From The Final Day Single) (2:49)
24. This Way (Taken From The Final Day Single) (1:42)
25. Posed By Models (Taken From The Final Day Single) (1:25)
26. The Clock (Taken From The Final Day Single) (1:39)
27. Clicktalk (Taken From The Final Day Single) (2:43)
28. Zebra Trucks (Taken From The Final Day Single) (1:33)
29. Sporting Life (Taken From The Final Day Single) (1:04)
Media Report:
Genre: new wave, post-punk
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits |
