Cliche thought it may be, the difficult second album doesn’t really come any more difficult than the sophomore offering from The Teardrop Explodes.
By 1981, the year of its release, the Teardrops were one of the biggest bands in the country (echoed across swathes of the planet). They straddled both the serious post-punk world and that of the teeny-bop pop magazine. They would grace the cover of both Sounds and Smash Hits. Frontman Julian Cope was both poet and pin-up. So, the obvious thing to do to follow up the pop perfection of debut Kilimanjiro is to record a skewed selection of psyche reflections on the break-up of your first marriage and how you hate the zoo of your fame, isn’t it?
And, needless to say, it is a brilliant album. Denser, more complex than its frothy (albeit awesome) predecessor. And here it is reissued in what can only be called the litimate edition. Everything you could ever want is here: extensive sleevenotes from the main protagonists; every b-side and session track from the period. None of the half-assed filler of muffled cassette demos that can blight a release like this.
Calling this album less accessible should not lead you to imagine a collection of synth drone dirges. Instead it’s an alluring web of sound and styles. Not as instant, but not inaccessible. Not only is this home to one of Cope’s finest baa-baa pop songs ‘Passionate Friend’ (still seldom bettered). There’s the unstoppable ‘Pure Joy’, dotty ‘Seven Views of Jerusalem’ and the haunting ‘Great Dominions’ (all vocal and synth, no dirge). I can’t be the only person that sees proto-baggy in the stomping swagger of ‘Bent Out Of Shape’? Surely proof that Cope’s claim to have invented acid house, might (like most of what he says) have an iota of truth to it.
The fact that there is no padding in the second disc’s 18 tracks says a lot about the band, but also the quality of this package (look, it’s rare that you’re not just being forced to buy everything again thanks to the new kitchen sink). The essential stuff is there; ‘Christ Vs Warhol’ (should be taught in schools – just to see the looks on their faces), ‘Rachel Built a Steamboat’, ‘Ouch Monkeys’. Great BBC session tracks (including an early version of ‘Screaming Secrets’ – later to grace Cope’s St Julian album).
A year after this album the band were chasing each other round the Welsh countryside with shotguns and on too many bad drugs. JC had declared himself a city centre. There’s a live version of ‘Sleeping Gas’ on here where you can feel this fracturing beginning to show. Cope plays a face solo. It lasts forever. It’s horrifying and mesmerising. As these things should always be.
I always suspected David Balfe started Food Records to try and get a shot at doing this all again but in control. That explains Blur. But, they will never be this good. Which is why Balfie should accept his past…
