The Pretty
Things
The Final Bow MADFISH
Last hurrah from undervalued
blues/psych/rock institution.
Having to bow
to the tragically
inevitable
rigours of
passing time,
and the physical stresses
incurred across 55 years of
embracing the rock’n’roll
lifestyle, The Pretty Things played
their final gig last December at
London’s O2. Vocalist Phil May,
having recently suffered a near
brush with the reaper, had given
up the fags and moderated his
drinking, but had been left with
emphysema and other
debilitating health problems that
scuppered the band’s 100-gigs-
a-year touring regime.
The Final Bow captures the
R&B stalwarts going out with
a bang: a salubrious venue;
a two-and-a-half-hour set; guest
slots from Van Morrison (three
songs) and David Gilmour (six,
specifically five from pioneering
concept work S.F. Sorrow and an
epic L.S.D./Old Man Going). It’s
an appropriately epic package –
a brace of audio CDs, two DVDs
(full show and edit), 10-inch
vinyl picks from May and
guitarist Dick Taylor, and a plush
52-page hardback book). And
the gig at its core? Triumphal,
emotional, beautifully paced
and absolutely bang on the
button. They really should have
been bigger.
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Ian FortnamPixies
Beneath The Eyrie INFECTIOUS
Alt.rock legends work some
American Gothic magic into
third post-comeback album.
It’s 31 years
since Pixies
shaped the
entire alt.rock
landscape to
come with the still brilliant Surfer
Rosa. Asking them to conjure up
the vein-popping intensity of old
would be a hiding to nothing
(although frontman Black
Francis gives it a good old go on
a couple of tracks), and here we
find them conjuring weird and
wonderful tales with the
dignified air of the elder
statesmen they are. And so
while they trade familiar surf
guitar (St Nazaire) and deeply
catchy grunge melodies
(Graveyard Hill, the most old-
school Pixies song here), most of
the album is taken up by
a combination of American GothicThe Who
Who POLYDOR
yarn-spinning, such as the folky,
madcap Catfish Kate, and more
contemplative confessionals, as
on Ready For Love.
The absence of vocals from
force-of-nature founding member
Kim Deal is still keenly felt –
despite a sterling effort from
current bassist Paz Lenchantin- but Beneath The Eyrie stands as
a solid return from a beloved
band with plenty of wry lyrical
tricks still up their sleeve.
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Emma Johnston
Pond
Sessions MARATHON
Aussie-psych frog’s todger.
Swimming in
the same
Australian
collaborative
pool as Tame
Impala (sharing singer-multi-
instrumentalist Jay Watson and
drummer Kevin Parker as their
producer), Pond cap the eight
studio albums they’ve released
since forming 10 years ago with
this career-straddling live set.
Bathed in dense psych-jangle
guitar, tracks such as
Springsteen-yearning Daisy, mid-
tempo jiggler Paint Me Silver and
title songs from 2017’s The
Weather and this year’s Tasmania
sound similar instrumentally to
their studio versions, although
singer Nick Allbrook sometimes
struggles to be heard from
within the spangled melee,
resorting to an amusing David
Cassidy-style elongated burp for
dramatic effect.
Weighted with slowies,
including the doleful Sweep Me
Off My Feet and the lustrous
Burnt Out Star, the set livens up
with the funky Don’t Look At The
Sun (Or You’ll Go Blind), a Giorgio
Moroder-style pulsing Hand
Mouth Dancer and the proggy
bombast of Medicine Hat. Pond
finally allow themselves to splash
it all over on the eight-minute title
song of 2015’s Man It Feels Like
Space Again, dunking into smoky
swamp-psych before reaching for
balladeering catharsis.
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Kris NeedsTygers Of
Pan Tang
Ritual MIGHTY MUSIC
NWOBHM wildcats, these
days on rabid form.
In 1981,
having scored
a second hit
album with
Spellbound,
the Tygers looked set for
a promising future, only forFirst new album in 13 years might be a lively
last hurrah.P
ete Townshend has always come
across as a prickly character, hiding
his artistic sensitivity with defensive
strops. It’s that awkward, tough-tender
ambivalence which makes this potential
swansong – 55 years since The Who’s
debut – infinitely more intriguing than
many late-life albums. The thinker in him
keeps stressing that rock’s dead (opening
track All This Music Must Fade ends with
a resigned “Who gives a fuck?”). Yet the
doer in him keeps doing it. His motivation
to deliver a new album was “personal”,
a desire to prove to himself that he could
still write while avoiding nostalgia
(something the Peter Blake cover, a riot of
retro-longing, wallows in).
The limply titled Who is a crisp set of
songs, shrewdly finding the sweet spot
between serrated and slick. Roger Daltrey,
for his part, sounds vibrant, the odd,
affectionate antipathy between writer and
singer once again lending their interface
an edge. D Sardy (known, worryingly, for
Oasis and Noel Gallagher) co-produces
with Townshend. Some over-buffed
patches call to mind the growing
Hollywood trend of digitally de-ageing
actors, yet generally this sounds, whether
by fluke or sweat, like The Who have
sounded (when playing new songs) since
John Entwistle died.
Crucially, it doesn’t go too gently. Fromthe attack of that opening, and an instant
confirmation that Townshend isn’t done
being perverse and pugnacious – ‘I don’t
care, I know you’re gonna hate this song’- you’re reassured that his sauce will still
enliven the pasta. Pre-empting criticism
by acknowledging that ‘it’s not new, not
diverse’ and ‘all this sound that we share has
already been played’, and calling himself
‘just grey, I’m afraid’, the writer
acknowledges his generation’s ebbing
influence. Sometimes this comes across
as bitter; more often it’s witty. Either way,
it’s sharper than the lack of self-awareness
exhibited by most of his peers.
Ball And Chain addresses Guantanamo
Bay, the near-epic Hero Ground Zero (with
an intro nod to Baba O’Riley) smirks that
‘every rock star wants to make a movie’, Street
Song sails on a skittering electronica base.
Then there’s a later lilt into acoustica for
Break The News and the flamenco-tinged
She Rocked My World. Rockin’ In Rage,
a bilious confessional – ‘I feel like a leper, like
handing my cards in’ – offers a field day for
Pete-psychoanalysts.
As it seems unlikely that there’ll be
a next from The Who, this last testament,
potent yet poignant, bright if not blinding,
fans those late flames fruitfully. The song
isn’t, quite, over.
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Chris Roberts
ALBUMS
82 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM