“I was determined in Chicago, But I dug my teeth into my knees” – Bright Eyes ‘The Calendar Hung Itself’

One more toad in the hole for this tentative yet tall and towering series tendering a treatise into today’s talents, Tennyson’s rather than Tennants, and, thankfully, not even a mere trickle of twats. Following the faultless formula of the matchless ‘Rock And Roll 1’ and ‘Country 1’ compilations this composite of crooners with their swoon-some introspective glories hand picked by the Rough Trade staff suggestively thrust their way meekly into the spotlight on a motorcade of moist motor neurones and a million asphyxiated synapses.

Whether as cuttingly humorous as the Cohen-esque Micah P. Hinson, catching butterflies with Syd Barrett on a Brighton beach for bestial breakfasts on ‘Beneath The Rose’, or you’ve self-harmed deadpan to Tom Waits, or harboured hard-worn heart-aches about hem-lines and hymens under the cultured shroud of Nick Cave there’s not a misplaced step into childhoods un-curtained incarceration imminent. Instead, we enter a realm that would send the editor of Uncut into an orgiastic frenzy to rival Led Zep at their most primevally bo-zo-hemian, but based purely on song, and one straddled by the combined Siamese Colossi of Waits / Cave / Costello / Richard Thompson.

And not simply song, but the simple strides into the starched patch of pulled weeds, chattering teeth, curious un-invitedness, stymied seed and questioning, unsatisfactory kisses...be it the intimate ghostly confessional of Elliott Smith’s ‘Needle In The Hay’; Bright Eyes brilliantly bitter ‘The Calendar Hung Itself’ - a tale of Shakesperherian loves languid costs with Love and Rockets flaying flamenco and Robert Smith the caustic compere; Barbara Manning’s California Kook-a-Billy of ‘Scissors’ managing to resemble a coked up 9am clutch of the B-52’s and the Bangles, while Tracey Thorn (yes, she of Every-bloody-thing But The Girl) provides one of the real toe over tit surprises on ‘Plain Sailing’, an almost priceless parsimony of smashed plates in spacious slow motion, bed-sit balladry in crochet stitching, Maria McKee sulking over soup and cul-de-sac blasphemy.

As with the other comps in this series there’s a whole slew of rarities, deities, dry-rot obscurities and ill-defined delights that descend on differing days. Ex-Pulp picker Richard Hawley’s cowboy junky coughing up cold turkey goblets of Grimsby grime is aptly titled ‘Hotel Room’ and is quite gorgeous, filtering the lights, sounds and scars on the horizon from the outside world onto a lonesome duvet. Mary Margaret O’Hara embodies Patsy Cline on ‘Dear Darling’, Simon Joyner’s nursery rhyme of Neil Young and Will Oldham (‘Alabaster’) mean that those two titans aren’t as conspicuous by their absence as could be, and the now sainted Antony and the Johnsons play an Arthurian slow reel, the graceful gauntlet run by a recently fellated Bryan Ferry returning the refined dignity of Julie Doiron’s ‘Snow Falls In November’.   

As the sleeve notes explain, the track listing of these comps could change radically if constructed again. A meander into the murky depths of musicianly mayhem means this succeeds as the kind of mix tape your mate’d do you to disprove your disparaging remarks about singer/songwriters. A wealth of jaundiced jewels exist amidst a few Amens.

“Hopefully there’s someone for you to start a new obsession with” they trumpet on various reed and wind instruments. Y’know what? They ain’t as wrong as that sentence. No better barn to start in.       __________________________________________________

- Stu Gibson