As someone who balks at most stuff from that wayward decade, I was a little unsure of my £1.99 purchase of this from a bargain bin. I'd seen the reformed Stackridge play a few Korgis songs, but full banded and with nary a synth or drum machine in sight. Luckily much of this record remains rooted in Beatlesque perfect pop, and where the New Sounds are used they make things enjoyably weirder. I suppose at this early point the experiments in production hadn't settled down into the cliches which they became. The best song to illustrate this is 'Boots and Shoes', a sort of oppressive, alienated pop song with wailing vocals. I've put the recent Stackridge reworking below (in the Spotify player, scroll down down down) to show how normal the song could sound without the weird.
The weird is good, obviously. It also manifests itself in the creepy 'Chinese Girl', which mixes sexual hunger with the regular kind (Gonna wrap her tight/In silver foil/And I'll warm her up/When I get home) in a questionably racist way. It kind of reminds me of the deranged narrator from 'Look Out, There's A Monster Coming' by The Bonzo Dog Band, which can only be a good thing. The dark and moody side of The Korgis comes up again in the murky penultimate 'Cold Tea', but it's not as odd or captivating.
Elsewhere, the production is less strange. A whole album of it might be a bit horrible, and they are a pop band after all, so we're probably blessed that the songs themselves are the focus of the rest of the LP. 'Art School Annexe', the opener 'Young 'N' Russian' and 'Dirty Postcards' are three fantastic songs, combining great upbeat melodies with lyrics which are funny without being idiotic, like the latter's "T'was on the Norfolk Broads we were punting one day/You received a nasty bump on the head/And you've never been the same since needless to say/ How I wish it could have been me instead". Poignant and ridiculous at the same time.
Unfortunately the two singles off the album, 'I Can't Help It' and 'If I Had You' neglect the silly lyrics and come off a bit pristine. You can see why they were popular, an in the throes of romantic entanglement I suppose they might hit the right spots, but anyone with any cynicism is advised to skip them. With 'Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime' they found the strength to pull off full-blown earnestness, soaring strings and all, but at this stage it's a bit corny.
Here! Look, a Spotify playlist with a selection of songs I talked about in the review!
Because um...abitofeverything makes music easy.
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