Music For Evenings: A Quick Review Of The New 40th Anniversary Edition Of Colossal Youth By Young Marble Giants
The simplest of records, 1980's Colossal Youth has had an enormous effect on the shape of indie in the last 40 years. If the artists who paid lip-service to this didn't always end up sounding like Young Marble Giants, they did at least genuinely understand what made the record great, and the music everlasting. And, as a result, the inspirtation that this group provided to subsequent artists, like Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, and the folks in Belle & Sebastian, was enduring, enough so that we're now here talking about the 40th anniversary edition of Colossal Youth from Domino.
The Welsh trio -- Stuart and Philip Moxham and Alison Statton -- of Young Marble Giants only recorded one album in their career and it's packaged here with bonus tracks and a DVD of a live performance from 1980. The record doesn't need those extra things to still impress, but those pieces provide a fuller picture of the trio's original work, and the process behind its creation. Building upon an earlier edition in 2007, this iteration of Colossal Youth: 40th Anniversary Edition from Domino stands as the definitive version of this original LP. And that original record still stuns, obviously.
"Searching for Mr. Right" is austere and yearning, while "Constantly Changing" works up a kind of quiet, surging vibe on the top of just Alsion's vocals and a few guitar-chords. That one is a real highlight here, as is "Music for Evenings", a simpler offering. "The Man Amplifier" is richly melodic and soothing, placing it at odds musically with the basic freneticism of some of the other tracks here, while "Credit in the Straight World", covered over time by loads of acts, is smart and stark. It is the closer, "Wind in the Rigging" that places the music of Young Marble Giants in another place, faintly closer to that of Frank Tovey and Fad Gadget, even, with the eerieness of the presentation being as essential to the overall effect as the barebones instrumentation. And that's sort of key as to why Colossal Youth has endured. No matter how simple this seems, there's an intellectual curiosity here that renders this far more complex than it seems. Each listen to Colossal Youth reveals a shade of meaning that you didn't hear before. In that sense, these three players could count as peers Vini Reilly of Durutti Column, which is to say that Colossal Youth is beyond genre and nearly its own style of music entirely.
For a record so tremendously important, there's not much necessary to add to solidify the appeal. Still, Domino have again worked overtime to get this album out in the best version possible. A generous selection of EP tracks and sessions strengthens the appeal of Young Marble Giants. "This Sporting Life" bounces along on a keyboard hook to kill for, while "Have Your Toupee Ready", from the Salad Days compilation, reveals the proto-post-punk that this trio used to build their unique brand of music. "Radio Silents" from the "Final Day" single, uses a jittery riff and a sinister bass under Alison's nearly-spoken word vocals to great effect, and there are other numbers here, including "Final Day", that are just as monumentally good, and nearly better than some tracks on the main album. Of course, the bonus cuts in total lack the austere cohesion of Colossal Youth itself, but taken on a track-by-track basis, the extras here are all essential. A DVD of the band's final 1980 performance at Hurrah in New York City almost seems unnecessary as part of the longlasting appeal of this album is the mystery behind how it was made and rendered. Seeing it performed, of course, nearly makes the power of what's here more impressive, considering how simple the pieces were behind things.
Colossal Youth: 40th Anniversary Edition is out now via Domino.
[Photo: Andrew Tucker]