Month: October 2018

The Go-Go’s hit the peak of their career with the very first track on their very first album, Beauty and the Beat. That’s not to say that the rest of their work is a disappointment — far from it — but “Our Lips Are Sealed” is simply a perfect pop record. Instruments build in in classic layers as the song begins — first drums, then rhythm guitar, then lead guitar, then bass, and finally Belinda Carlisle’s voice, smooth and sparkling as crystal. Every layer is excellent. Gina Schock sets an ebullient beat, a springboard for the guitars of Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey, while Kathy Valentine’s melodic bass dances through the rhythm section like Carlisle through the fountain in the song’s video.

I’ve heard this song hundreds of times since 1981, and it still makes my hair stand on end, every single time. It captures a feeling both carefree and defiant, with lyrics that make a lovers’ conspiracy against the world seem like the most ecstatic expression of young romance. At least, that’s the mood set by the initial verse-chorus-verse, but then there’s a shift as the bridge comes. The bass slides into minor key territory as Wiedlin takes over the vocal duties with an angelic and maternal tone: “Hush my darling / Don’t you cry / Quiet, angel / Forget their lies.”

As Wiedlin finishes her last word, Schock hits the pinnacle of the song, a two-second drum break that feels exactly like an explosion of joy. Valentine buoys the last stroke as the verse comes back in, but this time supported by that Wiedlin angel from the bridge, echoing questions and reassurances: Can you hear them? See right through them. The band reprises the first verse but enriches it with higher harmonies, ending on a thrilling, jubilant vocal chord.

How do you match that? They didn’t, but some tracks on this album come pretty close. Top among the candidates is the iconic “We Got The Beat,” a manifesto of Go-Go attitude, youth, and musical exuberance. “Our Lips Are Sealed” was the band’s introduction, but “We Got The Beat” was when America really fell in love with them, catapulting the single to #2 and the album to #1 for six consecutive weeks. Astoundingly, they are still the only all-female band who writes their own songs and plays their own instruments ever to top the album charts.

Not only that, it’s not as if they rely on the talent of a single great songwriter. Take a look at the songwriting credits on their 5 Top 40 hits:

• “Our Lips Are Sealed”: Wiedlin, Terry Hall
• “We Got The Beat”: Caffey
• “Vacation”: Caffey, Valentine, Wiedlin
• “Head Over Heels”: Caffey, Valentine
• “Turn To You”: Caffey, Wiedlin

Wiedlin, Caffey, and Valentine form the core of the Go-Go’s songwriting team, bringing people from outside the band every so often, writing songs solo or in various combinations, occasionally including Carlisle (who has co-writing credit on one song each from Beauty And The Beat and Vacation) and Schock (who co-wrote one Vacation song and two from Talk Show.) Despite the varied personnel, the songs share a consistent musical and lyrical identity: fun, bouncy, affirming, with a swagger that carries just a hint of darkness.

Take Caffey & Wiedlin’s “This Town”, which sounds like surf rock in deep shade, a ticking rhythm guitar part and a stalking bass line underneath bright harmonies. The first verse and chorus sets the tone for a “Yay Los Angeles” lyrical picture: “Life’s a kick in this town… This town is so glamorous / Bet you’d live here if you could and be one of us.” But then here comes the second verse: “Change the lines that were said before / We’re all dreamers, we’re all whores / Discarded stars, like worn out cars / Litter the streets of this town.” Not exactly pretty postcard fare.

Similarly, “Automatic” has few words, but what it has isn’t reassuring (e.g. “Angles sharp / Crash together”), and its overall mood is slow and spooky. Unfortunately, it’s not one of the album’s brighter moments. I got the sense that Wiedlin was trying for something hypnotic, along the lines of The Motels’ “Total Control”, but it comes out just kinda plodding. It starts a bit of a lackluster slide in the album, a few songs from side 2 that are just okay, as opposed to the fireworks show that is side 1 plus “We Got The Beat”.

I assigned Beauty and the Beat to Robby because I’d been listening to and loving Talk Show recently. I considered assigning Talk Show instead, but decided it was unlikely I’d be assigning another Go-Go’s album anytime soon, so I’d better pick the acknowledged classic. Funny thing, though — after listening to them both extensively, I actually think Talk Show is overall the stronger album. Though it lacks any single moment that reaches the heights of “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got The Beat”, even its lesser songs feel like classics (look no further than the deeply underrated “Capture The Light.”) The Go-Go’s had a brief and brilliant career (setting aside for a moment their 2001 comeback record), and over the short course of it they became stronger and stronger songwriters, if not hitmakers.

Even so, they absolutely bring the goods for most tracks on Beauty And The Beat. It’s inexplicable to me that IRS Records chose “Automatic” for the third single from the album when there are a raft of stronger contenders. From the rocking and vital “How Much More”, to the whirlwind of “Lust To Love”, and the defiant, hopeful “Can’t Stop The World”, this album is stuffed with shoulda-been hits. “We Got The Beat” is clearly the thesis statement, but Valentine delivers the perfect sendoff in the final track: “Can’t stop the world / Why let it stop you?”

Exactly.

British singer-songwriter Frank Turner has a trick. He didn’t invent it, and he doesn’t use it all the time, but he employs it to great effect on his fifth album, Tape Deck Heart. Here’s what it is: he sings a song long enough to make you think you know it, then changes it completely, putting a whole new context around it and bringing new and surprising levels of meaning to the very same words and tune.

The most pronounced version of this happens on “Four Simple Words.” The song starts out folky, and gently opens up into a swaying, strumming chorus:

I want to dance, I want to dance
I want lust and love and a smattering of romance
But I’m no good and dancing, and yet I have to do something
Tonight I’m gonna play it straight, I’m gonna take my chance
I want to dance

It’s a sweet and catchy, setting the stage for a warm and happy singalong, but as soon as it ends, furious drums upend the song and suddenly Turner charges in behind a frantic tattoo of electric guitars, spitting rapid lyrics about “heading out to the punk rock show” in a style that makes him as likely to be on the stage of that show as in the audience. When the chorus comes back it’s in that punk style, and now instead of feeling winsome and wistful, it’s a fierce declaration of independence from cultural strictures.

But the song’s not done yet. After a few pogoing verse-chorus-verse fusillades (with the occasional solo, profanity, or Rocky Horror Picture Show reference), it slows way down to deliver the chorus again, this time cabaret style, with tinkling piano and a subtle choir, and then switches to rollicking music hall on “But I’m no good at dancing”, and then ramps back into punk for a final verse and an abrupt ending.

The overall effect feels like taking the same sentiment to different phases of life, different internal and external communities, bringing them together with an insistence on joy and risk. The trick happens elsewhere too, though. “Broken Piano” finds him at first accompanied by a spooky drone, but otherwise a capella, lapsing occasionally into a grief-stricken Chris Martin falsetto. As the chorus arrives for the first time, the piano begins to assert itself, and the ominous drone increases in volume and coarseness. When the chorus comes back, it’s suddenly backed by huge, echoing drums, and a thick band of harmonizing Turners, leading up to sweeping, emotional power chords and an powerful climax.

“Plain Sailing Weather,” too, starts with its chorus in its simplest form, sung by Turner over basic acoustic guitar. Then the verse that follows it builds intensity so that when the chorus comes back, the band kicks in behind it and everything feels like it was meant to happen. “Tell Tale Signs” does a similar kind of build, albeit far more subtly.

Here’s the real trick, though. Those shifts don’t just happen within a song — they happen across the terrain of the album, too. Turner has described Tape Deck Heart as a “break-up album”, and that’s certainly apparent in songs like “Broken Piano”, “Plain Sailing Weather”, and “Tell Tale Signs”. Probably the most heartbreaking of them all is “Anymore.” No stylistic head-fakes in this one — it’s just pure acoustic guitar and mournful folk delivery of lines like “Darling, I can’t look you in the eyes now / And tell you if I’m sure that I love you anymore.” Turner frames “the romance and the running down of disconnected hearts” in stark terms that will surely resonate with anyone who’s ever been witness to the slow suffocating death of a love affair. It doesn’t get any bleaker than a repeated “I don’t love you anymore.”

But that’s not all there is to Tape Deck Heart. Amid the wreckage, there are brilliantly shining glimmers of hope. There’s “Oh Brother”, which beautifully encapsulates a close friendship on top of a deeply satisfying rock and roll riff. “The Way I Tend To Be” portrays a different kind of closeness, one that disrupts the singer’s self-destructive patterns with prompts to growth like “love is about all the changes you make and not just three small words.”

Best of all is the album’s opening track, “Recovery”. The song is unflinching in its depiction of a narrator “swallowed by the pain”, but every time the chorus comes in, the exultation of it is just undeniable, blowing through heartache even as it declares “It’s a long way up to recovery from here.” Turner’s band and his jubilant vocal recall the best moments of The Waterboys’ Big Music, with a similarly redemptive quality. At the other end of the album, the uplift that happens at the end of “Broken Piano” is similar to the breakthrough that happens in Coldplay’s “Amsterdam.” In each case, the pain gets surrounded by music so powerful that it lifts the singer into the skies, putting his earthbound heartache into a grander perspective. That’s how healing happens, and we’re lucky that Frank Turner has shared some of his with us.