Two from Tapete Records

By Henry Lipput

The latest solo album by Robert Forster and the debut album by  Britain's returning, reunited The Loft are recent releases from Germany’s Tapete Records that have caught my ears.

Robert Forster, Strawberries

As a member of the great band The Go-Betweens as well as his solo work Robert Forster has been known for his story songs. His “Born To A Family” on 2004’s Oceans Apart, the final Go-Betweens album, is a perfect example.  His albums since then have also included “Life Has Turned A Page” from 2019’s Inferno and “When I Was A Young Man” on 2023’s The Candle And The Flame.

On his new album Strawberries, “Tell It Back To Me” is a tale about two very different people getting together and over the years finding it difficult to continue to be a couple. “Breakfast On The Train” is unique in that it begins with an ending and then circles back with a story about a chance meeting at a rugby game when he remembers her from school and a night of love making that causes a family in the hotel room next door to complain about the noise. It’s a lovely, melancholy song and one of Forster’s best.  

The title song, “Strawberries," is a delightful duet between Forster and his wife and musical partner Karin Baumler especially because before the recording of the album The Candle And The Flame she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Although he was able to quickly record that album the result was a collection of songs that were literate and heartfelt with an underlying feeling of sadness throughout. So it’s wonderful to hear them have fun singing about a suddenly empty bowl of fruit while recognizing “it took time to recover/from the edge of the night.”

“Diamonds” is a departure in the sort of arrangement Forster has set for his songs with a free jazz interlude and shouted lyrics. Beginning with a riff that recalls “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield, he sings “She put diamonds in my eyes/Changed the way I saw life.” What follows could be seen and heard as a strong declaration of his love or a cry of despair for the loss of that love. The sax follows a similar route with a lovely melody that turns into an angry, confused blast.

The Loft, Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same

For a band on the fabled Creation Records label in the 1980s that broke up in the middle of a song during a concert, The Loft has been very busy recently. After performing at the Glas-Goes Pop Festival last year they were invited to record a BBC session for the Riley & Coe show (released on vinyl by Precious Recordings of London who also put out a single with “Dr. Clarke” and “Got A Job,” a non-album B-side).

Now the original band members Peter Astor (guitar and vocals). Andy Strickland (guitar), Bill Prince (bass), and Dave Morgan (drums) have reunited and recorded their debut album Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same. “The Loft has always been just the four of us,” said Strickland, “and it’s a real thrill to be writing and recording and playing across the UK with the band again.”

You can hear this renewed focus on playing together on each of the songs on the new album.  The band has a clean, crisp sound that recalls four-piece bands in the mid-Sixties as well as the Britpop sounds of the 90s.

Despite being upbeat, the protagonist of the opening track “Feel Good Now” can’t wait for that feeling so just wants to start drinking now. A similar disconnect between the lyrics and the playing is on “Killer” with its dark message but a lovely guitar solo.

The mid-Sixties sound is most evident on “Dr. Clarke” with a lyric and guitar that recalls another song about another physician on a certain Revolver album.

The beautiful “Greensward Days” has the looking-back feel of a Ray Davies song from The Village Green Preservation Society or the opening songs of Preservation Act 1.

A dream is a wish your heart makes

By Henry Lipput

Dreamers On The Run, the new album by BMX Bandits (Tapete Records), with its wonderful arrangements of instruments and both backing and choral voices, is, in many ways, the band’s Pet Sounds. (Need convincing? Check out the stereo mix of Pet Sounds created for the Pet Sounds Sessions box set in 1997.) “I am dreaming all the time/Not just when I’m asleep” sings lead Bandit Duglas T Stewart on the opening track and title song. Dreamers On The Run is full of tales of dreams achieved, hoped for, and sometimes dashed.

In my review of “Setting Sun,” the first single from the album, I referred to it as “jaunty pop.” Both it and the next song on Dreamers On The Run, “Time To Get Away,” are about dream vacations, whether real or imagined, and contain this type of uplifting vibe.  On initial listen so does “Hop Skip Jump (For You Love” with its Bo Didley riff.  But sometimes in a relationship, no matter how hard one tries, you don’t make the grade. “My best was never good enough/I go so far to win your love” – so “I’m sick and tired of running after you.” 

On the segue that connects “Time To Get Away” and “What He Set Out To Be” we hear the tide that has washed away the dreams of the man in this song. “He thought too much of himself/And not enough of she/He can’t replace her smiles/Not if he walked a million miles.” Both musically and lyrically it can remind you of a Ray Davies song from mid-period Kinks, as this sad and lonely man may be the figure watching lovers crossing Waterloo Bridge each evening to meet.

With “My Name Is Duglas (Don’t Listen To What They Say)” one is also reminded of The Kinks, this time from their Schoolboys in Disgrace album. The voices that introduce “Jack The Idiot Dunce” have the same dismissive tone of people who have no regard for others who are different. The BMX Bandits track gives both Duglas and Jack a chance to respond to the haters.

More life-affirming jaunty pop from BMX Bandits

By Henry Lipput

It seems like right now, with everything happening in the world, it’s more important than ever to have music that just makes us feel better when we hear it.

Well, Duglas T Stewart, and the family of musicians that make up BMX Bandits, have come to the rescue with just what we need. These kings of jaunty pop have returned with “Setting Sun” (Tapete Records) the first taster for an album to be released next year.

And it’s also perfect time for this song for other reasons. As we end the year and it’s cold and gray the thing you need and want the most is some time in the sun. And “Setting Sun” sets the scene for that as well. So, pull up the beach chair in the garage and pour a pina colada and turn up the volume.

Music by Pritchard, words by Woodcock

By Henry Lipput

You may think (as I did) that after having written both words and music for wonderful songs like “Mont St. Michel” from 2016’s Mother Town Hall and “Lullaby” from 2019’s Midland Lullabies that Bill Pritchard would have little need or incentive to collaborate with the Canadian poet Patrick Woodcock.

But it turns out this is a genius move and has resulted in the stunning new album Bill Pritchard Sings Poems by Patrick Woodcock (TapeteRecords). Woodcock has written nine books of poetry that reflect his work as a migrant writer, volunteer, and teacher. As a long-time fan of Pritchard’s work, during the pandemic lockdown he reached out to the musician and asked it he would like to write a song based on one of his poems. The songs were created from poems in Woodcock’s latest collection Farhang Book One out on September 5^th (the poems on the album are included with the CD and vinyl releases of Sings Poems by Patrick Woodcock).

Pritchard has lost none of his ability to create brilliant melodies and songs like “The Lowering” and “Art in G Sharp” that knock me out. The vocals and simple arrangements make you stop what you’re doing and listen to the words and give the poetry the attention it must be paid.

Two of the eleven tracks on the album are spoken by Woodcock with music written by Pritchard. “Floe” and “Balcony” are darker poems and it’s terrific to be able to hear the words in the author’s voice.

When everything changed

 By Henry Lipput

Robert Forster had three years’ worth of songs  for a new album before his wife and musical partner Karin Baumler was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

And then everything changed.

While Baumler underwent chemotherapy, Forster set out to quickly record songs at the Alchemix studio in Brisbane where they had lived for a number of years. Their son Louis joined the music sessions as did Adele Pickvance, a long-time friend, bass player on the last three Go-Betweens albums and Forster’s great The Evangelist album, and currently the Adele of Adele and the Chandeliers.

Not knowing how much time they had (when her health allowed, Baumler contributed violin and backing vocals to the songs as she had for Forster’s two previous albums), the goal was to create a recording they would always have of the experience whether it became an album worth releasing or not. But after listening to two of the completed songs, which were made without headphones and overdubs and with everyone in the studio together playing eye-to-eye, they wondered whether an entire album could be produced the same way. The result is the literate and heartfelt The Candle and the Flame (Tapete Records).

Forster wrote “She’s A Fighter” after Baumler’s diagnosis and as she rested from treatment he come up with a basic riff. The sound owes more than a little to skiffle (but with electric guitar and xylophone) and the simple, repeated lyrics of support (“She’s a fighter/Fighting for good”) became a mantra, a way of building up both their spirits.

A few of the songs on The Candle and the Flame deal with the passage of time. In “I Don’t Do Drugs I Do Time” Forster triggers a time loop of memories of both before and after he met Baumler. She provides lovely backing vocals as Forster plays an acoustic guitar. “I remember when we first met/Where you sat/What you said/What was running/Through my head” circles back to earlier times: “I’m walking to school in ‘69/The next day I’m 35.”

“Always” sounds like an early Go-Betweens track with its Tom Verlaine-inspired guitar. Although Forster sings “time moves in one direction” he continues with what I hear as a metaphor about how the brain processes memories: “And there’s a breakdown at the intersection of Highway 5/There’s going to have to be a detour” and your thoughts head off in another direction.

 “When I Was a Young Man” is a story song in which Forster writes about his early musical efforts and his major influences. “Elder brothers/I had a few/One was named David/The other was Lou” he sings, half name-checking Bowie and Reed. As time went other influences were felt: “Elder brothers/They came along/There was a new David/And there was Tom/They bewitched me in wardrobe and song” with this time referring to Johansen and Verlaine.

With “Tender Years” Forster conflates both time and storytelling. He says “She’s a book/A thousand pages” before letting us know “Images of her are vivid/Her body has not withered/From her entrance in Chapter One.” “I’m in a story with her” he sings “I know I can’t life without her/I can’t imagine one.”

They’ve been together for 32 years and their third meeting (the third time’s the charm, right?) during the German leg of the R.E.M/Go-Betweens European tour is referenced: “Time is important/Timing is more important/Without it a story can end/Heidelberg is a German city/By the river very pretty/I was there/The timing was our friend.” “Tender Years” has a groove to the arrangement and there’s also a wonderful “Losing My Religion”-like mandolin along with one of the few band workouts on the album.

Have The Proper Ornaments Created A New Indie Genre?

By Henry Lipput

The Proper Ornaments’ Mission Bells album (Tapete Records) is the band’s follow-up to last year’s shoegazey and Velvet Underground-influenced 6 Lenins. There are more musical references on the new disc and there is also what may be a new indie genre in the making.

In between the release of these albums the band (James Hoare, Bobby Syme, Max Oscarnold, and new bassist Nathalie Bruno) toured Europe. New song ideas were born during soundchecks and soon after the tour ended they began recording at Hoare's home studio in Finsbury Park, London. 

As a result of the band’s touring and going right into the studio, they’ve become a tight group that effortlessly falls into a groove. On “Downtown” the groove is not so much funk as swamp like The Beatles’ “Come Together” as they cover a song originally sung by Petula Clark. Hoare sings “Just listen to music of the traffic in the city / Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty” but it’s nearly unrecognizable which means they’ve made it very much their own.

There’s a brooding, nearly claustrophobic vibe to some of the songs. For example the lyrics of the opening track “Purple Heart” (“Your enemies are close / The walls are closing in”) match the overall tone of the song. “The Wolves At The Door” has a similar mood. But the delicate “Stings Around Your Head” and the closer “Tin Soldier,” with it’s Sterling Morrison-like guitar licks, are breaks in the musical clouds.

Two of the last songs on the album borrow lyrics from other songs on Mission Bells for their titles. “Music Of The Traffic” is an instrumental-only “Downtown” and “How Do You Get To Be So Cold” is a lighter, piano-based take on “Purple Heart” with a new set of lyrics.

My favorite moments on Mission Bells are the sounds and the instrumental passages within the songs. There’s the ending of “Downtown” where the band continues its groove, “Broken Insect” has a terrific, jangly rhythmic strumming guitar like on Lloyd Cole and the Commotion’s “Mr. Malcontent” as well as a droning bug sound like XTC’s “Fly On The Wall,“ and there’s the hypnotic drum and electronic beat of “Strings Around Your Head.” 

And the new genre? There‘s a bit of it at the end of “Echoes“ but it‘s on “Flophouse Calvary” where there’s what sounds like a pedal steel guitar in with The Proper Ornaments’ brand of gazey stuff. I may be wrong but this may very well herald the arrival of -- wait for it -- Nashville shoegaze.

Next time: Vince Melouney will make you feel alright.