Paste Magazine June/July 2010 : Page 89
BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE BLACK TAMBOURINE ELLIOTT SMITH BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE This Is Big Audio Dynamite: Legacy Edition LEGACY RECORDINGS RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW Let bygones be bygones When Mick Jones was kicked out of The Clash in the early ‘80s, he formed Big Audio Dynamite, a group that melded Jones’ pop sensibilities with his earlier band’s punk ethos. This new edition of their 1985 debut, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, comes as a two-disc set featuring several remixed tracks, including “E=Mc2 ” and their first single “The Bot-tom Line.” On the first disc, the songs appear in their original form, showcasing Jones’ catchy hooks, experi-mental spoken-word phras-ing and music/women/drugs lyricism. It’s iconic ’80s fare, as frothy and over-the-top as teased bangs and acid-washed jeans. Meanwhile, the second disc’s outtakes, remixes and B-sides tarnish the originals, combining syn-copated dance beats with vocoder-filtered lyrics, spa-ghetti-western samples and screams that lend an air of schlolcky Eurotrash. Those songs fell to the cutting-room floor for a reason, and should’ve remained buried. LINDSEY LEE 4.3 BLACK TAMBOURINE Black Tambourine SLUMBERLAND RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW Gauzy shoegaze transcends its era Some reissues work because they winnow a voluminous discography down to manageable size. This one does the opposite. Washington, D.C., noise-poppers Black Tambourine had the briefest of careers between the ’80s and ’90s, and this new collection of the band’s complete works inflates its output from a prior compilation’s 10 songs to a whopping 16, four of them recorded a year ago. Formally, the band strad-dles Shop Assistants-refer-encing Brit-indie, My Bloody Valentine-esque shoegaze and a Heavenly-like neo-girl group attitude, slather-ing feedback all over the slow-mo pining of “Black Car” and revving into stark rave-up mode on “Throw Aggi Off the Bridge.” Black Tambourine can be amateurish: “Can’t Explain” seems as if it’s being held together with chewed-up licorice and broken guitar strings. But it also builds to a fine frenzy that fans of Vivian Girls will find pleasantly familiar. MICHAELANGELO MATOS 7.3 8.5 ELLIOTT SMITH Roman Candle From a Basement on the Hill KILL ROCK STARS RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW Alpha and omega E lliott Smith’s 1994 debut and his 2004 swan song aren’t his best or most popular albums, but both are crucial to understanding the shape of his sadly truncated career. Showcas-ing Smith’s formative sound and quietly devastating songwriting,Roman Candle may be his most underrated work, and the austere “No Name #3” and “Condor Ave” hint at the greater triumphs of his next two albums, Elliott Smith and Either/Or. By contrast, From a Basement on the Hill (incomplete at the time of his death but finished by producer Rob Schnapf and longtime collaborator Joanna Bolme) may be his most over-rated; it substitutes busy arrangements for piercing hooks, and the songwriting is bitter as he revives an old addiction metaphor on “Strung Out Again.” These reissues, which wisely add no bonus tracks to disrupt the careful original sequencing, not only show where Smith had been—they underscore the tragedy of never knowing where he might have gone. STEPHEN M. DEUSNER 6.8
