Spine is quite good, isn’t it? I mean it would be even better if we could actually hear what was being sung, but what we’re presented with is perfectly acceptable, drone-rock. John Peel seemed to regard it as the best track on LMNO Pelican’s Boutros Boutros EP, given that all currently available tracklistings show he played it 4 times over March-May 1993, including for daytime audiences during his week sitting in for Jakki Brambles on Thursday 8 April.
Only one other track from the Boutros Boutros EP got played by Peel. Records currently show a single play on the night before this programme went out of the lead track on the EP, Call Yossarian. The recording I made my picks from for Peel’s 26/3/93 show missed the first 20 minutes or so and that’s why I never included Call Yossarian on the blog up to now. I only became aware of it when some research on LMNO Pelican led me to a site which contained 3 tracks from a 1991 session* which the band recorded for Dave Fanning on the Irish station RTE 2fm. Both in its session form and on the EP, it stood out loud and clear that Call Yossarian was their best track by a mile. It also becomes clear when listening to the four tracks on Boutros Boutros and the Fanning Sessions that Spine is something of an anomaly in LMNO Pelican’s back catalogue. Most of the music which I’ve heard from them has had a punk-New Wave edge to it which sounds like a faithful reproduction of underground rock circa 1979/80. Their music, most especially in Call Yossarian, fizzles and sparkles with energy and singable choruses. I can imagine that their gigs must have descended into glorious mosh-fests within a minute of the opening notes being played out.
But Spine stands out because it sounds the most contemporary of their tracks at that time. The bassline smells of grunge, the guitar work channels the more assertive end of shoegaze, especially during its final 90 seconds, the drums hit a Baggy-cum hard rock groove, and the vocal? Well, I know that Patrick Garrett can sing better, so I won’t say he’s channelling C86, but overall it feels to me as though LMNO Pelican were looking to channel Freefall or Catherine Wheel in Spine, and it is fair to say that Spine is the only track on the EP which doesn’t feel like it’s harking back to a sound from 13 years previously, and that may be why it caught Peel’s ear more than any of the other tracks. I’m bound by the rules I set myself here and am saddened that I didn’t catch Call Yossarian on the recording of 26/3/93. Had I done so, I’d likely be calling it as a potential Festive Fifty winner for 1993. But I’m happy to know it’s out there and happy to have it in my mental jukebox if not on my metaphorical mixtape. Instead, I will make do with Spine and consider it a case of Peel giving me what I didn’t know I needed, instead of giving me what I want.
At least when Bivouac recorded a song called Spine for a Peel Session, we could hear the words.
Coming next: Peel finds the record he’d been chasing after in the Little Richard Cover Search.
Video courtesy of 021snakey
*The date of the session is a guess by the uploader on The Fanning Sessions Archive
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