Back in the 60s and 70s, if John Peel was excited about the release of a new album, it was common practice for him to play the whole record on one of his shows. Examples include Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles* and Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan** (as well as Desire by the same artist). In subsequent years, Peel would content himself by playing trios or quartets of tracks from new records that particularly excited him.
On 17/4/93, he dotted 4 tracks from Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, the debut album by Swirlies, throughout his programme. My notes show that only Pancake would have interested me enough to keep on a mixtape. I like the tension between the driving, grinding rock sound coming up against the woozy keyboards and off-key singsong vocals of Seana Carmody. The lyrics mentioned missed classes, and given that the album’s tracklisting featured titles such as Bell and His Life of Academic Freedom, I wondered whether the album might be a concept record about life in college. I listened to the record last night and soon discovered that it wasn’t. If the record has any kind of theme, it’s around those of regret and tough love, but most of the lyrics are too abstract to be definitively pinned down.
What I must say about Blonder Tongue Audio Baton is that it is very much a record of two halves, and as I waited for Pancake to roll around - it’s the sixth track out of eleven on the album - I found myself wishing that I hadn’t felt the need to satisfy my curiosity about whether the record was a concept album. I found the first five tracks a slog to listen to, mainly because Swirlies fell into the trap of layering them in all kinds of discordant sounds and weird modulations, while simultaneously failing to lift the tempo above meandering, and I discovered last night that I really cannot get on with meandering drone rock, no matter how scuzzed up the band make it.
Then we reached Pancake, the halfway mark in the album and the first track that Carmody sings on. The first five tracks were sung by Damon Tuntunjian, which had me wondering whether Swirlies were in the same category as Moonshake and whether I would find myself leaning more towards “her over him”. Nevertheless, it was a welcome harbour to reach after 5 tracks of audio gristle. But then something rather wonderful happened. Over the second half of the record, Swirlies leave behind the sonic kinks and knots and let the material breathe a bit more. The album becomes progressively more “songy”, more involving and more exciting to listen to. I’m always happier to hear an album which has a stronger second half than first half, not least because it’s better to be looking at the time and thinking “How much more have I got left to enjoy?” instead of “How much more have I got to endure?”
But I only took one track out of the four that Peel played. A look at the tracklisting for this show reveals that, alongside Pancake, Peel played Bell, His Love Just Washed Away and His Life of Academic Freedom, which are…let’s see…tracks 2, 4 & 5 on Blonder Tongue Audio Baton. So, Peel was leaving us in no doubt which half of the album his preferences lay with. In fairness, he did play tracks from the second half of the record in subsequent programmes, ***but based on my experiences with it, I can’t help but wish that he’d gone back to his 1970s self and played the whole album, so as to give a fuller and truer picture of what it was like. Sometimes, John Walters’s attitude of We’re not here to give the public what they want, we’re here to give them what they didn’t know they needed could work against both audiences and artists, and that’s something which I feel happened in this programme.
Video courtesy of Swirlies - Topic
*Strictly speaking, the link doesn’t go to a Peel show. Radio London got an advance copy of Pepper about three weeks before it was released, and Ed Stewart was the first DJ to play it, albeit with a highly emotional Peel sitting in with him as he did so. I’d be surprised if Peel didn’t give the album a full play on The Perfumed Garden at some point.
*** On 1 May 1993, Peel played what I think may be the best track on the album, Jeremy Parker, but aggravatingly, the file of that show, which I made my selections from, missed the track off, so it won’t be blogged about here.
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