A new addition to my collection so yes it’s alphabetically out of step, but I’ve decided to drop things like this in as we go along (apologies to anyone suffering from alphabetical OCD).

Think of all the great bands that have released records on Polydor…Slade, The Jam, The Wonder Stuff, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Sam Fender it’s a long auld list. But none of those artists hold the accolade of having the biggest selling debut album in the long history of Polydor Records (it was founded in 1913). That particular marker belongs to Cast and “All Change”.

Cast were formed in 1992 by John Power (formerly of The La’s) and Peter Wilkinson (ex of Shack). Cast are always, unfairly to my mind, included in any conversation about the risible musical “movement” BritPop. BritPop was a lazy journalists invention to pigeonhole three acts who all came flouncing along at roughly the same time, Oasis, Blur(gh) and Pulp. Poor old Paul Weller was roped in as the “Godfather of BritPop” and subsequently the odd coat-tail grabbing, band wagon jumper like Ocean Colour (Duller ?) Scene and The Enemy were included too. Cast were oh so much better than that lame bunch.

There’s something about Liverpool, all that social and musical history, that means it produces music with a certain indefinable something about it. That’s not to say that all the music out of Liverpool sounds the same, very obviously it doesn’t, but it has a sound that is Liverpool. Think of The La’s and Cast and the Real People and Amsterdam and many others and there’s something about what they did/do that when you hear their music, whether you know anything about them or not, you, or at least I, think “this is from Liverpool”, it just sounds like the city. We went up to Ian Prowse’s Monday Club recently (something I would recommend anyone to do) and there were guys on that night that, to me, sounded like that music couldn’t have been made anywhere but Liverpool.

You want examples ? Well…The La’s “Timeless Melody”, Cast’s “History”, the Real People’s “Window Pane”, Amsterdam’s “The Journey”, all have an unquantifiable something about them that point to the City they were birthed in. It’s something that I first heard in The La’s which is probably why I hear it so strongly in Cast too.

“All Change” has sold over a million copies now, it offered up 4 hit singles “Finetime” (#17), “Alright” (#13), “Sandstorm”  (#8) and “Walkaway”  (#9), a record company dream. But it’s not a throwaway “pop” record. There’s great songwriting and melody here, substance which albums that have those sorts of numbers and that many hit singles don’t usually offer up. Had “History” been released as a single I think it would have topped even “Sandstorm”s chart placing. 

It’s an album loaded with hooks and not just in the singles, “Tell It Like It Is”, “Promised Land” and “Mankind” all have little barbs that catch into you so you find yourself humming them a couple of days later. It’s also an album full of positivity both in the way the music sounds and feels and the words, with lyrical nods to honour, truth, good living, fun and getting the girl (but nothing about killing the baddies). Positivity was something I found sorely lacking in “BritPop”. Cast kept it up too. Their 2011 album “Troubled Times” is well worth a listen if you were a fan of “All Change” back then. 

History - https://youtu.be/G1pCIrnGr8s?si=kCa6fSQKOAUVc3l8

And just like that (thanks to the wonders of Amazon prime) it arrived. I’ve been meaning to investigate the Jerry Joseph that came before “The Beautiful Madness” for some time and then I discover while researching details about that record that he has a new one out…serendipity is it ?

“Baby, You're The Man Who Would Be King” was written in a vintage camping trailer parked in Joseph's driveway in the midst of the pandemic. It was recorded, finally, in New York City with a band including some fine New York musicians including Hammond Organ by Charlie Giordano of the E Street Band. In interviews for the release Joseph has said "These, for me, were a different collection of songs…If there was a theme, it was to focus on simplicity - lord knows I can be, er, verbose…In the end, there's a lot more truth and vulnerability here than I'm willing to publicly concede…Considering the whole Covid driveway origins, it's surreal what we made and I'm just going to call it magic ... for which I am exceedingly grateful."

Almost every album I’ve written about in the last 205 Blog posts have been records I’ve known and lived with for many years. That familiarity make it easier to write about them. This may be the first I’m writing about as a new release (it came out on 29th September and I got my hands on it on 20th October), something I’m not used to but here goes.

First impressions are that this sounds nothing like “The Beautiful Madness”, in fact the first couple of songs lead me to thinking it sounds like a Steve Earle album (which in some circumstances is no bad thing). One thing I noticed on this record that never once crossed my mind when listening to “The Beautiful Madness” is that, at times, Jerry’s voice sounds uncannily like Elvis Costello, again no bad thing in some circumstances. Jerry starts to sound much more like the Jerry I’m used to by 3rd song “20 20 Moons”.  “Book Burning” is very (very) similar to the previous albums “(I'm In Love With) Hyrum Black” and last song on Side 1 “Canadian Boyfriend” has a little of Steely Dan’s wry humour about it.

Things get to sounding much more to my liking on Side 2, particularly the last 2 songs. “Loving Kindness” is a lovely melody that worms its way in and you find yourself humming over and over. “Leaving The lights On” starts with strummed acoustic guitar that really remind me of the way my brother Miles plays. It also has a lyric that really jumped out at me 

“The problem with choice, Is you have to choose”

It’s something I’ve been convinced of for many years now, just because there is a lot of choice (whatever that choice may be, access to more music, types of coffee in a coffee shop, TV channels, railway companies or anything else) it doesn’t make it any easier or cheaper to find the thing you really need and want.

It took me a few plays to get into “Baby, You're The Man Who Would Be King”, it’s nowhere near as instant as “The Beautiful Madness” was. But I think I’m on this ride with Jerry now, there’s something about him that feels like he’s worth sticking with, so I will. 

Loving Kindness - https://youtu.be/X3DAYzrCtxk?si=9ok5FdCysFY1my0m

I remember the days when a mate would recommend a record you’d never heard of or you would read a review of an album that sounded interesting and you’d just go out and take a chance on it. Well record buying has become an expensive game over the years but an old friend, Dermott the former DJ at the legendary J.B.’s in Dudley, recommended this album to me, so I read some reviews and decided I’d give it a go, even at the £30+ it was gonna cost for a record by someone I’d never heard of.

But I had heard of producer Patterson Hood (he of the Drive-By Truckers). Most of the Truckers make up the backing band on most of this album and Jason Isbell pitches in with slide guitar too on “Dead Confederate” (more of that one later) so there were inklings it could be good. Jerry Jospeh himself is from San Diego and now resides in Portland Oregon. He’s been releasing records since the mid 90’s and Hood and Isbell are long time fans.

I was quite excited when this record arrived. I’d purposefully not listened to anything (as you can online these days), I wanted that pristine, let’s hear it all for the first time experience. It’s green (the vinyl that is), which looked great as it exited its sleeve for the first time, and first impressions were…well, they were “holy hell, who is this guy and why have I never heard of him before”. Musically there’s nothing wildly earth shattering going on here, it’s acoustic based American rock, what would now be referred to as Americana, but Jerry is an engaging singer and a master lyricist. 

“Days Of Heaven” fades in on a gently picked guitar before picking up a shuffle beat after the first chorus. This and ensuing songs on Side 1 reference obscure Athens, GA band Bloodkin, towns in Tenerife and New Mexico, Bougainvillea bushes and Mormon cowboys (!) in the mysterious “(I’m In Love With) Hyrum Black”. The meat of this album however lies over on Side 2 and particularly in 3 songs, “Sugar Smacks”, “Dead Confederate” and “Black Star Line”.

“Sugar Smacks” is seven minutes of Joseph raging about the world around him. Producer Patterson Hood said of it “It might be the most punk rock song I’ve heard in twenty years”. The origins of the song lie in a documentary a friend was making about Joseph when he played shows in “Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand and then the Middle East – Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel and somewhere in there we fit in Europe, Mexico and the US. While playing shows in Tel Aviv, the first Hamas rockets hit the city but we went ahead with our shows.” Many of those experiences make it into “Sugar Snaps”. It’s dark and dense and angry and very, very twitchy. The lyrics are almost a stream of consciousness babble and don’t seem to make sense at times, just snatches of images seen, like

“I've seen the Himalayan monks in the Ding Bouche' 

Watching digital porn on their lightning phones”

And 

“Me too she said , Isis Slavery and genital mutilation 

Now we're here in a permanent cinder block refugee camp 

Reading about sexual harassment on the executive level of a Portland advertising agency”

And 

“The cartels are so happy about legal California weed that for 10 fucking minutes they stopped the slaughter and rape of Juarez compañeros 

Then they quit laughing and went back to stuffing bodies into 50 barrel drums”

And amidst all that doom and gloom there’s a flicker of hope, but it doesn’t end so bright

“Can I get an amen for Johnny Thunders? 

Can I get an amen for David Bowie? 

Can I get an amen for Joe Strummer? 

Oh god, If they could only see us now”

It’s a starkly moving song. As is “Dead Confederate” but in a different manner. This is  a gentle acoustic song with anything but a gentle message. It’s a song sung from the point of view of one of those statues of dead Confederate Generals that still cause many an argument in Southern States of the USA, statues that glorify slavery and the men that fought to defend it (“Standing, I been standing, best part of 80 years, With my Jim Crow benediction, ropes and hoods and local cheer”). But Jerry Joseph isn’t here to defend that but to point out the absurdity of these statues and what they stand for in a time when in Alabama “All I see is project housing, chicken bones and broken bricks”. It’s a harrowing and dark story.

Which leads into the much brighter “Black Star Liner” which, even as the name may suggest, isn’t about Marcus Garvey’s shipping line but is Jerry Joseph’s tribute to the passing of David Bowie. It’s another random bunch of images of Joseph’s fandom over the years (“Somewhere, lost in between Salvador Dali and tigers on vaseline, Big dreams…Starman waving from the sky”)…heartfelt.

Were it not for the release of Springsteen’s “Letter To You” this would definitely have been my top album of 2020, but it ran the Boss a very close 2nd. There really is no groundbreaking new style of music here, Jerry Joseph was nearly 60 years old when this record was released (and by looking that up I’ve discovered he has a new album out this year which I must now go investigate) it’s simply an album of well written songs with something to say. Sometimes that’s more than good enough.

Sugar Smacks - https://youtu.be/xCIygAMldXc?si=F6krN0_1Js_RPuq0