Friday, September 14, 2007

Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth (1980)

This right here is the debut and only album from a band that could have gone on to make many more brilliant records, but sadly they...didn't? Not sure why, but as it stands this is the only testament we have to the musical vision of these 3 youngsters from North Wales. The sound can be most easily summed up as minimal. Single track guitar, bass, drum machine (sometimes), and female vox. Singer Alison Statton sounds like a proto-PJ Harvey at times, although a bit softer. This is music built on quiet intensity. If they had been alive in the grunge era you could imagine some of these songs swimming in thick, crunchy guitars. Instrumental songs like "Wind in the Rigging" are another thing altogether. Beautiful, gentle, organ and drum machine driven slices of lounge cheese. The goofiness is a nice counterpoint to the more indie-pop oriented tunes. The album was apparently whipped off in a matter of days using almost entirely first takes and few overdubs in an effort to, as the band put it, keep the songs "alive". Well they still sound fresh, so they musta did somethin' right.



7 comments:

Splotchy said...

Hi, I found your blog via your post about The Feelies' The Good Earth, my all-time favorite album.

And now you are posting about Colossal Youth, another one of my favs.

Keep on keepin' on, and thanks for spreading the good music.

The Meat Beetles said...

A Meat Beetle thanks you for this and other great posts.
http://meatbeetles.blogspot.com

hungrymonsters said...

check out the 3 CD set which includes this album:
http://www.youngmarblegiants.com/colyouthcw.html

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