Fall of Saigon (Gazul)

By the time the first minute of Fall of Saigon has passed, the punchy opener 'Visions', I feel like I am listening to a slightly more aggressive version of Young Marble Giants. The simple synth pulses, gentle rhythms, and Florence Berthon's earthy, intimate voice are certainly from the same playbook, and this comes a few years later (1981-1984) so the influence is probably undeniable. But this was reissued probably due to the presence of Pascal Comelade, who later built a career performing in more experimental and improvised arenas, and these nascent tendencies are heard throughout. And when guitarist Terry Den takes over vocals, as on 'On the Beach at Fontana' (chanting a James Joyce poem) or 'She Leaves me All Alone', we get a more industrial, trance-like feel. His dour voice recalls the Cure or just about anyone else making dark punk-edged pop in 1982. (Could the band name refer to the This Heat song, or is it a reference to French political history?) This music is familiar through its obscurity, being another one of those rediscovered gems that keep surfacing at fairly regular intervals. That balance of serious and heavy lies throughout - there's fun live recordings of covers (Kraftwerk's 'The Model', TV Personalities 'Part Time Punks', and The Doors's 'The End') sequenced together in the middle, but it doesn't feel like filler, instead like a fleshing out of the personality of this band, represented 30 years later by this single CD. I don't know how Fall of Saigon fits into the trajectory of French art-rock; I so want to shoehorn them into some lineage between Mahogany Brain and Cheveu, but that's just forcing myself to rationalise great music into a historical narrative. The of-its-time sound and the covers inevitably situate this as a product of its time, but it's a time that we've been celebrating for three decades and I see no reason to suddenly stop.

Fairport Convention - 'House Full' (Hannibal)

Here's one I got for free somehow, which is a live recording of the 1970 Fairport lineup, post-Lamble, post-Denny. Just five guys trying to make the best of their iconic vocalist's departure. The liner notes, written by Joe Boyd in the 60s, are somewhat dismissive of the Full House album and of later Fairport in general (referring to a 'long, slow, sometimes ungraceful but always spirited decline'). But he insists that this 1970 band was a tight unit, not captured on the studio recording, and thus this live gig from Los Angeles in September 1970 is presented to support his argument. It's a good live recording - a bit lacking in the low end, but this is a CD after all - and the 'reluctant vocalists' Thompson and Swarbrick (again, Boyd's words) sound pretty confident to me, especially on 'Banks of the Sweet Primroses' where they exude a casual confidence which sounds striking, or maybe I just like English accents. The band is overall playing a bit fast, or at least with a spring in their step. The instrumentals are particularly fierce - 'Mason's Apron' sounds like something off Camper Van Beethoven's second album, and the climax of 'Matty Groves' never sounded better. As a band, the material has shifted really strongly towards the 'folk' in 'folk-rock' (which is a nice juxtaposition with the Heyday CD we just listened to) and also leads to more extended meandering solos by Thompson, which are always welcome. He seems to just stick some extra notes in hidden places, here and there, and it's a casual grace that he masters when he starts making solo records a few miserable years later. The centerpiece, of course, is 'Sloth' - I've already proclaimed my love for this song elsewhere, and that remains on this version, if it isn't amplified. The fierce buildup about 8 minutes in is even more aggro than the studio version, and the raw live edges are perfect for the come down, when Swarbrick starts to delicately pluck the violin strings around the cadence. It's like he's trying to tease the beast of a melody into revving up again and it works wonders. I love this song and even though this lineup of Fairport is slightly lackluster,  I can't imagine 'Sloth' with Sandy Denny -- the sense of resignation and frustration is distinctly male. The closing cut, 'Battle of the Somme', is delicate in a way that it feels out of place, especially after 'Mason's Apron', but maybe that's just my own itchy nervousness coming into play.