Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 01:34:24 -0500 From: Hk Kahng Subject: needed: a Yes fan... (long) >I'm curious to find out where other people think 4AD is going, what >kinds of acts we can expect Ivo to sign in the future. Whom has Ivo signed of late? He (idiotically) passed up ESP Summer, dumped Insides, and Glee Club kinda imploded at the last count (and I almost forgot Unrest/Air Miami/Briget-a-holics Anonymous...). Then there's Licorice, whose album is supposedly finished (thirty tracks recorded at the Defevers' basement, from which Warren has presented Jenny Tumor and Company with something on the order of eighty-six different mixes of those thirty songs... talk about overload), and from what I've been told, they sound like... Tsunami meets Grenadine. Quel surprise! dit l'homme avec le chapeau. I only hope that the twisted genius of Herr Defever can at least make things sound... erm, interesting. Although I will freely admit that I luuuuuv the last Tsunami album. Although I keep wondering if Kristin Hersh is ever going to receive royalty checks from its sales. Okay, so whither 4AD? I find Mr. Ingebrigtsen's astute and concise observation "More old farts" to be dead on the money. The old acts have eithe r bailed (on one hand - Cocteaux, and on the other - Kelly Deal... oops, wrong "bailed") or busted or splintered, and just keeping up with the pieces is enough to keep the roster full. But then again, judging by Mr. Perry's troubadouring on the last DCD disc, I'd much rather own a Nick Drake retrospective than Brendan's upcoming (yeah, right along with Windows 96...) album. Call me picky. Neaah. :^), you oversensitive duds. I think Ivo's going back to his "songwriter" roots with acts like RHP, Lisa Germano, Kristin Hersh, Heidi Berry (or should that have been Sandy Denny?), and (yes, even) Brendan Perry. And let's not use the word "folk," as I keep thinking of Alan Lomax and his compilations of Georgia chain gang songs. They're all (all together now)... SONGWRITERS - just because they're hauling around an acoustic guitar doesn't mean they're sensitive earthy-crunchy dolts. Fer example, look at Tim Buckley, whose ultimately fatal personal habits rivaled those of River "Speedballing Vegan" Phoenix. And Tim played a mean twelve-string acoustic and he wailed like the end o' the world was nigh. And what does all this mean? Nothing. Zilch. Not even a sausage. The sad thing here is that Ivo isn't (or more accurately, hasn't) signed any truly new bands thus far. Germano had two albums under her belt before coming abord the Good Ship Four-Ay-Dee, and Heidi Berry had the honor of being the worst-selling artist on Creation (although I think Idha has inherited that position of late) before changing labels, and Mark Robinson's been making records since he was weaning. Okay, so perhaps the only truly "new" acts are Glee Club (moot) and Red House Painters (but only because Mark Eitzel stepped in - Kozelek's reported passing resemblance to Nick Drake doesn't count). Insides doesn't count (all those Earwig records, fer screaming example). That Dog _shouldn't_ count. Michael Brook doesn't count. Swallow was entirely diversionary, and so was Spirea-X. And Pale Saints... oh, Pale bloody Saints... who lost their two greatest assets (Ian Masters and their grasp of fractional math) and became another boring 4/4 rawk band. Considering that I can count all the truly worthwhile albums that 4AD has rele ased since '92 on one hand and still have enough fingers to make a rude gesture says something about the state of affairs in the State of Watts-Russell. I don't know which visionary soul said that Che is the 4AD of the nineties (or something vaguely to that effect), and considering that TooPure has dropped the ball when Stereolab and PJ Harvey fled the nest and that Creation has simply become a joke, I would tend to agree. Che did lose (in some manner of speaking) Fur, whom I considered to be their best non-licensed band, although as they have Dart, I have no complaints. Actually, I do have a complaint. The Bardots. There, I said it.