Give me the money and I’ll see you right between the eyes.

Disk one of a two-CD reissue of this UK bands scant '80s discography, who in their original incarnation only managed a single and an EP.  

**Please do not reveal artist in comments!**

Hear

Fischer-Z - Word Paradise - The United Artists and Liberty Records Recordings (2026, Cherry Red) - a brief review.

I often ponder the sizable slate of UK rock acts that took their home country by storm, yet nary made a dent Stateside.  The rock and roll diaspora is filled with them from multiple eras - Status Quo, Marillion, Manic Street Preachers, Slade, and to a less obvious extent Kate Bush and The Jam.  For better or worse Fischer-Z didn't have mainstream appeal in England either, and never came anywhere near striking distance on my side of the pond.  Nonetheless they did have a handful of bona fide hits in locales such as the Netherlands, Portugal, and Australia, and over the course of some four decades the band managed to rack up approximately two million records sold (the bulk of which were from their early halcyon era in the late '70s through 1981's Red Skies Over Paradise.  Cherry Red's reissue of this entire era of Fischer-Z is upon us in the guise of the three-CD Word Paradise, an exhaustive reassessment of the group's initial spasm of full lengths, Word Salad, Going Deaf For a Living, and the aforementioned Red Skies Over Paradise, managing to graft on all contemporary singles and b-sides to each record.  Previous Fischer-Z compilations from this epoch, like 1990's Going Red For a Salad did an adequate job at corralling the quartet's singles and more well known album cuts, but those seeking the complete picture were resigned to sporadic reissues of individual albums, many of which had long been out-of-print.

In today's day an age, Fischer-Z simply don't have any obvious parallels.  While certainly not "wacky," the band's sardonic bite was irrepressible, due in large part to the singular vocal histrionics of prime-mover/guitarist John Watts, who's pitch approximated something that of a falsetto and a tolerable whine, that by some miracle never breached into anything outright aggravating.  Vaguely along the same acerbic lines as early Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Fabulous Poodles, and perhaps less-so, Squeeze, not to mention Yankee contemporaries Donnie Iris and The A's, Watts and Co. were a cheeky lot to a fault.  While not outright punk/power pop/synth, F/Z were ingratiated by said audiences anyway, as some of those sonic sensibilities were casually employed.  They spotted cultural and romantic notions not so much with a full-throated belly laugh rather a wry, sideways glance. What they may lack in obvious appeal to say, nascent Gen-Z ears it doesn't require more than a few listens to these albums to glean why they're still endeared by the folks who were reared by them, circa 1980. 

Infrequently astonishing but consistently confident and satisfying, 1979's Word Salad, is stunning in the respect that it's surprisingly sophisticated and nuanced for a debut, with F/Z genuinely possessing the temperament and poise of a band already several albums into their career.  Generating no less than four singles, ...Salad's arrangements are tight but breathable, bearing an amiable balance between keys and guitars.  A subtle ska bent (a la "Watching the Detectives") was already beginning to infiltrate their m.o. to tasteful and measured effect on "The Worker," which endowed the group their first blush of minor success, scraping the bottom rungs of their home country's chart, and managing to place at #20 on Netherlands' survey.  Hardly an album of extremes ...Salad never necessitates being so. 

Following one year later, Going Deaf for a Living entailed some minor innovations. In an uncharacteristic gesture Watt's timbre temporarily slips into a more natural baritone on the reggae-fied opening salvo, "Room Service," and is no worse for the wear on a tune that also incidentally merges power-chords with strings.  Loosely in sync with strains of New Romantic pop, "So Long" was the 'hit' this time around (another Dutch chart success, not to mention a #9 placement in Portugal).  Fischer weren't ones to wallop listeners over the heads with anything overbearing...with perhaps ...Deaf's one notable exception, the jovial and mildly unnerving "Limbo," analogous to what "Rock Lobster" represented to the B-52's. Elsewhere, our protagonists flex ample musculature on "No Right" and the extra punky "Crank." ...Deaf was the closest F/Z ever came to pushing the proverbial envelope, and their results did indeed vary.  

Polishing off their initial trifecta of acclaimed albums 1981's Red Skies Over Paradise, finds Fischer-Z scaling their absolute summit, with the melodious and genuinely anthemic single "Marilese" serving as not only the most out-and-out catchiest number on the LP, but perhaps the most dazzling song they would ever commit to tape.  Triumphant and buoyed as they seemingly were on the heels of this smashing pearl (#1 in Portugal for chrissakes), the overarching tenor of the remainder of ...Paradise is veritably more sober, with F/Z treading into several geo-political screeds - "Cruise Missiles," "Multinationals Bite," and even Cold War concerns pervading the lamentable title track. The serious yin to Going Deaf's.. oft lighthearted yang, Red Skies... makes for compelling character development and growth in Fischer's little sphere, and for better or worse there wouldn't be a follow-up to the record until a revamped lineup of the group resurfaced for 1987's Reveal, post a John Watts solo stint.

Word Paradise is available direct from Cherry Records hq, Amazon and hopefully your local retailer. 

They’re eating right out of your hand...

Splendid atmospheric, shoegazer-adjacent fare from 1992.  Melody Maker says: ...nerve-sizzling guitars and evocative soul voices.

**Please do not reveal artist in comments!**

Hear

The Chills - KCRW FM, Santa Monica 11/14/96

Got a treat for you this weekend, and it isn't even Chanukah - a live KCRW session with none other than New Zealand's Chills, or more specifically the late Martin Phillipps then-current iteration of the band. Touring in support of the Sunburnt LP (their first since '92s Soft Bomb) we're naturally treated to songs from the album and surrounding singles, plus perhaps more revealingly a very early Chill's nugget, "Smile From a Dead Face," that up to that point had never surfaced on a Chills record (it eventually saw the light of day on the 2016 reissue of Kaleidoscope World).  

There's also previews of two songs ("February" and "Bad Dancer") that would appear on 2004's under-the-radar ep release, Stand By.  If you're looking for classics, the pickings are mighty slim here ("Pink Frost" predictably lands on the setlist), yet if you know much about Phillipps the man was never a reliable human-jukebox. Interviews are continuously interspersed with the music, which may require you to adjust the volume here and there, but well worth your effort.  Full tracklist is below, and I'm also making this available in FLAC if that's your preference.  Enjoy.

01. Intro
02. February
03. interview
04. Bad Dancer
05. interview
06. As Far As I Can See
07. interview
08. Pink Frost
09. interview
10. Lost In Future Ruins
11. interview
12. Evermore
13. interview
14. Smile From A Dead Dead Face
15. interview
16. Dreams Are Free
17. interview
18. The Streets of Forgotten Cool
19. outro

MP3/FLAC

You must be a special kind of stupid...

 A bratty, pop-punkin' fireball from 2023.  

**Please do not reveal artist in comments!**

Hear

Greenhouse - Mad as Love ep (1990, Native)

Wish I'd stumbled upon this band sooner - about a three and a half decades sooner would just have about done the job to be accurate. Leeds denizens Greenhouse were sonically situated in the same high-strung environs as the Senseless Things and Thousand Yard Stare, albeit not quite as raucous.  "Mad as Love" (the song) is a lively, sub-three minute stab working in the familiar UK indie punk-pop constructs of its era, nonetheless yielding something fresh and astute.  "On the Occasion" pitches the tempo down a notch, but it's heightened melodic chops help it stand out equally. Nary a bad moment here, even if the concluding "Theft" comes off as a little askew (think pre-stardom Blur) in Greenhouse's overarching context.  

01. Mad as Love

02. On the Occasion

03. Ban the Car

04. Theft

Hear

A weight upon my shoulders, a rope around my neck...

From 1995. Vaguely like Hüsker Dü, only with Swedish accents.  

**Please do not reveal artist in comments!**

Hear

Black Sea - An Early Fall (1990, No. 6)

Not resembling XTC in the slightest Black Sea mouthpiece Augustine does however manage to evoke Peter Murphy, minus some of the histrionics. Lacking the overarching mystique of Bauhaus, B/S were nonetheless gunning for the goth set, and their lone LP, an early fall, yields mixed and often derivative results.  The prolonged "Hope" is  a wannabe Disintegration ballad if there ever was one, but still engaging given your tolerance at the given moment.  Side two is an overall improvement, and the grand finale, "the river runs red" is genuinely hot, with the band markedly shifting gears in favor of a far denser sonic motif recalling the finest gestures of the Mission UK.  Can't help but wonder what an early fall would have amounted to had it been modeled writ large on this particular schematic.  Lastly, a run through Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" isn't necessarily a pro or con, rather just sort of 'there.'

01. washed away

02. immigrant song

03. hope

04. mix

05. killing time

06. darkest days

07. empty fields

08. the river runs read 

Hear

In my room on a pad is written a letter return-addressed to you.

From 1995. Incidentally, their first album was recently reissued on vinyl, and is already commanding obscene money. 

**Please do not reveal artist in comments!**

Hear