A to Z This month…
BLACK SABBATH
Technical Ecstasy: Super Deluxe Edition BMG
6/10
Expanded edition of the Sabs’ coke-addled identity-crisis album from the mid-’70s
Black Sabbath’s seventh studio album came just as the quartet were taking their cues from whatever was voguish in 1976, from prog to punk, from funk to cock rock, each track slathered in Gerald Woodroffe’s keyboards while the band play dress-up. The galloping “Back Street Kids” suddenly goes into prog territory around the 1:40 mark; “Rock N Roll Doctor” is a leering piece of cowbell-heavy funk-rock; the acoustic-guitar-led “She’s Gone” is a precursor to Ozzy’s solo career; then there’s a certain prudish astringency to the way in which “Dirty Women” addresses prostitution. “It’s Alright” is a rather good McCartney-esque ballad, written and sung by Bill Ward, although it’s not really “proper Sabbath”, is it?
Extras: 7/10. A disc of live recordings (where some new tracks sound great alongside old faves like “Snowblind” and “War Pigs); a disc of new mixes by Steven Wilson (including two different versions of “She’s Gone”) and some alternative mixes and outtakes (including a fine, bluesy, harmonica-driven version “All Moving Parts (Stand Still)”, a hymn to a transvestite US president. JOHN LEWIS
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
B-Sides & Rarities Part I & II MUTE
9/10
More songs about death and galloping horses
The deluxe seven-LP version of this career-spanning rarities set adds a double-LP set of newer material (compiled by Cave and Warren Ellis) to the 2005 compilation curated by ex-Bad Seed Mick Harvey. The treasures of the Harvey set are relatively familiar. Part II is a vital addition to the autumnal period in Cave’s songwriting, beginning with a hesitant attempt at “Skeleton Tree” from 2006 (“Jesus was a liar and a thief”, Cave suggests). The final side in both versions offers a full album of unreleased material, all of it vital. In Cave’s more recent writing, Ellis’s experimental flourishes flicker and fizz behind the singer’s painful ruminations. There are slivers of comedy, a king-sized cock here, a Ka›a-esque fly there, but these are dominated by Cave’s preoccupations – death and endurance and loss and just staying afloat on a wave of memory. The highlight is “Life Per Se”, a heavily freighted prayer of pain in which hope endures, just about.
The 7LP set comes with a large-format booklet.
