Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Viv Albertine's EP

I am listening to Viv's EP, which has four tracks and two vids on it.
The first track, Never Come, was a surprise straight away because I expected her to sound like her live self, and this is a full production job.
These songs still have that capability to make me laugh out loud- Viv doesn't make jokes, but she has the ability to wrap up all those young feelings you never lose, all the simplicity of being hurt, and hoping, and getting annoyed, and wishing...
Oddly, it's a relief to listen to this; it's all right to cast off all the pretendy layers that you cover yourself with in order to be an adult and a woman, and shout yourself back to childhood.
I get an excited feeling in the pit of my stomach. Yes! I still want to climb trees and run along the tops of high walls as fast as I can, and I still want to boil up rhubarb soup in McDad's old oil pan in the smoke of a home-made bonfire! I want dirt under my fingernails and dust in my hair! I want to wear my brothers cast-off Levis and a pair of sandals with the toes cut out of them to accommodate my child feet that are growing alarmingly fast like courgettes in the night-time vegetable patch!
Viv doesn't care about what people think she should think. She thinks just what she wants to think, in an angry way because life has hurt her, but she builds a beautiful and poetic nest of scratchy guitar and chanting choruses to protect herself, and in the process sounds as fresh as the morning sea and as strong as a stormy wind.
I love the way she almost slips into speech while she is singing, reminding us that she is a real person and always has been, and not a Britney or a Kate Bush. You can tell what she brought to The Slits, and this is intriguing.
Being a guitarist, of course, I wanted to tear away the other instruments and hear just her and her guitar. I have said this before- she's a brilliant guitarist with a unique style and she ties in the way she sings with the way she plays in that spontaneous way the old blues guys used to.
You Go Girl Viv!!!!

1 comment:

frayedattheedge said...

Ooooh - toes cut out of sandals so that you could wear them longer (having had the toes stuffed with paper to make them fit when they were too big when you got them so they would last longer) - happy childhood days!?