From: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Subject: Review: Marc Almond - A Virgin's Tale Volumes I & II
Reply-To: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Organization: The University Of Edinburgh - Department Of Computer Science
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 16:14:03 GMT
Followup-To: rec.music.misc


These two discs collect a general rag-bag of tracks from Almond's time on
Virgin. I'm reviewing them here as a single entity, although the two discs
are two separate releases, since the splitting of what would otherwise have
been a perfectly viable 2 CD compilation into two separate releases seems
to be a rather cynical commercial move on the part of Virgin, since a
double would have sold for rather less than two mid-price single CDs.

The material here seems to be pretty much in chronological order and for
the most part appears to consist of odds and ends (b-sides, EP tracks)
covering the period 1985-1987.

Marc Almond	A Virgin's Tale - Volume I	Virgin CDVM 9010 [UK]

	Total Running Time: 50 min 54 sec

	1.	Stories Of Johnny (featuring Westminster	3:48
		City Choir)
	2.	Love Letter (featuring Westminster		5:16
		City Choir)
	3.	Blond Boy					5:03
	4.	The House Is Haunted (Ectoplasmix)		6:20
	5.	Broken Bracelets				5:18
	6.	Cara A Cara					4:31
	7.	The Heel					3:18
	8.	A Salty Dog					4:29
	9.	The Plague					3:09
	10.	The Little White Cloud That Cried		2:13
	11.	For One Moment					2:55
	12.	Just Good Friends				3:53

The first volume is marginally the better of the two, mixing Almond
originals with covers of songs that were first recorded by Mel Torme,
Eartha Kitt, Procul Harum, Johnny Ray, Lee Hazlewood, Peter Hammill and
others. Almond's songs tend to be the stronger, though, or at least they're
the ones that will seem most familiar and comfortable to fans of Soft Cell
or his most recent material.

The disc starts with the first two singles, on which Marc is accompanied by
the Westminster City Choir. The combination of a boy's choir and camp
arch-hedonist Almond seems like a rather dubious one, but these two tracks
are both fairly innocuous, lightweight and slightly old-fashioned pop.
"Stories Of Johnny" (complete with enough phasing for an entire series of
Star Trek) is the stronger of the two.

Almond's sleazier side begins to emerge on "Blond Boy", originally the
B-side of "Stories Of Johnny". While some of the lyrics might raise an
eyebrow, it sounds not unlike the material he was putting out during the
twilight of Soft Cell, albeit more conventionally instrumented.

This is followed by a cover of the Mel Torme hit "The House Is Haunted"
presented here in its extended "Ectoplasmix". It's not exactly the sort of
song you'd think of as ideal material for a dance mix, so it doesn't work
particularly well.

"Broken Bracelets" is one of the real standouts of the album, surprisingly
hard and rocky for an Almond track. It's perhaps a little repetitive, but
the instrumentation is interesting and the drastic change of pace towards
the end is nice.

"Cara A Cara" is a cover version, sung in Spanish. No idea about the
original artist. No doubt about the original artist for "The Heel" though,
it's an obscure Eartha Kitt track, sung by Almond without changing the
gender. It's a little weird hearing Almond singing a song meant to be sung
by a woman, and this was apparently the very reason Almond did it. The
cabaret style arrangement wouldn't be quite so annoying if it wasn't for
Volume II.

"A Salty Dog" is a real surprise, with Almond covering the old Procul Harum
track with genuine passion and his voice sounding better than I've heard it
sound in a long time.

From here on (with the exception of "The Plague") things go downhill a
little, as the songs (mainly covers) get saccharine or schmaltzy. This is
exemplified by Almond's cover of "The Little White Cloud That Cried". The
innocuous nature of this song couldn't be further from some of the material
that appears on the second volume though.

Erland Rating: +1
Crawford Rating: White/Cucumber/Chihuahua

Marc Almond	A Virgin's Tale - Volume II	Virgin CDVM 9011 [UK]

	Total Running Time: 55 min 04 sec

	1.	Gyp The Blood					7:33
	2.	A World Full Of People				4:58
	3.	Black Lullabye					5:08
	4.	Pirate Jenny					7:14
	5.	Surabaya Johnny					4:55
	6.	Two Sailors On The Beach			2:00
	7.	Anarcoma					6:38
	8.	Jackal Jackal					5:56
	9.	Broken Hearted And Beautiful			6:52
	10.	I'm Sick Of You Tasting Of Somebody Else	3:28

In this, the second volume, things get very dark indeed. "Gyp The Blood" is
a lurching sea-shanty, that presages Almond's Brecht covers (more on which
later). "A World Full Of People" is depressed and aggressive, "Black
Lullabye" is downright morbid (church bells toll etc).

The two Brecht/Weill tracks here are "Pirate Jenny" and "Surabaya Johnny".
They're really not my sort of thing stylistically, but the lyrics are at
least interesting. The first is sung unaltered, with Almond singing from a
woman's point of view, the second has deliberately been "sung from a guy's
point of view to give it a bit of a dark, nasty edge."

"Two Sailors On A Beach" takes a Lorca poem, set to a tune by Almond
collaborator Annie Hogan and played (by the sound of it) on accordion and
harpsichord. Short but sweet.

"Anarcoma" is a little more commercial, but the lyrics still follow
Almond's taste for the sleazier side of life and the accordion gives it a
modernised sea-shanty feel. This feel is retained, with some Near Eastern
spicing, on "Jackal Jackal". Two good tracks, although possibly the novelty
of the instrumentation (for me, at least) is a part of it.

One of the odd things about Almond's music has been his juxtaposition of
sleaze and hedonism with a broad streak of old-fashioned romance. This is
amply demonstrated by last two tracks on this disc. "Broken Hearted And
Beautiful", a sad but attractive love song, is followed by "I'm Sick Of You
Tasting Of Somebody Else" which is...well, the title is pretty
self-explanatory.

Erland Rating: +1
Crawford Rating: White/Cucumber/Chihuahua

In summary, I found both these discs made an interesting change from my
usual fare. I tend to associate Almond's voice with synthesised, Soft
Cellular songs, and while there are one or two here that wouldn't be out of
place on that duo's last album, the mix of more traditional instrumentation
and intelligent (if not always in the best possible taste) lyrics is
something a bit different. Almond doesn't camp it up *too* much, other than
on a couple of tracks (The Eartha Kitt and Johnny Ray covers).

Since it doesn't make much sense to purchase one of the CDs without
purchasing the other, I suppose I should really give them a combined
rating...

Erland Rating: +2
Crawford Rating: White/Cucumber/Chihuahua

Why the sum of the ratings rather than the average? Both discs are in fact
separately almost too good to be rated as just +1 but not quite good enough
to warrant a +2. Their strengths complement each other though, so together
I feel they're good enough to deserve +2.

Given that these two discs consist largely or rarities and obscurities, I'd
say they're aimed squarely at existing Almond fans and collectors. If
you're interested in Almond's music (perhaps after hearing Soft Cell) and
want to hear more, these discs are probably not the best place to start -
my own recommendation would be for _Tenement Symphony_ although I'm sure
that others will disagree.

--
			Al Crawford - awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk
	  Department Of Computer Science, The University of Edinburgh
   Rm 1410, JCMB, Kings Buildings, Mayfield Rd, EDINBURGH, EH9 3JZ, Scotland
	     Tel: +44 (0) 31 650 5165  Fax: +44 (0) 31 667 7209
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