This week's old singles reviewed! No 4

After a mysterious absence, we're back with the very cream of American punk rock (it's what it says on the label), indietronica, cod-Beach Boys and more

Tuff Darts behind CBGB in 1976

Various: The Best of American Punk Rock Recorded Live at CBGBs (Tuff Darts: All For the Love of Rock’n’Roll / Mink DeVille: Let Me Dream If Want To / Tuff Dirts: Head Over Heels / The Shirts: Poe
(Atlantic, 1976)
Discogs high for mint: No mint copies available. Highest recorded price is £15
Source: 99p from Oxfam

Truthfully, I bought this thinking it was just All For the Love of Rock’n’Roll, and only on putting it on did I discover it was a multi-band live EP. And then I got very excited, because on Discogs – though it is not valuable – it is described thusly: “This is the first record in the world where ‘punk rock’ is mentioned. It’s of course also the worlds [sic] first ‘punk’ compilation.” And the listings appear to support that: a first issue in 1976, then a repress in 1977.

But then I read a review of a CBGB compilation put together this year by the journalist Rob Tannenbaum, which said this EP came out in 1977, and was stamped 1976 on the label: its contents came from an album released in 1976. On the one hand, it seems inconceivable that by 1977 anyone than a budget label could claim this was “the best of American punk rock”. By that time, Ramones, Blondie, Television, Talking Heads, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers and Richard Hell and the Voidoids were all known quanities. On the other hand, it’s on Atlantic, the major label that completely missed the boat with punk. It’s perfectly possible Ahmet Ertegun was convinced by some clueless A&R that this really was the pinnacle of the CBGB scene.

All that said, it’s worth 99p of anyone’s money. The lead track we all know about: clearly not punk but good, clichéd fun from that hinterland where people were skirting around the edge of what would be codified into modern heavy metal three years later (Diamond Head used to cover All For the Love of Rock’n’Roll). The killer, though, is Mink DeVille’s track, which begins like a late Velvets pastiche, before its tense stalking is ripped in half by a slashing, trebly guitar line – very postpunk before the fact. It’s genuinely fantastic.

I didn’t until now realise that Robert Gordon had been the singer of Tuff Darts at this point. I really like Gordon – I don’t go out searching, but if I see a Gordon record in a shop I tend to buy it – but his voice is all wrong for the second Tuff Darts track, Head Over Heels, sweet powerpop that needs something with much less sneer and a lot more candy on top of it. As for The Shirts, words rather fail me: wailing guitar solos, Hammond organ trills, heavy vibrato on the harmony vocals. Guys, Woodstock was that way.

Marks out of 10: 10 (factoring in value for money)
Is it worth buying? God yes
Do I regret spoiling its mint value? It was nowhere near mint. But this is a winner.

Christina Carter: Alone / Together #1 (Obelisk/Tholos)
(Emerald Cocoon, 2011)
Discogs high for mint: $6.50 plus $15.50 shipping)
Source: Promo

NGL, I nearly had a heart attack when I checked the sleeve the moment after needle hit vinyl and saw this was one of a limited edition of 300. Because at that number, one has no idea if it turns out there are 500 people desperate for a copy, in which case it is worth money, or no one, in which case there are not.

In this case, there are not. Nor am I surprised. This seven inch fulfils all my lifetime needs for recordings of a worldless female voice giving it some ahhhing over windchimes. The B-side, Tholos, is every bit as gripping as the A, Obelisk.

Marks out of 10: 3
Is it worth buying? No
Do I regret spoiling its mint value? No

Jacco Gardner: Find Yourself/Mixed Feelings
(Full Time Hobby, 2015)
Discogs high for mint: £13 plus £3 shipping
Source: I’m not sure. It might be a promo, but I remember seeing Jacco Gardner, and it’s not inconcevable I parted with money for it at the merch table

First off, I feel swindled, because this unplayed single has a fucking scratch on it, about a minute from the end. That’s the forgotten peril of vinyl – that even the stuff untouched by human hand is sometimes just fucked. I bought my copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall from a supermarket in Windsor, and it had a massive scratch during In the Flesh. The reason I’d bought it is that it was madly mispriced, and when I tried to exchange it, they said I could only get something of equivalent price. To this day, then I am still surprised when I hear In the Flesh and it doesn’t go “Pink isn’t well, he stayed back at the hotelback at the hotelback at the hotelback at the hotel …”

Alas, I fear the scratch in Find Yourself is unlikely to repeat its way into my consciousness. It’s pleasant light psychedelia – more 1968 or 69 than 66 or 67 – with a sunblasted lead guitar pattern and the kind of affectless vocals intended to make you believe the singer has realised the futility of mere human existence in the face of the revelation of infinity he has received from some cheap acid in his mate’s bedroom. The B-side is not dissimilar, but without the singing. I am astonished to discover that Find Yourself is Jacco Gardner’s most-played song on Spotify, not least because a quick skip through the rest of his catalogue – which doesn’t suggest a man obsessed with exploring every one of music’s nooks and crannies – appears to have rather better songs.

It’s the kind of thing psych heads doubtless love, but it need not detain anyone who is not a psych head.

Marks out of 10: 6
Is it worth buying? If you’re a psych head
Do I regret spoiling its mint value? Well, it wasn’t bloody mint, was it?

Miracle Fortress: Maybe Lately/Hanky Panky Nohow
(Rough Trade, 2007)
Discogs high for mint: £5 plus £7 shipping. Someone’s having a laugh, because you can also get it mint for £1.99 plus £3.50
Source: Promo

I learn from Google that I published a review of the album from which this single comes, when I was editing the Guardian’s Film&Music section: the reviewer gave it five stars, and commented on how Beach Boysy this song was (Brian Wilson pops up in quite a few pieces about Miracle Fortress, the solo project of one Graham Van Pelt, from Montréal). And, well, a little. It’s similar to Brian Wilson in the same way a load of Warburton’s sliced white is similar to a baguette from a lovely boulangerie: they’re operating in the same general ball park, but the comparison does neither any favours.

You forget how the influence of the Beach Boys was everywhere at this time, I guess coming off the back of Brian Wilson’s return to live performance a few years earlier. Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear and (I think) Animal Collective were all layering harmonies, and looking back to late-60s and early-70s Beach Boys, as Van Pelt was. Truthfully, though, Maybe Lately doesn’t sound like one that got away: it’s pleasant and workaday and forgettable. The B-side’s John Cale cover loses points for failing to match its excellent title.

Marks out of 10: 6
Is it worth buying? No
Do I regret spoiling its mint value? No

Hulk: Fixed Star Day/The Sea Is Mute, The Waves Are Hymns
(Static Caravan, 2002)
Discogs high for mint: No mint copies available. Highest recorded price is £3.99
Source: Promo

Another one with a scratch, but because it’s an electronic instrumental it took me a little while to be sure it was a glitch, rather than a glitch, if you see what I mean. I’d forgotten about Static Caravan, a label with a seemingly endless procession of gently electronic or gently folky groups, or gently electronic folky groups. I suspect much of this kind of stuff was actually born neither folk nor electronica, but of the post-C86 generation adapting new instrumentation to naive or childlike or deliberately soft music.

Fixed Star Day isn’t much, but there’s a pleasant, droning insistence to The Sea Is Mute, The Waves Are Hymns that I really like: it sounds like the anthem of a particularly benevolent cult. It will still take all your money, but you’ll be treated very nicely along the way.

This one isn’t even on YouTube, let alone Spotify.

Marks out of 10: 6
Is it worth buying? Yes, for the B-side
Do I regret spoiling its mint value? Not bloody mint