Calenture [CD]

The little known Trffids are no more. From Australia, their unique blend of folk, country and rock hardly made a dent here at all. Lead singer David McComb's voice is somewhere between Leoanard Cohen and Nick Cave..a fine place to be. Calenture is a warm, sad, lush album, soaked in strings and well produced. Near hit "Trick Of The Light" is wonderful, while "Save What You Can" is quite simply on of the saddest songs I've ever heard. Their forte was a blend between melancholy and spirited music, never wallowing in misery, but entering into it just enough so it hurt a little. Anyone who's ever left anyone, or been left, will identify with the songs here. Their other albums are worth checking out too. Fine stuff, made somehow even more special on hearing the sad news of lead singer David McCombs death last year. Hear it.

'Calenture' was the Triffids fourth and penultimate album, for me it's as wonderful as 1986's 'Born Sandy Devotional' that recently garnered positive reviews for its similar expanded reissue by Domino. The Triffids are one of those bands that probably should have made it, but never did, as a result something of a cult concern (see: Microdisney, The Go-Betweens, Big Star, Felt, The Sound, The Replacements, The Saints, Comsat Angels, X, The Vaselines etc). This is one of those albums that certain people will adore, though some of the production sound is a little of its era, which isn't really the band's problem (future Pixies-producer Gil Norton, a few years fresh from 'Ocean Rain' produced). The original 12 track album with that killer cover is always an album people should own, but in this two-disc expanded version is more than a must. Domino spoil us, they really do...Heck, the album is worth buying for the title - Calenture being hallucinatory fields of green pictured by sailors lost at sea...

I love all the songs here, I'd say this is as definitive as fan's fave 'Born Sandy Devotional' - any bland period detail is levelled by the wonder these songs evoke. I love all the songs here, especially 'Hometown Farewell Kiss' and 'Save What You Can', two songs that I can listen to over and over, until the end of time. 'Hometown Farewell Kiss' has one of the greatest choruses in history, but it was of no concern to the masses at the time. That aching steel-guitar set to David McComb's gorgeously aching vocals and those words, those poetic words you can live in and watch them burn, let the flames grow higher. "My eyes are filled with light/my feet can't touch the ground/From here I can see the sights of my hometown city burning down/Now it blazes for me house by house/& my legs buckle under me/I don't mind I sing an old song of joy/For I know why and why it had to be..." - which says it all. Invoke a gorgeous apocalypse in the chorus-form...

'Kelly's Blues' following its spoken-word intro from Jill Birt drifts off into a sound like Microdisney doing the Bunnymen or The Cure. I think 'Calenture' fits better with the third and fourth Bunnymen albums than the Bunnymen's rubbish 5th record - though David McComb's vocals will probably remind many of their fantastic peers The Go-Betweens. 'Jerdacuttup Man' is a darker moment, reminding me a little of Tom Waits in the intro, while a song like several here and on other Triffids-albums that demonstrate the Triffids have been of influence. I certainly thought a few tracks on last year's over-rated album of the year 'Funeral' by the Arcade Fire owed a debt to this band...

The opener 'Bury Me Deep in Love' was meant to be their 'Suddenly', but sadly it wasn't...which is probably just as well. It's too sublime to be associated with the silly TV programme 'Neighbours' (Madge & Harold's wedding...don't ask. Though I loved the magic mushroom episode with Jim Robinson going all Butthole Surfers!!)You wouldn't get Scott Walker songs in 'Hollyoaks', and Walker is a comparison here - like Microdisney's 'Mrs Simpson' & The Go-Betweens' 'The Wrong Road', this is a song worthy of his reach. The strings are as sublime as those on the last Smiths album too. & have I mentioned the divine 'Blinder by the Hour', which like closing track 'Save What You Can' is a bruised piano-lead joy - so very happy-sad. The kind of romantic wanderlust that Tindersticks and Jack and The Go-Betweens and The Blue Nile and even The World Party have. Just listen to 'Save What You Can' and if you don't need this album then...

'Calenture' has always been a great album that I discovered too late in the 1990s, but is even more necessary in this deluxe reissue. It deserves more than the usual cult audience, it's too good for so few - I hope once the Triffids' back-catalogue is reissued, David McComb's solo albums & the work of Black-eyed Susans get similar treatments. These are songs to live by, and songs that capture the tricky thing called life, the common response - How could you live without it? What would that be like?

Following on from the recent re-issue of the magnificent "Born Sandy Devotional "the next in line is my own particular favourite "Calenture", though they are also releasing "In The Pines" on the same day. Like The BSD release this will have an expansive booklet and extra tracks. Like that, it's contentious as to how imperative these extraneous items are. The booklet , if it follows the same remit, will be a collection of hand written notes detailing the genesis and progression of the albums songs and while interesting leave you wanting a more empirical and authoritative version of the albums conception and the themes surrounding it. The extra tracks are usually very rough demos and though again interesting you are highly unlikely to return to them very often. The previously un-released tracks if indeed there are any may contain a hidden gem but don't hold your breath.

What is in no doubt what so ever is the brilliance of the Calenture album itself? Calenture is defined on the albums cover as a "tropical delirium that afflicts sailors who imagine the sea to be green fields "and is a fitting title for music as lush and transcendental as this. Beautifully produced by Gil Norton and sung with admirable poise and gusto by the late great David McComb this is an inspirational set of songs saturated with opulent romanticism and defiant melancholy.

The songs are mini-epics, awash with strings, augmented by pedal steel, melodic guitar phrases and plunging bass lines. Opener "Bury Me Deep In Love" was used for Harold and Madges wedding in "Neighbours" which is hardly a fair reflection of it's casual magnificence though top marks for taste to who ever chose it. Lyrically it sees McComb at his peak. On "Trick Of The Light" he tells us "The rim of her mouth was golden /her eyes were just desert sands" to a gorgeous tippling melody. "Hometown Farewell Kiss" kicks in with a cascade of pedal steel and keyboards before McComb intones resplendently "My eyes are filled with light /my feet can't touch the ground/from up here I can the sight/of my home town city burning down ". "Kellys Blues" opens with wonderful; chiming Appalachian guitars and flexes brawny bass lines. The orchestra comes more to the fore on the splendid "Blinder by the Hour" where his "Lips for food/my skin for sheets/my eyes for and my blood for heat /my two white arms for an overcoat" lyric is amongst the best love song lyrics I've ever heard.

The tone turns darker for "Jerdacuttup Man", a lamentation for an unfortunate soul who "Once lost in business/once lost in love" , was mummified and buried and now lies "Under glass in the British Museum "Jill Birt takes the lead for the joyous swagger of "Holy Water" and "Vagabond Holes" is a more muscular straight up rock track. "Open For You" is another plangent attractively performed number with Jill Birts backing vocals more to the fore .The one slightly ponderous song on the album is "Unmade Love" with its slightly stilted bass motif but finally there is the truly sublime "Save What You Can" about two lovers parting at New Year and it is almost unceasingly moving with an exquisite piano melody.

Where BSD seemed obsessed with the wide screen landscape of their native Australia Calenture seems more pre-occupied with the wide screen scope of the heart, the trials and tribulations that we go through in the name of that rather over used four letter word. It may not introduce us to a new pop vision or break any new ground but as a straight up rock/pop album you will not find better. Originally released in1987 its one of that decades outstanding albums. Buy it and bury yourself deep in loves enveloping vale and wallow.