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OK, you’re reading this on the website, so you must be interested already… but are you already a Newell/Cleaners fan, or just curious? If you’re in the first category, then you’ve probably got this album already. Great isn’t it? Lovely. Anyway, I’d love to chat, but I’ve got the unconverted to preach to first.
So, the rest of you: maybe you’ve happened across Martin Newell as resident poet for UK daily newspaper The Independent, or have read his rather splendid autobiography This Little Ziggy. Or heard his name mentioned in the more melodic end of the music press in the same breath as Syd Barrett, Ray Davies and Andy Partridge. Maybe, like me, you first heard of him by reading Giles Smith’s Lost In Music and were intrigued by Smith’s accounts of his Dickensian-clad, song-writing, home-brewing anarchist bandmate within. Or maybe – just maybe – you’ve stumbled on this page by chance (oh, you lucky people).
Want to know more? This CD is definitely the place to start. The tracks on this album date from the mid/late 1980s, a time when synth-driven music ruled, the beat was king and guitar-based bands with decent tunes were in shorter supply than ever before but make no mistake — this is timeless, brilliant, seemingly effortless pop music. Martin Newell knew (and still knows ) what he liked from a good tune (particularly ones from the late 60s) and managed the happy knack of being able to extract the essence of those bits, put them through his patented Newell filter and come up with songs that were wholly, totally original and yet familiar and instantly memorable. But his classic pop arrangements (drum machines notwithstanding) are only half the story. They’re hooked up to incisive, humorous and frequently lyrical, er, lyrics evoking times passed, the changing of seasons (and people too with the seasons) and personal experience. And they match the music bar for bar. You can practically hear the graft that went into the songs; it’s what makes them sound so simple.
All the classic, representative Cleaners tracks are present and correct here: Julie Profumo, which manages to motor along, be jangly and yet brooding; Living With Victoria Grey, its dated anti-Thatcher sentiments failing to hide a beautiful, uplifting melody; the autumnal Girl On A Swing; the sly chord changes of Blue Swan; the bleak-but-brisk skiffle of Johnny The Moondog Is Dead and perhaps the two best-known tracks, Illya Kuryakin Looked At Me, an all-time great song of the Sixties seen through wide, excited eyes and the laid-back, affectionate shuffle of Clara Bow. Honourable mention goes out to Radio Seven, which leaves you wanting more as its ascending chord changes and piano fade out in a slightly sinister manner reminiscent of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, and Song For Syd Barrett: ‘It was a dreamy English day/ it was pouring down with rain’ Great line!
The only potential downside to owning this disc is that it’ll become redundant when you realise that you’ll want everything else the Cleaners ever did; track for track, it’s pretty damn consistent as compilations go. My advice: buy this, see if you like it and then when you do (you will!), get everything else and pass Golden Cleaners on to a friend. They’ll thank you for it. |
