10. The Great Unwashed: Collection
Released by Flying Nun, this is the Kilgour brothers from one of the great all-time rock bands, The Clean, often referred to as the Velvet Underground of New Zealand. I like them better than VU (& I love VU). Collection collects 'Clean Out of Our Minds' & 'Singles', the two releases The Great Unwashed put out back in the early 80s after The Clean broke up. I got this album as a gift from Andrew Morgan (see first issue of Octopus), the man with the best musical taste in the Ozark region. The home recorded tracks on here are nimble, improvisatory -- if you're familiar with The Clean, imagine living room arrangements & recordings of songs like "Do Your Thing" or "Flowers". Most are laid back, brief, off-centered but catchy. I usually try to appropriate elements from my favorite albums; often, the influence is structural -- other albums in my top ten are models for pacing & juxtaposition. Collection feels much more like a collection than a cohesive piece -- most songs fade in/fade out, a staple of home-recordings and improvised songs. "Toadstool Blues" is almost like a miniature Kiwi Can song in its artfully seamed cut-and-pasting, beginning with an oddly percusive harp-sounding instrument and an organ and a jangly guitar with David Kilgour's Lou Reed meets Mick Jagger meets novocaine vocals; a couple of random beats on what sounds like a cardboard box are brought in rough intervals. All sort of standard, if very charming, lo-fi pop, then the last 10 seconds are chilling: a disembodied vocal is introduced w/o accompaniment, repeating: "I'll love you always/but not like the old ways/if you will forgive me/you won't have to kill me." These small, momentary surprises show up all over this album, tiny pieces that don't necessarily do anything more than reward close listening.
When Leigh & I started dating, the first mix-tape I made for her started with a song from this album: "What You Should Be Now". A very small, perfect acoustic song, maybe a minute and a half that served as a good clearing of space for the Stone's "She's a Rainbow", the next song on the tape.
