MUDKISS FANZINE
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PINCER MOVEMENT - JOWE HEAD - REVIEW BY LEE
In a climate where albums are being reissued repeatedly, it seems unthinkable that this 1981 debut solo album from ex-Swell Map Jowe Head has not been honoured with a release on CD until now. Joe Foster’s Poppydisc label has taken the plunge and is spearheading its welcome return.“Pincer Movement” may be almost thirty years old but this re-release is by no means an exercise in nostalgia. Such is the diversity and originality of styles on the album (save for the occasional permeation of primitive drum machine) it is impossible to slot this collection into any recognised timeline at all.
Jowe Head however does acknowledge the past with the opening track – revisiting “Cake Shop Girl”, his own 1979 composition originally featured on Swell Maps’second opus “Jane From Occupied Europe”. The lyrics famously convey unrequited love for the eponymous cake shop girl, adding pointed information about the inclusion of beetles in red food colouring for good measure. This version surpasses the Swell Maps’ original – its arrangement resembling the joyous sounds of a child’s birthday party – on Saturn. It leaves one beaming from ear to ear whilst simultaneously grabbing on to the nearest free-standing structure for balance.
An album that includes cider bottles, a treated floor and an electric heater amongst its instruments could easily be dismissed as wacky, but the wealth of ideas that precariously hang together ultimately display the marks of an astounding artistic brain. The riotous “Mermaid” , literally turning the accepted myth on its head (a topic later explored in current live favourite “Merman Blues”) is a playful gymnastic exercise on the ears that demands repeated listening, and “Equatormass & The Pulpit”, one of three collaborations with fellow ex-Map Phones Sportsman, is five and a half minutes of innovative, invigorating bliss.
The late Epic Soundtracks joins the fray for three of the five bonus tracks, most notably “Nearest Faraway Place” (a reworking of their earlier “Graveyard Shift”) and “Sliding Down”, where they are assisted on vocals by eighties pop/jazz chanteuse, Carmel.
Splitting both his cover of Elvis Presley’s “Crawfish” and his own “Diesel Loco Train” into separate versions on the album illustrates the tenacity where Jowe would not only cast aside traditional production values within tracks, but upset the applecart with the very tracklisting itself.
An album that stood alone in 1981 and still orbits in a different stratosphere to contemporary releases. Listen to Pincer Movement and forget all constraints of time ever existed.
Lee McFadden 3/4/10