Goth rock; say the words, and presto—I’m fleeing. The whole undead subgenre just kinda went over my head back in the eighties—moping about graveyards dressed like a vampire simply wasn’t my idea of fun. I wanted to laugh, damn it, not ghoul about in tiny black spectacles with some deathly pale waif in a tragic black dress. Nor did the Spectacle of the Romantic attract me; I mean, I like Charles Baudelaire as much as the next guy, but at heart I’ll always be an Arthur Rimbaud guy.
Ah, but when you summarily dismiss an entire style of music, you risk throwing out the batbaby—you Goth kids will know what I’m talking about—with the bathwater. And so it goes with Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, whose wonderful music it has taken me decades to discover. Perhaps I like them because, unlike such bands as Sisters of Mercy and Gene Loves Jezebel, they eschew the romantic trappings of Goth in favor of making a big ruckus. The Lorries are not subtle, and unlike the Cure they do not write songs designed to make the Goth Girls swoon. They traffic in pure pummeling brutalism, and have gone on record as denying their connection with Goth and saying their primary influence was Detroit’s MC5.
That said, they do sound like a Goth band—Joy Division to be precise. Big on the drone and murk, with Chris Reed serving as Ian Curtis’ sepulcher-voiced doppelganger, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry had to go to great lengths to avoid comparisons to Joy Division. And they did, with such wonderfully dizzying songs as “Spinning Around”—a whirling and pounding tune that will leave you dizzy—and the furious and echoing “Monkeys on Juice.” You can hear them both, and more, on 2000’s The Very Best of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, which provides a very decent overview of their contributions to Goth Civilization.
If Red Lorry Yellow Lorry are a case study in the anxiety of influence, it’s good clean fun listening to them trying to escape the shadow of their Manchester predecessors. They manage it just fine on the deliriously happy-making instrumental “Mescal Dance” and the sinister and pulsating “Crawling Mantra.” And the pressing need to move beyond the ever-present shade of Ian Curtis impels them towards such great tunes as “Chance,” which features lots of dissonant organ noise and sounds like the Pet Shot Boys gone mad. “Beating My Head” opens like Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” and boasts some tribal drum pummel and great horns; it was their first ever single, and already the Lorries were eager to put as much distance between themselves and Joy Division as possible.
“Talk About the Weather” is all spiky guitar shards, tightly reined-in drumming, and rage; Mr. Reed may sound like a certain late Mr. Curtis, but he has no time for the latter’s romantic fatalism. The same goes for the bouncing and bass-heavy “Walking on Your Hands,” on which Reed spitefully spits out the lyrics word by chisel-cut word. “He’s Read” is the savage “Ballad of a Thin Man” reinterpreted; “Hollow Eyes” features a throbbing bass line, some so-simple-it’s-beautiful drumming, and a hollow feel that goes right along with its title. As for “Cut Down,” it’s a mad clockwork drone and utterly captivating.
I don’t think I’ll ever wake up one morning a born-again Goth fanatic; my girlfriend recently arm-twisted me into watching a few Gene Loves Jezebel videos, and I couldn’t stop laughing. That said, I’m discovering that not all Goth is created equal, and that some of it pleases me just fine. Why, “Spinning Round” alone justifies the whole subgenre so far as I’m concerned. And the same goes for tunes like “Jipp” and “This Today,” which didn’t make it onto The Very Best of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. I’m not certain Red Lorry Yellow Lorry ever completely escaped the spectre of Joy Division—at least until 1989’s radically different Blow—but I do know they bequeathed us some unforgettable songs while trying. And hallelujah; there’s not a song dedicated by name to a seductive she vampire in the lot!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
