Kirsty MacColl - review

When people think of Kirsty MacColl her untimely and needless death often takes precedence over her rich musical legacy. The re-release (and re-mastering) of the three albums Kite, Electric Landlady and Titanic Days plus a CD and DVD anthology From Croydon to Cuba, which includes several unreleased songs as well as demo recordings, should help redress that balance, and pay proper respect to an outstanding British artist.

Kite
Kite, which was originally released in 1989, remains the most conventional MacColl album of the three - if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. It is a solid collection of acoustic guitar-based pop songs, both melodic and well-arranged. However, it was Kirsty’s ability with her biting, barbed lyrics to prick the uncaring on political and personal levels that comes to the fore.

‘Fifteen Minutes’ rails prophetically, with a withering sardonic eye, at the rise of a vacuous, celebrity culture: “Then there's always the cash / Selling yourself for some trash /Smiling at people that you cannot stand / You're in demand / Your fifteen minutes start now”.

The punkier ‘Free world’ sees collaborator Johnny Marr’s frenetic guitar racing alongside MacColl’s castigation of school and hospital closures.

Often Kirsty’s songs were like amusing, musical short stories. ‘Don’t Come The Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim!’ chastises an inconsiderate lover with some cutting bon-mots: “Their boots just go back on / The socks that had stayed on”. Certainly, this narrative songwriting is more fashionable now (‘The Streets’ Dry Your Eyes’ is one example) than it was back in early nineties.

There is always an unmistakable Kirsty MacColl sound: from the wistful cover of the Kinks ‘Days’ to the more defiant ‘No Victims’, they feature a signature layer-upon-layer of honeyed harmonies and Kirsty’s impeccable vocal pitching.

Electric Landlady
Electric Landlady is altogether a far bolder, more experimental and challenging album.

The big hit, ‘Walking Down Madison’, demonstrates the diversity. Weighing in at a hefty six and a half minutes, it is a stop-you-in-your-tracks fusion of urban beatbox, electro-rap, and is awash with samples, tailoring Kirsty’s social conscious to a dance market.

Musically, nothing is ruled out: her fondness for Latin salsa rhythms is indulged in the infectious ‘My Affair’, a camp, breezy narrative of self-realisation. The sheer gusto and confidence with which MacColl explores genres is palpable. From the cocktail jazz sound of the unassuming kiss-off ballad, ‘We’ll Never Pass This Way Again’ to the Celtic folkiness of ‘The One and Only’, to the calypso beats of the anti-war ‘Children of The Revolution’, the eclecticism of Electric Landlady is still bound by the vitality and enthusiasm of a great singer songwriter in full flow.

Titanic Days
Despite reasonable commercial and critical success of both albums, when Virgin was taken over by EMI, Kirsty was dropped from the label. At the same time, Kirsty’s marriage had run into difficulties and was collapsing.

Titanic Days was the perfect title for MacColl, whose life had hit “that sinking feeling” and was overwhelmed by flux and uncertainty. Gone are the calypso rhythms and in is a darker, more introspective feel.

From the opening track, ‘You Know Its You’, the prevailing mood is not captured by the ironically jaunty jangly-guitar backing but by a lyrical impact that bristles with frustration. The very first line implores, “I want to shake up this world and not feel so useless”.

The arrangements include more strings, orchestral arrangements and are incredibly lush in places. The sadness and pain of lost love, in ‘Soho Square’, and the underlying need for spiritual protection in ‘Angel’ speak volumes of MacColl’s vulnerability at the time.

Every single track hits the emotional mark with such accuracy and understatement that you want to immediately post the album to the best upcoming songwriters, like Lucie Silvas and KT Tunstall, as a primer of how to write classic emotional songs without resorting to clichés or dramatics.

For me, the epic title track, ‘Titanic Days’ with its unexpected melancholic ending is one of the highlights of a faultless album.

CD Extras
The extras on Kite and Electric Landlady are good, but Titanic Days excels with an entire extra disc of goodies. Demo tracks including a cover of ‘Dear John’, a shimmery Enyaesque track, ‘Fabulous Garden’ from an Australia-only release, and live tracks of ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ and ‘Free World’ make Titanic Days the essential purchase out of the re-releases.

There’s always going to be an element of sadness in revisiting Kirsty’s work after her death. One of the extras on Electric Landlady, a very pared-down re-mix of ‘Walking Down Madison’ (6am Mix) in which the eeriness of the reverb on MacColl’s voice is set against a rather hymnic synth, achieves a genuine poignancy.

However, it is the elegiac qualities of ‘Tomorrow Never Comes’, the final track on Kite, which will move anyone who has ever appreciated the warmth, vitality and talent of Kirsty.

She once said, “If a record doesn’t make you think, laugh or dance – ideally all three – then it’s a waste of vinyl”. If you add “feel” in as a fourth, you get a good idea what Kirsty MacColl achieved.



For more info on Kirsty MacColl, check out the excellent and comprehensive Freeworld: Kirsty’s Site on www.kirstymaccoll.com. To find out more about the campaign for a Judical Review into Kirsty’s death, go to www.justiceforkirsty.org.