The Wildhearts mainman celebrates a quarter-century of Classic Rock columns. For those of you who enjoy a healthy side-order of light to your mixed platter of shade, Concrete Blonde’s self-titled 1986 album could well be the Holy Grail you’ve always suspected your record collection is missing. Click here for Ginger’s previous columns.

CONCRETE BLONDE
Concrete Blonde
1986 – IRS Records

While this album originally grabbed my attention due to the welcome reuniting of original Sparks members, brothers James and Earle Mankey, it was the talents of singer-songwriter Johnette Napolitano that has it marked as a bona fide, no-nonsense, cast in iron classic as far as I’m, or anyone else lucky enough to own this album, is concerned.

Forming the band as Dream 6 in 1982, James Mankey and Johnette Napolitano opted for a Michael Stipe-inspired name change and began recording this album under the production umbrella of Earle Mankey (The Long Ryders, The Runaways) in 1986 for Miles Copeland’s IRS label.

Marrying middle-of-the-road rhythms, and almost Ry Cooder-style dreamlike guitar passages, with punk spit and Napolitano’s streetwise lyrics the album made for compulsive listening. No self-respecting music-loving punk in my circle was without a cassette copy of this awesome display of wasted talent that still stands up to close scrutiny to this day.

True passion in music leaps the divides of time with authentic ease, and with this credo as our guide let’s dive in.

‘True’ introduces the album with Mankey’s plaintive guitar wailing like a lonesome wolf before Napolitano’s emotive vocal asserts hold of proceedings. The sheer confidence displayed within the effortless swing of this track sets up the album with ringmaster’s magnetism as the lyric stamps home the trials of staying honest to oneself as society’s hardships challenge faith and belief. A timeless theme always worthy of a revisit from any travelling outlaw armed with extensive experience in the school of hard knocks. And a spellbinding opener.

‘Your Haunted Head’ springs to life as the bastard cousin of The Stooges ‘I Feel Alright’ before James Mankey’s liquid guitar sashays into town armed with unlimited supplies of cool. Lead and rhythm guitar are played with bi-polar intensity on one lone guitar track and the biting lyrics battle for centre space like warring poets in the worlds final mic-off. Thrills are commonplace when such talents enjoy the playful friction of their own tangled fusion, wrapping themselves around a theme and manipulating it with absent minded yet easy, vicious intent like a cat plays with a wounded mouse. Accurate and devastating.

‘Dance Along The Edge’ lets the pace slip into a relaxed groove as the delicious harmony vocals of this world-class chorus sail dreamlike on a sea of bourbon and regret as it soothes and empathises. Mankey’s masterful use of the tremolo arm frees ghosts to play amongst the Roxy Music rhythms of the backing track. Truly inspiring and mesmerising stuff that holds the listener tighter than a hand of cards, and with no less intensity.

And speaking of intensity, ‘Still In Hollywood’, next, is exactly as highly strung as one has now, at a mere four songs into this awesome album, come to expect from Napolitano and co. White-knuckle vocals, arrow sharp, socially astute lyrics and a backing track as tight as a junkie’s grip on the spoon, this is a dark ride through battered streets of the city not mentioned in the tourist guide.

‘Song For Kim (She Said)’ maintains the smooth gait and steady pulse with easy, feline grace as the slightly chopping verse acts as a springboard for another huge chorus to come bursting through the grey clouds riding a beam of pure Californian sunshine. Napolitano lets loose her cannon-like voice and appears to all intents like the sister-to-another-mister of Skunk Anansie’s Skin and Imani Coppola. Awesome stuff that chills the bone yet quickens the blood flow.

Six songs in and I’m finding it hard to argue that this should be in everyone’s top 10 albums of all time, without reservation, as ‘Beware Of Darkness’ raises gooseflesh, liquidises me and pours me into the sea. This is sheer brilliance, classic and momentous. Nothing from today’s ‘young-and-bothered’ is fit to shine the world-trodden shoes of this song, or indeed this entire album. Fuck, is this good!

Music and vocals collide in ageless splendour, showing, indeed, how it should be done. Oh man, that tremolo sweep up into that bristling solo. Oh man, that breathy harmony as major and minor chords enjoy melodic intercourse. Enough talking. Download this track NOW!!! Jesus Christ. The power of great music knows no respite.

Almost in full understanding of their effect on the listener at this point they allow the next track to follow a more traditional, yet no less thrilling, rock formula, with ‘Over Your Shoulder’, featuring another stock Concrete Blonde winning chorus and an overall shift in gear, and we are in home territory. The album has now sunk into the subconscious like the effortless company of a lifelong friend and as ‘Little Sister’ floats in delicate pop surroundings the relationship is complete. Artist and listener are in simple flow like a deal that destiny was always set to make.

And by the time the perfection of the country-tinged ‘Make Me Cry’ pulls up smiling by your side you are in little doubt that Johnette Napolitano absolutely has the best voice in history, at least for the duration of this recording. This is a song that will sit in a special room in my psyche until my final day where it will play alongside the highlights of my listening existence, making sure that there is light until the very end. Simple, emotional and shatteringly powerful, this is simply how songs are written, with pain and passion creating poignant melancholy with which to drive the message home to all who can, and will relate to it.

‘Cold Part of Town’ is like a final kiss from an estranged lover, bittersweet and imminently painful, this almost Fleetwood Mac-meets-Dire Straits number ushers in the final tune like the drawing to an end of an elongated moment of peace and understanding. And sure enough, like the end of a beautiful dream never designed to last, ‘True II’ plays the opening track once again, this time in instrumental fashion, perfectly bookending as magnificent as listening experience as one is likely to ever have recommended.

That very few people even know this album is in equal parts criminal and exciting. Very few things inspire me as much as a thankful shopper being turned on to a new purchase through this very column. And while this album may not be to everyone’s tastes, it certainly is NOT heavy metal, and although there is venom and spit aplenty the average punk fan may despair at the masterful balladry presented here.

For those of you, however, who enjoy a healthy side-order of light to your mixed platter of shade, this could well be the Holy Grail you’ve always suspected your collection is missing.

If melancholia, stirring vocal delivery, awesome guitar playing and sublime songwriting is your cup of chai then I simply cannot recommend this album highly enough. Enjoy each welcome replay. You deserve it.