Entertainment For Lively Minds
Is Goth a singles genre?
I don't think The Cure made good albums. They just sound too samey and are pretty boring to listen to. I can hear merit in some of the albums, and I don't think they're technically bad, but I can't say I enjoy them either. I was listening to Disintegration, their most acclaimed album, on the bus this morning. After three songs I just zoned out as it was so boring and repetitive. Their albums are just not interesting.
I seriously dislike their opening trilogy of doom Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me had some good songs on it but also a lot of filler. Head On The Door was a good album but again it was also boring and tiring to listen to.
The only Cure CDs I authentically like are really hybrids were their signature sound has been mutated with another genre. Greatest Hits, were their sound has been mutated with pop, and their self-titled twelfth album were more than a hint of heavy metal has been added.
Also, for me, Siouxsie and the Banshees have one great Best Of and a great CD of Peel radio sessions. Their albums are rubbish.
Joy Division. Amazing band (and Goth in tone if not in ideology). Substance, the singles and EP collection, is a monster. Strangely I've never really enjoyed Unknown Pleasures and Closer. Which sounds like heresy and I agree, I should be shot. I can hear the substantial merit in them but I can't in all honesty admit to enjoying them as 40 minute slabs of entertainment.
Is Goth a singles genre? Are Goth albums usually too repetitive and authentically depressing to be enjoyable? Am I missing the point in trying to enjoy Goth albums?
Does Goth need to be grafted onto other genres to be enjoyable? The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails is a heavy metal industrial album but it could also be described as Goth. And that's one of my all time favourite albums that I listen to constantly.
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I tend to think of Goth as more of a look
than a sound, as the look encapsulates several sounds, from extreme noise terror to gloomy miserabilist, even if some have a fetching fulcrum of sameyness. Mind you, what do I know, it's more a literary style and/or architectural phase in my book, never having had much truck with black lippy. I'd love to see David Ackles guest with the Cure, tho', in a celebration of a transatlantic sharing of language.
Next week: is punk/rock'n'roll/soul a singles game?
And why not?
In later years
The Sisters of Mercy have distanced themselves from the "Goth" tag, and though Eldritch is clearly being disingenuous, he is at least funny about it:
"I'm constantly confronted by representatives of popular culture who are far more goth than we, yet I have only to wear black socks to be stigmatised as the demon overlord."
He's been known to single out a goth in the audience and lean over to ask, "...and what have you come as?"
Oh I'm sorry
my mistake I thought you meant have goths ever had a girlfriend. The answers no by the way and if they did it wouldn't make them any happier!
I did think the same
but don't goths only go out with other goths?
are you sure they not just
huddle togther to fend of the jocks , the casuals and maurading emos and new ravers. it's hard work at your average 6th form sticking to your tribe.
What rot
Goths are very successful sexually. I actually did some research into this for The Face several years ago!
The Cure aren't really Goth, but I would say their first two albums, plus 'Head On The Door' and 'Disintegration' are fabulous albums, that I still listen to in their entirety. These are also their poppiest. I do like 'Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me' a great deal too.
In terms of the true Goth bands of my teens, 'First & Last & Always' and 'Floodland' by the Sisters Of Mercy are wonderful, and... blimey this is hard to admit... 'Dawnrazor' by Fields of The Nephilim isn't half bad.
If you are talking about bands that aren't Goth as such but have that aesthetic, what about Depeche Mode's 'Black Celebration' and 'Violator'? Glorious albums!
I grew very tired of Depeche Mode
They wore out their welcome because I kept playing their first brilliant singles collection (81-86?). The second singles collection (87-98?) was pretty poor. Violator to me it was two or three singles and the rest was so-so filler. Playing The Angel wasn't much fun, but then that was a late period album so no one really expects much from it.
an ol' gurlfren o' moin
groo up in the Wez Cunry loik and she says it was all a bit of a mash-up of hippy/goth/biker/surfer styles down thurr. With beach parties, barn parties, cider, blow and amphetamines all over the show - hence much friggin' in the riggin', in the rafters and and on any available space horizontal or vertical.
All apart from her - of course. She was as chaste as the dew on on a snowdrop until she met me.
Why you tittering like that? Anyway, The Cure were her favourite band and In Between Days and Friday on my Mind and Close to Me not only show what a fantastic singles band they were but will always remind me of a summer sometime ago
6 when the Streetwalkers were on telly......
Mullarkey with corns. Are you my son?
"Never knew dad really -
some say he was a doctor in the Midlands somewhere though..."
Joe
How exactly did you do your research? Did you put on a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt and a permanent sulk and suddenly find lots of girls with dark make-up throwing themselves at you? Or did you just ask some goths if they got it on a regular basis?
I think he had a ready supply of cider and black
...
Hehe
My research was not rigorous, but at the time I was sharing a house with a much younger goth type (of the Marilyn Manson fan generation) - he would take me out to goth/rock/industrial nights and frankly I was appalled at the lewd and lascivious conduct therein.
Goths
are like swans. They mate for life.
Cape on! Outside! Now!
"Also, for me, Siouxsie and the Banshees have one great Best Of and a great CD of Peel radio sessions. Their albums are rubbish."
The Scream, Kalidescope, Ju Ju, Kiss In The Dreamhouse, all great albums. You might not want to play them all the time, granted, but they certainly not 'rubbish'.
Now, bring me my vampire ladders I need to get off my undead high horse.
Cape on! Outside! Now!
"Also, for me, Siouxsie and the Banshees have one great Best Of and a great CD of Peel radio sessions. Their albums are rubbish."
The Scream, Kalidescope, Ju Ju, Kiss In The Dreamhouse, all great albums. You might not want to play them all the time, granted, but they certainly not 'rubbish'.
Now, bring me my vampire ladders I need to get off my undead high horse.
Joy Division - Goth??
Not in my book.
I'd say "Yes"...
A few good singles...but nothing that can last over an album, and certainly (like Britpop) no bands that are worth listening to in this day and age. Well, maybe the occasional nostalgic blast...
However, I think at the time The Cult's "Love" was quite a strong album, and Sisters of Mercy's "First Last & Always" but most of their best stuff was on earlier singles.
From going to clubs and gigs I recall there were a couple of great singles, Virgin Prunes "Baby Turns Blue", Flesh For Lulu "Subterraneans", Alien Sex Fiend "RIP"...Red Lorry Yellow Lorry were they "goth"?
I also have to confess that the opening track on Fields of Nephilim's "Dawnrazor" album was amazing, I can't remember the name - but the sound of the guitars and the riff was great, they could rock for a bunch of guys in cowboy hats covered in flour.
Rest of their stuff was as shite as their name though...
RLYL - Yaep!
What passes as Trad Goth is one of my favourite music scenes, probably because it was the only one I got fully immersed in and being 27, and in a decent job helped. I've met many old Goths who were on the scene and even followed The Sisters/Neff/NMA/ASF etc. around the country, you couldn't meet a happier more well adjusted crew. These days we all have mortgages, shiney nappers and the old leather strides and studded belts must have shrunk from lack of use (Ahem!) because we don't seem to be able to get into them. The Gothic Rock scene may have looked a bit po-faced and scuzzy to an outsider, I can assure you this was/is not the case, the camaraderie, sounds and hedonism were great fun. It made me the wreck I am today and I still listen to The Sisters (had the expanded remaster of FALAA on in the car last week - it blew me away!), Fields of the Nephilim/The Neffilim, Play Dead and The Cure.
As to whether it was a singles format, well yes and no:
Yes: there were many great singles that filled the floors and never made it to an album
but
No: those same singles rarely troubled the charts
There's a lot of good music that deserves to be heard but is overlooked because of the Goth tag, just avoid anything new, it is crap!
apart from this chap
'Eden', Ahráyeph's adaptation of the Hooverphonic original, is available for purchase!
To purchase the track, either follow the links here to Rhapsody and Amazon MP3.com, or just open your iTunes and go to the iTunes store of your region, search for Ahráyeph (even without the accent on the 'a' you'll get there) and you'll see the 'Eden' single listed together with 'Marooned On Samsara', ready for you to buy. It's only 99 cents if you decide to purchase the song, so you won't be missing an arm and a leg after buying it.
In any case, we hope you'll enjoy our take on the original Hooverphonic song!
Ahráyeph
Yes I have an interest, he's a very dear and talented friend who deserves more exposure.
To echo Dolly
Joy Division goth? No way.
what ...
he said.
Black overcoat on, outside, now,
Were All About Eve goth?
If so, I still derive great pleasure from some of their output, and I can happily listen to the first two all the way through. With flowers in my hair.
I too was fond of All About Eve
I think they were mainly hippies with a side order of goth.
its all positive punk to me
In the flat field by Bauhaus, still a pretty good album, although I only ever listen now to the odd track, the rest of their work not so good!
I loved all this when I was 15, and it was a good way to get girls, provided you were happy with slightly punky girls with lots of belts and black skirts wth leggings (which of course I was) although in 1982 it was still punk and not yet goth, whether it was UK Decay, Blood and Roses, Play Dead, Joy Division, Theatre of hate etc.
What defines goth? what defines post punk.....in my eyes it required neither cymbals nor lead guitar (except perhaps for some exotic scratching around the pick ups (so to speak)), gernally underproduced and certainly no guitar solos, somthing that more or less lives me with me to this day
A single's too short...
The occasional goth single (the Sisters' Temple of Love, Killing Joke's Love Like Blood) can prove fantastic in a club, but I think Goth is best enjoyed by listening to a whole album's worth, in the dark with the volume up.
Although goth is one of the hardest-to-define genres, generally you know it when you hear it, and for me it's all about atmosphere and feeling - the darker the better.
Listen to SoM's Floodland (especially the extended remaster - practically a double album's worth of blackness and nihilism, and the production is to die for) and just soak up the atmosphere. Or try The Cure's Disintegration - Lullaby is a great single, but it sounds much better when it's slotted into a whole album of pretty dark songs. The same goes for NIN - they might be industrial but they're still popular with goths, and The Fragile or The Downward Spiral are full-on experiences with beginnings, middles and ends.
The, er, "more selective" popularity of modern goth means singles are a rarity, so groups are entirely focused on cohesive albums: try The Scavenger Bride by Black Tape For a Blue Girl or pretty much anything by Diary of a Dream or Garden of Delight for albums clearly meant to be heard in one go. All strength to them, I say.
I don't know whether goth is a singles genre...
but I do know that goths are likely to be single.
Or perhaps not, judging from what's written above!
But what sort of single?
I appreciate this is nominally a "goth" strand, so I will use as my example the group b-movie (who seem to fall into line there, but no doubt the hard core Edgar Allan acolytes will rebuke me for such assumptions) Remembrance Day I love, having bought the 7 inch. Good for 7 inches, surely 12 even better, I thought, forgetting about John Holmes and his difficulties. Like most 12 inchers, instead of the 3 minute wonder, you get 10-15 minutes of random variations and minimalist blunders about a theme, with barely nary a hint of the original creeping in, except as you begin to tear needle from vinyl in exasperation.
Can anyone reliably give an example of where 12 inches is better than 7?