4AD 1989

Listen to 4AD 1989 on Spotify.

The playlist is, once again, not complete because Spotify doesn’t have everything. The missing songs are marked with an asterisk*.

1989 is a year of change. None of the old 4AD heavy hitters (Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, erm Clan of Xymox) release anything this year, but instead Pixies release their perhaps most popular album, Doolittle. (Well, OK, Bossanova might be even more popular, but those people are just wrong.) Doolittle straightens out most of the weirdnesses of Pixies’ output and packages into a more easily digested format. And digested it was.

Kristin Hersh was going through pretty much the same process with Throwing Muses, but not without complaint. She’d been told by the US label they were on that she’d better come up with a hit now, and she wrote Dizzy to appease them, as well as keeping things more straight throughout the album. To her horror, Dizzy went on to become a hit.

The good thing is that it’s the only bad song on the album. Tracks like Devil’s Roof are just so irresistible, especially with Leslie Langston’s ever-evolving bass lines playing against the melodies. I didn’t appreciate this at the time, because I was bummed that this wasn’t House Tornado II, but I’ve grown to appreciate the album over the years.

And then! At the end of the year! New people!

Lush and Pale Saints make their debuts, and they both fit into the “yes, people who like other bands on 4AD will like these bands” mould, but they’re something new. It’s time for shoegaze music, and one major part of it started here (and, sure, Ride and My Bloody Valentine etc).

All in all, 1989 must be the year 4AD released the least amount of music. There’s only two proper albums this year: Doolittle and Hunkpapa. The rest of the releases are singles, EPs and one mini album.

The Spotify playlist is just two and a half hours long, which is half the length of a normal 80s year… This would change radically in the 90s: 1993 is over 16 hours long.

1989

 CAD901
Throwing Muses — Hunkpapa

Devil’s Roof, Bea, Dizzy, No Parachutes, Dragonhead, Say Goodbye, Fall Down, I’m Alive, Angel, Mania, The Burrow, Take

 BAD902
The Wolfgang Press — Kansas

Assasination K. / Kanserous, Kansas, Scratch*, Twister*

 BAD903
Throwing Muses — Dizzy

Dizzy, Santa Claus, Mania, Downtown*

 BAD904
Pixies — Monkey Gone To Heaven

Monkey Gone To Heaven, Manta Ray, Weird At My School, Dancing The Manta Ray

 CAD905
Pixies — Doolittle

Debaser, I Bleed, Tame, Wave Of Mutilation, Here Comes Your Man, Dead, Monkey Gone To Heaven, Mr. Grieves, Crackity Jones, La La Love You, There Goes My Gun, No. 13 Baby, Hey, Gouge Away

 BAD906
Ultra Vivid Scene — Mercy Seat

Mercy Seat, Codeine*, H Like In Heaven*, Mercy Seat*

 BAD907
The Wolfgang Press — Raintime

Raintime, Bottom Drawer, Slowtime

 AD908
Ultra Vivid Scene — Something to Eat

Something to Eat*, H Like in Heaven*

 BAD909
Pixies — Here Comes Your Man

Here Comes Your Man, Into The White, Wave Of Mutilation, Bailey’s Walk

 BAD910
Pale Saints — Barging into The Presence Of God

Sight Of You, She Rides The Waves, Mother Might

 JAD911
Lush — Scar

Baby Talk, Thoughtforms, Scarlet, Bitter, Second Sight, Etheriel

This post is part of the chronological look at all 4AD releases, year by year.

*) Missing from Spotify.

March 1947: Green For Danger










I’ve never seen a DVD from this er company: It seems to be called Mr. Fat W Video, and the titles look like they’ve been made in Video Toaster in the 90s. And the DVD looks to have been upsampled from a low-resolution, low-bandwidth source: There’s both jaggy lines and banding. But it doesn’t look horrible!

Anyway, this movie is rather spiffy. It’s a proper British murder mystery, set during the war (i.e., a couple of years earlier). Immaculate Received Pronunciation and lots of stiff upper lips, but also PASSIONS GONE WILD (i.e., some kissing) while the V-1s are whizzing (well, flying very slowly) past and occasionally cutting out.

It’s great.

(Except bits of the actual mystery, which are very… er… stupid? Yes, that’s the word. Still, who cares.)

The detective character is great. I wonder whether they did more movies with him? Hm… the computer says no, although there’s a series of novels featuring him. I think I’ll sample one of those; if the novels are anywhere near as witty as the movie I’ll be very happy indeed.

Green For Danger. Sidney Gilliat. 1946.

Popular movies in March 1947 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
33087.6Green for Danger
20707.4Pursued
17447.4The Farmer’s Daughter
5087.2The Late George Apley
17777.2The Egg and I
6737.0Framed
4997.0The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
21666.9The Red House
22936.9My Favorite Brunette
26646.8The Two Mrs. Carrolls

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

February 1947: The Fabulous Dorseys













This is yet another (probably public domain) B movie from that DVD box set I’m apparently mentioning every third movie in this blog series.

This is the rags-to-riches story about the Dorsey brothers (who were jazz musicians back in the day). The acting shifts between horrible and ridiculous, but the script is pretty amusing. And there’s beaucoup de jazzy music, so I was entertained. It’s a lot better than it has any right to be, really.

The Fabulous Dorseys. Alfred E. Green. 1947.

Popular movies in February 1947 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
9047.1Nora Prentiss
40147.0Angel and the Badman
5827.0The Devil Thumbs a Ride
9786.9Hue and Cry
11606.9The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
3696.9The Beginning or the End
8196.9Ramrod
5066.6The Brasher Doubloon
14016.4The Sea of Grass
2246.4Carnegie Hall

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

January 1947: Calendar Girl










It’s been a while, but here’s another B movie from that box set where all the other B movies came from. Unfortunately the sound quality here is so bad that I can make out only every third word.

It’s kinda charming. It doesn’t really amount to a whole lot, but it’s inoffensive. Nothing much to dislike (except the audio quality). It’s… nice!

But not very interesting.

Calendar Girl. Allan Dwan. 1947.

Popular movies in January 1947 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
66397.8Odd Man Out
3807.3Hungry Hill
30817.3Boomerang!
47447.2Dead Reckoning
2737.1Zakazane piosenki
21867.013 Rue Madeleine
5376.9The Man I Love
9446.9Johnny O’Clock
37336.6Lady in the Lake
2986.4The Shocking Miss Pilgrim

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

December 1946: Humoresque















Joan Crawford! John Garfield! And directed by Jean Negulesco! Er… Ok, that’s a completely utterly unfamiliar name to me. That’s a really unenthusiastic Wikipedia page. He was nominated for a bunch of awards but didn’t win much. But they let him make a bunch of movies, so I guess they were commercially successful?

This is… kinda bad? Negulesco goes for Real Drama in every scene, I think, and it falls kinda flat. He mostly doesn’t have good enough actors to carry it off, and there’s such an abundance of bad lines and uninspiring (but “clever”) cinematography.

I’m not sure where my immediate antipathy for this is coming from. I mean, in some respects it’s not that far from Douglas Sirk, and he’s brilliant. But he… knew what he was doing?

Crawford’s performance is appropriately over-the-top, but..

I do like the extended musical scenes. That’s kinda unusual. And they’re all from the Now That’s What I Call Really Dramatic Classicalish Music Volume 14! Let’s see… this claims it’s Gershwin, Bizet, Chopin, Gershwin, Chopin, Chopin, Korsaov, Dvorák, Dvorák, Wagner, Grieg, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Porter, Porter and de Sarasate?

But it’s mostly Waxman? I think?

Humoresque. Jean Negulesco. 1946.

Popular movies in December 1946 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
2938268.6It’s a Wonderful Life
182108.0Great Expectations
3917.8Enamorada
29517.6Humoresque
44307.3The Yearling
16837.2The Locket
65156.9Duel in the Sun
2316.6The Falcon’s Adventure
4266.6The Secret Heart
17196.6The Beast with Five Fingers

This blog post is part of the Decade series.