Young Marble Giants Colossal Youth by: Dan Grimsey Mon:23-Jul-07 Label: Pias America Year: 1980/2007 WB rating 86 out of 100

Young Marble Giants were one of the ‘other’ post-punk groups.  One of those post-punk groups, that unlike Joy Division or the Gang of Four, that haven’t found themselves handed down from generation to generation, from one ‘greatest albums of all time’ list to the next, and consequently mentioned as an influence by every second band today. 

Instead their position in musical history appears to be that of a band with a passionate cult following, which have constantly tried to convert music fans to the cause.  In converting their friends to Young Marble Giants fandom, this cult following have been obstructed by the fact that their recordings have until now been practically impossible to find.  With the re-release of Colossal Youth, Young Marble Giants one and only album, this unfortunate situation shall finally be rectified. And the world shall become a much better place.

It’s easy to see why they have been so relatively overlooked. Unlike such bands as Joy Division or the Gang of Four, the musical ground that Young Marble Giants broke isn’t so aggressively obvious. They didn’t bang you over the head yelling ‘this is a musical break though.’ Instead they sounded as though they should have been wearing petticoats.  For Young Marble Giants, their musical revolution was a quiet and subtle one.

That said, the music of the band hasn’t been completely without lasting musical influence.  Whilst the sultry chanteuse style of singing that has always been apparent in the background of English indie pop, such as – in the last decade or two – Saint Etienne, the Sundays, Camera Obscura, and the Pippettes, originated from Dusty Springfield and Lulu, Young Marble Giants played an important role in keeping this voice alive during the otherwise very un-sultry punk years. 

There is a hand full of familiar post-punk ingredients: the plodding bass that always seemed to suggest a sense of loneliness and alienation, the scrappily played and possibly out of tune guitar, the pseudo-reggae rhythms, and most of all, the eerie sense of space – particularly, the eerie sense of space.  Very few albums have ever sounded as sparse as Colossal Youth by Young Marble Giants, and there are various reasons why.  Part of it is due to the drum sound, created out of a drum machine, that legend has it, they built themselves out of assorted bits’n’pieces laying around the house.  Imagine that, a home made drum machine.  That is totally DIY.

Colossal Youth sounds like an album that would feature a home made drum machine.  The album reeks of being made in a small cosy room, and comes from nowhere but the creator’s fragile and rather disturbed post-punk hearts. 

The sparseness goes further into the arrangements of the songs. The guitar strumming and percussion of ‘Eating Noodemix’ is so minimalist that the song seems almost ac cappella, ‘Wurlitzer Jukebox’ little more than a hypnotic robotic slapbass. All through this the home-made drum machine plops along, creating beats sparser than even Meg White would ever dare.

This sparseness creates an album, which is so stark it is scary.  The simple emptiness of the music makes the moodier songs, such as the haunting instrumentals ‘The Taxi’ and ‘Wind In The Rigging’ creating the soundtrack to something chillingly unwatchable. 

Then, amongst all this unsettlement, comes along Alison Statton, with a voice so naïve and pure, that she’s practically asking to be murdered by someone lurking in the shadows.  There is violence on this album subliminally suggested by the horror-movie organ and the rawness of the guitar and bass, and emphasised by the fact that in the middle of it all, is an innocent child-like girl with a pretty voice.

‘N.I.T.A.’ is a particular masterpiece of this form, with a stalking bass-line and lyrics about possession and haunting (“This doesn’t mean that I possessed you/you’re haunting me because I let you”) made more disturbing in the context of the performance than on paper. But regardless of the lyrics ‘N.I.T.A.’ is both endearing and not to be listened to alone, late at night, with the lights turned off.  It creates a world of beautiful eerie sadness that appears so bottomless, that it makes the melancholy of Camera Obscura sound almost cheery. 

Not all of Colossal Youth features Alison Statton angelic-voice heading ultimately and unavoidably towards a destiny of being a virgin sacrifice. Both ‘The Man Amplifier’ and the title track have a jittery carnival atmosphere, although it’s still a bit sinister, in much the same way that clowns are scary. Emphasising this mixture of happy, and scary and sad, are the vocal melodies, such as those in ‘Credit In The Straight World,’ which are almost nursery rhyme-esque in their simplicity, although that’s largely due to Alison Statton’s sweet sultry Welsh accent.  When the song was covered by Hole on Live Through This any nursery rhyme melody was hollered out of it.  Yet it is the Young Marble Giants rendition that is the more disturbing.

Colossal Youth is an extraordinarily primitive little record, not only due to the character of the home made drum machine, but the ‘real’ instrument playing which would come across as sloppy and unprofessional, if it didn’t also sound perfect within the albums context. 

But wait… if you buy now, you will receive CD Two, featuring 26 more songs. In general, CD Two is more ‘interesting’ than ‘must-hear’, but since after hearing the album proper you’ll be wanting to hear more – and considering that this is all the Young Marble Giants there is, possibly anywhere in the world - it shall have to suffice.

Brought together with the Colossal Youth album proper, this re-release establishes the position of Young Marble Giants as possibly the most criminally under-rated band ever.  Everyone should buy this CD, thereby ensuring that finally - 27 years after its initial release - justice shall prevail.