Garbage Days Revisited #58: Concrete Blonde - "Concrete Blonde" (1986)

 

"But I won't stop breathing today/'Cos if I can't walk proud, I'd rather walk away" - Concrete Blonde - True

One of the best things about writing these Garbage Days Revisited columns is revisiting albums that I haven't listened to in quite a while and remembering how good they are. I seem to remember Concrete Blonde were a band who came on to my radar when two of the people I respected the most in the music scene at the time, namely Ginger Wildheart and Pepsi Sheen from Sleazegrinder, wrote gushing retrospectives on them within a few weeks of each other. I mean, if anything was instantly going to make me sit up and take notice of a band then it was that and as happy fate would have it, a visit to the music discount warehouse in Leeds that had previously been a branch of Virgin/Zavvi before that went bust and the staff rallied together to buy the lease out and basically turn it into a worker-run discount music store for a year before the cost simply became too much would see me find a copy of both of their first two albums for just a fiver each.

Concrete Blonde were formed in LA in the early '80s by singer/bassist Johnette Napolitano and former Sparks guitarist David Mankey. The group actually seem to have a bit of a tie to the glam-rock era (which you'd never guess from their sound) as their later line-up would also feature former Roxy Music and Angelic Upstarts drummer Paul Thompson - now there's a guy with a varied musical CV! The truth is though that while I still love the group's debut album, subsequent releases didn't really grab me as much as they deviated from their original sound towards goth and even some below-par attempts at hip-hop. I will say though that it's been a good decade and a half since I listened to those other releases and the intervening years have probably seen my music tastes go a bit more gothy than they were in 2007-8 or so so maybe it's time to dig them out again.

Ah, that debut though...honestly, if you've not heard this album then you really need to right that asap. It's raw, bruised and beautiful the way all great 3am reflection records should be. The thing that's always made it stand out for me is that it starts out gentle and...well, not necessarily upbeat (Concrete Blonde don't really "do" upbeat it's got to be said) but certainly energetic but by the end, it's gone into an almost depressive downward spiral to some of the most heartbreakingly raw odes to loss you'll hear.

It helps that the album opens with the band's best tune True and it's long been a song that I turn to when life is grinding me down to try and help me see the light at the end of the tunnel. The motto behind it seems to be that yes, life is going to throw some pretty horrible stuff at you down the years but if you believe in yourself (and let's be honest, if you don't then no-one else is gonna) then you can overcome it. "One more sunset, lay my head down true, one more sunrise open my eyes and I'm true...". After this, Your Haunted Head kicks things up a gear into an almost whiplash-fast slice of punk anger before the slinky goth bassline of Dance Along The Edge points the way to where the band would go after this.

Still In Hollywood kicks the tempo back up with a rollercoaster ride through the dark side of Tinseltown ("So it's 3am, I'm out walkin' again...") before the aching Song For Kim (She Said) is the first of a pair of Napolitano's ultra-dark laments, this one about a friend who committed suicide. It's raw and hurting - uncomfortable listening but incredibly cathartic in the circumstances. Beware of Darkness and Over My Shoulder keep the nocturnal feel of the album brooding before Little Sister and Make Me Cry lead on to the genuinely heartbreaking closer Cold Part Of Town, the desolate sound of skid row when you realise the gamble you made on coming to LA to improve your life has backfired on you and there's nowhere left to go but down and out ("Dear darling, you were right about them all/When it all came down they never came around or called"). Again, to call this one dark is an understatement but it's an incredibly beautiful stripped back song which just leads into a shorter instrumental version of True to finish the album off.

It would take Concrete Blonde until their third album to finally achieve any sort of chart success with a much gothier direction via the Bloodletting album and its lead-off single Joey but for me, they're at their best on this debut, raw, bruised, battered yet occasionally hopeful before the attempts at hip-hop blunted their sound a bit. Admittedly, as I say, it's been a good decade plus since I listened to the two other album of theirs that I own, their 1989 sophomore Free and their Recollection best of (the group would go on to do six albums in total before disbanding in the mid-noughties - Napolitano now lives out in the Mojave desert making a living as an artist and all power to her) so maybe these are ripe for rediscovery but I honestly can't recommend Concrete Blonde enough - it's seen me through more lows in the last fifteen years than I care to remember, alternately reminding me that no matter how bad things get, you're not alone in being the only one who's suffering and that there's always light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark things may seem sometimes. Thanks Johnette, James and Harry - I owe you for this album and how much it's helped me to keep the flame burning when it's been a bit low over the last 15 years.