Garbage Days Revisited #60: The Icicle Works - "Blind" (1988)

 

"When times are good/When times are bad/Let madness be my epitaph..." - The Icicle Works - Shit Creek

It's the old favourite among under-rated bands that they're remembered for a song that really wasn't one of their best but just happened to give them by some distance their biggest hit. Such is the case with the Icicle Works, best known over here in the UK for their Top 20 hit Love Is A Wonderful Colour. I have to admit when I heard that song on a few '80s indie compilations, it wasn't one that stuck around in my head for any length of time and just sounded a bit new wave by numbers to me. Unlike a lot of other bands who I did get into via these compilations, I never really bothered to check them out beyond that initially and that, for the time at least, was that.

It was, obviously, the Wildhearts' fault that this changed when they opted to cover the Icicle Works' Understanding Jane as part of their Stop Us If You've Heard This One Before covers album and it ended up being one of the best songs on that album. That song had way more in common with the power pop of the Ramones than it did with the chest-beating of U2 and I promptly ended up going out and exploring their back catalogue in more detail. I think it was the awesome Hollow Horse which really drew me in to them and it quickly became one of my all time favourite songs - I mean if you want an example of how to write something that's pretty much perfect then you really should listen to it from the way it builds up from that gentle opening riff into a Concrete Blonde style message of staying true to yourself ("I can't confess my life's a mess/I've come to idolise you", "My past strung out behind me, contradiction and disaster/I'm in search of charity, a union I could master") before building up to that big skyscraping chorus ("We'll be as we are when all the fools who doubt us fade away") which leaves nearly every other group you could name hopelessly staring skyward knowing they're never gonna top it. Seriously, if you've never heard that song then I urge you to go and put that right this instant. Don't worry, I'll still be here when you come back.

All sorted? Good, we'll continue. The thing about the Icicle Works is that somewhat ironically, while they had their chart success at the beginning of their careers, they were a band who actually seemed to get better as they went on. Their self-titled debut is a decent effort which is very much tied into the trends of the time, 1984's The Small Price Of A Bicycle is, sad to say apart from the aforementioned Hollow Horse (which amazingly stalled in the lower reaches of the Top 100 when they released it as a single, proof positive as if it were needed that the British record buying public are absolutely useless at spotting a great tune when they hear it), a bit anonymous. It was with 1986's If You Want To Defeat Your Enemy Sing His Song that the band delivered a genuine classic though which saw them refining the best bits of the first two albums to genuinely nail it with a good and varied album from the tuneful pop of Evangeline to the angry poison waltz of Up Here In The North of England.

There were already signs on If You Want To Defeat Your Enemy... that the band were starting to branch away from what was expected of them with the album taking in everything from funk rock to folky acoustic numbers but nothing could have prepared anyone for what was about to come next in the form of the original group's 1988 swansong Blind. By this point, relations between frontman Ian McNabb, bassist Chris Layhe and drummer Chris Sharrock were deteriorating rapidly with the latter two becoming disgruntled with McNabb's authoritarian style of leadership. Sharrock would leave soon after the album's release to form the Lightning Seeds with Icicle Works producer Ian Broudie and would subsequently go through the ranks of the La's, World Party and eventually Oasis for their final album.

Similar to fellow Scousers the Boo Radleys' C'mon Kids or These Animal Men's Accident And Emergency, Blind is one of those great career suicide albums which was way too over the place for the public in 1988 to get their heads around but sounds like a proper lost classic all these years later. It sounds like McNabb simply decided "fuck it" and threw whatever the hell he felt like doing into the melting pot and with a rock solid rhythm section like Layhe and Sharrock to back him up, it's a proper mad professor's laboratory of an album and an absolute rollercoaster ride of a listen right from the moment it kicks in with a full on Zep style riffed up rave up Shit Creek which absolutely eviscerates hopeless copycats like Greta Van Fleet in one swift movement.

From hereon in, it's pretty clear that all bets are off as Blind swings from straight-up pop (High Time) through Waterboys style folk (Starry Blue Eyed Wonder) across to Prince style funk work-outs (The Kiss Off) and doo wop (One True Love) over to stuff you REALLY aren't expecting like the group going full on Zodiac Mindwarp biker sleaze on Two Two Three (good) or trying a calypso number on What Do You Want Me To Do? (not so good). I mean, guaranteed, not everything they try works but this is one of those albums you won't be able to stop listening to once you start because there's absolutely no way of telling what's coming next.

As I mentioned earlier in this article, this would be the final Icicle Works album with the original line-up - Layhe quickly followed Sharrock out of the door and the group were dropped by their label Beggars Banquet soon afterwards. McNabb would put together a new line-up for 1990's Permanent Damage but it failed to chart and soon afterwards he went solo. I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't really heard much of Ian's solo stuff but the little that I have (1995's Head Like A Rock and last year's Utopian) I've enjoyed. Again, it's something I really should follow up a bit more. McNabb has also put together a new Icicle Works line-up for live dates in recent years featuring Dodgy’s drummer Matt Priest among others.

Anyway, as I've said before, I heartily recommend both Blind and If You Want To Defeat Your Enemy, Sing His Song but for very different reasons. The latter is the sound of the classic Icicle Works sound at its best but the former is a brilliantly bonkers "shrug the shoulders and say fuck it to commerciality" album - one of those records where you're never sure what's around the next corner but one thing's for certain, it's never dull. A proper lost classic.