The second offering from Stiff Little Fingers, 'Nobody's Heroes' was released in early March 1980, just a year after their 'Inflammable Material' debut was release. A good work rate but not an uncommon one when it comes to the first two albums from a band with a strong live reputation. The band were not quite done with material drawn from teenage years of living with 'The Troubles'. Why would you drop that so soon when you are one of the few bands from Northern Ireland writing and recording such stuff? However, the scope of the album is much broader than that of its predecessor with songs about leaving home 'Gotta Gettaway', the hard road to recording success 'Wait & See' and the issues of fame once you get there 'Nobody's Hero'. A surprising inclusion is 'Doesn't Make It Alright', an anti-racism track by The Specials that had only been released five months earlier on their eponymous debut. Then a classic and still a classic 45 years later. True to form, the album also contains a couple of big anthems in the shape of 'Fly The Flag' a biting commentary of the new politics of Margaret Thatcher and her Tory Government, then not yet 12 months old, and 'Tin Soldier' a song describing the folly of a young man's enlistment into the army.
All told a great album and one of a classic consecutive trio of albums by SLF starting with the aforementioned 'Inflammable Material'.
Here's what the critics had to say at the time.
New Musical Express (1st March 1980)
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS
Nobody's Heroes (Chrysalis)
I CAN scarcely credit that it's a full 12 months since the release of 'Inflammable Material', that astonishingly strong first album by Stiff Little Fingers, so resoundingly does the impact of its brash impassioned outburst still ring in the ears. Within an instant it smashed all suspicion that the young Belfast band had merely been adopting the surface style of terrorist turmoil (its barbed wire imagery would fit punk chic like a dream) to conceal a lack of substance; in fact there was a commitment and vision to match the vividness of the 'Iocal colour' absolutely.
But that was 12 months ago, 12 months that have seen Stiff Little Fingers establish themselves as another successful act in the rock'n'roll circus and so, inevitably, become more distant from the situation which ignited and hurled them on their headlong flight.
Where 'Inflammable Material' was a frenzied expression of breathless escape, an outpouring of fresh energy mingled with stale disgust,'Nobody's Heroes' catches the band in a phase of growing self-awareness: still running, but allowing themselves a glance at how far they've come;still militant, but coming to terms with the realisation that like patriotism, anger isn't enough - foul realities require understanding as well as that; still in the realm of the political; but trying to deal sometimes with the more purely personal also.
Above all, they seem to be trying not to repeat themselves realising that each repeatition grows necessarily more hollow than the last - to spare us the sad spectacle of shellshock rock degenerating into agit-pop.
The lyrical diversification on this album is reinforced by.a certain broadening of musical horizons too - not too pronounced as yet, but the signs are there. Not surprisingly; therefore, 'Nobody's Heroes' is not an album to match the sheer obsessive and single-minded thrust and attack of its predecessor, because that stage is past and rather than be content to mimic it, SLF sound determined to develop.
It’s not a perfect record in any sense, but it's a hell of a good one, The twin guitars of Jake Burns and Henry Cluney, with the powerful back-up of bassist Ali McMordie and new(ish) drummer Jim Reilly, still mesh to form a-rock'n'roll unit of deadly effectiveness, full of demonic momentum and ever-present inventiveness.
The harsh rasp of Burn's voice gives everything,that cutting edge which, tethered to the urgency of the songs; makes complacency impossible; there's no comfortable way of accommodating this music, only outright rejection or complete acceptance. Which is exactly the way things should be.
KICKING OFF with 'Gotta Getaway', a forceful assertion of independence and purpose, the band cartwheels through 'Wait And'See', which is a sort of proudly defiant potted history of the group coupled with fond farewells to the original drummer Brian Faloon.
'Fly The Flag' pours withering scorn over the reawakened rat-race mentality that's being stridently proclaimed as our economic and moral salvation, and to hell with those who can't keep up.
'At The Edge' is another reminiscence about the teenage impulse to strike out for unknown freedoms, not the most novel theme for a song but breathing a fierce authenticity from every note all the same.
Side one closes with ‘Nobody's Hero' itself- a slightly defensive piece of self-justification (prompted, one suspects, by a review of last year's Lyceum show) to the effect that Burns emphatically rejects stardom and neither, by the same token, can he take responsibility for righting wrongs.beyond his control. Talk of heroes, he's saying; whether admiring or accusing, only distracts from the real problem, our inaction and passiveness.
'Bloody Dub' opens the second side and being an instrumental, its title could look at first like the gratuitous use ' of the vocabulary of tragedy simply for cheap effect. It isn't. 'Bloody Dub' is far better than a throwaway reggae workout; the best exposition yet of the band's potential, it's an expressive and almost shockingly evocative piece of work. Shattering glass and grating guitar drive the message home as well as any words could ever do.
The album's most surprising inclusion, however, comes in the form of a cover version: The Specials' 'Doesn't Make It All Right'. Given SLF’s concern with bigotry in all its different manifestations, the lyrics follow on logically, and it's not their first excursion into a reggae-based song either (the last LP had Marley's' Johnny Was'); but the band's frantic approach works against the restraint and simplicity inherent in the song, and it compares unfavourably with the original.
'I Don't Like You' is just a semi-serious stream of vindictive invective rather on the lines.of Cooper Clarke's 'Twat' ("If a thought came into your head / It would die of loneliness… You don't.entertain ideas / You simply bore them") and 'No Change' continues to explore the personal aspects of the band's present situation as it relates to the lives they've left behind.
'Tin Soldiers' finishes the side on a more stirring note, a bitter tirade for recruiting sergeants everywhere and typical of the Fingers' razor sharp whirlwind of noise.
Most of the words are again contributed by manager/journalist Gordon Ogilvie, as direct and concise as the music which brings them into life. Stiff Little Fingers might be nobody's heroes, but they're still worth anybody's time. Don't hang around.
Paul Du Noyer
In sounds Garry Bushell took a harder line on the album, but it's a review that kind of concurs with my own feelings towards 'Nobody's Heroes', critisisms that for me place the album some behind 'Inflammable Material' and 'Go For It' in terms of the Best of Fingers.
Sounds (1st March 1980)
Record Mirror (1st March 1980)
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS
'Nobody's Heroes'
(Chrysalis CHR1270)
ready to believe that. Subtle, SLF are not, Jake Burns' vocal chords sounding like they receive a
thorough sandpapering, every hour on the hour.
Rougher than Strummer at his rawest, Burns' voice is the most distinguishing feature of this album, which, Iike its predecessor, has arrived a good two years too late to have its fullest impact.
Judging by the credits, the Fingers are still very much the puppet of Daily Express journalist Gordon Ogilivie, whose philosophy about giving all the lyrics a political slant left the way open for the Undertones to become Northern Ireland's freshest talent.
To be fair, this time round, politics take more of a subsidiary role, though 'Fly The Flag' is hardly an exercise in patriotism, even if it is to be praised for its restrain . 'Wait And See' is a rowdy two fingers at all the band's early skeptics which many young groups are likely to ' be able to identify with, while the single, 'At The 'Edge', is more universal still.
But the unbridled abuse of 'I Don't Like You 'is nothing but a poor man's version of John Cooper Clarke's 'Twat', and .as for covering The Specials' ' It Doesn't Make It Alright', I do a better cover myself - ask John Shearlaw.
Even cornier is 'Tin Soldiers' , doubtlessly based on CSN & Y's 'Ohio' , except anti-war songs weren't even the last decade's thing.
Musically , there's nothing particularly ambitious, and if there still is a market for the three-chord thrash, I'm sure it's more likely to be in the dance hall rather than the sitting room . At times, there s some OK rock 'n' roll , but, I ask myself, is that what the world really needs' at this point in time? An unholy pastiche of the Upstarts, Sham and early Clash? If you ain't got the picture, you obviously do need it.
I don't. + + +
MIKE NICHOLLS
And just for good measure, here's a final word from Smash Hits.
Smash Hits (20th March 1980)
No comments:
Post a Comment