A
DIFFERENT LIGHT The
Bangles
IT'S SAID that through
concentrated effort of mind a person can
alter their pulse and body temperature.
Listening track by track to the second
Bangles LP I wondered if a similar thing
applied to records. I found myself
positively willing them to discover and
harness the pleasurable energies which
they regularly hint at but all too
frequently leave buried amid the general
Bangles and mash.
The Bangles promise so
much. Not only do they have obvious links
through gender and location (all
girl/American west coast) to the craze
and sweet hysteria of mid-'60s girl
groups who etched their emotional
conflicts onto nailbiting tunes and got
the production sound of a 100-piece
orchestra playing in a tin bucket, but
they have a comparable magic within
which could spirit them into being the
perfect contemporary manifestation of all
that. A throwforward rather than a
throwback.
The Bangles are
undoubtedly at their most potent using
other people's songs. And it's on the two
most curious selections where they shine
brightest. Strange moments like Liam
Stemberg's Walking Like An Egyptian', a
sort of tacky but likeable composition,
and Alex Chilton's delightfully simple
'September Gurls' which gets rewarded
with a sympathetically low-key treatment.
In contrast, their own
songs (seven out of 12) need something
more resolutely high-key to make
the listener sit up and listen. It's as
if they write songs on the simple
criteria of what sounds applicable to The
Bangles rather than striving to create
material which is good per se. This
serves to reduce the options rather than
widen them, as the group function best
tackling things not made to measure.
As a result you begin to
wonder if they're thinking, be it
consciously or otherwise, about their
target audience while being apparently
content to make structures of pure corn -
layers of vocal and uniform 4/4 thwack
with a little moderately assertive guitar
break - that's all too effortlessly in
one ear and out the other.
Finally one is left
mindful of the failings instead of the
successes. The Bangles carry off a
cultured switch and twist of vocal here,
a twinkle of guitar there, periodically
inspired combing of publishers'
catalogues and occasionally conceive
lyrics which don't rely on the symbolic
resonance of "ooh ". But with
'Different Light' they ride on the back
of a big wave that's always about to
break but somehow never quite does.
Mind you, if it did I'd
probably be dead from ecstasy.
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