The Complete Anthology (Disc 3) - Stump

Track list:
  
1. The Queen And The Pope
2. Seven Sisters
3. The Rats
4. Warm In The Knowledge
5. The Song's Remains
6. Safe Sex
7. The Lipstick Maker
8. Maggie
9. Love Is Too Small A Word
10. Ice The Levant
11. Thelma
12. Angst Forecast
13. Heathers In Shelter

Running time: 40 minutes
Released: 2007

More Stump now, such is the way with multi-disc retrospectives. You may wonder, if you are reading in order (as if you are) why I jump from Disc 1 to Disc 3. Where is Disc 2? Well, that is filed under the album it represents, A Fierce Pancake. I'm not sure why but I am not about to go and restructure things for consistency - it simply wouldn't be in the spirit of this band!

Disc one was a mess, but with some interesting bits and pieces mixed in, and I kept more than I thought I might. That was the last post of 2017, this the first of 2018. What does the new year bring?

My first thought is that the sound is more matured than yesterday's fare. There is more obviously a tune, albeit one realised through odd sounds and weird lyrics. The Queen and the Pope is much more clearly a song than Tupperware Stripper was (or many of the other offerings). It feels milder, too... watered down somehow. This is both good and bad. If the more extreme tendencies have been reigned in then there might be some more palatable sounds here, but on the other hand if it dulls the spirit, then it might end up with a bunch of dull tripe.

Early impressions are more the latter.

I was not expecting folksy sounds. The Rats opens with a very exaggerated Irish vocal, and a twangy little string accompaniment. I rather like it, moreso for the surprise, but it really does not belong on the same album as the first couple of tracks. It is over quickly and replaced by more of the quirky electro peaks and troughs that remind me of the small volume of Devo tracks I acquired at some point. It's spikey, hard to get into, but I think it largely works. The fast-paced vocal offsets the janky sounds well, though it goes a little tuneless in places and the end is bizarrely sudden.

This disc is jumping all over the place as the next number goes slower and darker. There is a nice atmosphere to it, the thrum of the bass in particular. The top end is light touch, soft, subservient and layers well for the most part - but then it takes over as a focus, a sort of evil magic tingle (if you've seen the same films or played the same games I have that might mean something) and it's an awkward, unpleasant central passage. Thankfully order is restored on the track so as not to sour me on it.

Then ugh. Safe Sex is just noises, unpleasant noises - bubbling sounds and nasal vocalisations. It does not belong on any record, ever.

It's a struggle not to be distracted by shopping... my brain is clearly in an "acquiring things" mode and with the sales on, I have a couple of wardrobe requirements to fill. Yet I haven't been motivated to look for things when not sat here listening. Classic attention and focus problems that have affected me for a few months now, and I am not sure why. In any case, after the horror interlude, the sounds have returned to something more tuneful. It is all very dated, but there is an 80s charm to Stump when they are palatable, and an 80s horror to them when they are not.

I have not been as immediately aware of, and uncomfortable with, the nonsense lyrics today. My instinct is that they are as all over the place as before, but they are less of a front and centre feature. Now there is a repeat of a track from yesterday... Ice the Levant has improved marginally on this later recording. Like many of the tracks here there is a more definite sense of a tune behind the screams and proclamations of oddity. It's still not worth holding on to, though there is a really pleasing resonance to some of the lower notes that I don't recall from disc 1. The screeches are too much though, as they were before.

Now that I am most of the way through, I will re-assert that yes, this is a more mature sound. By the time these tunes were recorded Stump had obviously refined their songwriting and performance. There is less random cacophony and more consideration. More of a standard pattern to subvert with their randomness rather than noise for noise's sake. There might not be anything as iconic as a man shouting "does the fish have chips?" but I prefer this more harnessed, controlled weirdness. They still have the interesting sounds here, they just use them in the production of tunes that are more, well, tuneful. For all my distractions and reluctance to fit this in today I have rather enjoyed it and am surprised to find myself keeping much more than not. The last track puts me in mind of Laika & the Cosmonauts, which is a very positive thing. Happy New Year.

The Complete Anthology (Disc 1) - Stump

Track list:
  
1. Tupperware Stripper
2. Our Fathers
3. Kitchen Table
4. Buffalo
5. Everything In Its Place
6. Bit Part Actor
7. Orgasm Way
8. Ice The Levant
9. Grab Hands
10. 50-0-55   
11. Big End

Running time: 35 minutes
Released: 2007

Complete random insert now. Back when I was getting into Microdisney via Cathal Coughlan's solo work, Stump were recommended to me by some algorithm somewhere (I don't recall whether it was a shop or a music site). I fell for the trap, bought the recently released Complete Anthology and then... thought it was odd and ignored it. Was that a good move?

By the by, this is apparently a concatenation of two releases, Quirk Out and Mud on a Colon.

The first sounds are hardly tuneful, and the early voice sounds more like a lead in to a budget 60's sci-fi tune than a pop song... my first musical point of reference is early Pink Floyd. There are some quite funky sounds buried in this track, in and amongst the rubble of the rest, but it is hard to see myself ever choosing to listen to Tupperware Stripper again. Amusing title, though, and the drive of the rhythm is a positive that hints there may be something salvageable in the anthology as a whole. We shall see!

This listen is my New Year's Eve; I've never been a fan of this night of the year and a safe, low key solo pursuit is just the ticket... even if the content I am consuming is not immediately lovable. I like Our Fathers a lot more than the first number though - there is a more definite tune here, whilst preserving some of the interest and quirkiness. The ending is a little but anti-climactic though, and the cutover to the next track is jarring. It jumps into precisely the kind of experimental noise-pop that I was expecting from my brief experiences of Stump when ripping the CDs... and it's not a culture I buy into, though that said I think the vocals that clearly don't fit standard lines and structures provide interest and creativity; it's the music around that which lets it down.

I am more parochial about my music these days for practical reasons. I have too much, I've never liked radio and the ways that I expanded my horizons in the past are less effective now - the lists of new releases on big online stores are dominated by re-releases and multiple different formats of mainstream items which I have no interest in, so I don't get to discover. I'd like to think I would be open to new artists, new sounds etc. - certainly I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the less familiar works I have listened to - but I don't go out of my way to find them. I also just... don't get to gigs anymore. No idea what is on, where, and no-one to go with if I were make for live music retreating out of my life.

I guess it is a question of priorities to some degree, but I do think it's got harder to sort wheat from chaff because there is now so much more... and the latter has always dominated in scale.

Anyhow - meaningless digression aside, if you overlook the questionable lyrics and suppress the suspicion that they're being weird for the sake of being weird, Stump had some talent in there. There is experimentation and there is cacophony, but there are also funky structures, rhythms and good pace. Nothing can save the horrible noise of Bit Part Actor though... it's just awful. It marks the end of the first EP; the latter 5 tracks are the second.

No song I have heard so far this evening has been entirely likable, but equally not everything has been a write off. For all the noise and weirdness in the construction of the sound, I think the most dubious element of the tracks is the lyrical content. The other parts wax and wane in quality, but the lyrics are just sheer nonsense throughout, and "adult" in that particularly juvenile way more often than I am comfortable with. I find it odd that I bring that up here, but for once I actually feel able to track the words to some degree... perhaps the lack of traditional tune structures throws a little more focus on the script?

Experimentation can be a good thing, but by its nature it is hit and miss. On this disc I feel the balance is more miss than hit. For every cool hook and each sweet sound there are two or three unpalatable items - crap words, walls of tuneless sound, incoherent track structure and so on. On the plus side, the tracks have been short and the whole disc is less than 40 minutes so it's not like it's eaten too much of my life. I find that I am keeping about half of it, much more than I thought I would, because enough of the tracks contained little positives to warrant another listen. By rights I should nuke it all, really, but sometimes that spirit of experimentation is welcome, and for when it is, there is Stump.