26c. Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding (Rough Trade)

Two weeks at number one from w/e 28th May 1983

There's a rule in pop which feels as if it's been in place forever - if a highly critically acclaimed single or radio playlist monster is issued on an indie label and flops, the artist will release it again on a major label to give it a stronger chance. This applies to a single we've only recently covered (Aztec Camera's "Oblivious") which will finally grace the National Top 40 when it's reissued on WEA in the Autumn.

In the case of Robert Wyatt's "Shipbuilding", though, Rough Trade just had another crack themselves, issuing the single in a series of new sleeves and grinding the promotional gears a second time. As a result, the record entered the National Top 40, peaking at number 35 - the first time the man had breached the threshold since his cover of "I'm A Believer" reached number 29 in 1974. It also hit the number one spot on the NME Indie Chart for the third time, becoming the first record to do so on more than two occasions. 

While this was marvellous news for Robert Wyatt, Elvis Costello, and anybody who appreciated the song, there's really little to be gained from us entering into a fresh discussion about it. Anyone who is interested should refer back to the previous entry, while we sniff around the nether regions of the charts down below.

Week One

13. Monochrome Set - Jet Set Junta (Cherry Red)

Peak position: 10

Arguably the Set's best known song thanks to its appearance on seemingly every early eighties Indie compilation in the world, "Jet Set Junta" is arguably also the group's best attempt at moulding their sound into something purposeful rather than gimmicky. Those Hank Marvin inspired guitar lines and Joe Meek-esque echos and futuristic atmospheres meet jolly, polite indie-pop which nags away at you without becoming irritating. 

I'm slightly surprised it only reached number 10 on the indie list, but Cherry Red's constant hyping of this one has obviously distorted my view of its actual popularity at the time.

14. Aztec Camera - Walk Out To Winter (Rough Trade)

Peak position: 4

Produced by Tony Mansfield of New Musik fame, "Walk Out To Winter" is a subtler single than "Oblivious", featuring Roddy Frame at his most reflective, pondering love affairs which can only be measured in seasons, not years. "Despite what they'll say, it wasn't youth, we hit the truth" he tells us, sounding like a profound version of Donny Osmond. Oh to have been an eloquent teen.

This record also saw Rough Trade get very professional and corporate on us all, issuing it as a standard seven inch single as well as a four-track double-pack, all with the aim of pushing Aztec Camera over the line into the National Top 40. The single was too reflective and delicate to cope with such force behind it and predictably buckled, only reaching number 64. 

It would also be Aztec Camera's last record for Rough Trade before jumping to WEA.

26. Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding (Rough Trade)

Four weeks at number one from 16th October 1982

There’s a moment in Sue Townsend’s bestselling novel “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole” where, upon learning that the Falklands War has broken out, Adrian’s father has a meltdown and tumbles out of bed, believing Britain to potentially be under attack. When the Moles are reassured that nothing of the sort is about to happen, and realise the Falklands are located off the coast of Argentina (hidden beneath a cake crumb in their atlas) normal family order resumes.

In the current age, where war seems to be a continual rumble in the background, it’s almost difficult to relate to this fictional overreaction. In 1982 though, the Falklands conflict was a shock. While the decades following World War II hadn’t been entirely peaceful, another country hadn’t actually invaded British territory in that time. As an innocent nine year old, I too sought reassurance from my parents that Argentinian soldiers weren’t likely to be parading down our street anytime soon. I had never heard of the Falklands and assumed they were either in the Channel Islands or off the coast of Scotland; this smelt to me like big trouble.

Once the national shock subsided, political blame began to be apportioned and sides began to be taken. Doubts were raised that the military or the British government had been taking the Argentinian threat seriously, leading to them being surprised by an attack which they had been repeatedly warned was imminent (this later led to conspiracy theories that Margaret Thatcher had actually allowed the war to occur for her own electoral benefit; I’m no fan of hers, but this seems unlikely). There were questions about whether an insignificant, sparsely populated island in South America was really worth risking human life over, and the inevitable counter-argument that the vast majority of Falklanders did not want to live under the rule of Argentina’s military dictatorship, and Britain had a duty to them.

It would be naive to assume there were clear left/right wing lines on these complex issues, though the general assumption was that left-wingers were supposed to be against the conflict while those on the right felt Britain had to protect its own citizens. To this day, I haven’t formed a clear opinion of my own on the situation, though by the time I was an adult and in a learned enough position to do so, the war seemed like a distant memory, so the pressure to have a proper opinion was off.

Meanwhile, out there in insignificant, gun-free indieland, it felt as if every group had a view. The anarcho-punks were against the war, obviously. Mark E Smith felt that the war had to happen, the first   contrary political position he had taken which apparently alienated him from some of his peers (it wouldn’t be for the last time). Some of the Oi groups were less subtle than that. And Elvis Costello and Clive Langer wrote this song.

Costello was vocally anti-Thatcher, and not necessarily subtly so. “Tramp The Dirt Down”, from his 1989 album “Spike”, is a fantasy about dancing on her grave when she finally passes away. While that song was visceral, “Shipbuilding” is subtle and unique among protest songs for not giving the listener an easy steer. Instead of laying down the law or satirically mocking the government, it takes the rare step of putting the singer in the shoes of an ordinary unemployed shipbuilder in a neglected industrial town – notably, the very towns Thatcher had virtually abandoned as non-Conservative voting lost causes in the eighties.

Robert Wyatt, who recorded the vocal in a couple of hours, is an inspired choice for the message. His voice has the correct levels of earthiness and vulnerability to carry the song, and he knows exactly where the difficulties and contradictions lie. “Shipbuilding” presents the war as an opportunity and a threat; a chance for a deprived town to be given serious work for awhile by helping to build the ships which may send their sons home, alive or dead. “Is it worth it?” Wyatt asks. “A new winter coat and shoes for the wife/ and a bicycle on the boy’s birthday”. The song opens with the mundane, the everyday, despite the enormity of the problem the record is addressing.

In common with the rest of the country, disagreements in the town spill over: “Somebody said that someone got filled in/ for saying that people get killed in/ the result of the shipbuilding” Wyatt sings breathlessly. This is probably the clumsiest lyric in the whole song, but his tight, rushed delivery ensures that it’s made to work; the one direct mention of the event every parent is dreading, skirted over quickly, almost in denial.

At various moments, you sense Wyatt protesting himself, justifying allowing himself to feel upbeat, the line “It’s all we’re skilled in!” saying everything in five short words. What else do we expect or want them to do? Sit out the chance to take their families out of poverty, albeit briefly?

Unlike most political records, “Shipbuilding” understands the micro-events that underpin society. As individuals living in capitalist societies, we are all to some degree complicit in wars, slavery, and cruelty we would not otherwise condone. We may have opinions, but our jobs and lives, and our ability to put food on tables, are inextricably bound up in situations we may only be dimly aware of. Even the melody understands this, the piano line following “It’s all we’re skilled in” allowing itself to sound almost triumphant, before falling back into a minor chord again.

6. Birthday Party - Release The Bats (4AD)

 

Number one for three weeks from 5th September 1981

While many interviews have revealed his uniquely dry sense of humour, Nick Cave isn’t particularly renowned for his way with a catchphrase or punchline. In the mid-nineties, you could shove Jarvis Cocker – a man who isn’t averse to a bit of spite and darkness himself - on a panel show and be assured of a few cheeky giggles, but it’s safe to say that nobody called Nick Cave’s manager about putting him on Pop Quiz.

So it's strange to listen to “Release The Bats” afresh for the first time in decades, years after it last pummelled my ears during Friday nights at the Rayleigh Pink Toothbrush (goths welcome), and notice both how camply brilliant it is and how indebted to simple sloganeering. For a track which is largely regarded as spearheading the gothic movement, it owes a far bigger debt to Joe Meek and Screaming Lord Sutch than Joy Division or Bauhaus, taking the ketchup and cleavage gore of a thousand cheap Hammer spin-offs as its source text.

“Bite! Bite!” demands Cave at the start, before asking loudly but almost incoherently “Tell me that it doesn’t hurt/ a hundred fluttering in your skirt?” an image which is immediately ludicrous rather than disgusting.

The track, like many Birthday Party singles, starts as it means to continue, like an unchallenged steamroller slowly crumpling up the edge of the street where the parked cars live. There’s no discernable chorus, just a continued barrage of stabbed guitar lines, catchphrases (which as the song progresses descend into excited gibberish such as “sex horror sex bat sex sex horror sex vampire”) and Cave ripping himself into a state of either ecstasy or fury. He seems conflicted about the bats, wanting to destroy them (or “explode” them) as much as he wants to celebrate them, like a wildlife preservation officer who happens to have some living in his attic.

The drumming is also worthy of mention here; in common with a lot of the indie chart entries I’ve been listening to for this period of 1981, the near complete aversion to a cymbal or a hi-hat is both notable and strangely typical. Martin Hannett famously got the ball rolling on this percussive style with Joy Division, but it also became adopted by acts whose debt to Joy Division was less immediately obvious – Felt, for example, were also adding bottom-heavy percussion to their otherwise airy indie-pop compositions at this point. In The Birthday Party’s case, it anchors the sound down with those jazzy basslines, making “Release The Bats” bit-part punk racket with a strange unwieldy swing on top.