Great music, pity about the production

Midnight Oil’s “Red Sails In The Sunset” (left) from 1984, and Nirvana’s “In Utero” (1993), victims of a producer’s proclivities.

Elvis Costello is back, and he’s got a hornets’ nest trapped under his pork pie hat.

The punk rock poet has returned with his 25th studio album “Hey Clockface”. Whilst out on the promo trail for the new disc, he took a detour to discuss his love of PJ Harvey, and his contempt for the producer of one of her seminal records, “Rid of Me”.

Elvis was naming names and laying blame, and he had punk rock dissident and iconoclast Steve Albini in his sights, whilst also giving legendary studio desk jockey Jimmy Iovine a decent clip along the way as well.

“I remember seeing PJ on ‘The Tonight Show’,” Costello told Pitchfork. “She stood there with just a guitar and did ‘Rid Of Me’. It was like seeing Howlin’ Wolf on Shindig! So great. And then I got the record, and it was nowhere near as good, but it didn’t matter. For me, the record sounds like shit.”

And then the man also known as “Little Hands of Concrete”, started landing a couple heavy blows on his chosen targets.

“That guy (Albini) doesn’t know anything about production,” he said. “He might be the second-worst producer of a great record after Jimmy Iovine, who totally fucked up ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’. It sounds like Bruce [Springsteen] is in a fucking shoe box full of tissue paper.”

Whack!

Costello knows a thing or two about being at the controls in the producer’s chair with volatile and combustible artists, having been the delivery man on two stone cold classics, The Specials’ genre defining debut in 1979, and The Pogues’ opus, “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash” in 1985.

So, that’s runs on the board.

His rant is a reminder that many a great record has died at the hands of a producer with wooden ears, too much narcotic inspiration or delusions of grandeur.

What starts as a great idea can end with the sound of a record crashing into a ditch – or a box full of Kleenex if you are Bruce Springsteen.

Occasionally, a producers’ vision can be an act of flamboyance so nuts that the car crash becomes the work of art itself.

David Bowie’s napalming of The Stooges’ classic “Raw Power” is so extreme, so outrageous (it sounds like a nuclear explosion in a phone booth recorded on an iPhone) it will have rock pigs debating almost 50 years later whether it was genius or garbage.

Better to be talked about rather than forgotten, huh? To that end, the studio assassins have had their way, because here we are discussing their audio crimes all these years later.

And in that vein, here’s my podium of albums that were murdered in the mix.

NIRVANA – “IN UTERO” (Steve Albini, 1993)

That guy again.

Albini is a punk rock fundamentalist, and that is about as much fun as eating a jar of Vegemite with a soup spoon.

When Nirvana were faced with the daunting prospect of following up their earth-shattering classic “Nevermind” (1991), rather than go forth and climb the north face to the summit, they decided to retreat to punk rock base camp. Enter Albini.

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His production on the follow up, 1993’s “In Utero”, screams a throat curdling “Fuck You!” to the army of fans who bought a ticket and loved “Nevermind”.

It was a ragged, loose, couldn’t give a shit, belch of an album. Great songs still abound, like “Heart Shaped Box’, “All Apologies” and “Pennyroyal Tea”, but it all seemed incidental to telling the world to go fuck itself.

I love and hate this record.

Faced with the prospect of mega-stardom they once craved, Kurt Cobain’s heroes like David Bowie and R.E.M. embraced their new status and decided to run with it, bending the world to their will.

With Albini and “In Utero”, Nirvana sulked and they flinched.

MIDNIGHT OIL – “RED SAILS IN THE SUNSIGHT” (Nick Launay, 1984 )

With 1982’s “10,9,8….”, Midnight Oil delivered Australian rock’s equivalent to The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper..”, a record so bursting with ideas and sonic escapades it left everyone else in their taillights eating dirt.

So, what to do next?

A 20-something English whiz kid by the name of Nick Launay had worked his magic in the producer’s chair for “10,9,8..” Launay was invited back to be at the desk as the band decamped to Japan in June of 1984 to record “Red Sails in the Sunset”.

Where “10,9,8..” crackled and snarled and came at you like the sound of an intercontinental ballistic missile roaring over your house, “Red Sails” sounded thin and airy. Lots of acoustic guitars, songs that hinted at a new religiosity, and electro drums – so many electro drums – splatting throughout the album like dropped pies hitting the footpath.

“Best of Both Worlds”, “Jimmy Sharman’s Boxers” and “Kosciusko” still pass muster, but the opener “When the Generals Talk” sounds like the Human League being mugged in the carpark of a Dapto pub.

TAME IMPALA – “THE SLOW RUSH” (Kevin Parker, 2020)

Hey man, what happened to all the weird?

Kevin Parker’s Tame Impala have blazed a trail over the last decade with neo-psychedelic sonic gems such as “Innerspeaker” (2010), “Lonerism” (2012) and “Currents” (2015), rising out of the suburbs of Perth to enchant listeners the world over.
Sure, “The Slow Rush” has Tame Impala’s requisite trippy-disco vibe about it, but it’s less a journey into the unknown and more the sound of music being piped through a shopping mall to make your visit less soul-crushing.

“The Slow Rush” is a colour-by-numbers comedown so palatable and beige it was nominated for a Grammy.

Parker still has great records in him, but he needs a kick up the arse and someone in the producer’s chair demanding he push himself out of his comfort zone.

Anyone got Elvis Costello’s phone number?