scans.
FODDER'S DAY
NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN
GOD FODDER
(Furtive)
THE Neds on "Top Of The Pops" spoke volumes, really. How they've
suddenly come crashing out of the indie cult undergrowth in a flurry
of bouncing bodies and frantic haircuts and hyperactive instruments
without so much as a choreographer or a dance beat between them. How
they're young and shamelessly impulsive and tripping over themselves,
all over their cavorting legs and arms, with a quite unattainable excitement
about what they do. How they are the big, cheeky grin on the face of
a grim old chart, the unexpected flash of colour on your black and white
portable.
"God Fodder" is a hello to all of this and, in all probability,
a goodbye to parts. The Neds are likely to outgrow the recklessness,
the straightforward electrical charge, the simplistic chorusing of "Kill
Your Television", the youthful generation-gap ravings of "What
Gives My Son?"
They now know that you don't have to be childish when you can be child-like,
directing those torrents of enthusiasm rather than merely indulging
them.
The band are at their best when they twist the percussive might of two
basses and a lethal drummer into the intriguing shapes of "Happy"
and "Until You Find Out" or the rolling, tumbling, round-and-round-again
rhythmic impulses of "Cut Up" and "Your Complex";
when they match up a razor-edge guitar with a touch of vocal and melodic
magic in the occasionally dreamy and fully compelling, "Grey Cell
Green"; when they dance off, unexpectedly, down side streets, as
Rat does with his sprightly, Big Country-style guitar on "Less
Than Useful", and in "Throwing Things", where a solitary
bassline brings the song to its end.
That it's possible to be complex and strange without any loss of power
or spirit provides this album with its most enduring moments and holds
out to the group their starter for 10, but hopefully, there will be
some things which are forever Ned's Atomic Dustbin.
Rat as a guitar hero! Mat's chest! Jonn's eye for a good argument ("Throwing
Things")!
And better still, Jonn's attention to detail. The Neds' lyrics are littered
with all sorts of fascinating fragments, glimpses of everyday human
intercourse, from the mixed-up uncertainties of "Capital Letters"
to a two-minute tirade called "You", complete with a sneering
borrow from Carry Simon: "You're so vain, you probably think this
song is about you."
On "Until You Find Out", Jonn's on particularly amusing form.
"All the things I don't do/Just make me laugh because they irritate
you," he insists in a typically deadpan vocal, set against buzzing
guitar and a brisk drum beat which alternates its tempos as the song
proceeds.
Ned's Atomic Dustbin are fiery and funny and serious and silly and clever
and chaotic and intense, and infinitely loveable. With this LP they're
showing us their past, which we can tuck away into the cupboard with
the photo album, their present, which we can adore, and their future
too.
If anybody can do it, they are capable of growing older without having
to grow up, and they will. I'm sure of it.
CAROL CLERK