Oh - feck... and again:

I loved Hopes and Fears soon as I heard it; but however so shadowy its dystopian realms it paled beside Live at the Witch Trials and Unknown Pleasures, next to which I suppose it became, like Winter Songs, a cute piece of wistful escapism. On Winter Songs, the lyrics were more real somehow - less hung up on the sort of melodramic middle-class angst as portrayed in In Two Minds which just seemed indulgent. At the time I was working with all sorts of Physical and Mental disability / illness so it seemed a sort of Gorey-esque pastiche really, despite the earnestness of the intentions. Things like Piers and The Dividing Line combined to illustrate the sorts of urban & rural landscapes I revelled in during my late-teenage years but which, as I say, were a lot more vivid in the hands of post-punk than post-prog!

I've still got the album, but the poster's long gone. Maybe I'll give it a spin later, despite my aversion to the 6th form bullshit sloganeering (Contentment is Hopeless - Unrest is progress! and the equally catchy Self love deals in force and reaction - love of others deals in self-criticism and revolution) that underwrites it. When The Fall and Joy Division came along I embraced them with exactly the same eagerness with which I embraced the surreal antics of Vic & Bob after a decade's worth of so-called Alternative comedy. By the time the Art Bears did The World as it is Today it just seemed so out of step it was untrue. I tried though - I even bought it from Recommended on subscription, and I've even kept it all these years, but I never liked it - although the first News From Babel album had a certain folksy charm about it but I think that was the cover as much as the Arty & political sentiments contained in the music.

I always say that without Greeves and Blegvad the whole thing lost its humanity rather, which is why Kew Rhone is a far more enduring work than any of the above (The Fall & Joy Division notwithstanding). Just a shame they didn't take Dagmar with them; if Dagmar had been on Kew Rhone it would have been one the finest albums of all time. Maybe in some truly alternative universe, eh??