Cleaning out the attic

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Here are two hefty compilations from back in the days - the 80s, mostly - when the word "alternative" when applied to the word "rock" still meant something subversive and arty.

The Clean are, of course, the Dunedin band which, spurred by punk's DIY attitude, helped to forge the early Flying Nun aesthetic and split after the outlandish local success of their first single Tally Ho and subsequent EPs.

Eventually the trio of Kilgour brothers David and Hamish and Robert Scott, thought better of it and forged something which almost resembled a long-term career with a global cult following and four albums in the past decade or so.

This 46-track double CD tries to capture them at every stage and figures chronologically is the best way to do it.

Starting with Tally Ho, the first disc encompasses the first two EPs as well as B-sides, out-takes and live tracks. That makes for quite a run of Clean classics - the frantic folk rock of Billy Two, the Dylanesque Anything Could Happen, the wiry drone of Point That Thing Somewhere Else, the still thrilling guitar instrumental Fish, Tally Ho's organ-driven cousins Beatnik and On Again/Off Again, a title which with that of madcap single Getting Older has come to describe the band's subsequent career.

The second disc trundles neatly through the highlights (and some out-takes) of those first three early 90s albums - Vehicle, Modern Rock, and Unknown Country.

The tracks from the British-recorded first show a sonic meatiness missing from the previous efforts as well as the songwriting confidence of Scott who was taking time out from his day job fronting the Bats.

The excerpts from Modern Rock and its follower Unknown Country caught the Clean in languid, pastoral psychedelic mode, the sound often echoing the expansive feel of David Kilgour's fine solo albums of the same period.

It's a lot to get through. But while the first disc can induce a twin attack of Nun-nostalgia and indelible tunes, the second one shows how the Clean's comeback was when they really got creative. All up, it's a fine volume of alternative New Zealand music history.

In the Auckland of the 80s, there was possibly no one more alternative than Jed Town and his ever-evolving multi-media collective Fetus Productions.

It sprang from the relatively conventional punk outfit the Features and operated under a few other mastheads along the way including the Fetals, Perfect Product and ICU.

The nice thing about the 20-track compilation Fetus Reproductions is that it reminds that despite their grim, industrial image - Town famously chiselled his front teeth to points - they released some strangely lovely songs as well as quasi-electronic instrumental guitar music some of which sounds curiously contemporary.

Of the songs, the best here includes the baroque electropop of What's Going On, Desert Lands which sounds like the missing link between the Tall Dwarfs and early Headless Chickens, and Backbeat which sounds like Prince - if he had been signed to Flying Nun.

It's dense and sometimes markedly dated (blame those drum machines) towards the end, but Reproductions is quite a delve into an arty attic.

THE EDDIE RAYNER PROJECT

Play It Straight

(G-Tone/In Music)

Eddie Rayner was semi-famous in the 70s and 80s as the brilliant keyboardist of Split Enz - after serving time in a few less-known Kiwi groups - and occasional Crowded House member. After that he made an attempt at being half of a pop duo the Makers, released a solo instrumental album, was behind the two Enzso collections, and has worked as a producer.

Now, in the tradition of studio boffins such as Alan Parsons, he has declared himself a project. Which means he's delivered a lavish album featuring various guest voices - some well-known, some less so - singing songs from various Kiwi songwriters which he's arranged, played and produced to scary levels of plushness.

It seems designed to partly revive some Makers tracks or those penned by the other half of the duo Brian Baker which the world so rudely ignored first time through. That means Alastair Riddell (Rayner's old band mate in Space Waltz) sings two. As well, Grand Central Band frontman Chris Melville (who also delivers Bic Runga's Bursting Through very, very seriously), jazz vocalist Caitlin Smith and Annie Crummer get one each. And no, there isn't much that's memorable about any of them.

As well, Crummer makes a one-woman stage-musical out of Edible Flowers, an Enz obscurity heard on Neil Finn's live album, and Play It Strange from the back pages of the Phil Judd songbook.

Likewise, Chris Knox's My Only Friend gets a sex-change and the full Celine treatment from Jessie Coutts which is only funny if you're attached to the original.

Just to compound its air of time-warp, there's always Riddell singing the song penned as the theme to the 1972 Nambassa festival making a Peter Gabriel-like opus out of it, and the Human Instinct's Maurice Greer singing Blerta's Dance All Around the World as well as another Judd song.

Yes, it's a big project. And utterly tasteful, too. With such variety. But if you too think it's overwrought, ill-focused and a load of nonsense then you're probably just outside its intended demographic.

The Clean: Anthology

Label: Flying Nun


Fetus Productions: Fetus Reproductions

Label: Antenna