Can - the Studio Albums

[Slim]

10: Can (July 1979)

A quite engaging start with a tune called All Gates Open. Is it about airports? I didn't listen closely to the lyrics. In archetypal Can fashion it doesn't really go anywhere but it rolls along quite engagingly - mainly propelled by a simple bass line, but with occasional washes of synth reminiscent of Kraftwerk. It has a low key vocal, a bit like a mumbling Lou Reed mixed too low. I can't say I like it much.

Next: Safe, which is three chords revisited for the worst part of nine minutes over a pretty simple rhythm. Got to say I'm tired of this sort of thing now. The synth doodles, the compressed fuzz guitar and the monotonous vocal do nothing to elevate it. It's a dirge.

And on to Sunday Jam, which - in essence - is more of the same really. But the repeated funky bass motif and Salsa rhythm do enough to propel it forwards for its four minutes and thirty seconds without taking casualties. Krautrock Salsa. It's a thing.

Sodom is a slow drum beat underlying sinister synth noise and that same old bloody fuzz lead guitar again. It endures for nearly 6 minutes. Karoli was a very decent rhythm player, he should have come up with some chord motifs or something. There's just no inspiration in what he does here. I can almost hear him wondering what to play next and he doesn't have any ideas.

A Spectacle is passable. A bit of a funky vibe, some harmonica, some scratchy wah-wah rhythm guitar, some shouty spoken words and thank god, Karoli wasn't tempted to get his fuzz pedal out. Yet again it's just a a three chord vamp. But it does have a bit of the old Can vibe and I think I would accept it as a filler on a decent album.

But wait - what's this? EFS No 99 is the old Can Can dance music, played with gusto and vigour and bringing to mind the spectacle of high-kicking, long-legged dancing girls in voluminous tresses. Karoli picks out the melody on lead guitar. No-one can claim they didn't have a sense of humour.

Then there's a track called Ping-Pong, which is 22 seconds of table tennis sounds with what sounds like a pocket watch melody or a musical box tinkling away subtly in the background. And finally Can Be is the old Can Can melody again, but this time Karoli improvises a fuzz guitar solo over it.

I wonder what the diehard Can fan would have made of this in 1979?

Slim pickings, but it's not the worst Can album.

[Slim]

11: Rite Time (October 1989).

Sometimes described as a reunion album, in fact the band hadn't split up by the time they recorded this in 1986. Supposedly Holger Czukay spent the next three years editing it into some sort of coherent shape.

But there are some things you can't polish and I'm afraid the final Can album is one of them.

Rosko and Rebop have left the band now, Holger is back on bass duties and the original singer Malcolm Mooney is back in the band so we're back, full circle, to the same lineup that recorded the debut album Monster Movie.

The first tune On The Beautiful Side of a Romance is, in all-too-familiar Can style, a simple three-repeated-chords affair underpinned by a bit of interesting percussion and a simple bass motif. On top of that there's a fairly awful, half-spoken, half-sung, lethargic vocal. Clearly, I was in for a long 42 minutes.

The Withoutlaw Man reminds me of Tom Waits. It's certainly tight and quirky, even if it's built round a single chord. It hints at reggae. I almost liked it.

There follows a really rather listenable tune called Below This Level with a jazzy walking bassline and some lovely, sparkling guitar chords. But the vocal only detracts from it. Who let Mooney back in the band? Honestly almost anyone could have done better after a few drinks.

Movin' Right Along - two bass notes, a busy drum part and that awful fuzz lead guitar. It drives along over its two chords pointlessly, but at least it's over in three and a half minutes.

Like a New Child - so bored of this shit now. You can call it sparse or spacy if you like. It's certainly low key. It's just a slow, plodding seven minute vamp over a couple of chords with an idiot vocal spewed over it intermittently.

Hoolah Hoolah - is this a comedy song? It's an uptempo, boppy tune that explores the phenomenon of wearing pants in "the southern side of France".

Give the Drummer Some has a nice reggae beat, a bit of '80s-sounding synth and more of the cod-Tom-Waits vocal style, but it also has the Karoli fuzz pedal treatment. A proper producer would have confiscated it. But the celebrated Krautrock 6-stringer redeems himself slightly with a nice fluid rhythm guitar motif later in the tune.

And, thank goodness, finally: In The Distance Lies The Future. Just idle, humdrum, monotonous wank with sporadic idiot vocal contributions.

Poor.

So in the end, over eleven albums, in all honesty there's not that much I would really have missed out on if I'd just stuck to my old compilation album, Opener.

[Slim]

Damo Suzuki has departed this mortal realm.

https://www.clashmusic.com/news/cans-damo-suzuki-has-died/

I shall have a listen to something from Ege Bamyasi later, and perhaps The Fall's I Am Damo Suzuki

[pxr5]

Oh, that's a shame - I'll play something by Can later on, probably Future Days. RIP. He did some stuff with black midi quite recently too: