Alternatives to the 'alternative'

Sweet Old World
Lucinda Williams
Chameleon through Festival
Take Your Medicine
The Gadflys
Phantom Records
Unhappy Hour
The Leisuremasters
Session Records (Phone (02) 365 4217)
Reviewed by Colin Hesse

Back in the '70s — the dark days before radio 2JJ came on the scene — alternative music was anything which didn't make the top 40 charts. This included a fair range of music, good and bad. It also acted as a subversive influence on popular culture, reflecting the popular movements for environment, peace, feminism.

The influence of alternative music reached its zenith with the punk boom of the late '70s, with its smash-down-the-walls almost anti-musician attitudes. Participation was the key. The music was made by and for its own audience.

The music industry establishment soon realised that it could market this "new wave" of music as well as it could Abba. The "alternative" market was born, bringing us the not-so-alternative outlaw misogyny of Guns 'n' Roses and Ice T, and a general blandness as so-called alternatives have blended to become simply a different (alternative) product.

So, given that all recorded music is a commodity, are there any ideologically sound records? Probably not.

There is, however, a lot of music outside of the hype of the industry image makers: live music in your local pub or perhaps at one of the numerous and diverse folk or jazz festivals. What this kind of presentation of music brings with it is participation, at some level, of the audience. People relate to the music without the hype.

Live performance is where all of these musicians excel, where they can reach out and take an audience away from the everyday, joining the audience and performer together in a celebration of life. All experience some difficulty transferring this feeling to the recording studio.

The Gadflys have moved on from their first recording, which sounded much as they play, to make the studio album Take Your Medicine. This has allowed them to give their sound a lighter feel than they achieve live. With few exceptions, it sounds thin. The songs are great, particularly "Out Low", which was recorded live, and the one song that is enhanced by the studio, "Into the Ground".

The separation between studio and live performance is even more marked on Lucinda Williams' Sweet Old World and the Leisuremasters' Unhappy Hour. Both have tracks recorded live in the studio, and more polished studio material, side by side.

The live recording of the song "Which Will" demonstrates perfectly Lucinda Williams' ability to draw the listener into a song, creating a mood of intimacy and caring. The rest of the record is pleasant enough, ting rerun of her last release.

For reasons, no doubt, of poverty, the Leisuremasters' seven-track CD was, with the exception of two songs, recorded "live" in the studio. On the evidence of the record, that is a plus. The two studio tracks suffer from overcluttered arrangements and a mix which pushes the drums far too prominently.

The live tracks on the other hand allow the band to stretch out and display the relaxed mix of blues and country influences that meld into a sound uniquely their own. "Sorrow" and "Charters Towers" in particular sweep one along with their relaxed, no hurry feel.

That, perhaps, is the real alternative to the consumer society.