It’s often the ones who slip through the cracks who are the most interesting, isn’t it? Take the largely unheard history of angular post-punkers MANICURED NOISE as a case in point if you will. Based in early Factory-era Manchester on the cusp of the 1980s, they rehearsed next door to the influential Joy Division, supported the likes of Wire, Siouxsie and The Pop Group and basically turned up on all the right gig posters. How the hell did we miss out on them on a wider scale at the time and why doesn’t their name turn up when the likes of Maximo Park are talking of their influences these days?
Broadly because the enormously promising MN sadly imploded (due to the usual personal and musical differences malarkey) just as they were about to make bigger ripples across the early ‘80s pop pond. Yes they made a couple of excellent singles on the short-lived Pre label (including ‘Faith’, which thoroughly deserves its’ rep as a ‘lost’ classic), recorded a David Jensen Radio One session and clearly had much more to offer, yet they broke up before they’d recorded their debut LP, thus leaving behind an impossibly slim volume of work, none of which has made it to CD before.
So all credit to the vigilant aural archivists at Caroline True, because they have assembled a tremendous retrospective collection with the 18-track ‘Northern Stories 1978 – 80’. The title is cogent, too, because – while MN’S nominal leader Steve Walsh (vocals/ guitar) was a refugee of punk’s diaspora in London – the rhythmically-enhanced sound of their best material is caught up in the gritty and funkily resonant sounds emerging from the city that was responsible for getting the country to dance during the 1980s. Walsh had slummed it in various less-than-salubrious digs in Whalley Range and Hulme when he moved up from London (via Rome) and evidently soaked up the atmosphere, for it permeates these brittle, angular songs in no uncertain terms.
The first half of the collection represents the meat of MN’S officially-recorded output and it’s consistently fine. The singles ‘Metronome’ and ‘Faith’ are propulsive and exciting, pushed along by the excellent all-girl disco rhythm section of Jodie Taylor (bass) and Stephanie Nuttall (drums), while Walsh’s skinny guitar gives it up to the funk and his incredulous vocals land somewhere the overheating meltdown of David Byrne and the cynical militancy of Jon King. The potential wild card is sax/ clarinet player Peter Bannister, whose playing can either be melodic and succinct (‘Payday’, ‘Faith’) or dissonant and challenging (‘Metronome’, where his squawking recalls Clock DVA’s Charlie Collins), but whatever he adds to the stew, it’s always aromatic and intriguing.
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They pull it all together for the BBC session recorded at the tail end of 1979 and recorded with the help of The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart. Although MN possessed a similarly inherent funkiness to The Pop Group, though, this session finds them moving in an increasingly sophisticated direction, not least where the smooth and seductive ‘Mystery Sound’ is concerned, though the strident ‘Payday’ and the evocative ‘Dreams Money Can Buy’ show that edginess was always going to be a factor in their sound.
The latter half of the collection is a little more uneven, but then it’s sourced from several different historical locations, namely live tracks recorded at the Marquee in London, a demo session from This Heat’s Cold Storage studio and a rehearsal tape. Inevitably, it’s not as consistent, but still fascinating stuff, showcasing the band’s more experimental earlier days. Tracks like ‘Competition’ can’t but help recall ‘Buildings & Food’-era Talking Heads, while MN’S collective love of soundtracks gets full rein on the likes of the chilly spy theme of ‘Music A’ and the Lalo Schifrin cover ‘The Human Fly’ where they seemingly relocate ‘Dirty Harry’ to Moss Side. The tunes from the Cold Storage session, meanwhile, are further out still, especially their ‘dub’ take of another Schifrin number ‘Great White Whale’ which is truly eerie and dislocated and sounds more like the weird, nightmarish visions of ATV’S ‘Vibing Up The Senile Man’ than the clipped, disciplined funk sounds they’d soon be delivering.
Nonetheless, ‘Northern Stories 1978 – 80’ is engaging stuff and throws a window open onto the all-too brief existence of a potentially important band whose story ended almost before it began. In the sleeve notes, Steve Walsh himself admits: “had we stayed together that little bit longer, who knows what might have been?” I guess now we’ll never know, but it’s great to be able to ride this far with them, even this long after the fact.
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