In Praise Of...Shriekback's "Oil and Gold"

Probably the band's best album, all told.

"This Big Hush" is definitely one of the best 3 or 4 songs they ever recorded however.

i returned to it recently and was a bit nonplussed by some of the production and some of the boisterousness of the songwriting, but "this big hush" remains amazing.

i knew Dan would beat me to this thread ..

classic album. simple. as.

did anyone get the latest album - some pretty decent stuff on it,

several tracks reminded me of the mad stuff on Oil and Gold.

"The Only Thing That Shines" was the only song I ever played in front of my parents that the expressly forbade me to ever play for them again.

.. but there are some lyrics/chants/styles during (arse feck damn - have to check) load the boat, bonehead that are very nemesis like methinks ..

Air Date: 19 Feb 1988 (NBC)
Director: Bill Duke (!!!)
Writer: Peter Lance

Episode Summary
Crockett & Tubbs suspect a Chilean police chief in a double murder

Guest Cast
Tony Plana
Oliver Platt
Michael DesBarres (!!!)
Mark Metcalf
Lisa Marie (!!!)

Additional Cast
Duane Huston, Jr.
Frank DeVito III
Katarina Etcheverry
Kevin Quigley
Kim St. Leon
Larry Litt
Lester Kerstetter
Rafael Lima
Steve Geng
Tracy Roberts

Featured Music
Gene Loves Jezebel, Twenty Killer Hurts
M/A/R/R/S, Pump Up The Volume
Shriekback, Running On The Rocks
Big Pig, I Can't Break Away

Air Date: 27 Mar 1987 (NBC)
Director: Tony Wharmby
Teleplay and Story: Michael Duggan & Dick Wolf

Episode Summary
Crockett & Tubbs investigate drug busts ruined by phony federal agents, who appear on scene and disappear with all the evidence

Guest Cast
Elizabeth Ashley
Jimmie Ray Weeks
Samm-Art Williams
Ian McShane
Martin Ferrero

Additional Cast
James Dybas
Robert Small
Stefen Laurantz
Tim Bice
Tony Vila, Jr.

Featured Music
Bryan Adams, Heat Of The Night
Dire Straits, Ride Across The River
Shriekback, Underwaterboys
Grace Jones, The Fashion Show
Belkis Concepcion y Sus Chicas, La Vecina

Indeed

Great, great song from the peak moment of 12" remix rock. No one has mentioned "Hammerheads", which works nearly as well as goosestep pop. I saw them at a suburban Elks lodge in PA around 1986, so if Nemisis was a hit, it still wasn't exactly mainstream. They opened and closed the set with it, and were pretty charming throughout.

that video is eerily similar to nine inch nails' "closer".

Everything NIN did was not-so-eerily similar to industrial-tribal-dance stuff done five years before. I've never figured out what made his take on it so palatable to the shopping mall.

busted. what I should have said was "overused". "horrible" was overkill, based on stuff I really hate from that era that used the sound, not this excellent album. I do think the songs suffer a bit from the prevalence of said effect. also, as discussed in some other thread I can't recall now, it dates the album to a certain time period, which I have no problem with but does place it in a certain category of memory that makes it difficult for me to truly hear it anew on repeated listens. hope that makes sense.

I always really liked the 12" mix of "Fish Below The Ice" as well. came with that cool embossed cover.

how crap is the UK cover in comparison to the USA cover ?

back to shriekback - the image above is garish and rather unpleasant .. i much prefer the uk cover :

http://www.shriekback.com/do_oilandgold_files/oilandgold_euro.jpg

(wow "Fish Below The Ice"!)

"Faded Flowers" is just such a killer song, this album is unbelievable, we are all old

tape version

A1 Nemesis
A2 Only Thing That Shines
A3 Health And Knowledge And Wealth And Power
A4 Hammerheads
A5 Coelocanth
B1 Malaria
B2 Everything That Rises Must Converge
B3 Fish Below The Ice
B4 This Big Hush
B5 Faded Flowers

It was a John Peel session in 1985 that introduced Shriekback to me as a 15 year old.

RTE 2 DJ Dave Fanning loved this album at the time

i knew in 1985 that this was a landmark album, it has a unique charm and character that still remains 21 years later

alexinnyc:

http://vassifer.blogs.com/alexinnyc/2006/01/please_stand_by.html
"Oil & Gold by Shriekback is an undervalued masterpiece that no music collection should be without."

many ilxor folks born in the early 1970s or late 60s love this album

Poetry in motion: Faded Flowers

This is the sound of poisons
the sickness no one knows
No one is crying for us this time
Our shapes are blurring under miracles of snow
Weave a circle round him three times
You have to plan your moves at these times
Our hearts are breaking
One more song to go

Chorus
These eyes are blind
This is a pure thing
These hands I kiss
Tragic as anything
These eyes are blind
This is a pure thing
All splash and hiss
Beyond my measuring

Only the anacrucis
the main event remains
Shameful and naked, out there in the
great cold outdoors
We have to learn these things again
Bathe in this incandescent glow
the leap to something I don't know
There is no doubt upon us when
the greasy men come back again

Chorus
These eyes are blind
This is a pure thing
These hands I kiss
Tragic as anything
These eyes are blind
This is a pure thing
All splash and hiss
Beyond my measuring
These faded flowers
Precious as memory
A veil of cloud
Correct as energy
We had some good machines
But they don't work no more
I loved you once
Don't love you anymore

In high school, my history class was looking for short instrumentals to use as credits music for a film project we were doing. I made my group use "Coelocanth".

(Martian, I know you're a human database but are you sure you don't have the A and B sides of that tape confused?)

this is one of my favorite lyrics of the whole damn decade

agreed. a girlfriend of mine once made me a beautiful post-breakup card with those words on it.

I'm using a friend's cassette-only car while house-sitting and found Oil & Gold for $1.99 at a record store. It sounds better than my 20+-year-old CD version. What a great fucking record. The background singing is strange, and I love all the anthropologist-gone-native lyrics (see also P. Gabriel's "The Rhythm of the Heat" and most of Remain in Light).

Anyway, this is fantastic. This is what other people must hear when they listen to Radiohead but that I never reached with them.

Oh, wait, I guess this thread is more up to date.

we had some good machines
but they don't work no more
I loved you once
don't love you any more

:)

You've heard the whole album, right? "Fish Below The Ice", "This Big Hush", "The Only Thing That Shines", "Faded Flowers", "Malaria" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge" are all as good as "Nemesis" (a few of them are BETTER :-0)

djp dropping the truth bomb.

Dan I feel like we've had this conversation before and I listened to some but not all. I will change that and report back.

well I just sent you all the tracks on the album via Spotify so

http://open.spotify.com/album/3iwEAHs9FeqHAivVxxfrf0 btw

YAY!!!!!

omg

I still have no idea how to use spotify properly. Not that I've really tried but . . . OK, brb.

My first thought is that there may be a little too much slap bass for my liking in some of the other songs. I will push on.

Or maybe that's not what it is but there's something. Hmmm.

wait until you hit "This Big Hush"

These guys are allowed to use slap bass. There was a meeting about it.

CONVERGE CONVERGE CONVERGE

Hmmmm.

The Only Thing That Shines is very nice.

The Only Thing That Shines is PRIMO languishing in one's bed music.

while killing yrself

x-post - lol totally

It's pretty good at my desk on a dreary post-vacation day music too tbh.

Yeah it's been Shriekback weather in NYC.

Listening to this last night, I noticed how that "call in the airstrike" line sticks out (in a neat way) because everything up to that point is primitive priests/cannibals/elixirs/etc., and then--airstrike!.

I was deep into the "Swamp Thing" comic at the time "Oil & Gold" came out and "Nemesis" seemed to fit right into the priests/cannibals/Heaven/Hell vibe of the storyline.

Some of these were pretty good but I'm sticking to my guns and to "Nemesis" for that matter.

TY for sending those, Dan!

no one ever said to give up "Nemesis"! that would be crazy talk

I just mean as my favorite. :)

I am totally team "This Big Hush"/"The Only Thing That Shines"

although at one point or another every song on here has been my favorite

loved it then, love it now, but it was hard trying to explain to 30 y/o coworker that nemesis was/is "danceable." :(

although at one point or another every song on here has been my favorite

Co-sign. One of those mixes of "Fish Below The Ice" rivals "Nemesis" for my favorite these days.

was just gonna come back and give some love to Fish Below The Ice, that 12" is fantastic and the album version is pleasingly different.

This is totally one of those albums that I'm going to re-buy because I am crazy for ever getting rid of it in the first place. And if they do a deluxe of Big Night Music, I'm a get that too!

One of my all-time favorite albums. Life without it is unthinkable.

I LOVE YOU BEST BUT IT'S ALL A MESS

lyrics sites are suggesting it's "when it's all a mess" but I had this album on tape and had to go w/what I heard

gotta admit i slept on this @ the time of release but once again...ty ilm :)

Ok, so I just did some quick A/Bing of the new deluxe version of "Oil And Gold" with the original, as well as the bonus tracks. My conclusions:

- The new version of the album is a bit 'hotter', i.e. compressed and loud, but otherwise sounds good. Nothing revelatory, mind you.
- Of the bonus tracks, the only rare item is "Fish Below The Ice (Dance mix)" which has never been on CD before. The extended version of "Nemesis", the one with the "Apocalypse Now" sample, was on a Richard Blade compilation and the live tracks were on a fanclub CDR so they're nice to have here. All the other O&G-era tracks have been on Shriekback compilations.
- Why did they include "Lined Up" and "My Spine"? And "Lined Up" is CLEARLY from vinyl! Wtf?!

All in all, a nice expansion of the album, but nothing that should make you run out and upgrade your copy.

any advise in sleevenotes re jam science reissue ?

cos that would be the one for me ..

Why did they include "Lined Up"

'Cos it rules so hard! Dave Allen absolutely on fire here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-R4XKuI7rA&feature=related

No argument there but it's not from the "Oil & Gold" period!

guess its being included on this reissue as the track was dropped onto an extra 12" with the 12" of 'below the ice' (oh the days when labels gave away free 7"/12" singles - the double pack !) that came out during O&G campaign.
embossed cover as well - hold the cover at an angle, and you can see some secret fish

http://www.discogs.com/Shriekback-Fish-Below-The-Ice/release/535819

The backing vocals/shrieks on Nemesis are possessed. Redonk. Incredible song.

I really liked Big Night Music too -- no big reissue of that yet eh?

BNM : a perfect album.
i love it.
very different to the earlier material, yet still, very much in line with the shriekback story.
would like to think if there is a reissue, then this could be a digitally sourced remaster/reissue.

They never really put a foot wrong until go bang and even then they made up for it in short order with the v underrated Sacred City

There is nothing I love more than the shriek vibe

They never really put a foot wrong until go bang

this. otm.

The extended version of "Nemesis", the one with the "Apocalypse Now" sample,

This makes so much sense that they would sample this, since Oil & Gold pretty much feels like sailing up the river to find Col. Kurtz.

Good essay on "Nemesis" here:

http://marchvladness.com/#/round2-siouxsievsshriekback/

Huh, thanks for the link, that was an interesting read.

that was unexpectedly excellent! also i can confirm that in minnesota too, c.1985, i never heard the term 'goth' and 'batcaver' was the closest equivalent i heard at the time

"Death rock" was what I heard in Massachusetts, but with "goth" spreading around 1986.

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PREHISTORIC ANIMALS

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