Sounds of 1989: The Dawn, Tears for Fears, XTC

Posted by Jayvee at February 1st, 2009

Luis wrote this piece back in January ’09 for our music issue. “The Sounds of 1989″ talks about a rock critic’s personal look back at the music of the tail end of the 80′s.

1989 was a ridiculously good year for music — this was the year of the Pixies’ Doolittle, New Order’s Technique, The Cure’s Disintegration, Elvis Costello’s Spike, the Cowboy Junkies’ Trinity Sessions, and releases by the Beastie Boys, De La Soul, The Wedding Present, even Madonna and Lisa Stansfield and that Batman soundtrack by Prince, and oh let’s not forget Nirvana’s Bleach.

My musical tastes were still forming — it was not too long before 1989 that my choice of listening fare was limited to a Justice League story cassette and Snoopy turn-the-page-while-you-listen audio books — but this was a landmark year for me in terms of finding music I would love ’til this day. Here’s a personal list of my choices for the best albums from 1989:

XTC – ORANGES AND LEMONS
It was “The Mayor of Simpleton” that started it all for me — and by “it all” I mean my long-term, ongoing love affair with the band XTC, an affair marked by giddy heights, occasional disappointments, incomprehension or outright disapproval from some and kindred understanding in others, and lots of waiting in between releases. “The Mayor of Simpleton” was the perfect gateway drug, so to speak, to XTC: insanely catchy and sonically rich, with clever-funny lyrics, and yet a sincere sentimental heart underneath. (I have since read that it’s not really one of the band’s favorites, but oh well. They were really useless at choosing their own singles.) Most of the rest of the album is no less impressive: perfect pop like “The Loving” and “King for a Day” and, oh my God, “Chalkhills and Children,” which still has the power to float me off into a wondrous womblike dreamland. I lent this to a girl in high school who loved the stranger, less poppy stuff on it (“Poor Skeleton Steps Out,” for example, and “President Kill”), which caused me to fall for her a little bit. Despite the fact that it inspired a band name that still makes me wince, this album is still one of my favorites.

TEARS FOR FEARS – THE SEEDS OF LOVE
Having grown up in the 80s, I was, of course, a Tears for Fears fan already by the time this came out. I heard the “Sowing the Seeds of Love” single first, and found it a great slice of Beatlesque pop (nice video, too). But I was not quite prepared for how much I ended up liking the entire album, from the affecting, anti-patriarchal, Oleta Adams-enhanced “Woman in Chains” to the heart-stopping, romantic apocalyptic “Famous Last Words,” with stops at the charming and wistful “Advice for the Young at Heart” and the arena-rocking “Year of the Knife” along the way. Their first two albums were excellent, but I have to admit, this is probably my favorite. I remember thinking then — “How are they ever going to top this?” So of course they broke up. (They’re back together doing tours now though, a fact which some enterprising local concert promoter should exploit.) Is it too embarrassing to admit that I used to play this in my bedroom with the lights off, singing along to “Famous Last Words” while wallowing in teenage angst? It is? Okay, I won’t then.

THE DAWN – BEYOND THE BEND / LIVE
The Dawn’s Beyond the Bend was the first album I ever reviewed in my life, and my first experience with getting my writing misinterpreted as well — funny how those two go together. I liked the album quite a lot, but I also pointed out that a couple of the songs fell flat for me (I was never a big fan of “R.T.Y.D. (Rock Till You Drop),” for example). Also, I may have opined that the last album was better — as, you know, effing critics are wont to do. So after the review came out in the school paper, one of my high school classmates got pissed off at me for dissing The Dawn. Which was not my point really. Anyway, perhaps even more significant to me was The Dawn’s Live album, largely because I was in the audience when the thing was recorded, in the cheap seats with four friends (one of whom is dead now, but not because of that concert), trying not to get hit as fights kept breaking out between the drug addicts in our section. The live recording of “Little Paradise” — or rather, my memory of the live recording of “Little Paradise,” since my Live cassette is long gone — still chokes me up a little bit. Finally, it was thanks to The Dawn’s influence that my friends and I donned straw hats and tsinelas and performed “Magtanim Ay ‘Di Biro” for a Filipino class presentation. Thanks, The Dawn!

THE STONE ROSES – THE STONE ROSES
In a way, I owe my musical education (such as it is) to the British Council — the old British Council in New Manila, specifically Mang Fred with his stack of under-the-counter issues of Melody Maker. (This is why I was nose-deep in Britpop when most of my friends were whipping their heads back and forth to grunge.) I still miss the Maker, with its wonderfully hyperbolic album reviews. It was thanks to a review of The Stone Roses’ debut that I sought this cassette out — I believe the adjective “Godlike” had been used, as well as the exhortation to quit one’s job and spend a week just listening to the damn thing over and over. I didn’t have a job to quit, but I must have cut a few classes while giving my full attention to this guitartastic, rhythmlicious, neo-psychefunky classic. (Yes, it’s so good I have to invent words to describe it.) Considering the seemingly effortless way they just whipped out this masterpiece, it’s kind of amazing — amazing in a bad way, that is — that it took them five years to follow it up, with a real stinker of a sophomore slump called Second Coming. Can’t deny the awesomeness of their debut though.

THE BLUE NILE – HATS
I came across The Blue Nile some time after 1989, which explains why I got it on CD instead of cassette. (Younger readers may wonder about the differences between these musical formats I speak of — never mind, not important now.) It was, again, thanks to a review that I picked this up — this time, a review in Rolling Stone, a review that did not bestow five or even four stars out of five on it, but did have this evocative line: “The band uses instruments masterfully to convey feelings: Synthesizers breathe warmth, a wan trumpet paints late-night downtown scenes, understated percussion registers like the beat of a heart.” Lovely. It sounded like something I would appreciate, and so the next time I confronted the unfriendly salespeople of the now-gone CD Warehouse, I asked for this. I’m glad I did. Years later, and it still serves as a perfect soundtrack for moonlit urban longing, for a certain sort of sweet desolation. Whenever I meet somebody and learn that they love this album too, I’m almost always sure that I’ve found a new friend.

// Luis Katigbak