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The Kirsty MacColl web site
V2 Press Release A sharp-witted, fiery-haired rent-a-tongue whose collaborations with The Pogues, The Smiths, The Wonderstuff, Johnny Marr and Talking Heads have passed into legend, Kirsty MacColl is British pop's answer to Zelig, turning 'popping-up' into an artform. Bono has described her as "the Noelle Coward of her generation", Morrissey has waxed lyrically over her bust, Caitlin Moran of The Times has called her the ultimate party animal and Billy Bragg has described her as "writing like a playwright and singing like an angel", but even these endorsements from on-high don’t quite do MacColl justice. While her reputation might have been made on the collaboration and the fly-by-night duet, her repertoire stretches well beyond it.
Daughter of folk singer Ewan MacColl, Kirsty avoided folk as a kid "because it was something I associated with my dad", but the protest song, the sharp, vitriolic turn-of-phrase, is in her blood. She formed her first band, The Drug Addix, during the punk era ("but I was the only member of the band who wrote punk songs"), and first charted (with They Don’t Know About Us, later devitalised somewhat by Tracy Ullman) in its immediate aftermath. There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop, Kirsty’s first major hit, was a novelty Nashville-style strumalong, but throughout the eighties she became recognised for her classic Englishness, reflected in both her original work (Free World) and choice of cover versions (The Kinks – Days and The Smiths – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby).
Unless you’ve been asleep for the last decade and a half, you’re aware of 1987’s Pogues duet, Fairytale Of New York (still the greatest Christmas song ever, by several miles), and 1991’s funked-up Johnny Marr collaboration, Walking Down Madison. But have you heard 1989’s pure, powerful and tender Kite (1989) and Titanic Days (1993) albums?
"I’ve never been terribly in vogue," MacColl insists. "I was never a New Romantic, I never had to live something like that down. I’ve got no desire to please the lowest common denominator, You can’t keep everybody happy and I’ve got no desire to. It’s not as though everybody makes me happy. Do I get on people’s wick? I hope so."
Moving away from the melancholy of Titanic Days, Tropical Brainstorm is described by MacColl as "my most uplifting record yet. I made a decision after Titanic Days not to do another album until it was a happy one. I’ve done sad for years and years and years. I didn’t want to make a miserable, cold English weather record; I want to make something that people can dance to."
The end product of a "sorting my life out" period for MacColl, which included the conclusion of her marriage to producer Steve Lillywhite and a period where she considered giving up the music business altogether in order to do a degree in Latin-American Studies, Tropical Brainstorm is exactly what it says on the sleeve: a burst of inspiration from a land where the sun never stops shining. After her split from Lillywhite, MacColl learned Spanish and visited Cuba and Brazil, where most of Tropical Brainstorm was written.
"I went alone because it forces you to interact with the locals," she explains. "I like the music, I like the literature, I like the culture and I like the people - I like being around people, generally. Everywhere you go, someone’s got a story."
The more MacColl interacted, the more potential songs formed in her head: the languid, provocative In These Shoes, the tongue-in-cheek England 2 Columbia 0, and the relentless Us Amazonians – MacColl’s most righteous, in-your-face pop song since Walking Down Madison.
Mixing Brazilian and Cuban Rhythms immediately sets it apart from all the other albums around at the moment. "I hadn’t been listening to anything English for about three or four years," explains MacColl. "Two and a half years of that was spent listening to Cuban records and then I moved on to Brazilian. It’s the first time I’ve had a whole cohesive group working with a Latin influence, but it’s not a purist Latin album, because it mixes up the influences so much; it’s more a case of introducing these styles into my pop songs. I chose to work with Pete Glenister and David Ruffy, who I’ve worked with for years and weren’t really au fait with Latin music before we went into the studio. I don’t think it’s going to alienate anyone who already likes my music. These are my sort of songs – it’s just that you dance to them instead of sitting down to them."
"It ain’t Ricky Martin and it ain’t Geri Halliwell. It was never a case of 'Let’s hurry up and do a Latin record'; this has been in the works for the last five years. I think once people get used to the Latin influence it’s generally a poptastic record. Because Pete and Dave have no grounding in Latin music, it’s a strange kind of hybrid - they weren’t aware of any rules, so there weren’t any. I think between us we’ve created a monster, but hopefully a great monster."
Kirsty MacColl has fought for her right to party, and Tropical Brainstorm is where she reaps the rewards.
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Promo Trail Interviews:Read some of the interviews directly relating to the album here:
Check out a fine interview on line with Neil Chase in Hong Kong - It will remain accessible via the Kirsty page at http://www.neilchase.com/CDs/KirstyMacColl.htm.
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A
promo CD was released containing 5 tracks: In these
shoes?, Mambo de la
Luna, England 2 Colombia 0, Treachery and Us
Amazonians. A fine uptempo
collection indeed. Happiness and joy. Catalog number VVR1010332P
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