Young Marble Giants’ Colossal Youth (2017)

One more entry from the 33-1/3 series of fancy little books from Bloomsbury Publishing devoted to specific albums. This one is by Michael Blair and Joe Bucciero, taking on the strangely beautiful and only album by Young Marble Giants, the Welsh minimalist trio who were briefly darlings in postpunk circles. It answered lots of my questions about the band and the album, including at least one I thought had no answer. First, both “young marble giants” and “colossal youth” are references to ancient Greek sculptures from circa 500 BCE called “kouroi,” depicting larger-than-life-size nude adolescent boys and girls. The statues can be as high as 10 feet. One of the Moxham brothers, Stuart or Philip, found a book about them and was fascinated. The third principal, singer Alison Statton, worked as a dental technician during the band’s heyday and is now a chiropractor. The answer I thought I’d never get is that Pedro Costa’s 2006 Portuguese movie Colossal Youth is indeed related to the album somehow. Released as Juventude em Marcha ("Youth on the March"), Costa, the picture’s director, writer, and co-cinematographer, specifically requested that releases in English-speaking countries bear the title Colossal Youth, harking to the album. Unfortunately, while this book is heavily footnoted, no source is given on this point, and little explanation of Costa’s reason. In fact, Blair and Bocciero seem mystified about it themselves, though convinced of the connection. I’ll take them at their word. This book reminded me of Geeta Dayal’s fine treatment in this series of Brian Eno’s Another Green World. It largely eschews personal anecdotes of their history with the album, replacing it with a lot of probing and erudite discussion of its purpose and sources. Colossal Youth really is a lovely and special album and I was grateful just for being sent back to it again. I like the way Blair and Bucciero cast the net wide to place this album culturally. Susan Sontag is mentioned a lot, as are Greil Marcus and Simon Reynolds. Usual suspects all, but Blair and Bucciero make use of them judiciously. This is a surprisingly rare thing in this series—a text that is a worthy companion to the album, enlightening and informative.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Young Marble Giants, "Choci Loni" (1980)

(listen)

Hailing from an era when one album, even one song, might turn out to be enough on which to mount a personal canon, the Welsh minimalist postpunk trio Young Marble Giants found a formula and made it work for the one album they made, Colossal Youth, which is well worth tracking down. This quirky and lovely song hits the high points: the soft hum of electronic gear, a twangy, butt-simple guitar figure, evocative as only twangy, butt-simple guitar figures can be (as Duane Eddy and others have been making clear since well before this), plus an intricate build to momentum, Alison Stratton's wonderful, ethereal vocals, and the role of the drumkit played by what sounds like someone tapping and brushing cardboard boxes and/or table surfaces. The whole idea is an intellectual exercise on one level, boiling down a sound to absurd essentials, but it's also a stone groove, winsome throwaway pop gesture, and a kind of poetry, accomplishing a good deal more than the look-what-I-can-do that mars so many intellectualized musical exercises: diamond-hard, glittering, and just a little silly, but infinitely beguiling. It moves and shuffles about like a miniature dancer, spinning, turning, bowing, all grace and elegance. The brooding tenor, slightly flat singing of Stratton's voice complements the mood well, waiting nearly a full minute to enter into the 2:37 track. With her out front the guitar even gets to go a little crazy. The words: "Eaten out of house and home / Choci Loni starts a roam / Putting on a bandolier / Hearing through a nudie ear." The chemistry in this song goes as far as you can hear in every direction.