The
Barracudas
Despite a cheerfully self-deprecating stance, London's Barracudas
offered quite an enjoyable sentimental journey through assorted
American traditions on Drop Out.
Some tunes plunged headlong into dense, ringing folk-rock - see
Violent Times or I Saw My Death in a Dream Last Night
for an update of The Byrds on a gloomy
day.
Surf tunes like Summer Fun and His Last Summer
tried a little too hard for laughs to overcome fundamental
flimsiness, but were fun and couldn't be faulted on attitude.
After abandoning a second album (four tracks from which were
salvaged and released as House of Kicks) and losing
drummer Nick Turner to the nascent Lords
of the New Church, singer Jeremy Gluck and guitarist Robin
Wills assembled a new Barracudas and recorded the wonderful Mean
Time, produced by Pete Gage (ex-Vinegar Joe), who also added
evocative keyboards to the LP.
Reclaiming more than half of the unreleased album's songs, The
Barracudas here sounded like a younger Flamin'
Groovies. (In fact, this five-piece line-up - easily The
Barracudas' best - featured ex-Groovie guitarist Chris Wilson.) An
effortless and catchy '60sish blend of punky pop, vintage Rock
& Roll, mock Merseybeat, snarly
mild psychedelia and Byrdsy 12-string folk-rock.
The 1983 live LP, packaged and recorded so amateurishly as to
resemble a bootleg, had a few original songs from the two
preceding albums but mostly consisted of covers like Seven and
Seven Is, You're Gonna Miss Me and Fortunate Son.
The performances rocked out enthusiastically, but the miserable
sound quality was an insurmountable obstacle to enjoyment.
After making a third album, Endeavour to Persevere,
The Barracudas disbanded at the end of 1984.
While assorted European labels issued compilations (I Wish
It Could Be 1965 Again), outtake collections (The Big Gap)
and archival concert albums (Live in Madrid, a terrible
1984 show but with better sound than the French live LP), Gluck
made a musically unrelated solo LP in collaboration with Nikki
Sudden and Epic Soundtracks (both ex-Swell
Maps), Rowland S. Howard (Birthday
Party) and Gun Club leader Jeffrey
Lee Pierce (on guitar).
Various permutations of that gang played Gluck/Sudden
compositions in simple recordings that had a nice, casual feel.
Stylistic variety - from acoustic guitars to near-noise -
kept I Knew Buffalo Bill interesting, but Gluck's artless
voice didn't really suit the material. The same crew later
reassembled to cut an EP, Burning Skulls Rise.
For his part, Wills made a pair of albums with a group called
The Fortunate Sons (originally a trio, but later a quartet with
Chris Wilson), whose bassist wound up in The Barracudas when Wills
and Gluck decided to restart the band in early 1989. The first
order of business was to polish up the tapes of the lost second
album from 1982.
House of Kicks' belated release as Garbage Dump
wasn't exactly the Rosetta Stone of 80s music, but it was a potent
dose of solid garage rock, albeit without the same tuneful charm
as Mean Time (with which it shared eight songs).
Overall, the biggest failings were the vocals, which were
hoarsely unattractive and rather weak in the harmony department,
and the unimaginative, overly nostalgic production style. The
World's A Burn was a six-track compilation of singles.
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