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Monday, August 01, 2022

Zero G Sounds | MARINE GIRLS :: BEACH PARTY 1981 - [Tracey Thorn]

 MARINE GIRLS - BEACH PARTY  1981

ZeroG Sounds :: Marine Girls - Beach Party 81






Long out of print sadly now and bought this when it came out (along with the Young Marble Giants debut) and have followed Tracey Thorn ever since up to her work with partner Ben. 

Zero G says

The debut album by the Marine Girls is one of the most wilfully amateurish releases of its era, which is not necessarily a bad thing. When it was first released on Daniel Treacy's Whaam! label in 1981, it undoubtedly sounded impossibly shoddy and nearly inept, filled with deliberately out-of-tune vocals, extremely minimal guitar and bass, and almost no percussion. However, its place as one of the pillars of the twee pop scene, along with the Young Marble Giants' "Colossal Youth", is now incontestable, and what once might have seemed haphazard instead sounds refreshingly artless and slyly provocative. 

Tracey Thorn, whose vocals would gain much more technical polish during her years in Everything But the Girl, sings with a sort of offhand grace, while Alice Fox' more tuneless yelp sounds like a precursor to Kathleen Hanna or Sleater-Kinney. The songs are monochromatic, though a few, particularly the opening "In Love," manage to marry memorable tunes to the group's deliberate minimalism. This is not an album for anyone who requires a lot of studio polish, but "Beach Party" is far from the grating tunelessness that some early reviewers labeled it.

"Beach Party" was named as one of Kurt Cobain's 50 favourite albums in his diaries.


Tracklist:

A1 In Love

A2 Fridays

A3 Tonight?

A4 Times We Used To Spend

A5 Flying Over Russia

A6 Tutti Lo Sanno

A7 All Dressed Up

A8 Honey

B1 Holiday Song

B2 He Got The Girl

B3 Day/Night Dreams

B4 Promises

B5 Silent Red

B6 Dishonesty

B7 20,000 Leagues

B8 Marine Girls

Marine Girls - Day-Night Dreams


Marine Girls - Lazy Ways (Peel Session)

2 comments:

marhawkman said...

I came her for he pic of the board game built into the disk case. But I can;t read it. :/

Andy Swapp said...

Sorry marhawkman it was the best I could find at the time . . . . . . . .