What an interesting record Gypsy Blood is. It did grow on me, but choked itself of air and water too, almost on purpose.
I was trying to place this in the context of what I know already, and boy, was that difficult. There's a little Elvis Costello -- more than a little, actually, but much, much darker and stranger. There's some Killing Joke, and some Stranglers. There's some Ramones, slowed down. There's doo-wop pop, almost 50s-ish, even Stray Cat-like (sorry). The hooks are thin in spots, but jumpy enough in other spots. Power chords come out of nowhere; tinkling guitar shows up in unexpected places.
But what I struggled with most of all was the choruses, the places where the songs rest, and that's when the dissonance Jackie Leven brings to bear muddies all the water. It as if he knows he has a nearly-conventional pop tune by the balls, and has to damage it somehow, by changing volume or octaves or going in and out of tune.
It's all very unique and enigmatic and almost experimental, but I don't buy for a second that "the music was judged out of step with other bands of the time" as per the Wiki entry -- this was 1979, when The Clash came to be and the B-52s and Talking Heads were widely celebrated, both quirky bands to say the least. The issue here isn't even that the music is hard to categorize. It just isn't radio-friendly in any way -- the quirkiness isn't funny, or novel . . . it's more disquieting. Sometimes the music feels stand-offish, and best I can tell from what I've read about these guys, they weren't easy to handle -- street kids who scared the shit out of Devo and fought with Hawkwind.
I liked what would have been "side 2" more than "side 1", although "Teenage Lightning" IS a very good opener. I struggled after that as the songs went in and out of frame without really sparking anything in me. "Binary Fiction" was my favo(u)rite here and effectively disco (an early version of late Gang of Four to be sure). I also liked "Highland Rain", where the wavering of the vocals in and out on tone and tune fits the music's timbre and the guitar takes over the chorus to some degree. I'm curious what happened to the guitarist Jo Shaw, who when allowed to express himself musically seems to have something to say.
I don't see a lost masterpiece here -- I see a band with limitations stretching itself as far as it could go without kowtowing to convention. That's an accomplishment, and I am no stranger to music which attempts to defy convention. But it's hard to make an emotional connection with this at least for me.
5/10. I wanted to like it more.
