The Rite Stuff

It was my friend Matt who explained it to me.  He’d just bought Julian Cope Jehovahkill for Leeds University Record Library* and had borrowed it for a couple of days.  I had taped it that morning and was trying to assimilate it in some/any way shape of form – wondering why Cope had eschewed the poppier tunes of yesteryear, why he’d bought out a 3-sided LP for F-s sake**, why he was bibbling about pre-Christian megalithic structures/the evils of monotheism/ascension and why the LP had a bit of an overly simplistic cover.

Matt explained to me as the twat factor; a deliberate provocation, a user-unfriendly crapness at times and a winding up that kept Mr Cope amused.  Oh, I thought, storing this information away for 27 years to be written just up there; where you’ve just been reading.

The twat factor is a useful, if imperfect, lens for examining Jehovahkill through.  Almost everything I love about Cope and conversely^ most of what irritates me about him.  His last major label LP, this is JC writ and lit up large, in the glow of a new dawn.  I can vaguely remember a little controversy over the LP title, but most right-thinking believers just ignored it, quite rightly.

Being me, I’ll give you the irritations firstly.  I am basically a fan of the tune, I can take an atonal genre-shredding psych experience as well as the man at the desk two over from mine, but I do think Cope, who is a great tunesmith, sometimes fails to see his through.  Some of the songs here fall apart mid way through, or have sections clumsily grafted onto them that they don’t need – I am looking at you ‘Fa-Fa-Fa Fine’.  When you’re pushing a message, in this case the Roman empires’*^ destruction of ancient belief systems and the subsequent domination of Christianity thereafter, you need a few good tunes to Trojan Horse your views over.  Focus, Julian, focus!

Now let’s deal with what Jehovahkill does brilliantly. I love the amount of variation in the music here. Krautrock was only a dimly-realised concept for me when I first heard this, but I know it is here a-plenty.  Nothing is slavishly borrowed, but the scope and extent of variation between flow and freak-out is pure Faust.  I hear the Doors and Jim Morrison in more here than Cope, I suspect, would admit (‘The Tower’).  Julian Cope’s own guitar playing is great throughout, the man can really strum.  Equally so his compadres, Donald Ross Skinner (bass, keys, co-producer) and Rooster Cosby (drums and sax), mesh brilliantly behind him.

Some highlights:

• Necropolis: excellent, surging space rock instrumental with lots of exhaust fumes and fire.  Some ‘mental guitar’ credited to Doggen.
• Julian H Cope: imagine Lou Reed not having to be remotely cool, throwing his shades away and having some metaphysical fun.  Plus it mentions ladies farting.
• Soul Desert:  wonderful, classy opener – some beautiful, nigh-angelic harmonic singing.  The bit where the bass comes in makes me weak at the knees.
• Gimme Back My Flag: gentle atmospheric piece, yet pointed.
• No Hard Shoulder To Cry On: stately, man moaner.  One of the few songs in the 1537 to mention insurance^*.  This track may have landed an LP too early.  Great fuzzy guitar.
• Mystery Trend:  just beautifully sung and delicately put together track.
• Upwards At 45 Degrees: great slowly-building firework of a song.  A 1537 mix-tape staple.
• The Tower: the 10-minute statement here.  Cope goes pure Morrison, doing talky poetry bits and the full black-velvet, frilly-cuffed shirt works.  It is monumentally good, luckily.

So most of it is highlights then.  Jehovahkill is a really good LP.  Island Records reacted to the mostly unanimous critical acclaim for this album by dropping Cope; his A&R man apparently described ‘Slow Rider’ as the worst song he’d ever heard by anyone (I have some sympathy, I am not too fond myself).  Maybe the twat factor had been applied too thickly. Cue outrage in the weekly music press and a Top 20 UK album.

Let’s start the party rite now! I have coyly failed to mention the best track here, because I am like that.  It is ‘Poet Is Priest’ and it is an absolute banger.  Harnessing the full twat factor it kicks off like a hip-hop raver, bounces along on an awesome bassline, samples, sequencers, spoken bits, house-style piano breaks, sax squonk, full-on house beats, Krautrock phasing and flanging and Crom knows what else.  I am a real sucker for anything that messes with genres, but ‘Poet Is Priest’ still sounds utterly unclassifiable 27 years on^^.

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As a sucker for megalithic stone circles myself, Cope’s 1998 book The Modern Antiquarian is an absolute treasure trove in this regard, I love his decidedly batty focus on the lore, wisdom and rites of ancient Britain.

The booklet enclosed with the LP is well laid out, full of poems, quotes and photos  and …. CD-sized.  Oh, why Island? I hate that.  We pay enough for these reissues surely to get a proper sized booklet – even if the original LP just used the CD one too. It’s a pet hate of mine, that.  Shame on you.

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It occurs to me that this is a sprawling, slightly unfocused review of a similar LP; not on purpose, but the medium is the message, I guess.  Buy Jehovahkill if you could do with some odd in your life, it’s great.  What do you say Julian H. Cope?

Slave to a slavering hollering dog
Woke up in the fireplace, slept like a log
Keep sweeping sister ‘til the brush comes apart
But just remember women aren’t supposed to fart          Julian H. Cope

982 Down.

PS: Apologies for photos being more pants than usual, this was an extraordinarily difficult LP to photograph in artificial light.  I took the world’s worst ever attempt to capture an engraved LP too.  Gone.

*capital letters seem appropriate there.

**first time I’d ever heard of one, I seem to own a fair few these days.

^is that an adjective meaning ‘clad in Converse All Stars’?

*^cue much Latin swearing when they find out Cope has been bad-mouthing them so completely.

^*’I’m driving uninsured and my father says that it’s wrong‘ – Cope’s father worked for Prudential Assurance, as I once did in the mid 90’s.  Fact.

^^I’m not one to advertise them but the 2CD edition has an incredible 21-minute version of this, along with a full LP of great B-sides and outtakes.  Including a track called ‘Michael Rother’.  What are you waiting for?