Where are you tonight I don't seem to know you No I'm not all right Where are you tonight (The Burning Down)
I remember when I first listened to King’s X Gretchen Goes To Nebraska*, I was so busy trying to grok the cover and the, frankly indecipherable, Ty Tabor penned short story on the inner sleeve that I actually failed to listen to a single note of the first side of the LP. I was that kind of obsessive.
It was alright though, untroubled by lady companionship (or any immediate hope thereof), education or paid employment I was able to spin the first side of the 78th LP in my collection again. I was that kind of obsessive.
I had fallen hard for King’s X and their debut Out Of The Silent Planet, I was sucked in partly by the C.S Lewis referencing title, partly by rave reviews and partly the band’s sheer difference, intelligence and integrity compared to most of the lycra-clad, long-haired lovelies singing songs about strippers and fighting that populated Kerrang! back then**.
King’s X were thoughtful, tunefully heavy and I didn’t even let the rumours they might have been a bit, you know, Christian put me off them. Plus almost nobody I knew had heard them or liked them and that made them mine. Yup, I was that kind of obsessive, sadly.
The progtastic LP title Gretchen Goes To Nebraska gives the game away a touch, although prog wasn’t a concept I was aware of back then. King’s X were progressive, they were trying to progress, to do something new, all of which was utterly lost on me; I just liked ’em. I consumed every second of this LP.
‘Out Of The Silent Planet’ always seemed like an odd choice for an opener to me, down-tuned guitars, woozy harmonies and sitar skirls hardly set me alight. What it does do perfectly though, is set the listener up for one of my very favourite King’s X tracks ‘Over My Head’. A wonderfully straight-forward tale of the power of music for a child, in this case specifically church music sung by bassist Doug Pinnock’s mother. The production punch on this cut is great and I remember them really elongating this one live.
Gretchen^ gets even better with ‘Summerland’, a beautiful regretful song that vies with their own ‘Goldilox’ for my very favourite song about romantic regrets. Ooft, I’ve shed some tears to this one over the years^^. Even to my jaded old ears today it remains a perfectly crafted, heartfelt, tune. Not that men like me have feelings of course, all that emotion stuff is for ladies and suchlike. Honest.
‘Everybody Knows A Little Bit Of Something’ brings a touch of funk to the mix, I really like the vocal effects on this one. ‘The Difference (In The Garden Of St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill)’ is another cracking entry into my Top 10 songs (with brackets) in their titles. Featuring some lovely acoustic guitar tones from Ty Tabor and yet more gorgeous Beatles-y harmonies, it was always a highlight for me.
The next goodie is Side 2 opener ‘Mission’ with its swipe at church hypocrisy and evangelical fund-raising. It also includes the Jubilee-topical line ‘religious vipers sucking royal blood’, which I like. Musically, ‘Fall On Me’ is better, King’s X really swing on this one while sounding very much like themselves, Jerry Gaskill (always a superb drummer) comes to the fore here and I rather like the way the song almost dwindles to nothing, before resuming late on.
I really like ‘Pleiades’, it’s straight-forward and confidently sung and occasionally threatens to launch into the thrash-adjacent heaviness King’s X touched on occasionally. The next best track is ‘Send A Message’ which ups the urgency again and really isn’t very subtle in its’ religious message, which of course sailed over my little hairy agnostic head 11,998 days ago; I was too busy enjoying the guitar solo.
Which brings us to the Gretchen ending, and often set closing, ‘The Burning Down’. This is a brilliant minimal track, packed to the brim with hopeless love, loveless hope, regrets*^, spent passion and a quiet fortitude. I love it because King’s X just lock into a quiet loop and play us on out for evermore.
Some of them know love Some of us know the burning down
I really enjoyed Gretchen Goes To Nebraska, although I did lament the band forsaking some of the heaviness of their debut LP and there are a pair of tracks here that don’t have much to commend themselves to me. King’s X really leaned into their difference here (whether in the garden of thingy-on-the-Hill, or no) and nobody at the time sounded like them at all, those close harmonies, the down-tuned often melancholy stylings. In a few short years elements of their sound would be all over everything that came out of the Pacific Northwest.
As a truly great man once wrote about them:
It was the fact that they didn’t fit into any of the era’s categories and clichés that made them such a good band and which, ultimately, stopped them making it.
As usual I fell deeply for the cover art for Gretchen provided by James McDermott. I am a sucker for photo-realistic rents in the time/space continuum and fenceposts, especially fenceposts.
I fell for it so deeply that I forgive King’s X their slightly irritating lack of capitalisation. Lads, it was cool when e.e cummings did it.
1133 Down.
*27 July 1989 I know this via the awesome power of teenage nerdery. That this was 11,998 days ago is down to the less awesome power of adult nerdery.
**let’s not pretend here, I still loved/love the spandex-clad chancers singing songs about strippers and fighting that populated Kerrang! back then.
^we know where she was going, let’s climb aboard the abbreviation train here.
^^especially to that sad guitar refrain at the end, got me every time.
*^boy did King’s X do regrets properly!