Few people could have predicted in 1992 that
Slowdive would get the honor/embarrassment that comes with the tribute album treatment. Then again, tribute albums had yet to plague us during the era when words like "airyfairy" and "oceanic" could be found in every other NME record review. Appreciation for the band has quietly risen since they morphed into
Mojave 3 in the late '90s; you can hear it in the young indie bands who would much rather buy new FX pedals than ditch their bassist, and you can also hear it in a handful of electronic labels whose artists seem to be equally inspired by bliss pop, IDM, and new wave. No label exemplifies this more than Morr Music. It's not entirely impossible that demo submissions are required to arrive at Morr's office with proof of ownership of
Just for a Day,
Souvlaki, and
Pygmalion, so it's entirely fitting that they're doing this. The fortunate thing about this particular tribute album is that you're not dealing with the unavoidable tedium that comes with guitar bands mimicking a guitar band; Morr's records, while including guitars here and there, are steeped in electronics with a pop slant and a nudge toward IDM. The unfortunate thing is that
Blue Skied an' Clear: A Morr Music Compilation occasionally sounds more like The Moog Cookbook than the Morr cookbook. Most of the contributors don't do much to the structure of the originals; instead, they do their best to replicate the songs with different means. Unsurprisingly, windswept airyfairy atmospherics are kept in place, as are floating tempos.
Lali Puna's "40 Days" is the highlight, putting to use their typically soft and cozy drum programming and a bassline that ambles on and then thrums magnificently.
Ulrich Schnauss' "Crazy for You" might as well be the missing
Chapterhouse remix of the original, with a
Rachel Goswell impersonator taking
Neil Halstead's place on vocals and a shuffling hip-hop beat added to pull the song down from the stratosphere. A second disc of originals is included. Morr was very smart in doing this, since there must be plenty of
Slowdive fans who are unfamiliar with the label. The covers disc, while giving the listener a good idea of what the label does, doesn't exactly play to its strengths. The originals are almost as patchy as the covers, but they show how the artists affiliated with the label take in influences without becoming weighed down by them.
Schnauss strikes again with an upbeat vocal number made up of percolating beats, twinkling melodies, and whooshy textures.
Guitar's contribution, featuring a singer who's a dead ringer for
Pale Saints'
Meriel Barham, is honestly just as good as anything released between 1990 and 1992. And
Manual's "Summer Haze" is the umpteenth example of
Jonas Munk's creaking, cascading hybrids of shoegaze, post-rock, and IDM. ~ Andy Kellman