HAPPY TIMES ARE COMING (AGAIN) - OBSCURE ALTERNATIVES#2
I'm not a fan of following the herd. If an artist, film, tv series, etc is huge or the current trend then my contrary tendencies will rise to the surface. There have been many times when a mildly successful band suddenly become huge and i will lose interest, or when, wary of hype, i won't get into them until the fuss dies down. But at the same time i want the things i love to get recognition. As i said, contrary. I have always steered clear of mass appeal, lowest common denominator stuff. I wasn't interested in Manic Street Preachers when they first appeared - and i still think Generation Terrorists is packed with filler - only to take interest during their next two albums which were less successful. And then lose it during their This Is My Truth...... era. When i stood in a record shop trying to choose who to spend my hard earned on that week i would rarely pick the current favourites, usually plumping for record that would, if lucky, be a footnote in the history of music. Rooting for the underdog. It's how i came to find Ultrasound. A band of glam-prog misfits with a tall obese 30 something frontman, they were never destined to be rock royalty, no matter how great i or any other of their fans thought their music was. Formed in 1996 from prog-art-rock bands Sleepy People and their successor Pop-A-Cat-A-Petal (who the members deemed "a bit too prog"), the line-up settled on lead singer/rhythm guitarist Andrew "Tiny" Wood, lead guitarist and main songwriter Richard Green, bassist and backing vocalist Vanessa Best, keyboardist Matt Jones, and (often shirtless) drummer Andy Peace. Apart from Green and Best they were hardly pin-up material, and whilst that might seem like i'm being unfair you have to remember that, in the world of music, image is important. Not that it mattered to the music weeklies: after bursting onto the indie scene with their first single - the glam indie racket "Same Band" backed by the glorious widescreen rock of "Floodlit World", on hip label Fierce Panda - they were proclaimed "saviours of rock 'n' roll" by the NME and Melody Maker, whilst support from Radio 1's Evening Session and a succession of storming live shows garnered interest from the music industry. After years of hard slog - Tiny, Green and Peace had been playing together in bands since 1989 - they were finally getting somewhere.
Signing to Nude Records, in February 98 they put out the limited edition single "Best Wishes", a stately, elegiac ballad, which got good reviews and Single Of The Week on Mark Radcliffes' show. Support slots on tour with Travis and Embrace, plus an appearance on Later..... With Jools Holland, gave them more publicity. The epic glam anthem "Stay Young" gave them their first Top 40 hit in June, reaching No. 30, followed by an epic performance at Glastonbury, and well received slots at T In The Park and Reading festival.
Another epic single, the aching power ballad (and i use that term non-ironically) "I'll Show You Mine", clad in a sealed rubber wallet, was released in October and would have reached No.25 had it not been chart ineligible. Further gigging ensued, touring with Placebo, followed by the recording of their forthcoming debut album.
In March 99 another single was released, a re-recording of earlier track and fan favourite " Floodlit World", which gave them a second Top 40 hit, peaking at No.39. A soaring, widescreen ode to hope and the redeeming power of music (with the self-referential line "sometimes with guitars we can reach you", not the first meta moment in their songs), it was Single Of The Week in Melody Maker, and buoyed expectations for the album, which followed in April. Upon the release of Everything Picture it was greeted with a somewhat lukewarm response. It had been long awaited in an industry where debut albums are usually rush-released to capitalise on that first rush of popularity, and a double album of sprawling glam-prog rock epics wasn't what the music press were expecting. Don't get me wrong: it's a great album, full of lovelorn, aching odes to rock 'n' roll, unrequited love, yearning for acceptance in an uncaring world, the product of years of outsider status. Glorious, ragged, glam/prog/indie rackets, elegiac moments of sadness, even the odd understated moment. But at the time it was seen as a bloated, overreaching, mess. Much criticism of song lengths was made, not least on the 39 minute closing title track (heads up: about 12 minutes of it is silence before a hidden piano version of "Best Wishes" starts), which was seen as an overindulgence. Fans pushed the album to No.23, but the momentum of that early praise and promise was lost. The following tour was a success, earning them a wider audience, but tensions started appearing between chief songwriter Richard Green and the rest of the band. Gigs were cancelled; they went back into the studio to start recording a second album, and a video was made for a planned single release of album track "Aire & Calder", although the band were unhappy with the record label's edit of the song. Amidst all this, Green quit and the band gradually fell apart. By October Ultrasound were no more. Various members formed or joined new bands over the following decade, bassist Vanessa Best became the Assistant Director of Music at a London comprehensive. By the new millennium, one of the most unique and promising acts of the nineties were largely forgotten. Then...... in 2010 they were asked to play a benefit show for Tim Smith of cult band Cardiacs, who had been one of their biggest influences. Smith had suffered a debilitating heart attack and stroke, and the estranged band members put aside any differences to play for the first time in 11 years. They agreed to give the band a second chance, writing and recording new songs which were released in 2012 on Fierce Panda as Play For Today (which came with a set of stickers), including the single "Welfare State/Sovereign", the former an attack on the then-governments austerity policies. Both album and single were welcomed by the fans, including two doctors who set up a label, Classic Album Club Records, specifically to release Ultrasound music. Doing everything independently means that live gigs and recording have been intermittent, and Jones and Peace have since both left the band (amicably this time.)
In 2016 a third album, Real Britannia, was released, preceded by the "Kon-Tiki" single, and featuring the epic "Remembered Blue Hills" , a multi-part exploration of growing up in England.
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