Between 1988 and 1990, Galaxie 500 released a trio of essential albums – Today, On Fire, and This is Our Music – before geographical and personal differences saw them quietly implode just as their star seemed on the ascent. And while each of the studio albums are pretty much perfect in their own ways – and each is a subtle development on a minimalist sound that has been variously described as proto-slowcore, lo fi, shoegaze, dream pop and more – there is a strong case to be made that the band are best heard on the posthumously released live album, Copenhagen.
Recorded in December 1990, on what would turn out to be the final night of their last European tour, it is hard to believe that the immense feedback and reverb-drenched music is generated by just three musicians. The Galaxie 500 captured on Copenhagen come across as coolly confident and fully in command of the huge swathes of sound they seem to be spinning out so effortlessly.
Which is what makes this new release of the band’s CBGB show from 1988 such a vital addition to their small back catalogue (and a welcome companion to last year’s Uncollected double-album of demos and alternate and rejected versions). With a set drawn entirely from their debut album, CBGB 12.13.88 is a different beast to Copenhagen altogether, showcasing a band enjoying their first flush of success and playing their most important NYC gig thus far (supporting Sonic Youth; Thurston Moore would call Today his guitar album of the year). If Copenhagen is all sonic cathedrals and sky-scaping soundscapes, CBGB is a leaner, rawer beast. Where Copenhagen’s tidal wave of sound simply demolishes all that comes before it, in the scuzzy confines of the legendary New York club, Galaxie 500 sound hungrier; less magisterial, but more human.
The band nail their colours to the mast from the start, opening their set with ‘Tugboat’: their debut single and sly tribute to Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison (who, post-VU, worked as a tugboat captain in Houston). With its knowing allusion to New York’s finest, its hypnotic two-chord shuffle and the sensitivity and melodicism of Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang’s rhythm section, it isn’t difficult to hear Galaxie 500’s debt to what is arguably the Velvet Underground’s greatest moment: 1969: The Velvet Underground Live. An avowed touchstone for Galaxie 500, 1969 is an album powered by the locked-in twin rhythm guitars of Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker’s driving, unflashy Bo Diddley beat and Doug Yule’s swirling keyboard fills. Working from a far more limited palette, the music created by the Galaxie 500 trio is something akin to post rock. The sound is stripped back to its bare essentials, the sophisticated arrangements and subtle dynamics belying the songs’ simple structures. It’s as if the band took heed of Lou Reed’s famous tongue-in-cheek aphorism that “one chord is fine, two chords are pushing it, three chords and you’re into jazz” and set out to show that, thanks to the intuitive playing of all concerned, one chord can be jazz, too. And there’s a languid looseness to Galaxie 500’s feedback-and-reverb-drenched sound that perfectly complements Wareham’s vocals, so that his elongated vowels and impressionistic lyrics are absorbed into the music – effectively becoming a fourth instrument and just another part of an organic whole – in a way they never really have in any of his post-Galaxie 500 projects.
That Galaxie 500 seemed to arrive fully formed is one of those small miracles of rock & roll. But it was a miracle brought into existence by their producer Kramer, whose importance cannot be understated. Kramer is to the Galaxie 500 story what Martin Hannett is to Joy Division’s, creating their signature sound by introducing the band to the joys of reverb, feedback and delay; taking their simple two-chord compositions into the realms of narcotically blissed-out sonics. Pleasingly, Kramer is behind the new mix of this live release (which was previously available only on bootleg) and while the sound is present in all its ragged glory, it feels as if the band are still learning how to make that sound bend to their will; as if they’re slightly nervous about realising the full extent of its awe-inspiring possibilities.
Which brings us to the centrepiece of the CBGB album, and the only song to be duplicated on Copenhagen: their inspired reimagining of Jonathan Richman’s a capella fragment, ‘Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste’, as a drone rock epic. On Copenhagen this is the song that closes the set, and it is delivered with an imperious insouciance that is absolutely thrilling. On CBGB the song is played mid-set and thrills in an entirely different way. While it still possesses the same epic grandeur, the band sound as if they are riding its wave, the song sweeping them along with it, as if they may lose control of it at any moment. On Copenhagen they aren’t just riding the wave, they are the wave. ‘Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste’ closes the Copenhagen set because nothing could possibly follow it.
On CBGB, ‘Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste’ is followed by ‘Pictures’ – and here, for the first time, the band’s relative inexperience is exposed: there’s a slight stumble; some momentum is lost. ‘Pictures’ sounds a little uncertain, as if the band themselves are still reeling from what went before; spooked by the power they unleashed and very almost lost control of. But this is a momentary blip, and ‘Pictures’ is followed by the double whammy of ‘Flowers’ and ‘It’s Getting Late’, both of which are executed with a fiery musicianship that taps once again into the mighty drone energy of ‘Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste’. “We’re Galaxie 500,” Wareham announces for the second time that night. If the first announcement, made towards the start of the set, was for the benefit of the audience, the second announcement feels as if the band are addressing themselves: reminding themselves of who they are, what they are capable of, and what is still to come.
Galaxie 500’s CBGB 12.13.88 is out now via Silver Current
