Three days into the New Year and we already have two Bordellos releases to happily contend with, notwithstanding that on a date as yet not appointed, there’ll be an expanded version of their finest moment – that’ll be ‘Debt Sounds’ in case you didn’t know – appearing sometime this year via, we believe, the Small Bear imprint. We did mention two releases, both are compilation gatherings, the bulkier of the two ‘faves’ we’ll be mentioning a little later this missive. For now though, volume 10 of the bands vault dig that is the ‘underground tapes’. As ever these selections come sourced from all manner of radio sessions, alternate takes, forgotten cuts and early versions and arrived in our inbox with an accompanying note from Brian musing on the fact that ‘melody inn’ – featured here – the Dandelion radio version therein, might well, in his opinion, be the bands finest moment. In truth we were all ready to whole heartedly agree until the impish occurrence of the parting ‘Marianne’ came into ear view, pure Fall-esque wiriness, delightfully skewed, off the wall and pretty much post everything, a true irregular head trip. Mind you ‘melody inn’ is indeed a cut above and by our reckoning as close as you are ever going to get to any imagining of a gathering of ‘wilder’ era Teardrops musing with Joy Division while led from the fore by Scott Walker appearing for real. Elsewhere here and certainly not making up the numbers, the darkly wired and primitively scowled ‘perfect time to die’ sounds as though its fallen from some early 80’s post punk blind spot, very ‘crown of thorns’ by the Bunnymen truth be told. Talking of the Bunnymen, some nifty Sergeant-esque needle work features on the bruising love note that is the very Doors-esque Stones sounding ‘the head on the floor’. Class. https://bordellos.bandcamp.com/album/the-bordellos-underground-tape-10-2
