Last year, Captured Tracks reissued Cleaners From Venus’ first three albums from the early 1980s, each one an accomplished masterpiece of guitar pop home recordings rivalling the work of R. Stevie Moore and Chris Knox, among others. Now a new vinyl/download set from the label continues the story of the English band, focusing on their work up until the middle of that decade. By this point, the Cleaners were essentially Martin Newell, whose guitar playing, singing, and arrangements balanced a sense of genteel pop-rock as refracted from the late 60s with the rough-and-ready explosion of DIY tape releases. But the real story, already an undercurrent on the earlier releases, was the sense of sadness and unease that pinned down the cheeriest-seeming songs, often reflecting a time of political and social despair as Margaret Thatcher’s government continued in office.
In the Golden Autumn, released in 1983, was the first Cleaners album to be released following the departure of co-founder Lol Elliott. The sensation conjured up in the title carried through songs with titles like “The Autumn Cornfield”, all bird sounds, child’s voices, and piano against a calm beat, and the concluding mock-live-at-the-lounge breeziness of “A Fool Like You”, where even the soaring sax break seems to underscore the refrain, “She’ll never love a fool a like you.” “Ghosts in Doorways” and the accusatory “Krugerrand Gladiators” felt even starker, however hook-laden-- the rich feeling in the guitars on the former contrasting lyrics like “Now you’ll wake alone/ In the golden autumn.” Throughout, the overall feeling of immediacy and using what there was at hand remains key-- liberal echo's featured heavily, but is just as dispensed with entirely.
Under Wartime Conditions followed in 1984, simply subtitled as "a collection of pop songs." Newell hadn’t suddenly gone pro by any means-- there were faint degrees of progression in the slightly clearer arrangements and more complicated instrumental passages. If anything, it proved his most enjoyably rollicking record yet, evidenced by the the drum-heavy boogie of “Hand of Stone” and the frenetic instrumental “Fracas on West Street”, a jam where the Cleaners bordered on shredding. If there was more depth and variety to the muffled beats on the opening “Summer in a Small Town”-- as close as the Cleaners got to funk-- the introductory chatter, barbed expressions of contentment, and roughly textured vocals would definitely trace Newell’s increasingly parallel path towards that of future collaborator Andy Partridge of XTC. Meanwhile a tip of the hat to a mutual inspiration (also noting the perils of fandom) with “Song for Syd Barrett” once again showed Newell's propensity for lyrics that intially read as bucolic and pastoral, but revealed themselves to be questioning and uneasy. For instance, from “Johnny the Moondog Is Dead”: “They kill the good guys off in history/ And tomorrow, who will the unicorn be?”
Songs for a Fallow Land, the Cleaners’ 1985 offering, shifts back into murkier mode with the opening “Sun Comes to the Wood”. Newell’s singing on the chorus has a slippery ease to it, a suggestion of another new balance found after a steady five years of work under the name. Sterling musical moments like the simple in-construction guitar breaks on “Julie Profumo” and the quick and just as quickly dispensed-with Beatles nod on “Heroin Clones” abound throughout. Themes of isolation and sudden connection continue to provide a deep anchor at many points-- “Gamma Ray Blue” is one of the sharper critiques of mass media impact on emotion out there, and certainly no less relevant in an Internet generation, while “Stars Are Cold”, is stripped down to piano, bass and beats, and reminiscences about being caught up in ones memories. Meanwhile the echo and space on “Soul Monday” is almost as post-punk as the band ever got, while the bells on “Winter Place 2” accentuate the group’s facility with instrumentals in turn.
After all this, hearing Newell himself introduce A Dawn Chorus: Early Cleaners and Beyond with a quick chat asking us to "take a break from the normal proceedings of jangly pop for a minute" is a fun treat. He then plays a snippet of a song recorded in his garage with relatives and friends at the tender age of 12. From there it’s a sampling of otherwise unreleased tracks from 1980 to 1986, ranging from full band efforts to solo recordings. There’s a sense of turning over the years, whether accidentally or by coincidence: the gentle Beatles/power pop swing of songs like “Bon Temps Roulez” leads on to songs with titles like “When Fire Burns Dreams”, addressing the all-too-real nuclear war fears of the time, and beginning with a riff on West Side Story that concludes “Do what we’re told by America.” “Young Jobless” captures that perfect sense of peppiness in the sound, rough recording in the engineering and deeply dark sentiments in the lyrics, a portrayal of post-academic employment failure that rings true 30 years on. Meanwhile, “It’s Been So Long” puts together the same combination with a focus on romantic frustration and yearning. Concluding with a take on the old Jeannette MacDonald chestnut “Beyond the Blue Horizon” that’s both great fun and just as yearning as the many originals, it’s a fine way to conclude another strong set from this remarkable act.
