Surprisingly, there hasn’t been an extensive, archive-emptying the Pale Fountains box set until now. The band released just two albums and a handful of singles between 1982 and 1985, but has maintained a cult following. That is mainly due to the subsequent career of frontperson and songwriter Michael Head, who remains a critically acclaimed, yet commercially underappreciated figure in British indie music.
Listening to all 63 tracks on the exhaustive The Complete Virgin Years, one has to marvel at how the sound—Head’s unrefined yet earnestly crooned vocals, Andy Diagram’s brassy horn stabs, the punchy drums, and spit-shined, trebly production—could only come from one decade; one half-decade, really. Here is thinking person’s early 1980s British pop exemplified, and the fact that these songs have not been overplayed in the ensuing decades only adds to their aura of guilelessness and purity.
Yet, at the same time, it is not difficult to hear why the Pale Fountains never made it commercially. Among their contemporaries, their mature sophisti-pop was neither as refined nor arty as the Associates or Prefab Sprout nor as effortlessly catchy as the Blow Monkeys or Wham!, all of whom they have something in common with. It is also worth noting that these comparisons, and indeed the Pale Fountains‘ entire legacy, are primarily based on their early singles and their debut album, Pacific Street.
Because they were released on independent labels, the original, relatively unvarnished versions of the blissful “Just a Girl” and reflective “(There’s Always) Something on My Mind” are missing; however, the subsequent remix versions still retain their charms. “Just a Girl”, with added girl-group backing vocals, practically invents the genre of tweepop.
Pacific Street itself contains several marvels. “Reach” opens the album with gently strummed pensiveness before bursting into jangle, leading up to a woozy, bed-of-clouds chorus. “(Don’t Let Your Love) Start a War” adds a bit of guitar muscle without letting up on the jangle. “Unless” enchants with rainforest synths and syncopated percussion, so portentous it has to be about something more than simple yearning for love. However, it’s not, which is made clear by the time Head’s soaring chorus and Diagram’s triumphant horns come in.
“Abergele Next Time”, though, is the absolute stunner, the track that in itself stakes Head’s claim as a songwriter and arranger of substance. It’s breezy, laid-back, and pretty, and the dizzy, backing-vocal-like strings on the bridge are the stuff pop dreams are made of. Then there’s the showstopping chorus. It still sounds fresh and beguiling, enough to make it seem like the 1980s really were as carefree and romantic as we’d like to remember or envision them.
Outside this clutch of brilliance, Pacific Street doesn’t quite establish the unabashedly romantic identity that seems Head is naturally drawn toward. There are bits of chilled jazziness, rockabilly flourishes, and even Tropicália. Still, Head’s songs maintain a pure, let’s-you-and-me-get-out-of-this-town optimism, underscored by his earnest (if sometimes overwrought) delivery and the band’s overall enthusiasm.
Virgin Records gave the Pale Fountains a six-figure advance for Pacific Street. It didn’t lead to commercial success, but it provided enough money to fuel a heroin habit for Head. Although it’s not immediately apparent that type of vice strips the purity right out of Across the Kitchen Table (1985). Perhaps inevitably, after the paucity of hits, there were musical changes, too. Head’s younger brother joined on second guitar, and fellow Liverpudlian Ian Broudie was brought in to produce. Broudie was fresh off work with another Liverpool bunch, Echo & The Bunnymen, and a few years away from his own mainstream mega-pop success as the Lightning Seeds.
It’s not quite surprising, then, that most of Across the Kitchen Table comes across as a more pop-friendly version of Echo & The Bunnymen. The Head brothers’ guitars are more prominent, often combining snarl with jangle, and Michael Head’s vocals are more controlled but also more verbose, as if he’s trying to cram as many words as possible into each measure. Diagram’s horns are all but absent; he left the band shortly after the album was released, eventually joining indie stalwarts James.
“These Are the Things” and “Shelter” sound like the Pale Fountains’ best candidates for should-have-been hits. Ironically, though, while the material is subjectively more consistent and accessible, it lacks most of what makes Pacific Street uniquely appealing. It’s almost like listening to another band altogether.
Bolstering the two studio albums on The Complete Virgin Years are numerous B-sides, “rough” takes, demos, outtakes, and remixes. The early version of “Shelter” offers a tantalizing glimpse of what the second album might have sounded like had the band remained more true to their art-pop leanings. There is a shambolic take on Love’s “7 and 7 Is”, and “Detrimentally” is a strange track that seems to mash all their many influences into one, three-minute song. Unfortunately, the mastering sounds harsh, and the liner notes are cursory, without any new input from former band members.
After the Pale Fountains split in 1987, the Head brothers went on to slightly bigger and, some would say, better things with Shack and, most recently, Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band. As for the Pale Fountains, The Complete Virgin Years is evidence of a group that had more ideas than two studio albums would allow. A few of those ideas were sublime.