x4 LP box set
Unravelled: 1981–2002 shines a loving light on lo-fi pioneers Tall Dwarfs, the prized New Zealand duo of Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate. The collection, available as a 4-LP, compiles songs from Tall Dwarfs' two decades of recordings. The vinyl edition includes a 20-page collector's booklet of photos, comics, posters, and other ephemera.
I first heard Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate before I heard Tall Dwarfs. They were there in Guided By Voices, Neutral Milk Hotel and the Elephant 6 stable, Palace Music and the outer edges of 90s Chicago (and a million others), smeared in absurdist swathes of irregular shapes and offhand melody. It wasn’t until I acquired a copy of the Flying Nun retrospective, Getting Older, that I heard them through Crush, a song that didn’t immediately compute. It makes no sense now that it made no sense then, but alongside the Chills, the Verlaines, the Clean et al it felt like a sore thumb. Too inscrutable. Too perverse. Somehow wrong. Of course those are now the things i actively seek out and Tall Dwarfs feel like a road map of sorts. Where they were travelling from does feel like a crucial point of difference. If many of their peers were channeling the Velvet Underground (and i'm not saying Know and Bathgate were not entirely), then The Fugs might be from where Tall Dwarfs begin. Scattershot and scatalogical, songs usually take unexpected turns and are steeped in their own shared surreal language, invariably involving animals, domestic confusion or the comedy of (ill)manners. They're about as close as any of the NZ bands get to The Fall, a testament to the construction of a very specific lexicon, both musical and lyrical. Unravelled collects together what i think is their entire 55 song output from 1981-2002, and you'd do well to find a single inessential moment across these four LPs. Nothing's Going to Happen, their debut and the opener here, is the obvious way in, and Crush remains confoundingly brilliant, but you're really in the diamond mine here - The Brain That Wouldn't Die, The Winner, Carpetgrabber, Dog, All My Hollowness To You... endless endless. A significant investment admittedly, but then also a total steal. Can you put a price on such inspiration (well, yes, it's £120).
