Music Review: Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, See The Fire

By Less Lee Moore

Back in 1986, I recorded Red Lorry Yellow Lorry’s “Walking On Your Hands” from WTUL college radio in New Orleans. It was the only track I’d ever heard from this Leeds band, but one I listened to frequently. For whatever reason, I never managed to delve further into the band’s discography until now. Cherry Red Records’ recent three-disc release of See The Fire (Albums, Singles and BBC Recordings 1982 – 1987) is a wonderful introduction to a band that has a singular sound but doesn’t fit into any single musical category.

Disc one consists of the band’s 1983 full-length debut, Talk About The Weather. The first two tracks, “Talk About The Weather” and “Hand On Heart” are fairly revelatory for a newbie like myself. They remind me of what is still so compelling about post-punk music: a kind of ascetic urgency. Singer David Wolfenden has frequently been derided as an Ian Curtis clone but that undervalues his unique talent. If anything, Wolfenden’s vocals are more like the operatic intonations of Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman, but less ponderous and more self-deprecating, especially when paired with his uniquely nihilistic lyrics.

Another standout track from Talk About The Weather is the haunting “Hollow Eyes” whose repetitiveness is comforting instead of repellent. “Sometimes” has the same kind of serrated beat as Gang Of Four at their best, but less sardonic. The multi-faceted “Strange Dream” comes across like a missing track from Siouxsie and The Banshees’ Join Hands without sounding at all derivative. Ditto for the outstanding bonus track “Beating My Head” which was originally released in 1982 and includes some snarly saxophone. The flip of that single is “I’m Still Waiting” which is almost gentle in comparison to the intensity of the songs on Talk About The Weather. The band also released a 1983 single consisting of “He’s Read,” a brilliant piss-take on snooty academic types, and “See The Fire,” whose chorus is one of the best on this entire collection.

Paint Your Wagon was released in 1986 and opens with the still-thrilling “Walking On Your Hands,” an anomaly on this release due to its light-hearted (despite the subject matter) tone. Overall the album is more minimalist than Talk About The Weather, with the band pushing the limits of relentless beats as far as they can go and not always successfully. However, “Last Train” (which sounds exactly like what its title suggests) and “Which Side” are both great. Interestingly, several of the non-album singles are superior to the album as a whole. For example: “Chance” has a heavy industrial/psychedelic texture while the spellbinding B-side, “Generation,” is again, one of See The Fire‘s biggest assets.

The third disc contains songs recorded for John Peel and Janice Long at the BBC in 1983 and 1984. It’s fascinating to hear the differences between these versions and the ones that were eventually released on albums or as singles. In some cases, the more spare production of the BBC recordings elucidates the talent and songcraft of the band in ways that later recordings do not.

It’s surprising that the new wave of post-punk musical aficionados haven’t latched onto Red Lorry Yellow Lorry the way they have other bands of the time period. Hopefully this release will change that and the band can continue to inspire new fans for many decades to come.

See The Fire was released by Cherry Red Records on November 24, 2014.