THE LEAKING MACHINE
Sound on Sound
(Jenny’s Feather Factory)
Birmingham’s Mighty Mighty are a legendary indie band, a blazing ball of indie pop in 1986 – 87 with their debut album – Sharks – released in ’88, three Peel sessions and an inclusion on the NME’s C-86 compilation cementing their reputation.
An established part of the Birmingham music scene of the time, alongside the Sea Urchins, Au Pairs, Nightingales and Napalm Death, they reunite regularly to play live and have put out further records and compilations since. Two founding members Russell Burton and Pete Geoghegan started the band Rockingham back around 2012 with drummer Spencer Roberts (often a stand-in drummer for Mighty Mighty) and are now known as The Leaking Machine.
The album is being released on Jenny’s Feather Factory Recordings, a label with its own weight of history. It’s founder Adrian Goldberg, from Harborne in Birmingham, is a well-known local radio and television presenter. His father Rudolph Goldberg was one of the last children to be saved from Nazi Germany by the Kindertransport – a program of rescue and evacuation which took place prior to the Second World War. Rudolph’s parents and aunt Jenny (who owned a feather factory) died in the holocaust, and Rudolph began legal proceedings for compensation many years later, dying before completion of the process.
Adrian Goldberg took on the case and completed it in Rudolph’s name, and the money which resulted from this allowed him to fulfil a dream of founding a record label in Jenny’s name. One other reason for doing this was a promise to release – when he could – a record by The Leaking Machine, now the first release on the label.
The album has a summery sheen to it, a beautiful production recalling dense, layered harmonies and instrumentation of the 60s with the Birmingham sound of the 80s. Opening track and lead single Chocolate and Cars is a nostalgic paean to Birmingham, referencing two of its major industries in the title: Cadbury’s chocolate factory and Longbridge motor factory. The chorus has a delicious descending bass line which accidentally or not seems to reference Procul Harum, one of many moments when time seems to slip: the middle eight and ending includes a guitar riff reminiscent of the Gigolo Aunts. The chiming, harmonic refrain “let’s go home” sounds out, calling back citizens from war, prison and other countries. On the other hand Travel Light opens with a very 80s synth bed and celebrates, well, travelling light and presumably away from home: “without a destination, you’ll never be lost”, celebrating getting lost as a route with a true earworm of a chorus, a West Coast college radio sound not a million miles from the beach.
Heart Attacks“Sound on Sound” is a more contemplative song seemingly about mental health, the impact of “feeling obsolete and strange”, and letting down your guard rather than constantly keeping other people at bay: “Let’s meet for a drink, no strings, and talk about work and other things”. The title track Sound on Sound has a stately beat, with the lyrics discussing the reassurance of repeated history, of art built on past art: “I found comfort in history repeats itself,” as the singer feels older but no wiser, “Sound on Sound”, builds up literally as the song crashes into a faster, heavier ending.
The Love Lawn has whimsical, XTC-esque lyricism, with a touch of the Kinks’ very English localisation: “Lie down on the love lawn, by the pond where the frogs spawn, we say good night and we greet dawn.” When the Time Passed Slow reflects on memory, the strange speeding up and slowing down of time depending on whether it’s happening now or it happened then, and the speeding up of time as we get older, ageing being a clear theme of the album.
Saharan Sand On Cars takes the phenomenon in the title as a metaphor for the uninvited events of life: the dust which makes its way across the continent to rain down as blood rain on us: “Still your face is wet, some things you don’t forget”, “at the end of the day, another bloody day, they come uninvited and leave you at your gate”. The fact that the sand can reach us is also a metaphor for the shrinking world, “but you’ll never see it all”. The vocals are echoed and distorted, as the song takes on a psychedelic tinge, like the colour of the skies when the dust is present.
Closer Love is the Word is a straight-ahead rocker, with another memorable chorus and highlighting the band’s ability to simply rock when they want, clearly a song to go down well live and an ideal ending to the album.
Sound on Sound is a triumph of English power-pop, strongly influenced by both the English and West Coast scenes of the 80s. The production is excellent, balancing the rhythm section with the layered harmony vocals and chiming guitars perfectly, blending in other sound effects and instrumentation as required.
Geoghegan’s voice, reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub (I found myself listening to Verisimilitude straight after), suits the material here and is never overpowered by the strength of the band’s sound, thanks to that delicate production. The album title finely sums up the material: modern power-pop firmly backed by the sounds of previous movements in the 60s and 80s, layered vocals and harmonies, layered guitars and production. It’s a worthy addition to the musicians’ history, and a fitting first album from this new label.
Essential Information
Sound on Sound by The Leaking Machine can be found on Bandcamp, here
