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Despite only releasing one full-length record during their time together, Young Marble Giants achieved enough in their short lifetime to leave an indelible imprint on the development of music in the early 1980s. Ostensibly ignoring the rules of chart success, the Welsh trio – Alison Statton and bothers Stuart and Phil Moxham – drew upon disparate elements of funk, reggae and jazz to create a sound that was simply unlike anything that had come before. Now, decades later, the band’s debut, 1980’s ‘Colossal Youth’, remains a benchmark in the canon of post-punk deemed worthy enough of this lavish 3-CD reissue.
What remains immediately striking is that ‘Colossal Youth’ is clearly an album of experimentation – a record of boundless artistic ambition that deconstructs song structure to its core principles. In fact, with little interest in following the templates of popular music, the band’s reduction of sound effectively taps into the essence of a post-punk philosophy that pledged to “rip it up and start again.”
Opener, ‘Searching for Mr Right’, for instance, is indicative this minimalist approach, combining clipped guitar lines with a fidgeting bass and discretely popping drum machine. Integral to the band’s sound, however, is Alison Statton’s diffident vocal – delivered with soulless neutrality that is both soft and inviting, yet austere and unsettling. Indeed, as lyrics flirt uncomfortably with themes of isolation and solitude (‘Include Me Out’, ‘The Taxi’), so the mesmerising serenity of Statton’s voice becomes even more chilling.
With so many ideas crammed within its short running-time cynics might sneer at the raw undeveloped nature within which they’re presented. However, less can sometimes mean more, and with each note carefully measured and weighted, the stripped-back production heightens the record’s abstract immediacy.
Maintaining the post-punk ethos, Young Marble Giants didn’t outstay their welcome after ‘Colossal Youth', choosing to release just a couple more EPs – included here alongside a clutch of demos – before disbanding. Indeed, like many of those tracks, the band came to a sudden and abrupt end, disappearing almost as quietly as they arrived. Of course, as this reissue might suggest, the legacy that they left behind is one that will last far longer. Essential.
