Aztec Camera - High Land, Hard Rain
This week, we dig into the debut LP by the Scottish jangle pop band Aztec Camera , 1983's High Land, Hard Rain.
The creative force behind the band was Roddy Frame, a fine singer, remarkable guitarist, and very gifted songwriter, who started his career at 15, and was 18 when this album was recorded. Completed in just three weeks, the album is filled with wonderful pop songs that touch on jazz and soul, and often defy categorization. Upon its release it was a commercial success in the UK and received critical raves on both sides of the pond.
High Land, Hard Rain is an inconceivably mature and complex album given the age of the songwriter. And while the album suffers some from 1980's production issues (most notably the use of synth drums), thankfully the strength of the songwriting transcends this weakness.
Recommendation for this episode: Workingman Bellfuries by the Bellfuries.
THINGS WE DISCUSSED ON THIS EPISODE
Roddy Frame
Bassist Campbell Owens (standing) and Roddy Frame pose for the music magazine Smash Hits in 1983.
Owens was an integral part of the bands sound on High Land Hard Rain.
Aztec Camera made their recorded debut on a 1980 cassette compilation of Scottish bands released by Pungent Records in association with Glasgow-based Fumes Magazine called Urban Development. The cassette contained three Aztec Camera songs: “Abbatoir,” “Stand Still,” and “Real Tears.”
The first official Aztec Camera single was “Just Like Gold,” released on the Scottish label Postcard in 1981. The B-side was “We Could Send Letters.”
The British music magazine New Music Express released a compilation cassette in conjunction with the record label Rough Trade called C-81 (which stood for Cassette 1981) that included a different version of Aztec Camera’s “We Could Send Letters” that the one that was one the B-side of their first Postcard single.
Official Video for the single “Oblivious.”
Aztec Camera performs “We Could Send Letters,” on The Switch in April 1983.
Frame performs “Down the Dip” form his home in 1984 during a segment on the British music TV show The Tube.
