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Daunt Square To Elsewhere: Anthology 1982-88 | 
 enlarge | Artist: Microdisney
Label: Sanctuary
Category: Music
List Price: £13.99
Buy New: £5.88
You Save: £8.11 (58%)
New (21) Used (2) from £5.88
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 4123
Format: Box Set
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
EAN: 5050749415684
ASIN: B000U0TARY
Release Date: October 1, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | Hello Rascals | | • | Pink Skinned Man | | • | Dolly | | • | Few Kisses | | • | Dreaming Drains | | • | I'll Be A Gentleman | | • | Sun | | • | Liberal Love | | • | Everybody Is Dead | | • | Patrick Moore Says You Can't Sleep | | • | Here | | • | Michael Murphy | | • | Love Your Enemies | | • | 464 | | • | Leftholdingswood |
Disc 2
| • | Past | | • | Birthday Girl | | • | Horse Overboard | | • | Begging Bowl | | • | And | | • | Are You Happy | | • | Town To Town | | • | Big Sleeping House | | • | Rack | | • | Mrs Simpson | | • | Give Me All Of Your Clothes | | • | Singer's Hampstead Home | | • | United Colours | | • | Gale Force Wind |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
"Feed the Birds, Poisoned Bread..." September 7, 2008
Paul Ess. (Holywell, N.Wales,UK.)
Microdisney emerged from the early 80's creative wonderment that was Kabuki Records. An excellent Dublin-based indie label which also boasted Kissed Air, Operating Theatre, Five Go Down to the Sea and briefly, Ruefrex.
Microdisney were far and away it's most successful act, but it's a relative claim. They scratched the charts with a couple of single's after they signed to a major, but by this time, their creative star was well on the wane, and they split in 1988.
But early doors they were something to behold. In singer Cathal Coughlan, they had the most sarcastically angry man in music. This guy tracked his targets with laser precision, then let them have all tubes. Focused to the Nth degree, and coupled with guitarist Sean O'Hagan's sweetly simple arrangements, early Coughlan lyrics were a nervous wrecking crew, deceptive melodies hiding a ferocious acidity.
Musically, Microdisney vary rarely let rip. Most of the songs are slowies, CC doesn't want his hit and lucidity cloaked by anything resembling ricketty-racketty rock music. There's a folk undercurrent, softly pining to the bars and clubs of Dublin, but modern, in a post-punk beatnik sense, and Microdisney most definitely DON'T do jazz.
CD 1 is the best disc and 'Pink Skinned Man' is the best song; a raging lyric fading with the most mournful violin outro you've heard.'Loftholdingswood' is probably the most foot-stampingly angry song ever invented, and there's a couple of groovy instrumentals; 'Patrick Moore Says You Can't Sleep Here' being the best by a whisker.
CD 2 is mostly poppier music made for Virgin Records. It's nowhere near the quality of the first disc, but there's plenty of goodies here as well. `Birthday Girl' is typical Coughlan snark welded to an anthemic tune, `Horse Overboard' is a Marr-style acoustic boogie and `Town to Town' is very much Microdisney's `Shiny Happy People', Coughlan and O`Hagan proving effortlessly they could write commercial melodies SO vital to the investors at Castle Virginio, but lyrics inviting the 'frying' of Dresden and Dublin see to it any compromise to Branson and co is soon sneered away into disappointment. Preceding it, (and this has to be deliberate) is the bleaker-than-sleet 'Are You Happy?'. An unbelievably down song, crooned with lethargic drudge, and haunted with Dave Gilmour-style guitar. "Are you happy now, laughing at the world?" Coughlan is exploring new depths of morose and it's wicked to hear the flirty synth and wistful strings of 'TTT' following it.
This collection fades towards the end of CD 2 (it HAS to...!) when the hunt for appeasing hits became a bit desperate, but to it's credit there's no embarrassing tacked on live cuts. Like most dour prophets, playing live was a beastly, unnecessary obligation. Microdisney didn't need a hall full of wasted students shouting "Where's Donald and Mickey!?" between every other song to realise an ultimate pop ideal. The Smiths could've done something about this perversion of artistic endeavour, but that's a different kickshaw. This cd proves they could do it where it mattered.
All Microdisney's album's veer annoyingly from brilliance to startling levelling-out, but 'Daunt Square to Elsewhere' is (with the exception of the madly omitted 'Helicopter of the Holy Ghost') a consistent representation, and most of it is colossally good.
A barbed-wire rainbow... July 1, 2008
Mr. J. P. Young (Newcastle upon Tyne)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Thank god for this release, is all I can say, given that Microdisney's actual back catalogue remains shamefully obscure, and the second-hand copies of the studio releases that do pop up appear to be currently fetching stupid prices. And heaven forbid I should descend into the netherworld of "things aren't as good as they used to be" grumbling, but it's a pretty poor judgement on the current state of indie music if the best indie songs I've heard for donkeys' years (heck, maybe ever) come from an outfit that split up twenty years ago.
I know full well that Cathal Coughlan's solo albums are things of brooding beauty, and I know full well that the Fatima Mansions were the finest scathing jagged rock band of their generation (and I know that Bubonique could have given early-era Ween a run for their money), but I managed to surprise myself by realising that Microdisney were the best thing he was ever involved with. And this is coming from someone who cannot stand the Smiths, or Steely Dan, or the Divine Comedy - three groups I've heard bandied about as comparisons.
Shred the comparisons. Microdisney had something quite unique and special going on - rich musical backdrops drawing from American country-rock, hints of soul, and the more haunting and crepuscular corners of wispy early-'80s indie (courtesy of Sean O'Hagan), in startling juxtaposition with CC's deep, rich croon, not as ominous as Nick Cave's, but a smoother and technically, stronger voice. And those lyrics...
It's true that the second disc here is likely better than the first, which is maybe too underproduced for its own good at times, though it still contains gems like 'This Liberal Love', the venomous 'Love Your Enemies', '464' (wherein Cathal channels his inner Henry Rollins for a minute of vein-bulging screaming, then winks "Oh dearie me, I'm in a state" as the music subsides to an insouciant lollop) and the standout 'Loftholdingswood', a gorgeous slice of dark outlaw country-cum-jangle-pop with a menacing accusatory chorus that swings in like a pendulum.
CD2 is a tour de force. Cathal sings like a god throughout. The occasional cheese-laden '80s production touches somehow accentuate the stark, lonely yet desperately angry 'Past' and the despairing anthem 'Birthday Girl'. 'Rack' showed the band to possess balls of steel in being one of the very few straight bands from that era to address AIDS (albeit obliquely and poetically), and the increasingly inventive string arrangements on this song and 'Mrs Simpson' turn them into glowering lounge-lizard numbers. Then throw in the jaunty-but-deadly post-nuclear fantasy 'Town To Town' (a certain type of ego mocked for its self-obsession amid "the sick winter for a thousand years"), a couple of barbed attacks on yuppiedom nowhere near as crude and obvious as some bands would make such songs, and the grand finale 'Gale Force Wind', which was more or less the greatest single of the 1980s. Yes, really.
Enough rhapsodising. If you're at all into intelligent guitar music and you're not au fait with Microdisney, you really, really don't know what you're missing.
Lest we forget, and go elsewhere December 11, 2007
Dudley Serious
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
It's a start. The previous Microdisney compilation "Big Sleeping House" was rather too brief to give a good overview of a band that released five albums plus a number of singles and EPs. "Daunt Square to Elsewhere" is, for the moment anyway, the only way of hearing work from Microdisney's entire period of existence without trawling secondhand shops or websites like ebay.
Cathal Coughlan's acerbic wit and pained romanticism was matched by Sean O'Hagan's sure way with a melody, and a guitar. Almost as if Tim Buckley had teamed up with Brian Wilson to expose the hollow heart of eighties consumerism. From spare early gems like "Dolly" to later polished (should have been) hits like "Singer's Hampstead Home", Microdisney ploughed a solitary path through the decade and might not have lasted so long if they hadn't had so much conviction in what they were doing and had not acquired a small but fiercely devoted following.
Other artists of the same period wrote personal, political and opinionated songs of course. It wasn't all overdressed, over-produced soundtracks for shampoo commercials. The band that most closely emulated Microdisney's approach was probably The Beautiful South, but their best work sounded clumsy and forced compared to Microdisney. Tracks like "Loftholdingswood" and "Begging Bowl" for example display depths of emotion and an instinctive ear for a memorable tune that their rivals could barely muster. Those qualities shine through everything on this album. Sadly though, original and best Microdisney was less popular than the cheap imitations (available from all good record shops, and quite a few bad ones). Despite being championed by taste-makers such as John Peel, playing live on "The Tube" and eventually landing a deal with fabulously wealthy Virgin Records, their brand of accessible and intelligent pop was not preferred by eight out of ten owners who expressed a preference. And when Microdisney finally imploded towards the end of the decade, few mourned or even noticed their passing. "Daunt Square..." makes a fair fist of righting that wrong and takes a decent selection of material from their entire recorded output. As I said, it's a start.
simply astounding music....... November 30, 2007
bish (Northampton)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have an awful lot to thank John Peel for.I listened and bought under his influence when the country was obsessed with large hair and lipstick (and that was just the men).Microdisney are my own naughty treat-like a midnight trip to the refrigerator when you are on a diet- they were delicious and when listening your brain reacts as if you have scoffed the biggest bar of chocolate in the world.
The quality of these songs is simply outstanding."Pink Skinned Man", "Everybody Is Dead" and "Sun" mean as much to me now as when I was a spotty (chocaholic) teenager.My only gripe is that "Idea" is missing but this is a wonderful tribute to a wonderful band.
You either "get" Microdisney or you don't.If you do you need not feel guilty.Visit the refrigerator as much as you like.Then feel completely and unashamedly satisfied.
One of the greatest bands in the world October 18, 2007
fatpaddykillah (Tokyo)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
How feeble does most guitar music from the eighties sound now? Pretty feeble, and most of its proponents have now disappeared, their angry rhetoric proven to be the empty bluff it was. Few have emerged from the period unscathed or looking like they still mean business, but Sean O'Hagan and Cathal Coughlan are still here and with foundations like these you can see why. Microdisney are a beautiful band, fearlessly choosing a route combining melody and craftmanship that confused and baffled those who saw guitar music as strictly a feedback or jingly-jangly thing. They produced music that sounded wounded, forlorn, angry and funny, usually all at once. They were brusied romantics, Cathal's rich vocals telling tales of exiles and layabouts searching for hope against Sean's intricate and always precise guitar playing. Never fashionable, never famous, they created a rock solid body of work that doesn't sound like anything else and this much-needed anthology is a beautuful document to that. Buy it, love it, live it.
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