The Cult of Colossal Youth

Young Marble Giants : Credit In The Straight World

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This music relaxes you, it's total atmospherics. It's just nice, pleasant music. I love it. The drum machine has to have the cheesiest sound ever. - Kurt Cobain

On February 2, 1980  the Welsh band Young Marble Giants released Colossal Youth, their only studio album and one of the most influential of the year. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain called it one of his 5 all-time favorite albums and his wife Courtney Love recorded "Credit In The Straight World" on Live Through This. 

Made up of two brothers, Stuart and Philip Moxham, and vocalist Alison Statton, Young Marble Giants recorded the album in five days at Foel Studios, located near Welshpool in North Wales. Stuart Moxham tells author Richie Unterberger the album was mixed in 20 minutes. 

We were very strict when we went into the studio to do Colossal Youth. We were very, very strict about how we wanted to do it. I had to be stripped right down, no frills. I've always been a reverb freak, and I love reverb, so we had that. But I mean, there were no frills, really.

By the time Colossal Youth came out on Rough Trade Records, the band was already breaking up. Philip and Alison were a couple and this extra dimension to their relationship was taking a toll, while Stuart  was breaking up with his girlfriend, Wendy Smith of Prefab Sprout and feeling like he wasn't getting enough credit for writing the songs and producing the YMG sound. After one more classic song, "Final Day" Young Marble Giants called it quits before the year was out.

  

     In its day Colossal Youth attracted some critical acclaim. Robert Christgau gave the album a B, writing: "Mensa applications, they're nothing more and nothing less than robot folkies. So call it cult muzak of the year--quiet, tuneful, passing weird."

But over time its legend has grown.  David Byrne tells MOJO Magazine “Colossal Youth was quite a phenomenon,” says Byrne. “It’s the archetype of bedroom-made music. But because it has that lack of slickness it really draws you in.” Why exactly? Stuart Moxham answered in this way:

 My criteria for a great album--there's really two things. One is atmosphere. All great albums are immensely atmosphere. To attain atmosphere, it has to be more than the sum of its parts. The other thing is detail. It's kind of contradictory, but if you think of any good album that is extremely atmospheric. If you listen to the bass line, or the sound of a kick drum, or anything, any detail--it's still absolutely sublime in its details. I think that's the reason. The songs are good, the riffs are great, and somehow, just by the fact that it's extremely simple, it's very atmospheric as well. It's the quality of Alison's voice, and there's lots of minor chords, and a lot of the songs are very sad.