Captured Tracks will reissue The Cleaners From Venus on May 14th! Concentrating on the period between 1983-1985, Vol. 2 will collect the band’s first three cassettes for a 4xLP vinyl/cd release. Led by the UK’s “Wild Man of Wivenhoe”, Martin Newell, also a well known writer and poet, The Cleaners From Venus occupied an off-beat, and mostly off-the-map place in the history of British jangle pop.
Newell had done some professional recordings in the the 70’s, while still in his early twenties and playing in the glam-rock band The Mighty Plod, and the prog-rock project Gypp, as well as a solo outing he did on the single “Young Jobless.” However, the first three cassette releases from The Cleaners were self-recorded. In a 2012 interview with Erin Amar from Rocker Music, Newell explained,
“They were recorded wherever we could record. Sometimes it was this big weird building I lived in, sometimes it was an old derelict kitchen in a big house I was looking after that wasn’t being used by anybody. We had a tape recorder mic, and people think it was a “style device”, but we just didn’t have any money for equipment…”
Coupling that with youthful naivete and exuberance, The Cleaner’s music was also joyfully out of step with the popular bands of the time. On the track “Summer In A Small Town” off 1984’s Under Wartime Conditions, Newell, tongue probably in cheek, laments: “Those crazy kids/they’re not a bit like me and you/with that crypto-punky, psycho-billy beat./They took you’re sacred rock-n-roll(read: Ray Davies, The Who, Small Faces)/they stripped it down and left you [hole?]/and then they filled it up with anger from the street.”
Far away from that, the song talks of that unimpeachable summer day, and seemingly, a life off the beaten path, claiming: “A day in the country/is not on the menu/for anyone you’ve met today.” And yet, even while celebrating this more pedestrian, small town view-point, what jumps out is just how totally inventive the music was. Often pushing its lo-fi constraints into off-the-wall, idiosyncratic turns, it always showcases Newell’s singular, lyrical talent.
