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| Popmatters |
 The easiest way to make a case for a three-disc reissue of the Teardrop Explodes’ debut Kilimanjaro is by using that old example of “if aliens landed, how would you describe this object or concept to them?” Kilimanjaro—along with Real Life by Magazine, Pink Flag by Wire, Crocodiles by Echo & the Bunnymen, Cut by the Slits, and Entertainment by Gang of Four—could be passed around as first-rate examples of British post-punk. Although the likelihood of explaining post-punk to extraterrestrials is only a nudge or two above explaining the intricacies of mumblecore (in the grand scheme of things, genre designations are of extremely little importance), for those fans of late ‘70s/early ‘80s indie, Kilimanjaro is an indispensible gem. Although fellow Liverpudlians Echo & the Bunnymen might be looked to as owning a more purely post-punk sound, with Kilimanjaro, the Teardrop Explodes made a more innovative imprint. The angularity, aloofness, and above-all jitteriness of post-punk is all here, but so is a loving debt to ‘60s pop and psychedelia. The overall effect of Kilimanjaro is of a less overtly political Gang of Four with a more traditionally pop sensibility replacing the former’s danciness. For the pervading sense of unease that comes from giving song titles a cursory read (think “Thief of Baghdad” and “Went Crazy”), the album’s pop moments are plentiful and splendid. “Treason” is an artifact-level post-punk pop song. With its crashing chorus and jangling verses, it sounds perfect for a “New Wave Hits” compilation, if only Teardrop leader Julian Cope had taken the pop star route rather than the lysergic one. ...full text |
| Bbc |
| Another of those albums that get dropped into the nether regions of any ‘all-time greatest’ list, Kilimanjaro also remains an oddity in any era. This band were born out of the same Liverpudlian Zoo records/Eric’s/Bill Drummond axis that spawned The Crucial Three which in turn spawned Echo And The Bunnymen, Wah! Heat and the Teardrops. It was also a band that, as anyone who’s read Julian Cope’s hilarious Head On will know, had some major personality clashes. By the time Kilimanjaro was to be recorded original keyboardist Paul Simpson had been ousted and replaced with co-founder of Zoo records and producer, David Balfe (who was, with Bill Drummond, the album’s co-producer). Not only this but subsequently guitarist Mick Finkler fell victim to Cope’s power struggles and was replaced both in the band AND on the record by Alan Gill from another legendary Liverpool band, Dalek I Love You. Kilimanjaro’s peppy horns, sweeping synthetic strings and trebly guitar sound unsettlingly ‘wrong’ when the whole thing kicks off with “Ha Ha I’m Drowning”. Cope’s lyrics seem both oblique and overly wordy, sung in a strangely English-Scott-Walker way. Yet by the time you get to the third track: the heady, anthemic single, "Treason", you’ve settled into this surreal mix as if all records should be made this way....full text |
| Guardian |
| The 30th anniversary reissue of the Teardrop Explodes' Kilimanjaro recently spurred one heritage-rock magazine to ask the band's former frontman Julian Cope if he would ever return to writing pop music. It seems a fair enough query given Kilimanjaro's success: it spawned a top 10 hit in Reward, spent 35 weeks on the charts and displayed such commercial promise that both U2 and Duran Duran apparently considered the Teardrop Explodes their only real competition. You might also feel compelled to ask in light of Cope's latter- day musical output. That variously includes an hour-long homage to the late Princess of Wales called She-Diana; a live recording of his "proto-metal" band Brain Donor; and Spades & Hoes & Plows, a self-styled "masterpiece of agrarian doom-clod-plod" that features Cope accompanying singer David Wrench on "Mellotron and 26-inch marching bass drum", and culminates in an 18-minute instrumental inspired by a series of road-toll protests in 19th-century Wales. Alas, Helyntion Beca (The Rebecca Riots) seems to have been overlooked by the programmers of the Radio 1 playlist, a fate that also befell such other recent Cope numbers as All the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise the Minute They Die That They Were Suckers). Buy it from Buy the CD The Teardrop Explodes Kilimanjaro: Deluxe Edition Commercial Marketing 2010 Actually, Cope told the magazine, he'd just written a pop song, inspired by the mid-60s baroque style of the Left Banke, a band not so wildly removed from the kind of influences that powered Kilimanjaro – the blasting brass arrangements of Forever Changes-era Love, the Seeds' reedy garage rock, the sunshine pop of the Turtles. "It's called," he added, "The Cunts Can Fuck Off." It's hard to reconcile the Julian Cope of today with the 22-year-old you hear on this 3CD deluxe reissue of the first album he made. There's something very fresh-faced about the music on Kilimanjaro, which replaced the murky, shaky, spindly sound of the Teardrops' early indie singles – collected on CD2 – with a sound that tapped into 60s psych's sunny optimism, rather than its creeping disquiet. Equally, though, there's something rather gimlet-eyed about it. You can hear an altogether more straightforward kind of ambition than that which presumably fuels the desire to record an 18-minute agrarian doom-clod-plod instrumental. Indeed, the Teardrop Explodes had a weird tendency to combine the wide eyes and the will to power in the same song. "Bless my cotton socks, I'm in the news!" opened Reward, while the faux-naif title and jaunty tune of Brave Boys Keep Their Promises cloaks a load of surprisingly Duncan Bannatyneish stuff about fighting your way to the top....full text |
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