Triumph Of The Willie [NME]
London Covent Garden Rough Trade [NME]
FinBegin [Splendid]
FinBegin [Tone Vendor]
FinBegin [NME]
FinBegin [Impact Press]
FinBegin [Aversion]
FinBegin [CD Universe]
FinBegin [Southern Records]
Reid Back In Business [NME]
London 12-Bar Club [NME]
Yawn! [NME]
Saturday The Fourteenth [NME]
Saturday The Fourteenth / Kissaround [ShineLikeStars]
William Reid [Wikipedia]
Wee Willy's Cock Up 24/05/99
Plan to feature himself naked with errection on record sleeve quashed by record company... William Reid, formerly of The Jesus And Mary Chain, has 'cocked up' over plans to feature himself naked with an erection on the cover of his forthcoming debut solo LP. Reid wanted to feature himself in his birthday suit on one side with a picture of an unknown nude woman with semen on her face on the other. But Creation Records, who were set to release the album, have washed their hands of the project because it falls foul of obscenity laws.
A spokesman told NME that if they had gone ahead, it would have landed label heads Dick Green and Alan McGee in prison. He said: "We've consulted our lawyers and it would constitute hardcore pornography. It's not a project we can pursue as he's insisting on this cover. You just can't show an erect penis. "It's his creative vision which we fully support. We're not going to censor him, but until he changes his mind we can't do anything. We wish him the best of luck."
He added that Creation were only due to release Reid's album due to the friendship between himself and McGee and that he was not actually signed for the album, so he was free to take it elsewhere. But if Reid did take the record to another company, anyone who went along with his plan would end up in jail, along with any record shop who stocked it or anyone who bought it, as any depiction of an engorged male member is illegal.
Reid was not available for comment.
[source: NME]
Triumph Of The Willie 18/11/99
He hits the record shops... William Reid releases his first solo LP under the alias Lazycame on December 6. The album is called 'Finbegin' and is out on Reid's own label, Hot Tam. He also plays his first solo dates at: Glasgow 9-11 Wellington Street Missing Records (6pm December 7) Manchester Oldham St Picadilly Records (5.30pm 9) London Covent Garden Rough Trade Records (12noon 11).
[source: NME]
London Covent Garden Rough Trade 11/12/00 [Review]
Two William Reids show up today. First, the grizzled old Blind Willie McReid, wheezing out cranked-up Jesus And Mary Chain favourites like 'Reverence' and 'Cracking Up', the second, a shy teenager playing clumsy guitar in his bedroom to impress the girls. The third William, the lecherous dog of legend, thankfully only comes out at night. Right now it's Saturday, noon, and in a record shop not much larger than a bedsit, it's time to wake up and feel the stubble. William, we infer, is no early riser, and he sings like he's just surfaced, probably from a deep pool of lager on the bathroom floor. And given the circumstances, that's just about perfect.
That he's gone acoustic undoubtedly helps. Outgrown, for the present, are the shock tactics. In place of the leather jacket, there is a leather-upholstered stool. In place of the feedback, a three-chord singalong. But those three chords, after all this time, are pretty much all you need. The Jesus And Mary Chain may have gobbed on for far too long, but minus the white noise, and even minus one brother (skulking in the audience today), the Idea still works. And so after a crowd-pleasing 'Darklands', it's down from the stool and away tae fuck with a man no longer deemed essential, but who still can't help getting away with it.
[source: NME]
Finbegin [Review]
Recording as Lazycame, William Reid, previously of Jesus and Mary Chain, is capable of making really nice, soft, slow and even sweet acoustic songs...but too often chooses not to. The song songs sandwich an all-too-large pill of experimental sound, which could easily serve as a soundtrack to the madhouse. There are, however, a few gems; if you listen close enough, your face might even turn red. "Complicated" is a catchy love song with Reid mumbling, as though in a drug-induced stupor, "too bad we got complicated..." "510lovers" starts with a description of a lover and melts into "...yah, yah, yaaah, yah, yah, yah, yaaaaaah...don't go away..." These songs have a certain charm, similar to Syd Barrett's solo stuff; you can't really make out what it means, but it's catchy and you understand what he's trying to say. But in what must be interpreted as a modern tragedy, the experimental stuff takes over the album.
[source: Splendid]
Finbegin [Review]
Debut solo album from William Reid of The Jesus & Mary Chain. The compositions gathered here are gloriously scatty, forging a dirty lo-fi conglomeration of the musical extremes clipped by the Mary Chain throughout their career. This is not just a reliving of the Reid Brothers glory days but a musician still exploring his boundaries, writing great songs & utilising the home recording aesthetic to wondrous effect. Imagine early Dylan with "Psychocandy"s production & Can's experimental groove!
[source: Tone Vendor]
Finbegin [Review]
If this record occasionally sounds like it was made by a Care In The Community patient, then that's understandable. The last two years of William Reid's life have been fraught, to say the least.
In September '98, The Jesus And Mary Chain's descent into drink-fuelled irrelevance came to an abrupt end in LA, when William quit onstage. Then Creation declined to release his solo debut when he insisted the cover had to feature a nude Polaroid of him with an erection. Rumours persisted that he was either an alcoholic or mentally ill.
For a man who, as one half of the Mary Chain, revolutionised music in the mid-'80s with JAMC debut 'Psychocandy', and who by rights should enjoy the same iconic status as Jason Pierce and Bobby Gillespie, it felt like a tawdry ending. 'Finbegin', the first of five proposed LPs due out over the next few months under a variety of monikers, is the first sign that a recovery is under way.
Picking up where last year's stumbling 'William' EP left off, 'Finbegin' is a fractured gem. A distant relative of Skip Spence's 'Oar', it is shot through with the same sense of confused desperation. Tracks begin and end with slurred muttering (after 'Fornicate', he starts to sing, "Long like the Queen Mother"), occasionally it sounds like he's tuning up after getting in late from the pub, but mostly it's a bruising and heartfelt experience.
There are three brutal love songs here - 'McIntoshlost', 'Complicated' and 'Unfinished Business' - the last of which runs Spiritualized's 'Cool Waves' close for sheer resignation ("If you want to be with him/Be with him"). Elsewhere, 'Bluejune', with its sparse piano, sounds like a Felt instrumental, while 'Rokit' and 'Fornicate' are both wilful collages of synthesised noise.
Disorienting and schizophrenic throughout, it's the sound of William Reid leaving the darkness behind. The best record he's made in years, we await his jazz album with interest. 8/10
[source: NME]
Finbegin [Review]
For his first solo album, ex-Jesus and Mary Chain William Reid wanted to get things right, which is why it took him so long to get it out there. Well, here it is, and it's worth the wait. The name Lazycame is appropriate, since the songs are lazy, lo-fi songs with Reid singing in his best Bob Dylan/Lou Reid impersonation. He pulls it off, really. Forget traditional song structures, too. He tends to go off in musical tangents at any given time, exploring a note or a riff until he is happy with it. Particularly out of place is "Rokit," which employs a drum machine and other gloomy electronics.
[source: Impact Press]
FinBegin [Review]
And He descended from on high and declared: "Lo, none shall use The Name in vain; a seven years� plague cometh to the house of he who profanes The Name." So it was said, and written by the Prophets, that shall never careless lips utter the name of Jesus � and Mary Chain.
So there�s no such passage in your King James � don�t bother writing in � but there really, really ought to be by now. Since the less-than-acrimonious split of the Chain in 1999, we�ve already been given a glimpse at Jim Reid�s work � Freeheat dropped an EP earlier this year � so it�s only natural his brother/former partner would resurface sometime soon. After spinning Lazycame�s debut album, it�s pretty easy to wish that the elder Reid would have went the way of the Chain and disappeared for good.
The Jesus and Mary Chain�s best work always relied on its ability to fuse skeletal pop melodies with a wall of ear-splitting noise, fuzz and clamor, though William Reid�s forgotten that balance with Finbegin. There�s touches of noise and other displeasing sounds for anyone with hearty-enough ears to withstand the sonic disarray, but anyone more in tune with the pop side of the Chain shouldn�t bother with this album. With few nods toward song structure, much of Finbegin rambles on like a particularly twisted � and rather uninteresting � fever dream. Whether Reid babbles like a drunk on karaoke night over minimal guitars that are so scattered they sound like they�re randomly generated ("God"), or plays hunt-and-peck piano over brooding electronic tones ("Blue June"), the pop mastery that tied Reid�s eccentricities together is stretched too thin this time around.
A few interesting tracks litter this album, though finding them is a chore that�s too daunting for anyone but the most ardent JAMC fan to take on. When they�re found, however, their success covers a wide range of musical ground, from a contemplative acoustic number ("Complicated") to a harsh, almost industrial celebration of machine-driven backbeats and geysers of distorted guitars ("Rokit").
Comparisons to the Chain are probably inevitable, especially since this album�s shipped with a sticker announcing Reid�s affiliation with his former band as well as directions to store clerks to stock it in the Jesus and Mary Chain section. No matter how hit or miss the Reid brothers were when working together, Lazycame can�t achieve a shadow of the Chain�s success.
[source: Aversion]
Finbegin [Review]
Jesus and Mary Chain's William Reid settled for the epithet Lazycame for his first full-length solo album. The compositions gathered here are gloriously scatty, forging a dirty lo-fi conglomeration of the musical extremes clipped by the Mary Chain throughout their career.
[source: CD Universe]
Finbegin [Review]
Freakier than a fistful of ludes at a Fantasia screening. An absolute must for JAMC fans.
[source: Southern Records]
Reid Back In Business 18/02/00
New material from Jesus And Mary Chain man... Jesus & Mary Chain founder William Reid will play a tiny show at London's 12-Bar Club on February 29. Reid will perform two sets including material from his first solo record 'Finbegin', released last year under the name Lazycame.
Lazycame will release a new single for the Guided Missile label in late March. The lead track will be the title track to the forthcoming second Lazycame album, 'Saturday 14th', due out in April on William's own HotTam label.
[source: NME]
London 12-Bar Club 29/02/00 [Review]
An unfairly peripheral figure in today's harsh commercial climate he may be, but amid his own select group of disciples he's forever Jesus.
The average erstwhile rock'n'roll legend might consider playing to a smaller-than-tiny audience at this smoky cubby-hole something of a comedown. But William Reid is not your average legend. Eighteen months after The Jesus And Mary Chain fell apart very publicly on their last American tour, you suspect he feels rather relieved to be sat alone with an acoustic guitar and a couple of beers, fumbling his way through some new songs to just his wife and some adoring diehards. "Och, you're awful nice and kind," he says.
Only a miser could begrudge William Reid this modicum of respect. His recent 'Finbegin' album, under the Lazycame alias, was a sometimes harrowing exercise in catharsis, the sound of a man far beyond the end of his tether and searching for a sense of peace amid the ruins, so to witness Reid so hale of spirit is quite touching. He plays most of that record's key moments this evening, rudimentary shells of composition sung in a consumptive moan that amply authenticates 'Unfinished Business''s account of vengeful love. '510 Lovers' cracks folk up with its quintessentially William line in mordant wit: "She's been fucking since the age of ten/She's been crazy even before then".
In between tunes - and the word is used advisedly - Reid proves he still bears several bags of chips on each shoulder with regard to his former band's place in history. Which is undoubtedly part of the reason he has no qualms about plugging in and playing some Mary Chain songs, most pointedly 'Never Understood'. "I like The Jesus And Mary Chain!" he proclaims, before bowing out with a ragged, still seductive 'Reverence'. An unfairly peripheral figure in today's harsh commercial climate he may be, but amid his own select group of disciples he's forever Jesus.
[source: NME]
Yawn! [Review]
In the guise of Lazycame, William Reid continues to vent his post-Mary Chain angst with prolific barminess. Here we have five tracks, which veer roughshod through confusion, bitterness and wayward brilliance, a nihilistic hipster with a mouth full of marbles as our guide. Opener 'Drizzle' is a largely unlistenable morass of inebriated muttering and out-of-tune clanging that gives way to the beautiful, sinuous fuzz of 'K To Be Lost' and 'Who Killed Manchester?' - two dizzy surf-rock sketches that sound as if they were knocked out after a night spent under a table. Then there's the greased-up tumble of 'Male Wife' and the vitriolic slur of 'Commercial' ("McDonald's are shit... Burger King's hip...") from the Mary Chain catalogue. And, as if this weren't enough compellingly purged, messy disquietude for one record, we are also granted a 'hidden' track that careers from ambient dub to melodic acoustic guitar to twitchy electronica to classical strings over a span of 45 minutes. It is, of course, completely insane. And easily the best thing William Reid has touched in years.
[source: NME]
Saturday The Fourteenth [Review]
Pivoting on the obsessional, the indistinct yet urgent fixation, you don't so much feel you're listening to Reid's second solo album as keeping a nervous eye on someone through a grille in the door. Post-Jesus & Mary Chain trauma, Reid's game is catharsis, indulging his self splinter by splinter, and accordingly, 'Saturday The Fourteenth' is a brain-splatter of guitar, piano and muttering that needs reading like tea leaves. When patterns emerge, it's oddly affecting: 'Muswil Clouds' is Lee Hazlewood with frontal lobe issues; 'You Don't Belong' and 'Kissaround' are DIY Spiritualized, one man and his mental fog, while 'Lo Fi Li' ("I'm pissing Coca Cola/ I'm pissing on America") opens a grimy window into Reid's mind. The rest, however - particularly the emetic 'Mayhem' and 'Dement' - could send Thurston Moore fleeing to his Abba albums.
Perhaps it's the mariachi trumpet, the electric piano jive, or maybe just the increasing incoherence, but you suddenly realise you're listening to an emotional tuning-up, a psychic soundcheck. For Reid, time to kill glitches, purify, refine. For anyone else, purge overkill. 5/10.
[source: NME]
Saturday The Fourteenth / Kissaround [Review]
Before you read this, other people will tell you (if you search for their words and bother to read them) that this record is terrible. Well, believe me, they just don't get it. And nor might you, but if you feel your favourite music and don't just hear it, then you might.
So, the Jesus and Mary Chain split up. Shit. But then William Reid's solo recordings began to emerge, drunken and sloppy - falling, right to the gutter. Let's not beat about the bush, some of them were just downright degraded and degenerated - beautiful. I mean, the man made this while he was going through the demise of his perfect rock n roll band, of which he'd been a founder member, alongside his brother Jim, for over 13 years. Not to mention the years of crazy substance intake, sibling brawls, record label blues and music press rejection. I doubt there are many musicians left in the world who could, or would want to make anything at all under those circumstances. This is the sound of an icon being crushed, and it proves to me that William Reid is a true artist, creating simply because he needs to, he has to.
'Kissaround' first appeared on the 'Tired of Fucking' single which Reid released in 1998 as 'William'. Then, releasing as 'Lazycame', he followed with the album, 'Saturday the 14th'. Get the picture?
I've had some really odd looks from good friends when i've played these tracks but I love them. Maybe it's a Mary Chain thing, but it's just so obvious to me, the songs are there. They are beautiful, shattered, crawling and pleading, Yet at the same time, drowning in 'fuck you!'s. It's completely desolate and abandoned and then all of a sudden, ''Make it - I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna make it'. I hope so William, I fucking hope so.
''Trying to explain why you make music to someone at Warner is like trying to teach a chimpanzee how to play violin'' - William Reid, 1998.
[source: Shine Like Stars]
William Reid (born 28 October 1958 in Glasgow, Scotland) was the guitarist for the British rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain. William, along with his brother Jim, the lead singer, formed the (at times unstable) core of the band during its fourteen-year career. William effectively ended the JAMC in late 1998 when he walked off stage fifteen minutes into a show at the House of Blues. After the band split up for good in 1999, William began creating, writing, and releasing solo recordings under various names such as William, Lazycame, Ravenscraeg and CNYK, but he's been a bit on the quiet side since 2000 (when he moved to live in the United States with his his wife, Dawn, and their son, Keir, born in January 2000). William has more recently been involved in the production of the Sister Vanilla album Little Pop Rock.
[source: Wikipedia]
back: ktobelost