A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window
Reviewby Dean Carlson
Shrill and freaky. Anarchic and a bit oompah-oompah. Almost unanimously loathed. Perhaps what you’d expect if you raised small orphans solely on prog-rock records scratched into the higher channels of Megadeth’s Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good! while they formed a union to demand to go catch the latest Dexy’s Midnight Runners tour. Cardiacs’ first studio album is one for the amnesiacs of the world. It leaps about, chews on its own rhythms — like “In a City Lining,” often 43 times within the same song — eschewing choruses as if conventional songwriting caused cancer. It’s reckless, difficult music that still retains a sense of celebration. The equivalent of a top-secret document with the best bits blacked out.
A Little Man nd A House And The Whole World Window.
Reviewer: p j (UK).
A life changing and devastating record from the best writer/producer on the planet.
But hey! Don’t let me confuse you!
The Cardiacs
A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window (Alphabet)
NME 1988
Tired of getting pushed around? Can’t stick the pace of the late eighties? Hanker after the days when Houses were for the Holy? Well take a look through the square window at the Cardiacs but no puns please ‘cos this isn’t funny.
Just when you thought Marillion had taken us to the very limit along comes this schizo-progressive anachronism wherein the Cardiacs have telescoped the entire dreggs of the early seventies into one album so geriatric, by comparison that the next Blue Oyster Cult will sound as fresh as ‘Viva Hate’.
It is the Floyd, it is Genesis, it is King Crimson, does is matter? ‘A Little Man…’ is the very worst bits of ‘Tommy’ stretched out to an eternity; it’s Emerson Lake and Palmer; it’s "Brain Salad Burglary" as the NME of it’s day might have said. By way of variation ‘In A City Lining’ knocks off one of those Neil Young/Mission cryogenic guitar solos and to bewilder us completely there is a nutty body-stomp midway through ‘Is This The Life’ which resides about as comfortable as Ian Paisley in the Vatican. Cardiacs are the sound of both feet in the grave.
Jack O’Neil
A Little Man nd A House And The Whole World Window.
Cardiacs are simply too perfect to describe properly, but let’s just say that if you took the first five Genesis albums, the first three Wire albums, a spoonful of Zappa, highlighted sprinkles from the Madness and XTC discographies, a dash of Robyn Hitchcock, and the first Roxy Music album, then put ‘em all in a blender, on high, and then served the mixture, chilled, in glow-in-the-dark baby bottles, you’d get at least a taste of ONE of the songs from this milestone in music history. And it’s not even their masterpiece (see “Sing To God” for that…) A MUST-HAVE for anyone with ears.
(reviewer unknown)
A Little Man nd A House And The Whole World Window.
Melotron user magazine
Cardiacs (no ‘The’, thank you) are one of those bands who seem to be impossible to describe accurately, although it never seems to stop people trying, so here’s my two penn’orth: ‘the weirder end of prog filtered through punk, with various other influences including ska. Think Gentle Giant and Frank Zappa getting a good kicking from the Pistols and Madness in a dark alley’. That doesn’t even really begin to describe them; Cardiacs are absolutely unique, and the tragedy is that after over twenty years of making this strange but wonderful noise, they’re still practically unknown, even in their own country.
A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window was their first full-length vinyl LP containing songs they’d been performing, in some cases, for several years. As main man Tim Smith tells it, “We really wanted a Mellotron on the album, and the only band we could think of with one were IQ, so we got hold of them and asked if we could borrow it”. IQ let them have it for a day, so they wasted little time in recording as much of it as possible; almost every track on the album has some somewhere, even if only almost subliminally. Opener ‘A Little Man and a House’ has a few small bursts of strings, but track two, ‘In a City Lining’ goes all the way with huge bursts of choir on its massive opening riff. Last-minute addition ‘Is This the Life’ was actually on their first cassette release from seven or eight years earlier, as well as a later, more widely-available cassette, The Seaside . Because they were persuaded to give it a third go at the last minute, a separate recording session became necessary, which explains the slightly different sound on the track. No Mellotron, of course, but it’s one of their enduring classics and doesn’t sound out of place on the album.
Apart from the almost medieval tonalities of ‘Interlude’, there’s very little let up from there on. Album closer, the emotional ‘The Whole World Window’ seems to consist of nothing else in the keyboard department; keyboard whizz Bill (“William D.”) Drake uses choir, flutes and strings to great effect, seeming to accentuate the almost pre-war feel of the song. Tim has told me that he played some too, but Bill has argued the toss. Whatever. Sadly, Cardiacs have never played the track since saxophonist (and Tim’s ex-wife) Sarah Smith left the band at the end of the ‘80s. (STOP PRESS: they encored with it at their November 2001 gig in London, absolutely bringing the house down). Because of the limits of vinyl, something had to be left off to make way for ‘Is This the Life’, so ‘I’m Eating in Bed’ was demoted to its b-side. Strangely, although it was supposedly recorded during the album sessions, there’s no apparent hint of ‘Tron on it, although it would have fitted perfectly. ‘Eating’ was reinstated to its correct position in the running order when A Little Man… made it to CD. For some reason, there’s a German issue of the CD, released some time before the UK one; it not only includes ‘Eating’, but all three tracks from the ‘There’s Too Many Irons in the Fire’ EP, and another b-side, ‘Goosegash’ that isn’t available anywhere else on CD in this form.
Somehow or other, despite only having the ‘Tron for the day, Tim found time to sample it as well, and the samples have cropped up on subsequent albums. In 1998, Tim borrowed my own M400 to (so I thought) record it for the new Cardiacs album. In fact, the malfunctioning machine ended up inspiring a whole new side project, Spratley’s Japs, where it can be heard on several tracks wheezing away, mere seconds from breakdown. I prefer my ‘Tron working properly; Tim preferred it breaking down. I won.
So, if you want to hear Cardiacs, go to their official site or just bite the bullet and take the plunge. Many people are put off by the band’s raw live sound, but this album demonstrates perfectly why they’re held in such esteem by their small but dedicated fan base. Buy.