Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – Radio Sessions 1980-1993

The radio session might as well have been invented with idiosyncratic but influential post-punk shamblers Television Personalities in mind; the format gave prolific bandleader Dan Treacy an opportunity to record his latest songs quickly, efficiently, and without any of the industry conventions—like rehearsing—he apparently despised.

In turn, radio loved them back. Legendary BBC DJ John Peel was an early supporter of the British band, which was one of the key acts in the transition from punk to indie, with a fey, melodic guitar-pop style that proved influential on the UK’s C86 bands and beyond. Television Personalities recorded a session for Peel’s show in August 1980; those four songs kick off this new compilation, Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – Radio Sessions 1980-1993. Also included is a session for the BBC’s Andy Kershaw from 1986; 10 songs recorded live for Cambridge, Massachusetts, station WMBR in 1992; and, as a bonus download, six songs recorded for New Jersey’s WFMU in 1993.

The appeal of a radio session is often to hear a band’s songs stripped of their more elaborate production choices. At the BBC, bands typically get a few hours to lay down three or four tracks, and there is no time for faffing around with fancy effects or a hired harp. The Smiths’ Hatful of Hollow, which includes BBC sessions as well as a couple of early singles, is probably the most famous example of that approach, with many fans preferring the basic arrangements of songs like “What Difference Does It Make?” to those laid down for album release. But that thinking doesn’t really apply to Television Personalities, a band whose laissez faire attitude to the studio gave them a reputation as godfathers of lo-fi. If anything, the production on those four Peel session tracks—“Look Back in Anger,” “Picture of Dorian Gray” (sic), “Le Grande Illusion” (sic), and “Silly Girl”—is actually cleaner than on the band’s 1981 debut album, ...And Don't the Kids Just Love It.

Most notably, the Peel session guitars are more melodic and less distorted than on the band’s debut, in a way that points toward the group’s future influence on artists like MGMT and Pavement, rather than back at Television Personalities’ roots in punk. The intros to the Peel session versions of both “Silly Girl” and “Look Back in Anger” include brief but gorgeous Byrds-ian guitar riffs that aren’t present in the rougher album takes, bringing to mind the delicate dramatics of early Belle and Sebastian.

The four Peel session songs aren’t necessarily better than the album versions, which have the added weight of history behind them. And the same might be said of the four Andy Kershaw session songs from 1986, three of which would turn up years later on the band’s mid-period masterpiece Privilege. That record is the one Television Personalities album where the production got away from Treacy, with the drums exhibiting a shade of the 1980s mania for excessive tampering. It is a relief, if not a revelation, to hear “Paradise Is for the Blessed,” “My Conscience Tells Me No” (sic), and “Salvador Dali’s Garden Party” recorded with slightly less ceremony than on the album.

If the two BBC sessions sound like the work of a band that is, on some level, at least vaguely interested in playing the music industry game, the two U.S. recordings are incredibly loose and unfocused, the work of a group constantly on the verge of self destruction. They include songs from the band’s 1992 album Closer to God—the WMBR version of “Goodnight Mr. Spaceman” is absolutely barnstorming—along with 1980s classics, material that would never see the light of day elsewhere, a handful of numbers from the (then) lost album Beautiful Despair, and a selection of covers. Some of these make an odd kind of cosmic sense—Buzzcocks’ “Why Can't I Touch It,” The Raincoats’ “No-One's Little Girl,” Daniel Johnston’s “Honey I Sure Miss You”; all interesting, if none essential—while the band’s lumbering take on Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman” seems such an unlikely choice it could only have been made with total sincerity.

Alongside this are gothically elongated versions of Privilege’s “All My Dreams Are Dead” and “My Very First Nervous Breakdown,” a song initially recorded for Beautiful Despair. In the WMBR session, “All My Dreams Are Dead” is stretched out with the agony of perspective, the everyday anguish of Treacy’s remarkable voice pushed to extremes of naive emotion. And the WMFU version of “My Very First Nervous Breakdown” is stunningly intense, nine minutes of edgy, unhinged, and manic psychedelic freakout, a bit like the late-’60s Pink Floyd live recordings when Syd Barrett was close to the exit. Both songs feel essential.

If all that sounds a little random—well, it is. Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out is by no means a logical introduction to Television Personalities, and some of the album—notably “Wandering Minds,” which was improvised live in the studio and sounds like it—is utterly inessential. But the session format works in the band’s favor, the rather basic sound of the recordings giving continuity to 13 years of work, in a way that more formal studio recordings might not. (Although the WFMU session sounds significantly more lo-fi than the other three.)

In fact, this kind of ramble actually suits a band whose career trajectory looks more like the drunken wobble of an office-party reveller than the agitated sprint of some of their post-punk contemporaries. Why not dip a toe into the swirling waters of inspiration with the same nonchalant approach that Treacy himself has shown over the years? Random it may be, but Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out has enough ramshackle style, off-the-cuff inspiration, and wide-eyed emotion to make obsessive fans swoon and newcomers fall in love.

Television Personalities: Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out - Radio Sessions 1980-1993

$40 at Rough Trade

$35 at Amazon