A veteran of the 80s Birmingham scene, MARK LEMON is still plying his trade, his most recent offering being the jangly folksy strum Just Like Elvis Presley, a song based on the story of a Presley fan from Handsworth who dressed to emulate his hero, called his house Gracelands, drove a car with the registration Elvis I and even changed his name. Indeed, when he died, aged 70, in 2010 no one even knew what is original name had been. No one attended his funeral but this is a fine tribute.
WALER, an electro alt-folk project by John Napier and Vincent Gould, return for a second splash with Water Songs Vol 2, meditations on nature of water and our relation to it, opening with the scratchy, jazz-infused hypnotic summery groove Water’s Edge followed by We Are Water where you might discern both Brubeck and Pentangle at play and closing with the keyboards led part spoken house dance worm Drip Drip Drip. My favourite though is How To Save A Dead Man From Drowning with its staccato rhythm, handclaps, echoey acrobatic vocals and an at times Eastern tinged vibe that harks back to late 60s/early70s psychfolk. (www.waler.bandcamp.com).
And maintaining an aquatic link, recently featured on the BrumRadio A-list, THE GOOD WATER offer Love, an infectious buzzing guitar love letter to early acid haze Stone Roses complete with phasing and backward guitar notes effects.
THE GORSTEY LEA STREET CHOIR have been into the remix game again, offering up The Dragons Of Mont Blanc - Extended Play with variations on three tracks, Enter the Dragons as a pulsing Neon Crow Prelude, a seven minute title track about wanting to turn back the clock to a brief moment of glory, here featuring the Junkyard of Silenced Poets, and a Black Star Liner dance floor restyling of Back To Drag a la early Depeche Mode. It’s completed with a radio edit of The Dragons Of Mont Blanc Part I and a radio edit of the same featuring The Junkyard of Silenced Poets, retitled Junkyard Sweetheart Number 13.
THE HUMDRUM EXPRESS returns with the follow up to 2020’s Ultracrepidarian Soup, Ian Passey for Forward Defensive (Cynical Thrills) with songs about Peter Shilton,neighbours with pubs in their gardens (the drone bowed strings, whisperingly sung “Staying Inn), manscaping, and people who talk loudly at gigs (The Gig Chatterer – “Acoustic bands are best, less need for me to shout/My naturally booming speaking voice will do/I’m 6’4” and I quite like to stand near the front/Helps me get a better view”). It opens in scampering form with Brave Boy, an amusing ditty aboutkiddies getting a sticker for overcoming needle phobia that proceeds to take a swipe at a failed track and trace system, Downing Street briefings and clapping for health workers in lieu of paying them.
Riding lolloping drums, the spoken Christmas With Evan Dando announces that, while prone to some exaggeration, “I know this may sound like an unlikely tale but, I once spent Christmas Day on Bondi Beach with Evan Dando” because, after all, “Exploring the southern hemisphere can throw up so many new experiences and unlikely situations - None more so than the sight of the 90’s Slacker pin-up casually wandering amongst jubilant festive revellers.”
A companion piece to the Gary Numanish new wave noir One Man’s Tat (Is Another Man's Treasure), Nostalgia For Beginners is just that as he namechecks League ladders in Shoot! Magazine, The Sports Argus Spot the Ball, Spud-U-Like, Berni Inns, Crossroads, Azumah Nelson, Pat Cowdell, New Romantics, New Wave, One Step Beyond, One Foot in the Grave, Amos Brearley, Shoestring, Streetband and Ronnie Radford. The embedded soccer references find full expression in When Peter Shilton Tweets, the lament of the Third Choice Keeper (“45 appearances spanning 20 years, I played 6 times one season – the most in my career…On each year’s team photo I’m the one that you can’t name”) set to a tumbling bluesy riff, and the wry fashion and football observations of Denim In The Dugout (“2-0 down half time at Grimsby Town/His wardrobe and his team get a dressing down/Roy Hodgson still looks sharp in a suit, but /Wait till you see Bielsa in boot cut!”).
An acoustic swaying anthem with cello backing, Manscape Monday is a particular highlight with its Ray Davies influence(“A dedicated follower of price tags”), nod to Manic Monday and mutedly sad lyrics (“My hobbies include my wardrobe and my hair/My fitness routine and my daily skincare/I hope my chosen fragrance adds to my allure/Along with my frequently scheduled manicure”).
Further social commentary can be found on the clattery What A Time To Be Alive! (“I’m scouring applications for a job that won’t exist”) where he wheels out another line in trademark puns (“I enrolled as a mature student, in desperate times/Turned up late for calligraphy classes in the hope of being given lines/You can have that one in writing”) while the lockdown trend of online live streaming forms the Jona Lewie referencing the spoken You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Watch Parties, detailing a mate’s decision to play an online gig “to top up his reduced wages and maybe re-connect with those he was missing but, most of all, take his mind off his employment uncertainty”, with its wry lines “It was noted that there were 30 people watching – the biggest crowd he’d played to in years!/As he openly admitted, the lack of applause at the end of each song was something he was already well accustomed to”. And a “note to self, never do a home gig on wash day”.
It ends with some space rock and another dose of Passey cynicism with the intoned Celebrity Death Etiquette about cashing in on the death of someone in the public eye, “the opportunity you’ve been waiting for to scroll through those endless phone photos/To re-share that blurry image of you invading the freshly deceased’s privacy during a chance encounter” and “Shrewdly turning someone’s passing into more about you than them”. The cutting edge of cutting comment.
ALBUMS
BREATHLESS
See Those Colours Fly (Tenor Vossa)
Formed in 1983 by frontman and This Mortal Coil collaborator Dominic Appleton, guitarist Gary Mundy, Ari Neufeld on bass and Tristram Latimer Sayer behind the kit, Breathless are a majestic and melancholic dream pop outfit of symphonic proportions. Making their album debut in 1986 with the Herman Hesse titled The Glass Bead Game, they released a further six albums before going into a ten-year hiatus. They re-emerge now with another stupendous opus, albeit featuring Neufeld’s drum programming on account of Latimer Sayer having been involved in a car accident prior to the band going into the studio.
It opens with the dreamy Looking For The Words, a song of support in the face of oppression (“I’m looking for the words/To arm and strengthen you/You know they would break us/If we gave them the chance/You know it’s just fear/You know it means nothing/Fear is all they know”, the band’s familiar cathedral of sound slowly swelling. It’s followed by early morn orchestral tones (Grieg?) that opens The Party’s Not Over, another number about support (“If you need my help some time/To ease you down/I’ll be here for you”, a gathering drone behind the muted vocals before the hushed ebb and flow My Heart And I (the title borrowed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning), from hence the album title comes, with its theme of loss and memory (“Who would have thought/That you’d be the first to go?/Trust you to put yourself first/And time sails by these days”), the quivering vocals putting me in mind of the pre-disco Bee Gees emotive vibrato.
The tempo picks up as the drums lay down the rhythm for We Should Go Driving, a number about turning the gaze inward (“Tonight/In this safe place/We’ll lay down our guards/And examine our mistakes/They’re who we are/Are they?/Are we?/Are we more?”) and clearing the air (“We should go driving/We should talk about these things”, distant churchy organ notes and a solitary drum beat introducing the soothing wash of the unrequited love Let Me Down Gently with its relationship in flux (“So now you see/Just what you mean to me/And, so graciously/You let me down gently/Why can’t things be/Just as they seem to me?/What do I do/To hold on to”) you?)
Another quiet orchestral tide washing against the shores, The City Never Sleeps opens a panorama of urban alienation and isolation (“Here I am /In this small life/Look at the night/Dripping with nostalgia/Here I am/But it’s so hard to feel anything”) the notion of being adrift continuing with Somewhere Out Of Reach, shimmering bells and pulsing keys providing the framework for a song that addresses the refugee crisis (“They’re a walk across the water/Are they really not our friends?”) where “The weakest are always left behind” as the narrator pleads “Give something back/Could it be as simple as that?” and ends asking “But what do I do?/Just what will be done?”
It comes to a close with first the fuller sound, undulating rhythms and cascading notes of So Far From Love, another song about offering support to a wounded heart (“Don’t believe the things they’re telling you/I wouldn’t hurt you…You know it’s true, don’t you?/How he lied and lied to you/That’s all he ever did to protect you/That’s all he ever did to comfort you/Well that’s not love”) and, finally, the seven-minute keyboard drone I Watch You Sleep that offsets the tender opening of “I watch you sleep/Like an angel here in the room with me/My innocent” with the later unsettling lines “They’re going to shame you…And the shame/It sticks like tar/You raised a demon” that calls to mind the parental agonies that inform things like We Need To Talk About Kevin, Mass and Nitram.
Hallucinogenic, ethereal, otherworldly and mesmerising, it’s been a long time coming but the wait has been well worth it.
Mike Davies
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