Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
David Sylvian
Secrets Of The Beehive
(Virgin, 1987)
Japan singer’s fourth solo album. Spooky-gorgeous avant-jazz pop opus ahoy!
For all the crimes of the ’80s, artists at least had the chance to stick around until they became interesting, and were given enough cash to construct a proper folly. Japan began as rum NY Dolls pasticheurs before catching a bad case of the Bowies, their brief moment of teen idoldom coinciding curiously with their ascension to full-on art band status, as 1982’s aptly disembodied Ghosts top-scored with a #5 in the UK singles chart. Meanwhile, Beckenham art-poove David Alan Batt (aka Sylvian) appeared to become more glacially pretentious with every release and, once solo, seemed grimly determined to use every colour in the box: exquisitely torn between pop and the other on debut Brilliant Trees (1984), somewhat tediously post-Eno on Alchemy: An Index Of Possibilities and Gone To Earth (same again, but a double, with extra Fripp).
Secrets Of The Beehive was his slight return to songwriting, creepingly consumed by an existential gloom that – for all the earlier posing – feels authentically felt, and beautifully focused on a bijou palette of instruments, with David Torn and Phil Palmer providing swoon-inducing guitar filigree and Riyuchi Sakamoto making synthesisers sound organic – like wood or water – or supernatural, like wispy choirs of dryads (semi-legendary Amazon reviewer Jason Parkes thinks Radiohead were listening; I suspect he’s right). Sylvian’s resonant, mahogany baritone can hardly have suited any material so well, whether “waiting for the agony to stop” on the dizzyingly sad Let The Happiness In or grappling with the feckless nature of his muse (I reckon) amid the almost upbeat strum of Orpheus. Beyond the confirmed impression of a record that’s well up there at the acme of mid-’80s art-jazz-pop (see also Thomas Dolby, Talk Talk etc) there’s something else. This is music teetering on the edge of the world, stoically on terms with the horrors on either side of the abyss. For that reason, Secrets Of The Beehive is always a rare hug at a dark time. Nice going there, Mr Batt...
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 13/08/2008
Further Listening
David Sylvian – Brilliant Trees (Virgin, 1984)
Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis (Polydor, 1998)
Morelenbaum/Sakamoto – Casa (Sony, 2001)
SUGGEST YOUR OWN DISC OF THE DAY ON OUR MESSAGE BOARD HERE, OR, MORE PRIVATELY, HERE!
Previous Disc of the day
-
-
Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
-
Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
-
Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
-
-
Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
end of body content back to top
Footer
Join us on:
© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use
|
|
Comments
Comment on this post
David_sylvian_1.. Great! :)
Posted by www.mojo4music.com at 1:28 AM GMT 17/04/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Comment on this post