Summer Sadness, August Angst

chrisweeks1020
7 days ago
8 min read

Updated: 10 hours ago

Starring

Blanche Biau, David Boulter, Florist, Gentle Hen, The Mood, Ten Fe

The Front Runners

Heartcore : Blanche Biau

In her merchandise range Blanche Biau has a black T-shirt. The slogan reads : “I went to a Blanche Biau concert, and all I got was depression and this lousy T-Shirt.” Don’t worry. This album is much better than that suggests.

It’s true that she channels the sound of The Cure’s ‘Seventeen Seconds’ - the album where their miserablist Goth persona took flight. Blanche also seem to have taken heed of Robert Smith’s description of Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees : “I wanted to have a band that does what Steven Severin and Budgie do, where they just get a bassline and the drum part and Siouxsie wails".

What saves this album from sinking into a mire of its own making is a strange kind of beauty. It draws you into a compelling night time world that you’re hearing from the inside, not in front of you. There’s a grandeur in the songs, buried in a web of dramatic and fuzzy distortion. It remains thrillingly musical though, suggesting the end of an epoch, perhaps a future one breaking down and crumbling away. It’s a world illuminated by electric neon that emphasises shadows more than light. These are songs that have been turned inside out, like a photo’s negative. It's a trick used on the album cover too.

There’s a heavy dose of shoegaze rolling the songs along, with an electropop / synthpop flavour that sounds quite DIY at times. It captures, too, the music of foghorns and sirens.

Every track holds its own but particular highlights are ‘With Roses You Say Goodbye’, ‘Holding You’ and ‘I Close My Eyes’.

This is an album you should pack into the survival kit of the student in your life as they leave for university. It’s cool enough to draw in new friends, and accessible enough to be an enjoyable listen.

Taster Track : Holding You

Singles 1981 -1984 : The Mood

Hands up if you remember The Mood. Neither do I, but I’m now asking how that state of affairs could be allowed to happen.

They were once a promising member of the second wave of synth pop, the wave where the emphasis switched from experimenting with the new sounds of a synthesiser to using one to create sparkling pop gems. They released half a dozen singles, three of which climbed the Top 75 without breaking into Top 40. Last year the band reconnected, and remastered their original songs to make this album. It sounds great, but here’s the good part. Listening to these songs is like discovering a £20 note in the pockets of a forgotten old jacket.

They certainly looked the part for the times. They were three parts sensitive souls, two parts bold colours and one part male model for a knitting pattern. In other words they were classic Smash Hits cover material.

We can smile fondly at our musical memories. The instrumental ‘Waves In Motion’ captures everything we loved about the time - simple melodies backed by novel synthetic beats and a ubiquitous saxophone to keep one foot in familiar territory. The “Ooh la las” and its sixth form French seductress whispering breathy promises of ‘Paris Is One Day Away’ is very much of its time.

The Mood ticked all the right boxes from ‘Don’t Stop’s pop chart and dance floor friendly funk from the school of Heaven 17, Spandau Ballet and ABC to the poppier side of the 80s represented by OMD’s ‘Souvenir’ and ‘Enola Gay’.

The album covers four years, and there are suggestions that The Mood were already beginning to move with the times without losing any quality. Listen to the chants and proto rap of ‘She’s Got Me’ to find one possible direction. Listen to ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ to hear the beginnings of a transition to another - a darker sound that was becoming al la (Depeche) mode.

This was a joy from start to finish, like trawling an old photo album of happy memories.

Taster Track : Waves In Motion

The Chasing Pack

Whitby : David Boulter

I’ve been to Whitby. It’s a town that celebrates Dracula, steam punks, fish and chips and stunning views across the harbour. It’s a riot of noisy sensations and visual delights. David Boulter does full justice to the moments of peaceful beauty that offer respite from the more frantic bustle of the town.

You have the sense that Boulter has sought distance from the day to day, either by location - Whitby Abbey is high above the town, 199 steps high - or time. Sunset, first light, last light and the Aurora Borealis all feature amongst the seven tracks here. This feeling of detachment comes out strongly in ‘The Abbey At Sunset’. It’s peaceful, but the strings seem to give a muted screech from the town below. It’s almost as if the excitable pleasures of childhood are almost too much for the grown man.

In his previous forays to the East Coast, into Yarmouth and St Anns, there’s been a feeling of strong connection with the locality. That’s not as evident here. There’s no sense of a Proustian stopping of time as memories come flooding in. I’m not drawn into the reveries the places inspire. It’s as if Boulter is trying to capture the essence of Whitby for others rather than himself. The pieces here are snapshots, evocative aural postcards but not as personal.

That apart, his ability to recreate atmosphere and gorgeous melodies remains his greatest gift. You can lose yourself in wonder at the tranquility of ‘The Aurora Borealis’. I have personal experience of watching ‘First Light’ creep across the harbour. It’s a beautiful sight and the music does complete justice to it. ‘The Cinder Track’ is a lovely piece of music as suggestive of cream and jam on scones as it is of clouds of insects swarming the path at sunset. The highlight is ‘Last Light’. It’s a triumph as Boulter brings atmosphere and gorgeous melody into happy alignment, satisfied and satisfying at the end of a long day.

David Boulter has a special talent and on this album he shares it with you.

Taster Track : Last Light

Jellywish : Florist

For such a light, almost flippant title this is an emotionally complex album, filled with resigned sadness and just a little cautious happiness.

‘Levitate’ opens the album and there are a number of words to describe it. Hushed. Intimate. Fragile. Pretty. It’s all those things but above all it’s sad, verging on mournful at times. It’s a strange kind of sadness too. Emily Sprague seems to imagine anything and everything that could prevent her happiness, so that she can be prepared for it. In ‘Started To Glow’ for instance she sings

“I’m thinking about dying again

The only thing that visits my head now.”

As the album progresses a kind of restrained happiness arises. It’s little more than a possibility though and that makes the sadness deeper and less easy to bear. It feels like a love story that develops against all the odds, only for one of the couple to die at the end.

Each of these songs takes us to Sprague's innermost thoughts. On ‘Gloom Designs’ especially, that takes us to some pretty dark places. f it does that to the listener, how must it feel to experience it? There’s no getting away from it - the unrelenting unhappiness starts to squash your spirit.

On a more positive note, there’s a steady gravitas to ‘Moon, Sea Devil’ and to others that impresses itself on you. It makes what might otherwise seem light and airy, something of substance.

The music plays its part too. You’ll be grateful for the strong melodies to songs such as ‘Levitation’ and ‘Jellyfish’. It’s as if she’s holding you in her hand to help you through the songs. The music is quiet. Some of the embellishments are barely heard butthat serves to draw you in closer. The main focus of the music is a strummed guitar. Everything else just creeps in.

If you like Ada Lea, Hand Habits and Cassandra Jenkins - and I do - you’ll find this takes you further down the same path.

Taster Track : Jellyfish

The Wrong Record : Gentle Hen

Formerly known as School of the Dead, Gentle Hen captures the wonder of being able to make pop music. It comes through your headphones like a tonic brightening the day.

There’s something childlike about this record. It’s full of the joyful excitement you might experience when you discovered you could make music for the first time. It’s the same spark that infuses Barenaked Ladies’ ‘If I Had $1,000,00’, Jonathan Richman’s ‘New England’ and The Boy Least Likely To’s ‘Be Gentle With Me’. As it progresses you can hear the American college influences of They Might Be Giants and, even, on ‘The Infinite Kitchen’ a connection to grunge and stripped back indie. It’s the kind of music that may have influenced the adolescence of Ross from ‘Friends’ if he sought a playlist that helped him to look and sound cool.

And with all those touchstones, it’s turned into something happily unique. It has charm. It’s full of helpless songs about things going unavoidably wrong (‘The Rumor Mill’). They’re laced with sad, wry humour but also a simple optimism that it doesn’t have to be this way. A bad day will end (‘Bad Day Done’). ‘It Only Takes A Couple of Words’ reassures us with hope at its heart that “Maybe all that matters is that you were nice.”

These are songs that don’t make a fuss. They have an attitude that will enable them to make music always, with friends and for fun. The furthest they get from the feel of rehearsing in bedrooms and garages is on ‘The Wrong Way’ which, in its own quiet way, borders on epic. They lodge in your head and heart as a result of more than a few nursery rhyme melodies.

Gentle Hen - the spoonful of sugar that helps life’s medicine go down.

Taster Track : Bad Day Done

Still In Love : Ten Fe

It’s six years since Ten Fe’s last album. In that time, they seem to have withdrawn from the indie synth elements of their past work and are now concentrating on a more comfortable kind of soft rock.

They do it very well but, in settling down, they also seem to have settled for something less. This is an album full of songs that could slip easily into the musical slot of a Saturday evening chat show. They’re not the first band to have followed the path from indie contenders to establishment protegees. Travis took the same route.

As my attention meandered from the music, I had a quick trawl through their Spotify catalogue. Their latest single is a reworking of 2019’s ‘Superrich’ in collaboration with some new guns. They’ve also released a cover of Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’. Maybe these songs suggest that, with the right material, they haven’t lost the imagination that helped them to stand apart in the past.

‘Still In Love’ is an album where Lo Moon meet Young Gun Silver Fox by way of the poppier side of Steely Dan. It’s an accomplished, pleasant and professional piece of work. I’m afraid they’re not words you find in a rave review. They’re more the kind of words you find in a ‘damning with faint praise’ thesaurus.

There are memorable moments, but fewer than before. ‘Still In Love’ reminds us that they know how to structure and build a good song, bringing it to a rousing climax. It also reminds me that I may be still in love with the band, but I’m having to work at it more than before. The synthetic woodwind on ‘All Night’ and ‘Everland’ is a nice touch, even as the guitar on ‘All Night’ reluctantly drags the song into soft rock territory. I enjoyed the piano chords on ‘Space Invader’ too.

All told, this was a little underwhelming. Ten Fe means ‘hold the faith’. Right now, that seems to be what they are asking of their audience.

Taster Track : Still In Love