5 posts tagged “crooners”

Continuing my thread of guys who have played brass instruments on David Sylvian albums, here is Mark Isham, as promised, from his first solo album, Vapor Drawings:

That's Isham playing everything, unless there are some drums in there that I can't hear, which would be played by Peter Van Hooke.  Vapor Drawings was released in 1983 on William Ackerman's Windham Hill label, which both brought New Age music into the mainstream and instigated the New Age backlash.  A Sunday Doonesbury cartoon at the time lampooned New Age music by positing the album title Air Pudding--not very far removed from Vapor Drawings.  Skimming through this album again I have a hard time finding a focal point in the music; it all seems like background music.  It's no surprise, then, that in the intervening two decades Isham has built a career as a movie soundtrack composer, with dozens of titles in his œuvre and no signs of slowing down.  He can rock out more than you'd think, though; I once saw him lead his band through a heavy fusion set at Washington's late Bayou nightclub.  And of course his trumpet is always a delicious embellishment, as in David Sylvian's "Red Guitar"--

When you want that "trumpet heard from afar while sitting in an outdoor Parisian café at twilight, waiting for a lover who is not going to show, or mourning one who has just left forever" sound, Mark Isham's your man.  How could I go on about David Sylvian and Mark Isham and not present the pinnacle of their partnership, the song that secured universal recognition of Sylvian's genius (if there is any justice in the world), the sublime "Orpheus"--

"I wrestle with an outlook on life that shifts between darkness and shadowy light."  Jackson Browne has apparently expressed in his lyrics every nuance of emotion that Bob Lefsetz has ever felt, but I get more out of that single line from David Sylvian than from all the Jackson Browne I've ever heard.  I have to stop now, before this becomes the All David Sylvian, All the Time blog.  But I do reserve the right to bring him up again.  Soon.

Since Salty Miss Jill brought up Neil Hannon in the Music Lovers post, here is Neil himself singing his song with "Jill" in the lyrics:

Neil Hannon is the true inheritor of Scott Walker's mantle, though he has a lighter touch: his humor is more sardonic than morbid.  (Walker himself now inhabits a different musical planet altogether.)  The best Divine Comedy album so far is Casanova, from 1996, which spawned the delightfully wicked single, "The Frog Princess"--

What a cheeky little man!  Incidentally, I owe my Divine Comedy fandom to Duncan Sheik, who linked to the DC website from his.  Co-incidentally, I heard Duncan's "She Runs Away" at the gas station yet again last week.  That song must really make people spend!

I first fell in love with The Music Lovers in 2003, when I was browsing on Darla.com looking for some new music.  I listened to the two-minute sample of "This World vs. The Next World" and I was instantly hooked:

I bought that first CD EP, Cheap Songs Tell the Truth, immediately, as I have rushed out (figuratively) and bought the two full-length CDs since.  Bandleader Matthew "Teddy" Edwards is a British expatriate, and The Music Lovers make their home in San Francisco.  They have yet to play on this side of the Continental Divide, though I remain hopeful.  I bring them up now because they have another album coming out soon, with a prerelease video directed by Margaret Cho:

Teddy's rich croon, dark lyrics delivered with a sunny melody, and 60s pop sensibilities put The Music Lovers squarely in Scott Walker territory.  ("Classic" Scott Walker, that is, not latter-day "difficult" Scott Walker.)  But there was another connection to be made that I just couldn't put my finger on until, by chance, I listened to the 1986 album The Wrong People by Furniture.  And thereon was a song I had forgotten about for two decades, but it all came flooding back immediately: "Love Your Shoes"--

"We're going to have the best time, the time of our worthless lives!"  How can you not love a lyric like that?  Jim Irwin was Furniture's singer; their first releases were on Survival Records, one of my favorite labels.  Survival was known primarily for minimal synthbeat music, and Furniture's cabaret style was a new direction for them.  However, after one album with Survival (The Lovemongers, with the original "Love Your Shoes"), the band jumped over to Stiff Records, rerecorded "Shoes" for their Stiff album (The Wrong People), and then got lost in the shuffle when Stiff was acquired by ZTT.  Most of that I learned on Wikipedia just now; I have some more Furniture music to track down, I'll report back if I turn up anything good.  In the meantime, if you liked Furniture, you will like The Music Lovers as well, and vice versa.

I rarely remember to search for my old favorites on YouTube, so it often happens that I happen upon them while blog surfing.  That's how I just turned up a couple lip-synching performances by Japan of the first song I ever heard by them, "Ghosts."  Having discovered New Wave and WHFS in 1981, it seemed there was a whole aternate universe of music to catch up on, and the only way to do it was to listen to HFS as much as possible, often long into the night.  It was late at night when I first heard "Ghosts"; I thought it was Bryan Ferry, but the arrangement was way futuristic, unlike anything I'd heard from him before.  I was fascinated with Bryan Ferry at the time (still am); I had always taken singers for granted before then, but his unique vocal style made me pay attention and realize that he was doing something artistic, and by extension, so do all singers.  Looking back on David Sylvian's career I see that his Ferryisms were just one stop in a long stylistic journey, and that he has always had a lot more power in his voice than Ferry.  Likewise, the weird synth burbles of "Ghosts" were the terminal point in Japan's evolution, their sound having started with glam rock and progressed through eurodisco, new romanticism, and dark balladry.  Hearing "Ghosts" again I think it sounds as fresh as ever, with lyrics that have stuck with me over the decades (despite my ignorance of lyrics in general):

Just when I think I'm winning
When I've opened every door
The ghosts of my life grow wilder than before
Just when I thought I could not be stopped
When my chance came to be king
The ghosts of my life grow wilder than the wind

Here are two choices of video, both to the album track, one from Old Grey Whistle Test, in color with some cheesy effects, the other in black and white from I-don't-know-where, focused almost exclusively on Sylvian.  In both videos he's wearing more makeup than a Maybelline man.

Here starts at last my Crooners thread, and I will state right here at the beginning that no songs posted will contain the MMc Factor.  In this case MMc stands not for Microsoft Management Console, but Michael McDonald.  Just as there are certain flavors I can't stand (wintergreen), and certain smells (whatever the key scent in scented toilet paper is), and certain textures (eggplant), so are there sounds I don't like, and one of them is Michael McDonald's voice.  That is the sound I call the MMc Factor.  Other singers have it, too, and that has prevented me from liking music that I would have enjoyed otherwise.  XTC is a prime example; I have a hard time getting past Andy Partridge's MMc Factor.

So with that out of the way I'll segue from Sheffield into Crooners with a Sheffield crooner, John Stuart.  Richard Hawley is currently riding a wave of popularity in the UK as the "Sheffield Sinatra," but in 1987 he played guitar behind velvet-voiced ex-Chakk singer John Stuart on Stuart's only solo single, a cover of Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze."  You will never hear a lusher version:

(There's that unmistakable Designers Republic graphic style again.)  Rounding out the backing band, billed as The Heavenly Music Corporation, are Dee Boyle (drums, also from Chakk), Darrell de Silva (sax), Jon Quarmby (keyboards), Justin Bennett (percussion), and Heather Allen (backing vocals), with production by Rob Gordon. 
Alas, that was all from The Heavenly Music Corporation as such.  Stuart would go on to be a member of the Lovebirds (with Hawley) and Magic Bullets.  He now lives in Barcelona and continues making lovely music as one-half of Forgetting, and on his own as, once again, The Heavenly Music Corporation.  (Hooray again for MySpace!)