Strange Fruit - Catherine Wheel

Sorry to go a week without blogging. Been busy.

One of my current favorite bands is Catherine Wheel
(current in the sense of currently listening to, not necessarily currently active, which CW apparently are not). Of the bands I've heard in the Shoegaze genre (which is by no means even half of them), these guys have the best sound, combined with the best songwriting. It's all about atmosphere. Any schoolkid can turn up the guitar effects and make noise leaning into the Peavey combo amp his parents bought him, but it takes art to make the songs that Catherine Wheel put out on their first two albums, Ferment (1992) and Chrome (1993). I have not listened to their albums after this period, which according to their Wikipedia entry took them away from Shoegaze into "hard rock". Will be worth a listen in the future.

A major part of the atmosphere achieved by the Shoegaze era CW is no doubt due to Tim Friese-Greene, a member of the seminal new-wave/alternative pop/rock band Talk Talk,who produced Ferment and played keyboards on Chrome.

As an aside, the Ferment album cover reminds me of a view down the throat of a sandworm.

In some of the online material about CW there are some comments that the lead singer, Rob Dickinson, was not confident in his vocal strength and that is partially responsible for the position of the vocals in the mix, which somewhat follow the Shoegaze poetic of voice-as-instrument. For me, this is not a drawback of this genre. It adds an irreplaceable dimension to the narrative and atmosphere. This is especially true in the case of CW. The vocal is in the high range for male (while not being falsetto), which adds a romanticism and even a fragility that synergizes with the strong guitar wall. Without this vocal sound, a huge part of the emotional content of these songs would not come across.

Strange Fruit (damn, no video on Youtube), from the Chrome album, encapsulates everything that is great about the Catherine Wheel sound.


At first glance, the lyrics look like standard oblique loner poetry. But there are a couple of really great stanzas here: First verse: "I've been inside this fruit when juices flow. But the taste is just a memory you hold. There is no real decay. No feeling of the skin. No juice."
Second verse: "This is sweet the soul the flesh I wish. It's the liquid that I miss. There is no real decay. The flesh is barely bruised. It's no use."

Dark, strange, I would even say gothic. Fits the sound perfectly, even though it is a not a dirge-y gothic tempo. They also dovetail really well with the song’s structure.

The guitar opening is strong and straight, uppish tempo. Then the drums kick in, clean, simple. Verse vocal is high and strong. The second part of the verse brings in a new hook, with great harmony somewhat receding in the background. The guitar line falls down from on high.
The every-beat drums during the chorus, which brings in yet another hook, really rally things. It's rare to find more than one real hook in a song and this one arguably has three (two verse plus the chorus). The guitar sound throughout is so full you can lean against it, into it like a big sofa. The chorus hook is emphasized further by the repetitive lead guitar line. The transition from chorus back to verse is really great, with an unexpected phrasing.
After the second chorus there is a brief bridge part just before a nice dreamy break (in America, Shoegaze was called Dream Pop).
Then we are given a big third verse and final chorus, which just rings out into forever at the end. The structure here is pure pop song, but this gives you everything you need soundwise and atmosphere wise. There are few perfect songs out there. I've already blogged about one. Strange Fruit is another.

Candy - Talk Talk

Talk Talk is one of the main influences on my songwriting (and vocal style). Their Wikipedia entry states that the group is best known in pop circles for its New Wave singles like "Talk Talk" and "It's My Life" but best appreciated by musicians in their more experimental "post rock" material on the albums Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock and afterward. All true, but my favorite Talk Talk songs are the more obscure ones of their early period. These have conventional pop structures, although you can hear where they are going (toward the experimental stuff) through their signature instrumentation and the roomy sound of the production. The things that have always stood out for me in Talk Talk are the terrific songwriting, fused with very strong atmospherics and simple but hooky chord progressions, and the vocals of lead singer Mark Hollis, which are quite high and extremely soulful - a perfect match for the songs.

Candy, the final track on their debut 1982 album The Party's Over is my favorite Talk Talk song. It's a masterpiece of downtempo emotional intensity. It begins with a little bell dinging on the off beat and then the intro/verse digs in with a slow basic rock beat (the percussion track is quite high in the mix throughout) and a high, pulsing synth theme. Then the piano theme wafts in, along with their distinctive rubbery bass line. The toms in the drumkit during the verse sound somewhat electronic, but it's unmistakably human drumming. There's a very nice build into the first chorus, whose volume is filled by a compelling running piano line, which jumps around as the bridge approaches. The vocal harmony in the chorus mixes a sweetness into the overall sad tone and during the chorus the bassline is tighter, less rubbery, and slightly funky in its repeating figure. The bridge reduces the drumkit to a military snare figure, and comes across as sort of a personal anthem somewhat outside the main thought line of the verse and chorus. The formula builds downward with the rhythm track returning to verse music leading to the big final chorus. The final chorus and big slow ending, somewhat rare outside of orchestral rock, provide a wonderful denouement with a sense of emotional drain afterward. There is an interesting demo version of this song on their 1998 compilation Asides Besides, with cleaner drumming that is lower in the mix, quite a bit more treble (but the initial bell sound is missing), and a backing vocal in the chorus that sounds higher (possibly a different person).

I won't often highlight lyrics, but in the case of Talk Talk it's a must. Here they are:

Candy

This sure is some kind of party
It's so useful
Surrounds my life with excuses
For what I choose to lose
And my name
Doesn't look the same to me
And inside
Don't you know I feel so bad
Candy,
When I tried to turn away
To feel new again
My emotion cost me pain
Did I look the same
When I think about the times
That I laughed away the idea you'd cheat me
But look again
What do you say 'That's my name'
And I hope that I've kept you amused
To wipe that spit right off my boots
And when I'm home and thinking in the dark
I hope that none of this has had to go too far
When it gets too late
To see me any other way
And it gets so hard to hold on
To everything that I want so bad

It's a relationship song. Apparently surrounding a woman named Candy (What do you say "That's my name") who has been unfaithful and broken the protagonist's heart. But there seems to be an analogy to the other kind of candy as well.

I never studied the lyrics of this song until I had heard it probably dozens of times and it had become my favorite Talk Talk song. In this case, discovering the full lyrics (instead of the partial understanding I could get from hearing the song) was like a picture emerging from fog. Not that I could immediately understand them, but they became beautiful immediately. This was both because they were associated with this amazingly beautiful song and also because they linked the whole work together. This has happened with other Talk Talk songs (e.g. Renee).
From Renee: "And maybe when the cheat plays
Maybe when the ace falls from his suit
And he tells you
'Yeah that's the game, I didn't want to lose it on the two'
You're playing his way
But the prize that you've been losing was youth"

These are genius lyrics but they are even more amazing if you have been steeped in the song first.

Interestingly, Tim Friese-Greene, the band's producer (a de facto band member), also produced and became the keyboard player for Catherine Wheel. This shows in the beautiful atmospherics. It's not a coincidence that I was attracted to the music of the two bands independently.