(#400: 28 October 1989, 2 weeks)
Track listing: Piano
Song – Instrumental/Blue Savannah/Drama!/How Many Times?/Star/La Gloria/You
Surround Me/Brother And Sister/2,000 Miles/Crown Of Thorns/Piano Song
Another landmark TPL
number, and maybe it is time to pause and take stock of where the eighties, as
this tale knows it, are going. Mention has previously been made of things going
full circle and back to 1980, and it has to be said that, as in that year, many
of its number one albums sound like the last album that will ever be made,
although the overriding concern is perhaps not so much apocalypse as the
multiple problems of relationships, and if and how man and woman connect.
Time, however, and as also mentioned before, is quickly
running out. In the big albums of this period there is a very real sense of the
last chance saloon, the final opportunity to have a say before a New Age, of
whatever stripe, comes to pass, and Erasure are no exception.
I have no idea who or what inspired the title Wild! – unless it’s a sneaky reference
to Oscar – but the fourth Erasure album is a dramatic improvement on their
third, far more focused, catchier/more singable, more poignant and more
downright fun to listen to.
It begins, unsettlingly, with a slow, standard piano
sequence which is soon invaded by odd tonalities (a clear pointer to future
voices like Plone and Plaid). This in turn fades out – we’ll get back to it
later – in order to usher in “Blue Savannah,” always one of my absolute favourite
Erasure songs, its desert romance fantasy underscored by that autumnal air (the
way voices and sounds echo back on each other) which I always find attractive
in pop. With its “Sealand” synthesisers and piano cascades, the song is rather
like a cross between early OMD and Michel Polnareff and I wish Elvis had lived
to cover it (even if to slow it down to “Beyond The Reef” speed). The
unresolved harmonies which take the song out (the repeated “to you only”s) are
achingly moving.
But Erasure can be as joyfully bitchy as they are affecting.
“Drama!” is terrific accusatory pop with great gusty yells of “GUILTY!”
courtesy of the Jesus and Mary Chain, who were in the adjoining studio working
on Automatic (and TPL has perhaps undervalued guest stars
on songs; did you know that Peter Frampton plays lead guitar on Frankie Valli’s
“Grease” or that Mark Knopfler appears on “She Means Nothing To Me”?).
Likewise, “Brother And Sister” and “2,000 Miles” are enjoyable romps through
family and relationship traumas.
When they slow down, Andy Bell’s deep register can sound
surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) like David Sylvian, for example on “How
Many Times?,” although this song also carries a distinctly Bryan Ferry-ish air
of affluent melancholy (“Will I regret the chances taken?/Why do I end up
always the one who is mistaken?”), or on the slowly-smouldering “You Surround
Me.”
In contrast, “Star” is a cheery thrust through impending
apocalypse and religious hucksters on TV. The cod-flamenco of “La Gloria”
(possibly with Ms Estefan in mind?) also sounds like it was a riot to make. Its
overall good humour is one of the things which makes Wild! immeasurably better than The Seeds Of Love; you do feel that this is basically Vince and Andy all the
way through, just the two of them, bouncing ideas off each other, and that no
celebrity guests or florid arrangements are required.
Then, however, we arrive at the two closing songs, and “Crown
Of Thorns” is a scathing denunciation of somebody we can only assume is
Thatcher (“Light in her eyes pours black on their lives,” “Her name burned into
his brow/Scorn in her eyes/Her back to the cries”) and how “old England” is
being allowed to bleed to death. This is the late eighties, there is a big
disease with a little name; it does not take much guesswork to identify the
source of the duo’s rage.
The closing song I will return to in good time, but it did
occur to me that if we are to take this record into account – and given that
those cries of “GUILTY!” echo the ones in “Waking The Witch” - we must also try
to pair it with the record that it kept at number two:
On balance it is easy to see why the Erasure album
prevailed; they had an absolutely devoted and loyal hardcore fanbase and Mute’s
promotional department were completely on the ball (perhaps learning from Rough
Trade’s mistakes with The Smiths). But Wild!
is a far more assimilable and easily digestible record than The Sensual World. Those in search of a
second Hounds Of Love were always
going to be disappointed; this has no easily discernible running storyline and
no catchy “Running Up That Hill” equivalent to hang onto as a hook. The nearest
thing to the latter is the title song, but great as it is, it was never going
to be a number one.
The strange thing about the song “The Sensual World” is
that, rather like another number one album from the other end of 1989, it is a
marked contrast to the songs which follow it; or they may be one long, aching
song divided into nine or ten parts. Here Bush finds sexual happiness and
fulfilment, but is this really happening or is she merely experiencing it in
the course of reading Ulysses?
The album initially does not appear to answer that question
readily. Instead it explores different dimensions of relationships between man
and woman, whether it be personal break-up (“Love And Anger”) or watching what
her parents are doing (“Between A Man And A Woman”) and it would appear that
the artist is experiencing extreme difficulty relating to any of it.
This may in great part be down to residual fear; and so “The
Fog” may be the record’s key song, with her father (played by her father
himself – Bush was now thirty) tentatively encouraging her to swim. But she is
afraid to let go, and this fear emerges again when faced with its antithesis,
the reckless woman ready to tie a firework and fire herself off Waterloo Bridge in “Rocket’s Tail.” Fear of
commitment, fear of being required to formulate herself as a unique individual –
who knows, but elsewhere there are implanted memories of dancing, or not
dancing, with Hitler (“Heads We’re Dancing”), or what sounds like Gable in Gone With The Wind, with the burning
cornfields and so forth (“Never Be Mine”). On the latter song she makes her
desire explicit – “I want you as the dream,” she sings, “not the reality,”
possibly knowing that the real Clark Gable would simply have disappointed her.
But on “Deeper Understanding” she falls in love with her
computer, at the expense of parental care. None of this is making her complete
as a person, and I note her attachment to “the thrill and the hurting” in “Never
Be Mine.” Then again, when she partially re-recorded four of these songs for
2011’s Director’s Cut, who should be
the voice of the computer but her not-yet-born son Albert.
Like The Seeds Of Love,
one does feel that the ornateness gets in the way of expressing something very
basic. All sorts of then-modish liberal arts types pop up throughout the
record, including Nigel Kennedy, Mick Karn, Michael Nyman, Alan Stivell and Eberhard Weber,
as well as the more expected David Gilmour. For me, however, only the Trio
Bulgarka, who appear on three songs, make the transition from look-at-my-cool-record-collection
status; frequently they argue with and sometimes overpower the singer, and at
the horrifically jubilant climax of “Rocket’s Tail” they join in with the yells
of “KICK IT! KICK IT!” (hinting at “Kick It In,” and yes, John Giblin is duly
present on bass).
And then there is “This Woman’s Work,” which is simply Kate,
her multiple voices and piano, and Michael Kamen’s patient and sympathetic
strings. It is always helpful to remember that this was originally written for
the 1988 film She’s Having A Baby,
starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern, and plays over its most heart-rending
sequence. Because this song is not at root about some residual imbalance
between expectations and reality; it is actually the bookend song to “Breathing”
since once again she is about to give birth and she is encouraging the new to be born (“I know you have a little life in
you left”). At the same time, however, she cannot help but recall her life
until now with its trail of unsaid things and undone deeds and roads never
taken (because what is to become of the father? There are so many other bass players on this record, and
he himself is present, if not all the time). Part of her wants that tentative
child in her back, while the other is trying to break through physical and
emotional pain. The strings rise to crescendo, the multiple Bushes howl their
way towards a scream, and then a final, ambiguous whisper: “Just make it go
away, now.”
It is a magnificent performance and also how the record was
supposed to end. Both CD and cassette editions carried an eleventh song, the
indecisive happy ending of “Walk Straight Down The Middle,” but if we are to
twin this record with the one by Erasure, then we have to admit that the common
denominator is indeed love and anger; both the love of anger and the process of
being angry at love.
And so it is back to “Piano Song,” a far from
straightforward but almost as moving an album closer. Bell sings it as though counting down his
final seconds. He is sitting alone, somewhere, getting older, being talked to
like a child (tellingly the song’s opening line is “Never get angry at the
stupid people”) but knows that his time is running out. He cannot quite recall “the
consciousness of me and you.” He stares at the window and sees only his own
face, his own eyes. “What hurts me most,” he sings or murmurs repeatedly, “I’ll
never see your eyes again.” His lover’s eyes, or his own eyes? He is dying (“The
harder it gets,” “Though I get weary”) but the cause of his dying is fairly
easily spelled out (“My body belies me, I’m of fertile mind”). Before the song
ends, his mind is starting to atomise – “I try to forget…I’ll never see your
eyes again…I can’t recollect…” This song stares the elephant in the 1989 living
room right in its eye.
And we have not even reached the terminal beach of 1989.
Yet.
Next: The end of the line.
