I so wanted to hail this as the hoped for return to form from a master of his craft. I wanted to say the same about his last album “Boy From Michigan”, which I thought sounded so good while I was listening to it, but have never felt the desire to listen again. Ever since the promise of “Pale Green Ghosts” in 2013, and despite some brilliant songs scattered throughout his later work, he has never managed to capture the potential glory of earlier work, scattering too many throwaway dance-oriented songs in amongst the genius of his best work. With a voice like his what else could you excel at but big slow-burn ballads like “Glacier”, or mid-tempo lyrical “pop” songs like GMF.
For this record Grant has teamed up with producer Ivor Guest (who produced the brilliant Grace Jones album “Hurricane”), giving the songs a sedate largeness, but otherwise it’s business as usual, as he juxtaposes personal themes such as family with the wider political world, and the dark days of ever narrowing hatred towards minorities, and the creeping malaise of religion eroding our freedoms. There’s a problem I have here. Songs like “Father”, with its yearning nostalgia for parental love (‘sometimes I just want to run into your arms and let you hold me once again’) and “Daddy” (‘will you hold me’), and “Mother And Son”, with the safety bond against a cruel world between them destroyed by war, (aided by vocals from Scottish folk singer Rachel Sermanni) are all slow moving and beautiful, poignant pieces of emotional music which should equal his best work, but they don’t. It might be the constant vocoder presence underneath his vocals, or the huge fabric curtain movement of the production, or a bit of both but the songs, beautiful as they are blend like ambience into the background, reminding me of the slow ballet of Gavin Bryars “Sinking of the Titanic”, the ever dwindling majesty of slow tragedy reduced to a beautiful dream.
“The Child Catcher” too, with its chilling orchestral drama, is somehow smoothed by the vocoder, only saved by the painful shrieks of the out of control guitar solo. The highlights for me are the layers of noises and syn drums which burst out of “Marbles”‘ rolling hills, the classic Grant song “Laura Lou”, which combine the electronics and synth voices with such chilling warmth to the acoustic strums and Grant’s naked baritone voice, creating touching greatness. “Zeitgeist” too is more classic Grant. Yes there is still the ever present vocoder, but the simplicity of delivery makes it more powerful and emotional.
I’d personally have thrown out “Meek AF”, “It’s A Bitch” and “All That School For Nothing” and concentrated on making a great single album. I find them unnecessary. However others would disagree, hence the popularity of songs like “Ernest Borgnine” and “Voodoo Doll”, but I can happily live without them. It is a great album, and there is enough here to keep fans happy, and it is certainly a much better album than 2018’s “Love Is Magic”, and I imagine when he performs some of these songs live on his upcoming tour there won’t be a dry eye in the house, but I’m still waiting for him to surpass his brilliant first album “Queen Of Denmark”. I know he can, and I know he will.
Andrew Wood
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