This is the latest album from Lars Cleveman, the well-known Tenor who usually specializes in performing the works of Wagner in the world's great opera houses to full houses. But Under The Influence isn't an opera album, but rather one of Lars' side projects as a slightly cerebral rock singer who of course has great diction and sense of phrasing on this follow up to 2008's Voices In My Head and is another slice of intelligent angry and bittersweet rock very much in the vein of John Cale and with the choir boy in Lars trying to slay all sorts of demons.
The album starts with an argument on Mood Swings and then it sort of bursts into Lars intoning his philosophy of how to get by and make the world a better place trying to get through the way he is driven mad by his partner and by life itself. All over some wailing guitar and cymbal-heavy drumming.
European Psycho sums up political insanity in a just over three minutes and has a better grasp of reality than many political diatribes you can read in the mainstream press. It also comes complete with some truly psychotic music.
Suffering Artist is a good look at how he was obsessed with death in his teens and getting high to rebel and look for a way out of the choir and how things have changed now he is older. It's a cool song of life's journey. The song's repeated refrain of "Suffering Artist" would be brilliant if sung by a busker. Of course Lars sounds nothing like a busker and neither do his backing singers.
The Devils Work is a deft reworking and modernized version of the Stones' Sympathy for the Devil, full of regret and wonder as to if this is the end and what we should be doing if it is. At the same time, the guitar solos in one speaker and the backing singers are in the other one along with some wild and slightly out-there percussion.
Back To The Dream is a bit more ruminative and slower and darker sounding with a scary spoken word interlude in the middle with all sorts of odd sounds in the background as the story unfolds and we find out what happened in this dream. It is reminiscent of the dream songs that Lou Reed recorded sporadically through his career, almost the narration to the start of a very twisted film.
|
Follow Me is a song of seduction as Lars implores you to follow him into his maze as he describes what will happen in the maze as the music gets wilder and has at time the feeling of impending claustrophobia that John Cale managed to evoke when he produced Nico's The End album.
Gallows Pole is a modern re-working of the old blues tune that Leadbelly made famous long before Page and Plant claimed to have written it. This version is good and desperate with enough begging to not be hung up there a good new take on it. The vocals sound like they have been recorded with a valve mic that has some sort of gating on it so he sounds almost like a 1930's reporter singing the song at us. The effect is quite chilling.
Big Jim has raging guitars that grab me by the ears. I'm not sure I paid much attention to the words, as I liked the music too much.
Secret Reels is slow and pensive look at the awful way TV can run our lives and how corrupting it is. But as the music expands with your vision, will you find that way forward that you really need? It sounds like a church organ being played as the rest of the sounds are built around it quite beautifully dream-like. A bit like John Cale's Caribbean Sunset.
The album closes with The Frantic Dr Moore: a tale of either despair and depression or just ruing the things that have caused Dr Moore to leave and it has to be said this song is played at the slowest, least frantic pace imaginable, every note carefully chosen and plucked or sung. A beautiful if a bit mystical end to the album.
Lars Cleveman online
|
