The danse macabre was a late-Gothic story that rattled the anxious bones of post-plague Europe. Pictures, plays, sermons, songs and sculptures told the tale of every kind of person (from an archbishop to a serf) being led by the Reaper in a cadaverous dance to their ultimate fate beyond the grave. Sic transit, as they would have said, gloria mundi. Thus passes, as we translate, the glory of the world.
No matter how much celebrity, how many units, how many millions - the last decider is the state of your soul. Or, in the present case, your music. Your sweet soul music. Damned or Sainted? Does it stack up or not?
Back at last with THE SCARAMANGA SIX we consider the challenge. Condemned (like Lord Berowne in “Love’s Labours Lost”) “to move wild laughter in the throat of death” the Six have spent their career to date carving Gothic tunes and Thespian stage moves that might tease “the pained impotent to smile”. Poor lovesick Berowne got “the speechless sick and the groaning wretches” to entertain for a measly twelve months. Musical obsessives THE SCARAMANGA SIX got the audiences of Huddersfield and Leeds for twelve excruciating years. Lucky, lucky them.
But do the groaning wretches have grins on their vacant faces yet?
Well, they were starting to hop and clap and look less miserable last summer, when the third full album “Cabin Fever” (ecstatically reviewed by W&H) was kind of released and The Six played a five drum kit tour de force at the Carling Leeds Festival.
And now. And now. And now we have “The Dance of Death”. Formally released on March 5th 2007 with full national distribution, the ten track album can already be got through the band’s website and gigs. It was produced by the band in conjunction with Tim Smith of The Cardiacs and features the stalwart Paul and Steven Morricone, with current band members Julia Arnez, Chris Catalyst and Anthony Sargeant. Orchestral arrangements are by Mike Scott and recording / engineering credits go to the same Tim Smith.
I almost daren’t tell you how good it is. You have been stung too many times. You’ve been told too often that albums will change your life. Too many times you’ve sat dejected and deflated by killer albums whose first flush of intoxication turned too quickly to nagging headache, dull oblivion and memory loss. You’ve even read this paragraph before and sighed “like … yeh … as if ...”
It cannot be.
But it is. It’s a brilliant album. It’s an album with everything. You could use up a whole degree in Contemporary Music just trying to catch all the allusions and precedents. Damn, the label have even sent out a twenty track tutorial CD to get reviewers schooled up to the task. John Barry, XTC, Gene Pitney, Scott Walker, William Shatner, The B-52s and Tony Bennett all figure along with some more obvious affinities like Cardiacs, Magazine and The Damned. One delight of listening to the album is noticing musical quotes from classic, but improbable places. Like Bacharach’s “Walk On By” (“I See Red”) or The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (“The Throning Room”). But they only lift the best bits. The ambitious bits.
I think it is worth emphasising “best” and “ambitious” because this is so unlike a standard indie chart album in scale and range. THE SCARAMANGA SIX don’t accept or work within limitations on this album. Limitations are for wimps. There are some great keyboard sounds - but not because it’s a cheap way to approximate real instruments. If they want a string section, a piano or a brass section to pound it home, they get one. If they want timpani and a huge bell for “Towering Inferno” they get one. There’s an absolutely corking saxophone part in “I See Red”. And so on - on every track. Money alone couldn’t buy this level of detail. Passion, mania even, is fundamental.
The overall mood is pumped-up, imperious scorn. There’s a self-conscious rage of affronted dignity and twisted pride surging through the whole album. Mad staring eyes and arched eyebrows are the normal gaze. Fear, admiring devotion and brittle laughter battle for emotional supremacy in the response. It’s exhilarating to hear adults having so much darkly inventive fun.
|
Fun, yes, but never forgetful of death, punishment or retribution. THE SCARAMANGA SIX have a heart of wounded pride and murderous revenge. “The Throning Room” is a simple tale of a psychopathic bride-killing. “Baggage” warns anyone who approaches to tread very carefully. “The Collector” is impenetrably horrific.(You’ll never leave my side / Jar of ether … Arriving in silence”) “Vesuvius” vents catastrophic human fury through transmogrification into Pompeii’s nemesis. “Sunken Eyes” is a very dark story of the lonely misery of a beaten wife. I’m reminded of TOM WAITS wonderful monologue “What’s He Building In There?” Like WAITS’S child narrator, the listener just knows these things are all too grim to be innocent, but the big plan is invisible. The unnameable truth is bigger and uglier because it can’t be discerned.
“I Wear My Heart On My Sleeve” is probably the simplest expression of THE SCARAMANGA SIX’s purpose. Given that this involves some complex reversal “simplest” is relative. “I wear my heart on my sleeve / I kick the man who stands in my way” they sing, with bursting lungs. “Helvetica”, already enjoyed as a single, treats the self to the kind of distortion and abuse suffered by a humble typographic font in this digital age. Not just doomed to death and damnation, but dehumanised in life too. This is big bold fun, eh? “Lifeblood Burning Dry” does obsessive sexual jealousy. “I See Red” covers male rage and violent loss of control. And, for seven minutes of hyperbolic finale “The Towering Inferno” is an operatic swathe of crazed melodrama. Is it a joke, is it a plane? No! It’s a hallucinating psychotic jumping off a high building. It’s crazy and it’s edgy and it works.
Conceptually none of this would stand up if the music wasn’t up to the task. With so much preposterous bravado and such guilty hubris on show, the music has to build a big enough, mad enough stage for the stories to parade themselves with a bit of credibility. And so it does. Big bass and drums, fiery guitar parts, subtle sharing and blending of vocal parts, and as many additional touches as the song demands are added with precision. I especially enjoy the occasional sotto voce or off-stage comment. The landmark big riffs and the charging vocals would have been enough for most bands. But not this lot.
The whole package is above and beyond expectations. There’s a 16 glossy paged booklet of lyrics, track details and photographs, with printing on the jewel case to add a co-ordinated layer to the booklet cover beneath it. Elegant. It’s also worth noting that Wrath Records have numbered this WRATH CD44. Independent specialist labels usually get to that sort of number by starting their catalogue at #40. WRATH CD01 was THE SCARAMANGA SIX EP “Are You One Of The Family” released in 2002. There’s been a trunkful of vinyl and a formidable collection of artists in that period too.
Dancing to our deaths we may be. But a crazed laugh while THE SCARAMANGA SIX play us out is no more than we deserve. As for THE SCARAMANGA SIX, this album has put a seal on their musical salvation. Whatever happens to it, or to them, I can feel a wave of excitement and enthusiasm for what Tim Smith has helped them to create here. It’s an album to put in the all time favourites box. It’s a long time since I played one album so many times in such a short period.
www.thescaramangasix.co.uk
|
