As a one-time rabid fan of The Mission, I’m aware of Artery, and even have a copy of their 1985 LP ‘Live in Amsterdam’ which I may have played once or twice in the twenty years since I picked it up. Not because it’s a bad album: I have a lot of records tucked away that I’ve never really got around to exploring properly. Anyway, Sheffield-based Artery were notable for being the band that Mission guitarist Simon Hinkler was in before he joined ex Sisters of Mercy Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams, but to my mind existed as little more than a footnote in proto-goth / post-punk history.
Unbeknownst to me, while I’ve been concentrating on new music, Artery reformed. At the invitation of Jarvis Cocker (Hinkler had worked with Cocker on ‘Pulp – It’ and engineered and produced subsequent recordings), they got back together in 2007 to play Meltdown. Four years on, they offer up their first new studio album in 27 years. And what do you know? It’s good!
This comes as something of a surprise: after all, other bands of the same era and ilk as Artery have also recently reformed with variations on the original lineups and produced new material with mixed results. Seeing a reformed Skeletal Family without original singer Anne-Marie Hurst, for example, was plain strange. They sounded good, but there was something not quite right about a bunch of middle-aged men in leathers fronted by a girl less than half their age. The March Violets are at work on a new album that shows some promise, but perhaps not the potential to be a bona fide classic. The reformed Bauhaus should have let it lie, and The Danse Society’s new sound, which saw original singer Steve Rawlings replaced by some awful generic goth bim was beyond disappointing.
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‘Civilisation’ sounds like an old record, for sure. In fact, it sounds like it could still be 1984. But it also sounds properly authentic, like a band who still have the fire, rather than a band who are desperately fanning the ash-caked embers. Of course, there’s no reason why, even without Hinkler or original bassist Tony Perrin (who would go on to manage The Mission after Artery split) it shouldn’t work: these are dark, difficult and even desperate times. As was the case in the 80s, we’re a nation in economic turmoil, with high unemployment and an uncertain future.
It’s the perfect environment for music that’s bleak, frustrated, nihilistic: in short, the type of music that was post-punk shortly before it topped into goth parody. Interlooping chorus-laden guitar lines, haunting piano and solid basslines provide the backdrop to Mark Gouldthorpe’s gravelly baritone as he dolls out frustration and despair with urgency and complete sincerity. It’s edgy in the way that UK Decay’s ‘For Madmen Only’ is edgy, and taut and claustrophobic in the way Red Lorry Yellow Lorry’s entire output is.
A triumphant return.
Artery Online
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