In July of 2024 Ben Holton started writing songs touched by the experience of visiting his ailing father. Visiting every other day, Holton recorded these sketches on a phone as he went. With his father’s passing a few months later the songs were set aside until, in June 2025, they were dusted off and recorded in Holton’s childhood home.
Such a process has the potential for being painfully introspective, wearisomely maudlin and/or darkly cathartic and in other hands might have ended up as such, but instead Holton seems to have distilled the essence of previous recordings (under the Birds In The Brickwork, My Autumn Empire and The Balloonist identities, as well as part of epic45) into delicate ruminations of solo guitar. In this context in particular the songs benefit from being wordless, instead relying on the reverberation of sound to suggest the tendrils of love, loss and memory that inevitably accompany such experiences. The album then sounds not so much as a laying to rest of ghosts as a summoning; the music communing with memory to create something suffused with the dusk of nostalgia. That can be a tricky beast to flirt with of course, for nostalgia is renowned for tempting us with its sweetest smile before slipping the cold blade of regret into our heart, all the while whispering promises of eternal delight. Holton wisely avoids this embrace and instead creates music that inhabits the liminal space between past, present and future without any hint of cloying sentimentality.
‘Flowers Made Of Light’ is not entirely an album of solo guitar suburban folk music, however, for Holton is joined in places by local Midlands’ musician Jim Sutton. A former member of the group Maurice And The Minors, whose 1987 album ‘Run By The Moon’ was a favourite of Holton’s father, Sutton here lends fretless bass in support of the guitar. The subdued assurance of Sutton’s contributions help imbue the songs with a welcome degree of warmth and lend a delightful element of local continuity to proceedings.
Of the songs themselves, the gorgeous ‘Station Road’ has echoes of Aztec Camera’s ‘Knife’ tingling in the moonlight whilst Vini Reilly dances with Virginia Astley in the shadows. ‘Late July’ finds characters from a John Moore novel idling away an afternoon listening to ‘North Marine Drive’ whilst ‘Mornings’ is Armada paperbacks gathering dust in Instamatic photographs. In ‘Your Guitar’, meanwhile, we can see Will Ackerman reading Lettice Cooper in dawn’s early light as a late dahlia drops petals from a finger vase on the windowsill like a fragment from an Oded Shimshon set piece. The Ackerman reference resonates particularly strongly, and Holton has pointed to the influence of the Windham Hill artists seeping through his work. Indeed, the sleeve of ‘Flowers Made Of Light’ is a fine homage to Ackerman’s 1983 title ‘Past Light’. Again, that play of time’s passing allowing the past and the future to kiss the present and make it sparkle.
‘Flowers Made Of Light’ then may be a deeply personal record, but in making it Ben Holton has also made something of universal appeal and lasting value. These songs remind us that out of loss comes faith and hope, whilst in the shadows of death we can, if we are fortunate, find delicate, delicious light and solace.
The cover illustration is a linocut print showing ‘Ingles Farm’ (from the Malcolm Saville ‘Lone Pine’ series of stories) in Shropshire, England. Original prints are available in the UNPOPSHOP
Blood Moon – HARESS (from ‘Skylarks’ LP) the field – ann annie (from ‘the ocean / the field’ LP) We All Rise with the Sun – Morgan Szymanksi and Tommy Perman (from ‘Songs for the Mist Forest’ LP) Weeping Roses [Lomond Campbell remix] – Dot Allison (from ‘Subconsciousology [Lomond Campbell remixes]’ LP) Shine – Mark Van Hoen (from ‘The Eternal Present’ LP) Crop Circle 5am – Ultramarine (from ‘Routine’ LP) Pharaoh – Modern Nature (from ‘The Heat Warps’ LP) Incomprehensible – Big Thief Double (from ‘Infinity’ LP) The Damage We Have Done – Lavinia Blackwall (from ‘The Making’ LP) Machine Gun – Astrïd and Sylvain Chauveau (from ‘Songs Originally Sung by Women Singers’ LP) War – Gwenno (from ‘Utopia’ LP) Corresponent – Lukas Creswell-Rost (from ‘Weight Away’ LP) Into The Circle – Joe Harvey-Whyte & Bobby Lee (from ‘Last Ride’ LP) ‘Til I Die – The Beach Boys Everybody Is A Star – Sly & The Family Stone Darkfall – Tim Didymus & Foster Neville (from ‘Ulla’ LP) Bees – GNAC (from ‘The Echoes On Departure’ LP) Arna – Cate Francesca Brooks (from ‘Lofoten’ LP) Where The Water Meets The Land – Mark Fry (from ‘Not On The Radar’ LP) The Lonely Cry of Lost Souls at Sea – Alison O’Donnell & Gayle Brogan (from ‘A Colloquy of Birds’ LP)
I Don’t Know How I Made It (feat. Taylor Goldsmith) – The Waterboys (from ‘Life, Death And Dennis Hopper’ LP) Never Read The Signs – Ian M. Bailey (from ‘Lost In a Sound’ LP) New Memories – Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears (from ‘Head In The Sand’ LP) Back Home – Silver Synthetic (from ‘Rosalie’ LP) Listening To Bobby Charles – Gary Louris (from ‘Dark Country’ LP) Save Me Jesus – Bobby Charles (from ‘Bobby Charles’ LP) Hooded Crow – Andrew Rumsey (from ‘Collodion’ LP) No Sooner Here (Than It’s gone) – Matthew Bannister (from ‘One Man Bannister: The Dark Backward’ LP) Marigold – The Ocean Blue (from ‘Cerulean’ LP) ten years dialogue (from ‘Grosse Point Blank’) Ten Years – The Loft (from ‘Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same’ LP) Pictures Of Anna – Louis Philippe (from ‘The Road To The Sea’ LP) A Thing That Used to Be – Snails (from ‘Just Look Around’ LP) We Are Dreams – Peter Hall (digital single) Hang in for Us Both – Dana Gavanski (from ‘Again Again’ LP) The Magic Wasn’t There – Julie Covington (from ‘The Beautiful Changes’ LP) The Kick Inside – Kate Bush (from ‘The Kick Inside’ LP) I Nearly Forgot, But I Went Back – Julie Driscoll (from ‘1969’ LP) Alice – Joan Armatrading (from ‘Whatever’s For Us’ LP) Another Side – Nicolas Godin & We Are KING (digital single) I’ll Always Love You (But Don’t Look Back) – Imagination (from ‘Body Talk’ LP) Pictures of Adolf Again – Bill Fay (from ‘Time of the Last Persecution’ LP)
Idiot Wind – Bob Dylan (from ‘The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991’ LP) Not On The Radar – Mark Fry (from ‘Not On The Radar’ LP) 88 Seconds In Greensboro – Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark (from ‘Crush’ LP) On The Quarter Days (Radio Edit) – Prolapse (digital single) Papists F.C. Theme – Papists F.C. (digital single) In A Hole – The Jesus and Mary Chain (from ‘Psychocandy’ LP) Mynd I Lawr – Ffa Coffi Pawb (from ‘Dalec Peilon’ LP) Losing Your Grip (Censorship Sucks! Version) – Meat Whiplash (from ‘Collected/Contextualized’ LP) Good Thing (session) – The Vultures (from ‘Liz Kershaw session’ EP) THROWAWAYS – DAVID CHRISTIAN (from ‘HOMEMADE THROWAWAYS’ LP) And When You’re There – The Chills (from ‘Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs’ LP) Martin Scorsese – Cheap Feel (digital single) Room for Everybody (Never Let Go of the Joy) – Hachiku (from ‘The Joys of Being Pure at Heart’ LP) The Shape’s Gonna Shift My Way – Anna Hillburg (digital single) Reverence (Basic Design’s Reverent Roller Disco Remix) – numün (from ‘Opening (remixes)’ LP) The Open Fields – The Balloonist (from ‘Dreamland’ LP) Secret Place – da Googie + Cara Tivey (from ‘The Golden Thread’ LP) A Weight Starts To Lift – Firestations (from ‘Many White Horses’ LP) Crossbones Lament (Guest Vocals Angeline Morrison) – Ben Edge (from ‘Children of Albion’ LP) End Transmission – Micro Moon (from ‘Figure in a Landscape’ EP)
I cannot say I have ever been a huge fan of the courtroom drama although I appreciate that this sub-genre of detective fiction most certainly has its devotees. My suspicion is that these fans are themselves likely also to be in the legal profession in one form or another and find the books to be comforting reinforcements of their extensive educations and rapier sharp wit/intelligence. This may be a rather unkind generalisation/assumption on my part of course, suggesting that my mistrust of the sub-genre may be rooted firmly in a sense of personal inadequacy; a certain begrudgingly accepted awareness that I never was nor will be Quite That Bright. Oh, I get by and I don’t believe myself to be entirely stupid, but, well, you know, perhaps that is not for me to say.
Anyway, if a blog is not a place for personal admissions then I am not sure what is, so let me also say that whilst attempting to refresh my shoddy memory about other courtroom drama stories that I have read over the years I made the rookie error of looking at a Goodreads list of ‘122 Best Legal Thrillers’. That this list appears to be almost entirely populated with John Grisham books perhaps illustrates only the tendency for these kinds of lists to be wildly skewed in favour of whatever happens to be the most popular/best selling items that are roughly contemporaneous with whenever the list is being compiled. One sees this tendency in any chosen media type and it is entirely understandable, if also endlessly frustrating. I should note here, of course, that I have never read a John Grisham novel and that whilst they may be marvellous things of estimable quality, that’s not really my point. Which is? Well, which is that on a blog called Unpopular one ought not to expect much energy being expended on those things that fall easily into what we might term The Mainstream. That one ought to expect, perhaps, a little light being shone under some of the smaller stones; a scratching about in the shadier, more cobwebbed corners of the bookshelves.
What did surprise me a little, however, looking at ‘122 Best Legal Thrillers’ was the complete lack of reference to Earl Stanley Gardner, whose Perry Mason novels were enormously popular in the 1940s and 50s. And whilst I like Perry Mason well enough, he is not a patch on the Bertha Cool and Donald Lam characters for whom Gardner (writing as A.A. Fair) wrote a lengthy series of magnificently trashy Noir Pulp novels in the same period. No space either on that Goodreads list for Cyril Hare, which perhaps is not surprising as the list appears to be heavily US-centric and Hare’s books from the 1940s and ‘50s featuring lawyer Francis Pettigrew are tastefully, parochially English. Whilst having been fairly regularly reprinted down the years they nevertheless seem to fly just below the radar, and I heartily recommend them all.
Missing from the list too are John Mortimer’s ‘Rumpole’ stories which I have never really got into but are most assuredly ‘good’, or Sarah Caudwell’s peerless Hilary Tamar novels which are not courtroom dramas but make tremendous use of characters from the legal profession and any excuse to remind ourselves of their brilliance ought to be grasped.
Also lacking in the Goodreads list are the novels of Sara Woods although this may not be so surprising since most of her 48 book run featuring serial lawyer/detective Anthony Maitland have been out of print since the latter half of the 1980s when just over a dozen were reissued by US publisher Avon. These editions, pushed out just after Woods’ death in 1986 and coinciding with the posthumous publication of the final few Maitland stories, have cover designs that could scarcely be more redolent of the 1980s, yet simultaneously also cleverly hark back to, when exactly? The 1930s? 1940s? The stylistic visual references are hard to pin down, and this is particularly apt because, at least in my reading of the first five Maitland novels (newly republished by the happily resurgent Dean Street Press imprint), this seductive slipperiness of period is largely inherent in Woods’ writing. For whilst ‘Bloody Instructions’, ‘Malice Domestic’, ‘Error of the Moon’, ‘The Third Encounter’ and ‘Trusted Like the Fox’ were all originally published in the early 1960s, for the most part they manage to come across as being infused marvellously with a spirit that feels older than one might expect.
The estimable Curtis Evans once more turns in tremendous introductions to these reissues and does a fine job of setting Sara Woods within the context of the times, literarily speaking. These notes necessarily reference Christie, Marsh and Sayers whilst also nodding to the more contemporaneous P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, with Evans making a sound case for rating Woods much more highly than the past forty years of invisibility might suggest she warrants. One reason for this slip into relative obscurity might be the fact that Woods, a Yorkshirewoman transplanted to Nova Scotia in 1958 at the age of 42 was ambivalent about self-promotion, allowing her books to speak for themselves rather than, in the parlance of the current age, expending most of her energies on Building The Brand. It is to the immense credit of Dean Street Press, therefore, that a resurrection of her work is underway, and on the evidence of these first five releases Woods and Maitland ought to find a welcoming new readership.
That said, I must say that the first instalment, 1961’s ‘Bloody instructions’, is for me by some distance the weakest of this selection. Perhaps inevitably the book reads as something of a fumbling in the dark, the necessary initial workings out of characters and approach. Being resolutely in the courtroom drama camp seems to fence everything in rather and I found if difficult to warm to any of the characters. In a contemporary review Francis Iles/Anthony Berkeley called it “a most accomplished piece of work“, and whilst this is true up to a point, it also feels that in hindsight the original publisher Collins might have been minded to hold this one back. Anyway, I’m not sure if Berkely-Iles’ recommendation coloured me against it from the off (I’m not for the most part a fan of Francis-Anthony), or if the theatrical angle allowing the (rolls eyes) Shakespeare quotations into the mix pushed my buttons in an irritating manner, but for me it never pulls itself out of the realms of the rather sedate and ordinary.
Better by significantly more than half is 1962’s ‘Malice Domestic’ in which the recurring characters of Anthony Maitland and his famous uncle Sir Nicholas Harding start to become more fleshed out and appealing. Again, there is an odd uncertainty about time period sitting over everything like a fine mist and if one wonders what the audiences of the early 1960s might have made of this, it is perhaps inevitable that our 21st Century reflections are themselves coloured wildly by the intervening 60 odd years of cherry-picked Pop Cultural references. So there’s not much Adam Faith or Billy Fury here, but perhaps there is a hint of Johnny Keating’s ‘Theme from Z-Cars’… In truth though Woods’ novel feels like it reaches back into a pre-war era, with its central trope of ‘inherited madness’ and the classic(al) themes of generational conflict/wilful misunderstandings, jealousy and financial gain all neatly threaded together in a pleasingly coherent manner.
Things continue to develop in the next couple of books in the series, with both ‘Error Of The Moon’ and ‘The Third Encounter’ (originally published in January and June of 1963 respectively) doing a fine job of drawing more detail into Anthony Maitland’s backstory as a WW2 secret service agent. ‘Error Of The Moon’ sketches the first lines of this in the form of a novel that more obviously roots itself in the early 1960s. A narrative around the development of anti-missile systems on the desolate Yorkshire moors allows Woods to use her memories of the dozen years spent farming the landscape to conjure a sense of place with aplomb, whilst also turning a hand to something that has the air of espionage thrillers being popularised at the time by John Le Carré and Eric Ambler. It may be tempting to wrinkle one’s nose at this and suggest Woods might be Jumping On The Bandwagon somewhat, but it is worth pointing out that she in fact wrote all four of these early Maitland books in the period of 1958-61, thus putting her firmly in the context of a Le Carré contemporary. As an espionage thriller ‘Error of The Moon’ may not scale the same heights as ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ but then what does? And anyway, Woods’ novel is much more rooted in the murder mystery tradition than Le Carré’s work, although having said that I would suggest that it compares favourably to ‘Call For The Dead’ in which Le Carré introduces George Smiley in a work that, like ‘Error of The Moon’ also owes as much to classic detective fiction as to thrillers.
If ‘Error of the Moon’ sketches the first lines of Anthony Maitland’s backstory then ‘The Third Encounter’ adds colour and form. A shade of confusion may exist in the book being called ‘The Third Encounter’ whilst being the fourth instalment of the series, but this does perhaps also carries its own mystery. Having written all four books prior to approaching a publisher, might Woods herself have felt opener ‘Bloody Instructions’ in danger of being rejected in favour of ‘Malice Domestic’ as the debut? Might she originally have thought ‘The Third Encounter’ would be published before ‘Error of the Moon’, thereby allowing a more linear unfolding of Maitland’s history? Did Woods, indeed, pen them in that order? Or is the title simply a reference to the narrative of the story, in which the denouement does indeed (spoiler alert? Probably not really….) feature the third encounter between Maitland and his wartime nemesis, with the discord of the ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ inferences being a particularly humorous/cruel dig at the orderly infatuations beloved of so many devotees of the genre? Who knows (and who really cares, yes?), for what really matters is that ‘The Third Encounter’ is a thoroughly entertaining read and that its oscillations in time between the early 1940s and the early 1960s are elegantly carried off. Well executed too are explorations of the themes of identity, loyalty, love and betrayal, making it perhaps my favourite of these early Maitland stories.
Now quite why this batch of Dean Street Press reissues leaps over the fifth book in the series (January 1964’s ‘This Little Measure’) to arrive at ‘Trusted Like The Fox’ (also originally published in January 1964, according to Goodreads) I am not sure. Perhaps there is some disagreement/confusion about publication order (guaranteed to frustrate those aforementioned obsessions with order amongst many of the prospective readers) but regardless, ‘Trusted Like The Fox’ initially feels like it is taking rather a backwards step in being, like ‘Bloody Instructions’ much more firmly positioned within the courtroom drama context. If that might initially feel like a disappointment (and I must say that it was so for me) this is quickly dispelled by the realisation that Woods has apparently already mastered the balance so that the book develops and unfolds in a much more satisfying manner. Here Woods again plays on the theme of identity whilst also once again massaging a narrative that slips between the ‘present’ of the early 1960s and the ‘past’ of the early 1940s, pointing out as it does the threads of connectivity and the manipulation/obfuscation of facts in order to tell preferred stories according to individuals’ needs and desires. As with ‘The Third Encounter’ there are also references to questions of righteousness, loyalty, betrayal, love and self-preservation/narcissism which feel oddly prescient/relevant in 2024, although it is also arguable that those are timeless themes of relevance at any given point in history.
These five books then are (‘Bloody Instructions’ arguably aside) enormously welcome additions to the reissue market and allow the name of Sara Woods to be recognised by fans of detective fiction who might otherwise have been denied the pleasure. I look forward to the next batch with eager anticipation.
‘Bloody Instructions’, ‘Malice Domestic’, ‘Error of the Moon’, ‘The Third Encounter’ and ‘Trusted Like the Fox’ are set to be published on 2nd December 2024 by Dean Street Press.
With thoughts of school reunions still lingering in the air I thought I would look for a few more murder mysteries using that particular underpinning theme. From my very rudimentary research it would seem to be a surprisingly small field, especially when one disqualifies college/university reunions or any others that bring together groups that were formed largely in (relative) adulthood. Of those, Dorothy L. Sayers’ ‘Gaudy Night’ is perhaps the most well known and best, yet I admit I am drawn much more to reunions of childhood/teenage ‘friendships’ because these seem to me to be ones fired through with the most profound disconnects that nevertheless do not overpower something altogether more powerful and peculiarly comforting that draws them together.
Anyway, as mentioned last time out, Clifford Witting made a good fist of a school reunion murder mystery back in the 1950s with ‘A Bullet for Rhino’, but typically uses the fee-paying private school as its setting. This does make perfect sense for its use of the ‘alien’ setting (see also the Country House) as a method of necessarily distancing the generations of readers who grew up in the age of the Welfare State and who were schooled in Comprehensives or (whisper it) Secondary Moderns. Yet it must also be remembered that for Witting and his contemporaries the fee-paying private school (boarding or otherwise) would have been the de-facto experience for themselves and the bulk of their readership, so this sense of the reader as historical and cultural tourist would exist to a far lesser degree. Are there, then, some murder mysteries written since that time where the setting is the comprehensive school reunion? As I say, my research is rudimentary at best, but it would appear not. The closest I could find is ‘Maxwell’s Reunion’ by M.J. Trow, but whilst this has the titular character (one Peter Maxwell) as a teacher in a contemporary Local Authority Comp, the reunion in question is still of seven former students of a private school. The 2001 novel is apparently the seventh instalment in what currently appears to be a 21 book run, several of which, if their titles are anything to go by, take aim at some of the easy targets of state education. So we have ‘Maxwell’s Inspection’, ‘Maxwell’s Academy’ and, ahem, ‘Maxwell’s Zoom’. None of which, as a retired state school teacher, I have much desire to read. Indeed I rather wish I had not picked up ‘Maxwell’s Revenge’, for whilst it all trots along at a reasonable pace and is over relatively quickly, there is still an element of ‘skip to the end…’.
It must be admitted at this point that I have my own prejudices about many (most?) ‘modern’ murder/crime mysteries to contend with here, and sadly ‘Maxwell’s Reunion’ presses a lot of those buttons. A predilection for dropping popular cultural references (in this case mostly film)? Check. One dimensional characters who seem to adhere to the lowest common denominator stereotypes? Check. A general air of insufferable smugness around the lead (Peter Maxwell) character? Check. Managing to make the reader care not one jot about the fates of any of said characters? Check again. All of which makes reading the book feel a little like working through a checklist, which usually suggests that the writer may have approached the writing in much the same way. Others will, and indeed have, thought differently of course. I dare say one cannot get to 21 books in a series (as well as innumerable other titles and other series, apparently) without doing something right in the eyes of many, but hey ho. Not for me.
Better by far, for a variety of reasons, is June Wright’s ‘Make Up for Murder’. One of these reasons is most certainly that it was originally published in 1966, which makes it as old as me; another might be that it’s plot and premise is largely one that has been twirling around in my mind since my own high school reunion some weeks back, one that, if I did not find fiction writing to be such an insufferably hard slog, I might one day actually write. Something to do with celebrity, identity, self-(re)invention, secrets and the slippery shape-shifting qualities of truth. Don’t hold your breath.
Anyway, ‘Make Up For Murder’ is actually the last of the seven novels written by “Australia’s answer to Agatha Christie”, an epithet apparently predicated on the fact that her first novel ‘Murder In The Telephone Exchange’ outsold Christie in the Australian market during its publication year of 1948. The book (which gained publication thanks to a competition run by London publisher Hutchinson, and judged by Anthony Berkeley Cox, John Creasey and Dennis Wheatley) is by some distance Wright’s longest and in my eyes weakest book. The local colour lent by its Melbourne setting perhaps explains some of its appeal to the Australian market, and certainly Wright’s own experience of working in a telephone exchange lends it an air of detail that carries the narrative convincingly. Such an approach of ‘write what you know’ is not always good advice however, although perhaps one can only judge this if one has had similar experiences. Had I worked in 1960s telephone exchanges myself then I might be rolling my eyes at Wrights’ depictions in much the same way as I have done to Trow’s depictions of teaching in the naughties. That said, this familiarity with the workings of a telephone exchange is also the novel’s weakness, for it feels like far too much time is spent/wasted describing all the little idiosyncrasies of the exchange, little of which ends up having much input to the solution of the crime(s). It feels too as though Wright felt impelled to add layer upon layer of complication to the plot, in so doing confusing embellishment with quality detailing, though doubtless this would have appealed to Berkeley Cox… As a first piece of detective fiction it is a pleasant enough diversion, but one can’t help but be glad that Wright seemed to learn from the process, implementing the golden rule that Less Is More in her subsequent work, particularly in the three Mother Paul novels.
The first of these, 1958’s ‘Reservation for Murder’, is a fine if slightly odd way to start. Narrated in the first person by Mary Allen, a resident in the Kilcomoden business girls’ hostel in Melbourne, Mother Paul actually rarely features in any significant way. Rather she floats around in the background, flitting into view at opportune moments to ask an oddly probing question or to make an astute observation. Admittedly this does feel rather appropriate given her position as a Reverend Mother so one must assume that it was a conscious decision in style by Wright, but in my eyes it does not quite come off. ‘Reservation for Murder’ then is a fine enough murder mystery that suffers only from that slightly odd first person narrative and, whilst avoiding the excesses of ‘Murder In The Telephone Exchange’, being a touch too lengthy for comfort with Wright still a little guilty of stuffing too much into the one story. 1960’s ‘Faculty of Murder’ is better by far, with Wright having trimmed the fat and arrived at what feels to me like the perfect fighting weight for a murder mystery. There are fewer detours, a sympathetically drawn policeman in Inspector Savage as capable supporting actor, and a neatly crafted mystery that plays on sibling connections, questions of identity (a recurring theme in Wright’s work, it seems), the struggles of youth to grapple with the vagaries of adulthood and the struggles of all ages to deal with the passions of jealousy. Gone is the first person narrative, proof perhaps that Wright acknowledged the difficulties that approach presented in ‘Reservation for Murder’, but Wright continues to write Mother Paul as a figure who moves gently around the book whilst never taking centre stage for very long. Wright instead centres the narrative around a faculty tutor at Melbourne University and the approach works well, allowing Mother Paul to deftly manipulate everyone else into making the moves and uncovering the facts that support her thoughts and theories. And whilst Mother Paul still remains rather too hazy a character to ever rival the confidently drawn Miss Marple, for example, there is something altogether admirable in the way she calmly positions all the parts of the puzzle. Faith and Truth in some delicate dance on the road to enlightenment, perhaps. ‘Faculty of Murder’ certainly feels like a significant step in June Wright’s journey.
Before getting (at last!) to Wright’s 1966 swansong of ‘Make Up For Murder’ it is worth taking a sidestep to consider the posthumously published ‘Duck Season Death’. Written in the mid-1950s but inexplicably rejected by her publisher and remaining unseen for some sixty years, this short novel is a real treasure. For if her other pieces of detective fiction show Wright working competently within the traditional structure of the genre, ‘Duck Season Death’ sees her playfully lifting the curtain and gleefully exposing the workings. The narrative revolves around the murder of what appears to be a particularly unpleasant character within what is effectively a closed-circle of suspects, all of whom would seem to have good motive for the crime. So far so classic Country House murder mystery. What lends it an extra level of pleasure, however, is the fact that the victim’s nephew decides to employ his learning from years reviewing detective fiction to find the killer, whilst himself becoming Prime Suspect for the Police. And is it a spoiler to point out that Wright employs that most irritating of all detective mystery tropes of identifying the real murderer by introducing some facts at the denouement that the reader was not previously privy to? Perhaps so, but in truth it rather feels amusingly appropriate. Perhaps too this knowing sense of self-deconstruction was just a shade ahead of its time, and whilst this would certainly explain the rejection by conservative publishers in mid 1950s Australia, it makes for a thoroughly entertaining read in the 21st Century.
And so finally, yes, to ‘Make Up For Murder’, which continues the approach used in ‘Faculty of Murder’ in having the narrative centred around a character other than Mother Paul, who once again is allowed to slip stealthily around in the background, perceptively solving the crime whilst everyone else pursues the red herrings that Wright still enjoyably throws into the mix. Red herrings are of course the bread and butter of most writers of mystery fiction, and June Wright certainly sprinkles her stories liberally with them. Indeed, this predilection is, as already suggested, perhaps the main stumbling block in enjoying ‘The Telephone Exchange Murder’ because there really are just too many of the things constantly getting in the way of the story. It’s as if Wright wanted to use up all of her ideas in that one book, which is fair enough when one considers she might well have written it thinking it might be her one and only. By the time of ‘Make Up for Murder’ however Wright has something of a handle on this, and the herrings are rather more cautiously dealt into the story. And is that story one of a school reunion? Well yes and no. The murder in question certainly takes place during a reunion for former students of the fictional Maryhill school for girls, a reunion at which TV celebrity Rianne May is the star attraction. The relationships between several of the former classmates is also something of a key theme, although this is not explored in the depth that one might have thought possible. That said, whilst working up the threads of those relationships into something altogether meatier might have added some potential literary interest to the story, it might also have added a bulk that, having learned from the excesses of ‘Murder In The Telephone Exchange’ and to a lesser extent ‘Reservation for Murder’, Wright was keen to avoid. She certainly does avoid bulk, and like ‘Faculty for Murder’, ‘Make Up for Murder’ is a pleasantly trim tome with a pace that clips along nicely. As for the murder in question, the question from the off is always about whether the intended target for the poison in the teacup is Rianne May and how the answer to that might explain her subsequent disappearance. The disappearance of May rather mirrors the continued relative invisibility of Mother Paul in the story and is quite a neat piece of paralleling, particularly in light of the denouement and the idea, perhaps, that Wright was drawing similarities between the realm of traditional organised religion and the then relatively new religion of television. There are some quite delicious little threads of theatrical illusion running through everything (something that The Church has had centuries of practice in) and issues of secret and altered identities abound. The central one of these identities of course is Rianne May herself, or plain old Maisie Ryan as she had been known as a schoolgirl, put upon by some of those classmates who remained in Melbourne whilst she found fame in London, eventually to return home the conquering hero (or heroine as would have still been the case in the 1960s). Television, then, and the multitudinous cast of characters required to produce and maintain the illusions it creates, is the central theme for ‘Make Up for Murder’ and Wright takes great pleasure in sketching those characters with a deftness of touch. Few, if any, come across as altogether pleasant individuals, with perhaps only May’s personal secretary Sue Berry, around whom Wright builds the narrative, emerging relatively unscathed from Wright’s gentle barbs. As noted, the books clips along at a fair pace and although Wright still arguably crams one or two too many narrative arcs into the limited space for true comfort, it is all throughly enjoyable. Enjoyable too is the inevitable thread of romance that Wright often employs in her stories. Does the girl gets the man? What do you think… And although it all comes across a little eye-rolling for 21st Century audiences, the attitudes Wright describes are very much of their time and place and should certainly be enjoyed as such.
Such a notion of time and place is certainly key to enjoying June Wright’s books, and ‘Make Up for Murder’ is as valuable a piece of Pop Cultural documentation as it is an enjoyable murder mystery. Belonging very much to a place and time could also be said about June Wright herself. Certainly one wonders whether in another time and another place she could or would have continued to write and publish novels after ‘Make Up for Murder’. For although Wright was clearly hitting her stride with the Mother Paul stories (the reappearance of Inspector Savage suggests the possibility of a serial double act that would, I think, have been very successful), and a fourth had been planned and plotted, Life, in the form of family and her husband’s mental health rather got in the way. Had things turned out differently would further Mother Paul mysteries have gained the character the affection shown to Miss Marple? Would a larger body of work have established June Wright as more than being something of an antipodean curio? Such questions are moot, of course, and in truth we ought to be thankful her work has resurfaced for our pleasure. She is certainly worth investigation.
I took part recently in the Facebook meme about albums that influenced my taste in music. The ‘rules’ suggested posting only a photo of the sleeve, with no explanations etc, but frankly where is the fun in that? I want to know why people pick particular things and the thinking that’s gone into it. So here are my twenty. Dates are year of original release, and not necessarily when they influenced my taste.
1 – Abba ‘Greatest Hits’ (1976)
No, I was not listening to Punk in 1976, and it was not until 1977 when my friend Graeme Milligan bunked off school to buy a copy of ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ that I had even a vague notion about what it was. No, instead I was, like most of my peers, in thrall to ABBA and thank goodness for that. I have foolishly denied my love of ABBA at various points in the intervening years, which tells you nothing about the music and everything about my insecurities and the need to be seen to be following the correct trends appropriate to whatever might be deemed ‘cool’ in whatever circles I might have imagined myself to belong. My first pick for this entry was actually 1977’s ‘The Album’ which in hindsight may been even more counter-cool cool, and I do remember excitedly queuing up to see ‘The Movie’ at the Orient cinema in Ayr. In truth though it would be this ‘Greatest Hits’ collection that I would have listened to most; the one with Agnetha and Bjorn looking a bit sulky on one side of the gatefold and Frida and Benny snogging on the other. In hindsight it’s a truly great photograph, the two ends of the bench and two sides of the gatefold capturing the gamut of emotional treasure contained within the songs. Of course I was unaware of this at the time. I just thought it was perfect Pop music. And it was. And it is.
2 – The Jam ‘All Mod Cons’ (1978)
It strikes me that the majority of the albums/records that influence one’s musical taste by default come from a time when one is most easily influenced. Which is to say, largely, though not exclusively, when one is young and impressionable. In all truth the records that had the most influence on my own developing taste in my youth were singles, mostly heard on the radio, so mostly contemporary with my age. However I’m also certain that up to a point that taste was as much informed by the sound of scratchy 7″ singles that had belonged to my mum’s sister. Singles from the ’50s: Elvis. Lonnie Donegan. Anthony Newley. The Teddy Bears. All played on a mono Marconiphone record player. That tinny, thin, trebly kind of sound somehow connected and informed, I am sure, my musical preferences in later years. The Jam, though, would be the first contemporary group who made a significant impression, and whilst they were primarily a singles group, the albums weren’t half bad either. I chose ‘Setting Sons’ in the ’20 Albums That Changed My Life’ meme, so ‘All Mod Cons’ gets the nod here.
3 – The Photos ‘The Photos’ (1980)
This is the first album in this meme of ’20 albums that influenced my musical taste’ that I’d struggle to listen to all the way through nowadays. Yet it was one of the first albums I chose to buy for myself and I played it an awful lot at the time. Did the music press of the time label them (disparagingly) as a Brummie Blondie? I’m sure they must have, yet I owned this and not ‘Parallel Lines’ (that I taped from a friend – I don’t think they were bothered about a tape of this in trade…) so it gets my nod for being an album that influenced my taste for guitar driven punk/pop songs with a somewhat nasal female vocal (Carrie would call them whiny girlie singers).
4 – P.i.L ‘Metal Box’ (1979)
My friend Alan Penman bought ‘Metal Box’ when it was released and I have a vivid memory of borrowing it to tape on my dad’s stereo system. That memory involves me sitting in my dad’s armchair, headphones tight on my head, and a feeling of utter bewilderment filling my head in the spaces left by the, ahem, ‘music’ I was hearing. This was the first time I can remember hearing music that I truly did not understand, had no reference points to latch on to, but that was undeniably mesmerising and seductively Other. I was too young and too diverted by a multitude of other things to explore any of the contextual musical avenues pointed out by P.i.L. at the time (and in all honesty, much preferred the short Pop thrills of the Top 40), but I’m sure that hearing ‘Metal Box’ at the age of 13 allowed me to be more receptive to the music that influenced it when I came across it in later life.
Would I have been receptive to Simple Minds’ albums like ‘Empires and Dance’, ‘Reel to Real’ or ‘Sons and Fascination’ if I had not first been primed by ‘Metal Box’ as a thirteen year old? It’s a moot point, but I suspect those records would have connected regardless, and certainly with ‘Empires…’ and ‘Reel…’ there was a similar sense of them feeling strange and otherwordly. By the time of ‘New Gold Dream’ then I was already very much in thrall to Simple Minds, so it might be argued that it is an album that did not influence my musical tastes so much as reinforce them. Yet I would argue (with myself if no-one else) that the influence it held for me was as much to do with what followed, and the growing sense of what I did NOT like/want as much as what I did. As is well documented, the group’s trajectory after ‘New Gold Dream’ was to Stadiums and Big Rock Anthems, and certainly the roots of that are in ‘New Gold Dream’. Yet ‘Dream’ tempers that grandiloquence with a spacious spirituality, a reverence for the previous strangeness that had led them to this jumping off point. ‘New Gold Dream’ then in hindsight is an album where I understood the weighing up of personal interest versus group loyalty; started to grasp the idea of ‘this, this, this and this, but not that.’ A valuable lesson.
6 – Aztec Camera ‘High Land, Hard Rain’ (1983)
‘High Land, Hard Rain’ would be the album that firmly established my taste for melodic (and for want of a better word) jangly guitar Pop music. There would be something of a flood of other artists making similar sounds in the/my years to follow, but I am pretty confident in saying that this is the text from which everything, for me, flowed. The David Band design for the cover was highly influential too, as was the very similar Fraser Taylor work for The Bluebells and Friends Again, whose ‘Trapped and Unwrapped’ LP from a year later was also vying for inclusion here. Heady days.
7 – The Smiths ‘Hatful of Hollow’ (1984)
I thought relatively long and hard about whether to include ‘Hatful of Hollow’ in the list of albums that have influenced my musical taste and finally decided it would be churlish not to. It could be said that The Smiths were not significantly different to the sound forged by Aztec Camera and so arguably their records merely cemented a love for a certain aesthetic that Roddy Frame and his gang had established in my heart. And yet, those early Smiths singles did somehow stand apart… By the time ‘Hatful…’ was released of course I was fully conversant with everything collected there, either from the singles or the sessions taped from the radio so I’m not sure that, strictly speaking, the album itself was much of an influence, but the cultural reference points contained within its songs and aesthetic certainly were.
It’s not a record that I would, or even could, listen to again now. Morrissey’s vocal deliveries have grated for a long time, and lyrically much of it now feels very deliberately posed, which of course explains its success in connecting so strongly with disaffected young adults. A small part of me is rather ashamed at being taken in by it all, but I’m sure that a larger part of the 19 year old me would be ashamed of my present self, so that’s hardly worth bothering about…
8 – Weekend ‘La Variete’ (1982)
On reflection I think this one ought to have come before The Smiths’ record because it was probably my most played and loved album through the summer of 1983 and arguably hinted at treasures lying behind many more musical doors than, say, ‘Hatful of Hollow’ ever did (I’m not denying here the invaluable other cultural doors that The Smiths ushered me through). It’s an album I have come back to, and continue to come back to, on a fairly regular basis, and it always sounds sublime. An older fellow student at the Mackintosh School sneered when he saw it on my drawing board in the studio back in 1983 and called it ‘faux jazz’. I didn’t really know what he meant at the time, but he was wrong anyway.
Everything about this album feels perfect to me, from Wendy Smith’s cover art to the label design to the music itself. Easy listening for uneasy listeners sure enough.
9 – R.E.M. ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’ (1985)
In 1985 ‘Fables/Reconstruction’ was the first R.E.M. album I heard and I found it remarkably seductive. Again, this was a record for which I had few reference points, mostly because I simply had no real musical education in terms of the things that were influencing the artists making these records. Even in 1985 I was not reading ‘the music press’ aside from ‘Smash Hits’ (something that in hindsight I’m quite thankful for) so I had no notion of the ‘scenes’ that were feeding the music that I found myself enjoying. One of my brother’s friends was, however, very much into ‘the American Scene’, and after listening to ‘Fables’ I quickly borrowed the previous R.E.M. albums, plus records by groups like The Rain Parade, Green On Red, Replacements etc. Those other groups would only more fully appeal to me in later years, but I found those R.E.M. records to be remarkably strange yet effortlessly accessible. Not understanding was, I think, a large part of the appeal. There was an opaqueness to their records at this time that hinted at outsider folk mythology, and although I couldn’t have identified it as such at the time, perhaps instinctively I felt drawn to elements of those threads even as a more visible part of me recoiled against anything that might be described as ‘hippie nonsense’. ‘Fables’ then not only opened avenues into ‘American Rock’ but also into a multitude of other peculiarities. I still listen to it on occasion and whilst it makes a great deal more sense to me now than it did in 1985, it retains, I think, a sense of keeping some mysteries cloaked, and that is certainly to its credit.
10 – Various Artists ‘Motown 20th Anniversary Album’ (1980)
I wish I could post, say, a Kent label compilation as the album that influenced my taste in music to take in Soul stylings, but the reality is that it was this Motown 20th Anniversary compilation that I bought ostensibly as a birthday present for my dad that I remember as a way in. In truth, Soul is not the musical genre that I would personally turn to by default when looking for something to listen to, but whenever I do hear something from, say, those Dave Godin Deep Soul Treasures compilations, it is pretty much overpoweringly magnificent. There is a strong argument to be made for compilations generally being the prime mover in terms of albums that influenced my taste.
11 – Various Artists ’20 Town and Country Greats’ (1974)
The first draft of this list of 20 albums that influenced my taste in music included ‘Grievous Angel’ by Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris as the album that opened my ears to the pleasures of Country music. Whilst that album undoubtedly was a crucial factor (and would have been way cooler to include here), on further reflection I decided that K-Tel’s ’20 Town and Country Greats’ from 1974 ought to represent the Country genre. It was my dad’s album, one of very few ‘contemporary’ records that we had in the house (record listening almost entirely restricted, as I’ve previously mentioned, to my mum’s late sister’s collection of 45s and EP boxes from the 1950s) and appropriately I posted this entry to FB on fathers’ day.
It would be misleading to suggest that as a youngster the music on this album made me a lifelong lover of Country music, and indeed if pressed as a teenager I would have disparagingly told you that it was, literally, ‘Dad Music’ and not my thing at all. Equally true, however, would be the fact that frequent exposure to these numbers by Johnny Cash, June Carter, Marty Robbins, Charlie Rich etc would have subconsciously laid the foundations on which later discovery of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris (and a host of others) would build.
12 – Fairport Convention ‘Unhalfbricking’ (1969)
There were moments in my piecemeal musical, ah, ‘education’ when what might be classified as Folk Music came to my attention, and when they did they almost always hit the spot. I have said this before, but primarily I remember a mixtape that Rob Young (then of Poppyheads, later author of the epic ‘Electric Eden’ book) made for me back in the summer of 1988. That tape introduced me to Bert Jansch, Bridget St John, John Renbourn, Nick Drake even (who I had never heard until that point). I think there was even a Fairport Convention track on there, yet it was not until years later that I felt the urge to fully listen to any of the Fairport albums and ‘Unhalfbricking’ was the one that really hooked me. As with, say, The Kinks, it is something of a shame that the early albums tend to get all the continued attention/reverence because Fairport Convention too made some great records through the 1970s and 80s that tend to be overlooked. Yet I remember that the sorely missed Neil Kulkarni thought that the run of four albums they released in 1968 and 1969 were pretty much a perfect body of work that rivals anything by anyone. As with many things, he was spot on.
13 – Archie Shepp/John Coltrane ‘New Thing At Newport’ (1966)
If ‘La Variete’ by Weekend made me at least receptive to the idea of Jazz in 1983, then it has also to be admitted that it took many more years before I even dipped a toe in the wider waters. Perhaps predictably, John Coltrane was the artist I’d decided I was going to check out, but the only two albums I could find in Glasgow’s Tower Records store in 1991 (I picked up Ultramarine’s ‘Every Man And Woman’ and a spare copy of Emily’s ‘Rub-Al-Khali’ on the same trip – both albums which could equally be said to have influenced my broader musical taste) were ‘Ballads’ and this split LP with Archie Shepp. The ‘Ballads’ LP was/is lovely, but this blew my mind. The Archie Shepp side in particular still sounds incredibly challenging and to a degree impenetrable but is wildly exciting. A bunch of Blue Note compilations later expanded my awareness and perhaps could have been included in this meme, but it’s this ‘New Thing At Newport’ album that really pushed me onto those.
14 – The Orb ‘The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld’ (1991)
In the previous entry I mentioned picking up ‘Every Man And Woman Is A Star’ by Ultramarine back in 1991, and it was initially my pick for the album that influenced my taste in music to take in the electronic sounds of the late 1980s and early 90s. On further reflection however I’ve opted to go for ‘The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld’ because I think the album, more than any other, captures my attraction to the idea of music as collage, as something that (in this case literally) picks elements from a multitude of sources and puts them together to make something new and otherworldly. If at the time of its release (and for a number of years thereafter) I would have denied in myself the appeal of what are undeniably Prog influences and references, then that was my loss (yet also, I would argue, for the time, my benefit).
15 – Omni Trio ‘The Deepest Cut Vol 1’ (1995)
The idea of a drum’n’bass album being the record that would influence my musical taste rather cuts against the grain of the genre, which was/is exemplified by 12″ singles. Those singles were something of a revelation to me in the mid 1990s and there was a period there when I was listening to little else. The records sounded more exciting and thrillingly new than anything I’d ever heard, my lack of ‘training’ as it were from the more hardcore end of the techno genre (and my not being a clubber) perhaps being a factor in that. The singles collected on Omni Trio’s ‘Vol 1’ double LP were already hard to find by the time I got switched on, so it’s 1995 release was perfect timing. ‘Shadowplay’, ‘Thru The Vibe’, ‘Together’ and especially the magnificent ‘Renegade Snares’ sounded like a whole new universe opening up, as indeed it was. The records still sound splendid, and if a little of the lustre has worn off that is perhaps as it ought to be for music that was so spectacularly of its time. It also points to the fact that the d’n’b sound so quickly became ubiquitous and consumed by the mainstream, but that’s the price of ‘success’ I suppose.
16 – Bruce Springsteen ‘Born To Run’ (1975)
It is nine years since something clicked with me and The Boss, allowing me to rather gleefully turn my back on beliefs I had held for decades. Springsteen wasn’t a bombastic boor and American Rock could be a marvellous beast. Who knew? Pretty much everyone else but me, as it turns out, but No Regrets and all that. There are other Springsteen albums I prefer to this (‘Darkness…’ and ‘The River’ nose ahead for me) but ‘Born To Run’, on its 40th anniversary was the one that eventually cut through the crap and cut me to the quick.
17 – One Man Bannister ‘Rubber Solo’ (2019)
I wrote about this album (a version of The Beatles’ ‘Rubber Soul’ by Matthew Bannister, formerly of beloved Flying Nun band Sneaky Feelings) on its release back in 2019, and I’m interested to see, on re-reading the piece that even five years ago I was still somewhat hesitant to admit an appreciation for The Beatles. So whilst clearly ‘Rubber Solo’ was not the album that influenced my musical tastes sufficiently to make me perform an abrupt volte-face, it certainly played a significant part in changing my mind. Another significant player in that easing of my barriers was Unpopular’s Texas correspondent William Crain (formerly of The Soft Set and an erstwhile Tangents contributor), whose drip drip feeding of cuts on his excellent ‘The Sound The Past Makes’ blog certainly chipped away at my defences. In the past four years or so then I have certainly enjoyed much of The Beatles’ catalogue, including some of the subsequent solo work. I have even read books about them, which would have been utterly unthinkable prior to 2019. I retain reservations about the mediated repetitions of The Beatles ‘significance’ and the need to feed the capitalist beast of the industry, but I concede that this can be detached to an extent from the music, the songs, the records, the films. There are still groups from the same era whose work I rate higher (The Kinks, notably) but, as with Springsteen, I have finally given myself permission to enjoy The Beatles, and that feels fine.
18 – Trappist Afterland ’Se(VII)en’ (2018)
I had not heard of Adam Geoffrey Cole’s Trappist Afterland prior to venturing into the wilds of Totnes one evening in 2018 with Phil Wilson to see him/them perform a show. Also on the bill were Keith Christmas, who was terrific, and Nigel Mazlyn Jones, who was astonishingly good. Trappist Afterland, however, sounded and felt completely otherworldly and I was utterly captivated, so much so that when I got home I immediately bought all of the music then available (via Bandcamp) and played them on continuous loop for the next week whilst I decorated the living/dining room during the Easter school holidays. The 2018 LP ‘Se(VII)en’ then is the album that influenced my taste in music to take in that deliciously peculiar realm of mystical folk that dwells in the borderlands where the demons of Prog regularly make dawn raids to plunder and leave their dark marks. There is a new Trappist Afterland LP due later this year and there are few things I am as eager to hear.
19 – Genesis ‘Selling England By The Pound’ (1973)
The penultimate entry in the ’20 albums that influenced my taste in music’ meme is courtesy of Genesis. ‘Selling England By The Pound’ first came to my attention, I think, around 1974 or ’75 when I was eight or nine. It was during an Art class at Troon Primary School and I have this vague notion that it was all to do with one of my classmates wanting to draw something like the cover illustration. I suspect that they had borrowed the album from an older brother’s collection and were seduced by the image, but it did little for me then and whilst I like Betty Swanwick’s work for London Transport, it still does not really float my boat. The same might be said of the music, and whilst I am fairly certain I did not actually hear the record in 1974, by the time I was getting interested in music thanks to Punk and the New Wave, ‘Selling England By The Pound’ was assuredly the stuff that we were supposed to detest, and so detest it I did. It sits here then as an example of something that influenced my taste in so much as it fell into the category of what I did not like for many years. The whole realm of Prog indeed felt eminently resist-able in spite of the nudges made by the likes of The Orb, and in more recent years by that discovery of Nigel Mazlyn Jones and the contemporary mystical folk contingent, whose music nods quite heavily in the direction of Prog, I think. The Cherry Red box sets of progressive sounds from the 1970s have also had a part to play in opening my mind and ‘Selling England By The Pound’ at last sounds like something I can enjoy. It’s only taken half a century.
20 – ‘Celibidache Conducts Ravel’ (2018)
Chatting with my brother about this whole ‘albums that influenced my taste in music’ thing, we agreed that one of the key factors in discovering music in our youths through the late 1970s and 1980s (and indeed beyond into the early 1990s) was via cassette tapes. These would either be as a means of making a copy of an album a friend had but that we did not, or in the form of compilation tapes (I don’t think anyone in the UK called them ‘mixtapes’ until the Internet age). These tapes were vital forms of communication and combined with fanzines and letters were, for me at least, more essential that the inky music press or radio (which I seldom listened to). From this conversation we wondered what the contemporary equivalent would be? Snatches of music on The TikTok perhaps? Podcasts? Mixcloud playlists? Friends posting tracks on their social media feed? Certainly that’s how I discovered ‘Celibidache Conducts Ravel’. It was a click through from one of John Darnielle’s postings which appeared at one of those points in time when for whatever reason nothing in our libraries of music is doing it for us and we feel like a change, if only we knew what that change sounded like. And this time it was Ravel, which is something in my ignorance of Classical music that I never thought I would say, but there we are. My mum’s cousin David loved Classical and particularly Opera and would play albums when we visited him in Kilmarnock when I was young. It is a vivid memory, despite (or because of) the fact that I never understood the appeal. Nor am I entirely certain that I have the headspace to investigate much further at the moment, but this performance at the very least has teased open both the door and my mind. Here’s to another 20 previously unknown albums performing the same feat in the future.
As is, ah, ‘traditional’ with the Unpopular advent series, there is no real sense of the records being in any particular ‘rank’ until we get right down to the nitty gritty of these last few entries. The Bathers’ beautiful ’Sirenesque’ almost took the top spot with its end of year burst of elegant ambition, but on this Christmas Eve (or whenever you might have stumbled on these words) it is a record with similarly refined grandeur that takes the dubious honour of being The Most Unpopular Record of 2024.
After a pause of six years The Clientele returned at the end of July with ‘I Am Not There Anymore’ and boy was it worth the wait. As with Withered Hand this is certainly another instance of disproving that beloved line about anticipation being so much better, for ‘I Am Not There Anymore’ takes the heights of expectation set by perhaps the most perfect catalogue of any group in the 21st Century and sets them even further out into the vast wonderment of the universe. Hyperbolic, yes. Ridiculously so, yes. Unapologetically so, yes also.
A fascination with symbolist literature and surrealist art has always filtered into the records of The Clientele. It has always been identifiable in Alasdair MacLean’s lyrics but it has also been in the overall feel of The Clientele. Even at their most pristine and beautiful they have seemed strangely Other, like looking through a slightly fogged lens. Intimacy at arms length. With ‘I Am Not There Anymore’ however that connection to the surrealist realm feels more audible in the physicality go the recordings than ever before. Many of the pieces feel like Joseph Cornell constructions or Max Ernst collages, the joints and edges visible/audible. Sometimes it feels like a record influenced as much by ‘90s Baroque hip hop as by ‘60s psych-folk traditions, as much PM Dawn as West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, say. There is an intricacy here that rewards immersion but that never feels frustratingly clever, and that is surely one of The Clientele’s strengths.
Indeed this notion of small, interconnected elements has always been key to understanding the appeal of The Clientele. It is twenty years, after all, since Tim Hopkins wrote some words about their ‘The Violet Hour’ debut LP for my Tangents website and dropped a reference to ‘Under The Volcano’ by Gilbert Sorrentino. I mention this because Hopkins suggests that Sorrentino’s book is a novel “because there isn’t a better word” and perhaps the same is true of ‘I Am Not There Anymore’, which we call an LP, or an album, or a record simply because that is the physical form it takes. Yet some things transcend, or at the very least escape the confines of their physical structure. It’s that sense of The Clientele being Other again.
‘I Am Not There Anymore’ then might be a narrative of sorts. It is certainly theatrical, or perhaps more accurately filmic in the Fine Art tradition. Douglas Gordon might make something of its disjointed connectedness. One can imagine hearing it in a gallery, or hearing a gallery within its grooves. At times listening to the record is akin to wandering the halls of the Museo del Prado. One’s skin goosebumps in much the same manner, certainly.
So themes, references, characters populate ‘I Am Not There Anymore’, coming and going in distinct Movements. Something about love being found and lost and found again. Something about place, landscape, suburban and rural, English and Spanish. Nostalgia, the melancholy of childhood memory, the Prustian rush of the senses. The record is a a delicate dance between cloaked objects. There are suggestions of forgotten faces, a waltz in the space between loss and hope. Everything is cloaked, a little obfuscated or even wildly obscure(d). Whistler figures in a De Chirico landscape. Things that by rights do not belong together but that in the hands of The Clientele most assuredly do. So something approaching magic, then.
And as tremendous as individual songs like ‘Lady Grey’, ‘Blue Over Blue’, ‘Claire’s Not Real’, ‘Chalk Flowers’ and ‘Through The Roses’ are (and oh they are, they ARE), it is their placement in the context of the whole, next to short instrumental interludes and spoken word pieces (to which Jessica Griffin of The Would Be Goods lends her voice) that really gives them a special shine. ‘I Am Not There Anymore’ is an album that almost insists on being listened to as an album. And whilst it is surely a gross generalisation to suggest this is something that will be anathema to generations raised on the idea of individual songs, there is too something comforting in the thought that The Clientele have made a record that is mature in conception, execution and audience.
All that said, it is perhaps also difficult for compilers of mixes to think of albums as albums. In choosing a single track from ‘I Am Not There Anymore’ to end the 2024 Unpopular advent one would certainly be spoilt for choice, yet it is very difficult to look beyond the epic eight and a half minute opener ‘Fables of the Silverlink’. This is a track that not only sets the scene, but that also encapsulates the entire record in its scope. This piece, like the album itself, seems to unfold in distinct Movements, each giving a snapshot of the elements that will unfurl over the next hour. It recalls the seven and a half minute opening track of The Bee Gee’s majestic ‘Odessa’, and indeed that album is as good a touchstone as any when considering the appeal of ‘I Am Not There Anymore’. For like The Bee Gees, The Clientele are not afraid of scale and grandeur. They are not ashamed of dreaming big but know that such dreams are seldom effectively wrought with blustering epic gestures. Success is instead carried off through attention to detail, through acknowledging the vitality of smallness within vastness. Both ‘Fables of the Silverlink’ and ‘I Am Not There Anymore’ achieve this balancing act with an uncanny (apparent) effortlessness. Something approaching magic, indeed.
