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Rating: Luckily, there are albums capable of sending shivers down your spine. Ninety percent of the time, these are albums that have sold little to nothing. You discover them by following faint traces, just like a stalker approaching a forbidden area.
For example, those left by a young androgynous artist who sought artistic fortune in Ireland, which would become a benevolent homeland for childhood friends Bono and The Edge. But the Virgin Prunes were too strange and original to succeed, and ...if they had to die, they died (...If I Die, I Die). However, Gavin Friday's talent was not something to let fade into oblivion, and when he presented himself in 1989 with his first solo work, the trace hunter knew he was on the right track. The hopes, illusions, and aspirations of a musician almost always lie in his first effort, and this album reflects them all. Starting with the choice of cover drowned in the sepia tones of Anton Corbijn's photograph (yes, him): Gavin leans on the piano of partner The Man Seezer (Maurice Roycroft) while a nude couple dances embraced. It's an album of feelings, those strong, true ones that only a smoky atmosphere of nightclubs drowned in the sinks of vice can make epochal. And who better than a producer like Hal Willner, who in his albums dedicated to characters like Kurt Weill demonstrated a magical touch for bohemian settings.
The traces to follow become increasingly clear: the liquid guitar of Bill Frisell and the oblique one of Marc Ribot, the bass of Fernando Saunders coming from Lou Reed's band, the drums of Michael Blair directly from Tom Waits' crew. Sufficient clues to think that you have something good in hand and surprisingly far from the visionary days of the virgin prunes.
I don't want to talk too much about it because sometimes these songs touch the personal, like the splendid "You Take Away the Sun". If you still have a shred of heart left, perhaps it's enough to let yourself be enveloped by the virile melancholy that voice and viola explode in a crescendo that leaves you stunned: " ...there was a time when yesterdays were just tomorrows and now time ...time has taken". It's the heart that reveals, ("Tell Tale Heart"), whispering stories suspended in a foggy halo between light and darkness, dancing on the soft sound carpet crafted by exceptional musicians to highlight Gavin Friday's interpretative abilities. Elsewhere, the atmospheres are dictated by the instruments of the two extraordinary and never intrusive guitarists to paint another fresco ("Dazzle and Delight") that leaves you breathless "...here comes that sinking feeling, pay your cash for a new disease, kiss this beast, fall in love with the greatest of these".
Frisell's liquid notes this time open a glimpse towards the great American-style song (the album is recorded in New York): "...he got what he wanted but lost what he had" is the refrain of "He got what he wanted", and the beauty of the track makes it even harder to decide which to prefer in this perfect album. Throughout the album's grooves, Friday also shows his strength, as in the glam rock of "Men of Misfortune", hovering between Bowie's affectation and Lou Reed's substance. Or in the terribly Waitsian march of "Rags to Riches".
And Willner's production is felt in the cabaret atmospheres of the title track taken from the poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde. "Everybody kills what they love" Jeanne Moreau sang coldly in Fassbinder's "Querelle de Brest", while Gavin manages to make it rich with color and nuances helped by the wonderful group accompanying him. Even "Next" by Jacques Brel becomes an excursus through smoke-filled Mittel-European bars, but the spirit of the holy drinker Tom Waits wandering the Tropicana Hotel in West Hollywood isn't that far off. Neither is the Nick Cave of the Dylanesque "The Death is not the End", just seven years separate his version from Gavin Friday's, but the Salvation Army bass drum and Hank Williams' electronics give it an even more convincing image than the duet the Ink King stitches with Kyle Minogue.
I realize I have talked more than I intended, but with an album that ends among the searing notes of Marc Ribot's guitar and Gavin Friday's intense interpretation for a track like "Another Blow on the Bruise", it's hard for the heart not to be revealing and not to start telling stories.
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