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Rating: Timid gleams of baiadera light opened threads of gems in that thin soot-black sky of Manchester. They had whispered to Richard not to sleep for a night, to show that face so bewildered by life, but they didn't know that he hadn't slept for weeks; that aerial shot, that swarm of metropolitan bodies fleeing from nothingness, that geometric close-up on Ashcroft's face, sad and hollow like Caviezel's Christ.
Evangelical and blasphemous,
across that eternal pavement
and at the exchange point of that rail track,
a theater of civil sobriety.
The string and brass arrangement played in the background, amid the fairytale moves of a bittersweet symphony of such disputed authorship, yet so perfectly recalling that Andrew Oldham Orchestra. In those 90s and in the innocence of that music, the embryonic provocation of Richard Ashcroft and his Verve, in that only too famous song, had sown the first wild shrubs and flowers of evil in Jarvis Cocker's golden garden. In Ashcroft's gaze lost on the horizon and iconic of disorientation, of a soul in collision with its bittersweet half, that sideral cosmic journey where, after light years, in the heart of the galaxy the original cocoon was found, a suture point, solitary and secluded within that deep canyon of despair.
A strange bittersweet breeze blows through this page, indeed the strange thing is that we're not talking about doom metal, but about brit pop.
So, are we sure we're talking about brit pop?
I'm asking because the artwork for this “The Magical World Of The Strands”, relaunched by Megaphone as a hidden gem of those years, incredibly recalls instead that acid summer of '67, and many songs in style evoke that bittersweet breeze of Forever Changes nestled within the luminous guitar pop of the Pale Fountains.
In a better world, these intense and melancholic gems, worthy of Byrds and Love, would probably have been legendary hits.
So let's allow that dazzling sparkle of sixties typography on that cover to lead us into the unknown, through a deadly leap backward by a quarter of a century, softly gliding (and I would like to see) on another iconic close-up.
Amid those wrinkles carved by the wind hazards of the Los Angeles bay in 1967, with Sir Arthur Lee trying to make sense of the world while spinning wildly out of his orbits, sang in "The Red Telephone"
Life goes on here day after day,"
"I don't know if I’m living / Or if I’m just pretending to
Sometimes my life is so unsettling."
Arthur Lee always expressed admiration for the talent of Micky Head, up until meeting his band in splendid live performances (documented in a 2000 album “Shack accompany Arthur Lee”)
What would the Nineties, Brit Pop, those adorable fringes of the Gallagher brothers, have been if Michael Head had only wished to adorn his art with that talent with just one more touch of lyrical melodrama, gifting a few timid gleams to even overshadow for a moment that regal & damned romantic soul of his?
But then, would those songs of his have remained such precious gems?
Even if to him all this might matter very little, always inertially ready to rise again from impending woes and as swift as a hare to chase delicate Elizabethan plots through interludes of sweet hallucinogenic mist. In 1998, the champions of britpop were preparing to ride into the sunset, the crowns of Liam Gallagher and Coxon were beginning to drown in pints of Guinness, and with This Is Hardcore, the end credits began to roll overshadowed.
From the top of his hill and through that dense fog, The Magical World of the Strands perfectly symbolized febrile visions of end-of-century crises but forcefully clung to that timid sprout of verses torn from the bareness of those cliffs. A laborious and artisanal grace for an album that still knew how to hide impenetrable secrets after myriad listens, an ancient passion that flourished from the breaking of dreams, desires for holy redemption soon stained by new and joyful perdition. And that strange object of Mick Head's desire, the object of Stone Roses' adoration “I don't need to sell my soul; He's already in me", idolized by the Gallagher brothers in ecstasy over the acoustic improvisations of the Shack.
At the mercy of that strange reserved cult object, invisible as a sleeping vagabond on the edges of Pont Neuf, impervious to any human form of hedonism and inevitably lost among tales of misfortune, drugs, and secluded in that “canyon of mental despair”, west of Los Angeles bay and across that hot transoceanic red telephone line.
The art of fading as a divine remedy for life's outbursts, those necessary disappearances among “silk and amphetamines”.
Because truly everything happened to Micky, and by a twist of fate, his crystal talent never shattered amidst life's uproar and remained intact, and unknown. In the early '80s, the cult was already online with the creation of the Pale Fountains, together with his best friend Chris Mc Caffrey, a debut album “Pacific Street” with enthusiastic reviews but zero titles, then the Paley almost immediately disappeared amid heroin smoke.
Then the second formation of “Shack” and that album “Waterpistol” with that story that could not have been scripted better by the Coen brothers. After two years of difficulties due to Micky's precarious health and other band members, on the verge of releasing the album, all those master tapes from such a troubled genesis were incinerated as the entire recording room went up in flames. Indeed, it’s absurd that all album demos, to be called Waterpistol, could end up incinerated in flames. And thus, the mocking fate decides to save from oblivion a tape that remained intact, in the producer's suitcase who’d taken a copy home the night before. But the ordeal and penance for Micky would be long, because as if nothing happened, during a trip to the States, the producer forgets the demo in the back of a rented car. Another year passes since the tape's recovery but when things seem to settle, the record label (the very famous Ghetto Records) goes bankrupt and the promotional launch sees the light only 4 years later, too bad that in the meantime the band had already split, and Micky had just begun that dangerous relationship with a friend, a certain “Molly.” Only then in 1995, Marine Records, a German independent label specializing in British musicians’ releases threw a lifeline to our heroes, the album also received some enthusiastic reviews, but the reception overall was lukewarm. In 1999, therefore, right at the century's end, NME claimed that net of that Greco-Roman tragedy, “Waterpistol” could have been an album fit to inspire a generation.
And always softly, step by step, you finally come almost face to face with that worn-out door, leading to that basement of lost gems, in that magical world of prized threads described on the album cover. So equip yourselves with a state-of-the-art deodorant and potentially even a powerful extinguisher or at least a water bazooka, given the precedents. And upon opening that door, pervaded by adorable aromas of ancient molds, you could find anything, lost and forgotten relics, a cowboy boot that belonged to Arthur Lee, a still lustrous lock of Gene Clark’s hair, a shaky set of Jarvis Cocker’s dentures.
Or none of that, but simply an old red phone, cordless, with a mysterious voice seemingly emanating from that dusty receiver, seemingly in its last breath begging you not to waste time, not to waste indeed anything, because it's not fair, because time is about to be arrested and the key is about to be thrown away...
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