Shelleyan Orphan
Helleborine

Lying inert in my soft cradle, on the frontier between Morpheus and the Land of Reason, I surrender ears and heart to the cavities of "Helleborine," among its thousand intricate baroque folds, the superb brass sessions, the sonic enchantment of Caroline Crawley, the harmonies embroidered ad hoc by Jemaur Tayle. Speak to me again with serene sweetness about the life stories of ordinary people, the landscape projected in the windows of your little rooms in Bournemouth, rain-refreshed fields, and long afternoons of gray winter warmth. The sun is a distant promise, today we warm ourselves only with the poignant melancholies coming from my acoustic speakers, doors to a parallel and past dimension, the center of Victorian England's late-century splendor. Like all cult bands, Shelleyan Orphan remained in the shadows, far from the limelight and its spotlights, masters of their own synergistic dimension but distant from others.

Inspired by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the romantic literature of the late 1800s, Crawley and Tayle released their debut album in 1987 for Rough Trade, an unusual and anachronistic product in dissonance with the musical laws of the period and aligned, in broad terms, with very few other bands, most notably their compatriots Dream Academy (those of the splendid "The Love Parade"). Their pastoral rock and baroque chamber rock propagated by the atmospheres of this masterpiece are a watershed in the myriad of subgenres that belong to the folk tradition, the transition point between ancient music and the surprising adaptation to conventional pop, a convergence revealed in the instrumental ensemble composed of elements of light music and others typical of chamber classical like oboe, cello, flute, harp, double bass, viola, and violin. Dew-laden soundscapes, echoes of a personal and not at all banal sophisti-pop peek from the tracks of this work and attract new (few) discerning ears, even those of Robert Smith who enlisted them as a supporting act (alongside Mark Almond) for the Cure's promotional "Disintegration Tour." The undisputed musical and lyrical creativity of the Orphan gave birth to songs that would rightfully take their place in the master records of British musical heritage, "Epitaph Ivy and Woe," "Cavalry of Cloud," "Anatomy Of Love," the eponymous "Helleborine," and the poignant "Melody Of Birth" still shine with their own light today, thirty years from that magical 1987, illuminating and inspiring new bands, especially The Apartments and Tindersticks.

Like other bands of the period, Shelleyan Orphan were born, grew, and disappeared, moving in the British musical undergrowth, with its predefined and inescapable clichés. On October 5th, 2016, after a long illness, Caroline Crawley bid farewell to the world, putting a definitive end to the Shelleyan Orphan tale which had meanwhile returned in 2008 with the new album "We Have Everything We Need" after sixteen years of inactivity.

Today, deliberately abandoned to the transport, I allow myself to be led into the territories that "Helleborine" has carved into my soul since the first listen; if I had set aside a euro for every time this record moved me, today I would be a wealthy man.