On 14 January 2017, I was staying in the Thistle Hotel, Euston, within striking distance of Euston station in London. That evening, I ordered a copy of the original cast recording of Lazarus the musical with music by David Bowie and a book by the Irish playwright Enda Walsh. I know the exact date I bought the recording because Amazon helpfully tells me that ‘You last purchased this item on 14 Jan 2017.’
The reason I ordered the CD was that I had just returned to the hotel, exhilarated, after seeing the musical at King’s Cross Theatre which was built specially to host it. The musical premiered in an off-Broadway production in New York in 2015. Poignantly, the first night was the last time Bowie was seen in public, before his untimely death on 10 January 2016.
To add to the poignancy, the New York cast came into the studio to record the musical on 11 January 2016, when the world was waking up to the news of Bowie’s death only a few days after the release of his final album, Blackstar. The whole Lazarus album is superb, with a very strong vocal cast, in particular the actor Michael C Hall who played the central character and whose voice is similar to Bowie’s but with its own distinctive timbre.
The instrumental arrangements are stripped-down compared with the original studio versions. In the case of This is Not America, the arrangement is hauntingly sparse, giving the song a melancholy, contemplative quality that’s absent from the original. Once heard, it’s difficult to shake the mesmerisingly simple opening synth chords from your musical memory. Sophia Anne Caruso’s vocal performance is very different from Bowie’s, childlike but also astonishingly mature.
Sophia Anne Caruso told TheaterMania that she received the call asking her to play the part of Girl in the New York production on her fourteenth birthday,
“I’m good at playing other-worldly roles… I enjoy doing stuff that’s a little more dark and trippy”
She ended up rehearsing Life on Mars with Bowie himself in the room.
Bowie recorded the original version of the song in late 1984 with the jazz/fusion band the Pat Metheny Group for the soundtrack of John Schlesinger’s spy film The Falcon and the Snowman (1985). Although Bowie rarely collaborated with jazz musicians, his regular keyboard player Mike Garson had jazz chops. Blackstar heavily features a jazz band: Donny McCaslin (saxophone), Jason Lindner (piano), Tim Lefebvre (bass) and Mark Guiliana (drums). He recorded his 2014 single Sue (Or in a Season of Crime) with Maria Schneider and her experimental jazz orchestra.
But This is Not America is not particularly jazzy. It features 80s synths, and a gentle calypso rhythm, with no virtuosic jazz solos or instrumental breaks. It was a Billboardpick of the week, ‘an enigmatic mood piece with the singer in his West-End musical mode’ (page 82 of the 2 February 1985 issue).
Bowie recorded a live version at the BBC Radio Theatre, Broadcasting House, London on 27 June 2000. It’s driven by a fiercely funky guitar from Earl Slick, melodic bass from Gail Ann Dorsey, and eloquent keyboards from Mike Garson. The closest that this version comes to the Lazarus musical version is the backing vocals from Holly Palmer and Emm Gryner. The song was was released on a bonus CD as part of the Bowie At The Beeb set, but it is doesn’t appear to be available on streaming services. All three versions are excellent, but I do find myself returning to the haunting Lazarus version again and again.
In memory of David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016)
Click on the image below for more in the Off the Beaten Track series…
Image: Escomb Nature Reserve, Bishop Auckland, County Durham
A recording of the English composer Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ from his Enigma Variations (1899) introduced Friday night’s concert. This felt appropriate in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, which has often hosted orchestral concerts that have included Elgar’s masterpiece. There’s a quintessentially English melancholy about much of Elgar’s music, and the music of Neil Hannon, leader of the Divine Comedy (although he was born in Northern Ireland).
There’s also something of the English wit of playwright, singer and songwriter Noël Coward in Hannon’s songs. Coward would undoubtedly have appreciated the sartorial elegance of Hannon’s guitar roadie, ‘Alistair’, who was impeccably dressed in a jacket and white turtle neck sweater rather than the traditional long black shorts and black top commonly sported by a guitar tech.
Hannon came on sporting a natty black fedora and a black suit, and his band were similarly attired but without the headwear. The hall was packed, and the adoring audience hung on Hannon’s every wry witticism. Hannon’s rich baritone was warm and inviting, and his manner was easy and relaxed. One suspects he may have done this before.
He was joined by an excellent band – two keyboard players, lead and bass guitar, violin, and drums. The band provided gorgeous, multi-layered backing vocals and was equally at home playing rock music, sophisticated lounge jazz, and French-style chansons (with accordion but Anglophone lyrics).
The nearly two-hour set included 24 songs, demonstrating the range and variety of Hannon’s songwriting. The set was beautifully structured, flowing from one song to the next to create an engaging musical journey.
The concert began with the thoughtful Achilles, which ends with a meditation on mortality about a man of 53, the same age as Hannon when he wrote the song, whose ‘mind was turning/To thoughts of mortality.’ An early highlight was another song about death, the extraordinarily poignant The Last Time I Saw the Old Man, about the final physical and mental deterioration of Hannon’s late father, Neil Hannon, Bishop of Clogher in County Tyrone. The song ends with the moving words,
As we left, the sun was setting on the land The last time I saw the old man
Hannon sang this beautiful, moving song with his back to us, and raised his hat at the end, as if in silent tribute to his father.
A lighter sequence of songs followed, the best of which was a lovely version of I Want You, with a gorgeous piano introduction, an evocative additional violin part, and jazzy drumming. Hannon brought out the melancholy minor key of the chorus of this song, which is from the new album Rainy Sunny Afternoon. Hannon’s storytelling, present in most of his songs, came to the fore in Norman and Norma, which tells the story of a couple who got married in Cromer in Norfolk in 1983. This also illustrated Hannon’s skilful and witty wordplay. Perhaps only Coward would have dared rhyme ‘Chroma’ with ‘pneumonia.’
There was more overt humour in the staging of Our Mutual Friend. Hannon came into the audience and, on the words about sitting on ‘our friend’s settee’, sat in a vacant seat. A woman returning from the bar wondered whether she should give him one of the drinks she had bought. As the characters in the song ‘sank down to the floor’, Hannon sank down to the floor at the front of the Stalls, and lay there while the band entertained us with an instrumental break. Hannon acted out waking up the next day and stumbling out to the bathroom as he regained the stage to huge applause.
There were some punk stylings in Generation Sex and At the Indie Disco, Hannon swinging his hips and almost knocking his knees together like an early Elvis Costello. The lounge jazz theme returned in Neapolitan Girl, a dark tale of a post-war woman whose ‘innocence can be restored/With a visit to the Professore.’ The story’s darkness was belied by the sophisticated music, including a deliciously off-beat rhythm with which the audience gamely (and accurately… this was after a Divine Comedy audience…) clapped along. We stayed in lounge jazz mood with Hannon’s ‘favourite part of the show.’ During an extended version of the new song Mar-a-Lago, with its elegant samba beat, Alistair brought on a drinks trolley. Hannon introduced each member of the band and prepared their favourite tipple for each of them. We stayed with the theme of cocktail parties with A Lady of a Certain Age, who ‘sipped Camparis…. At Noël’s parties.’ Another rhyme of which Coward would have been proud.
Freedom Road (played for the first time on this tour), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and In Pursuit of Happiness provided a triptych of tristesse (with apologies to Neil and Noël). But Hannon has also written danceable songs, or to use the technical term, bangers. The audience leapt to its collective feet for five floor fillers, starting with Absent Friends and ending with the exuberant fan favourite National Express. As the song says, everyone sang ‘Ba-ba-ba-da.’
The encore began with a couple of songs Hannon said were ‘not up-tempo but swayable.’ There was a gentle version of Songs of Love, with warm backing vocals and lovely harmonies. Hannon threatened to ‘leave for other places’, but the audience wouldn’t let him go yet. He obliged with Invisible Thread, which could have described the invisible but unbreakable link between Hannon and his adoring audience.
There will always be An invisible thread Between you and me
After this song ended quietly, the final encore was the anthemic Tonight We Fly. And with that, we flew home on the wings of song, this joyful concert still resonating in our ears.
2024 was a stunning year for Prog Rock new and old
The Cover of Living & Alive by Beatrix Players
The Return of Beatrix Players
Beatrix Players, led by Ms Amy Birks, made a welcome return to the progressive rock scene in late 2023 with the release of their album Living and Alive. In 2024, they brought the complete album to Manchester’s Band on the Wall and then to a triumphant home gig in the village of Barlaston, near Stoke-on-Trent. Birks was heavily pregnant and jokingly complained of ‘baby brain’; she has since given birth to a baby daughter. In the meantime, Birks and her band were superb live. Birks was a charismatic leader, her wonderfully expressive voice ranging from a warm, low mezzo to a high soprano, sometimes urgent in her delivery and at other times quietly intimate – often in the same song. She was a powerful stage presence, drawing the audience in, as their enthusiastic response showed.
Amalie Bruun (Myrkur)
Myrkur – Danish Black Metal and Scandinavian folk music
The Danish composer, vocalist, and classically trained multi-instrumentalist Amalie Bruun released her debut album under her own name in 2006. In 2011, she formed the indie pop duo Ex Cops with Brian Harding. The band split in 2014, and she started releasing music under the name Myrkur, Icelandic for darkness. In late 2023, she released Spine, which combines many of the styles of previous albums into a sophisticated whole, graced by her remarkably versatile voice. The album was partly based on her experience of being pregnant with her son Otto, who was born in 2019.
But the song My Blood is Gold, reviewed here in the ongoing Off the Beaten Track series, is a product of another significant life event: the death of her beloved father, Michael Bruun, in 2021. This profoundly moving track perfectly describes Bruun’s despair at her father’s death and her resolve for his memory to live on through her music.
Bruun brought her music to London in April 2024, demonstrating her versatility as a singer and songwriter in an eclectic set. Over the course of four albums and various EPs and singles, she has combined black metal with Scandinavian folk music, sometimes on the same album. Her latest album, Spine, her most eclectic yet, formed the bulk of the setlist, including a run of six songs at the start of the show. Bruun was joined on stage by Swedish folk singer Jonathan Hultén, the support act, in a gorgeous version of House Carpenter, a traditional Nordic folk song, attracting the most excited applause of the evening.
Marjana Semkina on the cover of her second solo album, SIRIN
Marjana Semkina and iamthemorning – a difficult but artistically successful year
Marjana Semkina is a member of the prog rock group iamthemorning with her Russian-born compatriot, the pianist Gleb Kolyadin, both of whom are now resident in the UK. The duo have released several records, the most recent being The Bell (2019) and the EP Counting The Ghosts (2020).
Semkina has recently pursued a parallel solo career, releasing her first solo LP, Sleepwalking, in 2020 and her EP, Disillusioned, in 2021. In 2024 she sang on the Moonflower EP with Zora Cock of Blackbriar, and released SIRIN, her second solo album. Semkina created this album without the support of a record label, raising tens of thousands of pounds for the project via crowd funding. She is an exceptional talent, as a singer and a songwriter, and a passionate promoter of her poetic and profound vision of the world through her music.
Semkina had a challenging year. Her bandmate Kolyadin was arrested and imprisoned in Thailand while on tour as a session musician with the Russian dissident rock band Bi-2. He faced deportation to Russia, where the band could have been persecuted for anti-war sentiments. Semkina highlighted the story via social media and an online petition.
Kolyadin was released after a week in prison and returned to England via Israel. A few days after his release, the duo performed an emotional comeback show at Piano Smithfield in London. Later in the year, the duo were joined by a full band to perform iamthemorning songs at St. Matthias Church in Stoke Newington, London. Semkina began with an evocative selection of her solo material, and Kolyadin demonstrated his supreme skill as an improviser in a solo piano set before the iamthemorning band played a superb band set.
The Cover of Harmonic Divergence by Steven Wilson
An Overview of Steven Wilson’s Year
While fans of Steven Wilson eagerly await his new album The Overview due in March, in 2024 he released a Record Store Day album Harmonic Divergence based on his 2023 album The Harmony Codex. Producer Ewan Pearson also remixed ‘Inclination’ from that album. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote, ‘Ewan Pearson sprinkles sunlit Balearic euphoria’, and Wilson described the remix as ‘a hypnotic cosmic disco odyssey.’
The year also saw the re-release of Storm Corrosion, the collaboration between Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt of Swedish progressive metal band Opeth, in a new Dolby Atmos remix. Wilson has been making surround mixes of his own and other bands’ albums for so long now that he has been asked to do a surround sound mix of King Crimson’s Red for the second time after he did his first surround mix of the album in 2009. He decided to teach himself the art of surround sound mixing after Elliot Scheiner created 5.1 mixes of the Porcupine Tree albums In Absentia and Deadwing.
As Mikael Åkerfeldt admitted, Storm Corrosion isn’t an easy listen. However, it is certainly not as challenging to listen to as the albums Wilson has produced for his Bass Communion project, such as Ghosts on Magnetic Tape. Both albums take a while to give up their secrets and bring joy to the listener. In the Dolby Atmos mix of Storm Corrosion, the opening track makes the most startling use of the new technology. On other tracks, the effect is more muted, but when surround sound is used, it’s more effective as it is used sparingly.
Finally, in 2024, Wilson brought festive greetings to his fans with a physical release of his 2023 Christmas song, December Skies, complete with two Wilson-themed Christmas cards. The year also marked the fifth anniversary of the release of love you to bits, Wilson’s album with his no-man bandmate Tim Bowness, a melancholy disco masterpiece.
Perpetual Motions by Gavin Harrison and Antoine Fafard
Perpetual Change with Gavin Harrison and Antoine Fafard
Gavin Harrison, the drummer in Steven Wilson’s band Porcupine Tree, released Perpetual Motions, his second album with bass player Antoine Fafard, a collection of inventive musical explorations and collaborations from the virtuosic duo and several friends. The album’s title describes the perpetual change of musical arrangement from one of Fafard’s compositions to the next, the only constant being the playing of Fafard and Harrison on every piece. Remarkably, Fafard presented Harrison with complete recordings to add drums and percussion later; Harrison’s playing perfectly matches the pieces so it’s impossible to tell that his recordings were done separately.
Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland of Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate
Malcolm Galloway had a more than Adequate Year
Malcolm Galloway of Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate provided deep insights into his health condition and his writing process in a fascinating two-part interview: Part One and Part Two are here. Galloway and his bandmate Mark Gatland have a new album out in March, The Uncertainty Principle. In the meantime, One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov), one of the singles from the album, was released in 2024. It’s a compelling snapshot of a moral dilemma in which one man’s brave decision probably averted World War III. Hats Off shared the bill in Camden, London with a new discovery for me, the band EBB, who have a wonderful stage presence.
Prog the Forest at the Fiddler’s Elbow
Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland, with the promoter London Prog Gigs, hosted a charity prog festival, Prog the Forest, at the Fiddler’s Elbow in Camden. All performers gave their services for free to support the rainforest and wildlife conservation charity, World Land Trust, which ‘protects the world’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats.’ This was the sixth year of Prog the Forest and the most successful to date, raising £2750 to protect nearly 26 acres of rainforest and other threatened habitats.
The eclectic line-up was made up of: Spriggan Mist, a ‘pagan progressive rock band’; singer-songwriter Leoni Jane Kennedy, who was hand-picked by members of Queen for the Freddie Mercury Scholarship and plays acoustic Rush covers as well as her own songs; The Mighty Handful who include a ‘former music director of Strictly; Mountainscape who play instrumental post-metal; Theo Travis of Soft Machine, who has played saxophone and flute with numerous jazz and prog bands; Tim Bowness and Butterfly Mind; and Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate.
Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets
Prog History Brought to Life
The late 1960s to the mid-1970s were arguably the golden era of Prog Rock, particularly in the UK, but as can be seen from the reviews above, the genre continues to thrive, with superb new music being produced both on record and live.
New life has also been breathed into prog rock classics, with the return of Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets with live interpretations of early Pink Floyd songs. Robin A Smith continued to tour Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells – the 50th anniversary, with a stunning new arrangement of the classic album; 2024 was also the 50th anniversary of the release of Peter Hammill’s solo album The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, from which the epic track ‘A Louse is not a Home‘ is taken.
Special Thanks
With thanks to Jerry Ewing and Prog magazine for keeping the prog flag flying, and to Chris Parkins of London Prog Gigs for his tireless contribution to the live scene in London.
For an overview of the year in classical music in 2024, click here.
Love you to bits is the seventh studio album by no-man, the long-running collaboration between Steven Wilson, frontman of Porcupine Tree and a solo artist, and singer and co-writer Tim Bowness, who is also a well-established solo artist. The band was formed in the late 1980s and signed to the label that also featured Björk, and for a little while it appeared that the band would be the most successful of Wilson and Bowness’s many projects. Wilson went on to have far more success with Porcupine Tree, whose most recent album Closure /Continuation reached number 2 in the charts. His most recent solo album The Harmony Codexreached number 4; by comparison love you to bits reached number 94 when it was released in November 2019. But don’t let that put you off; the album is a masterpiece of moody electronica and disco beats.
The album took 25 years to complete. It was begun in 1994 and then left languishing on a hard drive until its completion in the summer of 2019. It’s divided into two parts, love you to bits (bits 1-5) and love you to pieces (pieces 1-5). It describes the breakup of a relationship from the perspective of both protagonists, sometimes separately and sometimes both at once. Helpfully, the lyrics in the cd booklet are colour-coded to make it clear which point of view is being expressed.
On the surface, the album is very simple. It’s basically one song repeated many times, with an earworm of a chorus. But on repeated listening the album reveals great richness and subtlety. Each of the two tracks is divided into five segued sections, and the structure of each track feels more like a suite of classical pieces, a theme and variations, than a standard pop album. Listening to it feels like climbing up a hill – there seems to be little change as you walk higher up the hill, but glancing back over your shoulder you realise how far you have travelled and how the landscape has changed. It’s a journey well worth taking.
Part 1 Love you to bits
Bit 1 starts deep in the heart of an industrial soundscape, out of which emerges a muscular disco bassline and a four-to-the-floor insistent drum beat. This contrasts with Bowness’s heart-wrenching vocals as he looks back over a broken relationship,
who are you holding?
how are you coping?
did you move on, or stay behind?
Here, as throughout the album his vocals are gentle, intimate and contemplative, beautifully expressing sorrow and heartache.
In Bit 2 the disco bass line continues while a mournful synth line floats about, and the vocals submit to the misery and exhaustion of weeping for lost love, eventually fading out completely as if the protagonist has given up, while the instruments continue playing.
Bit 3 is perhaps the highlight of the whole album, a thrillingly visceral guitar break, effortlessly funky, a minute of pure joy before the vocals stutter back in.
Bit 4 begins with a similar instrumental feel to the electronica of Wilson’s track ‘Personal Shopper’ from The Future Bites(2021). Ash Soan’s virtuoso rolling drums bring a sense of drama to the track; his playing is superb throughout the album. The guitar solo from David Kollar is startlingly angular, summoning up the spirit of King Crimson at their most deliciously dystopian. Appropriately enough, David has (according to his website) been described by King Crimson guitarist Pat Mastelotto as ‘one of the most innovative and driven young guitarists on the scene today’.
Bit 5 begins with enthusiastic sequenced synthesisers and a powerful drum break, and haunting echoing background vocals repeating the words ‘I love you’ that gradually morph into a gorgeously melancholic brass band arrangement that perfectly expresses the ‘heartache’ described in the lyrics.
Part 2 Love you to pieces
Part 2 is in some ways more inward-looking and contemplative than Part 1, and perhaps not as immediately accessible, but it repays repeated listening.
Piece 1 begins in a very gentle, soul-searching mood and gradually comes to life, with heavy use of evocative echo effects as the track progresses.
In Piece 2 we are suddenly thrown into a very dark place, with an oppressive, pulsating bass line as the two former lovers argue bitterly, ‘we got everything right… and everything wrong’. A frenetic electric piano solo takes us into the world of jazz, and in particular Miles Davis in his later electronic period – not surprising as it’s played by Adam Holzman who also played in Miles’ band on Tutu (1986). The track is another highlight of the album.
Piece 3 arrives like a ray of light out of the gloom of Piece 2. Glittering synthesisers sparkle like the ‘stardust’ in the lover’s eyes, quelling for the moment ‘my constant sense of dread’.
In Piece 4 for a moment as everything goes right in the relationship we seem to be floating in the ether, although the occasional slightly discordant note suggests the ‘dread’ that lurks far below on the earth. The dream ends as it implodes with a sound like a cassette tape unspooling as the music unravels.
Piece 5 ends in the depths of despair – one lover refers to ‘fights in the hallway’ and the other says ‘you got colder and colder’. We are in an emotional Arctic, Bowness’s desolate vocals accompanied by a slow, lugubrious piano. Finally, ‘time disappears’, and our journey has ended, leaving is to contemplate, ‘how did we get here?’
Personnel
Steven Wilson – all instruments except as listed below Tim Bowness – Vocals Written and Produced by no-man
Additional musicians: The Dave Desmond Brass Quintet (Brass on track 1 bits) Ash Soan (Drums) Pete Morgan (Electric Bass on track 1 pieces) Adam Holzman (Electric Piano Solo on track 2 pieces) David Kollar (Guitar Solo on track 1 bits)
This Blog was originally published on 10 August 2020, and updated on 22 December 2024 to celebrate the album’s fifth anniversary.
‘Inclination’, the first track on Steven Wilson’s seventh solo album, The Harmony Codexwas released in a limited edition 12 inch single, remixed by Ewan Pearson, on 19 January 2024. Pearson describes himself on his website as a ‘Producer, Mixer and Remixer.’ Pearson previously remixed Wilson’s upbeat pop song ‘Permanating’ (from 2017’s To the Bone) in a dance version.
Pearson has had a lengthy career as a remixer, having worked with Tracey Thorn, Goldfrapp, Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode among many others. His dance version of ‘Inclination’ couldn’t be described as prog rock. As Jerry Ewing of Progwrote in January 2024,
‘Gatekeepers and those of a sensitive disposition look away now!‘
Pearson’s version is reminiscent of dance music pioneers New Order at their most electronic, in tracks like ‘Tutti Frutti’ (from Music Complete, 2015). Pearson’s mix begins with the chorus that appears much later in the original song, with the original beautifully mixed harmonies; but the sparkling synth loops suggest we are heading in a different direction. This soon happens, with the introduction of a heavy disco beat with added hand laps and a chunky disco bassline. The handclaps are an example of the ‘disco double clap’, two claps in very quick succession described by Hugh Morris of The Guardian in July 2023 as, ‘The infectious disco rhythm heard from Barbie to Kylie…cheeky, silly and faintly magical.’ Pearson’s remix achieves the difficult feat of taking Wilson’s contemplative song and driving it along with a propulsive beat, even in the parts of the song that were originally downbeat, to create a joyous new version that moves the feet in the way that the original moves the soul.
Blog Piece No. 68 (2024): A Music Critic’s View of an Art Exhibition
A fascinating and moving exhibition reveals the breadth and of depth of Yoko Ono as conceptual artist, activist, musician, artistic and life partner of John Lennon, mother…and her unexpected sense of humour.
‘The only sound that exists to me is the sound of the mind. My works are only to induce music of the mind in people.’
When Beatles fans saw images of Yoko Ono sitting in the studio next to Beatle John, quietly knitting and saying very little, few would have realised that she was one of the most important and creative avant-garde artists of the twentieth century. Even Lennon himself didn’t always publicly recognise his wife’s talent – his most famous and beloved solo song, Imagine was credited only to him for many years until he recognised her contribution to the concept and the lyrics. From 2017, nearly 40 years after her husband’s death, Ono received a co-writing credit. This exhibition celebrates Ono’s remarkable and immensely varied solo work as an artist, both the ‘music of her mind’ but also her actual music as a solo artist and with Lennon. The exhibition also celebrates her relationship with Lennon and their joint efforts to bring awareness to the possibility of world peace, expressed in the naïve but profound slogan ‘WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT.’
It’s easy to overlook the rather startling fact that Ono and Lennon only knew each other for fourteen years from their first meeting in 1966 to his murder in 1980, and that they were only married for eleven of those years. The exhibition covers over six decades of Ono’s creative life. Beautifully curated by Juliet Bingham and others, the show is in chronological order, with each work given enough space to breathe, and just the right amount of context and explanation given in the galleries themselves.
By the entrance there’s a haunting black and white film of Ono’s left eye, before a darkened room containing Telephone Piece (1964/1967) in which we hear an analogue phone ring followed by an unsettling, disembodied voice, ‘Hello, this is Yoko.’ In the next room, the sense of unease is heightened by a large screen with a black and white film of a lit match dying in slow motion called Lighting Piece (1955/1962). We seem to have been plunged into a world in which we are already faced with a metaphor for our own mortality.
It’s a relief therefore that the next room begins to reveal the humorous, playful side of Ono’s work, part of her endlessly fertile imagination. On the floor of the gallery there’s a piece of cloth canvas titled, A Work to be Stepped on (1961/2024). A polite enquiry to a member of the Tate Modern team elicited the reply that the title was meant to be taken literally, and a warm smile in response from him to the author’s delight in being able to tread on a work of art. The same member of staff was also responsible for ‘intermittently’ operating Waterdrop Painting VI (1961) by dropping water on the floor from a suspended bottle. Toilet Piece (1961/1971) which was performed at various concerts in New York, is the sound of a flushing toilet.
Humour continued in the next room with Bag Piece (1964) in which visitors are encouraged to join each other in a large black bag. Two young women accepted the challenge, constantly shapeshifting like cats in a sack, shrieking with laughter, emerging looking rather hot and saying it was difficult to breathe in there. But like many of the pieces in the show, it has a more profound meaning, as Yoko is quoted as saying on The Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA’s) website:
‘By being in a bag, you show the other side of you, which is nothing to do with race, nothing to do with sex, nothing to do with you know, age, actually. Then you become just a spirit or soul.’
The room also included the famous Cut Piece (1964/1965), again filmed in black and white, in which members of the audience at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York gradually cut pieces of clothing off Ono’s body. It’s difficult not to find the piece disturbing, as well-dressed men gradually remove her clothing while Ono remains impassive, sometimes casting her eyes upwards as if trying to distance herself from what is happening to her. But according to Ono herself, that interpretation would be wrong. It was initially a criticism of other artists who only gave people what they wanted to give, ‘I wanted people to take whatever they wanted.’ And when she performed it in Paris in 2003, she said that her performance was ‘against ageism, against racism, against sexism, and against violence.’
Humour continues in the next room, with Painting to Shake Hands (1961/1962/2024) a large canvas hanging in the centre of the room with a slit in the middle allowing visitors to shake hands through it. The piece has the witty subtitle, ‘painting for cowards’, which could be seen as the conceptual artist poking fun at the very idea of conceptual art which avoids traditional painting or sculpture. Ironically, elsewhere in Tate Modern, Marcel Duchamp’s seminal piece of conceptual art, the urinal or Fountain is on display, a readymade, everyday object that the artist designated a work of art because he had chosen it to be a work of art. There was more humour in Painting to Hammer a Nail (1961/1966/2024), which reveals that what had sounded like the curator anxiously building another part of the show when heard from previous rooms was in fact an invitation for members of the public to hammer nails into the wall until, ‘the surface is covered with nails.’
The room that will perhaps appeal most to music fans, and particularly Lennon fans, is that which records his relatively brief time with Ono. It’s poignant to see Lennon’s dates recorded on the wall as ‘1940 – 1980’. Behind those basic facts lies the tragedy of a life cut short in New York, a place where Lennon had felt safe to wander the streets without the level of security that a superstar would now insist on having. Perhaps the most important work in terms of their relationship is Ceiling Painting (aka YES) from 1966 as it marks the point when the couple first met. It’s a step ladder which you originally you could climb (it’s now roped off) and look through a small magnifying glass to see the single word ‘YES’ on the ceiling. Ono exhibited it at as part of Unfinished Paintings and Objects by Yoko Ono in later 1966 at the Indica Gallery in London. Lennon was invited to the show; the couple hadn’t previously met and, ironically, neither of them had heard of the other despite being two of the most important artists of the twentieth century. But Ono’s work had an immediate, positive effect on Lennon, as he told Jann Wenner in a Rolling Stone interview that was later published in the book Lennon Remembers (Penguin 1973),
‘I climbed the ladder, you look through the spyglass and in tiny little letters it says ‘yes’. So it was positive, I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say ‘no’ or ‘fuck you’ or something, it said ‘yes.’‘
The other iconic work, Bed Peace (1969), a film of Ono and Lennon’s ‘Bed-In’ in Montreal shows them in bed with Ono’s daughter Kyoko, all dressed beatifically in pure white, contrasting with the dull suits of the newsmen who were clearly baffled by the attempt to promote peace by holding court in bed . Even here, humour is evident in the posters by the bed, reading ‘Bed Peace’ and ‘Hair Peace’ (as in ‘hairpiece’, or a wig/toupée). As Lennon says in the film, ‘If we make people laugh, that’s enough. Happiness leads to peace.’
An ante-room (originally called an ‘anti-room‘ by the spell-checker on this Blog, a concept Ono herself might enjoy) titled Approximately Infinite Universe (from Ono’s 1973 album of the same name) concentrates on Ono’s music. The room displays artwork from many of the albums, and there are comfortable chairs with music players with a selection of Ono’s music to listen to on headphones. Poignantly, one of the albums from which excerpts can be heard is Season of Glass (1981) written in the aftermath of Lennon’s death, with its shocking cover image of the blood-stained glasses Lennon was wearing when he was murdered. Many of the songs feature Ono singing in a conventional rock style, her slightly fragile voice often deeply affecting. But she was also known for her ululating, screaming style, which she uses to accompany the short film FLY (based on Ono’s 1968 score for Fly (Film No.13), shown in a separate room on a large screen. The soundtrack matches the fly’s movements as it walks across a woman’s body, creating a scene that could have come from a horror film, particularly when the fly rests on the woman’s lips. But again Ono wrongfoots the viewer. As well as embodying dirt and decay, the fly also represents the freedom of Ono’s spirit, creating a deeper meaning beyond the superficial horror or disgust of the soundtrack and imagery.
Another ante-room invites visitor participation. Add Colour (Refugee Boat) (1960/2016/2014) began as a room with white walls and floor, with a small white boat in the middle. Members of the public are invited to use blue markers to add their own thoughts on the walls, the floor and the boat itself. The blue represents, in Ono’s words, ‘Just blue/like the ocean.’ She asks visitors to reflect on the international refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people crossing the oceans to come to Europe. The accompanying poster references the UN Refugee Agency’s prediction that in 2024 the number of ‘forcibly displaced and stateless’ will rise to more than 130 million. The work is playful – children are allowed to colour in parts of the boat; political – some of the comments written on the walls are overtly political; and poignant – the fragility of the boat that could carry refugees across an ocean is pitiful. A possibly unintended but beautiful consequence of the blue ink is that from a distance (see above) the boat and the room appear to be a pointillist painting. Viewed from this angle, the boat could be at the bottom of the ocean, having sunk to the ocean floor after the boat capsized. A haunting image, which demonstrates Ono’s deep humanity.
Further humanity is shown in the piece just outside the blue boat room, Helmets (Pieces of Sky) from 2001. From a distance (see above) the helmets recall the bowler hats so common in the surrealist works of René Magritte, but on closer inspection they are German soldiers’ helmets from WWII. Inside these images of destruction are blue jigsaw pieces, which Ono invites us to take away. Ono shows that war fragments hope, which is represented by the sky. Her hope is that the individual pieces of the jigsaw will be put together at some future time by a collective effort of humanity.
The final room of the exhibition is called The Personal is Political and features only two works. The first is My Mommy is Beautiful (2022) which consists of two parts. Glancing up to the ceiling, large photos of parts of a mother’s naked body can be seen. Again, Ono’s humour is evident – she says, ‘it’s rather like looking up at your mom’s body when you are a baby.’ The second part is a wall on which visitors are invited to attach a piece of paper with their thoughts about their mother, or a photo of her, to create a massive, and profoundly moving, tribute to motherhood. Examples include,
‘To mum I miss you! Hope your having a ball up there + happy.’
The final work on display is WHISPER (2013), a film of a performance by Ono about ten years ago when she was eighty. Ono screams and ululates, repeating the words, ‘I wish…let me wish.’ It’s challenging, like much of the work in the exhibition, but strangely immersive and moving. We have been drawn into the world of an endlessly imaginative, playful, political, compassionate, joyful, humane and ultimately hopeful artist, who in this exhibition has taken us on a wonderful, life-affirming journey.
Yoko Ono Music of the Mind is on at Tate Modern until Sunday 1 September
Art-rock band no-man were founded in 1987 when Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness started writing music together. They briefly flirted with mainstream success in 1990 when their single release colours was Single Of The Week in Melody Maker and Sounds, leading to record label and publishing deals. Wilson went on to have much more success with Porcupine Tree and as a solo artist, but no-man continued to release albums sporadically, including their most recent, love you to bits in 2019. The duo have more recently collaborated on their podcast The Album Years.
‘Pigeon Drummer’ comes from the band’s sixth album Schoolyard Ghosts released in May 2008. The song evolved from a demo by Tim Bowness called ‘City Sounds’ which can be heard here. Bowness later used the lyrics on ‘wherever there is light.’ The track ‘Pigeon Drummer’ was written at a time when Wilson was starting to move away from Porcupine Tree to focus on his solo career. His first solo album Insurgentes was released in November 2008.
What is remarkable about this track, and some of the songs on Insurgentes, is the sudden and shocking descent into extreme noise after a beautifully melodic section. This happens very quickly on‘Pigeon Drummer’ after only about 30 seconds. When Wilson uses the same technique on Insurgentes, on songs like ‘Salvaging’, the noise section appear much later in the track. Wilson had been listening to the noise project Merzbow, started in 1979 by the Japanese artist Masami Akita, and enjoying the disruptive effect the use of noise had on melodic tracks, like obliterating an Old Master painting with black ink.
Wilson has often spoken of his love of cinema, and the term ‘cinematic’ often applies to both the sound of his music and the structure of his songs. Bowness’s demo version, ‘City Sounds’ and ‘Pigeon Drummer’ share a cinematic structure. ‘Pigeon Drummer’ opens with a music box. After a burst of noise, there’s a guitar theme that might remind some listeners of the guitar at the start of ‘Dream is Collapsing’ from Hans Zimmer’s score for Inception (2010). But if that film is science-fiction, a deeply philosophical, multi-layered thriller, the no-man song is perhaps closer in structure to the European art-house movies Wilson so admires. The juxtaposition of sweetly haunting melodic sections with extreme noise has the non-linear narrative of films by the Spanish iconoclast Luis Buñuel.
The track also seems to draw from another film genre; horror. The song adopts the trope of contrasting an insouciantly sun-lit scene with a subsequent scene of violent horror. The music box could have come from Philip Glass’s score for the original Candyman film. The tolling bell, and the ethereal choir could also have come from a horror film score. There’s also something unsettling about Bowness’s vocals, which are as sweetly and gently delivered as ever but heavily compressed to give them a slightly inhuman quality, a technique Wilson often uses on Porcupine Tree albums such as on the songs about serial killers on In Absentia (2002)
Whether you choose to view ‘Pigeon Drummer’ as a slice of art/noise rock, a homage to the structure of avant-garde European cinema, or the soundtrack to a horror film, it’s an extremely evocative and effective piece of music.
This post was updated on 29 August 2023 at 10.50 to add references to Bowness’s demo version ‘City Sounds.’
In his 2004 song ‘The Happy Goth’, Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy sang ‘She wears Dr. Martens and a heavy cross/But on the inside she’s a happy goth.’ Back in the dark days of the last century, going to a concert by The Cure meant seeing many goths in the audience – happy or unhappy. Although there were a few in the audience tonight, including a man who dramatically removed his Robert Smith wig after the gig, there were probably more Goths onstage than off it. But Robert Smith himself is a happy Goth now, musing on his ‘Friday night disco’ music and apologising for starting the concert with such resolutely undanceable songs as Alone (from the new album Songs of a Lost World which hasn’t yet been released) and Pictures of You. It would be a long wait for fans who had come to hear the poppier side of The Cure, ageless pop masterpieces such as Friday I’m in Love and Boys Don’t Cry which didn’t appear until the second encore nearly three hours later.
Referring to the fever dream of Shake Dog Shake, Smith said he finally understood the song, although when he turned to the next page of the lyrics he didn’t recognise the hand that wrote them because of his ‘seven second memory’ (although perhaps he meant Seventeen Seconds, after the title of the band’s second album from 1980). But despite the whimsy of Smith’s genial banter, and the disorganised tangle of his Goth hair, what is most striking about the immaculately delivered set of songs from across the decades is the precision of his songwriting; he manages to achieve a rare combination of lyrical and musical simplicity, simple instrumental lines interlocking perfectly like the mechanism of the theoretical perpetual motion machine. If that machine is impossible because it defies the laws of physics, then Smith’s voice is also a thing of wonder, that of a man 30 years younger.
If Smith still sounds like a young man, some of his new material seems to come from the bitter experience of a much older man. This lyrical theme of songs of experience that follow songs of innocence (as in William Blake’s poetry collection of 1789) began around the turn of the millennium when he wrote ‘It used to be so easy/I never even tried … All that I feel for or trust in or love/All that is gone’ (The Last Day of Summer). In much earlier times, Smith wrote almost cheerfully about death, with the insouciance of youth, ‘It doesn’t matter if we all die’ (from One Hundred Years, played elsewhere on this tour but not tonight). On the new song I can Never Say Goodbye he reflects on the cruel reality of death that has recently taken away both his parents and his brother, poignantly singing ‘Something wicked this way comes/To steal away my brother’s life.’
Simon Gallup, Smith’s long-time partner on bass still retains his youthful energy. A one-man rock and roll show, he wears his bass low-slung like Peter Hook, prowling around the stage while other members of the band are almost statuesque, sometimes putting one foot on a monitor in classic rock star pose. But Gallup’s playing is far from cliched; his bass tone is superb tonight, and his melodic and inventive guitar lines are always a joy to hear. He has fun on A Forest, duetting with Smith at the end as Smith improvises guitar chords over the iconic bass line, ending with a solo blast of distortion.
‘New’ member Reeves Gabrels on guitar, who incredibly has now been part of The Cure for ten years, provides respectful backup but occasionally produces florid and virtuosic solos that remind us of his avant-garde work with David Bowie. Drummer Jason Cooper is never showy but remains the rock on which The Cure’s Gothic edifice securely stands. And Roger O’Donnell fills in the spaces between the stark guitar lines with rich keyboard washes. The sound throughout the evening is beautifully clear, revealing the interlocking textures of the instrumental part while Smith’s distinctive tenor soars above. Despite Smith’s plaintive cry of ‘it used to be so easy’, the band still make playing live sound easy – the mark of a great live band who may or may not have been playing for one hundred years already.
Radiohead members bring new band The Smile to Manchester
*****
Last time Radiohead played in Manchester was five years ago, when the Manchester Bombing forced the Arena to close and the gig was moved to Old Trafford Cricket Ground. It was an emotional evening, with the crowd singing Karma Police, ‘For a minute there I lost myself’, which became even more poignant in that context. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood returned with their new band The Smile, and again there was a change of venue, from The Albert Hall to The Academy, but this time for a more benign reason, described as ‘production issues’.
This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Radiohead’s seminal album OK Computer, and many bands would have marked it with a world tour, promising to ‘play the whole classic album in full.’ It would be hard to criticise them if they had decided to do so, and many fans would certainly have appreciated it. Instead, Yorke and Greenwood decided to do something radically different, to form a new band with drummer Tom Skinner from the jazz group Sons of Kemet. Thom Yorke’s distinctive falsetto vocals and Jonny Greenwood’s intense guitar playing provide a strong link to Radiohead, but The Smile are far from being a slimmed-down version of the famous band. The most obvious musical link appears in the song You Will Never Work in Television Again which looks back to the post-punk of the early Radiohead era of The Bends.
But both men have moved on; it seems unlikely that they will ever write a song like Creep again. Thom Yorke has released some excellent solo albums, in particular Anima from 2019, and Jonny Greenwood has written Oscar-nominated film scores Phantom Thread and The Power of the Dog. So it’s no surprise that The Smile’s new album A Light for Attracting Attention has moved on from Radiohead in style. And to stress that they aren’t Radiohead, the new band didn’t play any songs from the band’s rich back catalogue, restricting themselves to playing only one song not written by The Smile, a compelling version of Thom Yorke’s solo single Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses in the encore.
The role that Tom Skinner plays in the band shouldn’t be underestimated. He brought a more loose-limbed, jazz style to many of the songs, and the rhythmic complexity and precision of the intertwining instrumental and vocal lines was a highlight of the evening, starting with the pulsating synths of The Same which opened the gig. Thom Yorke’s voice was a strong and emotive as it has ever been; sometimes it felt as he if was an ascetic solo troubadour in troubled times. Elsewhere he was nearly drowned out in a maelstrom of psychedelic sound that was reminiscent of early Pink Floyd instrumentals. Jonny Greenwood brought a funky swagger to some of his basslines, as well as his more familiar introspective guitar-playing. Sequenced synth lines wrapped around the band, weaving in and out like vines around a tree. The band have created their own style, making them hard to categorise, a mesmerizing mix of post-rock, math rock, contemplative balladry, and the complex time signatures of prog rock. The audience listened intensely, with some members gently swaying to the hypnotic beats. 30 years since Radiohead released Creep as their first single, members of the band continue to innovate, and to bring their audience with them as their musical journey continues.
Love you to bits is the seventh studio album by no-man the long-running collaboration between Steven Wilson former frontman of Porcupine Tree and now a solo artist, and singer Tim Bowness. The band was formed in the late 1980s and signed to the label that also featured Björk, and for a little while it appeared that the band would be the most successful of Steven Wilson’s many projects. Wilson went on to have far more success with Porcupine Tree whose most recent album Closure /Continuation reached number 2 in the charts. Steven’s most recent solo album The Harmony Codexreached number 4; by comparison love you to bits reached number 94 when it was released late in 2019. But don’t let that put you off; the album is a masterpiece of moody electronica and disco beats.
The album has taken 25 years to complete. It was begun in 1994 and then left languishing on a hard drive until its completion in the summer of 2019. It’s divided into two parts, love you to bits (bits 1-5) and love you to pieces (pieces 1-5). It describes the breakup of a relationship from the perspective of both protagonists separately, and sometimes both at once. Helpfully, the lyrics in the cd booklet are colour-coded to make it clear which point of view is being expressed.
On the surface, the album is very simple. It’s basically one song repeated many times, with an earworm of a chorus. But on repeated listening the album reveals great richness and subtlety. Each of the two tracks is divided into five segued sections, and the structure of each track feels more like a suite of classical pieces, a theme and variations, than a standard pop album. Listening to it feels like climbing up a hill – there seems to be little change as you walk higher up the hill, but glancing back over your shoulder you realise how far you have travelled and how the landscape has changed. It’s a journey well worth taking.
Part 1 Love you to bits
Love you to bits (Bit 1 – 5)
Bit 1 starts deep in the heart of an industrial soundscape, out of which emerges a muscular disco bassline and a four-to-the floor insistent drum beat. This contrasts with Tim Bowness’ heart-wrenching vocals as he looks back over a broken relationship,
who are you holding?
how are you coping?
did you move on, or stay behind?
Here, as throughout the album Tim’s vocals are gentle, intimate and contemplative, beautifully expressing sorrow and heartache.
In Bit 2 the disco bass line continues with a mournful synth line floats about, while the vocals submit to the misery and exhaustion of weeping for lost love, eventually fading out completely as if the protagonist has given up, while the instruments continue playing.
Bit 3 is perhaps the highlight of the whole album, a thrillingly visceral guitar break, effortlessly funky, a minute of pure joy before the vocals stutter back in.
Bit 4 begins with a similar instrumental feel to the electronica of Steven Wilson’s most recent release, the track Personal Shopper, perhaps suggesting the new musical direction he will pursue on his next album, The Future Bites (now postponed until next January due to Covid-19). Ash Soan’s virtuoso rolling drums bring a sense of drama to the track; his playing is superb throughout the album. The guitar solo from David Kollar is startlingly angular, summoning up the spirit of King Crimson at their most deliciously dystopian. Appropriately enough, David has (according to his website) been described by King Crimson guitarist Pat Mastelotto as ‘one of the most innovative and driven young guitarists on the scene today’.
Bit 5 begins with enthusiastic sequenced synthesisers and a powerful drum break, and haunting echoing background vocals repeating the words ‘I love you’ that gradually morph into a gorgeously melancholic brass band arrangement that perfectly expresses the ‘heartache’ described in the lyrics.
Part 2 Love you to pieces
Love you to pieces (Piece 1 – 5)
Part 2 is in some ways more inward-looking and contemplative than Part 1, and perhaps not as immediately accessible, but it repays repeated listening.
Piece 1 begins in a very gentle, soul-searching mood and gradually comes to life, with heavy use of evocative echo effects as the track progresses.
In Piece 2 we are suddenly thrown into a very dark place, with an oppressive, pulsating bass line as the two former lovers argue bitterly, ‘we got everything right’…’and everything wrong’. A frenetic electric piano solo takes us into the world of jazz, and in particular Miles Davis in his later electronic period – not surprising as it’s played by Adam Holzman who also played in Miles’ band on Tutu. The track is another highlight of the album.
Piece 3 arrives like a ray of light in out of the gloom of Piece 2. Glittering synthesisers sparkle like the ‘stardust’ in the lover’s eyes, quelling for the moment ‘my constant sense of dread’.
In Piece 4 for a moment as everything goes right in the relationship we seem to be floating in the ether, although the occasional slightly discordant note suggests the ‘dread’ that lurks far below on the earth. The dream ends as it implodes in on itself with a sound like a cassette tape unspooling as the music unravels.
Piece 5 ends in the depths of despair – one love refers to ‘fights in the hallway’ and the other says ‘you got colder and colder’. We are in an emotional Arctic, Tim’s desolate vocals accompanied by a slow, lugubrious piano. Finally, ‘time disappears’, and our journey has ended; how did we get here?
Piece 2
Personnel
Steven Wilson – all instruments except as listed below
Tim Bowness – Vocals
Written and Produced by No-Man
Additional musicians:
The Dave Desmond Brass Quintet (Brass on track 1 bits)
Ash Soan (Drums)
Pete Morgan (Electric Bass on track 1 pieces)
Adam Holzman (Electric Piano Solo on track 2 pieces)
