CD: "The Appeal of Discarded Orthodoxy" A Tribute to David E. Williams
Various Artists
Review By:
C. Lee Vermeers
Label: Old Europa Cafe
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It is difficult to properly review a tribute album, since it is not really possible to take the whole as a gestalt, and each track must be considered individually. We'll just go ahead and give our one-line-or-so impressions.
The album cover is stark and fetching, with a picture of David E. Williams' head staring out of a field of black, and the large white letters “WiLLiAMS” at the bottom. Inside, disk 1 is labeled “Pop and Folk”, while disk 2 reads “Contra Pop and Folk”. Underneath the cds are vintage pictures of girls running, surrounded by the words “These are the days when a girl's in the way, to open a casket or close a buffet...”, words from the song “A Man Needs A Man Friend”. That happens to be the first song on the first disk, provided by Rome. A promising opening, it is followed by the somewhat less successful cover of “Game Warden” by Der Feuerkreiner, but still things are going well, and we want to continue listening. Dogs Hate Monet come next with a cover of “Sarah's Booted Boy” that wouldn't feel out of place in an '80s dance club. The album, though, is uneven, as all tribute albums tend to be, and Circus Joy give us our first miss with an Italian cover of “Less Than Queer” (titled “Meno Di Strano”) that sounds like a mix of the Velvet Underground playing the main riff from “Heroin” over and over and a hoarse whisperer being talked over by a b-boy, only not as cool as that sounds. Womb gives us a version of “The Girl From The D'n D” that sounds like an LA hardcore band with a neofolk singer. How can you not like that?
We have loved Rose McDowall's music for years, so the medley of “Restraining Order” and “Fishheads And Olives” that Naevus does with her is a guaranteed hit with us. Listening to Rose sing “I'm waiting for a man that will murder me” is a pleasant, if rather disturbingly misogynistic, moment. To us, this is the high point of the first disk, though we're sure it won't be the best part for everyone.
Misogyny, of course, is a major theme of Williams' music, so if you aren't prepared for that and some rather nasty poetic imagery, you probably should stay away. As a case in point, we come to the storytelling of “Little Sap And Varicose”, ably performed by Lloyd James, where a little boy is punished by his mother for masturbating, then later secretly watches his grandfather get naked and have a stroke. It's a powerful story of psychological trauma, and Mr. James has a voice that is well-suited to telling it.
Ernte follow up by giving us a German-language cover of “I Have Forgotten How To Love You” titled “Ich Hab' Vergessen Wie Man Dich Liebt”. The crossing of the male vocalist speaking a story (presumably. My rusty German is not up to the task of understanding lyrics) and the female vocalist singing the chorus, slightly brokenly, over acoustic guitar melodies is worth hearing. Next, Changes give us a pretty straight folk rendering of “Got So Many Women” that works well to deliver the song without unnecessary ornament. The Lindbergh Baby follow that by working through “Gentleman Farmer Slips Away” ably enough, but somewhat forgettably.
“Severed Hand Holding Daisies” is one of Williams' most memorable images to us, so Myoclonic Jerks had a lot to live up to here. By rendering it as a flower child ballad, they manage to do a fine job. Spiritual Front come at “There Is No Mud In Joyville” like Echo and the Bunnymen, and make it sound like our bedroom in 1980-something-that-makes-us-remember-that-we-are-old. In a sense, then, Jerome Dieppe's version of “Taxidermy Tragedy” is a welcome relief from the sense of our own mortality creeping up on us, at the expense of someone else's. It's another version that sounds like it really wants to be on the radio in the 1980s, though, sounding a little like Morrissey, but not as broad. This is not a bad thing, by any means.
Code Voire regale us with a rendition of “Seizure Dream Believer” that starts out like a band on Cleopatra in 1995, and never gets away from that. Next we come to another Italian version, this time of “Nativity Of Skulls” (renamed “Presepio Di Teschi”) that sounds like a psychedelic swirl of sound. It's by Spectre, and it makes us happy, though we can't understand a word.
Albireon deliver a version of “No Fun Anymore” that is somewhere in between a piano bar rendition and a slow noise-industrial power ballad. It works, we think, but we don't know if anyone else will enjoy the joke. This is followed by Division S doing “The Ballad Of Bob Crane” that sounds a little like an Angelo Badalamenti piece reimagined as a country song, and it's every bit as interesting as that might lead you to think. David Talento's cover of “Grey Balloon Masquerading” follows this somewhat weakly in comparison, but the more traditional neofolk styling is still welcome.
“The Need For Less Sex In The World” is presented by Seelenblut almost as a Christian Death homage with sampled dialogue. If you like old timey gothic rock, as we do, it should probably work well for you.
Next is David E. Williams himself, giving us “Bad Day Anyway”. If you have this album, you probably already like his work.
Thomas Nöla et son Orchestre do a version of “Sandra Lindsey” which is impeccable, sounding as inevitable as a murderer in a slasher film. Foresta di Ferro and Ethel Mermaid round out the first disk, doing “I'm In Love With The Ambulance Driver” and “I Was A Fool In Love” respectively. Both are worth hearing. Foresta di Ferro sounds like they wouldn't be out of place in a Weimar cabaret, while Ethel Mermaid present their piece like a '50s girl group, if it were in a nostalgia musical like “Grease”.
Disk 2 is a big transition in tone, announced by the operatic styling of Second Amendment's arrangement of “Wotan Rains On A Plutocrat Parade”, almost like Laibach. Love Axis keeps that going with their pseudo-Germanic version of “Legends of the S.S.”, and we start to wonder if Williams is a neofascist or if it is all playing with the imagery to shock the unhip.
Aesthetic Meat Front hits us hard with a noise version of “The Curious Pediatrician” that almost hurts. Of course, that's what we want, since we are a masochistic audience or we wouldn't be here. Nazi UFO Commander (who, by the way, have one of the best band names anyone has ever thought of) don't let up on that delicious pain with their belting out of “Hello Columbus”. By now, we are no longer caring about the specific lyrics, and just lying down in a pool of delicious sound. Artefactum/Horologium take that feeling and twist a knife in it with “Stillborn”. Slowing things down a lot, it presents a drone of sound and a little girl's chanting as the backdrop for an epic of self-hatred.
Testing Vault finally relent, sort of, and give us a version of “Charlotte's Glass Eye” that slowly burns into the wounds we've received.
Oh, yes, disk 2 is for a very particular, very dark aesthetic. Happily, we share it.
Lark Blames (who include the aforementioned Lloyd James) present “Listen Somewhat Awkward” with Rodolfo Protti, and the awkwardness is made palpable. Suddenly, we are assaulted with “Pumpernickel Crust” by Dead Man's Hill, sounding like a gunfight after the quiet desperation of the last track.
Going back, for a moment, to a quieter sound, Oneiric Imperium provide “Hymns To The Genius Of Idi Amin”, but “quieter” doesn't mean “nicer”. Nor do things stay that way, as the track builds noise on noise in an “experimental” fashion. Angel of Decay keep that crescendo of noise cresting with their arrangement of “The Oven”.
Then comes our favorite track on the second disk, “The 23 Definitions Of Love” done by Macelleria Mobile Di Mezzanotte. Deconstructing jazz the way most neofolk artists deconstruct folk (should we call it “neojazz”?), it sounds like a 1920s nightclub in the universe next door. Not quite the way we expected to dance tonight.
Shining Vril do an industrialized version of “Sandra Lindsey” which makes for an interesting comparison to the version on the first disk. It has some nice sound deformations and repetitions. This is followed by a more post-poppy track given by Teatro Satanico, a version of “My God And My Dog” retitled “El Me Dio + El Me Can”.
Der Bekannte Post Industrielle Trompeter give the penultimate track, “Gift”. Being penultimate, one would expect it to be among the best, but it seems disjointed and incoherent to us. Finally, Bleiburg work through a fairly straight dark pop version of “Last Belch Of The Fish” that is alright, but not really something to write home about. The vocals are interesting, we suppose, but not spectacular.
Overall, we recommend getting this, as some of the artists here are well worth following. This assumes that you are fond of neofolk, industrial, and postindustrial music in general.
