EXAMPLE 22 – ALBUM REVIEW

After sending off my questions to Nick Saloman, I continued listening to Example 22, the new Bevis Frond album, and wrote a tight three-hundred word review to follow up the interview. How organised was that? Assuming Nick came through (which he did, entertainingly and with astonishing promptness) I’d have a feature and a follow-up post in the bag. Smashing.

Except that, in a misguided attempt at efficiency, I deleted earlier versions of the interview questions… including the document with my album review. I looked high and searched low, even went back in time – but no joy. The document was gone.

So here is a stern test of Example 22. After full immersion in Frond-world for a couple of weeks, can the album excite me again as I sit to write, again, about a sprawling vinyl opus? Now that the thrill of initial flirtatious attraction has passed, will the relationship hold up to what feels rather like a day at the office? Let’s find out.

The album opens with mid-paced rocker ‘Are we nearly there yet’ which seems to beckon the classic childhood question into middle-age. Not so much impatience as desperation: In the words of Trower, ‘I can’t wait much longer’. Is the search for contentment? Or perhaps a running away from what is too ‘claustrophobic’. There is a lovely, lyrical guitar solo that evokes a pastoral escape — or maybe that is just me yearning to get away too. Nick Saloman’s songs often invite the listener to overlay their projections onto his enigmatic verses.

‘Waiting for Sinatra’ is the first of several songs that have a patina of mortality over the words, though belied here by the high energy of this straight-ahead rocker. Gout, throat nodules, hair loss. Getting old makes it hard to hold on to fantasies of the golden becoming. Neither Frank nor Godot will arrive to bring enlightenment to crepuscular middle age.

Though I love the committed psychedelic spray of Bevis Frond, it is the sprinkling of folk-rock songs that add a nourishing variety of flavour to albums that are usually chock full of good songs. ‘Longships’ is the first of these on Example 22. A terrific song with chiming guitar that, as the song-writer himself allowed, explores xenophobia and the real —or imagined— fear of invasion.

Side one rounds out with one of my favourites, ‘I blame the rain’, a crunching rock riff with brilliant soloing and great guitar effects. I imagine sitting down a couple of metal colleagues (you know who you are) and playing this at high volume. It just fucking rocks.

Organ adds a nice reedy texture to the uptempo ‘Hot sauce or nothing’. Think early Elvis Costello bopping his specs off and you’ll have the idea. A complete change of pace for the wistful electric ballad ‘Where is Egon Schiele’, described by Nick S as simply ‘falling into place’. A lovely, romantic guitar solo falls into place perfectly in this song.

I’ve written about the first six tracks on Example 22, though such is the consistency it would work equally well to have chosen a different sequence from the sixteen songs comprising the album. Psychedelic rock served generously, a smattering of musically introspective ballads, some folk-rock sparks and punk-ish belters and that’s another fine Bevis Frond album. The twenty-second, to be precise. As Nick has said he intends to continue writing songs and putting out an album when there is enough quality material, with a bit of luck there’ll be more Frond to come. I’ll have my pre-order in, for sure.

Postscript

In the interview, Nick scuppered the theory that ‘Manual labour’ was about playing live rock and roll. Mulling it over with my backroom Bevis Boffin, we wonder whether it is about the transition from traditional hands-on manual labour jobs (and politics) to the thumb-twiddling automated digital (New Labour) age, with the associated losses of dignity, identity and direction.

As I don’t imagine the writer will enlighten us, here is the lyric for Vinyl Connection readers to offer their interpretation. Share in Comments, or take your understanding to Platform One Records in Hastings and tell Nick. He probably won’t spill the beans but at least you’ll have a nice day out and get to browse some interesting records.

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MANUAL LABOUR

On the front line, Nick reporting

Out of coal tar, men are walking

Just conduit for your hang-ups

Semi-stand up, semi-tragic

What are we doing here? Manual labour

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An observer in the war zone

Staying neutral, lack of hormones

Gather fences for me to sit on

Ever shy once, never bitten