Play It Again Sam (label)
07 November 2023 (released)
07 November 2023
2023 is ‘the’ year of the Goth. The genre that refuses to remain dormant, the style that resists total co-option, the sound that lives on forevermore. Back (in black) with a bang.
On the literary front we’ve had Cathi Unsworth’s ‘Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth’, John Robb’s ‘The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth’ and Cure sticksman Lol Tolhurst’s ‘Goth: A History ’. Plenty to sink your teeth into …
Tolhurst has also been busy working in cahoots with fellow skin-hitter, former Banshee and Creature Budgie and Garrett ‘Jacknife’ Lee, ex-Compulsion guitarist and tune-polisher to the stars (Taylor Swift; U2).
Almost four years since its hatching on this supergroup plus esteemed guests debut, ‘Los Angeles’, the trio craft (unlucky for some, lucky for the rest) thirteen alt-pop, electro-rock, ambientertainment, glooming-mood/dooming-brood songs to soundtrack the twilight hours and the dawn chorus. Thematically addressing the fantasy of the American Dream, the ever-blurring distinctions of freedom and slavery, proffering hope amongst the despair.
Primal Scream’s resolute rock ‘n’ roll recycler Bobby Gillespie features on three tracks: the slow-gospel-bound opener ‘This Is What It Is (To Be Free)’, the ‘Kowalski’-echoing deadpanned-delivery of ‘Ghosted At Home’ and the quasi-trip-hopping political-chicanery pointing ‘Country of the Blind’.
Starcrawler’s voodoo-dolly Arrow de Wilde teams up with Idles’ Mark Bowen to contribute a tribal-ballistic breakdown: ‘Uh Oh’ is jam-packed with JuJu jouissance.
‘Bodies’ finds Lonnie Holley providing some ire and grimstone sermonising backed by Mary Lattimore’s (s)harp inter-cutting. The enigmatic Pan Amsterdam drips jazzy hip-hop hues all over ‘Travel Channel’. A chat-spat collapsing history of observations and privations.
LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy applies his own post-punk panoramas on two tracks: the titular ‘Los Angeles’, a glam-stomp assault on the city’s underbellyaches and fakes where he yelpingly disavows any seductive charms the place purports to offer as only an outsider can. The other is ‘Skins’: a tribal-treatise that evokes Echo and the Bunnymen’s esoteric excursions and lysergic litanies.
U2’s The Edge shows his all-too-rarely expressed experimental chops on the outstanding (if too brief) motorik of ‘Train with no station’ and the buzz-bounce of ‘Noche Oscura’.
Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock assists on the brilliant ‘We got to move’. Full of Eastern premise interspersed with Western menace, a contortion-distortion danceflawless anthem.
This multifarious album is infinitely more than the sum of its parts. It’s creatively assembled ensemble all contributing to a modernist canvas of cross-cultural critiques and trans-historical communiques.
As George Carlin wisely uttered “In order to believe in the American Dream you have to be asleep”.
Wake from your somnambulant schismed slumber and reclaim your rightful biorhythmic rhumba. Let these sounds be your guide.
