Yesterday we talked about the mature and clear-headed love songs of South Carolina’s Contour, today we’re going in the opposite direction. We are covering another mature pop record, but this one has all the subtlety of a house on fire. Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie and Savages’s wildcat personifier Jehnny Beth turn in a classic-styled chamber and country-pop record that has all the drama of a grand piano somersaulting down a flight of tenement stairs. It’s mature in the respect that it reflects emotions adults cycle through while they realize that they don’t love each other anymore, and like so many classic stories of love and love lost, it involves a swelling pyre that consumes everything these lovers once built together.
Bobby and Jehnny first teamed up for a cover of the Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood bitter orchestra pop ballad “Some Velvet Morning,” a song that is perfectly suited to smashing every piece of furniture in your house with the help of your partner as you shoot dagger-like glances at each other over violently overturned ottomans and a haze of shredded slipcover fibers. The ugly mood and indulgent melodies of that piece are reproduced perfectly throughout Utopian Ashes, maintaining the momentum of a train jumping the tracks and gliding through a wedding reception, or a bullet burrowing through a roll of bubblewrap.
The destructive potential of the relationship depicted on Utopian Ashes is obvious from the outset- as Bobby confesses with a breathy calm in the first couple of measures of “Chase It Down,” “Time slips away / Day after day / And I don’t even love you / Anymore,” in doing so he pushes through a sumptuous curl of violins and a hard beating funk groove to get a clear view of his lover while he tears down the illusion of their marriage. In a mixture of shock and relief Jehnny replies with force and heat, “Free fall from the love / Who is gonna come and save us now?,” projecting her voice forward to counter the blowback of a revelation that has caused the floor beneath her feet to part and envelope her in a precipitous plunge into the grainy pitch of the Earth’s flesh. It’s an inspired way to start the album.
Things settle out a bit and become less sinister for the country morning reflection of “Your Heart Will Always Be Broken” where Jehnny’s voice sparkles like sunbeams refracting off a swaying windchime, while Bobby’s parts complement the nostalgia for love ribboned throughout the first verse, leading to a piano lead duet that units the performer’s voices in reverie and release, circling each other so closely you can almost imagine feeling their breaths brushing each other cheeks with each waltzing pass.
“Stones of Silence” keeps step with a Cuban rhythm and jazz-funk groove as the lovers examine the gulf that has formed between them, wondering at the depth of its basin, and the sheer rise of its precious, and how suicidal the attempt to cross it would be. The darkness of this moment is balanced by the hushed Scottish-styled piano balled “You Can Trust Me Now” where the lovers come to terms with their separate fates, and the cooling, cleansing strum of “Sunk in Reverie,” an acoustic psychedelic-pop number that reminds of early Primal Scream accompanied by the healing coo of Jehnny’s voice, a calming presence whose tranquility is earned through the peace-dividends offer by time and distance from the fire that once threatened to consume both her and her former lover’s souls.
I’m not going to claim that Utopian Ashes is a perfect album, as there are definitely a number of qualified duds in the sequencing that I would prefer not to describe in detail. However, the high points of the album are truly, dizzyingly high, and do a fair job of overshadowing its more low and meager offerings. Overall, Utopian Ashes is a solid addition to the long cannon of kitchen sink romance and dirgy duets that make up a not insubstantial part of America’s folk tradition. Don’t allow yourself to be singed by regret from neglecting this little beauty.
Buy and stream Utopian Ashes via Bandcamp below:
Get a copy of Utopian Ashes on vinyl from Third Man Records here.
