a r t i s t : Nick Grey
t i t l e : Thieves Among Thorns
d a t e : 2006
l a b e l : Hand/Eye (h/e022)
g e n r e : Indie
r l s. d a t e : Oct/2006
t r a c k s : 10
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 68,4 MB
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Thieves Among Thorns features Nick Grey, Jasmine Pinkerton &
Nicholas Davis (from the semi-romantic act Nick Grey & The
Random Orchestra). This new collection of songs, stripped bare
of the Orchestraüfs usual members, reveals a quieter, sadder
aspect of their work, and was recorded after Nick dreamed of
commiting suicide with a Bible in a Geneva first-class hotel.
As a result, Thieves Among Thorns is all about forlorn piano
lullabies, insecure percussions and torpid classical
arrangements, eerie ballads and numbing rythms, terminological
inexactitudes and sleepy hyperboles. Ten desolate tracks where
Nick's laptop arrangements and quiet, inconsolable vocals
interweave with pianist Jasmine Pinkerton's eastern-Europe
sensitivity and Nicholas Davis' precise guitar.
A sound shaped by various failures, breakups and periods of
intense doubt : perfect for heartbreaks and codeine addicts.
Beautifully packaged in cardstock 'arigato pak.'
http://www.nick-grey.com/
There's a place in the heart of almost every Englishman
between the age of 40 and 70 that exists in the rarely used
front parlour of his mother or father's parents' house, a
place where he remembers sitting in school shirt and short
trousers enduring what seemed like endless childhood hours
self-consciously swinging his legs on an overly-large
Victorian settee, his heels occasionally accidentally kicking
the velour in an abstracted manner to the obvious displeasure
of his father, as both of his parents chatted endlessly to
grandma about the weather and Auntie Maggie's bad back, while
a slightly de-tuned radio set in the back room broadcast the
kind of Radio 4 drama that was always accompanied by
eloquently played but fragmented and tinny schoolroom piano;
beyond the net curtain freedom was the stifled chatter of
children and cars passing silently.
Nick Grey's new album reminds me of those days, technically
pre-psychedelic but still rather mind manifesting in a too-
much-sugary-tea and not-paying-enough-attention-to-the-grown-
up-conversation kind of way. THIEVES AMONG THORNS shines in a
blissful times-lost-that-never-really-existed manner, its
pastoral chords and hymnal air constantly undermined by little
Roger in the other room fiddling with some new and too noisy
mechanical invention and getting his hand slapped for it by
mother. The piano based songs on THIEVES AMONG THORNS all
recall tunes I've known all my life, yet this collection
rings, nay zings with newness. It gleams with a clarity and
poetic truth heard only in the work of the most confident of
artists. For the lovely genius of this record lies in its
adherence to its own metaphor, probably located initially with
great effort by the artist but thence defined, executed
seemingly effortlessly. On this album, nothing kicks the
listeners out of their melancholy for one moment, and I was
careful when making tea to select not my usual large Orkney
mug depicting heathen temple The Ring Of Brogar and the Viking
cathedral of St. Magnus and the Old Man of Hoy, but instead
this English Republican chose to drink from a fine china
beaker celebrating Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee presented
in 2002 to all the local children by Cherhill Parish Council.
For, as I'm always at pains to point out, acceptance of the
artist's own metaphor is essential in order to maximise one's
enjoyment of that art.
There's little point in describing each song that Nick Grey
has brought before us on this exceptional album. Suffice to
say, nothing is out of place and nothing stands out except ALL
of it, yet it is neither an album of songs nor an album of
purely experimental works, the record standing shamanically
and entirely successfully at the doorway between both genres
just as John Cale's THE ACADEMY IN PERIL attempted but
ultimately failed to do. For whereas Cale was tempted to
undermine the pastor within him by adding inappropriate
elements that made us not wince perhaps, but most certainly
flinch, instead Nick Grey's masterful acceptance of his own
metaphor ensures that - as all has been dedicated to ensuring
the completeness of the trip -- nothing up-ends the continuity
of our listening pleasure. Indeed, this album is one of the
most truly ambient records I've heard in many a year, and
rotating it endlessly can send the listener close to catatonia
and nudging sleep.
The preponderance of fizzing technology and cut-ups keeps the
record far outside any so-called Keltic zones, placing it
firmly in a Germanic realm, as though Grey were sitting at the
piano in the sitting room, but hemmed in by a VCS3 synthesizer
half-inched from the physics lab by an older brother, as self
-animating mechanical toys and half-broken robots interrupt
the proceeding from time to time by bursting suddenly in to
life. And yet there are no disruptions that shake us too much
from Greyüfs spell, even the American radio voices are
appropriate to the overall downer atmosphere. THIEVES AMONG
THORNS sounds most of all as though a thoughtful radio DJ had
created a special Sunday afternoon selection made especially
to accompany the hours between 2.30-6pm. For this is no
midnight album, neither is it an evening album, but invokes
that time-honoured Sunday afternoon time-slot after the World
War 2 movie but before SONGS OF PRAISE. I know because Iüfve
played it at all hours of the day and never yet on a Sunday,
but the music of THIEVES AMONG THORNS conjures up that ultra
specific moment every time and without fail.
If I were to compare this record to others, I should say its
pleasure centres would best be paralleled by making up a
compilation from any of the less gothic/more rural tracks from
Nico's DESERTSHORE or MARBLE INDEX LPs, Are We Dreaming? from
Kevin Coyne's 1978 LP DYNAMITE DAZE, Vowels from Ulver's
wonderful A QUICK FIX OF MELANCHOLY E.P., the harmonium-based
Window Shopping For A New Crown Of Thorns by my own The
Teardrop Explodes, almost anything from David Wrench's epic
and criminally underrated LP BLOW WINDS BLOW, Armand
Schaubroeuk's exquisite version of Auld Lang Syne, most
anything from the out-of-character Cale-obsessed fourth album
of Japanese band Overhang Party, several of the piano based
Residents tunes that appeared on NOT AVAILABLE, moments of NEU
75 and large chunks of Cluster's SOWIESOSO. Luckily, however,
that compilation is unnecessary because Nick Grey's new album
reaches all of the above and much more.
For foreign listeners, I would recommend THIEVES AMONG THORNS
if you wish to know what was the essence of the post war
English living room. For it is not the self-regarding too-drum
heavy jangle pop of the perpetually mournful Morrissey and The
Smiths, nor is it the wonderful but too dark northern
Englishness of Joy Division, rather it is the slightly out of
reach simultaneous ebbing and flowing of joy at what we once
had tempered by gentle grief at what we've lost. For the
Englishman does not, I believe, really wish to kill himself,
nor does he wish to kill others. Like this fabulous record of
Nick Grey's, the Englishman probably most wants just to be
left alone and... well, to contemplate his own inevitable
death whilst fiddling with his own stuff in a shed or back
room filled with meaningful artefacts accumulated over his
life, and with enough light to see properly and, of course, a
brew.
Julian Cope
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth/1594
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01-Tammuz [06:06]
02-Hail Heart! Clouds Upon Clouds! [04:46]
03-Failure (Is A Lonesome Bitch) [05:20]
04-The Endless Pink [05:22]
05-All Lives Revolve In Bright Circles Of Quiet Light [06:45]
06-Spa Diva [01:21]
07-Montreal (Vue Aerienne) [03:38]
08-Devolun Inis [02:11]
09-End Of All [08:08]
10-The World Mountain [09:18]
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52:55 min