Flipsides & Otherwise: FAO #15

This column was originally conceived as a convenient means to cross-examine short-form releases that didn’t quite require lengthy prose.  Since then though, such a remit has been self-corrupted by a necessity to round-up an overflow of new and archival wares, often thematically, before they pass through this writer’s over-roving ears.  But this time around, it seems appropriate to focus on just two condensed and all-too-likely-to-be-overlooked records with little connective conceptualism, aside from their mutual adoration of artful MP3-defying packaging.

 

 

 

The Real Tuesday Weld – Last Words (Antique Beat, 7″)

Stephen Coates may have been forced to turn The Real Tuesday Weld into a cottage industry to disseminate material outside of the US, through the establishment of the DIY Antique Beat imprint, but that’s not say his home-cooked produce is anywhere close to being half-baked.  This gorgeously-constructed gatefold-vinyl single serves as a smart but subtle reminder to pick-up his belatedly-issued-in-the-UK long-player The London Book Of The Dead.  The luscious “Last Words” – extracted from the said album for this freshly-pressed A-side – is another luminous yet dark retro-electro nugget from the Coates canon.  Within its gossamer grooves lies a romantically-bleak peak into a failed relationship (“You said you loved me/And I kind of believed that/But these days who knows what it means?” Coates whispers with an almost Morrissey-like lyrical veneer) that re-highlights The Real Tuesday Weld’s role as a well-oiled vehicle for one of London’s most imaginative songwriters and sound-shifters.  The two tracks on the B-side are perhaps less strident, but no less essential within the context of The Real Tuesday Weld’s formidably dense discography.  The wordless “Last Loves” provides some laconic levity through Coates’s penchant for perverse cambering inter-war jazz ’78s.  Contrastingly, the concluding “Last Days” gently rubs itself in the same elegiac Enoesque balm as “Turn On The Sun Again” (from the first Tuesday Weld LP), whilst proffering a more positive counterpoint to the topside’s doomed musings, with Coates encouragingly intoning, “Just thank the stars above/You got the chance to be here/Lose yourself in love.”  Loss, love, dry wit and existentialism all-neatly bound into three crackly pieces of art-pop?  Serge Gainsbourg would be proud of such understated ingenuity.

Visit: www.antiquebeat.co.uk

Pree – A Chopping Block (The Kora Records, CD/download)

From preliminary plays of this 5-track debut EP/mini-album from Washington DC’s Pree, there are some nagging familiarities that initially threaten to thwart affection.  In a nutshell, it’s singer-songwriter May Tabol’s vocals that lead to easy comparisons with Joanna Newsom, Regina Spektor and pre-You Are Free Cat Power, which could cruelly label Pree as a derivative enterprise.  However, it soon appears that such similarities are more by instinctive accident that calculated design, allowing this quintet of wonderfully-unvarnished songs to reveal a nascent talent worth nurturing.  Besides her alluringly angular marbles-in-the-mouth tones, Tabol’s gift for intriguingly arcane language and beatifically brittle musical arrangements confidently establishes Pree’s distinctive life-force across this too-short collection.  From the shimmying electro-acoustic “Heaven Is A Drag,” through the rustic back-porch-located “In The Parlor,” via the ornate baroque of “Lack Of Fight,” inside the lovely piano-led “Light Fails” and over to the twinkling glockenspiel-framed “Speak Warmly,” A Chopping Block is laced with delightfully rich details ripe for repeat personal-playlist picking.  Where Pree will go from here is hard to foresee, but based on this captivating calling-card it should be more than worthwhile to check back on the band in the near future. 

Visit: www.myspace.com/musicforpree