Black Box Recorder: Passionoia

BLACK BOX RECORDER: PASSIONOIA (2003)

1) The School Song; 2) GSOH Q.E.D.; 3) British Racing Green; 4) Being Number One; 5) The New Diana; 6) These Are The Things; 7) Andrew Ridgley; 8) When Britain Refused To Sing; 9) Girls Guide For The Modern Diva; 10) I Ran All The Way Home.

Apparently, this was never meant to be the final BBR LP — the band members were just sup­posed to take a break in order to pursue solo ventures, from which, however, they never truly re­covered. Sad, because out of their three «proper» LPs, Passionoia is clearly the weakest one. It is not at all bad — in fact, it's intriguing as hell, and not any less intelligent and biting, and I'm all for having it and savoring it, it's just that it would look much better sitting in the middle of their discography rather than playing the part of an accidental swan song.

The thing is, on Passionoia Haines and Co. decided that it was time to frame their satire and maddening ambiguity in an «electro-pop» setting, highly derivative of Eighties' synthpop and, in some way, quietly heralding the soon-to-come trend of rock bands embracing vintage synthe­sizers and hopping into the 21st century on the shoulders of that weird, tech-crazed, decade's electronic wizards. But Luke Haines really plays nobody's game but his own, and, as usual, it is not easy to tell whether he actually likes these dance rhythms or if he just uses them to lure in the unsuspecting listener — dance, dance, dance, before you know what really hit you.

What I do know is that the pounding electropop beats disturb and confuse the subtlety, so im­portant for the total success of any given Black Box Recorder song. You can't beat those lyrics, or those pop hooks, or the usual deadly loveliness of Sarah Nixey's voice, but you can corrode them a little if you go too far, and contaminate the atmosphere. Certainly songs like ʽGSOH Q.E.D.ʼ or ʽAndrew Ridgeleyʼ (a veritable tongue-in-cheek ode to synthpop, choosing Wham! as its symbo­lic start-off point) should not be used as a natural introduction to the world of Black Box Recor­der: we wouldn't want anybody to think of them as a «dance band», even if you have to be really stupid to take ʽAndrew Ridgeleyʼ at face value.

That said, in the overall context of BBR's career, the point is taken: Passionoia is not so much this band's lesson in nostalgia as it is a lesson in history. Haines and Moore, using Sarah as their instrument of choice, go back to their childhood days (actually, one could say they go back to her childhood days, since Sarah is the youngest member of the three and it is only her teens that were properly soaked in the Eighties) and, basically, ruminate on what it was that made Black Box Recorder what it is today. Of all three records, Passionoia is the most extraverted one — there are endless references to Britain, British history, British culture, British celebrities, British edu­cation, and even though all of them are still made from within the safe frozen confines of BBR's glass house, this time around, BBR's beady eye is staring out, not in.

As usual, the songs are mostly great, despite the fact that this transition to electronic rhythms way too often prompts Nixey to trade in her nuanced singing for ice-cold spoken parts or robotic choruses (which she still delivers seductively). ʽThe School Songʼ takes ye olde tradition of lam­basting the cold and cruel educational practices of The System and makes Black Box Recorder a «proud» part of it — whoever takes the time to listen to this anthem to the end, gets "a grade A from the Black Box Recorder School of Song"; along the way, Sarah successfully plays the part of the monster teacher (although, frankly speaking, I wouldn't mind getting a double detention from the likes of her!) and instructs you to "destroy your record collection, it's for your own pro­tection", which is fairly sound advice, I'd say.

The major highlight and, not coincidentally, the least dance-oriented tune on the album is ʽBri­tish Racing Greenʼ, probably one of the creepiest pieces in the BBR catalog: the lovelier the tone in which Sarah is describing our conservative ideal ("a little cottage by the sea, a glass of gin, a box of chocolate"), the more disturbing is that post-chorus distorted guitar riff, and the very idea of "British racing green", ending each chorus with gravity and suspense, is used as a threatening symbol of... isolation? containment? self-sufficiency? whatever. Where a Ray Davies would have probably turned the same song into a hypnotic ad for his country, Black Box Recorder have this perfect balance between paradise and nightmare — just like on the album cover, where blissful poolside relaxation is contrasted with some poor slob floating face downwards in the same pool (a visual metaphor that is almost too blatant by BBR's own standards).

The same song also introduces the band's big problem with Lady Di ("Now I'm living in a chat­room with the Diana fan club / They sent a virus to my dream"), more fully explored in the vicious electronic-acoustic ballad ʽNew Dianaʼ — so vicious, in fact, that it would automatically preclude Black Box Recorder from turning into the nation's favorite band, had they ever nurtured such a thought. Although, frankly speaking, it is not a very good song: musically simplistic and vocally relying on a single repetitive hook ("I want to be the new Diana!"), it has less replay value than the similarly-themed, but not name-dropping ʽGirls Guide For The Modern Divaʼ, with a trickier vocal arrangement.

The sarcastic mask stays on the face all through the album, until the very last number: ʽI Ran All The Way Homeʼ, nearly free of any electronic coatings, states that "The novelty has worn off / We are not amused any more / If you really love me / You'll let me go home". Go home where, exactly? It does feel like an escapist anthem, but the way Haines, Moore, and Nixey built up their philosophy, it does not exactly leave them any particular room for escape. Then again, probably what they are talking about is still that same "home" of ʽIdeal Homeʼ, the cocoon-capsule, the «black box» that shelters the protagonist from the perversities of unprotected life — the whole song is just one more metaphor for a panicky existence in the real world, into which they'd briefly ventured out with their dance rhythms and pulsating synthesizers, and which they now abhor even more completely than before. At least, that's one possible hell of an interpretation.

Despite its particular and general flaws, there is still no way that Passionoia could be deprived of a thumbs up, and if you were taken in by the first two records, it will, at worst, let you down only slightly (at best, if you are a synthpop / techno lover, its computerized tissue will only be a further stimulus). As I said, the only reason for sadness is that with this record, Black Box Recorder bid us all fare­well without anyone knowing it. They did come together several years later, with two more songs written and released as a single circa 2009, but no album followed, and the band officially split in 2010. Of course, it may simply have been that they felt there was nothing more to say, and I get them: pursuing the same musical and ideological agenda, album after album, must be tedious for Luke Haines, and as great as the Black Box Recorder project has been, it has been really a «one-trick pony» type of project — I mean, Sarah Nixey is a perfect type of singer for this attitude, but she is rather one-dimensional, like so many femme fatales (Nico etc.), and if Black Box Recorder carried on for too long, they would have run the risk of stepping into the realm of self-parody. The only thing we can hope for now is that these three records do not fade away into total obscurity — they may be closely linked to a particular time and a particular place, but that time and that place are really so symbolic and so extendable to other situations that they will always find a grateful audience, like so many other «dated» arte­facts of quintessentially British culture.

Black Box Recorder: The Worst Of Black Box Recorder

BLACK BOX RECORDER: THE WORST OF BLACK BOX RECORDER (2001)

1) Seasons In The Sun; 2) Watch The Angel Not The Wire; 3) Jackie Sixty; 4) Start As You Mean To Go On; 5) The Facts Of Life (remix); 6) Lord Lucan Is Missing; 7) Wonderful Life; 8) Uptown Top Ranking; 9) Brutality; 10) Factory Radio; 11) Soul Boy; 12) Rock'n'Roll Suicide.

Much of this album has been made redundant upon being converted into bonus tracks to the new CD editions of England Made Me and Facts Of Life — no big surprise, since most of the songs were originally B-sides on singles taken from those albums. That said, this compilation still merits a separate review, since every single song on it, and that goes beyond the B-sides, rules to high heaven, and plus, only a band like Black Box Recorder could dare to slap the semi-ironic, semi-bombastic title of The Worst on a record that so clearly contains some of the best. Because for Luke Haines, the best is the worst — in the sense that, the more uncomfortable you feel about any of his songs, the better they probably are.

Since this is a compilation, thinking conceptual thoughts about the record would be rather point­less, but it does open up a few extra edges and links to BBR that would otherwise be missed. For instance: David Bowie liked Jacques Brel, enough to cover his songs, and on this album, BBR cover both Brel and Bowie — as long as the songs have something to do with quiet desperation and impending demise (ʽSeasons In The Sunʼ and ʽRock'n'Roll Suicideʼ both qualify). The arran­gements and particularly Sarah's vocal adaptations are almost enough to make me cherish the covers over the originals (at the very least, ʽSeasons In The Sunʼ is definitely a morbid improve­ment over the hit version by Terry Jacks — might have been even better if the band reverted to Brel's original French lyrics of ʽLe Moribondʼ, but Nixey's French might not have been good enough for that, especially since her little phonetic peculiarities are an integral part of the band's magic, and they could have suffered in the transition to a non-native language).

Still another cover is ʽUptown Top Rankingʼ, formerly a visiting card for the one-hit reggae wonder Althea & Donna — the original was a slightly ironic, slightly defying piece of «norm­core propaganda», as they'd say nowadays ("no pop no style, I strictly roots"); BBR extract it from their nostalgic attic, dust it off, freeze it up, and prove that they can put a little whiff of genuine Black Box Recor­der™ spirit into anything. The main difference is that the old version had life and humor in it; the new version has bleakness and claustrophobia in it, but the basic message of "no pop no style" remains the same. Consequently, it is more interesting to compare these two versions than, say, the two versions of ʽRock'n'Roll Suicideʼ, where they basically preserve Bowie's original emotions, merely cutting down the bombastic dramaticism.

As for the originals, well, they are instructive. For instance, I never knew anything about «Jackie 60», which was apparently one of the hottest and kinkiest New York party events in the 1990s, sort of a symbol of complete freedom of sexual identity — and here is Luke Haines writing a song about it in non-too flattering terms: ʽSave me, save me from Jackie Sixty, take me, take me to the top of the worldʼ, Sarah coos in her trademark frigid-seductive manner, as the incredibly catchy pop song, with acid political incorrectness, attacks the allegedly phoney «world of Jackie 60»: "This isn't mother nature boy / Stripped naked and frightened / The only reason that you're here / Is because you've been invited". Spelled out wicked and strong, and nobody could even use the words as a pretext for accusations of homophobia.

Other highlights include the short and unusually hard-rocking ʽLord Lucan Is Missingʼ (another good reason to catch up on celebrity history — apparently Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, was quite a colorful figure, well worth immortalizing in 1:49 worth of stern hard rock riffage and funereal intonations); ʽStart As You Mean To Go Onʼ, which not only has one of the catchiest basslines on the album, but should also be made required listening for all the hipster youth of today (sometimes being torn to shreds right in your face may serve as helpful shock therapy, although most people probably wouldn't get the message of lines like "topshop, doves and Glastonbury, learned to be a secretary" and "cut our losses, screw our bosses, get out while we're still young"); and ʽBrutalityʼ, a song so unnerving and so ambiguous that it alone could have made Black Box Recorder the biggest anti-hip turn-off ever since the Kinks chose to make themselves deliberately uncool in the eyes of the young generation with Village Green.

Please remember, though, that although the lyrics to at least half of these songs simply beg to become the chief focus of attention (we could quote and analyze till morning, easily enough), they are never delivered at the expense of hooks — verses, choruses, little guitar figures, every­thing fitting the general mood. You certainly do not need to understand one word in order to cherish the gorgeous melancholy of ʽWonderful Lifeʼ, whose lead vocals, harmonies, guitars, wintery keyboards, and music-box chimes are arguably this record's finest musical synthesis, and whose chorus mentions a "wonderful life" in the most sadly ironic manner possible.

Overall, no question about the rating — thumbs up a-plenty — except that I generally agree with the idea of eventually disbanding the record, as long as nothing on it ever gets lost, and fattening up the running lengths of the two «proper» albums: even despite the monotonousness of the mood, this is songwriting and performing of such high quality that I'd have no problem whatso­ever with, say, a 60-minute running length for England Made Me (well, that's pretty much how it goes on the new CD edition).

Black Box Recorder: The Facts Of Life

BLACK BOX RECORDER: THE FACTS OF LIFE (2000)

1) The Art Of Driving; 2) Weekend; 3) The English Motorway System; 4) May Queen; 5) Sex Life; 6) French Rock'n'Roll; 7) The Facts Of Life; 8) Straight Life; 9) Gift Horse; 10) The Deverell Twins; 11) Goodnight Kiss.

This is like a carbon copy of England Made Me, except this time everything is different. Well, musically the only big difference is that the band relies more on electronics — creatively prog­rammed drums and digital keyboards threaten to push the guitar sound out completely on the first few tracks, although acoustic and electric guitars still find a way to creep in through the back door, eventually. But if you thought this change in texture would make the band sound colder (as a transition to a more electronic sound often does), you couldn't be more wrong.

In comparison with England Made Me, The Facts Of Life is a downright optimistic, positively charged album. Not because England was such an epitome of depression, and certainly not be­cause the band now offers anything like a «happy» view of the world — no, they still sound like the same bunch of resigned shut-ins, with no intention whatsoever to come out into the sun and play the usual game of life. The difference is that, faced with the choice of "kill yourself or get over it", The Facts Of Life makes a clear decision in the direction of "getting over it" (I could not even exclude the possibility that the decision was consciously chosen so as to avoid the tag of «suicide propagandists» that some media sources were only too happy to attach to the band).

In a way, the differences are subtle — and how could they not be, when this is, after all, the same band, with the same distinctive, individualistic vocalist and the same idea that music should be an honest reflection of life itself? But sometimes a spade is just a spade, and when, on the tenebrous ballad ʽStraight Lifeʼ, Sarah coos "it's a beautiful morning, it's a beautiful day", it is un­reasonable to look for any hidden irony. Instead, this is a quiet, self-contained celebration of the «dream home» — separation from all the irritants ("away from alternative culture, transient people coming in and out of our lives...") and chilling out in the safeness and cuddliness of your densely woven cocoon. Irony? More like utopian escapism, if you ask me. Some people actually like to "live in a tin on top of the wardrobe", especially those that are convinced that living anywhere else exposes you to misery and suffering.

If there is one song that I feel reminded of while listening to this album, it is... Bob Dylan's ʽLay Lady Layʼ — the synthesized strings that open ʽThe Art Of Drivingʼ kind of echo those Nashville steel guitars that provide the soft, springy foundation for Dylan's love ballad. I daresay it is just a coincidence, but in reality, the two songs share more than just a couple of chords — both are soft, gallant pleas to the imaginary listener, begging him/her to give in, seducing and becalming the listener. From that point of view, a "stay lady stay, stay while the night is still ahead" is not that different from a "you've been driving way too fast, you've been taking things too far". The entire album is just that — a big old "slow down" message. Slow down, drop out, tuck in, get off, and stay under. There's actual beauty to be contemplated in all this.

To make things more convincing, Nixey shifts her singing technique, melting a few blocks of ice and transforming them to breathy steam — songs like ʽWeekendʼ are purringly sexy, even if the singer immediately issues a warning ("careful not to touch, we've drunk enough"), and few other people could make a repeated line like "Friday night, Saturday morning" sound so mysterious — is it longing? yearning? boredom? hypnotism? whatever it is, it's darkly enchanting, as is ʽThe English Motorway Systemʼ, a Buddhist anthem to the art of existing and surviving on the high­way — especially efficient if you play it back to back with Deep Purple's ʽHighway Starʼ, as an effective illustration of how the exact same object can trigger such different visions. And even if "the English motorway system is an accident waiting to happen", this is not a horrific realisation, but rather just one more of those "facts of life" that you learn in the course of "detached obser­ving". It's a highway anthem all right, yet at the same time it's a song that could have just as well be done by any qualified master of «ambient pop», like Brian Eno.

So as not to fall completely into the trap of discussing lyrics rather than music (and there is a lot to discuss here, believe me), I will just state what seems obvious — the chief musical instrument here is Nixey's voice, through and through; otherwise, ʽMay Queenʼ would be a mere rip-off of the Beatles' ʽDear Prudenceʼ (whose guitar chords it is quite unashamed to pilfer), and ʽGift Horseʼ would merely be a pretty instrumental, stuck somewhere in between New Age, adult contemporary, and baroque pop — it is the singing that transforms them into gorgeous fantasies of romantic escapism. Most beautiful of the lot, though, is saved for last: for ʽGoodnight Kissʼ, Sarah packs so much tenderness that by this time, I believe, every single listener should be subscribing to the Church of Black Box Recorder, buying all their records, stocking up on cereals, water, and toilet paper, and boarding up all doors and windows. "Use your imagination, we can go anywhere" — it's all in the mind, you know.

Of course, if I were hard pressed to only choose one, I'd still go with England Made Me, for all the extra darkness and frost. But The Facts Of Life really dwells in the same darkness and frost: all it does is shine a little light inside the darkness and get a bit of a fire going in the midst of the frost, because, well, you know, otherwise it's "kill yourself" and we don't wanna do that. So es­sentially they just constitute a solid premise and a logical sequel, and the «choice» is a fickle idea anyway — let us just simplify things and go with another thumbs up.

Black Box Recorder: England Made Me

BLACK BOX RECORDER: ENGLAND MADE ME (1998)

1) Girl Singing In The Wreckage; 2) England Made Me; 3) New Baby Boom; 4) It's Only The End Of The World; 5) Ideal Home; 6) Child Psychology; 7) I. C. One Female; 8) Up Town Top Ranking; 9) Swinging; 10) Kidnapping An Heiress; 11) Hated Sunday.

One hell of a fun ride would be playing this album back-to-back with Springsteen's Born In The USA — another album that describes the uneasy relationship between the protagonist and his home country, but in a diametrically opposite manner. As someone born in the USA, the Boss is rowdy, hot, dynamic, willing to go to extremes in any given emotional state. As someone made by England, Sarah Nixey is... frozen. Black Box Recorder? More like Ice Box Recorder, if you ask me. With cockle shells and silver bells to boot.

Interestingly enough, the Black Box Recorder project was started up by Luke Haines before his main band, The Auteurs, folded its wings and went to sleep. In its deepest essence, the project pursued the same goals — a cynical, melancholic deconstruction of any life-asserting values that the surrounding society and culture might contain — but the execution was very different. All the songs were co-written by Haines with John Moore, formerly the drummer and guitarist for The Jesus And Mary Chain, and all the lead vocals were female, handled by the abovementioned Sarah Nixey, formerly a nobody, but as a member of Black Box Recorder — one of the most haunting figures in British indie pop. Consequently, Black Box Recorder explored a «softer», subtler, less rock-based approach than The Auteurs, and its combination of ingredients, even if it is not necessarily «better» than The Auteurs, seems much more unique.

The key ingredient of England Made Me are the vocal melodies that Luke and John are feeding to Sarah — and her interpretation of these melodies. Unlike, say, Beth Gibbons of Portishead, who typically sings out of a bathtub with razor blades fastened to her wrists, Sarah never lets her slightly childlike voice quiver with extreme emotion. Instead, she delivers those lyrics, usually full of gruesome, morbid, or cynically bittersweet imagery (the most often quoted line is the chorus to ʽChild Psychologyʼ — "life is unfair, kill yourself or get over it"), like a formerly sweet and delicate person that, after some particularly dreadful trauma, has pretty much lost all feeling, or fallen in an entranced state. Pinned to a background of quietly plucked guitars, inobtrusive backing vocals, occasional chimes and synthesizer strings, it makes for a great combination: simple, immediately hitting all the right nerve centers, and with no direct analogies.

The price to pay for this is monotonousness: the level of variation in between these 11 tunes is fairly low. But the tunes themselves are short, and each one has a little something going on to hook your attention, be it the decisiveness with which Sarah states that "my 18th birthday, I'll die of boredom" (ʽGirl Singing In The Wreckageʼ), or the gruesome conclusiveness of her "the kid is gone, he's not my son" (ʽNew Baby Boomʼ), or the freezing, ironically consolating tone of her "it's only the end of the world..." (meaning that the worst is yet to come, after all), or the depres­sing blues picking on ʽKidnapping An Heiressʼ, which leaves no hope for humanity even before the first bit of lyrics comes along.

The true wonder of England Made Me, though, is that it is one of those albums that does not really make you want to kill yourself — but rather to get over it. It wears its mourning clothes quite casually and stoically, neither commanding the listener to fight this gloom (because it can­not be fought against) nor, like Robert Smith or the aforementioned Beth Gibbons, inviting you to masochisti­cally gloat over it. It's only the end of the world — get it? It's not that serious. It just happens. One of the key songs, ʽIdeal Homeʼ, presents you with this mystical claustrophobic perfection ("in an ideal home, everything's safe... in an ideal home, nothing you do can go wrong..."), contrasting it with "miserable songs from the house next door, perhaps they're plan­ning to end it all" — you can take it as a blunt allegory of social segregation, of course, but you can also view it as a hymn to spiritual isolationism: the «ideal home» is a metaphor for simply locking out all feeling and barricading yourself from all the evils, disappointments, and different degrees of shit going on all over the world — an urge that may not be completely alien to quite a few of us, right? Especially when the ʽIdeal Homeʼ is set to such lovely music.

This is, of course, the quintessence of Luke Haines, the most cool-headed guy ever to write and sing about the world's evils, but Sarah here is a more perfect vehicle for his ideas than he himself ever was, and England Made Me, despite — or due to — painting a rather unsavory picture of England as a place where people trap spiders underneath glass and kill strangers at railway sta­tions just because people love a good murder mystery, is one of his finest contributions to the world of intelligent pop music. A humble masterpiece that deserves to be much better known, so here's hoping that this enthusiastic thumbs up might help it some.