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album // Sketches From The Book Of The Dead
Unbelievably, despite being in his
fifth decade of making music, this is Mick Harvey's
first album of totally self-penned songs. Time spent in the bands
of Nick Cave, Simon Bonney and
PJ Harvey, plus all that time devoted to poring
over the Serge Gainsbourg legacy for two albums, has evidently paid
off; Sketches From The Book Of The Dead is an accomplished,
yet understated, collection of eleven songs, all of which ruminate
on death. The album was produced by Mick, who also plays guitars,
piano, organ, electric bass and percussion. Harvey was also joined
by Rosie Westbrook (double bass), J.P.
Shilo (accordion, violin, electric guitar) and Xanthe
Waite on backing vocals.
According to my new best friend Wikipedia 'the Book
of the Dead is the modern name of an ancient Egyptian funerary text,
used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around
50 BC.' So now you know.
Overt reference to the Book of the Dead, or at least
Harvey's version, comes in the lyrics of the opening track, 'October
Boy', which was made available as a free mp3 a few months before
the album was released. 'If you're writing a song for the Book
of the Dead / Then write one, write one for me' sings Harvey
in the voice of the October Boy of the title, while a dark, filmic,
almost Morricone-esque backdrop underpins the black tale of a man
anointed with a 'sonic gun' who takes 'rock 'n roll poison'; that
October Boy is almost certainly Rowland S. Howard,
departed to the afterlife in recent years, and whose birth month
was October. It is an unopinionated obituary to one of Howard's
earliest musical allies, the writer of the haunting 'Shivers' and
his co-creator of amazing sounds in The Birthday Party.
'The Ballad Of Jay Givens' will be familiar to anyone
who picked up a copy of Mute's Vorwärts
compilation from earlier this year. This is Mick, with accompaniment
from guitar, strings and organ, telling a dark tale of Givens, apparently
his father's best friend, a chap with a pretty dark and shady past.
As a story set to music it's absorbing and mysterious. 'Two Paintings'
exists on a haunting musical tapestry of looping, often elegiac
noise and mournful piano, depicting it seems, the separation from
a loved one, featuring the descriptions of two paintings by Gustav
Pillig. There are some truly moving moments in this song, particularly
Mick's wordless vocal harmonies at the very end. Pillig's artwork
adorns the sleeve and booklet, along with other paintings from Katy
Beale.
'Rhymeless' is a clever, folksy piece whose verses
are structured from fragments of well-known nursery rhymes. 'All
the songs that you never sang / To your little ones' is a line
which fills me with much regret. The song deals with children moving
from being cherished to being effectively abandoned, neglected,
deserted, forgotten, none of which I am remotely guilty of when
it comes to my two wonderful daughters. But it does sadden me that
my children seem to know the nursery rhymes that Harvey quotes from
without me ever having once sung them those words. 'Frankie T. &
Frankie C.' describes the love shared by the two characters of this
song, a man and a woman both sharing the same first name; the way
Harvey describes the spark shared between them reminds me of the
way people of my grandparents' generation might have described the
first flushes of romance. Alas, the love of the two Frankies was
to be short-lived, the death of Frankie C. leaving Frankie T. alone
and mourning the loss of his beloved, finding himself spending his
days longing after her and ultimately fading away in a bid to join
her. While most of the backing has Harvey plucking elliptical patterns
on his guitar over droning, carefully-sculpted sound, there are
some fantastically heavy guitar crescendos at the end of the chorus.
In a neat play on words, 'A Place Called Passion'
– a tale of someone lost during World War One – the
front-line assault on Passchendaele and the word 'passion' are forced
into an unhappy marriage, Harvey's story of a relative who lost
his life during the Great War evoked through the artefacts handed
down to him – books bearing futile inscriptions from that
relative's parents pointing him toward a bright, but ultimately
thwarted, future. This is the realities of conflict distilled into
personal impact and significance. Like so many of the tracks on
Sketches From The Book Of The Dead, 'A Place Called Passion'
is extremely poignant. 'To Each His Own' is mysterious, a spoken-word
poem of sorts over whining noise, with an intonation not unlike
is former Bad Seeds bandmate Blixa Bargeld's
spoken word pieces.
'The Bells Never Rang' is one of my personal favourite
tracks, a ballad which takes us to Paris, rural Australia and Geneva
over its three verses set to layers of strummed guitar that rise
in intensity and urgency, only to drop away into a chorus of vocal
harmonies and thin, reedy organ. This appears not to be a reflection
on death of people per se, but on wasted opportunities,
lost chances and relationships that fizzled out. 'That's All, Paul'
has a title that wouldn't have gone amiss on one of Harvey's Gainsbourg
albums. Who Paul is we never know, but it would seem from the lyrics
that young Paul, seemingly cut short in his prime, probably never
really got to know himself either; Harvey is evidently bitter toward
this pointless loss of life, which sounds as if it was caused by
a single moment of recklessness. For that reason alone it reminds
me of Rebel Without A Cause.
The album, fittingly, closes with the rousing single
'Famous Last Words', but it is preceded by one of the most evocative,
moving love songs I've ever heard, 'How Would I Leave You?'. Accordion,
dramatic but sparse drums, piano and strummed guitars underpin Harvey
reflecting on his attempts to leave somewhere (home?), his decision,
or indecision, influenced by the wondrous nature he sees all around
him. It all sounds idyllic, pristine, Walden-like, Harvey
laconically and benevolently forced into inaction by the world he
sees enveloping him.
lp+cd / cd:
1. October Boy
2. The Ballad Of jay Givens
3. Two Paintings
4. Rhymeless
5. Frankie T. & Frankie C.
6. A Place Called Passion
7. To Each His Own
8. The Bells Never Rang
9. That's All, Paul
10. How Do I Leave You?
11. Famous Last Words
single // Famous Last Words
It almost feels redundant reviewing 'Famous Last
Words' by Mick Harvey. A straight lift from the
forthcoming album Sketches From The Book Of The Dead, this
is indicative of where the lowly single has found itself in the
iTunes age – a single track, released via digital stores only,
with no B-sides or anything, no information on who played on it,
nada.
Gripes aside, 'Famous Last Words' is a great track.
Mick delivers his vocal double tracked like a conspiratorial Lee
Ranaldo at his wordy best, while the music could have sat
comfortably on any of the PJ Harvey albums Mick has worked on –
a dirty, bluesy sound; tambourine percussion and an almost-there
beat; fuzzy guitar distortion and a grinding bass line; a horn-style
stab adds a Stax-esque soul dimension to the chorus which sounds
perfectly natural here even though it shouldn't. On the strength
of this, and 'October Boy' which at the time of writing was doing
the rounds as a free download, Sketches From The Book Of The
Dead promises to be pretty exceptional.
I'd write more if there had been a B-side perhaps,
you understand.
i:
1. Famous Last Words
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