Robert Leeming

Who ever heard of a Wolverhampton troubadour? It’s not really a place you would expect to breed troubadours, but obviously Scott Matthews slipped through the net. You don’t often take a stroll around the Bullring and bump into a Woody Guthrie like character carrying around a battered guitar marked “This Machine Kills Fascists”. Although, honestly I’ve never been to the Bullring, it could be full of Woody Guthries for all I know. However the blurb on the front of Matthew’s new album ‘Elsewhere’ claims that he is and who am I to disagree.

His last album 2006’s ‘Passing Stranger’ was great and Ivor Novello award winning. For those not up on their 1920’s music hall songs, Ivor Novello wrote such 1920’s barnstormers as “Keep The Home Fires Burning”(Wikipedia-1 Robert-0) and was known to love temperamental, thoughtful Wolverhamptonite’s. Right at the bottom of the list of accolades and laurels for his last album, is the fact that I liked it. In fact I really liked his last record. His attempt at (to use a tired old cliché) “the tricky second album” though is very pared down, acoustic filled and ever so disappointing.

“Underlying Lies” is a great bombastic opener, and is an example of Matthew’s heavily orchestrated old sound. I like strings and lushly orchestrated tracks ala Scott Walker and Bill Fay, but sometimes when it goes to far, over-orchestrated tracks can sound like a bad Roger Moore era Bond theme. Not advisable. Especially if it involves Sheena Easton But Matthews handily avoids such comparisons here and on his last effort. Just as an aside, I dislike every Bond film except the ones with Roger Moore in. Admitting Roger Moore is my favourite Bond has lost me friends, associates, pets and clergymen and I think I need to join a self help group.

After the pastoral opener the album takes a much folkier acoustic turn, in fact sometimes his phrasing reminds me of folk legend Nick Drake and Richard Thompson. The acoustic sound is backed up with a sprinkling of violin and cello, with a female backing vocal. On the track “Suddenly You Figure Out”, the albums highlight, Matthew’s is backed by what sounds like a ragged old colliery band, complete with flat caps and ashen faces.

Many tracks have a kind of Simon and Garfunkel, Scarborough Fairesque use of vocal harmony, but while the music is lovely most of the lyrics are just so dull and empty that listening to them is the equivalent of sitting watching a rabbit turn grey. For example the song “Fracture”: “What is it you want/you decide/and I’ll leave you alone/but not on your own/fractured heart/dented your start/on the plans that you made/but your plans blew away.” Mind blowing stuff as you can see. Ivor Novello is spinning in his grave.

Robert Plant also makes an appearance on the song 12 Harps. Great. Like my love for Roger Moore my hate of Led Zeppelin also raises eyebrows sometimes. Actually never. Which culturally aware people ever talk about Led Zeppelin? Urgh. But again even with “star power” (and I use the term loosely), the song is totally undistinguishable from the seven other acoustic dirges that feature.

“Into the Firing Line” and “Up on the Hill” are good upbeat tracks, which offer an awfully welcome break from the poorly written gloom.

So while a few song’s here have some fire behind them, the acoustic tracks consistently fall flat, they lack the sense of palpable misery and heartbreak that propels many of the great acoustic compositions. In some cases his songs here are misery by numbers that spout over used platitudes.

If you dig John Martyn, Nick Drake or Tim/Jeff Buckley, you will like this album, but unlike their piece de resistance’s (butcher a French phrase there) your unlikely to listen again and again.

A balmy, sun streaked Manchester is what greeted Dirty Projectors, on their inaugural trip to the city, to perform. The good thing about Manchester is that it looks its self in grey slate sky’s yet sparkles when the sunshines. It’s a rare gift. Manchester is built for the rain, everything feels in sync when you walk through Albert Sq and its raining. But when the sun does shine and this increasingly glass city does sparkle, it jumps starts the mind, you get a different angle, a different feel, an alternate take.

Basically I was edging towards a good mood as I approached the Mint Lounge, and the musical feast on offer, did little to dint my sunny disposition. In fact it’s very hard to be objective about Dirty Projectors, a band that has recently collaborated with Talking Heads totem and alternative music deity David Byrne, when the preceding band was so good.

Polar Bear, who shared the bill with the Projectors, are a tight post jazz group led by Seb Rochford, who’s extraordinary frizzy hairstyle deserves a paragraph in itself . They will probably never get anywhere near the commercial success that could await the Projectors, but they impressed me.

The outfit is led, interestingly by two saxophone players, an instrument that is usually relegated to second in command in jazz groups who favour the piano or trumpet as a lead. The saxophone, I believe, harbours the ultimate jazz sound, much mellower than the piercing noise of a trumpet, the oaky waling sax tone epitomizes jazz cool.  The two saxophonists were backed by Rochford on drums, double bass, guitar, synthesiser, and in what is the most bizarre instrument to be added to a line-up since the 13th Floor Elevators electric jug, the high pitched squeaks of a pink balloon, together creating an impressive and balanced jazz grove.

Frankly if I were in Dirty Projectors, I would be leaving nasty notes in Rochford’s lunch box for so overwhelmingly upstaging them. But leaving aside my unabashed love for the jazzsters, Dirty Projectors, were well..okay.  I was waiting for them to name drop Mr Byrne really, in a “oh by the way moment.”  There wasn’t one, thankfully, but they did play ‘Knotty Pine’ as an encore, the song they put together with him for the 4AD charity double album Dark Was The Night. It’s a lovely eccentric tune that deserved the cheers it received.

But the rest of the set, plucked mainly from the bands new album Bitte Orca was a little lacklustre. I was briefly distracted, by a girl who I had struck up a conversation with, we had got past the usual pleasantries of home town, alma mater  etc and had moved on to a game of musical one-upmanship, a kind of I’ve been listening to Andalusian hip hop, countered by…ah but I’ve been listening to Mongolian free form jazz..that kind of thing without the comic exaggeration. Finally I threw in “of course…my ultimate favourite is Scott Walker”. Her response “I don’t really like him..too many strings”. The conversation died. She may as well have grown a third eye.

The music plodded along during this exchange, the sound of talented musicians coasting, but as the set continued towards it’s ‘Knotty Pine’ conclusion, things did improve slightly, when the group tackled some of the songs of their 2007 album Rise Above. The album was the brainchild of Dave Longstreth, the Brooklyn based groups self styled “musical director” and involved him “re-imagining” from memory,  punk group Black Flag’s album “Damaged”. Did any of the versions match the intensity of Black Flags original…not really….in fact it was like listening to the sound a fire makes after you pour cold water over it, but the tunes were innovative if a little to laid back.

Apparently the album versions contain “flute solos, choir vocals, string sections, brief forays into Latin, jaw-dropping musicianship and double to quadruple track lengths”….which has me very interested. The pared down versions I heard at the Mint Lounge reflected the typical cross-purpose sound of the group, the harsh vocals of Dave Longstreth twinned with the sugary, sweetness and light vocals of Amber Coffman. Backed by a throbbing lead guitar which is juxtaposed with a folksy keyboard style.  An open ended sound which is covered with electronic niceties. All good, musically proficient, but lacking the necessary fire.

In many ways Polar Bear should have headed the bill, but I don’t think “musical director” Dave Longstreth would take very kindly to that notion, in fact he would probably leave something much worse in Rochford’s lunch box than a nasty note and given he’s an ex Yale student, it would probably be something along the lines of…..a rotten fig.

Robert Leeming

I’ve got to say before I lay into Aidan Moffat’s new album that I really like the cover. If that sounds crass then I apologise. But I do really like the cover. A silhouetted gravestone against a rising sun, bordered by an MB Games logo, of old…you remember..Kurplunk, Buckaroo those kinds of things and a gold pen scribbled title ‘From Heaven to Scotland’. Irony I suppose, imagery, a good cover, a very good cover.

Most of what follows isn’t as poetic or nostalgic.

Aidan Moffat was Malcolm Middleton’s partner in the now dissolved company Arab Strap and both have gone onto pursue attention worthy solo carers. Middleton in particular has shined in recent years with his albums ‘Brighter Beat’ and ‘Into the Woods’ and of course his wonderfully uplifting attempt at a Christmas number one “Were all Going to Die.”

The problem with Moffat (who is now accompanied by his new band the Best Ofs) is that he starts to sound a bit like a Rab c Nesbit type character after a while, slouching around in a string vest, with a tin of Larger in one hand and an Aldi bag in the other shouting “lift up your skirt and I’ll fill you with babies” as he does, in ‘A Scenic Route to The Isle of Ewe’. The Scots do know how to do charm. Although the addition of the sounds of lapping waves upon a Scottish Loch side at the end of the track is quite a nice touch.

‘Big Blonde’ and ‘Oh Men!’ continue upon the general laddish theme, both are pretty irritating ditties that edge towards the chauvinistic and is kind of what FHM would be like if it opened on Broadway…only with a toothless old hippy playing the banjo instead of good music, the music here is frankly pretty dire and uninspired.

But just when you start to think Moffat would rather lick a Marmite jar clean than frolic in the daises, (I have no idea what that means),or just when you start to think his perfect evening would consist of a night watching the Star Wars series back to back (even the bad ones),while his girlfriend crochets, followed by bad sex, followed by an hour on the Xbox, our lurching lecherous wretch comes over all Byronesque.

The gorgeous ‘Atheists Lament’ just about rescues the album as the author settles his score with the man upstairs as does ‘Now I Know I’m Right’, a touching ballad dedicated to the fickleness of young love.

The penultimate track ‘Living With You Now’ is like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s marriage set to music, if they had thrown fruit at each other instead of lines from an Edward Albee play. Moffat sings in the so-so dirge “You punched me in the ear, so I threw you on the bed, you slammed and smashed a glass on the front door, I kicked a table into bits and threw a grapefruit at your head, and I have never, I have never loved you more.” Good old Scottish love.

Moffat can go from channeling Keats in one stanza to the editor of Nuts in the next, which is a skill worth praising in itself. So I’m kind of in the middle on Moffat’s latest, I suppose the whole things a bit like Scotland itself, a bit rough till you get past Glasgow, but when you do, its beautiful.

Oh and I quite like the cover.

Jeff Goldblum is dead?
But I saw him just the other day
At the bus stop
Minding his own business
Buzzing
To himself
Like we all do

I breezed past him in my tailored raincoat
He caught my eye
Or his caught mine
Or it was mutual
Or he liked my raincoat
And he produced a tissue from his pocket
And wiped a tear away

Robert Leeming

For many people listening to ambient music is the equivalent of watching a fence warp. Not for me though, I’ve broke the ambient wall, I’ve sat through a Steve Reich record, which is basically the same few notes repeated again and again played by an orchestra of doorbells. If I appear not to be selling ambient, then that is because its a very hard sell, a repetitive, aggravated sound without vocals always is, non the less the concentration that is required to get into the music is worth it. Ambient music can be an engaging listen, a study in the texture of sound, without the intrusion of lyrics or melody. It’s basically raw, uncluttered, unfettered noise. Music bottled at its source.

Firstly before praising Jon Hopkins’ excellent new ambient/electronica record “Insides”, I just want to point out his past indiscretions, he’s toured with Coldplay, he’s produced Coldplay, he holds Chris Martins umbrella for him when he goes for long walks in the rain. After hearing his album though, its probably best to bite my lip and say all is forgiven.

Jon Hopkins deals in the electronic ambience of Steve Reich twinned with a more subtle, string powered drone, which is sometimes reminiscent of Penguin Cafe Orchestra or God’s Speed You Black Emperor. The music lightens and darkens like a gradual unravelling dream, and after travelling through some electronic storms, finally returns to the redemptive calm of the first track “The Wider Sun”, in the final cut “Autumn Hill”, both driven by Hopkins own haunting piano playing.

Scott Walker said of his more recent work that the revolutionary sound of ”Tilt” and “The Drift” involved painting with great blocks of sound, instead of trimming a piece to fit vocal and melodic lines and patterns. This is continually exhibited here. In fact at some points during the album, I almost expected Scott Walker to interrupt with a high pitched “I’ll give you 21, 21 ,21”. That’s a reference to Walkers “Farmer in the City” on Tilt, if you haven’t heard that gothic splendour, get it now.

As the album progresses there is a constant echo of dance music, not so much that people start to reach for glow sticks though and the classy people clamber for the exists, no Hopkins walks the delicate tightrope and merges dance sounds into a ambient atmosphere. In fact “Colour Eye” sounds like a 90’s rave if it was taking place on a submerged 1920’s Atlantic liner. The dance beats sound over an echoy piano, like ocean currents tickling ancient ivories in the Hacienda, the track ends with the sound of falling rain, the real Madchester sound.

The nine minute “Light through The Veins” is the most Reichesque track and may test the patience of newcomers to ambient to the limit. But lovers of “Music For Eighteen Musicians” and “Different Trains” will really love this technicolor shoe gaze. The song is hypnotic, the pulsating waves of sound and thundering bass getting inside your consciousness.

The echoy piano sounds return for the rest of the album, particularly in the wonderful minor key piece “A Drifting Up”. Its the kind of music that would usually be set to a time-lapse image of a dying flower, or a city street as the day expires, in an arty documentary.

These pieces could probably be described hundreds of different ways by hundreds of different people, which is the proof of the power of ambient music. In a traditional song the images conjured up in ones minds eyes are passed on verbally by the songwriter. It’s an utterly effective but limited technique. Ambient music allows your own imagination to fire on a limitless scale, on all cylinders, in widescreen. There are no limitations, you make up your own meaning.  Jon Hopkins latest aims for transcendence and manages to tip toe awfully close.

Morrissey is probably the last British musical icon, someone who ranks alongside Lennon, McCartney, Jaggar and Bowie, although a music critic once said that the last British musical icon was Elton John, luckily this person is now serving life in a Siberian cultural gulag….where he sits around all day listening to George Formby and eating canned fruit. It’s probably correct to note that pretty soon Morrissey is going to be 50. You can only yearn for love for so long before it starts to seem a little ridiculous and you can only market angst for so long before it starts to seem like you’re only in it for the money. Is a 50 year old lovelorn Morrissey too much to stomach? Can he still live up to past glories? The answer is very much yes and no.

Years Of Refusal, Morrissey’s first album release since Ringleader of the Tormentors three years ago is, comparing it to his quite illustrious back-catalogue, quite disappointing, yet it is a Morrissey album and his voice and context are still outstanding and original in today’s musical environment. The album does contain some perfectly crafted pop songs such as Mamma Lay Softly on the Riverbed, Im Throwing My Arms Around Paris and Its Not Your Birthday Anymore, but most are lyrically bland and lacking in the humour that once made Morrissey’s lyrics stand out.

The track Black Cloud is the best example of this, even though Jeff Beck is dragged in as a guest guitarist on the cut, the lyrics are still a very average affair. As he croons: “The one I love is standing near ,the one I love, is everywhere, I can woo you, I can amuse you, but there is nothing I can do to make you mine, black cloud, black cloud” etc etc, you begin to think “here we go again”. He also seems to be running out of good workable metaphors to describe his loveless predicament I mean come on “black cloud”! Morrissey sings the weather forecast.

The song “When Last I Spoke to Carol” complete with Mexican style trumpets, sounds almost like something the Arctic Monkeys would do. The song is so lacking in emotion that it may as well be about Carol Vorderman’s shock departure from Countdown. In fact the old Morrissey would probably say just that.

Ringleader of the Tormentors was a revelation, both musically and lyrically. The Italian composer Ennio Morricone, whose master-work is the score to the film The Good The Bad and The Ugly, agreed to do string arrangements for some of the songs and the lyrics were jam packed with references to Rome’s architectural history “Piazza Cavour, what’s my life for?” and Italian cinematic achievements “Visconti is me Magnani you’ll never be”.

There is nothing like that here. Years of Refusal with its mock Herb Alpert cover brings no real musical evolution. Boz Boorer, Morrissey’s long serving lieutenant, guitarist and co – lyricist, (in case you don’t know him, he is the portly gentleman who lurks around in the back of Moz’s music videos and looks like he’s just been hoisted up from a workingman’s club floor, he can play the clarinet apparently –badly), is ever-present providing chunky guitar riffs and the odd
generic rhyme.

The problem maybe was the producer, Jerry Finn, who sadly died not long after the completion of this record. He had produced albums in the past by Blink 182 and Green Day but never in his career worked with the kind of artist, like Morrissey who produces torch songs and ballads. The lack of experience here shines through on this album and the other Morrissey album he worked on You are the Quarry. Ballads on YofR such as “You Were Good In Your Time” seem cheep, with canned strings and bad arrangements. When Tony Visconti took the producing reigns for Ringleader, these slower songs were done to perfection.

So were Viva Hate had the epic ballad Late Night on Maudlin Street, Your Arsenal had the controversial ode to football hooliganism We’ll Let You Know, Vauxall and I had the confessions of Speedway and Ringleader the Carry On references to “powder kegs between my legs” what, has Years Of Refusal got? Well, it’s a good rock record, that certainly has a sense of urgency, but it is little more than that.

To achieve lengthy carers, artists have to adapt and change their style. Morrissey has already proved that he is a master at the Frank Sinatra style mid-career comeback. Now Manc Sinatra must adapt to his 6th decade and write about maturity, with the same wit and sophistication with which he tackled youth. This album is hopefully filler, before his next master-work.

The other day I was reading about the British actor James Mason, star of films such as Kubrick’s Lolita and Hitchcock’s North by North West. After moving into Buster Keaton’s former house in the Hollywood Hills, Mason discovered a small building, hidden in the undergrowth within the properties grounds. He broke open the rusted door and found a projection room and shelves bursting with cans of rare and unseen Keaton masterpieces, a movie lovers treasure trove. I imagine the basement of the Finders Keepers re-issue label to be somewhat similar to Mason’s garden projection house, stacked high with hundreds of rare and dusty records plucked from obscurity to be re-released and re-appraised.

The owners of the Manchester born but London based label describe themselves as: “psychedelic librarians and cosmic pop quiz elitists” committed to leaving: “no progressive pebble unturned or record collection un-rifled” in their search for music’s lost gems. The troika of owners include Manchester based record producer Andy Votel, DJ and designer Dominic Thomas and owner of Delay 68 records Doug Shipton. Their aim, to bring obscure lost gems back into the public sphere, from across the world, reproduced in the style of their original packaging.

The labels inaugural release in 2005 was Jean Claude Vannier’s L’enfant Assassin des Mouches. The record is perhaps best known for its cover which shows the protagonist Jean Claude Vannier who was the arranger for Serge Gainsbourg’s sublime Histoire de Melody Nelson, running across a beach stark naked. Jarvis Cocker searched for the album during its years out of print and said of it after the record’s re-release: “This is one of those records that you really can’t believe whilst you’re listening to it; So you put it on again just to check, pinching yourself to make sure. Yep, here it comes again – insane guitar? Check, unhinged orchestra? Check, demented choir? Check, this record is real, you really need it in your life.”

The title which roughly translates as “The Child Assassin of the Flies” was scribbled on the back of a piece of paper by Gainsbourg after he heard the record for the first time. This elusive title is the only explanation provided for the music that lies within the cover, although Mojo magazine did attempt to flesh out the plot saying it roughly concerns: “a small boy who drowns enormous sentient flies in a lake of jam while an array of alarm clocks, a ghostly 140-voice choir and random bursts of accordion create aural mayhem.” To me it sounds like something David Axelrod would have turned out if he had been an arty Frenchman, living in the tenements of Paris, perhaps next to Gene Kelly in the opening of An American in Paris. Fuzzy guitars and stabbing strings abound, but their is also the sprinkling of showbiz and old Hollywood musicals about it. No doubt everyone will come to different conclusions as to its hidden depths and meanings.

However the label’s most successful release to date has been Lubos Fiser’s ‘Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders’, a soundtrack to a Czech new wave film. Czech new wave films apparently all have strangeness in common and never brush past the notion of being “easy going”. The soundtrack though garnered a cult following after the film was showed at the Glastonbury Festival and the soundtrack release has even spawned a tribute album. It took Andy Votel 12 years to track down the original studio recording and the baroque rock cycle of suites has been organized into something that vaguely resembles the plot of Jaromil Jires original film. The music has a mystic feel tinged with uncertainty and foreboding.

The slew of records released under the Finders Keepers umbrella is not limited to European musical obscurities though. Turkish psych rock is provided by Selda and Hungarian folk by Sarolta Zalatnay, the Janis Joplin of her native country, and of course not forgetting Yamasuki, a psych-rock Japanese opera about karate sung in French, something that truly has to be heard to be believed.

Votel, Shipton and Thomas promised on the launch of the label to provide: “Discerning purveyors of the bizarre and abnormal with Japanese choreography records, space-age Turkish protest songs, Czechoslovakian vampire soundtracks, Welsh rare-beats, bubblegum folk, drugsploitation operatics, banned British crime thrillers and celebrity Gaelic Martini adverts all presented on CD, 7″ and traditional black plastic discs in authentic packaging.”

Bob Dylan once said that he thought himself a “musical expeditionary” when he whiled away hours of his youth seeking out and listening to obscure Americana records. We don’t have to do the record hunting now though, because Finders Keepers are there to do it for us.

Many musical sins are committed during the festive season, just look at a list of Christmas number ones and you will see a whole host of them, many now used as instruments of torture at Guantanamo Bay. Lock me in a room with the last 20 years of Christmas number ones playing on a loop and frankly I would confess to anything, just to get out. Thank goodness then for a little record label called Finders Keepers, who have just released their Christmas single, to virtually no acclaim – ‘Bonne Annee’ by Jean-Pierre Massiera.

In a world were money minded suits sap creativity at record labels for the sake of profit and publicity, Finders Keepers, an off-shoot of Stockport Born DJ Andy Votel’s Twisted Nerve Records, reaches back to unreleased obscurities from years ago. Don’t get me wrong though, most of them are obscure for a reason, they don’t necessarily appeal to the X-Factor, Take That loving types that so adore the “usual suspects” that clog up the “charts” these days. They are though treasures for those who love real music.My favourite and the labels second release is ‘Yamasuki’, a fuzzed out, educational, multi cultural, psych rock opera from 1971…..sung in French, described as “absolute fucking genius” by Plan B magazine and labelled as “proto-psychedelic hip-hop that defies categorisation.”

In fact one would say that the whole Finders Keepers catalogue defies categorisation from soundtracks for Czech art-house films to the sharp trill of Sartola Zalatnay, labelled believe it or not as the Turkish Cilla Black. And from the beat poetry of Susan Christie on John Hill’s ‘Six Moons of Jupiter’ to the psychedelic sounds of deepest darkest Wales on the Welsh Rarebit compilation.Their specially chosen Christmas 7inch single is no different. Jean-Pierre Massiera, a studio wizz and prog genius, recorded few albums and the discovery of one would cause any record collector to go into hypovolemic shock, so is their rareity.

The A side of the single recorded originally in the late 1960s takes Christmas staple Silent Night and twists it into an amazing sound collage of fuzzy guitar over the theme with a French spoken word over-dub discussing the finer points of the Cote d’Azur and dinner with Dirk Bogarde….or something along those lines. Side B, Bonne Annee 1969 then takes the same theme and mixes it with a David Axelrod-like brass and string powered funk. If Silent Night has to be heard at all, it has to be heard like this, transformed into a mini psych rock masterpiece.

All in all it knocks every other Christmas single currently congealing all over our air-waves, into (as we say up north) a very cocked hat. I fear though it will never triumph over the likes of our current musical Yuletide hero’s……..Terry Wogan and Aled Jones….Peter Kay in a fat suit etc. as the record is a super limited 45. It is though a seasonal introduction to a charming record label.

Scott Walker, Bill Fay and Nick Drake are often listed as the mystery men of British music, enigmatic and reclusive are descriptions that apply to all three. There are plenty of competitors for those titles today though, reclusive and enigmatic are labels artists increasingly cling to in an attempt to fetter a myth around themselves and increase record sales.

Nothing was more ridiculous earlier in the year than folk rock guitarist “Bon Ivor” grousing unendingly in interviews about how he fled to a log cabin in the woods and lived off deer meat for a month, all while recording his debut album. A great stunt, which conned a few innocent souls into thinking “this guys obviously tortured, a real thinker”. His next trip to the cabin, for the all but certain follow up album will no doubt be accompanied by an online video blog and live web cam of him crying into his deer meat and coming up with a few more generic ballads of loss and longing. The whole hearted bragging of his month long solitary existence was a gimmick, if it was not, he wouldn’t have mentioned it, he would have released the album to critical acclaim and let the music announce itself on its own merits, and then years down the line say “oh by the way that albums got a nice story to it”.

Then of course we have people like Ray Lamontagne, a guy who we’re told hasn’t cracked a smile for forty years. Except of late, on his increasingly regular trips to the bank, hand in hand with some very large bags of money, when he has apparently been spotted grinning moronically. He is of course painfully shy and doesn’t want to leave his hotel room for fear of bumping into other human beings. There is no problem with that of course. But you can’t help thinking about someone like Nick Drake who crafted some of the most beautiful songs in the pantheon of 20th century British music. He was so shy he couldn’t perform live concerts, Mr Lagmontaine has tour dates falling out of his ears. Drake barely saw any of his records sell in his lifetime, Lamontagne’s debut album sold half a million copies, yet he hasn’t cheered up just in case it blows his act. Drake certainly didn’t highlight his own misfortune at every opportunity, he had to much pride in himself and his music. Lamontagne seems to pick over his own problems in almost every interview he does.

Chamber-rock artist Bill Fay is even less known than Nick Drake, the three albums he released in the late 1960s and early 70s are lost classics which sold a handful of copies at the time. Alt-country group Wilco’s patronage has heightened his profile ever so slightly, but this doesn’t mean he has rushed into production, what would only be his fourth album in a lifetime, or announced a concert tour. No, his camouflage has remained in place, his hiding place undiscovered, there are only five known photographs of him in existence and his one live appearance in decades, with Wilco in a gigs encore, was never recorded on his stipulation and has not been replicated since. He has certainly not cultivated his mystery to inadvertently increase his fame, his reclusivness is unrelenting.

The ultimate McCavity of British music though is Scott Walker, who’s fame with the Walker Brothers in the 1960s matched that of the Beatles. He threw all this away for the sake of his insular introvert self and produced four string laden masterpieces in loneliness and despair. His massive young fan base immediately dropped him as they became enmeshed in songs about Ingmar Bergman films and references to Albert Camus, which of course as Walker explained with a wry smile: “they couldn’t dance to”.

Walker purposely shunned his own success to produce the kind of material he wanted to, with no explanations. He had early fame and asked by Muriel Grey on a bizarre appearance on The Tube in the 1980s if he would like it to return he said he desperately hoped it wouldn’t. His latest albums are chocked with extraordinary gothic weirdness, totally at odds with his early work. His change of paths comes with no self – psychoanalysis on his part of course.

Today’s thinly wrapped enigmas, the Lamontagnes and the Bon Ivors caveat their music with their tales of misfortune and years of turbulent melancholy and they use it as selling point over their craft itself. I’m not saying they have not lived through difficult times, but it is not something unique to them, other artists have to, but they’ve not breathed a word of it voluntarily. The real enigmas give us their work and then disappear to whence they came, leaving us to ponder the person behind the music and come to our own conclusions.

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