Interloper - Ed Clayton-Jones (Golden Robot Records)
The past is a mystic portal. You know? Maybe not so much if you're under 24 years; but, if you survive long enough, you draw on the past more than the present, simply because 1) there's a lot more of it, 2) there's a lot you missed the first time, 3) you're finally beginning to put the pieces of your youth together and 4) your thirties and forties will just have to remain unexamined.
Not all of us ponder our beginnings, but we should, because it's how we got here. And some of that getting here was pure luck as much as anything. Anyone who thinks that they were predestined or that their life was written by god ... sorry, chum, you think you're way more important than you actually are. Remember that last roast lamb? Could've grown up and had a happy life, but guess what..?
Ed Clayton-Jones: "In our youth we like to think we understand pain and loss but we invariably come up as glib and disingenuous. First-hand experience really helps give some gravitas to the message. Dreams and nightmares."
Yep, the closer we get to death, the more we become aware of it (no matter how much we try to deny its existence). We've seen our friends and loved ones go, folks who should never have gone before us, and teenagers in death metal outfits trying hard to shock us ... we see our lives as a long and winding road through forest, desert, ocean and stars ...
Take overpopulation. This planet is seriously overcrowded. The exact “right” number of people (opinions vary, for some reason) who should be here was clearly exceeded decades ago.
For example: me. I shouldn't be here. I had a condition as a newborn which, without life-saving surgery, would've killed me before I'd lived a month. Eight years later I was prescribed glasses for short-sightedness; I'd had the condition for at least 18 months before anyone realised. Of course, Had I been living as humans had evolved, out on some prairie or other, I would've long since starved to death or, if I'd not had the childhood condition, I would been either a predator's meal, or trod on a poisonous critter, or fallen down a hole, or done some damn fool thing. Ate poison berries, perhaps.
There's no question: my DNA dictates that I should not have lived. Nor should the folks who came into being through the clever-cleverness of IVF - if your DNA is such that you can't have babies, why would you want to propagate your defective genes? Some people protest against abortion clinics (without any agenda for dealing with - for example - the subsequent deluge of orphans), so don't make me Prime Minister 'cos I'd ban the use of IVF clinics except where injury - not DNA - has made reproduction impossible.
I guess I'm a tad contrary. Inevitable, perhaps? Senior citizens have a reputation for being contrary and irascible. Me, I've been training for the role all my life (despite my DNA).
Like senior citizens, musicians are also contrary fuckers.
Then there's the musicians who are also senior citizens.
Perhaps you know a few? Contrary is the polite word, I guess.
No, really. They'll get your attention with what they're doing, and just when you think you have a handle on them, they veer away and do something different.
So, what's the meaning of the title "Interloper"?
Ed Clayton-Jones: "The interloper is an unwelcome yet unloveable thing in an otherwise ordinary setting. I was working painting houses with a friend and I had told him that I was going to call my next album 'Interloper'. That night he sent me a picture he found which depicted a Moose in silhouette through fog, now that is an Interloper he said. That birthed the idea of the cover. An unwelcome yet unloveable thing in an otherwise ordinary setting. Frank Trobbiani designed the cover using AI which unleashed a whole new can of worms."
Nick Cave and Mark E. Smith have always done this (M.E.S. less so these days, but still) and stuff whether they lost fans or not. Of course, they ended up gaining more. Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and John Lydon did this as well, of course, but hanging over them is the spectre of The Band by which they Came To Fame.
Other bands are more or less required to churn out The Canon by which they're known, because if they don't, not enough folks will come to the party. Buzzcocks spring to mind, and I'm sure you can think of many others. Some bands prefer to play The Canon ... others don't but, hey, bills don't pay themselves.
Iggy and the Stooges were a niche thing, and to a certain extent, still are. Ditto The Birthday Party. When I first started encountering adult musicians, I realised that bands I thought were fabulous, weren't regarded in the same light by 'real' musicians (aka “musos” - I recall one such dismissing the Velvets as “weird”). Nevertheless, outfits like the aforementioned, and The Scientists, and The Velvet Underground, and innumerable others, all had an uphill struggle before everyone began to say how much they'd always been into them.
Truth is, a lot of folks say the "right'" things about "the right" bands, irrespective of whether they like them or not.
You can say similar things about literature. Ever read Tolstoy's “War and Peace”? Never mind that his wife transcribed his godawful handwriting and, more or less, what with the cooking and the thirteen (WTAF!!) kids, rewrote (and edited) the bloody thing seven times....if you're one of that rare breed who still reads for pleasure ... have you read it?
No, me either. Always thought I might like to. But I doubt I will, not now.
But you'll meet folk who say they've read it. I've only managed part of Joyce's "Ulysses", and while it's brilliant, I've no desire to spend the best part of six weeks with it (and the inevitable explanatory volumes to go with it). I'm sure there are plenty of folks who will tell you they've read “Ulysses” (by Joyce or Homer, take your pick) and they will have; but, a bit like seeing the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club or the Ramones' first show at CBGB's, or Birdman at the Funhouse (or the Marryatville), or Fear and Loathing's first ever gig ... people like to think they were on the cusp of the wave of the new.
Robert Hughes named his most important book on art, ‘The Shock of the New” for a good reason. What once shocked, and profoundly, is now part of the background. Remember the carpet cleaner advert on TV with Pro Hart's famous dragonfly? All part of the background now. The shock is long gone.
Figured out where I'm heading yet?
No?
Albeit rooted in rock'n'roll's past, The New York Dolls' first LP was, for many, a powerful breakthrough, as was The Ramones' first LP, and Suicide's.
Okay, hands up all of you who listened to Suicide once in the last year, but the Dolls and the Ramones several times.
Uh-huh. I'd argue that, while Suicide's LPs were not as influential as the others, they made a whopper of a cultural crater. For many of my friends, when arriving home a tad pickled, “Suicide” is their go-to, and pity help the neighbours. Don't get me started on the huge musical influence outfits like Throbbing Gristle and The Residents had on the local Adelaide scene.
All this looking back, eh? It's only with hindsight we can see things clearly, or have some useful perspective, it seems. For example, all the Americans who support Trump, all the Israelites who support Netanyahu ... I bet they love “Star Wars”, where the goodies are the rebels and the baddies are the established Empire... and yet, when it comes to the present... hmmm. do they just see themselves as rebels ...?
Funny how we can't see things clearly when we're right on the spot, ain't it? I can just see Netanyahu and Trump in those silly black cowls (shades of Francis Dashwood), urging us to join the dark side... except they each think they're that puke walkersky guy...
(An aside: astonishing that Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't have an entry on Francis Dashwood, an extremely significant chap, but the National Portrait Gallery does.
Got there yet?
Right. Enter the portal of the unfamiliar. A bit like Bob Short's “The Light Brigade”, “Interloper” does stuff you ain't familiar with. Astonishing that that's even possible these days, you may think, what with the urgency of Spotify's pigeon-holing and genre confinement. Clayton-Jones' quite terse descriptor of the LP is that it “might be best to describe the LP as Apocalyptic Soul”.
Which, if you haven't heard it, doesn't really tell us much (although it's an apt description). That said, I'd lean toward Modern Country (in the real sense) ... but that's if I had to confine the music.
“Interloper” is a damn fine LP. Simple as that. The first thing you will notice, however, is that Ed's using a voice-altering widget (actually an old TC Helicon Voice Tone synth pedal with the vocoder function) and his voice takes on a machine-like timbre, like one of Asimov's lost robots in a destroyed and abandoned city. Initially, this may shit you off - which I confess it did to me on the first listen.
Ed Clayton-Jones onstage with his "other band" The Wreckery. Matthew Ellery photo.
Now, we all know that vocodering is heavily over-used by the young folk in nightclubs and those cars which park next to you with Ali G in the cockpit (I figure this is to disguise the rather pointless lyrics, while it would've been initially to emphasise them). But on "Interloper" it serves both a creative purpose, but also - and most importantly - it surfs you in. Maybe not first listen - but that's what happens. And Ed's lyrics surpass anything you've ever heard in a modern nightclub.
A few months back, Ed sensibly played his new LP to a few initiates and noted their (apparently rather startled) responses. Typically, being a contrary senior musician, he's stuck to his strings (or, in this case, his pedal).
Ed Clayton-Jones: "I could say that I had cancer in my throat and that was what prompted my using the vocal synth but it wasn’t. I was almost going to re-record the vocals after I got push-back from a couple of my peers but in a moment of clarity thought: nah, fuck it. You can only please yourself and the rest is out of your hands ...
"I like broadening the scope of what I do beyond guitar bass drums. I am listening to lots of different artists, particularly rappers like Lil Durk who use vocal effects as a default. Even the often egregious Kanye West has inspired me. Ollie Olsen told me years ago to listen to Die Antwoord and “Yeezus” by KW. I was blown away by both. I was surprised to hear the depth of what KW did on 'Yeezus', it was his crowning achievement. His use of vocal synthesis was brilliant. When it’s blatant and not being used to prop up a weak performance it’s a different animal.
“There’s always outside forces impacting our choices in composition, influence, situation, equipment and personal taste. I have always liked vocoder but felt it was pretty limited in scope ... I love Kraftwerk, I love the whole 'Man-Machine' thing. I actually like the interface ...
“I have had a lot of pushback on my use of vocal synth which is fantastic. If I'm not in water over my head then I should just give up. I have a comparatively primitive studio so I have to play the cards I have. I spent years in the wilderness thinking I couldn’t get recorded because I didn’t have a label or a budget. Now I have my own studio and I don’t answer to anyone! For better or worse!"
Fair enough, Ed. In the context of “Interloper”, once you get used to it (think of getting used to Ron's wah-wah on the Stooges first two LPs - weird and unfamiliar the first time you heard it, but ... christ, that's impressive, okay?), well, two listens later and Ed's songs are in your DNA.
Ed Clayton-Jones: "It does amuse me that people think that there’s no vocal effects running on Leonard Cohen or Dylan or even Cave for that matter. There’s very little that goes to tape unadulterated. Nick’s new album has him in Cathedrals of reverb. It’s just another tool in the kit. Or a colour on the palette".
The14 songs wrap themselves around a consideration of the past and future, both blurred, as part of a modern dystopia which we're trying to understand while we paw through our memories. Each song is like a film, a memory, a dream; equally, most of the songs here would sit neatly in any number of films or TV series. “Will It Be Okay To Die?” is the kind of song which can only be written after a life lived and pondered, in the context of lost friends and lovers; a series of questions which make their point in an elegant and lovely context.
“City By City” opens us up with some cascading, intimate piano and from there we have a thick, sliding groove which stares death in the face:
The road is long
Get on the train
You want to ride
You ain’t going home
You'll forgive me, I'm sure, but I cannot recollect too many powerful thoughts from the nightclub style music which pervades us these days. By god it's dull. An endlessly robotic demand that we pay attention to ... an absence of humanity. Consequently, it's fascinating to hear Ed use techniques which are more usually used for ranty squeaky vox on relentless marching powder rhythms, creating sensitive ballads like “Ayahuasca” (with its nod to a certain Kraftwerk song).
Musicians, eh? they're the sprites who remind us of our mortality (and of the fun we can have heading there).
.. we are nothing in the greater scheme of things
All civilisation true or imagined will eventually fade
“92 in the Shade” is a lolloping synth roll saturated with Ed's laconic, lost vocals. Truth, this LP is one I really would prefer to see played live. There's a lot of power here, not merely lyrically ... there's also a lot of interesting things going on which you only notice fully on repeated listens. The morse code sequence, for example...
And then we have “Country Girl”, which Neil Young might have written, perhaps in one of those moods where he was heavy-heavy and delicate, but didn't. Some songs, you want the story to be real. I'll leave it there. It's really groovy, too.
The title track is a dead-set creepathon, complete with Max Cady in the main role. Johnny Cash would've dug this, as would Cohen. Hell, Perkins or Race should cover it. The guitar is particularly gritty, sounding like rusty bedsprings, mama...
There’s a place where nobody goes
The dirt is easy to turn
I can find a place for you there
Where you can burn
“The Sadness of Beautiful Things” is like a gorgeous Grimm's fairy tale, with a brutalising line smack in the middle; in context, "How can you be sad when you’re beautiful?" tips the song over into a gaping, dreadful chasm. It's done magnificently, too ... you quiver as you listen. I've often thought that beauty is as much a curse as a blessing, and Ed really brings that out to a degree.
Perhaps I should add that there may well be a particular way to listen to music. I don't simply turn on the stereo and leave the room, or bustle about the house cleaning or folding. Music is something I either dance about to or, as in this case, I lie back and let it take me.
Ed's intimacies on this record I find profoundly moving. Incidentally, I've noticed a lot of lapsed Cave fans recently expressing disdain for his current direction; I'd suggest a dose of Ed Clayton-Jones. Songs like “Everywhere I Go”, “I Need It” and “Collision” will resonate with many such.
If it weren't for the lyrics and the tempo, “Machine” could almost be a country song about loss and desire... Ed's musicianship is on display throughout “Interloper'” piano, guitar and, of course, the precise programming and editing.
Look, I don't want to give too much away about “Interloper”, okay? It's something you need to put on and experience. Maybe, then listen to it again ...
Yep, sod you. I'm just gonna listen to it all over again; I'll leave it to you to discover the rest.
However, “1975” closes the LP and it's simply a perfect way to go out:
The kids had guns in 1975
The war was won in 1975
We came undone in 1975
Straight from one of Bowie's more straightforward periods, or ... nah, enough. Ed's a hell of a distinctive voice (in more than the obvious way), and it's a damned shame folks haven't discovered him. I guess he's just not confined enough. Spotify reduces us.
Here, Ed's contemplating the state of the world as we saw it on the news just prior to punk. For a lot of yer old-school punks before punk was invented, years like 1974 and 1975 were pivotal. 1976 was when things began to coalesce, it seems.
Writers on early punk/new wave don't describe this sufficiently (I suspect they either don't want to remember it or don't know):
Everyone getting shot
Planes blowing up in the sky
Nobody was innocent so everyone wanted to die
And frankly, this song might has well have been recorded in 1976. Weirdly, “1975” reminds me a little of some of Wire's latter works - although of course it sounds nothing like Wire. Back then, The Ramones' first LP didn't write itself, nor was it written in a vacuum; ditto Suicide. But that's just the musical backdrop, not the real world backdrop.
What Ed's saying is that nothing's been right, truly right, since that year.
And he could well be correct.
I was wrong about this LP the first time I heard it, by the by.
But I've listened to it non-stop for a couple hours now, and it's now part of my DNA.
Does APRA have a Best Dystopian Philosopher category? (And if not, why not?)
