Biography
In the late 70s, the
seemingly monolithic Henry Cow, founders of the Rock in Opposition
movement, found themselves split down the middle: Tim Hodgkinson
and Lindsay Cooper wanted to write longer pieces, while Fred
Frith and Chris Cutler wanted to work on song-based material.
The result was the dissolution of Henry Cow, with the longer
pieces being released as Henry Cow's Western Culture
and the shorter vocal tracks being released as the first Art
Bears album, Hopes and Fears.
Since it was recorded
during the same sessions as the last Cow album, Hopes and
Fears features several members of Henry Cow as guests, and
sounds somewhat more Cow-like than the other albums. The esoteric
Winter Songs is something rather different: a concept
album based on French cathedral carvings, with a dry, stark
sound to match. The World As It Is Today, the Bears'
final album, is a bitter, sarcastic critique of capitalism,
complete with heavy-handed Marxist lyrics from Cutler and a
blocky, strident sound.
- Alex Temple [December 2001]
Hopes
and Fears (1978)
I've
heard this referred to as "the lost Henry Cow album." There
is some truth to that, I guess -- after all, it was recorded during
the same sessions as Western Culture, and the Cow members
who didn't go on to form the Art Bears are all listed as guest
musicians. But except for a few passages, Hopes and Fears
doesn't really sound like Henry Cow. While Cow synthesized
their influences into a single style, this album is unabashedly
eclectic. There are songs that sound like Kurt Weill ("Pirate
Song"), dissonant neoclassical instrumentals ("Terrain"), wild
folky dances ("Moeris Dancing") and thundering atmospheric noise
collages ("The Tube"). Perhaps the most stylistically unexpected
moment is in the longest track, "In Two Minds." This piece
starts out as a sort of angst-ridden, twisted folk song, but somewhere
in the middle we get a ponderous major-key section that's surprisingly
close to straightforward rock. This section would probably
seem very heavy-handed in any other context, but in the middle
of an album that for the most part has little to do with rock
'n' roll, it somehow makes perfect sense. If there's anything
to complain about here, it's the lyrics, which start out affectingly
simple and lure you into listening to them, before hitting you
with horribly overwrought phrases like "to discredit conscience
and reject all criticism."
The eclecticism
of Hopes and Fears may be part of why it works so well.
Transitions like that between the first two songs -- quiet tonal
clarinet-playing segueing into a stark distorted texture of
rattly drumming and weird synthesizers -- keep the listener
on his toes at all times. It's certainly an advantage
over the Art Bears' other two albums, which seem a bit stagnant
at times. But I think what really makes this album so great
is its depth. While much of the Art Bears' later work
seems cool at first but gets less interesting with successive
listens, this one just keeps getting better. Even the
more unassuming tracks take on their own identities, and sections
that once seemed limp suddenly seem beautiful. At the
time of this writing, the only part of the album that has not
thoroughly wormed its way into my head is the final section
of "The Dance," which is just too blocky and lacking in subtlety
for my taste.
I also have to
say that this is one of the most melodic RIO releases I've heard.
Nearly every song has a memorable and beautiful vocal line,
from the rather straightforward chromatic tonality of "On Suicide"
and especially "Pirate Song" to the weirder but utterly convincing
tunes of songs like "Riddle" and "Maze." You could almost
call it a sort of avant-garde pop music.
And of course,
I have to say something about the bonus tracks. A lot
of people are not crazy about bonus tracks, and I'd be tempted
to agree in this case, except that "All Hail!" (mislabeled as
"Collapse" on the back of the CD) is simply amazing. Possibly
my favorite Art Bears song, it sounds like "Beautiful as the
Moon - Terrible as an Army with Banners," only with a hell of
a lot more bite. The sound of Dagmar's anxious double-tracking
over Frith's melancholic piano and Cutler's vicious drumming
sends chills down my spine, and the variety of instrumental
tone color, here more than anywhere else on the CD, makes me
wish that Hogkinson, Cooper and Born had stayed with the Art
Bears for their other two albums.
- Alex Temple [December 2001]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
Winter
Songs (1979)
If I had to describe
this album in two words, they would be "stark" and "minimal."
If I could add another sentence, it would be: "And that doesn't
mean what you think it does."
To be sure, there
is a good deal of music here that really is stark in the usual
sense. Dagmar Krause's not-exactly-harmonious voice is
sometimes presented alone ("First Things First"), doubled by
a thin instrumental line ("Gold"), or accompanied by harsh,
dissonant clanging tones ("Winter/War"). Some instrumental
passages are incredibly thin-textured, without a consonance
in sight: "The Skeleton" starts with nearly a minute of clomping
6/8 drumming and dissonant organ chords. At the same time,
though, many of the harshest-sounding textures are actually
quite full, as in the distorted, noisy collage of "Man &
Boy," and what seems to be very fleshed-out harmony is often
actually played by a very thin instrumentation, as in the quiet,
lilting Celtic-tinged folk of "The Hermit."
The "minimal"
quality also manifests itself in some unexpected ways.
Sometimes the instrumentation or texture is minimal, as described
above. Sometimes, as in the hyperkinetic "Rats and Monkeys,"
the music is full of detail, but minimalist in construction;
here, Krause spends the first half song shrieking the same two
meaningless lines over Fred Frith's scraping violin figures
and Chris Cutler's maniacal drumming. Halfway in, there is a
short pause, and the second part of the song is taken up by
furious and even more repetetive electronic manipulations of
samples from the first half, resulting in something in between
RIO, techno and noise. Unlike a lot of minimalist music,
the effect of the repetition is not hypnotic but invigorating.
Actually, I wish
there were more on this album like "Rats and Monkeys."
There are a few other songs which really stand out as different
-- "The Hermit," the liquid and jazzy "The Summer Wheel," and
the vocal polyphony of "Three Figures," which comes off like
a harsh and percussive Gentle Giant. Most of the album,
though, is taken up by bleak quasi-tonal miniatures, which are
beautifully fascinating at first, but get tiresome by the end
of the album. The last two tracks in particular, except
for "Three Figures," are so harmonically static and texturally
thin that I sometimes lose my patience and turn off the album
before it's over.
Overall, I'd have
to say that this is my least favorite Art Bears album, without
the compelling eclecticism of Hopes and Fears or the
sarcastic solidity of The World As It Is Today.
The presence of some truly excellent material certainly redeems
it, but at the same time only makes it that much more frustrating.
- Alex Temple
[December 2001]
