Label: Beta-lactam ring Records Format: CD
I dunno quite what you call the sub-genre of music which seemed to spring fully-formed from the head of Lee Hazlewood a long time ago before being kicked into touch by the punks and goths, but you know the one I mean. It’s got the Bad Seeds, Gallon Drunk, Tindersticks, Crime And The City Solution and other such magnificent acts in it, and they’re drinking whisky, listening to blues and country, and making wonderfully beautiful music from misery and humour. Anyway, whatever you call it – probably alt- something, or swamp- something, or something equally and unfittingly banal – there’s a new recruit to the posse in the shape of The Long Dead Sevens. Coming very much from the spaghetti western end of the spectrum, they still manage not to sound anything like Fields of the Nephilim, although it wouldn’t surprise me if at least a couple of them wore hats.
The White Waltz is an apt showcase of their talents, opening with the wonderfully dark and ominous “Pigface”, which is not, despite its title, as far as I can tell a eulogy to the 90s industrial supergroup of the same name. Slide and acoustic guitars back up a supremely mournful vocal – “Oh, I make love but I can still hear those castanets; how they echo in my head like a thousand companion insects”. If that’s the kind of melodrama that turns you off, then let’s face it, you’re probably not going to like it. If, like me, it’s exactly your kind of thing, then The Long Dead Sevens will deliver in spades (although the line “the fat man he is dead” did have the unfortunate side-effect of reminding me of the David Bowie episode of Extras, but that’s probably just me).
The country element comes way to the fore on “The Mother Song”, a tale of bad parenting (“you should have kept him at home and kept him out of all the bars, ma”) told to a whirl of hillbilly banjo and Dirty Three-style violin, which comes across as a spiritual cousin of Violet Femmes‘ classic “Country Death Song”, only less whiny and with more footstomping. Add the righteous blues of “Seven Levels”, which takes us on a trip through Dante‘s Inferno by way of some slide guitar which wouldn’t sound out of place on the Hardware soundtrack. Think maybe of a more countrified Bad Seeds, or Tindersticks if you caught them on a drinking bender before they got maudlin and were getting a little bit aggro down the pub; like a belligerent drunk who’s been okay up til now, and still retains some of his charm, but shows in his eyes that he’s about to go on the turn and punch someone’s lights out. “Edgy” in that sense, rather than a crass marketing sense. Instead of buying a round, appease that guy with a pint and spend the rest of your cash on this album. Except it’ll probably make you want a drink.
-Deuteronemu 90210, drunk and angry –
