Breathless – See Those Colours Fly

Tenor-Vossa

After the relatively recent reissues of Glass Bead Game and Between Happiness And Heartache, the time has finally come for new material from Breathless. Their gaps between album make the Blue Nile look prolific, but seriously each outing is worth the wait.

Having prepared songs for this release, not only did they have to cope with lockdown delays but close to the time of recording, drummer Tristram Latimer Sayer was involved in an accident that took him out of the recording process. Rather than draft in another drummer, bassist Ari Neufeld programmed some simple drum parts for the others to work around and that obviously change the internal dynamic, giving an unexpected opportunity to explore variations on their regular sound.

I still find it hard to believe that it has been thirty-five years since Glass Bead Game and ten years since Green To Blue; but still, the group manages to evoke that sense of solitude and yearning like no other. They have produced it themselves, but have chosen to re-visit Kramer for mixing and his ineffable touch has sprinkled the album with reverb and given it that sense of slow, drifting movement that suits Dominic Appleton‘s voice so well. Maybe it is the gaps between recording that has preserved his voice as, although you feel the sense of time moving on, that purity of tone and sense of longing is still very much there; but with a poignancy now.

Nine tracks spread over forty-five minutes gives them opportunity to unfurl, but without anything overstaying its welcome with the stately melancholy of opener “Looking For The Words” almost being defined by that voice. The line “You know they would break us if you gave them the chance” is difficult, but somehow heart-warming in its us against the world mentality. The progress is refined as it melds into the drifting, elegiac keyboard swirl of “The Party’s Not Over”. Its distant, martial drum pattern evokes chances not taken, but never giving up on the possibility of something positive down the line.

I had a little rush of Pieter Nooten and Michael Brook album Sleeps With The Fishes on “My Heart And I”, its gauzy finery draped in positivity while the following “We Should Go Driving” is more of a showcase for Gary Mundy‘s guitar work and its interaction with Ari’s bass. The bass is proud, statuesque while the guitar cries and flails around Dominic’s measured delivery. It is impressive but unsurprising that after all these years they know so well how to play to one another’s strengths. The doomed romance of “Let Me Down Gently” has its heartbeat rhythm slowed to a crawl while the guitar pines for something unseen and the bass equally dizzying assists the search. This is music of liminal spaces and their unrushed progression is an absolute tonic to a certain listener; the sort that is happy to share their introspection.

The interplay between guitar and bass is just sublime all the way through. It feels as though the guitar is the sparkling reflection on a rippling body of water where the bass plots a course through that undulating surface, allowing it to be moved and swayed by the supple insistence. Over all that, Dominic’s keyboards lend texture and a sense of warmth, with each track inhabiting enough of a variation on that theme to be essential. In fact, the penultimate track “I Watch You Sleep” has a relative sense of urgency that funnily enough brings Galaxie 500 to mind, and lends an even greater sense of heartache as it just builds and builds, the minor-key descent and goosebump-making emotion pushing the listener to the limit.

It is a fine track to finish on and once again you realise how much you miss Breathless being around; the guitar soars, the bass chimes, the voice draws you in and then it fades, leaving you bereft once again. We can only hope that Tristram’s return to health will cause the band to consider breaking the ten-year gap and enter the studio again. Until then, this is a perfect reawakening.

-Mr Olivetti-