Meadow House – This Should Not Be Happening / Misadventures On The Scorn Cycle

Feeding Tube / Public House

Daniel Wilson, who operates under the nom de plume Meadow House, is one of the great English eccentrics. As well as being part of improv quartet Oscillatorial Binnage, releasing the intriguing Radionics Radio and acting as Resonance FM‘s composer-in-residence for 2014, he has operated a mediadropping scheme for the last twenty years. Under the Meadow House umbrella, he has kindly left various recordings, often made on discarded cassettes, and using discarded and unwanted materials to broaden the horizons of those people fortunate enough to happen upon them. Two LPs have been compiled of these recordings, one on Feeding Tube, compiled by Joey Pizza Slice, which appears to revolve almost entirely around suicide, and one by Norman Records‘ very own Public House.

Definitely a bedroom activist with, I imagine, rooms full of broken stuff to make the various sounds encased within the hapless vinyl, Wilson shares certain aesthetics with the likes of Daniel Johnston or the very early home-released Smog stuff, but delivered in the slightly creepy whine of the underdog. The Feeding Tube album This Should Not Be Happening contains thirteen bedsit lamentations or suicide-longing ditties that at times raise a smile and at other times feel every so slightly uncomfortable. Stealing a social worker’s car in order to succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning on “Carbon Monoxide” is one of many ingenious ways Daniel has thought up to reach a hypothetical end.

Delivered over a wheezy organ rhythm, the likes of which most people remember their grandparents performing with utilising the “bossa” or “rumba” rhythm function, it lends an air of decrepitude and loneliness. A street musician with an asthmatic accordion is brought to mind on “Risky Old Business” and on “Fleas” an out of tune harpsichord plays a rather charming tune as Daniel tells us of his only friends the fleas; “the fleas are my friends by my side, kissing me goodnight”. It is enough to make your skin crawl, but faintly smile at the same time. Elsewhere, “Bitterment Of Self” sounds almost lovely, a female voice singing sweetly until interrupted by an enormous belch that brings this to a brief halt, followed by an accapella rant.

We have songs with lists of prescription drugs, one where somebody is held captive under the stairs, chained to a wall, another which is a list of ways to commit suicide. It is a lot to take in, even if at points the humour overrides the darkness, as on the almost Bad Seeds-like ‘Time On The Hands”; off-key and with a Gothic clanking rhythm, Daniel tells of “a wanted poster: Have you seen this man? He only tried to change things with his own hands”. The whole album wheezes and shakes, grinds and gurns with bells and xylophones all at odds, Bontempi organs at the end of life, often out of tune and usually at the point of collapse. Fun in a Chris Morris on life support kind of way, it isn’t easy, but has certain charm.

The Public House album is easier to like, the emphasis not being entirely on death, dying or severe misfortune. Some of the seventeen tracks here have appeared before, but only on long-unavailable formats. One uses the voice of an unknown woman found on a cassette hidden in a wall, ironically. She sings about how nice mice are in a slightly drunken manner and it sounds like something Rough Trade would have released in the early 1980s, with Daniel adding human beatbox and FM dial static. There is a lot of humour here, along with songs about erectile dysfunction and self -castration.

There are titles like “Midgefly Larvae Lover” (a rather impressive track with guitar and xylophone);  ‘A Disturbance In The Pancake Shop”, with barrelhouse piano, Stephen Hawking vocal stylings and appearing as though the tape has been baked; and “Disco Vomit” (an upbeat dance number that tells of someone lying in the street covered in vomit having left a nightclub). There is a lot to laugh at here, particularly the tale of the kid avoiding PE because of the strapping rugby lads and being rescued by the anorexic dinner lady. The lines “Safe in the dinner lady’s arms / Why do they always look like Maxine Carr?” did bring a smile to my face.

The musicianship is a little more functional and capable, and the songs have extra texture, even if it is slowly dragging monophonic keyboard textures. “Wrecked Liberty Cap Harvest” is almost tragic in the way all the other gardeners gang up to destroy the one crazy mushroom grower’s harvest. Final track “Cubism Is Dead” is sweet but sad, the art teacher bemoaning the student’s inabilities, insisting he draw as he sees, not as he thinks.

There is a lot here to recommend this album, and what Daniel is doing in general. Not to everybody’s tastes, perhaps, but investigate further and help Dan to stop jumping into bins just to survive. Check out his thesis too, which is most interesting.

-Mr Olivetti-