‘I’m starting to think that all of the world’s major problems can be solved with either oyster sauce or backing vocals.’ That was Brian Eno writing in his diary one evening, after a long day’s thinking and maybe a glass or two of something agreeable. I am not entirely convinced by the bivalve mollusc argument, but the second half of his apophthegm makes perfect sense.
Last week I was listening to Tim Burgess’s 2012 album Oh No I Love You (OGenesis), a recent and possibly inspired purchase. Mr Burgess is perhaps better known as lead singer and increasingly large face of The Charlatans, the long-serving Midlands indie band who enjoyed a brief spell in the sun during the Britpop horror. Unlike many of their more august contemporaries, they have kept going, probably because they didn’t make enough money to have any choice in the matter. Every so often, nonetheless, Burgess releases a solo album, and this one was a collaboration with Kurt Wagner, leader of Lambchop, a band as studiedly quiet as The Charlatans are unstudiedly loud.
My favourite tracks here are very Lambchop — slow, brooding and sometimes barely audible — and my absolute favourite is the last track, ‘A Gain’, a lament for lost love that barely moves at all, until the last third of the song when a gospel choir comes into the mix. ‘I will not brave the dancefloor for you again,’ they sing, although obviously it’s Mr Burgess who won’t brave the dancefloor, not them. But it’s wonderful. Their vocals transform the song into something bold and beautiful and magnificent, and if you turn the volume up loud enough it does seem for a couple of minutes that all of the world’s major problems have indeed been solved.
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