Salad Undressed
Album Review – Good Love Bad Love, by Graeme Holdaway
Being Human
You know it’s quite rare that I smile while listening to music, as far as I am aware. Recently I went to a gig to see my erstwhile heroes Steely Dan, (what’s left of them) at the awful, awful venue that is the O2, Greenwich, but despite the damage that playing in that cavern does to the sound, I couldn’t help smiling when the excellent band of leading players of each category of instrument played a note–perfect version of Aja.
Similarly, while watching the eclectically excellent Field-Music at the Colston Hall a few days ago. Never heard of them, had only heard a couple of early tracks played on a phone before the gig, but boy! What a surprise! I hadn’t heard such deliciously complex music since (er…) Steely Dan (note to self, shut up about SD)
So, when I listened to a copy of the album kindly provided by the band so I could write this review, the very first track, Being Human, made me smile. Oh! the word-play! the nearly banal, but oh so understated verbal clichés, neatly and cleverly undermined by the dissonance of guitar, right from the first subversively flat last acoustic guitar note of the intro. The song takes you on a journey, and has such delicious musical and verbal twists and turns that I had to listen through it three times before I even went on to the second track. I loved the textures of the instruments, all of which fitted together like a Chinese box, with no visible joins, and the solo Melodica struck just the right note of pathos for the ensuing lyrics to jar against, and yet from Marijne, the succession of banal yet somehow menacing phrases that we all use every day ‘what a stroke of luck’ ‘I’m on your side’ ‘That’s off the page!’ make for a queer feeling of weightlessness that one might feel when the perfectly ordinary-looking passenger on the bus
next to you reveals herself to be an axe-murderer. Compelling, and only the first song.
I should probably mention that I have some history with Salad, the band that was launched in the 90s during the so-called Brit-Pop era, including the two members who are now Salad-Undressed, Marijne Van Der Vlugt, vocals, and keyboards and Paul Kennedy, guitars and vocals as I recorded several songs with them as engineer and co-producer in my London studio The Beat Factory. I’m not sure what Marijne thought of being described as ‘Brit-Pop’ being Dutch, as she is, although I’m pretty sure what her opinion would be about Brexit, but these are labels, and Salad then, and Salad Undressed now, transcend them.
Evergreen
There was, and is, what sounds like on first listen, a slightly controlled and seemingly dispassionate quality to Marijne’s delivery in many of her songs, but this is subverted (there’s that word again) icily by the content of the lyrics, as in Evergreen, where she, on hearing the voice of the man with whom she has had a fling, remarks that his voice is soothing, but she doesn’t need saving, as she’s ‘an evergreen’. With the careful and evocative backing of drums, organ, with that reedy tone-wheel Hammond sound, like a fairground carousel, and a delicately played lead guitar with a strangled solid-state transistor distortion that nicely contradicts the delicacy of the playing, and a strumming acoustic guitar providing a rhythmic structure for thevoice to bounce off, the song has a sort of rise and fall like a trampoline.
It is as if the girl, feeling nothing, for either the man, ‘our love was damaged in the haze’
or her sister, riding across the sea ‘She can ride a million miles, but still she won’t be free’ can fall at her feet, but they can’t somehow touch her. ‘My leaves are never down, I’m an evergreen’. She is glad that she has their attention, it piques her interest, but it means nothing to her, apart from the realisation that she has ‘It’ because she is self-contained. We all know people like that.
Relationship Dust
This song is about that awful moment, possibly imagined, but never completely contemplated, when a relationship ends and (I know I said I wouldn’t mention them, but..) you have to decide ‘Who’s going to get the Steely Dan? Here’s a clue-I am! (sung by them both!). Neatly disturbing, (especially about the Steely Dan!) but funny at the same time. Quite short, but a lovely little vignette, nonetheless, and Paul singing more lead in this song, so it becomes two different points of view, rather than the personas within Marijne in other songs. There is a sly humour in the piece, which anyone who
has been in more than one relationship (all of us, surely?) will savour, like revenge served cold. There was one slightly jarring note in one of the lyrics, but I think you should buy the album to discover what that is, and see whether you agree. There’s also a rather good literary joke, but enough spoilers, already!
The backing is sparse, with acoustic guitar and a couple of other touches, which suits the song, as if the couple had already packed, and all that was left was a dusty acoustic with only five strings on it in the corner.
Nowhere Near
This is a great example of these composers’ wilful and adamant refusal to write and record a straight-ahead love song. It is a love song, it’s about a great, passionate love which would conquer all, and change your life completely, but that would be boring, now, wouldn’t it? I have no idea how they do it, with the ingredients of the instrumentation they use, nylon-string guitar, and a slightly Latin inflection in the beat, and ‘Desert Island Disks’-style strings, or like an alternative ‘Girl From Ipanema’, but the semi-tone shifts in the melody, and the doom-laden bass synth that comes in at the bridge, coupled with the feeling that the answer to ‘You think I like you, you’re nowhere near’ should be ‘Hate’, but it somehow turns into ‘Love’ while you’re thinking ‘She loves him, but she hates him for it’ Above all, it is Marijne’s ability to pack implied venom into an otherwise gracefully and perfectly delivered sung lyric that captures a listener’s heart, before freezing it solid and casting it aside.
She could whisper in your ear something that could make your blood run cold, I’m sure, not to mention what you imagine is happening during those heartbeats at the end, while nervously looking over your shoulder……. It’s all in the imagination, the hint of a tumultuous physical love affair, but that menace seeping around the edges, like ‘Shades of Grey’ directed by Hitchcock (shudder!)
Having met her, you’d never believe that such a warm person could sing such things, but that is one of the things that makes this lot different from the crowd, in my humble opinion.
Door
This is a continuation of the same theme, with linking heartbeats, although electronic ones instead of the ‘lub-dub’ human heart recorded of ‘Nowhere Near’, and this time you are certain there is going to be trouble, because the hapless partner is looking at the door with the thought of going through it, and leaving the woman, and you feel like screaming ‘Run! She’s got a knife!’ before you’ve even got through the first verse!
I love the fact that these songs get to you, as you sift through the inferences, catch the whiff of sulphur in an otherwise innocent lyric, or notice something, and have to rewind to find out if you were mistaken ‘Surely not..’ you think, and then it is confirmed and you are impressed and shocked in equal measure. I like that you cannot listen to this music while being indifferent to it, but I wouldn’t suggest listening to it in the attic of a lonely moorland house with the lights off! There were some of these elements in their music as Salad, when I recorded them last, in the 90s, but more of that elsewhere. Here, those elements have been developed, honed, brooded over, and stirred in a cauldron, and the long gap has been certainly, for me, been worth the wait. The meeting of minds between Kennedy and Van Der Vlugt*(and one other, read note at the end), with a potent blend of song-writing, instrumentation, talented playing, sublime singing, and their choice of sound-scape elements speak of a unit who have matured, experimented, and are very sure of their direction, and I have to say I am impressed.
To continue with Door, it’s a bouncy, rocky, two-step-with-piano, that sounds like it could have almost been a 70s novelty, one-hit-wonder backing track if it weren’t subverted (sorry!) by the inevitable lyric sung from another dimension at right-angles to the one that the jolly 70s musos are in. Also, the drop section is ultra-contemporary, and has the effect of juxtaposing the cool beauty of Marijne’s voice with the menace inherent in the lyrics. That dichotomy between the lyrics and their delivery is a fearsome weapon in the hands of such a good singer. It has the effect of ‘Oh, that’s such a lovely melody. Just a minute……..OMG! What’s she singing about!’ The drop section enhances this, but then the emotion implied is then underpinned by the guitars and a vamping keyboard, as well as an unexpected dead stop, followed by a deliciously incongruous minor sixth (I think?) end chord. One can imagine a
horror-film end scene end-stopped by that chord, as the male object of the song……………….!
I Love the Doctor
With all of the above, but not even halfway through the album yet, one’s suspicions are on full alert from the get-go with this one, Ok, where’s this one heading? You think, and then you get it, and it makes you smile, again. Once again, perfect instrumentation, slightly like the cotton-wool effect of an anti-depressant, I imagine. It is interesting that Marijne’s voice has a slight edge about it, in this one, and again, it is like little bread-crumbs of clues left just lying there for the
listener to discover, all by themselves, about what’s going on in the protagonist’s mind. Skilfully
executed.
Moonshine
Big 80s drums hammer into the intro of this one, with what sounds like a group of jazz
musicians jamming underneath, with a sepulchral walking bass and a half-sung, half-spoken lyric by Paul on lead. It’s a slice of sonic authority that swings with a massive groove, with a wordplay on ‘Moonshine’ when Marijne comes in on the chorus. It’s the atmosphere of the song that commands your attention in this one, it’s a big song, and compelling, as it rolls through its changes towards another chorus, and builds still more sonically towards its climax and fade. A song of a welcome change of gear at this point of the album, softening you up, no doubt, for
more vocal mind-games from Ms Van der Vlugt
We’ll Never Meet
I wasn’t wrong. A stalker’s anthem. There could be nothing more terrifying, I imagine, than a psychopath who is also attractive. It’s not that the lyrics themselves betray that, but it’s the extra leap of imagination that is demanded of you by this band. Everything in the track, the arrangement, the instrumentation, the chords, and that clear voice, singing about things that on the surface are somewhat benign, but what is actually going on beneath the surface of that cold, clear, limpid lake………?
Princes & Fools
This one is a simpler song, but no less compelling for all that. Stereo acoustic guitars drive the song, with Paul singing, as the woman ponders the complexities of a relationship borne of the choice of all ‘The Princes and Fools’, unaware of the reasons why she chose this particular fool, or prince. The fulcrum of the song, describing the woman’s reaction to the rules imposed by her partner: ‘Yah put me through’ is a delight. On this is hung the raison d’etre of the whole song, in a voice that shocks as it is a completely different from any voice, either on this album, or any of Salad’s I have heard before. She is a really, really good and expressive singer.
Blue Cold Eyes
A study in what it means to be under the influence of another who one is attracted to, with a Doors-like intro of electric piano and guitars. Favourite line: ‘Since we first met, you’ve had me in your grip, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t hurt a bit’. But just like ‘Riders on the Storm’ not all is well in paradise, and the chorus reveals that ‘but-I’m not free’ . Nonetheless she muses over and over on the situation she finds herself, twisting and turning, like a fish on a hook, underpinned by evocative slide guitar from Paul. A lovely section at the end reveals (I think) how the song may have been born.
Hyacinth
This is, in my opinion, the most beautiful song on the album. That does not mean I don’t think most of the other songs on it are not equally as good. I mean it is beautiful. It is a love song, and it is one of the most beautiful and original love songs I have ever heard. The chorus does things to your endorphins, the last line of each verse lifts you into one of the most moving choruses of any song I’ve heard, it is truly lovely. This does not mean that any clichés are in evidence, it is original, and the more so in that most of the song is not sung by Marijne, but the effect when Marijne joins in on the chorus is sublime. The intro and the first verse do not prepare you for what comes next and it is startlingly effective. This was obviously a labour of love and there some poignant little details, a little whistled counter-melody, on the turnaround of the second verse, the descending organ motif and the glorious, yet understated strings complimenting the choruses. The end section with its Richard Hawley-esque guitar segues neatly into the last chorus, and then it is finished, and it leaves something behind it in your mind. I would buy the
album on the strength of this song alone.
Fine
Throughout the album thus far, I had a thought, or maybe an un-acknowledged feeling, that there was an influence, well actually one small influence amongst many others, that felt slightly familiar, amongst the varied influences that I sifted through, with delight, it has to be said. In this song, which is Marijne, alone at a piano, singing with a painful honesty, as if she is missing a layer of skin, about the aftermath of something awful that happened, almost too painful to bear, that is over now, unstated, not fully expressed, except for the sound of that naked emotion in her voice. It reminded me, not stylistically, not in the type of voice, but in the total commitment to expression of feeling, of Bjôrk. She delivers this, not so much from the heart, as from her soul, and it is a fitting coda to the album, woven as it is throughout with various types of scary, menacing, uplifting, beautiful and downright strange emotions. There is a fascinating story inherent in many of the songs, albeit a short and very scary story in some of them, put together with a musicality and a subtlety and sureness of musical touch, and If there was one word I could think of to describe the impact of this album, it is ‘cinematic’, there is plot, quite often a sinister one, there are wide open spaces, and claustrophobic ones, big, thrashing instrumentation, and delicate little touches that one barely hears, that nonetheless
make their mark because the arrangements, and the mixes are so carefully constructed, with such attention, that each song seems to be in a space all its own, and I have rarely had so many visions of environments triggered by not only the lyrics, but also the instrumentation, and the spaces draped around them. It is as as though the sound was somehow lit by a master cinematographer.
*I listened to this album cold, without knowing anything about how it was recorded, or produced, and who did what, apart from (I thought) who was singing, and I made some assumptions about who had written which songs, based on my experience from my own input to Salad’s 1990s discography, and also knowing Paul Kennedy’s guitar style, and that Marijne also played keyboards.
When I spoke to Paul and Marijne, face to face, for the first time in years, in a bistro in Soho, after I had written the above, I learned that there is another sonic auteur in the creative mix of this album, Donald Ross Skinner, a producer, engineer and musician, and I started to realise that there had been other elements that now began to coalesce in my dissection of this album. Firstly: I was completely fooled by the male vocal in Hyacinth, which turned out to be Donald, not Paul, secondly, he plays drums, and lots of other instruments. Thirdly, he writes songs, including co-writing Hyacinth, which you will have noted, is one of my favourite songs on the album, but is also perhaps the most different in style to the other songs. In terms of production, which is possibly a black art to anyone unfamiliar with the recording process, I, as a producer/engineer myself, am here to tell you that Mr Skinner knows what he is doing.
It was also interesting to find out that the songs were written by the three principals in various combinations. Van der Vlugt and Kennedy, the main team of old, are now augmented by Kennedy and Skinner with Kennedy writing some songs by himself, and there two songs by all three.
In the old days, as a producer, or co-producer, as I was with some of the Salad recordings I did with the band, one would have worried, possibly, about whether such-and-such song was ‘commercial’, and it was interesting to find a quote the other day in an interview from another musician I had once recorded, Alex James of Blur, saying ‘The record company said if we didn’t come up with a hit, we’d be kicked off the label’
You only have to listen to the dross on the TV, radio, and almost all over every streaming app to know what ‘commercial’ means these days.
There is room, however, in this musical internet-driven renaissance of multiplicities of style, and genre, for original, interesting outfits who have perhaps been ploughing their furrow for a long while. Bowie had eleven albums to go, before he had his first hit and he was supported by 60s and 70s record companies, who were more benign in those days and let artists develop at their own pace.
Salad Undressed are one such outfit, and if this album is anything to go by, they are there. Buy it. Buy it on Vinyl, CD, download it, whatever but buy it. I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed, and they need the sales so I can find out what they are going to come up with next.
I personally can’t wait.
Copyright Graeme Holdaway 2018
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