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Beth Gibbons and Black Box Recorder
BY FRANKLIN BRUNO
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Remember trip-hop? The label may have been rejected by most of the artists it was first applied to (artists are like that), but it certainly seemed to name something. In the late ’90s, the genre’s compromise between the intentionally faceless rhythms of contemporary dance music and a more traditional emphasis on expressive melodies and vocalists was inescapable, as if pop’s future had finally arrived. Of course, the future doesn’t last as long as it used to — who’d have predicted the ascendancy of the Strokes and the White Stripes in 1998? Recent releases by the style’s architects (Massive Attack, Tricky) have been self-indulgently eclectic, leaving the loops-plus-tunes field to latecomers (Everything But the Girl) as well as every singer-songwriter tired of paying for session drummers. Geoff Barrow’s penchant for spy-flick atmospherics and slo-mo turntablism made Bristol’s Portishead the most stylish (and imitated) band of trip-hop’s first wave, and Beth Gibbons’s witchy cool gave it a distinctive voice. The group were last heard from on 1998’s live-with-orchestra Roseland NYC; though officially a "break" from her main gig, the import-only Out of Season (Go Beat), credited to Gibbons and "Rustin Man," suggests that she’s parted company from Barrow. Despite programming by Talk Talk associate Paul Webb, the feel is pointedly analog. Almost every track depends on grainy sonic details no good futurist would care about: live strings, fingers passing over guitar frets, the foggy whir of a heavily-Leslied Hammond. There’s even a jazzy ballad ("Drake") in wire-brushed 5/4 time, though the song’s melodic twists are more Bacharach than Brubeck. In Portishead, Barrow’s restrained arrangements hemmed in Gibbons’s soulfulness and talent for mimicry, often to great effect; solo, her pipes are front and center throughout. It’s not always a good idea, as the too-overt Billie Holiday impersonation of "Romance" shows. But most of her influences are worn more lightly: the piano vamp and the drawn-out phrasing of "Show" nod respectfully to the late Nina Simone. And on the single "Tom the Model," the subdued richness of both her voice and the surrounding orchestration evokes vintage Scott Walker, with high-anxiety lyrics to match: "I can’t hide my own despair/I guess I never will." Out of Season finds Gibbons in the same dark places as Portishead’s Dummy; she’s just arriving by older means of transport. Sarah Nixey and the rest of Black Box Recorder have visited the same stops as Gibbons, though in reverse order. First conceived as a vehicle for excess songs by the Auteurs‚ Luke Haines’s 1998 debut, England Made Me, established Nixey as a low-affect anti-diva, vocally limited but with personality (and mockingly posh accent) to burn. The single "Child Psychology" backed her spoken monologue with spare, electro-acoustic work by Haines and former Jesus and Mary Chain drummer John Moore, as if Peggy Lee’s "Is That All There Is?" had been reconceived by, well, Portishead. The 2001 release The Facts of Life poured on the technological polish, even spawning a British chart hit in the title track — another monologue, this time about the terrors of puberty, and punctuated with an ironically gooey chorus: "It’s just a nature walk/I’ll let you hold my hand." The recent Passionoia (One Little Indian) is even glossier, with a higher proportion of songs aspiring to the dance floor. You can hear the club-friendly remix lurking inside "The School Song," which casts Nixey as a sadistically imperious headmistress ("Line up by the pool — yes, I know it’s February") against a background chant of "Destroy your record collection/For your own protection" timed to a soft-centered house throb. The previous albums’ distinctive use of space (not to mention Haines’s guitar) largely vanishes under an anonymous coating of synth-strings, even on the few rock-structured tracks ("I Ran All The Way Home," the Kinks-ish "British Racing Dream"). Much of Passionoia is plastic all the way down, but "Andrew Ridgely" has a more complicated texture. Framed as autobiography ("This is Sarah Nixey talking/MIDI’d up and into the groove"), it finds the singer plunking down her tooth-fairy money for a copy of Fantastic before launching into an apparently sincere (albeit misspelled) paean to George Michael’s silent partner: "I was brought up to the beat of your synthesizer/I came alive to the smoldering fire in your eyes." The song resonates with pop’s capacity to reveal previously unimagined aspects to life — if only to a schoolgirl. The final twist, though, is that Nixey is just as pre-fabricated as her subject of adoration: even when she sings her own name, Haines and Moore don’t give her a writing credit.
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