Ex-members of Japan play on this record. Of course I'm going to like it.
At the time, No-man were very much out of time, and after all the cycles of the decade…they still are. Maybe they were in sync with things with Romo supposedly happened, but otherwise they were just going nuts around the edges there. They did have being One Little Indian going for them, which I assume is why I actually heard about them any, at least through zer UK press. Then I actually listened to them and realized why the writers who I trusted the most, like Chris Roberts and Simon Price, were going nuts over them. They were, indeed, all that the press hype was describing them as, a dancefloor revamp of the elegant and wastrel [as opposed to wasted] tradition trickling down from sources like Roxy Music, the Associates and, indeed, Japan. Throw together "Love is the Drug," "Club Country" and "Quiet Life," add hip-hop loops to the techno pulse and the disco swing, and reasons to love were everywhere.
With time I discovered, to my distinct bemusement, that in fact the lovely, elegant, luscious, pouting, etc. lead singer Tim Bowness, with quite the perfectly restrained gentle voice indeed, wasn't really the prime mover behind the band, neither was it violinist Ben Coleman, whose playing added just that touch of Euroelegance to the pure, pristine and crystal clean sounds of songs like "Housekeeping" and "Heaven's Break." Instead it was Steven Wilson, who in fact started out with a prog-inspired outfit called Porcupine Tree which he also leads to this day; much like His Name is Alive's Warren Defever, Wilson tackles anything and everything because he can and because it all sounds great, and why not? But the real treat of knowing the provenance of the band was the fact that No-Man didn't sound like a side project any more than Porcupine Tree did, or anything else Wilson did. It stands on its own as something swoonsome and dramatic.
Which is where the ex-members of Japan come in. One song in particular, "Sweetheart Raw," still makes my jaw drop every time I hear it, because it's No-Man plus all the folks in Japan -- Barbieri on icy keyboards, Jansen on the funky drummer trip and Karn doing the fretless bass like bad 80s yupfunk never happened -- all crashing together to create something that shimmies along to angelic choruses where everything is icy and beautiful and worthy of simple adoration. And hearing how Wilson interweaves the guitar perfectly in it all, right down to the loud twang in the middle of the break, and how everytime you listen to the song you realize there's something else going on in there, just makes you realize how much you can adore something more and more everytime you listen to it. Add to that song titles like "Beautiful and Cruel" and "Painting Paradise," and life is truly beautiful, and not a bad film.
And "Heaven's Break," which ends everything, just…soars. Lovely keyboard loops and textures, Coleman's violin cutting through it all, Bowness singing along…ah. Why aren't all songs like this? Or musicians? Or life itself or…?