David Westlake
‘My Stunning England’
(Tiny International)
album assessment
5/5
Ex-Servants songwriter returns extolling arcane Albion tradition with an Orwellian case for English patriotism and British historical past. It’s thoughts boggling stuff, writes Neil Davenport.
Again in August, No matter Occurred to the C86 Children? by Nige Tassell was revealed. It was an awesome pitch for a e-book: to trace down musicians from every of the twenty-two bands featured on the NME’s notorious 1986 compilation tape. Other than Primal Scream, the category of ’86 had lengthy drifted into obscurity and common employment. The phrase ‘cautionary story’ may summarise lots of the onerous luck endeavours present in Tassell’s e-book.
At chapter 16, there’s none extra onerous luck than that of David Westlake. His band again in 1986, The Servants, had expertise to burn. Two basic singles, ‘She’s At all times Hiding’ and ‘A Solar A Small Star’, and a treacle thick, reverb heavy John Peel session, signposted a probably main songwriter. However The Servants and Westlake’s trajectory, of perennial label points and authorized woes, at occasions bordered on farce. Along with a pre-Auteurs Luke Haines between 1987 to 1991, The Servants grew to become completely in limbo. Historical past was being made elsewhere and the pair grew to become passive spectators.
A disillusioned Westlake retreated to academia and regulation earlier than self-releasing Play Dusty For Me in 2002, a 3rd Velvets album impressed set that re-connected him to the unique Servants after the frantic art-rock of Disinterest, the unironically titled debut from 1990.
However Westlake’s songs had been just too good to languish in full obscurity endlessly. Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch talked about how he tried to trace down David Westlake in an effort to kind a band with him. A 1987 Janice Lengthy session with the Go Betweens on backing was typically repeated on Gideon Coe’s 6Music present.
The largest increase arrived from the great folks at Cherry Pink in 2006. In the end, a compilation of early Servants materials was rounded up on the 21 monitor Reserved album. Lastly, we had in our possession recordings of gems resembling ‘Whose Calling You Child Now?’ and ‘Loggerheads’. Six years later, Cherry Pink issued the unreleased second Servants album, the additionally unironically titled Small Time. American Anglophiles had been additionally taking discover, releasing variations of Reserved tracks in addition to reissuing Play Dusty For Me on vinyl.
In between the re-prints of the previous decade, Westlake tentatively revealed that new materials would ultimately be launched. Now with Luke Haines again on board, the quasi-concept album My Stunning England is Westlake’s first all new set in twenty years. It’s a unprecedented document, a recent replace on George Orwell’s critiques of left intelligentsia present in England Your England (1941). It contains a a lot deeper stage of essential commentary than wherever else proper now. ‘The Age of Unenlightenment’ and ‘E is for Empire’, for instance, calls for a studying of British historical past that highlights the nations achievements in addition to its atrocities. As Orwell may even inform you, when the previous is politically managed, so is the current and future.
That is excessive stage stuff. Not since Malcom Eden’s outdated band McCarthy (however in a totally totally different historic context) has there been an try to intelligently problem obtained knowledge. And never since Black Field Recorder’s England Made Me has there been an try to finger New Labour’s Third Means as a damaging pressure on the nations as soon as stoic and resilient character. The haunting, opening title monitor asks ‘what have they performed to you?’ about England, a recognition of the cultural vandalism that’s emerged because the late-nineties.
As My Stunning England unashamedly nails its mast to a pro-Brexit place (see the Type Council flourish of ‘Au Contraire, Tony Blair’), the album is on a direct collision course with music business Remainers and Blairite ideologues. Westlake is unlikely to be receiving Christmas playing cards from Stuart Lee anytime quickly. However leaving apart ideological divides, My Stunning England merely triumphs as a persistently nice, 14-song guitar pop album. It’s full of a few of Westlake’s finest songs. There’s a fierce and sudden urgency right here from a author who usually trades in dimly-lit magnificence. There are surprises galore.
‘Mallory Stored Climbing the Mountain’ proffers the spectacle of The Bunnymen paying tribute to Everest mountaineer, George Mallory, while pile driving via a stomping ska beat. The barrelling ‘Conflict Memorial’ would possibly recall the jovial heft of, dare I say it, Britpop, but it surely’s shot via with a ghostly environment that pervades the album. ‘Bethnal Inexperienced Museum of Childhood’, a breezy run round on childhood, turns a June Brides trumpet right into a scrumptious earworm. There’s extra nostalgic localism on the glam-riffed ‘Hayes, Middlesex,’ tributing each The Candy and The Ruts who first gigged there. It’s this optimistic and celebratory aspect of My Stunning England that fleshes out the album’s broader conceptual themes. There’s a civic minded love of nation right here, an English model of that expressed by Scottish and Welsh bands and artists. ‘The Fashionable Ruins of Previous London City’ and the gorgeous, hazy ‘English Parish Church buildings’ completely seize a way of time, place and geography.
There’s rather a lot to soak up right here. Tributes to ‘queen of the music halls’ Marie Lloyd. Nineteenth century army historical past (‘Common Gordon’s Final Stand’) and the marvels of pre-Victorian structure (‘Regency Terrace’). Westlake is occupying the musty attic of British historical past final delved into by (British) Sea Energy, however with out the arched cosplay. He has a real fascination for arcane Albion and a real believer in stiff higher lip values.
No matter occurred to the C86 Children? For this one, he’s solely turned in one of the crucial idiosyncratic, political and blazingly tuneful guitar pop albums this yr. There’s no cautionary story available right here.
My Stunning England is out now on Tiny International Productions
