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Take dark themes of dysfunctionality and fractured
lives, wrap them in sugar-coated candyfloss melodies
and pour them into crystal decanters. Filter them
through electronic psychedelics that owe an equal debt
to Portishead and Beck and if you can
imagine what might come out the other end, you've got
a good chance of guessing what Sarah Nixey's first
solo album might sound like. Ignore its own subheading
- "Through the glitter and the grandeur, there's life
in the cabaret" - as there's very little cabaret here
and very much more that can be traced back to the
influence of producer James Banbury.
Sing, Memory is released on the ServiceAv label
that Banbury runs with former Art of Noise member, talking head and
all-round art pop aristo Paul Morley, both of
whom have previously worked with Nixey in the sublime
Infantjoy, and it's to this group more than the
better known Luke Haines side project Black
Box Recorder (for whom she also provided vocals)
that Sing, Memory owes its largest debt.
In between triphop beats, artpop electronics and
disco drum lines you'll still find lyrics about double
whiskeys, concrete jungles and children crying on the
radio of course. She's not going to let you get off
that easily. Nightshift in particular is this album's
Child Psychology, a song as fragile and beautiful as
it is disturbing but Nixey has taken the original,
recorded by Peel favourites The Names, and made
it her own.
From the spoken word intro of Sing (prelude), Nixey
sets out her stall, explaining that there are two
sides to everything: some songs are true and others
are lies. What follows is an album in two halves, a
package that in the good old days of vinyl would have
been spread over two lovely large discs of delicate
black vinyl to slip in and out of a beautifully
designed gatefold, to nurture and caress. It's
difficult to think of Nixey without images of a
perfect, bohemian utopia bubbling to the surface. We
slip even further into the night from Memory (prelude)
onwards, another spoken word intro that segues into
The Collector, the album's standout single.
The woman will always have a special place in this
reviewer's heart for bringing melodious life to the
line "Life is unfair/Kill yourself or get over it",
thereby rubbishing Morrissey's entire career in
just nine words and proving her utter superiority to
all other forms of pop life but nonetheless it's good
to see that she can cut the mustard without Haines'
idiosyncratic (read: disturbingly bonkers) lyrics to
back her up. At times disposable MTV disco - single
Strangelove to name but one - and at others music for
a trashed BoHo lounge at 4am - Masquerade
deserves special mention - Sing, Memory is as
listenable as it is addictively seductive, the perfect
soundtrack for when the curtains are drawn and the
sheets are made of black satin.
It's a record that beckons you in with an evil grin
to slip beneath its eighties electro surface into the
same dark and murky waters where Echo and the Bunnymen
and OMD first invited us to skinny dip. Echoes of the
darker end of eighties electronica flit all over the
album, above and beyond the cover of the early
Human League classic The Black Hit Of
Space, slipping in and out of ethereal memories
from the British Electric Foundation to Saint
Etienne.
On 13 February Nixey is playing the St
Valentine's Day Massacre at the Luminaire - a venue
that could prove to be the ultimate date. Marry the
boy who offers to take you there and you won't go far
wrong. Unless he murders you on the wedding night of
course, which would make a great subject for a Sarah
Nixey song. Let's hope she's working on the next album
already.
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