Graham Reid | | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a classy package of white vinyl inside a shiny silver insert sleeve and with a lyric sheet.
Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .
Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte's 1928 painting Two Lovers had the kissing couple's heads swathed in concealing cloth, passion thwarted.
After the Brunettes, Princess Chelsea's The Cigarette Duet clip (90 million-plus You Tube views) and solo albums it was a little late for Jonathan Bree to adopt similar face-covering on his 2018 album Sleepwalking.
But the anonymity, mystery and allure remained potent over subsequent clips and album covers, including this which shifts from the European ennui and doomed Romanticism of 2020's After the Curtains Close into emotionally cool Eighties synth-pop (When We Met) and the Bowie-cum-Blondie disco duet of former lovers admitting painful absence (Miss You with Chelsea and the legendary Nile Rodgers).
Guitarist Rogers is also co-writer/co-producer with Bree on the similarly chipping-funk title track, there's polished gloom on We'll All Be Forgotten where Bree stretches beyond his Bowie-esque low register into pained emotionalism and if Steel and Glass employs an obvious metaphor it suits the disengaged, soulless urban landscape of the Gary Numan mood.
Bree had international traction with his song/clip You're So Cool five years ago (29 million views) and on these meticulously crafted, mannered songs – which reference and sometimes transcend New Order/Ultravox's signature frostiness – the mask drops to reveal . . . just more lethargic, jaded reserve.
Clever and studied.
.
You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.
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