The Tabloid press says despair... I say music!

The tabloid press, backed by some cod-act psycho-babble experts, say that the second Monday in January is the low psychological point of the year.  Yes it is, arguably, not the best for many and today the gloomy wet weather has not helped too much either.
The remedies that they espouse (often rather costly sinecures, which is odd as at least a large part of the malaise is deemed to be of a financial nature) amaze me.

My solution is simple, certainly very cost effective and at least in part can easily be shared.  Go home, get warm and enjoy some cheap, simple and easy home-made comfort food.  This is an entirely positive, guiltless trip - for it eschews any excess of Christmas past.
The music is something of an issue, for the faux jollity of seasonal tunes has likely worn thin, and who wants to revisit the ex- in X-factor just yet?  This is where we might end up at odds.
It has got to be good music, in the sense of accomplished and that which has stood the test of time, but it must possess a healthy measure of another attribute.  By healthy I mean that it must be so utterly downbeat that it can only possibly make one realise that the second Monday in January could actually be worse... indeed very much worse.
That there is something very English about this is quite inevitable. There is one album that works perfectly for me in this capacity. It even prefigures the Monday morning issue by finishing with the track 'Hated Sunday' and yet ultimately subverts the issue as a whole.  It is perverse, lyrically fearless, but by never exceeding its self-imposed dimension shows itself to be a masterful piece of writing, editing and recording. This is it:

 Black Box Recorder - England Made Me (1998)

It is sometimes said that the late 199os was a sterile phase in UK music, something that is certainly not true now.  If that were indeed true this was one glorious exception.  I'm not convinced that it contains even one truly optimistic song but also, in Uptown Top Ranking, there is a totally twisted cover of the single originally written and recorded by Althea and Donna (1978).

Global passionoia...

In these days of sub-prime mortgages, rising oil prices, financial insecurity and a weak dollar it is tempting perhaps to wish we were still an island nation, largely independent of outside influences. Forget those thoughts - it hasn't happened for the last ten centuries and it certainly isn't going to happen now but that is not to say that the British take on life is about to disappear.

Who better to catalogue the British condition than Black Box Recorder?

You are late again.
Thank you so much for gracing us with your presence.
No, really, do sit down.
And what on earth is that you are wearing?
This is an educational establishment not a nightclub.
Put your hand up; don't mumble, don't interrupt.
Wipe that idiotic smile off your face.
When you are here you do what I say.
Walk in the corridors; walk, don't run.

That is just the first part of the first song and when Sarah Nixey is headmistress, singing lyrics credited to John Moore and Luke Haines, things are unlikely to get much more comfortable.
While it is the last of the Black Box Recorder albums to date it could hardly be regarded as a weak one and, like the others (England Made Me and The Facts Of Life), it is almost certainly an acquired taste and one unlikely to be widely understood outside the UK.
Many tracks have a sinister undercurrent that might not appear obvious on the first listen and towards the end of the album this is increasingly so. It is, with its often peculiarly ambivalent British references, going to be very difficult to pin down if not in lyrics then in their intention. It is all the more interesting for that. The obvious follow up is Sing, Memory (2007), which is Sarah Nixey singing her own songs, and it is very good indeed.

There is a reason for it all - a master plan.

Every now and again I'll decide to like an album that I've discovered rather later than perhaps I should have and the latest is this, a 2007 release. I like Black Box Recorder and the three albums that they released on which she sung all vocals. This solo album has still taken a while to make a real impression on me and, now it has, I can't see why it didn't do so before!

"It's become a quiet obsession,
Destroying all the things I love.
There are at least two sides to every story."

I had wondered where unsettling electronica combined with disturbing lyrics had gone in 2007 and now I know.

It's classless and crass; it's only the end of the world...

Just yesterday I was saying that I had albums that were mellow and also those that I hadn't really listened to properly. It now seems that they were often in both categories and yet others are not.

Yesterday and today I've unearthed some more and given them a good listening to. I'll soon disclose more of them but, if anything can be predicted, they point to more purchases of music by Sarah Nixey.
"Sarah who?", I can almost hear you say in unison!
Well, if you don't already know it, she was vocalist for thoroughly English trio 'Black Box Recorder' - the all-time experts in hopeful misery - for whom she sung with a perfect diction that only makes the often quite disturbing lyrics seem all the more surprising. It is an effect both creepy and claustrophobic that can either be soothing or scary but, whichever it turns out to be, the choice is always hers and never yours!

England Made Me (1998) was the first of the three 'Black Box Recorder' albums.

The title of this post is a lyric borrowed from track 4 while the single Child Psychology was even banned from the radio, on account of the lyric "Kill yourself or get over it.", as if it would have had much air-play anyway.