Open all hours?
"Statues" is the second album by The Open and follows 2004's debut "The Silent Hours". Before laying down the new record, vocalist and songwriter Steven Bayley took a trip to France to overcome band bust-ups, personal breakdowns and disappointing studio sessions in Wales. Wales?! Whilst I feel sympathy for the former two trials and tribulations, he's getting no rallying words of support for the latter. If you're going into a studio, best not to do it in one of the most archaic, infuriatingly banal and dismal places on Planet Earth. And yes, I've taken the existence of Ipswich into account here.
While I'm not expecting rebukes of Anne Robinson intensity and, to be frank, don't particularly care if anyone is offended by that sentence, those of you who have visited Wales will surely know what I mean. A country whose national dish is cheese on toast, whose national symbol is a green stick and whose national football team couldn't beat a starting eleven comprised of small woodland mammals and a goalkeeping sheep has no business building a recording studio, let alone hiring it out to bands and performers. Of course, the guilt ultimately lies with the band, as it was they who chose to go there in the first place. Steven, that miserable experience was entirely of your own manufacture. You should have known better. Next time go to Nassau, soak up the rays and have a couple of Martinis.
Anyway, back to the plot. The lyrical philosophy of this ten track album is the "facing [of] your demons and finding ways to move forward" - yep, I've lifted that straight from the promo blurb again - and while this is largely true, there are moments when the crown of melancholic acumen slips from Bayley's head and ends up a mangled mess on the floor.
Opening track "Forever" features a gloriously stripped production and a classically melodic chord progression, bolstered with muted trumpets and rattling drums - though it does remind me of "Who Wants To Live Forever" by Queen a little too much (and by association reminds me of the movie "Highlander" which is no bad thing) - but thankfully it's when your player hits the second offering that the album comes truly alive.
The new single "We Can Never Say Goodbye" is a melancholic, disheartening musical tapestry of palpable emotional intensity and one of the album's stand-out tracks. Bayley's voice is both quietly affecting and seductively malevolent, as if he's taunting his partner. The opening lyrics "How long must I wait?/These foolish mistakes that I make/How long 'til you see this side of me?" set the dispirited tone straight off the bat and there's a great mid-section guitar solo too. The production is particularly flat, and intentionally so, as Bayley's voice is so suffocated during the chorus that his distress is made all the more substantial.
"Two Lovers In The Rain" constructs a sonic landscape reminiscent of "Dark Side Of The Moon"-era Pink Floyd, while title track "Statues" unveils the sweet and beguiling tones of Bayley's voice, though again the lyrics are defiantly dystopian and despondent.
Throughout the album, Bayley can be viscerally heard through the instrumentation employed, particularly on "My House" during which the introductory anguished guitar wail takes the listener even deeper into a quagmire of despair. The vocoded vocal adds an unworldly sensitivity to the proceedings and though the violence of the musical arrangements (or lack of) briefly shines a path to an oasis of beautiful malaise, the lyrics "There's no happiness/There's just loneliness/At my house" pretty much sum everything up.
"She's Mystery" is where the album begins its descent into madness. Featuring lyrics that contrive to impress that Bayley is made of the same intellectual stuffing as James Blunt, the track (perhaps even more bizarrely), flowers into a musical weed that wouldn't sound out of place on an album by The Bluetones. Needless to say, I do not mean that to be taken as a compliment. Almost a bad, "Seasons Of The Change" is one of the most ostentatiously produced songs that I've ever head, and deserves to be consigned to the same bin that most of "Beautiful Garbage" got dumped into a few years ago.
"Fallen Tree" and "Alone" get the album back onto more established ground - both being disconsolate, melodic songs - though as you've heard most of this stuff earlier on the disc, you'll reach a point where you want to seek out Bayley personally, give him a slap in the face and tell him to cheer up. Well, I did anyway.
So why did this album get 10/13 if I think some of it is complete tosh? Well, firstly it's for the bare-faced cheek of The Open. They've produced an album that is dramatically disparate in musical execution but so coherent in dispirited emotional intensity - so they're getting an extra gold star and an apple straight away. There are so many ideas packed into the ten tracks that it is never boring, though if you play it through a second time, you'll definitely remember which ones to skip. If, as I do you adore "Sandinista!" by The Clash, you'll appreciate this album for the same reason.
Secondly, the sheer quality of "We Can Never Say Goodbye" and "My House" elevates the rating above what it should be. These are two undeniably fantastic songs and, although I know that because the majority of the record buying public are mindless automatons with less intelligence than a propelling pencil they won't be rocketing up the singles charts anytime soon, they damn well deserve to.
At the end of the day, "Statues" is a serious album by a serious band. Sure, it loses its focus along the way, but then perhaps that makes it all the more relevant and realistic. Not since the glory days of Echo & The Bunnymen and The Cure has depression been so beguiling.