Thoughts and songs from the edge, embracing both the beginning and the end. Humanist release their new record.
Release date: 26th July 2024
Label: Bella Union
Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital
FILE UNDER…
File under post-goth, post-industrial or post any classification you wish. Post Lanegan, as in Mark, is the one I like best, not least as the late singer was himself without and beyond easy classification. Humanist, aka Rob Marshall, had been a close collaborator of the iconic maverick, working together on 2017’s Gargoyle, with Marshall writing six of the songs, Lanegan later adding lyrics, as well as contributing further material for the subsequent Somebody’s Knocking, two years later. There may have been more to follow, were it not the intervention of Covid, and Lanegan’s eventual death.
Indeed, Marshall’s first record as Humanist included material the two had previously worked up over their professional relationship, as well as some Lanegan vocals. This is all new, but is in the same vein, deep and dark doomy soundscapes with, often, surprisingly uplifting lyrical themes. Lanegan remains easily imaginable within this framework, but, in his absence, a number of guest vocalists are on hand to provide more than adequate replacement. (Some, such as Dave Gahan, have clear Lanegan links of their own, Gahan also appearing on that first eponymous Humanist album, in 2020.)
THE BEGINNING
Track one, The Beginning (My God), starts as it means to go on, with stolidly ringing guitar and bass. Already the Lanegan shadow is cast, it easy to hear his voice in that of Carl Hancock Rux, an American poet perhaps better known as a poet and social activist. Lashings of echo add to a ceremonial feel, the mood of, say, Soulsavers, being invoked, and it is a powerful introduction. Some raddled free form sax hurtles about the otherwise sonic impenetrable wall. With the chimy guitars and retro synths of Happy up next, Ed Harcourt is now at the microphone, and it is all very Icicle Works. Those two references alone may be enough to draw your interest and it worked for me.
Drum machine and a dreamy vocal from Tim Smith follows, for Too Many Rivals, he once of Midlake and now Harp, rather than the erstwhile Cardiacs man, which could have been interesting, if beyond the grave. With a lysergic torpor, it is a strong cut, the singer’s angelic tones up against brittle shards of guitar. As it weaves into your cortex, it becomes difficult to shift, in both melody and mood. The Immortal reprises Harcourt, another artificial drum beat dicing with a tapestry of spiky chorus pedal notes. A slightly distraught chorus makes for a disarming listen. “Give me all your saline drips“, no less…… The same sense of imploding doom, imbued by that song, comes closer as James Cox (Crows) delivers a dark shutters down sense of finality to The Holding Pattern. As in closed is the new normal?
IN NEED OF A LITTLE CHEER?
If in need of a little cheer, who better than Dave Gahan (!?), who manages to bring warmth to a lyric that starts “I have died a million thousand times“. Relax, it is a soothing song of bonding and brotherhood, of support and succour. Brother is currently the single and, in a fair world, would have sufficient crossover appeal to give the album a greater traction. Again, and more than just in voice, the Soulsavers comparison is a worthy cross-reference, remembering Lanegan too had form with the production team.
Lest anyone now feel the mood too light, Peter Hayes now helps tip the balance back toward the dark side, which feels the intent of the doom-core arrangement, the voice of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club a little too warm for the full descent. In fact, it becomes another song of gospel infused psychedelia, a whiff of Spiritualised in the banks of build.
Suddenly comes a change of colour, of daylight maybe, with a female vocal adding a brightness hitherto near hidden. Set to a New Order disco rhythm, Rachel Fannan offers a breathy matter of fact vocal, although, as it progresses there are reassuring hints of designated Banshee seeping through. As much a poet as a musician, she has collaborated as part of U.N.K.L.E., presumably her link into this project. It is probably the weakest track here, sticking closest to any genre defining template.
ALMOST A PRAYER
The woozier even than Too Many Rivals, Dark Side Of Your Window, redresses the balance, all tentative guitar and fragile vocals from the (whatever happened to) Glasvegas frontman, James Allan. Almost a prayer, it floats on a gossamer breeze of glassy notes. “I wasn’t looking for you/ but I found you though“, and the most surprising song so far. Isobel Campbell builds on Allan’s momentum for the brooding Love You More, which, her vocal apart, could almost be, don’t leave me, U2. And a slap in the face for anyone who still thinks all this sort of music sounds the same.
Dispensing with guests, it is Marshall himself who picks up microphone duties for the final triad of songs, albeit under a further name, this time as Madman Butterfly. Each more freeform and nebulous constructions, perhaps designed as an afterthought.
Lonely Night tackles loneliness and is appropriately bleak, with The Presence Of Haman sounding a particularly febrile fever dream, a tone poem of sounds and disembodied vocals. And yes, The End is not just the end of the record, but a treatise of the end; if not our friend, certainly our inevitability. Orchestral in nature, piano, cello and banks of synthesiser rise up in a solemn processional, wordless song billowing above, before dropping back to a sustained low drone of cello and solitary piano notes, ahead a second coming. Is this how it ends is the metaphorical question, the metaphysical even, and I can’t answer for that, but it makes for a an unexpected and oddly uplifting conclusion to this record. Give it more than a cursory listen and be as quietly impressed as I.
Taste a bit; here’s Too Many Rivals from Humanist, featuring Tim Smith
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