After enduring some nobbut-middling demos as 2008 limps, mugged and penniless, over the finish-line, your reviewer is happy to report that there is a sting in the tail. This five-song EP by Phill Honey’s latest project, Dear City, is one of the strangest, unsettling and haunting offerings of the year.
In nearly every respect, Dear City is a long way from Honey’s current band, The Delta Frequency, which is all wrathful guitars and street-fighter vocals. In contrast, the singer in Dear City, Camille Baziadoly, sounds like she might expire if a butterfly flapped its wings too close to her.
My God, she sounds ill. But in a good way. She is La Traviata of the Oxford music scene, embodying the doomed consumptive operatic heroine, but translated to the here-and-now and backed by the whisperings of Honey’s ghost-ridden electronica rather than a nineteenth century orchestra. I see her character as getting through the day by liberal doses of absinthe (or something even more illegal) before taking to her bed in a rat-infested garret overlooking the frozen Seine.
Truly, there is not a single dud on the record. Opener “Away Sometimes” seems to defy conscious analysis: I can’t detect a single word Baziadoly is singing but the effect is terrifying, as if some supernatural force is desperately trying to send me some urgent message. The music is equally potent, with a minimalist tapping rhythm driving into the brain like skeletal fingers on the other side of the wall. The effect is amplified by sickly chorused guitars and that hardy annual of scary music, theremin. The rewarding coda draws a little on Radiohead’s Paranoid Android.
‘Bear In the Cave’ is a child’s nursery rhyme, specifically Damian’s from The Omen. Ostensibly about a neglected toy, the awkward verse gives way to an icy multitracked chorus The Cocteau Twins would be proud to acknowledge. While not competing with Baziadoly’s delicate vocal performance, Honey conjures a relatively lush backdrop of beats, cellos and glockenspiels to beautiful effect. We’re not a million miles from Dntel or The Postal Service, which is definitely a good thing.
‘Rip’ has that odd combination of neuroticism and eroticism that is the hallmark of Polly Harvey’s best work. ‘On the Walls’ is a Siberian-bleak piano ballad which highlights Baziadoly’s reedy soprano to almost maddening effect. Honey’s instrumental master-stroke on this one is the introduction of a balalaika, which takes something already gorgeous and elevates it to the realm of the sublime.
After that near-eviscerating experience, ‘Shut In’ feels like light relief. The only track with a recognisable drum-beat (and it’s not the steadiest, to be honest!), it sounds like a radical recasting of a blues tune, perhaps Dylan’s ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’. The multitracked vocals are a standout, but the song is a little too conventional after the thrills that have gone before.
So, as I say, another triumph for Honey who has seen a chequered critical reception for some of his other projects. This music is highly original, thrillingly potent and absurdly atmospheric. But if they ever perform live, I hope that Baziadoly receives a doctor’s note. Come to think of it, maybe I should get one too-my nerves are shattered.