I’m not sure of the relevance of the Seahorse, Shrew or indeed the realistic cartoon heart depicted on the sleeve of this album, but after several listens I’m inclined to think it doesn’t matter. Mephisto Grande seem to inhabit their own strange world, and are happily and psychotically exploring it, leaving few pointers for us outsiders in terms of what it means, how it works and where it’s leading.
Superficially, Mephisto Grande are following in the bloody, muddied footsteps of the sorely-missed Suitable Case For Treatment, who bequeathed singer Liam Ings-Reeves and drummer Pete Ward to this new outfit. They combine the weirdly devotional aura of that band with a contrasting blend of psychosis and calm, throwing in the clarinet and saxophone playing of Zac Gvirtzman to ramp up the oddity factor by several points. Even on this relatively short debut – it clocks in at just over thirty minutes – they find the space for two multi-part pieces, as well as two traditional religious songs reworked in their own style. They’re either very ambitious, and very confident in what they’re doing, or massively pretentious. Maybe they’d claim that they are all of these things.
The album opens with the oft-covered, hundred-year-or-more-old spiritual folk standard ‘Wade In The Water’. It’s turned into a one-note mantra, punctuated by gently lurching chord changes and as an introduction to the band, it’s an invitation to listeners to enter their weird universe. Personally though, I’d have opened up with the second track, ‘Pig’, as it encapsulates what Mephisto Grande are all about – creeping, spidery sounds, with a minimal rhythm section and strange, stabbing saxophone notes. Of course, there is also Liam Ing-Reeves’ voice, a deranged, bleeding-throat roar that blends Tom Waits and Jack Skellington, conjuring up the image of a questionable preacher stalking the land, spouting out an unintelligible, frightening message. The second half of the song is a voodoo rave-up with incantation-style vocal lines and a squealing pig of a sax solo. It’s clear that this band are having fun and that they demand that you do the same, perhaps for your own good.
‘Drainage part 1′ sees a touch of Birthday Party-era Nick Cave yelping before dragging us down to the next circle of Mephisto Grande’s screaming hell – it’s as if they’re trying to keep it together, but can’t help but break out into chaos and weirdness. ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’, an old SCFT standard, is a welcome breather with its meta-religious stylings, before the album’s core – the three-part ‘Sea Life’ – takes hold. By turns, this trio of movements is random, terrifying and shattering: moving from Beefheart-goes-folk to free jazz to lounge swing to no-wave hammer-blow thunder to an elephant solo to a satisfied throaty cough. It’s utterly confusing, but brilliant in parts. I haven’t a clue what the lyrics are about, but it just doesn’t matter. The vocals are as effective an instrument as they are a message-carrier. This three-parter confirms that they’re turning into more than just a ‘post-Suitable-Case’ band, especially when they fall into a circular groove of bluesy guitar riff and screaming saxophone that sounds equally familiar, funky and alien.
After this the album begins to wind down – ‘Drainage part 2′ going truly weird with Tibetan monk chanting, distant vocals and super-distorted chanting; ‘Salon Des Refusés’ helping us come down with its accordion backing and distant, booming drums. Everything ends on a single bass drum thump, a sly and knowing nod to the strangeness that’s gone before.
This is a pretty stunning and pretty mindbending album, showing Mephisto Grande to be forging a unique path for themselves and seemingly paying little or no attention to trends, outsider thought or the normal way of doing things. In doing so, they’re probably going to be more bloody-mindedly successful than they realise. There’s an innate sense of experiment and freakishness in this band that hasn’t quite gelled yet, but may well come to some kind of fruition in the coming months and years – it’ll be interesting to watch this develop. They’re still in the early days of building their strange world.