In praise of... Breathless - The Glass Bead Game

Here's my attempt to review and do justice to this wonderful record. Sorry if it seems muddled -- I've been writing it for four hours and I kept getting distracted and annoyed while I tried to concentrate.

This is quite possibly the darkest album I own right now next to The Comsat Angels' Sleep No More. Incidentally, both are among my absolute favourite albums and vital pre-dawn music for me. (However, before anyone accuses me of being a doom merchant, I would like to point out that Scritti Politti's Songs to Remember and Lizzy Mercier Descloux's Mambo Nassau are also included in my list of favourite records and both albums nearly epitomise jouissance -- merriment, jollity, and bliss. I'm merely fond of polarities and extremes in my music.) As others have suggested, Breathless would be hailed as monarchs of post-punk if A) they had not arrived after the post-punk glory days of 1978 through 1982, or if B) they had signed to 4AD, which could have been possible considering that frontman Dominic Appleton appeared at the time on a few This Mortal Coil songs on Filigree and Shadow ("The Jeweller", "Strength of Strings") and later guested on Blood ("I Am the Cosmos"). Instead, they've been relegated to relative obscurity in comparison with peers like The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees -- who Breathless shares a lot in common in the sense that they share a sort of nocturnal romance in their music. Bassist Ari Neufeld's painting selected for the album cover seems to capture the atmosphere of the record, too. Blend in some elements of free jazz, a penchant for changing time signatures and song structures about as often as Throwing Muses do, the slightly lisping but still hauntingly expressive voice of Appleton, and lush multi-layered lyrics filled with tensions hinting at domestic troubles and personal struggles and issues while remaining vague about what exactly lies underneath (despite undoubtedly trudging through sixteen different flavours of hopelessness) with occasional breaths of air (on "Sense of Purpose" and "Count on Angels") and you have the essence of The Glass Bead Game. John Fryer's production (he previously assisted Cocteau Twins on Head Over Heels and Treasure and also produced This Mortal Coil, and after two more outings with Breathless would enter the Nineties producing albums by post-industrial electro-rock behemoths like Nine Inch Nails and Stabbing Westward) adds both chilliness and warmth to the proceedings and the album sounds quite luscious and almost timeless -- even the keyboards don't sound like a product of the Eighties and the entirety seems like it was completed five minutes ago.

The album was recorded in two separate sessions several months apart, the first half of the album consisting of the first session recorded in 1985 and the second half comprising the second session from the following year. The Glass Bead Game commences with a warning from Appleton on "Across the Water": "Take care to look as you pass, or you might miss the one thing you've strived for all your life." Spare bits of music softly ebb and flow around him like ripples causing ice floes to jostle each other on a freezing lake as he describes "one sorry arm" waving from across the water, and he pauses for a brief minute as his synth resonates glacially and peacefully and the atmospherics slowly build and gurgle like a spring while Ari Neufeld's bass keeps time before Appleton softly coaxes the listener to drink "from the cup of life and hope for everyone" while assuring that there's "always one more miracle" as the tapping of cymbals rises in the mix. The drums start to pound and the atmospherics mesh into a proper song (or rather, something resembling a chorus) for the final minute as Appleton moans that he is aware of what's being said around him, that it's "no easy task for me to hold you and to see" and divulges that his only hope is that "there'll always be room" for him. The whole song's evocative of unsettling placid waters and the lyrics seem to suggest a yearning for comfort on what seems to be (althous this is a matter of conjecture) a trans-oceanic journey. Whatever the case, it's a very elegant, unconventionally structured, and highly promising album-opener.

A soft keyboard drone is already in progress when "All My Eye and Betty Martin" starts, and then Ari Neufeld's bass begins to pulse as Tristram Latimer-Sayer's drums stutter over it. Guitarist Gary Mundy lays down a few spare notes as Appleton tastes some sort of victory toward something undisclosed. The drums fade out and the band bathes in more serene atmospherics for over a minute before Latimer-Sayer returns with a different stuttering waltz pattern and the drama increases, not reigning in but continuing to unfold as Appleton sets up a snare to "outwit the suspect" with a partner who won't admit that they apparently have more of an idea what to do than he does ("I know half as much to what's coming round the corner! Tell me where it's going! Tell me if it's true! You say you don't know, but I know you do too!"). The proceedings grow increasingly gorgeous in sound as Mundy's guitar stylings are unleashed without restraint for the first time and reach skyward until everything evanesces into the distance, and then the same keyboard drone that started the song returns to the mix and concludes the song.

Appleton's voice doesn't appear until more than halfway through "Count on Angels" but that doesn't matter as the introduction is bound to captivate the listener as it builds up and becomes prettier and prettier. One instrument starts after another and the song meanders gently around like a swan -- incidentally, Appleton's keyboard playing partway through sounds almost like something intended for a ballet! Over a minute and a half in Mundy starts scratching at his guitar percussively and soon makes brief bright bursts compounded by Appleton's keyboard at the end of each bar. Mundy's guitar is released from its muzzle and starts spiralling around shortly before Appleton chimes in with the happiest lyrics on the album ("Sometimes there's nothing so sweet as sleep [...] more or less, the time finds strength from the smile in your eyes [...] I count on angels, I count on laughs to follow the right thing to do, and so far, so good"). Mundy's guitar briefly disappears, long enough for everyone to catch a bit of fresh air in the calm before he returns and seemingly brings the most vicious part of the eyewall with him, and what a catharsis that results! At the end of the song, everything drops out but the keyboard and the bass, which play out and slowly arrive at a halt.

On the seven-and-a-half minute "Monkey Talk" the album takes a down turn in mood, but not in quality! Appleton's keyboard starts with a rather ominous and eerie intro with Neufeld's bass leaping out with random, heavily treated notes before she truly enters with a chugging groove as Latimer-Sayer's drums synchronise with her and pound out a plodding semi-tribal rhythm. Mundy and Appleton moan about being "two days from Eden" and sound like they've gone through Hell in trying to get there, and the song almost seems like proto-Alice in Chains in a sense but more spellbinding and less dreary to endure. Mundy's guitar soars and screeches during the lengthy interlude, Appleton's keyboard becomes more spectral, and Latimer-Sayer pummels his drum-kit even harder before the mood sinks even lower and the music grows even more dramatic as Appleton pleads, "Hold on like I do!" and laments over himself, "This town, this home, it never alters those hollow faces that tempt our tired souls. In times I've known I've been taken in and led nowhere, nowhere short of cold. When will I be told?" Through the remaining two minutes "Monkey Talk" increases in its sombre intensity until the guitar and bass drops out and Appleton closes it: "We’re full of praise, dry eyed and fighting, eyes open wide -- we can’t feel the stones, no, feeling like I do; holding out for you... They take us for granted, leave us lamenting -- and I can’t bear to see you, and I can’t bear to look at you. My eyes are dry, my heart is hardened, the stones are dust to me."

The second half of the album commences with the song closest to being conventionally structured on the album (and it's still one verse, one chorus, and two more verses that take on a different tone from the rest of the song!), "Every Road Leads Home". Appleton claims that, because of the titular fact, he can't decide which way to head home, and the drums pitter-patter and propel the track while Mundy's guitar chimes through the first half, restrains itself through the middle while the keyboards lead the way, and explodes and furiously careens through the finale -- and the way home is undoubtedly one to remember. "Touchstone" begins with Appleton playing two different keyboards and reporting on the current conditions ("Overhead, the sky seems almost clear and the fire has seen the water dry, and age falls back on itself again...") and advises the listener to "stay warm by the hope you hold" just as he does. The keyboards begin to swell, Mundy scratches at his guitar, and Latimer-Sayer issues a stutter or a few of his drums before launching into another semi-tribal pattern. Mundy follows suit, and Neufeld chimes in with a bass that snakes around while Appleton goes on a tirade about the monotony of domestic life ("What kind of home is this? [...] What kind of home lets the cold winds blow in from the badlands around where we are? And how can a moment burn down the bridges we've worked hard so long to secure? It's a fine time for kind hearts to hang up their fine thoughts and throw all regret to the fire, and burn with their memory the wounds and the reveries that all of their efforts have bought..."). The music crescendos in intensity and volume, sweeping with emotion until it abruptly but very appropriately drops out, save for Appleton's keyboards, which last for one more bar.

"Sense of Purpose" (no, not a cover of The Sound) starts with Latimer-Sayer's stuttering drum pattern halfway reminiscent of The Au Pairs, bits of keyboard, and flourishes of guitar before the bass starts churning through the mix. Lyrically, the song only consists of two verses but the main gist of it presides in these lyrics: "Here in my homelife, there is so much room for you. Those scars are ill winds that linger like some old swansong. I smile to myself -- those moments lost are moments found by you." Mundy's guitar zips around and careens through the close of the song as Appleton's keyboard become even more glacial and heighten the tense nature of the music, particularly toward the closing seconds as Mundy's guitar all but disappears and Appleton slams down on the keys. As soon as "Sense of Purpose" ends, Appleton's keyboard reappears again with a sort of Renaissance Fair theme on "See How the Land Lies" that quickly turns more tense as rattling noises are heard in the background and Appleton curiously notes, "Like a second sun came round, like we'd never seen the dawn before, we breathe almost deeper than our hearts can reach -- quite how or why we’ll never know... We've stopped the clocks and held our tongues but never really felt the gain. Whisper down the grapevine, just how many years..." His keyboards turn even more spectral in tone, and after a few bars the rhythm section stirs. Appleton continues, "Overhead, the sky's now clear, down below the weather's bitter.. I believe I can almost feel you giving all away and asking for more answers I don't know..." and here Neufeld's bass goes from sullen to despondent as it chugs and rumbles. Before long, Mundy joins in, at first locking in with the rhythm section before his guitar grows increasingly distressed and becomes louder and distorted. As the music heightens in drama, Mundy starts strangling his guitar and produces torrential squalls that predict the outro of Kitchens of Distinction's "Hammer" three years in advance before the song abruptly fades out even as the surge increases, as if the tape couldn't handle anymore of the intensity once it began to peak. It's an odd and yet fitting way to close the album -- luckily, the reissue includes one more song ("Stone Harvest" from 1985's Two Days from Eden EP) that does not detract from the force of the album and makes an even more appropriate album-closer than "See How the Land Lies" -- it just wouldn't have fit on vinyl. This song commences with Neufeld's bass sounding very distressed and turning doomier as the tempo shifts and the other instruments enter. The drums disappear while Appleton sings the lone verse in the song, but when they reappear the atmosphere darkens and nearly becomes claustrophobic as Appleton chants the title like a mantra while the backing track features him screaming over himself before merging in with the chanting of the song title and serving as a double-tracked vocal. Appleton soon stops, the music becomes less propulsive and more ominous as everything but his keyboards fade out, and then they too disappear into the silence but echo long after in mind. Finally, the listener reemerges into the world after forty-six minutes, able to breathe but still appropriately breathless.

"All My Eye and Betty Martin" (Real Player)
I'll post some more songs from this tomorrow.