The Rising Of The Lights [CD]

The four stars I've awarded above shouldn't gloss over the fact that this is, like all great cult art, a bit of a marmite thing. You have to be ready for whimsy; have to be willing to hear a charming - even trite - melody suddenly interrupted by discord or an abrupt change of rhythm. Perhaps most of all, you have to be willing to hear some exceptionally surreal, yet unashamedly sentimental lyrics, sung in proper english-country-church-choirmaster style.
But if you can take all that... this is how it should be done.

Thanks to William D Drake for another wonderful album, somehow I missed that it had come out, only found out yesterday by mistake. Ridiculous. I do not share some listeners horror of the 'clever' in Bill's music , a bit like levelling stupidity at The Ramones, yes? and?
Beautiful music, discovered just in time for Christmas, great.

With Cardiacs to all intensive purposes dead after Tim Smith's two heart attacks and the increasing unlikelyhood of ever seeing the album for which the 'Ditsy Scene' single was to be the taster of, the torch to continue its ideosyncratic traditions have passed to former member Bill Drake.

After a largely disappointing first solo album from Bill, the groans over the self-indulgence instrumental 'Yew's Paw' were masked by the deafening cheers towards 'Briny Hooves' released the same day. With the messy collapse of XTC and Andy Partridge apparantly stuck for any ideas beyond flogging old demos to the more gullible parts of their dwindling fanbase, there's a sizeable audience out there for music by quintessential English eccentrics ever since the days of Peter Gabriel dressing up as a daisy with Genesis. In the 21st century, Bill looked like the artist to fill it.

This third solo album sees Bill trying to do the best elements from the last two albums into one - thus there is a mixture of instrumental tracks in the mix - and like most of his output to date is largely centred around the classical piano, but being eccentric for eccentrism's sake ruins much of it.

Take for example 'Homesweet Homestead Hideaway'. It's all very well having two different 'movements' to a song so long as they go together, but rather like Genesis' 'Stagnation' it's painfully obvious what we have are two completely different songs cobbled together with a jarring ten second bridge (at the 3 mins 30 secs mark) matching neither. The gorgeous instrumental second half ought to have been separated from the first as a song in its own right.

'In An Ideal World' is a beautiful song ruined by an embarrassing lyric, and he knows he can do much better than this Purple Ronnie greetings card effort. Same goes for the otherwise fun 'Song In The Key Of Concrete', lapsing into They Might Be Giants territory when the jokes failed. The early taster track 'Wholly Holey' sounds painfully like an ITV 70s sit-com theme tune, whilst the opening track 'Super Alter' comes across like a Church Of England vicar trying to be hip with an audience of bored children.

The putting of James Joyce's 'Laburnum' to music by contrast is a triumph, and with the acclaim the Waterboys received for this year's album doing the same to the poems of Yeats perhaps we can look forward to Bill pursuing this line further. 'The Mastordon' and 'Ziegler' manage to be as quirky as any Cardiacs number but with that short snappy cohesion that made it work.

'Me Fish Bring' and the instrumental title track are as beautiful pieces as any of those from 'Briny Hooves' or Cardiacs in their more reflective moments. Contrary to his own belief, our Bill is an excellent singer, particularly when harmonising with a female vocalist (Dug Parker and ex-Cardiacs saxophonist turned painter Sarah Cutts in this instance), and along with his piano pieces represents the real high points of this album. Similarly, 'Ornamental Hermit' would not feel out of place on 'Briny Hooves'.

It's not a bad album, but it takes a fair bit of getting used to, and some may find it just a bit too 'trying to be clever' to be worth the bother.