Deluxe version of 2003's intense solo offering..., 15 Dec 2003

By	Jason Parkes "We're all Frankies'" (Worcester, UK) - See all my reviews

The most divisive area of Blemish has been the three-tracks with avant-garde jazz-guitarist Derek Bailey (Ballads, Guitars Drum & Bass)- which is odd as it's only continueing the direction Sylvian pursued with guitarists like Bill Frissell & Marc Ribot and in songs like Boats for Burning & the Dobro-series of tracks. The Good Son assaults its listeners with an unsteady free-jazz form, further confounded by Sylvian's echoeing vocals; the form of the song very much mirrors the alienation of the album. She is Not is a brief Bailey/Sylvian track, recalling Boats for Burning; while How Little We Need to Be Happy is the final unsteady track. However, in the sequencing of this album, the Bailey/Sylvian tracks are put into context by the more palatial/pop (if we could call them that) tracks.

The traumas that created this album remain elusive, I don't care really, though there is some speculation; Sylvian has pointed towards vague past experiences he hasn't been able to put into words before. Think of a track like 1989's Stigma, then think of this set...the title track is a 13-minute guitar assault that drifts off into the kind of sonics common to EAR, Kevin Shields & Gwei Lo. Blemish is seemingly infinite, Sylvian appearing cut off in existential hell; it's no surprise that in his live set he sings a track that incorporates elements of Samuel Beckett's Eh Joe. & I think people are a bit hard on the visa line, thinking of credit cards when they should be thinking of access to certain places...

The Only Daughter is almost as alienating as The Good Son- then again, Madonna had deliberate jumps on her 2000 track Don't Tell Me, so it's hardly that radical! Out of the gloom comes one of the highlights of the album, The Heart Knows Better, at just under 8-minutes this is a gorgeous lament- easily up there with tracks like I Surrender, Earthbound & Pocket Full of Change. The hook here is divine, even if it sounds a bit like autosuggestion...

From the interlude of She is Not comes Late Night Shopping, which sees Sylvian return to the climes of Pop Song- Cage-like electronica, hints of Stockhausen & sinister samples of modern life. The slow-handclaps and the lyrics, which show consumer society reduced to an existential hell ("we can take the car/no one will be watching/we can lose ourselves late night shopping...tell me what we need/write a list, or something/we don't need to need a thing, late night shopping...") to a clatter of crashing trollies and the kind of electronic interruptions that Radiohead have been faking since 2000! Finally, after How Little...comes the palatial cool of a fire in the forest, recorded with Fennesz it recalls the final track from Dead Bees on a Cake, Darkest Dreaming. Where DD sounded like a dark end to DBOAC, AFITF sounds like an upbeat denoument to Blemish- demonstrating how dark this album is!

Blemish is a journey, not one that everyone will want to take- it certainly recalls intense albums like Metal Machine Music, Music for a New Society, The Marble Index, I See a Darkness, Star Sailor, Secret Name & Red House Painters (Rollercoaster). Perhaps it ought to be thought of as an e.p., a direction that Sylvian was working towards. It stands out for me as the release of 2003 & another of Sylvian's great solo works; here in this deluxe edition...

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