I have always had a love/hate relationship with Edward Ka-Spel's work–he has written some of my all-time favorite songs (Tear Garden's "Romulus & Venus," for example), but he's also recorded an avalanche of stuff that I was not so enthusiastic about. Consequently, I became an increasingly casual LPD fan over the years and haven't heard their last few albums at all. That being the case, I was totally unprepared for how excellent this album is–I can't think of another band in history that has managed to write some of their best songs 30 years into their career. The Dots' best days are definitely not behind them.
Seconds Late For The Brighton Line feels like an album by a rejuvenated band, which is somewhat surprising, given that they've been at it for three decades.Also, it is their first album as a four-piece, as two long-time Dots members (Niels Van Hoorn and Martijn De Kleer) have recently departed.However, there is a perverse logic to their current vitality, as having fewer band members limits what Ka-Spel and company can do, making everything simultaneously a bit more challenging and bit simpler.The band had to find new ways to do what they've always done and fewer people playing means more emphasis on the actual substance of the songs.Edward recently mentioned that the hardest thing about the current stage in the band's career is figuring out a way to make people think a new LPD is "special," but there is actually a very clear-cut way to do that and they've done it: write some great songs.Lots of people make spaced-out psychedelia these days, but Edward Ka-Spel occupies pretty rarefied territory as a songwriter.
There are no major stylistic departures here from previous Legendary Pink Dots albums, but there are a few things worth noting.There a couple of Ka-Spel quirks that I have always had a hard time with: his more impassioned, higher-pitched vocals and his sometimes over-whimsical, "deranged nursery rhyme"-style delivery.Obviously, many LPD fans feel quite differently, but I vastly prefer his more understated side and I get what I want this time: Ka-Spel is generally at his world-weary, ominous best here. The only clear exception is the opening piece, "Russian Roulette," which narratively counts to 18 ("14 wives save the marmalade for 15 flies") before bursting into a plaintive mantra of "your number's up, the chips are down, you thought you counted."That is normally the kind of thing that makes me cringe, but the surrounding music snowballs in intensity nicely, making for a likable song.Apparently it is also provides the cryptic key to deciphering the album's overarching concept, but I have made zero progress on solving that particular riddle–someone else is going to have to do the heavy lifting on that one.
There are three songs that seem to stand head and shoulders above all the others for me.My favorite is "Radiation Day," largely because the warm, woozy synthesizers below the vocals are extremely cool.Everything else is pretty amazing too though–the band were clearly firing on all cylinders here, as Ka-Spel's vocals are quietly, melodically intense and all the peripheral sounds are pleasantly weird and unpredictable.Edward's vocals are even better in "God And Machines," as he calmly describes an unsettling and enigmatic dystopia over a bed of hissing and buzzing electronics.It's the sort of song that is evocative and disturbing enough to obsess a person for days and it is exactly the sort of thing that Ka-Spel does better than anyone else (and seems to be getting still better at).Unexpectedly, however, I also found myself drawn to the infinitely lighter "Someday," which sounds jaunty, innocent, and even vaguely tropical.The Legendary Pink Dots are one of the few bands that can safely take stabs at writing pop songs–they are far too intrinsically warped to mess it up.
Remarkably, the band's sound does not seem to suffer at all from their newly attenuated line-up: the Dots remain as characteristically lush and lysergic as ever, picking up the slack with increased reliance on computers.It doesn't sound like they are having much trouble coming up with new ideas either, a state of affairs that I cannot credit a laptop with.Seconds Late For The Brighton Line is simply a very solid (and sometimes spectacular) album:longtime fans will find plenty of what they have always loved, newcomers will find several compelling reasons to become longtime fans, and inquisitive minds will be able to drive themselves crazy trying to figure out what it all means.They've won me back.
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