The twenty first century offers us no relief, no comfort, no permissible sense of stasis. We continue to move – herded like cattle by the media – like Lemmings falling off the cliff of expensive coffee and contactless payment.
For many of us this causes anxiety, which leads to an overwhelming urge to block the outside world out; a psychological state familiar to John Grant, a man whose determination to withdraw left him penniless, stateless and on the brink of being lifeless.
Conditioned by his parents’ religious beliefs and the liberal Conservatism of his adolescent home in Colorado, the singer admitted recently to hitting rock bottom amongst the chaos of his adult life – of being in, “the phase you go into when you are just causing wreckage”, before in 2010 the members of Texan band Midlake nurtured him gently back into the recording process, in doing so finally giving his fractured talent the audience it deserved.
Grant has subsequently released two albums; ‘Queen Of Denmark‘ – the fruits of that collaboration – and its 2013 successor ‘Pale Green Ghosts‘, the former an archly sardonic, laugh-out-loud salute to prejudice in all its forms, while the latter bore all the hallmarks of an artist grasping for greater inclusivity and meaning. Both were as well received critically as any artist back from the brink of dissolution could expect, neither flinched at cataloguing personal disasters both recent and in the past.
Now living in Reykjavik and in a relationship with the permanency he craved, the expectation may have been that the forty-seven-year-old would be moved to craft material rendered from feelings of security, affection and empathy. Instead, ‘Grey Tickles, Black Pressure‘ is the work of a man squaring up to more than just surprises like finding rose petals in the bath when he gets home from work.
Literally translated, ‘Grey Tickles’ is an Icelandic metaphor for midlife crisis, while ‘Black Pressure’ is Turkish for nightmare – a combinatorial phrase which precedes an album that will confound as much as it delights. On it, Grant lyrically acknowledges demons old and new – the titular opener is about rejecting self pity at his own misfortune in a world where, “Children…have cancer – and so all bets are off”, whilst the subject of ‘Geraldine’ is Page, winner of a Best Actress Oscar for her role in 1985’s Trip To Bountiful, of whom he takes the characteristically blunt opportunity to ask if she, “Put up with this shit”, as he feels everyday life is forcing to him to do.
Forthright yes, but it’s also a song which will feel like more familiar territory to fans of either or both of Grant’s first two albums, one on which his textured baritone is to the fore. In many other places here, this is not the case.
Take ‘Snug Slacks‘ for instance, on which he sounds like a college professor larking about unprofessionally with lustful poetry, or ‘You and Him‘, where he’s goofing off on a redneck one minute before, to a scabrous punk beat, that voice is tormented into being as nasty as a loud-hailing cop. Neither song is in a comfort zone of any kind, both strutting through the foreground like cats, unrepentant and challenging you to not love them. In places personalities split: on ‘Voodoo Doll‘ normal John croons through the melancholy verses whilst John Diablo then skats over the bass-infused chorus, two sides of the same unexpurgated coin.
Maybe this is maturity and happiness bubbling up through the subconscious, manifesting itself in the confidence to do whatever feels right creatively: those looking for a ‘TC & Honeybear‘, or perhaps a ‘Glacier‘, will be disappointed here though. We have instead the moribund, antique sci-fi kitsch of ‘Black Blizzard‘, or ‘Global Warming‘s stilted self consciousness, both striving for that more familiar sense of intimacy, or stylish resignation.
At its peak however there’s still a moment to cherish in ‘No More Tangles‘, itself about the conflicted habitat for Grant of Stockholm; a place he loved but also where he received his positive HIV diagnosis. A jag against co-dependency, the song is instead interwoven with its regret over lost time. “No more rainbow games, with narcissistic queers”, but oddly the momentum it creates is now forward not back, a sense of identity strong enough to find singular expression via the emotional medium of solipsism.
Considered from all angles, ‘Grey Tickles, Black Pressure’ is not an experimental album in the strictest sense of the world. Its creator hasn’t set out to alienate his audience, nor has he succumbed to the Messianic belief that he should be indulged by them. On it the songwriter we thought we knew has taken the brave step of re-centering his music around instrumentation – as opposed to the lead instrument being his voice – a decision which, given its almost celestial qualities, will doubtless leave some fans a little nonplussed.
The flip side is that it enjoys some of the schizophrenic charms familiar to the work of many other contemporary artists; diversity, a sense of creative freedom, talented collaborators doing things that you cannot. In the process Grant’s opened himself up to greater levels of subjectivity: if in places if feels like in his new found love fondness has made the heart grow absent, this is a risk he’s clearly felt he’s willing to take to keep breaking new boundaries.
And yet the selfish part of you is also left wondering just how catastrophically beautiful a John Grant breakup record would sound.
(Andy Peterson)
