If album covers, and titles, are an indication of a band’s direction then Manchester’s Money are in reverse.
Their 2013 debut album ‘The Shadow Of Heaven‘ has lead-man and songwriter Jamie Lee on the front flung out in a crucified pose, head slumped, the recently deceased drifting on up to the aforementioned afterworld.
Now, on the cover of their follow-up – the disconcertingly labelled ‘Suicide Songs‘ – there is a knife that may or may not be about to slice down into Lee’s forehead. Let the watcher decide. Depressing yes, but at least he’s still alive.
Interviews with Lee reveal a sensitive fellow not content with the trivial tricks of the material. The archetypal pained artist trying to exist long enough to express himself, in thrall to a devious world. You can bet he has a bookshelf surfeited by the spines of Keats, Camus and Nietzsche.
As far as Almighty-equating tracks go, opener ‘I Am The Lord‘ looks more divine that it sounds. Rummaging through the Beatles‘ back catalogue for some of their flower-powered Indian tropes, it filters out through Britpop-tinted spectacles. However, it’s the sweeping statements that end up punching hardest, with proclamations like “I don’t want to be God, I just don’t want to be human”.
He goes one further on ‘I’m Not Here‘ and completely effaces himself: “I’ve earned the right to say it, I’m not here”, still with a 20-year hangover jangling about the timbre. The gripes with deities, humans, life and death most horrid is an ineluctable leakage on the record. These aren’t the mere whims, though, of someone looking for perfunctory words to swaddle round melodies. Thank God (Lee won’t) that he has the lyrical nous to avoid one wagging a finger and telling him not to be so lugubrious all of the time.
Take the folky, campfire-chummy ‘I’ll Be The Night‘. It bears the line, “A fruitless search for saviours will leave nothing inside”, but is vindicated in its desolation by the preceding droll, “No one owes you any favours, they only owe you wine”.
Slow, acoustic delve ‘You Look Like a Sad Painting On Both Sides Of The Sky‘ wails like the bluer brother of ‘Space Oddity‘. It makes you question which sky’s sides he’s on about — the sky that separates heaven and hell? Lee’s vocals on it, like a lot of the time, are a poignant force. Malleable to his feelings every which way.
The problem with such a pile of introspective wood chippings is that sometimes you end up choking on all the indulgent dust it leaves in the air. Eight-and-a-half-minute long ‘Night Came‘ meditates entirely over two chords dressed up in grand drums, echoes and an impassioned Lee that plateaus miles before the faraway ending.
Ironically, the brief brass and guitar of ‘Suicide Song‘ is a calming follow-on and Michael Stipes in its delivery. “This is your suicide song,” offers Lee, like he’s offering you a piece of his concern (he is — it was penned for a friend “not in a good way”). Though in it there hides a rare, overcooked couplet, “I know some of us need to turn our minds into one, but I know that just ain’t too much fun”.
‘All My Life‘ reaches a new fragility. “Not ashamed of what I’m doing, but I’m ashamed of what I’ve done”, Lee openly bears. He stretches the octaves on a chorus featuring gospel backing singers, and it’s these few sublime bars that feel like the entire album’s money shot.
But it’s not over until the wassailing of ‘A Cocaine Christmas and An Alcoholic New Year‘ has had its (literally at the start) slurry say. Like the previous record’s final song ‘Black‘, it’s a resigned piano piece, this time indebted to The Pogues. He might have wasted a white Christmas up his nose and downed all the wine, but he’s as “happy as a child”. A child that wants to be as outrageous and beautiful as absurdist author Jean Genet. An altogether unsurprising want by the time things come to a close, as you feel like you’ve just been sat inside Lee’s head à la John Malkovich for 45 minutes and now know everything about him.
Even if the next album isn’t half as divulgent and regressed to a teenage Lee on the cover, because this has gripped us so we’ll still be all ears.