Lol Tolhurst, Budgie, Jacknife Lee and many more combine with stunning results.
It sounds like the beginning of a gag, but it’s not.
What do you get when you cross two quasi-goth drummers and one celebrated producer? One of the albums of the year. Not funny, is it? But this project – despite its many strengths – places little import on humour.
Lol Tolhurst, a founding member of The Cure and Budgie, original sticks man for Siouxsie And The Banshees have known each other for over 40 years and a few years ago formed a ‘supergroup’ along with producer Jacknife Lee and also Bauhaus drummer Kevin Haskins, who sadly had to leave for his day job.
Although intriguing as what would have appeared, one suspects that it may have been one drummer too many, so with Tolhurst and Budgie on synths and Lee on guitar and distortions (of which there are many) the project took shape.
As it is, Los Angeles is an immersive, dystopian fever dream of an album. Obviously the percussion is great, but the trio have pooled together their contacts for a fearsome supporting cast of collaborators and singers.
Some are better known than others, but no less effective on record: American artist Lonnie Holley (the Sand Man) teams up with classically trained harpist Mary Littimore on the sinkhole beats of Bodies, the former delivering a grizzled, throaty vocal performance with the latter’s instrument conveying an elegant urban sprawl at the end. Elsewhere, Pan Amsterdam plays mournful brass and assertive vocals on the slight Travel Channel. Both add layers to an already textured album.
But there are two main contributors whose songs effectively ape their main bands. Bobby Gillespie is sprinkled across the album, firstly on the muted industrial tones of opener This Is What It Is (To Be Free) (‘Falling ever further cos the centre cannot hold’) before strings and dub take over.
The Primal Scream singer’s lyrics are so uniquely him and, knowing that the contributors wrote their own lyrics, ensures everything becomes clear. The bone-rattling intensity of Ghosted At Home is peak XTRMNTR as he laments ‘she’s my addiction, my crucifixion’. Like a crocodile waking from a nap, that would be parody were it anyone else up front.
Lastly, Bobby G goes to town on neo-liberalism (one of his pet hates) on the desolate Country Of The Blind (‘poison in the mind of the precarious classes’) with such disdain that it makes one even more impatient for the next Primal Scream album (7 years and counting guys). In contrast, just by virtue of his innate positivity in his voice, Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock scats deftly across the brutalist big beat of We Got To Move, which has a lightness of touch not apparent elsewhere.
The other big vocalist is James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, who brings his trademark feverish yelp to the title-track’s tin can percussion, fizzing, warped dub and sinister xylophone. He’s there at the end of the album too, sounding wired on the tribal junkyard clank of Skins, which evolves into a morose ambience, drawing things to a conclusion.
Newer acts get their share too: Mark Bowen of IDLES proffers crunching industrial guitars against a samba beat on Uh Oh as Starcrawler’s Arrow De Wilde muses: ‘I’m Doris Day, I’m Elvis Presley, I’m the fuckhead on the American Dream’. The track starts like Pet Shop Boys’ Suburbia but it certainly doesn’t end like it.
Yet while most contributors are recognisable, one stands apart. You may know Dave Evans (The Edge) for his chiming, simplistic guitar licks in U2, but lesser known is that he’s made records with Jah Wobble and Can’s Holger Czukay. Riffs left at the door, he features on Train With No Station, surely a tribute to Kraftwerk in both title and tone, and the exuberant Noche Obscura.
For fans of Death In Vegas and The Cure, with its rich textures and eerie distortions, Los Angeles leaves a visceral impression.