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Hopes & Fears

by Art Bears
ReR MEGACORP, Thornton Heath, Surrey, UK, 2004
Remastered CD-ROM from vinyl (1978), ReR ab1, £11.50
Distributor’s website: http://
www.rermegacorp.com.

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University

mosher@svsu.edu

What is Rock? One questions the breathy PR calling this 1978 reissue (originally a Henry Cow album) "some of the best and most bizarre of the old school of Art-Rock". Only two cuts, "In Two Minds" and "Riddle" have regular rhythmic drumming as a crucial part of the composition, which this reviewer considers Rock's prerequisite. A couple of cuts have moments like the late Frank Zappa's pieces where he employs irregular rhythms and stop-time, but those lack Zappa's biting electric guitar that lassos his pieces to Rock instrumental conventions.

Epistemological quibbling aside, "Hopes and Fears" is an interesting album outside of Rock tradition. This reviewer first heard Dagmar Krause on producer Hal Wilner's "Lost in the Stars", the multi-artist tribute to Kurt Weill that included Lou Reed, Sting, Stan (Wall of Voodoo) Ridgeway. Krause is a cabaret chanteuse like the mature, reinvented Marianne Faithfull, and most of this CD uses kabarett band instrumentation on discordant, early twentieth century lieder. Krause often phrases Chris Cutler's words like a Brecht/Weill song, and the lyrics of the opening cut "On Suicide" is a poem by Brecht. "Pirate Song" promises something like "Pirate Jenny" but is more in the manner of a Steven Sondheim show tune. "Hopes & Fears" could be memorable soundtrack to a theatrical multimedia, multi-image show, for at their most focused the Art Bears set up stage sets in the listener's mind's eye.

The fifth song on the CD, "In Two Minds", is the first one that's Rock music, albeit rather un-Arty, with all the pomp of Elton John-style piano chords and Pete Townshend-esque power guitar. Here we get Chris Cutler's lyrics at their strongest, a snapshot of dysfunctional domesticity like the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home" but more pointed and political. "Maze" is distinguished by solo drums, and "Riddle" has an ominous beginning before guitar-drum interplay. The weaving and swaying of "The Dance" evokes Celtic music in the British isles or Brittany. "Terrain" has fine fiddle and choppy rhythm, and Fred Frith then plays prog-rock guitar reminiscent of Chris Howe of Yes. "Morris Dancing" has the feel of Yes or Zappa.

Supposedly there was much improvisation in the process of composing and recording these pieces, so Frith and Cutler may have bent over backwards——perhaps excessively——to avoid Rock clichés and repeating themselves. This tendency is even noticeable on Cutler and Frith's 1999 "2 Gentlemen in Verona" concert (issued by this label as ReR CCFF 3), where there's no traditional 4/4 rock structure until the Encore. The result is that the Art Bears generally lack Rock's simple——even stooped——melodies and beats, the kind that you inadvertently catch yourself singing while shaving of showering.

 

 




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