Last Place On the Map

Description

Last Place On the Map is the fifth album by the British alternative pop band Lies Damned Lies, independently released on Sticky Music in 2002. The album was written, performer, and recorded by Lies Damned – Charlie Irvine, Dot Reid, and Steve Butler. Also featuring Ewen Vernal on bass (tracks: 3, 4, 7, 9) and Eddie John on drums.

About the only thing I dislike about Lies Damned Lies is their name. But let’s be candid, any band who make music as richly emotive, honest and subtly musical as this trio could call themselves the Scottish Snot Ensemble and I’d still be listening hard. Has it really been six years since Steve Butler, Charlie Irvine and Dot Reid last released an album? How time flies. The thing about Edinburgh’s Lies Damned Lies is that, having their own studio and long established record label, the pressure is off them to (a) rush out the first 10 songs that happen to come along and (b) bow to commercial pressure and attempt to move stylistically towards what’s selling big. Instead, they simply allow life itself to mould and shape their lyrics and melodies and then perform them with an intuitive understated way, preferring stripped down arrangements than the formulaic stereotypes of much of today’s sounds. The effects are mainly achieved with guitars and keys with even bass and drums used sparingly. And then there are those wonderful lyrics. Pride of place goes to «Tell Me Who», a tender-hearted song about judgmentalism. “My perspective on this thing is/ It is a mistake you made/ Others may wish to condemn you/ But who is without sin/ Hours of talk and miles of print/ Tell me of the strangers guilt/ This may simplify the world/ But who is without sin.” While on the subject of the lyrics, I really appreciated the look of the sleeve (resplendent with a cover painting by Richard “Billy Penn’s Brother” Nicholson) but I wish someone had checked to see the handsome handwritten calligraphy of the lyrics was a tad more readable. But I digress. To that small but perfectly formed bunch of Lies Damned Lies devotees this album will be a purchase which has already been made (after all, the veterans launched it at Greenbelt 2002). But if this review or last issue’s Sticky Music piece spark your interest, go to their website and investigate one of British Christendom’s most beloved institutions. [Tony Cummings, Cross Rhythms, January 2003]

Every few years Scotland’s Lies Damned Lies make the most audaciously brilliant pieces of music that you could ever wish to hear and yet few people ever do. It is not so much a secret as a scandal, not just for them but for the many hundreds of thousands of people who are looking for something just like this. Flirting with the big time way back in the early nineties, they signed to Siren, did all the expensive pop videos in locations like Mauritius, released all the remix 12” singles but in failing to dent the charts were dropped. That was a move that sent them running back to the border and setting up their own studio in Ayrshire where without the need to oblige with singles they have spent the last decade creating “honest to God” albums of sheer wondrous beauty.

For a point of reference think Talk Talk and Blue Nile; that kind of ambience before ambient had been discovered. Lush atmospheres with beauty so deep you can sink into it like the lushest of expensive carpets. Thick pile comfort. But their name betrays them and comfortable is not what they are aiming to create. It is that “honest to God” factor again. Like «Who» the lead off track on this new album, that we should get around to raving about, asks “Who is better, who is worse/ who to bless, who to curse/ who is pure and who complex/ who is without sin?”

Dot Reid, Charlie Irvine and Steve Butler are not over generous in optimism. Realism is their wont and the underside the only thing that they think makes good art. They left two great songs off their previous work Lamentations because they were too up!

And yet we see much more light on their latest masterpiece, perhaps sparked by their leaving the studio as their day time work and going back to the “real” world! Butler is an Episcopalian vicar and as on his solo album of last year there is something warmer in the connections of this work. The eschatological «At The Centre» here is like a camp fire song for the sand hills at the gate of heaven and even includes children’s vocals.

But it all comes back to the beauty. Dot Reid’s fingers sink into the keys so gently and these tender sounds that resonate with a mystical something drift across the ether to caress and collide with Charlie Irvine’s guitar chords that are played as much with feet as hands to linger long in the air. In the middle Butler’s vulnerable husky voice on the very coolest side of Sting creates this sound that is unique to this sum of parts. When needed they ask old friends, Deacon Blue’s Ewan Vernal and the only drummer they ever trusted Eddie John to add a little rhythm on languished bass grooves and a sprinkle of percussion.

The Last Place On the Map was recorded just there, the last place that was mapped in the last ordinance survey of Britain. It takes the Beatitudes and looks at them from all kinds of angles to add very modern flesh and bone to the ideas of Jesus. Yet there is nothing bland or clichéd about how Lies Damned Lies express the spirituality that informs their work. They throw out questions and observations that have you asking the big questions whether you come from a theist’s viewpoint or not. This is a band that touches the ears, the mind, the heart and the soul. As they sing on “Could Have Been You,” “This isn’t guilt/ This isn’t ambition/ Just having eyes to see and ears to hear/ What do you hear?” One of the albums of the year actually! [Steve Stockman, The Phantom Tollbooth, 9/22/2002]

> iTunes

CD tracklist:

01. Who
02. High
03. Could Have Been You
04. Washing Up
05. At The Centre
06. Let Them All Out
07. Mr Smith
08. Trust
09. After The Rain
10. Great Cloud Of Witnesses

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