Très Brillants

Arty, imaginative, fey, rather cultured, mannered, worldly wise, sensitive, fond of deconstructing then reconstructing obvious forms in new and exciting ways, highly attractive to ladies of a certain vintage. The more I look into it, the more I am convinced that the only difference between your humble correspondent and David Sylvian is that he always looks great in a suit, a skill I have never even come close to mastering*. Ah well.

Brilliant Trees, Sylvian’s first solo LP after Japan split is an exquisitely pastel pastille of a record. Eschewing the, for me unsettling, greyscale of Japan’s Tin Drum** Sylvian decided to make an everything album utterly unconstrained by form, expectation or pandering to any preconceived audience idea. Owning it makes me 17.4% more sophisticated than I would be without it. True story.

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David Sylvian is great at planing away the basic, expected structure of songs, jettisoning all the expected parts, bridges, choruses, certain rhythmic cues we all depend upon; scrapping the obvious. But^ the brilliance lies in somehow making them sound like pop songs still, rather than a freeform stew of elements, it is at times a subtle melodic dance of the seven veils.

Take opener ‘Pulling Punches’; squint your ears and it could be a prime new romantic single. The awkward funky rhythm, era-appropriate synth parps and great guitar from Ronny Drayton give it a real time stamp, but the track just does not go where you think it will. Swirls of brass, which I think are synthed by Holger Czukay here, disrupt things and provide odd juxtapositions.

The next two tracks ‘The Ink In the Well’ and ‘Nostalgia’ are even better. The former borne along by Danny Thompson’s double bass magic (that tone and timbre are just amazing) and a playful vocal, the latter … well.

‘Nostalgia’ is an incredible track, the crowning glory of Brilliant Trees, sounding rather like a rural utopian version of Vangelis ‘Memories Of Green’ (or maybe ‘Damask Rose’) and the beginning of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’. I catch some muffled lines about exorcising a ghost but this one isn’t about words for me, it’s a sensual experience – silk and honey. The music is sparse, gently rhythmic and Kenny Wheeler’s flugelhorn floats over it all. It feels appropriately warm and safe.

The punchy, jazzy pop of ‘Red Guitar’ does less for me, although I do like his slightly anguished cadence on the chorus, but the three remaining tracks on Brilliant Trees really do pull their weight, not their punches.

‘Weathered Wall’, ‘Backwaters’ and ‘Brilliant Trees’ are all great, all longer tracks. I hear the influence of the second side of Bowie’s Low in them all, despite their jazzier pastel palette. Riuichi Sakamoto, a man who seems to exist solely to spin gossamer cobwebs of atmospheric sound, features on two them. Taken altogether there is a sense of Sylvian retreating from view^*, crooning amongst bucolic ruins, whilst a spare, subtle rhythm pulls you along almost imperceptibly.

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I find Brilliant Trees to be a subtle, enchanting and affecting LP. I could barely repeat a single line from it, which is unusual for me, it just all glides on past in a stately fashion, whilst Sylvian busies himself making his beautiful musical tree house from unconventional materials and arty musings.

Therein lies the only problem with Brilliant Trees, you do have to be in the mood for it. There is a reason why songs have choruses, bridges, obvious bits, they help us to shout along and stomp our feet to. It is my failing not the LPs, but occasionally I do need a slice of obvious.

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It would all be very well hiring David Sylvian to remodel/rethink your bathroom, but rather than a daringly reimagined unfrosted glass cube positioned over the front door, sounding a subtle counterpoint to the more usual brickwork, sometimes you just need to be able to take a shit in private without upsetting Ethel and Bert over the road.

And that’s music criticism at its very finest, right there.

1056 Down.

PS: Have some glam, sneery Japan from 1978:

*dressed smartly I either look like a doorman or a bum, regardless of whatever care and/or expense has gone into getting me that way.

**an album I just never ‘got’, Mrs 1537 and 1537 JR love it, I can’t.

^never start a sentence with ‘But’.

^*from his pop stardom?