Terrascope - Waiting For The Piano To Fall, Review
Wheeldon, the “Parisian Englishman from Sheffield” has recorded nearly 20 albums in the past decade. Each one offers a unique taste of his Gene Clark-meets-Alex Chilton inspiration and for good reason. Most of them have been recorded with different bands/backing musicians. The same theme applies to his third “solo” album. The pseudonymous Living Paintings (Greg Ashley - Drums, Jach Ernest - Fiddle, Bootchy Temple - Bass, Handy Curse - Piano and Keyboards and producer Don Idiot - Lead Guitar) showed up at the recording studio (Télémaque in Caen) having never played or even rehearsed together before. Yet within a week, they had learned, arranged, and recorded the album and its invigorating spontaneity shines throughout.
While John Lydon’s caterwauling shrieking throughout his PIL catalogue may immediately spring to mind once Wheeldon launches into the dramatic, emotionally draining ‘Stamping On The Daffodils,’ there’s a magnetic car-crash curiosity drawing you into his paean to a fading working class. Political themes continue to crop up on the nostalgic folk dirge ‘They’re Not Selling Flowers Around Here, Anymore’ with its Tom Verlaine-like melancholia regretting the changing neighbourhood, while the marching rhythm and funereal trawl through ‘Black Madonna’ uses that familiar icon to question civil rights violations in an age of religious and ethnic uncertainty.
I hear a bit of a paisley underground groove in ‘Isaak’ that reminded me of Green On Red and the country weeper ‘Oh, Surprise’ satisfies my soulful Alex Chilton itch, with Ernest’s waltzing fiddle adding the right ambiance. ‘As You Stood Before The Mountain’ has a playful, strolling arrangement that lightens the emotional weight of Wheeldon’s personal message/lyrics and ‘Weeping Willow’ is anything but - an actual toe-tapper disguising a sentimental plea to save a difficult relationship: ”I hope we make it this time.” And the proverbial shoe is replaced with a piano on the title track, a gentle warning in the global warming battle that shows us where Wheeldon stands.
Wheeldon and the band will be touring later this year, so you can experience the existential angst in all its glory in person. Unlike that shoe and the Firesign Theatre’s electrician, that piano dangling from Damocles’ sword may be closer than you think, and Wheeldon & co. are doing their best to keep us around a few more years.(Jeff Penczak)