by Ben Hogwood
What’s the story?
The second album from Creep Show follows five years after their debut – in which time a great deal has changed. The line-up remains the same, with John Grant the charismatic vocalist to beats and soundscapes fashioned by Wrangler – who are synth and electronics wizard Benge (Ben Edwards), Cabaret Voltaire frontman Stephen Mallinder and Phil Winter, creator of many weird and wonderful sounds for Tunng. Their 2018 debut, Mr Dynamite, is described by the four protagonists as ‘a fairground ride into the dark corners of a world that was on the brink of being blitzed in a blender’.
With so much source material for the follow-up, Yawning Abyss would seem to be all about the impending disasters seemingly awaiting the world, as well as the one big disaster – Covid – which has been with us during the period of composition.
And yet, the quartet make room for optimism. Mallinder and Grant headed to Iceland to make some unfiltered vocals, while Winter and Edwards were given the task of bringing it all together for the final cut.
What’s the music like?
Creep Show make some incredibly varied music! At times this album feels like a reflection of the times in which we live, being wildly unpreditable and disfunctional, but then at other turns with an elegance and poise that shows the craft with which it was made.
The two immediate stand-out tracks are Moneyback, with a brilliant couplet from John Grant (“You want your money back? I don’t think so!”) and then the madcap Yahtzee!, which pretty much sums up the state of play in the media at the moment! Sitting on the more elegant side is Bungalow with a mellifluous and stately vocal, while Stephen Mallinder excels up front on Matinee.
Does it all work?
It does – assuming you have the bandwidth to accommodate the wide range of styles on offer!
Is it recommended?
Yes. While sometimes far from easy listening, Yawning Abyss is very much an album for our times.
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As also would be one from Icelandic singer Susanne Sundfør (above), whose often brittle yet always focussed delivery teased out the deadpan humour from On Your Own Again then stripped Angels of Ashes of undue preciousness. Best of all was the edgy irony she brought to The Amorous Humphrey Plugg, another highpoint of Walker’s song-writing, while Hero of the War aligned anger and compassion to a telling degree. A slight pity that Long About Now, Walker’s one number intended for a female vocalist, was not featured. Maybe another time?
A fine guitarist and distinctive crooner, Richard Hawley proved as attentive to the tangible atmospherics of It’s Raining Today as to the warm evocation (so easy to sentimentalize) of Two Ragged Soldiers. Neither was there any dilution of that yearning for domestic bliss in Montague Terrace (in Blue) or sardonic humour in The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime) – a song which underlines Walker’s awareness of the political realities during this period, as has surfaced more obliquely in much of his more recent music.
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