At last year’s Record Store Day – Black Friday, I was intrigued by the 3xLP of David J demos but hardly likely to invest in a box of LPs from the artist. So one can imagine my delight when on last Friday, May 3rd, Independent Project Records answered our hopes with a delightful 3xCD issue of the 34 songs in another of the label’s stunning, letterpress folio CD packages. Sure, sure. They do not fit on my CD racks, but in this case I’ll grant an exception since the end product is completely gorgeous.

The songs themselves consist of 34 tracks recorded onto demo cassettes by the artist himself with [mostly] the simplest of accompaniment from the years 1984-2004. A twenty year period that saw David flexing his songwriting muscles not only for his other bands Love + Rockets and Jazz Butcher, but also his solo career as well. One imagines that these musical sketches were deemed to have fallen between the cracks by sheer dint of their numbers, since many of the resulting tracks were excellent tracks that should have been deep cuts or B-sides at the least.

The provenance of the project was almost effortless. David’s friend and archivist Gabor Nemeth knew of the boxes of tapes and suggested that he should digitize them for posterity, so three full shoe boxes of tapes were duly dispatched to Budapest where Gabor did the grunt work. Shortly after that had been done, Independent Project Records contacted David out of the blue, asking if they could work on a retrospective project of his choosing. Then David reviewed the tapes and selected the running order of “Tracks From The Attic.” Obviously, it was meant to be.

David J: Tracks From The Attic – US – 3xCD [2024]

Disc 1 [1984-1985]

1. Punishment by Roses
2. The Dream Collector
3. Blackmail
4. The Murders in the Rue Morgue
5. My Soul Was Still Shouting, ‘MORE!’
6. I Wish Those Spacemen Would Come
7. Badge of Lead (A Western)
8. Small Death Of a Broken Doll
9. She Calls the Morning Cruel
10. Lady Bureaux
11. Is There Anybody There?

Disc 2 [1986-1989]

1. The Wolf Knows
2. Castles of Limburg
3. If Muzak Be the Junk Food of Love
4. Homo Sapien Blues
5. This Town
6. Vincent In the Flames
7. They’ve Murdered Christ Again
8. Lucky Dog
9. Old Man in the Rain
10. Conspiracy of Shadows
11. The Long Ride Home

Disc 3 [1990-2004]

1. Cruel Britannia
2. All the Pilgrims
3. It’s Got to Be the Angels
4. I’ll Put Off Thinking About You for Awhile
5. Or Do I Speak Too Soon?
6. Oh No! Not Another Songwriter!
7. Diamonds, Black Eyes and Valentines Blues
8. The Most Beautiful Girls in the World
9. Before the Positive Was Negative
10. At Paradise
11. New Year’s Day
12. Leaning Towards the Falls

The set kicked off with a deceptive first track in “Punishment By Roses,” complete with anxiety provoking organ drone to contrast with David’s morose vocal and plaintive acoustic guitar. Deceptive, because, for the most part, these songs would be based on acoustic guitar accompaniment. Having seen David J perform with just guitar was the pull for me to hear this set in the first place. Goodness knows that the artist can get away with that conceit. That said, the organ drone gave the song a heady Velvet Underground vibe as heard here.

I immediately took a shine to “Blackmail’s” winning melody which proceed in a lively fashion as David’s insouciant lyric and delivery revealed an appealing lightness of touch for the former Goth icon. Hearing the artist describe the song’s coda in a spoken work aside to himself recalled the immediacy of James Brown giving cues to his band. Elsewhere the brief, tentative “My Soul Was Still Shouting, MORE!” with its fast rhythm strumming and brief 1:50 duration and cold ending spoke to the urgency endemic to the demo process as evidenced here. There were boxes of cassettes because the artist is in a race against time to fill their sketchbook.

There were some surprising outliers here in terms of subject matter. Where “I Wish Those Spacemen Would Come” was in many ways what we might expect from David’s pen with its lyrics citing Boadicea and Enola Gay, “Badge Of Lead [A Western]” was something else entirely. Did we ever expect a pulpy scenario of frontier justice from a member of Bauhaus? And when the climax occurred, complete with vocal gunfire foley effects, the sense that anything could happen in this collection manifested. “Small Death Of A Broken Doll” was melodically similar to the Love + Rockets song “Dog End Of A Day Gone By,” so maybe that one was a predecessor that was recycled for the greater good?

The second volume covered the busy ’86-’89 period. I liked the chiming acoustic guitar of “Castles of Limbourg” that spun a winsome spell as David’s vocal descended into a whisper at the song’s climax for a breathtaking, beguiling beauty. We had a definite winner with the perceptive “If Muzak Be The Junk Food Of Love” where the perky melody allowed for the incredibly sardonic lyric to have the full, contrasting spotlight.

The one opus in this collection with a Prog-worthy running time [nearly nine minutes] was the almost talking blues song “The Long Ride Home.” Which seemed to document an encounter with a troubled female fan as it spun the tale of a US tour’s ending with pathos and compassion. On the face of things, it seemed as if David was exercising his confessional songwriting muscles…which would get referenced later on in the album.

The third disc began with the “I-can’t-believe-this-wasn’t-a-single” track “Cruel Brittania,” which was as slashing a takedown of Britain as only a native could commit to song! At the very least, it would have been a potent B-side that would have gotten fans’ tongues wagging. “It’s Got To Be The Angels” was built on an acoustic guitar rondo that pulled us in quickly with the gentle singing of David maintaining our rapt attention most capably.

Did I call “Cruel Brittania” a lost A-side? Well double that merit for the fantastic “I’ll Put Off Thinking About You For A While.” It was simply a classic song cast adrift in a random box of cassettes and abandoned until now. With its vivid lyric placed into a jangly pop setting, it begs to be a hit for someone, somewhere. Songs like this peppering the program show just how on target David’s songwriting was even if it didn’t register with him at the time.

“I make it back to the hotel with its tawdry glamor,
And I think I’ll call you but I know I’d only stammer…on the phone
And I think I’ll put of thinking about you for a while

“I’ll Put Off Thinking About You For A While”

And if this was all getting to be a bit too singer-songwriter for an artist forged in the flames of Post-Punk, then the brilliant meta-pop of “Oh No! Not Another Songwriter!” managed to affect the best sort of self-deflation of ego imaginable. That it didn’t see the light of day as a B-side at least was something of a small tragedy. David managed to sink his teeth into the most sardonic deconstruction of songwriting possible here. Not surprisingly, this track was issued on the artist’s Soundcloud two months in advance of this album!

This is my life in 27 verses,
each line told from my heart
With a subtext that bears the inscription
Hey, don’t you think that I’m smart?

“Oh No! Not Another Songwriter!”

This was a close examination of songwriting process for David laid bare in a transparent fashion. Some of it was the artist donning the mantle of singer-songwriter and coming to grips with that reality, even as other flights of fancy were present here to assure us that he was not yet ready for a Lauren Canyon address just yet. Almost everything here was a rough-and-ready jam box tape, but there was one outlier in “Before The Positive Was Negative” where the artist ducked into a demo studio on the road to apply the most gloss to be found here with some overdubs and a more studied arrangement.

PICK THE FORMAT

The 3xLP that appeared last year was three LPs on red vinyl, but concurrent with the full issue of the album, there’s now a 2nd brown vinyl pressing of the LPs that also come with the CDs as well in an attractive letterpress folio package. There are 850 of these at $75.00 apiece. Fans who are just into the silver discs [which match the metallic letterpress inks rather nicely, I think] can obtain the CD only package for a modest $30.00. And for David J überfans, there’s always one more option.

SUPREME DELUXE VINYL ART EDITION

In an edition of 70, there’s the collector’s edition that comes filled with the literal essence of these songs, as we’ll see. But the buy-in for what will probably be several unreleased David J songs not on this collection [or anywhere else] that only you will have on a 30-40 year old cassette tape [undoubtedly dusted with David J DNA] will be sporting a commensurately high $500.00 price tag. Here’s what this supreme deluxe vinyl art edition sports.

• Hardshell box with artwork as above
• 3 x LP in translucent vinyl
• 3 x CD on 12″ x 12″ letterpress card
• 3x 6-panel folding lyric sheets for all 34 songs
• Numbered insert
• Postcard with digital download codes for set
• Original graffiti art painting by David J using cassettes tapes as stencils – signed by the artist
• One of the original demo cassettes tapes in the infamous shoebox that David J kept in his attic [until this project got underway]

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“Tracks From The Attic” was an expansive affair that hit my personal target of replicating the soulful bonhomie of the artists’ one live solo concert event I enjoyed so much a few years back where his acoustic guitar was his only prop for an evening’s magic. And now that same vibe is informing almost three dozen tunes with a very solid solo album hiding in plain sight amongst them. If you want to hear more, there’s always that Super Deluxe Box with a unique cassette of demos beckoning. For me, the CD package hits all the right marks, so DJ hit that button.

3 x COLOR LP + 3x CD

3 x CD

SUPER DELUXE VINYL ART BOX

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