Post-Punk Monk

John Foxx + The Maths tribute to The Velvet Underground… in more ways than one

[…continued from last post]

John Foxx has spoken about the influence of Hank Marvin’s guitar playing on him as a music fan growing up, but apart from the Beatles/Shadows synthesis of “When You Walk Through Me” from “Systems Of Romance,” there’s not too much you could point to in his CV to reveal that. Apart from Foxx playing acoustic guitar on B.E.F.’s Billy MacKenzie cover of “It’s Over” with Hank himself taking the lead guitar. Now that’s all changed. “The Dance” began with a modular rhythm echoing in an empty space while Robin Simon added incongruously buttery guitar twang straight from the Hank Marvin playbook for a dreamy, early 60’s romantic pop sound.

Meanwhile, the synths began encroaching on this sound, adding minor key shading that upped the beautiful melancholy of the song as the upward spiral of the lead melody made its way to the spotlight. On first listen I thought that this was going to be an instrumental, but Foxx’s dramatic entry into the song at the 1:20 point came as an unexpected surprise as he whispered into our ears, stepping out of the shadows where he’d been the whole time. Meanwhile the song continued to build in low key grandeur until by its end we were swimming in cathedrals flooded with glorious sound. The lyric was as minimal as the music itself was maximal. Making for a stunningly emotive song.

Foxx had assumed that there had been more of The Velvet Underground’s DNA in his body of work than there had been upon review, which was part of the genesis of how this album developed. To allow him to make up the missed chances he thought he’d covered earlier. “New York Times” was a track that was predicated on writing further about the titular character of Sister Ray.

“She used to dream, about perfection
She had a love of distaste and rejection…

And in her room, she kept no light
So she could hold on to the darkness, every night…

That sailor’s hat, those stolen clothes
That torn out chain, that remained, across her door
She loved the marks, and what they’d leave
She said they tore all the wings from her dreams” – New York Times

The rhythmic scrape of synth noise that trilled like an insect syncopated with the white noise hi-hats drumbox tom tom right out of “Enola Gay.” Robin Simon’s guitar added distorted riffs to give the clean groove a bit of noise and muscle. Benge’s evil bass synth sound echoed the desperation of the streets that this Sister walked, but there’s no tricks or murder here. Just the hint of escape and redemption.

I loved how the next track began immediately on following the last note of “New York Times” fading. “Last Time I Saw You” was the dark heart of the album. All queasy, lurching mechanical rhythm loops of sickening inevitability. The hint of horror movie theremin was buried deep in the mix but this was not a supernatural horror being sung about. This song dealt with the monsters in our midst who casually kicked their humanity to the curb for power and empire.

“Last time I saw you
I had to look away
Some kind of presence
Making me feel ashamed

Last time I saw you
I tried to reconcile
All those, shellshock visions
With the mystery crimes

If you’re the prophet
Then we must be the loss
If you’re the cut and style
Then we must be the cloth” – Last Time I Saw You

The final song opened with a deceptive synth drone until the Simmons drums of Benge immediately let us know that Foxx was revisiting the romantic melancholy of a song like “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” from “The Golden Section.” But where those earlier ballads were suffused with longing and possibilities, this one is written from the perspective of the older man Foxx is now and the poignancy is devastating as he examines the traces left of love long lost. The synth solos in the middle eight and climax are heartbreaking in their intensity. Another difference to the songs of old in this vein were that we could have had at least seven minutes to let them play out in their grandiosity. This time the closing solo is brief and with Simon adding his guitar to the sound for a melancholic undertow that was more clear-eyed for its lack of grandiloquence.

This was a great album for John Foxx +The Maths. It’s always great to hear Robin Simon playing along with Foxx, and this was another chapter to their collaboration. It’s a far cry from the fusion of guitar and synth that Conny Plank brought to the table 42 years ago on “Systems Of Romance!” There’s no smoothness desired here. It’s also a far cry from any of the other Maths albums; which have tended to mutate – sometimes wildly – between releases. Foxx had said in his Electronic Sound interview that in reviewing his past he was drawn to “The Man Who Dies Every Day” from “Ha! Ha! Ha!” as being something he’d like to dive into and explore further. I can only concur that Foxx has taste similar to mine, since that’s a pivotal Ultravox! song for me and if I had to pick only one that encapsulated the gist of the band, it’s the single track I’d choose.

But this album mutates the genome of the song in various radical ways. Maybe only “New York Times” [what a great title!] traffics in precisely that sort of vibe. The rest is darker or more melancholic. Foxx has correctly responded to the zeitgeist and has made an album that reflects the punishing now in an adult fashion. And that’s what I respect from the artists that I like. That’s he’s done it with a support crew like The Maths gives me hope that one day; maybe next year, we can have a concert or two that we would want to attend. Wherever it may be.

– 30 –

Metamatic ‎| UK | CD | META67CD | 2020

John Foxx + The Maths: Howl – UK – CD [2020]

1. My Ghost
2. Howl
3. Everything Is Happening At The Same Time
4. Tarzan And Jane Regained
5. The Dance
6. New York Times
7. Last Time I Saw You
8. Strange Beauty

It’s been a Hell of a year, and the John Foxx + The Maths album I’d been waiting over a year for was pushed back due to the Covid-19 bomb going off in the Spring. I’d lost the plot so thoroughly with potentially life-threatening stimuli to engage my brainstem with that when the week before the delayed release of “Howl” was heralded by an email from the Foxxlist, my spouse immediately stepped up tot he plate and ordered it for me. Thankfully, the goods arrived at my house via the US Postal Service. But for how much longer?! Let’s dive in after a few days of regaining my footing with this new album.

“My Ghost” began with a drumbox ticking off and the distorted guitar of Robin Simon riffing at a low volume before the synths [also distorted] added a “Telstar” like wail to the energy levels. Then Foxx joined in the song in a chorused, distorted voice as he related how his ghost [or shadow figure] was threatening and undermining his life. The hook here was the grinding synth distortion skipping across the stereo spectrum as the synths built up a chord sequence similar to the one in Bauhaus’ “Lagartija Nick. Benge injected the necessary back beats into this song to give it the teeth it needed.

“My ghost, with all the ragged rage
I have ever seen
With all the twisting things
I thought I was hiding” – My Ghost

At the coda Simon got in a guitar solo that had a twangier [yet still distorted] counterpoint to the now wailing [yet distorted] synths as the energy peaked up to a harsh drop off just shy of a cold ending. As it had been with the early pre-release singles, this was a darker, sexier incarnation of John Foxx + The Maths at work. There was none of the dispassionate restraint commonplace in Foxx’s music of the last 40 years. This was music in the red for the very times we’re living in today.

The title track was a bracing, chaotic glamrok dive back into the howling feedback of “Ha! Ha! Ha!” only allied this time with more Bauhaus DNS in the form of a sexy whipcrack beat courtesy of Benge, who also played the filthiest synth bass imaginable. The synthesizer quotient here was as low as it’s been for Foxx since that second Ultravox! album. It was primarily Simon’s show as the howling chaos of his playing was front and center here. Foxx hung back here, his voice run through a chorus and [better get used to it] further distortion for a distancing effect, proffering only the barest hint of guidance to the raging stallion of Robin Simon’s guitar. The lyric seemed to be purely a response to Simon’s playing.

“I see you stand in the middle of a storm
And all the traces are gone, gone, gone
Howl downtown, let the beast out
Let the beast out …now!” – Howl

It first blush, the tone of the playing struck me as being cut from the cloth of Gang Of 4’s Andy Gill [r.i.p.] as I immediately heard the kind of serrated, violent chording that Gill played on cuts like “To Hell With Poverty.” Further listening gave evidence of Fripptone® ca. “Scary Monsters [and super creeps…]” to also be found here. The guitar was in your face and down your throat from the get-go, but further listening revealed that Benge was playing valuable counterpoint here with all of the rhythm under his command.

The lurching synth tone only ever got a bit of spotlight on the middle eight, which was the only part of this that sounded remotely like what we expect from a John Foxx project.  I also loved the aggressive mixing that Benge and Foxx oversaw here with Simon’s guitar cutting in and out of the mix with hard, percussive edits that were shocking in their abruptness. The final minute and a half of the album track was merely the guitars [which Foxx was also playing, in addition to Simon] and the synths having a love fest while handcuffed to each other with knives drawn.

Then came the centerpiece of “side one.” Will there be a more appropriate song for 2020 than “Everything Is Happening At The Same Time?” Doubtful. The [distorted] violin intro from Math Hannah Peel and the keystone drum pattern, so similar to “Tomorrow Never Knows” marked this song as the one touchstone of familiarity in the midst of this turbulent return to the aggression of “Ha! Ha! Ha!.”

Foxx has been inspired by the Beatles turn to psychedelia since his teenaged years, and he’s not been shy about building a magnificent edifice on the foundations that the Beatles had built, but this time he’s not aiming for sense of possibly thrilling fusion/dislocation of self that “When You Walk Through Me” offered. Nor is he attempting to model the intoxicating swirl of attraction that “Endlessly” had done.

This time he was using psychedelia as a metaphor for the disjointed and troubling times of today. he feeling of not standing on solid ground any more as the very basis of reality was under attack. This time it was the violin, along with the rhythm that took the spotlight as Foxx distilled the confusion and despair that pressed him down on a daily basis.

“Scenes on the news
Stream in, confuse me
Things I can hardly believe
Things I wish I’d never seen

And everything is happening at the same time

Too many people
And so many lies
So much to deal with each day
Sometimes I’m too sad to try” – Everything Is Happening At The Same Time

A single beat dropped before the song began on the “two.” Right away the interplay was between the rhythm box and the minor key flute-like synths [that can’t help but make me think of The Specials “Ghost Town”] and Robin Simon’s guitar, which was more under control than on the last Maths outing. I suspect that what I thought were flute patches were actually Hannah Peel’s heavily mutated violin.
They suggested the exotic air of snake charming. The biggest difference here was Foxx as he’s back in touch with his wilder, pre-Quiet Man artistic persona. Certainly this song of animal passion would have been out of place on any of his albums post-1977. But the subtext of animal attraction was just another way of parsing Foxx’s favorite Ballardian theme with the wild reclaiming the civilized. This time using a trope from the 20th century [“Me Tarzan – You Jane”] that’s even older than Foxx.

As was the guitar of Robin Simon with his trademark Post-Punk flanging driving a modal guitar line sweeping through the urban jungle environment of the song at rakish angles. The climax where Foxx’s synths duel on the outro with his sharp riffage while Benge kept the New Wave back beat was definitely my kind of throwback. The last two and a half minutes of the album version expanded the instrumental interplay between the synths and guitars; occasionally dropping out for the back beat to come to the fore before allowing the guitars and distorted violins to let the song ultimately dissipate its erotic energy with its forces now spent.

Next: …Back From The Shadows