Last year one of the biggest musical thrills was the re-emergence of Shelleyan Orphan’s Jemaur Tayle in a new band that he and Boris Williams of The Cure had put together for the “Age Of Loneliness” album to be released physically tomorrow. Though Shelleyan Orphan were one of the more distinct bands of the 80s, to put it mildly, nothing in their first three ornate, bucolic, and acoustic albums, cherished for decades in my Record Cell, prepared me for the wild, off-road musical trip that the first two Vamberator singles provided me with. I thought well enough of them for each of them to make my top 10 singles list of 2024. And the only reason why I didn’t know about the third single, “Creature In My House,” was that it was released in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene where my blog was on ice for pretty much the month of October as we had bigger concerns in Asheville.

Vamberator: Age Of Loneliness – EURO – CD [2025]

1. I Used To Be Lou Reed
2. Tiny Little Finger
3. Sleep The Giant Of Sleeps
4. Pilgrim
5. I Don’t Want To Cut The Grass
6. Age of Loneliness
7. I Need Contact
8. Zebra Butterfly Swallowtail
9. Creature In My House + INTRO
10. 10. They’re All The Same
11. Imps

We already knew and loved “I Used To Be Lou Reed” but maybe last time I forgot to mention how delightful the “Satellite Of Love” backing vocals were that crept into this impressive soufflé of Art Pop. The surprising palate cleanser of the brief spoken interlude “Tiny Little Fingers” helpfully let us know right up front exactly what we were getting into. We would soon find out that the filtered vocal from Mr. Tayle set the pace for the off-kilter vibe of “Age Of Loneliness.”

As if to reassure us that the album would merely be left field, the debut single, “Sleep the Giant Of Sleeps” used the superb string section of the Archemia String Quartet, imparting a hint of The Cure at their most baroque, to soothe any fevered brows ruffled by the second song. But that was just misdirection, because on the defiantly humid “Pilgrim” the combination of Mellotron and sitar caused overwhelming clouds of patchouli-scented vapors to seep into one’s cranium and open up at least three of one’s chakras. And then the song’s extended coda, complete with Hindi spoken word recitation from Vinita Joshi over a choral Mellotron bed managed to open two more. It was the most unrepentantly psychedelic cut I’ve heard in 40 years.

And then, as if to say, “watch this!” Tayle jumped completely off the cliff with the positively surreal “I Don’t Want To Cut The Grass.” The placidity of the music bed with it’s birdsong and gentle tattoos of snare drums amid the synthesizers gave a genteel foundation for Mr. Tayle’s detached musings on just why and how he did not want to cut the grass. In my more perverse moments, I can imagine a five minute dub coda appended to the track in order to wipe the rest of my brain clean. Clearly, in his time away from music before recording this album, Tayle had dispensed with any residual fear of the sort that most of us carry around to keep us from taking chances like the ones he was tossing into the wind like confetti.

Waves of echoplexed synthesizer rhythms suddenly gave ground to the purity of Luca Etzi’s oboe and the string of Archemia once more. The groovy title track examined various aspects of the current zeitgeist as Jemaur took a hard look at the current predicament. The arrangement might seem like over egging the cake, what with Jo Nye’s backing vocals on the grandiose chorus. But that wouldn’t take into account the fearlessness with which Tayle pursued the muse of this collection of songs.

Then, after this frenzied peak, he delivered the coup de grace of the album with the heartfelt, and unashamedly direct appeal of “I Need Contact.” With his voice bereft of effects and the piano playing front and center, the humanity of the song wears its heart on its sleeve in a way that the excursions into baroque excess that typify the album have no interest in doing. As Tayle suggested, sometimes understatement becomes the loud reply.

Tayle managed to unite psychedelia with a kind of chocolate box pop with the splendid “Zebra Butterfly Swallowtail.” The gentle kalimba and the slow tempo with low bass chords on the piano pumping gently through the intro gave way to the surgical licks of the acid guitar and Paisley Pop percussion. Sprightly coaxes of oboe imparting a dignity to the phantasmagoric wash of the song examining the loss of his partner Caroline Crawley nine years ago. Over time, the underlying grief which was the origin of the song had turned inside out to reach for a kind of cathartic joy as the guitar solo in the coda spun its magical spell.

The lurching “Creature In My House” seemed to be begging for the backing vocals in the coda to “I Am The Walrus” to enter the scene. But the playful xylophones brought the playful song back into Cure territory. Tayle’s delivery dancing skillfully amid the meter of the song. The crescendoes of brass at the climax did little to dispel the whiff of “Sgt. Pepper” inherent to the track, making it lesser goods to these ears.

WhenI read the press kit for this album and saw the name Barry White being invoked I could hardly believe my eyes, but “They’re All The Same” absolutely had some of the great one’s DNA swirling in the spicy cocktail that still pushed the song out to a far point on the horizon. The conga groove coupled with the swelling strings and liquid guitar were unmistakably White touches that were ultimately poured into a very different vessel of song. I never would have imagined half of Shelleyan Orphan moving in this direction and that he did was cause for celebration. So much of this album sounded like little else I’ve heard in ages.

And I think the final track managed to become an outlier to where Tayle might go following this bracing and eclectic project. Instead of mixing cocktails of disparate sounds and styles with an almost bloody minded perversity, the deceptively titled “Imps” instead trafficked in the sort of Art Rock that Roxy Music had proffered on their glorious “Country Life” period. The solid, motorik drums of Boris Williams taking pleasure in driving the sound into Art Rock territory with strategic fills advancing the song.

The combo of horns riffs and a hint of atonal Eno synth riffing pointing back to the foundational period of Roxy Music before circling back to 1974 with handclaps and a focus of power almost alien to this largely dilletantish album with no concern of cohering. When the song faded out suddenly at the 4:28 point, I was actually disappointed since the vibe here was whispering in my ears, “at least 6:00 minutes long, please!”

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard an album so willing to follow its’ own peripatetic muse with no regard for maintaining equilibrium and unity. As much as I like the coherence of an “Empires + Dance,” I am equally capable of being swayed by an album that rips up the familiar tropes and shreds the planbook before hitting the studio. Tayle claimed that this time out he was going to let the individual songs lead him by the nose to wherever they needed to go. And this factor makes “Age Of Loneliness” a startling and delightful project from an artist whom we all thought we knew and had placed in a very specific little box. Only to have him rip the box to shreds as he escaped into the swirling night air with gales of laughter.

Normally, an album that deals so heavily with vocals drenched in effects and potentially distancing effects can alienate me, but the cheerful abandon of this album meant that I can almost not imagine the album without them. Tayle has woven a tapestry of sound here that exalts human spirit and eschews deadening techniques like quantization and inhuman grids of sound. This was an album that instead, at this late stage of the game, dared to rebel against the straitjackets of conformity and “good taste.” Reveling instead in the messy and biological world we humans are always trying to deny.

Dark Companion have the CD at €18.00 and the blue LP at €29.00. There are only 500 CDs and 300 LPs so fans of freewheeling and gloriously liberal music would do well to add this opus to their own personal Record Cells. An album like this only comes along once in a decade or so. And if the shipping from Italy [what other nation to best press up this album?] gives one pause, at least the 24/48 DL will fit any budget at a sensible £7.00. DJs hit that button!

-30-