Sometimes, a band’s biography is integral to one’s appreciation. This is certainly the case with the emergence of this release by The Glue Ensemble. To quote liberally from their biography, ‘School friends and self taught instrumentalists Zee Ahmad and Ben Blaine had been in bands together for the best part of a decade but by the time Zee was hospitalised they had talked themselves off the stage and behind the scenes.’
‘Ben is an award winning filmmaker who, working with his brother Chris, had helped document London’s burgeoning and raucous New X music scene. Zee produced their videos and managed many of the bands. The passing of that Deptford moment saw Zee fall out of love with music and its industry, also the fading of that hopeful cacophony coincided with the death of Ben’s father.’
And yet, here they are, and it’s perhaps fair to say that true artists are compulsive in their creativity. And the darkness and despair provide the grist to The Glue Ensemble’s mill. They’ve already amassed a respectable catalogue of songs, featured on previous releases with uplifting titles like ‘Our Winter’ and ‘Teatime at a Funeral’. ‘We Used to Live Round Here’ continues in this vein: it’s emotive and elegiac, nostalgic and quietly powerful in the way it simmers amidst lush orchestration.
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That isn’t to say it’s an out-and-out wrist-slitter: ‘The Devil in the Garden’ is bleakly lugubrious, but in contrast, ‘Death of a Civil Servant’ stands out as one of the album’s more upbeat, chipper tracks, its chamber-pop calling to mind an altogether grittier Divine Comedy.
‘The More Loving One’ may be built around a soft swell of piano and strings that are rich, deep and imbued with sadness, but the vocal builds to a ragged crescendo, torn with emotion and landing somewhere between Nick Cave and Tom Waits. It’s a promising start that paves the way for the Latin-infused ‘My Morning Pages’. Again, it’s bittersweet and world-weary. And it’s fair to say that ‘We Used To Live Round Here’ is an expertly crafted document of string-soaked melancholia.
The Glue Ensemble Online
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