The Attendant may not be a household name, but as leader of seminal Creation Records’ guitar combos The Loft and The Weather Prophets, Pete Astor will certainly be known to many.
Alistair Fitchett, of International Times, comments in the ‘Suburban surrealism, psychedelic urbanity, Stephen Duffy living on a hill with Wire as house guests, taking the world apart and reassembling it beatifically off-kilter.’ And indeed, ‘Unit’ is a busy release, and Astor packs a lot of ideas and a lot of stylistic variety into just five songs.
It’s a thunking, funking stop/start bass groove and metronomic vintage drum machine sound that provides the basis of a fairly minimal arrangement which stands as a backdrop to the monotone spoken word of ‘How to be Here’, and the vibe is distinctly 80s. It’s a thread that runs through the altogether more sedate but expansive ‘No Gold Watch’. Do people even get given gold watches anymore, on retirement, or ever? Do people even get to retire, even? I read recently how a large percentage of retirees unretire within a couple of years due to missing the people and the workplace. Perhaps this is why gold watched have been dropped as a thing… but more likely it’s all part of the economy drive.
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‘Machine for Living’ is an interesting piece, a drifting, chorus-soaked guitar drifting over that mid-pace drum-machine thump as Astor lays down another hushed, restrained spoken delivery. The background rises in volume and tension and over time, the track takes on a whole new dimension of depth and the brooding angles are truly gripping.
On ‘Unit’, The Attendant explores a kind of nostalgia which offers no relief, no joy, just a lugubrious melancholy. But being well-executed carries it, and ultimately, ‘Unit’ feels like an articulation of something lost.
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