Association is a weird thing and it can have a bearing, whether we like it or not. ELVIS PERKINS, for example, would probably not have whetted this writer's appetite had he been Tom Cruise's son rather than the late, great Anthony 'Norman Bates' Perkins.
Nonetheless, merit still counts for something in this jaundiced world and Elvis Perkins' debut album 'Ash Wednesday' had a delicate, ominous beauty which engaged on its' own terms. His lengthy touring on the back of the album's release brought him to the attention to an approving public and the engagement of a regular core group of musicians in Brigham Brough, Wyndham Boylan-Garrett and Nick Kinsey breathed new life into his deathly muse. So much so that they've been retained on an equal billing as ELVIS PERKINS IN DEARLAND.
Thus, the eponymous 'Elvis Perkins in Dearland' is a second debut for Perkins rather than the official follow-up to 'Ash Wednesday', but what's in a name? Whether it's Elvis Perkins or Elvis Perkins in Dearland, this is a fine album and the democracy at work certainly hasn't blunted Perkins' macabre ruminations on love, life and death.
Produced by Chris Shaw (Bob Dylan/ Public Enemy), '..In Dearland' is a dark, Americana-tinged outing. Akin to The Band's heyday recordings, Dearland have names (Brigham Brough, Wyndham Boylan-Garnett) and use arcane instruments (trombones, harmonium, banjo, clarinet) which make them sound like wandering minstrels attached to a backwoods carny troupe and the noise they make usually lives up to the brilliantly unlikely billing.
Opener 'Shampoo' gives you an idea of the roots-imbued sonic cross-pollination going down here. Ushering in wheezy, Neil Young-style harmonica, whirring Garth Hudson organ and Nick Kinsey's valiant attempts at inserting a dragging disco beat, it's a corrosive love song of sorts, with Perkins delivering a blood-stained Valentine courtesy of lines like: “black is the colour of my one true love...black is the colour of human blood.” The fact he sings in a sing-song-y fashion rather like a cross between Hawksley Workman and Sparks' Russell Mael only adds to the esoteric attraction.
Expecting the unexpected from there on is the rule of thumb, yet Dearland seem to excel regardless of the Alt. Country variant they seem to employ. 'Hey', for example, finds the band indulging in a drunken waltz around Kinsey's lunkheaded, Mo Tucker-style drums. 'Hours Last Stand' finds the musical corpse being dragged into Tom Waits/ Violent Femmes-style country death song territory and the splendid, lovelorn acousticism of 'Send My Fond Regards To Lonelyville' is elevated – as if from nowhere – by a rattling good New Orleans-style mardi-gras final coda with trombones at six o'clock.
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The album's menacing high point comes courtesy of the lashing, lurching, Bad Seeds-ian rock'n'roll of 'I'll Be Arriving', though it's the album's final section which really stands out. To this end, there's the mad-two step of the (probably literally) devil-may-care 'Doomsday' (“I don't let Doomsday bother me, do you let it bother me?” which makes you realise what a radio-friendly unit shifter from 1899 may have sounded like. Then there's the killer final KO of '123 Goodbye' and 'How's Forever Been Baby?' The former opens with a lyric which would give Bill Callahan a run for his fatalistic dollar (“123 goodbye, I love you in death more than I ever could I life”) while the eminently stately 'How's Forever Been Baby?' has an elegant restraint and provides a suitably valedictory wind-down.
Association, then, really isn't the issue here, for Elvis Perkins and his talented henchmen have more than enough twisted, psychotic splendour of their own to go around. With 'Elvis Perkins in Dearland' they've created a magical place, but it's a landscape where both love and darkness are clearly visible. Don't stray too far off the beaten track if you want to be around to savour the next one.
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