I've no idea why it has taken two years for this album to land in my in-tray for review but I don't think I have missed anything.
Danny Scott is from London, studied mime and later moved onto other performing arts. He now fancies himself as a bit of a poet but, having heard this record, I beg to differ.
The concept of the album is explained thus: "The identity and inspiration for Fallen Rainbow is one of 'tragi-beauty' - a refusal to deny the reality of pain, hurt and brokenness, but equally a defiant refusal to be bound, crippled or determined by it either".
It opens with piano refrain ,Traces, played by Johannes Diem a tune which resurfaces five times, the final time extended into the closing song.
The album's sixteen songs are interspersed with spoken words and I was reminded of a record called Edge of Day from 1989 in which the poems by Laurie Lee were beautifully set to music by Johnny Coppin. That anthology of poetry and music worked admirably because it created a vital and lyrical link between nature and the cycle of life. Scott attempts something similar here but falls flat because his metaphors are so pedestrian and his 'poetry' is deadened by dull lines read in a deliberate manner as if weighty pauses alone would impress us with his depth of feeling.
On Borrowed Time, for example, he drags out a simple line "It's simply how it's meant to be" to become :
"It's simply...............how...............it's ...............meant...............to ...............be"
which, instead of sounding profound, merely made me think of Peter Sellers' reading of The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night in the style of Shakespeare's Richard III.
Scott says he wanted his song cycle to be released as a live recording to capture the "fragile reality" of a concert performance. The songs were therefore recorded in a performance at the Theater des Andenblicks, Vienna.
But the strange thing is how he has chosen to capture the reaction of the audience.
For instance, there is enthusiastic applause for the faux-comic turn of track 8 :'Where d'you get those shoes' (which doubles as a introduction to the band members) and by the time we get to track 12, the mere reference to the title (Bridges) sends the crowd into a state of ecstasy .
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You can't help thinking these cheers are canned. especially since, for the opening and closing tracks, the audience reaction is conspicuous by its absence. Shades of Life, which is seems a key track is curiously greeted with silence as are all the final four tracks.
This all gives the unfortunate impression that the theatregoers' had a burst of enthusiasm mid-way through the show then inexplicably lost interest.
The album's message is that the props that we imagine keep our lives on track are often illusory or, as Scott puts in the attempted rap - Yeah and?: "we search for knowledge but still don't understand". .
The contrast between our personal troubles and real world tragedies is driven home with an irritating lack of subtlety. Just Another Day ,sung by Ingrid Diem, is a case in point. Here the singer tells of banal everyday irritations ("my pen keeps running out of ink" while relating some horrific news of the day:"A gun-man shoots five children dead at school". So, the song continues, while lovers kiss and mothers coo over newborn children, "the soldiers still are fighting in the trench"(sic).
The final track Traces #5 is like a rainbow-over -troubled-water
prayer, one assumes to an interventionist god, ( "I cannot close my heart to thee") that expresses the hope that we will re-find lost roads, begin again with fresh optimism, find joy......blah-de-blah-de-blah.
Personally my own hope of finding anything other that pretentious bunkum in this record had faded long before I got to this point .
Danny Scott Online
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