The last Thomas Dolby studio album was Astronauts & Heretics back in 1992, so to say A Map Of The Floating City is long-awaited is a bit of an understatement.
There have been a couple of live releases and re-issues in recent years (notably the wonderful collectors edition of The Flat Earth in 2009) but the silence with regards to new music was finally broken last year with a couple of digital EP’s available from the official Dolby website. 6 of the EP tracks appear on A Map Of The Floating City. Whilst they work perfectly well as album tracks, it’s a slight disappointment that the album is not made up of more new music, but after such a long wait, it’s only a minor complaint.
Album opener Nothing New Under The Sun kicks off with a bassline that’s vaguely reminiscent of The Jackson’s Can You Feel It, and this is the only real nod towards the 80’s on the album.
“Hey any fool can write a hit
loop me a breakbeat baby I’ll tweak it till it fits”
A wonderful rhythm guitar line from long-time Dolby collaborator Kevin Armstrong drives the song. The Princealike dirty bubbling synths introduce Spice Train, a track that sits better on the album (as a standalone single it never really hit me). The Eastern promise of the strings and backing vocals work well with the travelogue lyrics.
Evil Twin Brother, with it’s New York fire sirens, Shaft guitars and themed lyrics really set the scene for the song. Much like the way I Love You Goodbye from Astronauts & Heretics, with it’s crickets and thunder gave a real cajun flavour, Evil Twin Brother gives a real feel of the at times claustrophobic New York city vibe.
“They say that New York city never sleeps
But I think they’re only talking about me
it’s 3am and ninety-five degrees.”
The album is split into three themed sections. The final track that makes up the first section (Urbanoia) is A Jealous Thing Called Love, a lovely latin-tinged song of regret and betrayal, featuring Bruce Woolley (co-writer of Video Killed The Radio Star with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes of The Buggles) on backing vocals.
Amerikana is the second section of the album, which starts with Road To Reno.
“He was a crooked politician
she sold brassieres at Sears
he said he liked The Beatles
And she liked Tears for Fears”
A tale of a Badlands styled road-trip, that’s never going to end with chocolates and flowers, although Mars bars get a mention in the lyrics. The guitar has a real Dire Straits circa Communiqué era feel, which is apt as Mark Knopfler features a couple of tracks later.
The Toad Lickers is a banjo and jaw harp (from Imogen Heap) led song about “a group of crazed eco-hippies in the Welsh mountains who get high on Bufo alvarius and creep into the local town after hours in search of munchies” according to Thomas on his website. Glad he cleared that one up, as otherwise I’d have no idea what on earth this strange song is about. The track features backing vocals from Adele Bertei (who provided the soaring vocals on Dolby’s Hyperactive! from 1984, pop-pickers, not toad-lickers).
17 Hills is the longest track on the album, and is up there with Screen Kiss as one of my favourite Dolby songs. Featuring the afore-mentioned Mark Knopfler on guitar, this evocative track always reminds me of the wide-open spaces of California, and the hills overlooking the urban sprawl of Los Angeles. 17 Hills features some lovely fretless bass work from Jeffrey Wash.
“The city rises on seventeen hills
seventeen hills from the Bay
The silhouette of those beautiful hills
is right at the end of this old stormdrain.”
Love Is A Loaded Pistol ends this section of the album and is the most stripped back track, with just Dolby and a string section. I’ll let Thomas explain the inspiration for this song:
“The idea came to me in a dream: I had a nocturnal visitation from Billie Holiday who traveled through time to give me a song lyric. Of course, I was amazed and I was overjoyed. She was in an evening gown and looking ravishing. She sat next to me and said ‘I’ve got a lyric for you.’ I said ‘Great, hit me!’ She said ‘Okay…..This time it’s love.’
I smiled awkwardly. There was a pause. Then I said ‘erm…. well it’s a bit crap, isn’t it?’ She looked dejected and asked why. I said there had to be half a dozen songs with that title over the years, not that any particular one sprang to mind. ‘Well you can make it cool, right?’ Suddenly the waking me got very upset with my dream me and interjected some diplomacy. I mean here I was with one of the greatest singers that ever lived, and I just told her her idea was crap. I started to say something like ‘Look, I’ll try to work your lyric in….’ but it was too late. Billie was fading and I felt myself waking up…”
Oceanea is the final themed section of the album, which starts with the song of the same name. Featuring Eddi Reader on vocals, it’s a beautiful, haunting song that even includes what sounds to me like, shock-horror, some auto-tune effects on Dolby’s vocals, not in a Cher way you understand, but just a subtle inflection on certain words. The lyrics are the most moving on the album, and Oceanea is definitely the personal highlight of the album for me.
Simone, with its theremin intro from Bruce Woolley, has a lyrical twist that I won’t give away here, and at times reminds me of Aja period Steely Dan or maybe even early Prefab Sprout (who Dolby first worked with on the Steve McQueen album in 1985).
The album ends with To The Lifeboats, with its lovely rolling drums from Pat Mastelotto and haunting acoustic guitar, sounds of the sea and a not very positive end for the subject of the song, by the sounds of things.
Hopefully the warm critical response to this album will mean there won’t be such a long wait until the next Thomas Dolby album.
Buy A Map Of The Floating City at Amazon UK
Buy The Flat Earth at Amazon UK
Buy The Golden Age of Wireless at Amazon UK
Buy The Sole Inhabitant – (+DVD) at Amazon UK
Buy Astronauts & Heretics at Amazon UK
All lyrics © Thomas Dolby
All A Map Of The Floating City videos on this page taken from the official Thomas Dolby YouTube channel.
The 2008 Bush Hall show was certainly a memorable and emotional evening, captured perfectly by Richard Smith’s excellent mixtaped dvd. But for me, the real no-man experience was this magical 45 minutes at Leamington Spa. I’ve seen hundreds of different live shows across many genres, committing many individual live performances to memory, and of all these performances I have seen since my first live show back in 1979 (Thin Lizzy at Hammersmith Odeon, in case you are wondering), I have compiled a list of my favourite gigs (Thin Lizzy never made it into the top 10, though it was a great first gig). Vivid memories of performances by the likes of The Stranglers at The Rainbow, The Police at Lewisham Odeon, Kate Bush at the London Palladium, The Who at Wembley Stadium, Prince & the Revolution on the Parade tour, Nine Inch Nails a couple of years ago and more, have now been joined by this no-man show.
pretty genius (the third wild opera song of the evening, and no-man’s least popular album according to Tim) felt more like the album version, mainly due to the more powerful drum sound, and then there was lighthouse. A key track on the returning jesus album (and the band’s most “progressive” song) lighthouse retains its power and beauty in a live format, and the instrumental coda after the organ break always sends me somewhere. If they had played just this one track, I would have still left the venue a happy and content man.
Slow Electric is a new collaboration between Tim Bowness (no-man), Peter Chilvers (Bowness/Chilvers & Brian Eno) and the Estonian group UMA (Aleksei Saks and Robert Jürjendal). The album features Tony Levin (King Crimson / Peter Gabriel) on two tracks.
I must admit, I’d not heard any of this Norwegian band’s music before, though I did buy the Night Blooms album by The Opium Cartel (another project from White Willow’s Jacob Holm-Lupo) but I was keen to hear the album due to the involvement of no-man’s Tim Bowness on the track Kansas Regrets.
Grace For Drowning is the second solo album from Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree / no-man). Whilst his debut release, Insurgentes (2008) seemed to draw inspiration from the post-Punk era, Grace For Drowning has a wider palette of sounds, and harks back to the late 60’s, early 70’s for inspiration, especially in drawing influence from film scores (Belle De Jour ) and some of the more jazz-rock experiments (Remainder the Black Dog).
My most played artist of 2010 (
Another new band, this time from the UK. Their Man Alive album was released in late August, and follows a string of single releases dating back to 2008. The songs are varied, with lovely layered harmony vocals, inventive guitar and nods to bands such as Talking Heads, Yes, XTC and even The Associates.
Portland, Oregon’s Gavin Castleton is a singer/songwriter I came across late in 2009, via someone’s end of year list on Facebook. See, sometimes these lists are worthwhile! Gavin’s music varies between progressive jazz-tinged pop, through to electronica and even rap, with traditional song arrangements and looping experiments.
She wanted a job so I brought her the forms
My favourite Gavin Castleton album is For the Love of Pete, which was released in 2007. It’s the most traditional (for the want of a better word) album from Gavin.
The Devil and I is the debut release from Lone Wolf aka Paul Marshall. Leeds musician Paul Marshall released an album called Vultures in 2007, but his first release under the Lone Wolf moniker is a very different beast. Losing the folk influences, and drawing from a wider instrumental palette, the Devil and I is as lyrically rich as it is musically.
Queen of Denmark was a must buy for me, because of the Midlake connection (the band back Grant on the album). Sounding very much like an album from the mid-70’s, with lush backing vocals and not sounding out-of-place in the company of Bread or Fleetwood Mac, Queen of Denmark reveals more when you dig deeper. Silver Platter Club even sounds like Carole Bayer Sager meets Gilbert O’Sullivan, but in a good way, I kid you not!
The Suburbs is summed up perfectly by its cover artwork, hinting at a time and a world long since disappeared.
2010 was the year I rediscovered Bruce Springsteen. My favourite Bruce albums were always The River, The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle and especially Darkness on the Edge of Town. I went along to the UK premiere of the film The Promise In November, which was attended by the Boss himself. The documentary looks at the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, and some of the songs that failed to make the final cut. It was a fascinating look at this landmark album, and I treated myself to the box-set that contained a DVD of the documntary, a remastered version of Darkness on the Edge of Town and a double disc of The Promise, songs from the Darkness sessions.
Darkness on the Edge of Town sounds amazing in this remastered version, it’s like hearing a new album. I’m still blown away by Candy’s Room, Badlands, Racing in the Street and Prove it all Night. I find it hard to believe that I first heard these songs 32 years ago.
Ok, not a new film, but one I’ve just seen. Directed by Sean Penn, and starring Emile Hirsch as Chris McCandless who leaves a life of comfort and safety to find a different way of life in the wild, open spaces of the US.
As above, one bought on blu-ray this year, and a horror classic. In my eyes, the film deserves to be talked of in the same way that The Shining, Omen or The Exorcist are described as genre-defining movies.
The Pacific
Tim Bowness and his band – Michael Bearpark (Guitars), Steve Bingham (Violin / Loops) and Peter Chilvers (Piano / Textures) played a private show at the Estonian Embassy in London at the request of the Ambassador, Dr Margus Laidre.
California Norfolk’s Days Turn Into Years was a real surprise, as it was presented as an epic 10 minute re-reading, and was subsequently very different from the album version. The song was driven by plucked violin strings, and deviated from its original arrangement about three-quarters of the way through the performance, building towards a gradual, powerful crescendo.
Unprotected was the only song from the My Hotel Year era, and was a b-side (does that term still exist?) from the Sleepwalker single. It worked well, even when shorn of all the electronica of the studio version.
Released in 2008, but only noticed by me in 2009, so included here, the album Rook from Texan band Shearwater is a delicate collection of songs driven by rich strings and piano mixed with acoustic guitars and lots of references to birds (band member Jonathan Meiburg is a graduate student in ornithology).
Again, a 2008 release, but one I stumbled across in 2009 thanks to the wonders of Youtube. I was aware of Butch Walker’s previous band, Marvellous 3, due to the power-pop anthem from 1999, Freak of the Week (a fair-sized hit in the US that I heard when on holiday in Florida).
The part Swedish, part US band Miike Snow have released one album to date, and a clutch of classic singles. For the fact-fiends reading this blog, the Swedish contingent in the band were responsible for the Grammy winning Toxic by Britney Spears.
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