Reviewer’s note: Due to certain dark, deeply personal urges which the vocals of this album dredge up within me, I have consulted (by way of a less than reputable acquaintance) a certain Ecuadorian “Dentist” and procured a prescription for some rather high-potency Lithium, which I will be popping liberally during the following writing, so as to facilitate a more “balanced” review, and to hopefully not drag said text into the gutter of my difficult-to-suppress erotic “dark place”. Apologies in advance for any lapses in grammar or punctuation this may cause.

Allllrrrrright. Art Bears.
At the sour turn of the Sixties, two Cambridge students(natch), Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson formed the nexus of Henry Cow, a band who over the course of ten years pretty much bucked every stale tradition of Rock, creating their own odd, Baroque-inflected free jazz soaked cacophony which they refined to a method (or perhaps more accurately a series of techniques to build upon) dubbed “Rock in Opposition” by way of several communal traipses across old Europa and six (well, seven-“Concerts” was the anything-but-ubiquitous live double) polarizing, sometimes pretentious but always deeply rewarding albums, two of which were recorded (in true 70’s art-rock pinko fashion) as shared efforts with like-minded (read “obviously bent”) German labelmates (Virgin usedta be one of the world’s most adventurous record companies, believe it or not) Slapp Happy, Fronted by exotic twitterer Dagmar Krause…ohhh, time for another pill. hold on.

Ahh. there. Anyway, During the recording of their final (and in my opinion, finest) album “Western Culture”, the band split down the middle, with Hodgkinson wanting to continue down the increasingly oblique “tin foil hat-doffing” path their music had been careening down, and Frith wanting to perform more “song-oriented” fare. In a fashion unusually amicable and diplomatic for such a politically-minded outfit, Frith split off with percussionist Chris Cutler, to finish recording the material they had prepared for “Western Culture” but which did not make the final lp. Cutler wrote lyics, and lo and behold, their recently-made-bandless Harpy acquaintance Dagmar Krause stepped up to the plate to deliver them…Errrm, pill time, excuse me.

Yeah. Cutler cribbed a band name, Brion Gysin style, from a quote out of the book “Ancient Art and Ritual”, “Art bears traces of its collective, social origin” and the band was up and running. Their first album, “Hopes and Fears” was released in 1978, being made entirely of Cutler and Frith’s aforementioned leftover Henry Cow material, updated to include Krause’s vocals.
Now, since her days in Slapp Happy, something akin to a slow-burning demonic possession occured within Dagmar Krause. Where once there was a charming, if limited, psych-pop singer (picture a Teutonic Grace Slick) there now was a voice that would make Wagner sweat clean through his hair-shirt. The two collaborative Slapp-Cow (Henry Happy?) albums displayed her intent and and a far more adventurous set of pipes, but it’s on “Hopes and Fears” where she really spontaneously combusts. Unfortunately, the album feels very uneven, because Cutler and Frith’s sometimes exceedingly spare (methinks the pair had read too much Bertold Brecht) playing just doesn’t keep up with Krause’s glottal acrobatics. One gets the feeling they were deliberately trying to clear the room for her musically, but could’ve done so without completely clipping their own formidable wings.

(Gulp.)

This, thankfully was not so on their second album “Winter Songs”. The duo wrote a fresh batch of 14 succinct, arguably more tuneful songs (though I find it funny what Frith and Cutler conceptualize “song-oriented” material to be–it’s as if the only “Pet Sounds” they were influenced by were the ones made by the communal Sheepdog when it got heartworms) all based loosely on carvings which adorn the walls of the Amiens cathedral in France. Dense? Yep. Challenging? You bet. This is a tough, TOUGH album to crack. It’s supposed to be. You’ll think, “What the hell is this? it sounds like a dumptruck full of Oboes and soup cans being driven off a crystal cliff by a yowling Succubus!”-even if you’re familiar with its’ creators’ previous output.
But with repeated listens (which you will be compelled beyond your will to commit yourself to–I certainly was) it’s brilliance will begin to take shape, an angular Swan which slowly carves itself out of the ice of initial distaste. Brilliance, nay, genius, all too apparent in Frith’s shapeshifting guitars and stark arrangements and Cutler’s pots-and-pans-in a room full of cuckoo clocks percussion, and his oblique, preternatural lyrics, delivered supernaturally by…THAT VOICE. It is the confounding voice of crestfallen strength, desperate and seemingly tuneless, yet never missing a note. It is stark in the greatest German tradition, but unlike much less talented and yet far more namedropped “anti-singers” like Nico, It is a voice strained and cold via too much emotion, rather than devoid of it. You can hear Krause’s inflection and influence in the yelp of Siouxie, the stern command of Nina Hagen, the searing operatic baritone of Jarboe and the tenor of Diamanda Galas. In the demented “whisper-to‑a howl” of P.J. Harvey. Its, its.…

Damn it. I promised myself I wouldn’t sully an otherwise fairly studious review, but Lithium be damned. It’s my Eastern European blood…The vocals make me want to be dominated. Have a patent-leather stilletto heel ground into my ribs, a clove cigarette ashed in my open eye, carve a Brisket thats taken straight from the oven and placed on my bare back, You get the picture. Nothing scatological, Just a good ass-kicking. Dagmar, you can be my personal “Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS” any time.

Wow. I feel better.

(I still think Nietzsche and Ayn Rand were full of shit, though.)