Album Review
David Devant and His Spirit Wife
Seaside the B-sides
Kindness Recordings
DL / CD*
Out now
*CD’s have sold out due to reviewers inability to meet a deadline. Download it and burn to disc for the car.
Compilation retrospective of all the David Devant & His Spirit Wife B-sides. Rare tracks that were previously only available on limited-edition vinyl and CD singles. All the tracks capture the band’s freer experimental pop magic out of sight of the label asking for the single. Perversely they all seem like hits. And it stands as probably the very best of Devant in one package says Ged Babey.
This album made me very happy indeed as I listened to it from start to finish. I don’t revisit this bands work as often as I should…. It’s utterly joyful, musically wonderful. English vaudevillian psychedelia, glam and pure pop. David Devant & His Spirit Wife, are, to my mind, the great ‘lost’ ‘Britpop-era’ band. They just weren’t monosyllabically nomenclature’d enough (Blur, Pulp, Oasis) – and far too surreal, arty and smart to be capable of dumbing-down.
It also made me cry, as 14 years ago my best friend, who I will forever associate with David Devant & His Spirit Wife, died, unexpectedly, tragically young. I never realised how much I still miss him but and hour and a quarter of David Devant & His Spirit Wife brought the memories flooding back.
Phil was possibly the archetypical Devant fan. A geek, a nerd, into movies and Sci-Fi, soundtrack music and cutting-edge comedy far more than he was actually into music and the indie scene. Ten years young than me, when I first met him he’d never been to a small-venue gig ever. He was a bit OCD and wore earplugs when I did tempt him to go and see bands. He was ‘socially awkward’ and inappropriately rude at times and my friends referred to him as ‘your weird mate’. For someone who was ‘straight’-looking (not at all punk rock or indie-cool) he was incredibly outrageous and funny when intoxicated or bored.
He had tried his hand at drama and writing comedy scripts, movie screenplays etc and the only band he had a passion for previously was They Might Be Giants. Anyway…. most bands he came with me to see he dismissed as ‘rubbish’, until I suggested David Devant & His Spirit Wife….attracted by the kooky name alone.
He was utterly captivated by their performance, the theatrics, the spectral roadies and of course the songs. He’d never seen anything like them before. Neither had I to be honest. The Vic and Bob type surrealism and slapstick of for example, grating carrots over the Vessels head during Ginger. The notion of Englishness encapsulated in the Music Hall magician and the characterisation of the band as The Vessel and the Cluedo-inspired The Colonel – complete with vintage safari suit. Everything about the band appealed to Phil and his imagination. The habit of replacing the ‘obvious’/predictable rhyme… the psychedelia of odd, everyday outmoded objects, cine cameras, steam kettles, curly-cabled red telephones. Magic, love(life) miscellaneous – all the details you can’t do without. He loved them, and so did I, pleased I’d finally convinced him that ‘live music’ was as great as cinema.
DD&HSW’s motto as every fan knows is ‘All Done with Kindness’ way before ‘be kind’ became an memetic platitude. Phil was, despite his idiosyncrasies, a very kind man. He always bought the best presents for my son – including DVDs of V for Vendetta and They Live, before he was quite old enough to appreciate them. He always signed himself off as ‘Philip R. Smart’ so that you couldn’t say his name without saying Arse in the middle.. I miss him, his unique humour and kindness and David Devant will always remind me of him.
And in true Ronnie Corbett tradition I have digressed: Seaside the B-sides is a monumentally brilliant album – a great non-chronological running order – and some of the later tracks I’m hearing for the first time… It’s well worth investing in, even if you aren’t a hardcore fan (they already have it -the 200 Limited Edition CD’s selling out at the launch gig last week.)
Singer/lyricist Mikey gave me a commentary on the songs (in italics) and I have added my thoughts (not in italics)
Everything Fits into Place – Essex funk ode to reconciling synchronicity and OCD. Voulez vous be mindful avec moi?
Showcasing the DD&HSW genius in one song: incorporates the Pearl & Dean Ba-ba ba-ba bap-a-baa and Cameo’s Word Up on a song which echoes Howard Devoto & Magazines cover of Sly Stones Thank You…
One Hand – shoe gaze Alex Chilton bubblegum pop song about desire and heart break.
Later period stuff where the band rocked harder.
Life on a Crescent – one of those songs that presented itself as a gift. Turning aspiration into triumphant dissent against expected orthodoxies. Recorded live on the Mark Radcliffe radio 1 show.
I wonder if the rest of the session is in a vault somewhere and releasable? Great track from the flawless debut album.
Slip it to Me – the best track that wasn’t on Nuggets. Living by the sea is amazing but you might drown in a wave of smugness.
Sounds like a live recording and the band at their best. Almost Suede-like in its sexiness… ‘My mountain bike is rusty / the people in the flat above don’t trust me’ is a classic couplet.
The Trouble Mervyn Peake’s nonsense poem honoured in sonic worship of his genius.
Always one of my favourite Devant B-sides. I started a Peake book once, but never finished it. I always loved this track and it is a pinnacle of the bands greatness, despite being thieved magpie-like from Merv.
David’s Coming Back – The song that the Vessel walked back on stage to after being fired from a canon at the Duke of Yorke’s cinema.
Nice piece of Glam stomp.
Dolphin Squares – not so much a song as a feeling about the haunting utopian residency in Pimlico. Inspired largely by the buildings red neon name visible across the river.
Beautiful Bowie-ish pastoral psych pop song.
The Imposters – nouvelle vague theme tune for a programme about the rise of social media written in 1999.
Mikey/the Vessel’s voice at its most commanding and again Bowie-like – an unavoidable comparison as his speaking voice has the same tone too.
Life Line – sad song about an alluringly desolate life in a kitchen sink tragicosmic opera.
Another Top Ten Hit from a parallel universe….The In 2001.. and In 2002.. lines dating a timeless song of Alone Again Or type greatness.
This is for Real – originally recorded as the b side to Pimlico (the first single) starts as a Kinksy romp through nature/nurture in the specifics and mutates into the ultimate punk glam anthem sung on Milton’s burning lake.
A great version of a fantabulous song but with annoying ‘tap-dancing’ low in the mix.
One Thing After Another – as if Bono had written his weirdest song after concord crashed imagined with David Niven in the cockpit. Genuinely.
Incredible song which really does sound like U2 if they were decent and influenced by Powell & Pressberger.
My Magic Life – the title of David Devant’s real life biography. A feat of historical fact contained in the technology of melody.
Along with the Auteurs ‘Showgirl’ and Gretchen Hofners Judy Garland Life, to me this is the sound of what ‘Britpop’ could have been, if it had any class or sense of decorum (along with Suede and Pulp needless to say)
Ghost in My House – a possessed cover of the Falls cover of R Dean Taylor’s stone cold Motown classic.
I actually prefer this now to the other versions – I know – that even surprises me!
Sometime Else – psychedelic mind altering rewrite of Slip it to Me, made for seventies Kids tv. Further proof of the bands desire to reclaim the seaside for those that see it.
Back and White – a hair product as portal to radical nostalgia. Featured in the film The Bystanders.
Do you reminisce in black and white? I do actually have dreams in black and white sometimes, having only got a colour TV at the age of 12 (in 1976). The band must be almost my age!
Who we Are – Arista label bosses objected to the opening lyric of Said the owl to the pussy cat, overlooking the band’s most heart breaking piece of sonic enchantment.
Any song which could be described as ‘Lennon-ish’ and/or sung in a falsetto voice I ordinarily, instinctively loathe – but this is the exception. It is utterly beautiful and a song I will take to my grave and have played at my funeral after-party. And I really can’t explain why. Said the Owl To The The Pussycat. Meow. whatcha looking at? Don’tcha know I was born like that..
Any Fool Can Fall in Love – the song begins with “All men are bastards who like to play with guns. They shit all the answers I guess they’re their fathers sons”. Romantic love envisioned without men needing to assert their alpha authority. Apparent naïf in love.
Just a classic love song.
Born Yesterday – the true story of band’s first two months set to an ornate tapestry of extra-terrestrial motifs.
Incurable – David Devant died in Putney home for the incurable. I’m in cure. I’m incurable. Sings the Vessel contemplating madness as self preservation.
I adore this song. Never heard it before. It’s like Supergrass circa Caught by the Fuzz with feedbacking Freak Scene type guitar. The band at their loosest and most ‘punk rock’. the lyrics are brilliant: I could show you all my dreams so beautiful / but I’d much prefer you up against the wall.… could be a Suede b-side. There are times when any band transcend everything and just write a song which plays-itself and sounds out-of-control and this is one such song. Their usual restraint is absent. They seem to be playing in now-or-never kind of abandon.
The Last Ever Love Song – recorded live for British Forces Radio, sort of how the last ever love song might sound. Composed on a Yamaha multi track organ. Only better.
Classic which was on the Work, Love life, Miscellaneous album.
Mr Talent – a song about the vampiric desire to succeed so strong it becomes the ghost of a flea and saves the world.
A slice of utter genius – Brel, Scott Walker and Rocky Horror vibes – the only current band who get anywhere near this are Erotic Secrets of Pompeii who have a darker version of this kind of sound, full of bombast and choruses.
Cookie The Clown – written and recorded in the Brecon Beacons. A story about love and the redeeming power of a longing for the supernatural.
Odd, yet fabulous short story with theme tune music a la Tales of the Unexpected.
22 songs which I have listened to on-repeat for a whole week. The Greatest Story Ever Told of how a bands ambition and artistry meant they only reached a discerning cult audience. The theatre, absurdity, surreal aspects never obscured the fact that they were great songwriters with a lot of heart behind the artifice and characterisation. Joe Public were never gonna get them somehow.
One of the things which 1977-79 Punk taught us was that B-sides could be brilliant, better-than-the flip in some cases, beautiful, brash, blissful, bold, beguiling…. this collection fits all of those descriptors and more.
All wordsGed Babey
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