“Why do we automatically sink to fighting the uncontrollable things/When we could just pack up our belongings and go?”
That’s the first question The Tycho Brahe put to the jury on ‘Steel Wheels’, the breezily propulsive opening tune on their second album, and while this writer has no answer, I do have another query: “Why is it we feel compelled to chase only the ones who run away?” The vile Viconte de Valmont purred in Dangerous Liaisons, to which arch ice-bitch the Marquise de Merteuil snapped back “Immaturity.” When it comes to pop’s groaning banquet, we all turn into little Neros demanding finer wines and shinier baubles.
A couple of years ago I interviewed Carol Keogh and listened intently to what she had to say about keeping things small and beautiful, stressing music over personality. I rubbed my chin and reviewed the tape and scarcely agreed with a word she said. But… a fundamental difference in doctrines doesn’t preclude a reconciliation with the music. I like The Tycho Brahe a lot, plus, putting out a double album on no budget is ostentatious to the point of Wildean.
But is it vanity publishing?
No. Love Life is perfectly realised within its own parameters. The Tycho Brahe, more than any band operating out of this country, sound like no one so much as themselves. Obvious reference points are damn near impossible – I might resort to something like “mid-period Kate Bush fronting some lost 4AD band”, with the caveat that it be that label’s Les Mysteres Des Voix Bulgares as much as This Mortal Coil.
Their sound is polyphonic but also polyrhythmic; the pizzicato pluckings of ‘Imprint’ combine with scattershot snare drum and high drama strings to make a sound that is genuinely cinematic as opposed to simply aping treasured film scores.
I do have problems with some aspects of the record though. Carol Keogh’s words would scan like arthouse hand-wringing if her voice, somewhere between north of England folk chanteuse and indie cipher, didn’t render them synaesthetic. She’s more in love with her ideas than the desire to communicate them, so when a line like “We have only love, only love/Hold onto it”, cuts through the mix you have to savour the raw emotion invested in it. Moments like these strike the partial listener in a way that the more esoteric stuff can’t.
If Carol Keogh ever quits music, her recitation of ‘The Sun King’ should score her a regular gig on children’s television Storytime slots – provided the little tykes are whacked out on ’shrooms.