Passion play

It would appear that Luke Haines’ taste for subversion has intensified over the years. Consistently one of the greatest – not to mention most criminally under-rated – songwriters operating in Britain, Haines has managed to retain the corrosive lyrical content from such barbed masterworks as the Auteurs’ After Murder Park, only these days he likes to merge the same dark thematic preoccupations with lethally catchy pop melodies.

“I think if you’re going to write fairly cynical lyrics, you’ve got to have a pop tune to go with it,” reasons Sarah Nixey, lead singer with Haines’ current group, Black Box Recorder. “Also, the way in which I sing the songs softens the blow slightly. You want to draw people in with something that sounds really beautiful, but when you listen a bit more closely, everything is not quite what it seems.”

Haines’ work would also appear to prove the veracity of the old saying that all cynics are, in fact, disappointed romantics. As with gorgeous Auteurs’ tracks such as ‘Child Brides’, much of the material on BBR’s third album, the excellent Passionoia, mixes scathing social satire with an oddly affecting air of melancholy.

“There’s a sort of cosy view of England and Britain there,” Sarah agrees. “In actual fact, I don’t think it’s contempt at all. I just think that it’s a country that we know and love, and we’re just allowed to say these things – they’re like home truths, really. And if you can talk about England this way in novels and films, then why can’t you talk about it in songs?”

Sarah’s mention of film and literature leads me to draw a comparison between BBR’s work and that of authors such as Will Self and Martin Amis, two writers who have also attempted to explore the simultaneous beauty and horror of living in London.

“Yes, definitely,” Sarah acknowledges. “The songs are very character driven and quite theatrical. They’re also concept albums as well. This time round, on Passionoia, we’re dealing with a lot of the old themes – love, relationships, dating. But there’s also a few new elements sneaking in, like modern aspirations, pop stars, and maybe a few odd characters as well, like Andrew Ridgely, and wanting to be the new Diana!”

Depending on which angle you approach it from, the death of the so-called ‘People’s Princess’ provoked either (a) a profoundly touching outpouring of public grief on an unprecedented scale, or (b) a relentless onslaught of total strangers spouting sense-mangling soundbytes.

“It was strange, it was displaced emotion really, wasn’t it?” Sarah reflects. “I wasn’t amazed at the reaction exactly, because a celebrity dying is always treated like a national disaster. But it went on for so long! We wondered about when it would be the right time to bring this song out. You obviously have to wait a few years for people to recover from the emotional devastation (laughs wryly). We felt five years was about right. ‘The New Diana’ is actually the first song about Diana since the rewording of ‘Candle In The Wind’!”

Although Passionoia is unlikely to replicate the global chart success of Elton John’s unlistenable dirge, BBR have nonetheless made significant inroads into the mainstream in recent years, even appearing on Top Of The Pops with the title track of their magnificent 2000 album, Facts Of Life. Sarah is keen for the group to move even further into the national consciousness.

“We’d love to do Top Of The Tops again,” she asserts. “Our goal is to infiltrate the mainstream - I think we fit in quite comfortably between TATU and Oasis. Chart success is what we’re after.”

Here’s to the Top 20 getting a much-needed kick in the backside.