REVIEW: Chris Connelly, Shipwreck (Wax Trax!/TVT)
- John Walker Chris Connelly has what you might call an "image problem." What to do when you're best known as lead screamer and John Lydon impressionist for Al Jourgensen's industrial/metal projects Ministry and Revolting Cocks, and yet you've just released a classic solo album of British art-rock which sounds like the product of a heavenly union of David Bowie, Brian Eno and Scott Walker? Shipwreck, first released in late 1994 but only now gathering steam with kudos from Rolling Stone, no less, is that album. And while it doesn't entirely jettison the hard-rock punch of Connelly's industrial past - "What's Left But Solid Gold?," "Drench" and "Meridian Afterburn" all rock out respectably--it is minus the Lydonesque yowl of RevCo which left Connelly with "a headache 24 hours a day and a constant sore throat." Which is quite OK, because Shipwreck's most glorious moments come when Connelly embraces the influences which he wears quite proudly on his sleeve--his current tour features Bowie and Walker covers for the encores--and goes for it.
"Candyman Collapse," the album's leadoff track, is sprightly art-funk al la Eno's Nerve Net, with Ministry drummer William Rieflin, sounding quite relieved to be freed from the hammerhead tempos of his regular band, cooking up a steamy polyrhythmic brew, over which Connelly adds a--suitably, given the song's title-- neo-bubblegum sounding chorus. Bubblefunk? Why not? The end result here is original, and, uh, quite tasty indeed. Similarly enjoyably bent is "Spoonfed Celeste," a comically black and kinky tale which would have sounded quite at home on Bowie's whimsical Hunky Dory album; check the lyric sheet for this one!
Beyond the rocking, the sprightly and the kinky, however, lies the true spiritual core of Shipwreck. Scotsman Connelly is at his best when he's mixing his love of poetic language (a big fan of W. B. Yeats, he) with the torch-song sensibility of Bowie's "Word On A Wing" or Walker's version of "No Regrets."
"Detestimony III," a remake of an obscure classic from Connelly's days with his first band, Finitribe, utilizes the aforementioned formula to stunning effect. The lyrics here are more suggestive than concrete: "Swords controlled by unknown souls / break habits by reversing roles / the mind completes the cycle / then you die." A gloomy existentialism, perhaps, but one buoyed by Rieflin's powerfully insistent drumming for an overall uplifting effect.
"The early nighters (for River Phoenix)" avoids the cliches that one could imagine infecting such a topic, an elegiac gem featuring a lilting vocal which effortlessly rides over a jazzy, syncopated musical backing. Here, Connelly conjures up a poetic evocation of those "who stop the flow / and die young," perhaps thinking not only of Phoenix, but of his girlfriend Tracey, who committed suicide in 1991. Connelly's industrial work also dealt in images of death, but in an entirely different way--only a true cynic could turn a deaf ear to music this stunning.
As it should be, the title track is the album's artistic apex. "Shipwreck" is an ode to a past of moral misadventure, and is musically on a level with "Heroes," no small praise coming from this critic. A soaring bassline takes the singer over the everyday threshold of emotion into catharsis, as Connelly wallows in the fragments of a misspent past: "It was proven in darkness / the drugs and the water mix well / If I come across heartless / I lost what I knew when I fell." The final line of the chorus is fittingly also one of the album's most powerful images, positing Art as an escape from Reality and a lifetime of mistakes: "Design your own sunset / and drop out of sight," sings Connelly, his voice cracking with emotional intensity.
Shipwreck is the great David Bowie album that fans have been waiting for since about 1980, except that Bowie didn't make it, an enigmatic Scotsman from Edinburgh did. Buy it today, and help ensure that Chris Connelly the crooner never has to scream again.
