Certain music lends itself particularly well to specific physical media. For instance: Black Sabbath on vinyl, Autechre on CD, Aaron Dilloway’s tape manipulations on cassette. I don’t know if it’s due to the rugged, physical performances or the nagging sense that this is a fly-on-the-wall recording of a live jam session, but something rooted in Deep Cabaret’s Matchless demands the innate tangibility of analogue formats. It’s fitting then that this jazzy desert blues album, initially released on CD in 2020, has now been cut to wax for the first time by Wrong Speed Records. For the more digitally minded amongst you, a bonus live recording has been strapped on too.
At the heart of Deep Cabaret’s sound is a sturdy sense of the corporeal. That’s true of both the tactile handling of physical instruments (hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, clarinet, and cello all make appearances alongside a classic combo of guitar, bass, and drums), and the lyrical content of troubadour and lead vocalist, Steve Lewis. He lifts literary lines from the likes of William Blake, Carl Jung, Mary Oliver, and Jonathan Safran Foer, reworking and repurposing their prose into new narratives. He navigates the squelches, throat-sung drones, and tight-cheeked laser squeaks of opener ‘Dronegeese’, to discuss notions of repenting, singing “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles”. Then, on ‘Lila, with the lines “I’m just a body” and “One more day of it” he seems to be taking the perspective of someone lying on their death bed, waiting for the blissful relief that supposedly accompanies life’s loosening grip. Despite this prayer for respite, we find ourselves in the midst of a maniacal, chaotic, freak-folk waltz, suggesting that nirvana may not be lurking on the other side.
It’s not just what he says but how he says it. Despite the fertile abundance of intriguing instruments and talented performers, it is Lewis’s own chasm-straddling vocal chops that take centre stage. His ecstatic oral manipulations range from soft spoken word and carefully crooned passages to sheer guttural growls and rabid impersonations. Prime examples include the title track which is led by a full-throttle drone lured out of a ragged larynx and ‘The Blue’ in which Lewis’s dexterous voice emits a frog-like croak of “eee-ooo-ah” that then shifts, almost too easily, into stunning, Anohni-eqsue opulence.
‘Real Reality’ comes across as if Abstract Concrete have been flirting with Afro-funk, or Fela Kuti playing with A Certain Ratio as joyous, swinging, staccato clarinet bursts, prime for warming up a cold January day, flurry up to a satisfying crescendo. Once again, however, it’s Steve Lewis’ role as bandleader, conducting the disparate parts into one cohesive whole which provides the emphatic direction, lending it the air of a live recording or, at the very least, an accurate simulacrum of the evidently somatic live experience. Either way, the impression that we’re left with is that of a tight-knit band doling out serpentine grooves with the animated Lewis driving them on from the centre of the throng.
