TRACK REVIEW: black midi - Marlene Dietrich

TRACK REVIEW:

black midi

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet

Marlene Dietrich

9.7/10

The track, Marlene Dietrich, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-GM18LE1lA

GENRES:

Progressive-Rock/Jazz/Avant-Garde

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

The album, Cavalcade, is available via:

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/black-midi/cavalcade

RELEASE DATE:

28th May, 2021

LABEL:

Rough Trade

PRODUCERS:

Black Midi/John ‘Spud’ Murphy/Marta Salogni

TRACKLISTING:

John L

Marlene Dietrich

Chondromalacia Patella

Slow

Diamond Stuff

Dethroned

Hogwash and Balderdash

Ascending Forth

__________

IT is quite right that many…

are showing so much love for black midi right now. Their second album, Cavalcade, is receiving rave reviews for its originality and hugely impressive sound. It is a different thing compared to their 2019 debut, Schlagenheim. At eight tracks, their new album has concision and no waste. Each song is different and, when you listen to what they are producing, there is so much inventiveness and magic in their music. I am going to get down to reviewing a track from the album a bit later. Before that, I think it is worth providing some black midi background. I am also keen to look back at their debut and the sense of expectation and reception it received – I will work my way forward and get to Cavalcade after that. If you have not heard of the band, then black midi are an English rock band from London, formed in 2017. The band consists of Geordie Greep (vocals, guitar), Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin (vocals, guitar), Cameron Picton (vocals, bass guitar, synths) and Morgan Simpson (drums). An interview from The New York Times this month gives us some introduction:

“Band members cited copious musical influences. Simpson, 22, had been playing drums in his Pentecostal church since he was 4 years old, learning all the flexibility and drive that comes with live gospel music. Picton, 21, started as a guitarist but had a revelation listening to Motown bass lines. Greep, 21, absorbed his father’s record collection — progressive-rock, classical music, country — but was also fascinated by the whiz-bang impact of scores for cartoons.

black midi honed its music with regular gigs at the Windmill, a pub in Brixton with a reputation for nurturing innovative bands. The group still touches down at the Windmill — most recently with a 2020 Christmastime benefit webcast to support the club through the pandemic. For that concert, black midi merged with Black Country, New Road — billed as Black Midi, New Road — to perform Christmas carols, Minimalistic improvisations and, well, “Born to Run”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Martin Goodwin for The Guardian

I remember the buzz surrounding black midi back in 2019. Before they put out their debut album, so many people were discussing their music and bigging them up as a band to watch very closely. Certainly, when you hear what they produce, it is very different to anyone/anything else. Not quite Rock, (their music) draws in Jazz, Experimental and so many other sounds. Quoting from Interview Magazine, and we get a sense of how the band formed and the sort of reception afforded them in 2019:

“Black midi began honing their sound shortly after they met at BRIT School, a performing arts school that has seen the likes of Adele, Amy Winehouse, and FKA twigs pass through its doors. There, its members, Geordie Greep, Morgan Simpson, Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin, and Cameron Picton, were encouraged to experiment and improvise. That perfectly imperfect sound can be heard on their debut record, Schlagenheim, which also stands as a perfect encapsulation of the four-piece’s frenetic live show. “It’s like Russian roulette,” says Greep of playing in front of an audience. “It could be the best show you’ve ever done, or it could be absolutely terrible. The main thing is that you can’t have any expectations.”

Zero expectations is how black midi are approaching their future. So far, they’ve shunned attempts at trying to contextualize their music, especially when they’re asked if their bleakly abstract sound might be a response to Brexit. “If that’s the comparison people want to draw, then that’s cool, but for us, it’s just about music,” says Greep. “It says more about the person describing it than the band. In that way, we’re an inkblot test”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Bella Howard for The New York Times

Although there is modesty and that feeling that there is no pressure on the shoulders of black midi, I do feel like there was a real wave of affection for them. They definitely had people interested and curious as to what Schlagenheim would sound like. The album has such an improvisational feel. One wonders how it all formed in the studio. Returning to that interview from The New York Times, we get a sense of what the studio setup was:

“The band carved its early songs out of ideas that arose in collective jam sessions and were reshaped by relentless touring. Material that would end up on its debut album reached a worldwide audience on YouTube with a set filmed for the Seattle public-radio station KEXP during the Iceland Airwaves Festival in 2018. For “Schlagenheim,” black midi expanded its lineup in the studio, using synthesizers and guest horn players, refusing to be confined by what its members could perform onstage. Still, the album clearly captured the band’s manic energy.

When black midi performed “Bmbmbm” on television for the Mercury Prize in 2019, Kwasniewski-Kelvin leapt and tumbled across the stage. The group went on a later tour without him, substituting BRIT schoolmates on saxophone and keyboards. In January 2021, Kwasniewski-Kelvin announced that he was taking a hiatus from the band because he was “mentally unwell.” Although he shares some composer credits on “Cavalcade,” he is not heard on the album, reducing the band to three core members. “It’s a personal situation he’s getting through,” Greep said. “We’ll see what happens”.

I think, to contextualise and better explain Cavalcade, one needs to look back at Schlagenheim in order to compare and evaluate. Definitely, black midi have changed their studio habits and songwriting since that debut. Before that, I want to stick on the band’s formation and their earliest days. Coming to an interview from CRACK of 2019. It makes for interesting reading:

“Initially starting life as “two-hour ambient jams” between Geordie and Matt, the band recruited Morgan behind the kit in their final year at Brit School. A school show was part of a world music assignment that saw them take on Neu!’s krautrock jam Hero. “We must have taken up about half the show,” recalls Matt, “because we made it 15 minutes long. I wasn’t even playing guitar in that one, just smashing a cymbal,” he shrugs.

From there, things freewheeled. Geordie sent emails around to “every venue [he] could think of” in search of a gig. He only one got reply: The Windmill in Brixton. At that point, they realised they needed a bassist. “We only had one rehearsal with Cameron on that day,” Geordie remembers of that first show, in June last year. “But hey, it went alright!” After that, the group began playing at The Windmill with increasing regularity, tightening the screws of that live show and building a word-of-mouth following in lieu of any recorded tracks or social media presence. Months later, an NTS Radio session unexpectedly popped up on YouTube, gathering views like wildfire, crowds clamouring for scraps of information on a band by then dubbed by fellow Londoners Shame as ‘the best band in London’.

PHOTO CREDIT: Titouan Massé

If it all seemed mysterious, that wasn’t the intention. “People cottoned on quite quickly and we didn’t have much money,” shrugs Cameron of those quiet early months, not even a demo to their name. “And we really were just starting out, as well,” picks up Morgan. “Every little thing is a bonus. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves at all. It’s just one thing at a time.” From there, they were snapped up by producer Dan Carey, a man with a knack for drawing the wonderful out of British indie’s weirdest offerings. “He came up to us after a show and was like, ‘I want to record that one – boom, boom, boom’,” recalls Geordie. That then-nameless track subsequently took on an onomatopoeic description, the lolloping, blues-meets-a-helium-balloon of bmbmbm becoming Black Midi’s debut single.

Now, the group are back in with Carey, working on a debut album. Sessions are going “really well,” Geordie says, reticent to offer up much more. There have been setbacks along the way – a big-time London show at Electrowerkz was nearly derailed by an exploding amp, he explains – but given their ever-mutating state, they’ve learnt from every bump in the road. It lends that debut an unknowable edge. It’s a first-work that could take Black Midi’s sound anywhere.

“If you’re setting out to be a thing, you’re already pigeonholing yourself,” shrugs Morgan. It’s a totally open approach to creativity which feels core to Black Midi’s being. Every show they play finds them morphing further still; no two sets are ever the same. It’s that – more than hype, mystery, or any other buzzword – that makes Black Midi such a beguiling prospect. “We don’t want to be the same in two months, or four months or six months,” says Morgan, looking to the future, before pulling out a word surely no-one would use to describe his band: “We don’t want to get… complacent”.

I think, with the hype that surrounding them from the debut album, there were misconceptions and false labels applied to black midi. It must be quite hard for any band to misconstrued or defined falsely. On that point, the band spoke with Loud and Quiet. The banner headline of the interview sort of says it all: “The industry scrambled over an unlikely hype band just pleasing themselves with awkward sounds”:

“They’re an unusual bunch in conversation. Simpson and Greep do the majority of the talking, and their manner contrasts sharply, the former relaxed and effusive, the latter rather more intense, prone to a withering stare or a monosyllabic answer when my questions don’t interest him. He’s a puzzling presence throughout, steely-eyed and detached, yet not unfriendly. At one point during the interview he produces a packet of obscurely-named biscuits from somewhere within his long, Cossack-style overcoat, and offers them to me sweetly. I politely decline, slightly wrongfooted by his sudden shift in character, to the visible amusement of his bandmates.

I suspect that this slight oddness, the occasional incongruities between the four band members, has only added to their secretive reputation. I ask whether they’ve actively cultivated that air of mystery, and whether they like the label now that it’s been attached to them.

“No, and no,” asserts Picton sharply.

Simpson expands. “It basically just came from one article. We never set out to be hard to find. I guess the whole mystery thing is the lack of activity on social media, but that’s not a lack of anything – we’re posting what people wanna see, just the information that’s needed.” It’s true: look at their social media presence, and it is fairly sparse, but they do share all their live dates and link to where their music is available online. They’re not hiding anything.

“But yeah, that NME article, saying we’re mysterious, was one of the first things that was written about us, so it set the tone for what followed,” says Simpson. “But it’s just made up.”

Picton laughs wearily. “That article was funny as well, cos they were like, ‘the band have no recorded music whatsoever, you can’t hear them anywhere’, and then at the bottom it linked to the NTS session, which then linked to three other tracks that you could’ve listened to at the time. They were all studio quality too – it was a live recording, but it was in a proper recording studio”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Edwina Hay

It is amazing to think that, with two incredible albums under their belt now, there was a sense of modesty or caution around Schlagenheim. I guess it is dangerous blowing one’s own trumpet so early – lest the band be seen as arrogant or there is schadenfreude if they fall. Staying with that Loud and Quiet interview, the band did talk about their feelings and expectations for their debut:

“As I wrap up the interview, we discuss what comes next for the band, once this album is released. In a good-humoured way, they’re a little evasive, keeping their cards close to their chest.

“Hopefully it’ll sell a million copies,” Greep says, his deadpan tone inscrutable as ever. After all, it’s unlikely that a band as challenging as Black Midi will truly break through to the arena-level mainstream, but their rise has been meteoric so far; stranger things have happened. “Then we’ll retire and chill out.”

“We’ll all go and live all over the world and rehearse like twice a year,” suggests Picton. “Make an album out of that and put it out whether it’s shit or not.”

Simpson is a little more sincere. “An album is literally just a snapshot of an artist at that time. Up til the release of the album, that’s been our sound. Hopefully in two years’ time, it’ll be different.”

“As long as it keeps changing, we’ll keep going,” agrees Greep. “Don’t wanna be zombies playing the hits”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet

I shall shift things forward to Cavalcade. I suppose, like so many other artists, black midi did not want to repeat themselves on their second album. Whereas they were a new band in 2019 and there wasn’t a lot to suggest what a debut album would sound like, by the time this year rolled around, so many knew about black midi and what they are about. I feel it is useful introducing some background regarding Cavalcade:

“Black Midi began writing music for a new album in late 2019, not long after the release of their debut studio album, Schlagenheim, in June of that year. The band chose to have a less improvisational approach to writing their second studio album, in contrast to Schlagenheim which was crafted around jam sessions. Guitarist Geordie Greep said of the process, "People seemed to really like the debut album but after a while we all became pretty bored with it...So, it was like: this time let's make something that is actually good." Prior to the recording sessions for the album, guitarist Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin took a break from the band, citing a need to focus on his mental health; he took part in the writing sessions for Cavalcade, however. Saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi and keyboardist Seth Evans, who were a part of Black Midi's recent touring lineup, were a part of the album recording sessions. The band first recorded "John L", the opening track, with Marta Salogni in London.v Afterward, they recorded the rest of the album with John "Spud" Murphy at Hellfire Studios in Dublin during the summer of 2020”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Stas May for Interview Magazine

One of the most notable evolutions between the two albums is that black midi have adopted a broader sound palette this time around. I shall come onto the fact that the songwriting and recording is more structured (and less improvisational). One reason Cavalcade is receiving such praise is that black midi are venturing into new territory. The interview from The New York Times tips on this:

“On its second album, “Cavalcade,” arriving Friday, black midi broadens its music even further. The band pushes its dynamics to new extremes, juxtaposing bristling cacophony with sparsity and quietude, while Greep and Cameron Picton, the band’s bassist, sing about societal and physical decay along with the chance that music holds hope. The album even offers one straightforwardly melodic song: “Marlene Dietrich,” a bossa-nova-tinged ballad about the familiarity of pop as a sanctuary in a world of strife. “Cavalcade” is the work of a band that’s determined to defy all routines, including its own”.

There is a great interview from Vanity Fair that I want to reference very soon. The band have such a wide range of sounds and artists they admire. In terms of their listening habits, it is so varied and eclectic. Perhaps Schlagenheim didn’t truly reflect that:

“According to the members of the group, who spoke to Vanity Fair on a Zoom call from their London practice space earlier this month, the biggest change is that they actually composed the songs this time around. “On the first album, most of the songs were more textural than, you know, traditional or whatever. They were more, someone plays a riff and then let’s all play on top of each other and make cool sounds,” Greep said. For Cavalcade, they wrote partly through jam sessions but also by individually bringing in ideas for songs in the more traditional sense. “The whole thing with this album was just making it a lot more melodic but also making the crazy bits a lot more crazy. Making it crazy in both directions—more accessible moments, and more tangible, but also more insane, more crazy, more funny”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sacha Lecca for Rolling Stone

On Cavalcade, the humor and insanity is both lyrical and experiential. The record begins with “John L,” a practically scary onslaught of crunching horns, guttural vocals, and clattering percussion, which fades directly into “Marlene Dietrich,” a hazy crooner that could fit in on a.m. radio. Those stylistic veers of flight and surprises persist throughout. “It’s more of a roller coaster,” said Picton.

Bassist Picton, sporting a mop-top of curls and red-painted fingernails, said he did read a handful of reviews for Schlagenheim and thought they didn’t do a great job of capturing the breadth of the band’s listening habits. They don’t only listen to noise rock, for example, and aren’t particularly obsessed with the genre’s history. “I think it's just funny when people say, like, ‘Oh, yeah, these guys are definitely influenced by X band,’” he said. “But then it’s just a band that we’ve never heard of. It’s some random American band that was a regional success, and we’ve never heard of it in our entire lives, and the only people that like it are nerds on weird corners of the internet.” (So what do they listen to? “A banger is a banger,” Picton quipped.)

It might seem a little strange that a couple of talented teenagers could tap into exactly what keeps rock nerds hunting through the archives without necessarily realizing it, but their explanation is two-fold. The band met at the BRIT School, the government-funded music school known primarily for producing pop stars like Adele and Jessie J and for the profound influence its well-trained musicians have had on the British record industry at large.

PHOTO CREDIT: Neale Haynes for The Times

I really like Schlagenheim, though one feels that it could have been slightly tighter and edited. It didn’t quite have that concession that one would hope. Maybe this is natural for a band who had so much energy and such a rich sound. Cavalcade sees them address that in spectacular fashion. The band spoke with THE FACE about the changes adopted for their new album. Concision is very much at the heart:

“All of those disparate influences come to bear on Cavalcade, where the speed-prog of Chondromalacia Patela settles into an indie-jazz groove presided over by Greep, who’s now singing like a choirboy chansonnier before some Actual Headbanging takes the musical reins. It’s like every aspect of Scott Walker’s four-decade career in 290 action-packed seconds.

As the vocalist says, “the idea [moving on] from the last album to this album was to go further in both directions: have the crazy bits be crazier, and also have the more melodic, consonant bits be more accessible, or poppier or whatever. And just to have that wider dynamic. And, yeah, the sense of space, or have some room sometimes.”

Also, be concise. Eight tracks will do it, and if one of them, Hogwash and Balderdash is only two-and-half minutes, so be it. Because black midi years are like dog years – they pack a lot in. Or, as Simpson, says: “It’s all about intent, isn’t it? You don’t want to do a half-arsed version of a 12-minute song and it be OK. Do a five- or six-minute version and make it really, really good”.

With some streamlining and changes comes an album that is more structured. That is not to say that black midi has become tame or conventional – they are still very much as odd and unique as they always were! Whereas improvisation was God back in the Schlagenheim era, there has been a conversion. We learn more about that in this interview from The Quietus:

“The band that once seemed evangelical about the infinite power and possibilities of improvisation have now ditched it in favour of structured songwriting. The forced downtime of the pandemic brought about a much-needed break and reflective pause period for them. “It was a welcome change because things had been so hectic,” says drummer Morgan Simpson. “For a few years we hadn't had the time to be in a space together for a few weeks to try and create something new. So we fell into patterns of jamming and rehearsing but the productivity levels weren't as high because it was hard to get in the zone when you knew you had a 5am flight to catch.”

Greep: “If you're playing and touring all the time you get into a sense of wanting to have some control over things and not wanting to do anything wrong,” he says. “When you get into a situation with unlimited time, you really start to think about what you want to do in music, to ask what kind of music you want to make, and then realising how many times you have actually thought about that and been honest about it. So we were making a conscious effort to change the music.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Yis Kid

The move away from improvising is less of a leap than some may think, the band say. “The whole notion of being an improvisational band was pushed a bit harder than was actually the case,” says Simpson, with bassist Cameron Picton adding, “People pick up on certain aspects of your story and you don't really have much in the way of control over what gets picked up on.” Greep also echoes this. “That was the story, like we’re this band who make it all up as they go along, the whole album you can hear them thinking it up as they play it, all the words are made up on the spot and stuff”.

At moments on the record the band sound unrecognisable from their previous incarnation. “The songs now have proper chord sequences and there's actually melody,” says Greep. “We had a bit of that on the last album but a lot of the time if you have monolithic songs that are just burning away with effects over the top you can't really sing in a melodic way. So my voice in this style lends itself a lot better to these songs.”

Picton contributes as the writer and singer of two tracks. There’s the lush, hypnotic and deeply textural ‘Diamond Stuff’ that sounds almost slowcore-like in its starkness. The antithesis to this is ‘Slow’, which would be more aptly titled as ‘Raging Jazzcore Fury’. Across the album there’s still plenty of the band’s usual taut, intense, guitar work that marries no wave ferocity with prog proficiency, but it’s where those songs lead that results in such a constantly surprising listen. There are moments of real tender beauty on the album that will have those who hated the band’s earlier work wondering what the hell is going on but just before you’re sucked into a more serene and pretty world, things explode and confound once more. As you’ll hear on 'Chondromalacia Patela' which sways from a gentle jazz-tinged post rock groove into an eruptive force that sounds a bit like if Swans and Magma joined forces”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Yis Kid for CRACK

I do want to focus on a few sonic inspirations behind Cavalcade. I mentioned earlier how Schlagenheim did not quite incorporate all of black midi’s musical tastes. Stereogum spoke with the band. I have selected a few of the band’s choices regarding influences on Cavalcade:

“As musically dense as Cavalcade is, it’s also got a lot of different ideas colliding. Black Midi were tight-lipped about the meanings and themes of the songs on Schlagenheim, but from the jump they introduced Cavalcade as a multi-faceted, festering series of characters and scenes. A lot of different inspirations went into that. Ahead of Cavalcade‘s release, the current members of Black Midi — Greep, Cameron Picton, and Morgan Simpson — called us to talk about what they were reading, watching, or listening to when concocting the contorted, vivid world of Cavalcade. The band approached this a specific way: Each member chose three of their own influences, and then all three selected one they collectively held close. Read below to hear some of the stories and thoughts that made Cavalcade what it is.

Igor Stravinsky’s “Cantata” And Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise Opera

GREEP: When I was young, my parents used to play Stravinsky’s music a lot. When I was 12 or 13, there was a music teacher I really, really liked at school. We got along really well and he showed me all these cool types of music. I thought, “This guy is a great man.” Then he left and he was replaced by quite an old, cranky teacher. Someone I didn’t respect very much. I thought, “This old guy, he’s not all that.” A lot of time with my original music teacher, I used to go up at lunchtime and chat music with him. That’s where I learned a lot. With this new teacher, I couldn’t. Slowly but surely I found he wasn’t so bad. He knew a thing or two. One day he says, “Let me put The Rite Of Spring on.” Because it was him that was playing it, I really wanted to hate it and think it was complete crap. It was shocking to hear, because it’s a crazy piece of music. I was like, “Yeah, you’re nuts.” But really, I was like, “This is really good.” There was something there compelling me to listen to it. As we were listening, he said, “I would give anything to be able to listen to this for the first time again.” I thought, “Whoa, that’s pretty mad.”

IMAGE CREDIT: Anthrox Studio

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

SIMPSON: A friend of mine in secondary school was really into art, and he showed me that painting. I wasn’t into art that much at that time. I do remember that being one of the few paintings where I thought it was very cool. A few years ago, I went to an exhibition, “Soul Of A Nation: Art In The Age Of Black Power” at the Tate Modern. After the exhibition, there were postcards in the shop, and Nighthawks was one of them. It wasn’t related to what I’d just seen, but it jumped out to me. In that moment, I felt a sense of tranquility that I’d never really felt looking at a painting before. That’s why I love it so much. It’s actually my laptop background. It’s just some peeps hanging out drinking whatever it is.

I’ve probably done the thing a lot of British people do and subconsciously look over the river. When I thought about my influences, I’ve gone for all American ones without consciously thinking, “Wait, there’s loads of British ones that could also be on that list.” It just shows the influence you guys have on our country”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Bella Howard for The New York Times

The final thing I will investigate before reviewing the track, Marlene Dietrich, is how black midi have succeeded in spite of their unusual sound. Going back to the interview from The Quietus, the band cite a possible reason behind their success. We also discover a recent fundraising event black midi were involved with:

“Considering the kind of music Black Midi make, it’s left some perplexed that they’ve graduated to such a level of acclaim, developed a rabid fan base, slid straight into prime time radio playlists and ended up being the most experimental band in years to land a Mercury Music Prize nod. “I think it’s right place, right time,” says Picton when asked if they’ve ever wondered why they’ve broken through the kind of barriers that a lot of other alternative bands face. “Plus, making good behind the scenes decisions and having a good team.”

However, they also credit the privileged situation they had being at the famed BRIT School together. “Having two years where we had free rehearsal time whenever we wanted it at college,” says Picton. “Having those two years to just do all the stupid shit - do all the embarrassing stuff and get it out the way.”

The band has been involved with fundraising to help The Windmill in Brixton, a venue where they once had a residency and grew their reputation. These have manifested in live collaborations with pals Black Country, New Road. Is there any future there for a proper collaborative album? “Probably at some point,” says Greep. “If there's another band who are really good in the same city, who you also really get on with, there's no reason not to get together and do something proper. It's just making sure you don't do it for the sake of it and you have a solid reason for doing it.”

For now, the band is focused on their own material. Which is already at a stage beyond their second album. “Hopefully by the time we start playing shows again we'll be onto the next one with even more new songs to play,” says Greep, with Picton suggesting album three is already about 40% done. It puts them in a position where their return to performing live offers up as much potential for reinvention as their latest album has done. “We relished making this album and not even having to think about how we'd play it live,” says Simpson. “It's just about keeping it exciting,” Greep adds. “We don't want the live show to be a product that we as a band can completely envision before we're there. There's nothing worse than going to a show and knowing what you're going to see before the show even starts”.

It is important to move on to reviewing a Cavalcade track. I have selected Marlene Dietrich, as it is one that really interests me. Whereas some tracks on the album enter with an explosion, Marlene Dietrich welcomes in soft guitar. One gets this romantic-cum-riparian sound that is delicate and beautiful. From a band who excel when they ramp things up, they also prove they can do something more modest and level-headed. I feel a lot of the focus goes on black midi’s sound. Not too many focus on their lyrics. On Marlene Dietrich, there are some terrific lines. The first verse sets the scene: “Marlene Dietrich/Under soft lights/With a taped back face/Our soft spoken queen/Takes her place on the stage”. One gets caught in the sway and gentle grace of the song. The acoustic (or Spanish?) guitar plucks and stutters as the bass provides some liquidity. Strings come in as we get this gorgeously rich and cinematic sound. In a song about the German-born American acting icon, it might be hard to find a particular angle. In its simplicity and lack of layers/strangeness, black midi allow the song to breathe. “As the big curtains open/The last troops run in quick/For the one and only/Marlene Dietrich/She whispers demurely/“from The Blue Angel”/The song we all know/The one that we’ve paid for”. One gets a really fascinating picture. I listen to the song and was imagining the scenes and images. Marlene Dietrich is a really arresting and incredible song that is quite different to everything else on Cavalcade. I feel the song contains some of the best lyrics the band have produced so far.

There is a slight tension one feels, half-expecting there to be this snarling guitar or wig-out. Without mania or experimentation, the band keep things straight and focused. Whereas Schlagenheim was improvisational and one feels this sense of a band doing it live without too much honing, a song like Marlene Dietrich is more composed and nuanced. I wonder how long it took to write the track. It has so many standout lines that one cannot help but fall inside of: “Fills the hall tight/And pulls at our hearts/And puts in her place/The girl she once was/In that suit of ’33/Soundtracked by disapproving commentary”. There is wit, intellect and fantasy mixed together in a track that almost seems like a film in itself – appropriate, given the nod to a cinema queen. The strings are especially beautiful! There are guitar lines, a great drumming layer; all wrapped together in this symphonic, lush song. It is nice to hear a track from black midi that wins you over with its heart and soulfulness – as opposed something angular, multi-part and accelerated (not that there is anything wrong with that). My favourite section of the song definitely provoked a smile: “And my shuddering neighbour/Turns and roughly rouses me/He says, “While a kiss on the lips may not make a frog a prince,/An orgasm renders any queen a witch:/Metamorphosis exists!”. Where as some lines are quite easy to interpret and hit you because of their beauty, there are others that leave you wondering: “Damn all us idiots/Damn us till death/Relentlessly trying to untie our knots of/Rivers and roads that defy all sense”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Topete

I have listened to Marlene Dietrich a few times, and it impacts me differently every time. The second track on Cavalcade, it arrives after the frenetic and epic John L. That track almost seems like a Bernard Herrmann score on speed! It shows great bravery and consideration to then follow that with a track that is almost the polar opposite. The final lines/verse are as striking and brilliant as those which came before: “But her hands loosen all/And her voice brings you youth/Her cheeks cradle the holy breath/That pumps the lungs of her Mackie Messer”. Running in at under three minutes, one could definitely listen to a lot more of Marlene Dietrich. Although Cavalcade is eight tracks-long, five tracks run at over five minutes – the swansong, Ascending Forth, clocks in at just under ten minutes. The second-shortest track on the album (Hogwash and Balderdash take the top honour), Marlene Dietrich is my favourite. It ends mention of ‘Mackie Messer’. Mack the Knife (or The Ballad of Mack the Knife; (German: Die Moritat von Mackie Messer) is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their 1928 music drama, The Threepenny Opera. It adds another layer and twist to a fascinating story: “And she beats the heart of her Mackie Messer/And she walks the stage with her Mackie Messer/And she makes us smile with her Mackie Messer”. On an album with so many pearls, I especially love Marlene Dietrich. It is a song that you will come back to again and again.

PHOTO CREDIT: Martin Goodwin for The Guardian

Before wrapping up, it is probably worth looking ahead and seeing what might come next for black midi. As we learn from The New York Times’ interview, the guys are already working towards a third album:

“While preparing to tour again, band members have also been writing songs for a third album. “One thing that we all really want to do is enhance the pretty and beautiful and melodic side of things,” Simpson said. “But also go even more to town with the crazy, super intense loud stuff. We really want to try and just maximize both ends.”

As band members talked about their music, the word “crazy” kept coming up. For black midi, it’s a point of pride. “I think it’s better to go crazy, full crazy, and fail, than just do something you know you can do,” Greep said. “We’re just going further in all directions”.

Not only is there new material brewing; the band are also looking to get back onto the stage. Referencing the Vanity Fair interview from earlier, black midi discussed performing live and the challenges faced post-Brexit:

“As for Black Midi, the band is looking forward to getting back to what it does best, performing live. When we talk, they’ve just finished rehearsing for two shows on Friday night, their first in-person performances since early 2020. Like most stunning natural phenomena, Black Midi does kind of have to be seen to be believed. Offstage, they’re a group of unassuming, agreeable friends in their early 20s with an easy rapport, but onstage, they’re a chugging machine that always seems on the verge of collapse. Greep is the wiry, barking archetype of a post-punk front man, Picton has unshowy mastery of his instrument and a metronomic sense of rhythm, and Simpson is, simply put, one of the most physical, electric drummers around.

IMAGE CREDIT: Anthrox Studio

They discussed the challenges for touring bands presented by Brexit and the aftermath of the pandemic, but Greep is pretty confident that there will always be an audience for what they have to offer. “This isn’t chart music or anything,” he said. “But I think there’s always going to be that niche of live music, music that’s played with instruments and everything that sounds like it can fall apart at any minute. Because people just like that”.

I will end things here. There is so much (justified) praise surrounding Cavalcade. It is a great album that will surely rank alongside the best of this year. I wonder whether there is increased pressure on black midi to exceed themselves or change for a third album. I feel they will take some time to craft an album that is true to them. Make sure you grab a copy of Cavalcade (there is a link at the top of this review) and follow them on social media (links are at the very bottom). I am excited to see where black midi head and what is in store. Venues will open up very soon, so the band are going to be keen to get their new album out there. In a year that has delivered so many tremendous and instantly-engaging albums, black midi have given the world one of the best. They are so hard to pin down and can not be compared with anyone else. Let’s hope that we see much more music from them. When it comes to their music, one can never predict…