Editorial Reviews
Music Review:
Music Review
New Tricks [Original recording remastered]
Music Review: Alfred Koerppen Edition, Volume 4
Great Singers at Teatro San Fernando
Music: Dope Beat Maker Volume 1 [Explicit Lyrics]
Feels Just Like It Should [CD-single] [Enhanced] [Import]
Free As a Bird [CD-single] [Import]
Ill Communication [Explicit Lyrics]
Amazon.com
The first Black Box Recorder album, 1998's England Made Me, was originally conceived by Auteurs and Baader Meinhof frontman Luke Haines as a typically baleful response to the cultural and political hysteria--respectively, Britpop and Tony Blair--then gripping Britain. Recorded with the help of former Jesus & Mary Chain drummer John Moore and singer Sarah Nixey, it did for Britpop roughly what the film Carrie did for the senior prom. The Facts of Life, the follow-up, maintains the withering glare but fixes it this time on the personal. The songs here obsess with unnerving clarity and mordant wit on the banal, cruel details of human relationships and are narrated perfectly by Nixey. Where her perfectly English-accented whisper infused England Made Me with the air of a bored aristocrat finding contemptuous amusement in the misery of others, on The Facts of Life she has located an edge of taunting viciousness all the more diabolical for being so understated. The tunes, as ever, are sweet and insidious, perhaps best thought of as Saint Etienne turned feral. Highlights on an album full of them are "English Motorway" and "The Art of Driving"--BBR triumphantly reclaiming the American rock & roll prerogative of the road song for their damp, claustrophobic homeland. The Facts of Life is a masterpiece. --Andrew Mueller
Album Description
Black Box Recorder are an enigma. A three piece comprised of the haunting and fragile-voiced Sarah Nixey, Auteurs henchman Luke Haines and absinthe importer (& former Jesus & Mary Chain) John Moore. Stylistally, the band have catapulted themselves into some netherworld halfway between Air and Velvet Underground. Instruments include, Guitar arpeggios, synthesizers, glockenspiels, chiming xylophones, strings and drum machines. This release features the bonus tracks, 'Start As You Mean To Go Up' and 'Brutality'. Standard jewel case. 2001 release.