As a tragically obsessive consumer of music, I am used to the idea of expectation out-performing reality. It has too often been the case
that the act of imagining the tantalising possibilities of an
eagerly-anticipated album has provided rather more fun than the experience of
actually listening to it. Having learned to live with that kind of disappointment,
it was always a particular treat when something managed to match my hopes and
expectations.
In the mid-80s, I had been a fan of the cult (i.e. chart-avoiding)
band Microdisney. The talents of composer Sean O’Hagan and singer /lyricist Cathal
Coughlan were finely balanced, with an ever-present tension between their sophisticated
music and the somewhat caustic lyrics. O’Hagan’s love of the Beach Boys and
Steely Dan was obvious, while Coughlan’s default mode of righteously-vented
spleen helped give the songs something of an edge.
Such was the talent of these two men that, when Microdisney disbanded
in 1989, it seemed obvious to their small-but-dedicated fan base that something
else, something special, would emerge. For what seemed like months, I scoured
the music press in the hope of some news until, at the fag end of the decade, the
splendidly eclectic Snub TV featured a video of Cathal Coughlan and The Fatima
Mansions performing a song called ‘Only losers take the bus’. Filmed in a deconsecrated synagogue, it featured Coughlan, besuited
and bound at the pulpit, staring down the camera to perform a rip-snorting track
based on a tough electro-rhythm, some kick-ass rockabilly guitar and a typically
spiky lyric, seemingly focused on a self-made millionaire with unhinged views.
I particularly loved the crazed injunction in the instrumental breakdown to “Get these dead bodies off my race track!”
When the mini-album ‘Against Nature’ appeared on Kitchenware Records,
it lived up to my fanboy dreams. I had no problem with the fact that it didn’t
sound like a coherent band project, because I was charmed by what appeared to
be a sonic snapshot of where a talented singer-songwriter’s head was at;
indeed, the absence of focus felt more like the presence of possibility, a promise of future riches to be forged
through Coughlan’s idiosyncratic eclecticism. The collection contained nods to
Microdisney on ‘The Day I Lost Everything’ (featuring a splendid monologue
referencing both Jimmy Tarbuck and Santa Claus) and ‘You Won’t Get Me Home’,
wherein the writer wallowed in his fascination with losers and grotesques:
"The Prince of Caledonia, he drives a
diesel van
and he peddles skag in Hamilton. He's the reality man, reality man."
'Bishop of Babel’ was, to all intents and purposes, a
power ballad, while ‘13th Century Boy’ represented a jolly, if slightly skewed,
take on Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s chart-dominating disco formula; it may
have been intended as a pastiche, but it worked pretty well as a pop tune.
Freed from the pressures of working for a major label and
writing for a band, Coughlan
essayed his love for Scott Walker through a couple of particularly haunting tunes.
The lush synths of ‘Big Madness’ set a disconcertingly mellow backdrop for a
chilling lyric, which opened with a killer boasting of his exploits with a “weeping
spinster” before going on to explore the territory between romance and dangerous
obsession. ‘Wilderness on Time’, featuring just voice and harpsichord, was raw
and full of longing, set off by a wonderfully unhinged opening line:
"When my taxi arrives
Say that I'm dead, having swallowed my leg"
Say that I'm dead, having swallowed my leg"
Hearing Coughlan on this kind of vocal form, you can’t
help but wonder why he didn’t become the voice of his generation; his singing is beautiful,
expressive and just dripping with gravitas.
In Microdisney, his grouchy misanthropy (at times,
outright nihilism) had been ameliorated by O’Hagan’s deft tuneage, but once
Cathal got the keys to the car, the listener had to endure an altogether bumpier
ride. He went on to make more thematically coherent albums with The Fatima
Mansions, although there were times when the band’s dreary muscularity bludgeoned
the tunes into a bloody pulp and it was frustrating to hear a man with a golden
set of pipes opting for the kind of testosterone barking favoured by vocalists with
a fraction of his talent.
On stage, Coughlan and the Mansions could be electrifying. I
remember one gig at Glasgow University when he deliberately whacked himself in
the forehead with the microphone and drew blood. I had actually driven past him
and the band in town earlier that day and –for a fraction of a second- had been
tempted to roll down my car window and shout “Only losers take the bus!” Thankfully,
I thought better of it. If a guy could deliberately whack himself on the head
with a microphone, who knows what he might have done to an idiot fan pathetically
trying to ingratiate himself by half-wittedly demonstrating his knowledge of an
obscure band’s oeuvre?
His solo work since the demise of the Mansions has been articulate,
sophisticated and sprinkled with occasional gems, but contains way more shade
than light and is, to my ears, somewhat thin on melody; the fact that beautiful
melodies do occasionally break out
makes one suspect that, in shying away from pop music, Coughlan is cutting off
his nose to spite his face.
In that sense, ‘Against Nature’ might be viewed as the template
for a brilliantly off-kilter pop career that never quite happened.
Here's a link to that first TV appearance:
