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There’s a harrowing elegance that attaches ‘Frieze’, amid its skewed melodic tablatures and haunting wastelands of screwed up love notes, forgotten hopes and abandoned dreams, Letcher crafts a gloriously dysfunctional modern day pop opera.
Back in his homeland of South Africa this debut outing has been the subject of a flurry of awards and deservedly so, now relocated to London completing his doctorate at the Royal College of Music, Letcher’s pedigree can be retraced back to the 90’s when he was a member of Urban Creep, since their demise he’s been busy working on both solo and collaborative projects whilst exploring film compositions the fruition of which can be heard on the recently completed score for Clare Angelique‘s film ‘my black little heart’. Chris Letcher is also the nom de plume of his assembled London based five piece.
Don’t for one second kid yourself ’frieze’ is an exceptional body of work, all at once intelligent, intricate and thoughtful its unabashed ambition bleeds through its multi layered grooves, touching, melodically astute and at times haunting this fifteen track opus is an inspired carnival of mixed emotions and contradicting mood swings that rush to sugar tipped peaks of euphoria one moment (as on the glorious triumphant pop fixation of the opening cut ‘Deep Frieze’ with its celebratory J Xaverre like tugs and lushly coaxed west coast fizziness) the next splintered and crushed tearfully under foot (as on the exceptionally sublime ’bird caught fire’ - a soul scavenging gem threaded throughout with an eerie whirling spectral willow-ness fleshed by arcs of monumental grandeur). Not so much a rollercoaster - more kitchen sink than a plumbers merchants.
Reference wise (in recent memory) ’frieze’ clearly identifies with J Xaverre’s ’these acid stars’, Archer Prewitt’s ’White Sky’ (especially on the bleakly murmuring ‘architect‘ or its half cousin ‘robotic soldiers‘ with its dinkily drawn out frosted pirouettes ), Tex La Homa, Epicycle, Oddfellows Casino (the fragile and frail piano led and rustically tempered ‘special agents’ is a thing of emotion unravelling beauty), Kevin Tahista (captured perfectly by the unassumingly elegant and graceful ‘misheen’) and Baby Bird (check out the lushly orchestrated aspects of the grippingly tormented and enchanting ’bad shepherd’ and the cripplingly mournfully eloquence of ‘sketch‘) - in fact listened as a whole it’s the latter to whom Letcher and Co clearly recall in terms of texture and bruised pop majesty. Littered throughout these bitterly sweet bruised odes are stricken with a unfailing sense of the waning and wilting omnipresent touch of the macabre and the morose. Deeply intimate and yet strangely caressed with an introverted power pop sensibility.
Elsewhere the cantering shadow lit MOR motifs of the arresting ’swallow’s tail’ contrast sharply with the quietly inward turbulence of ‘milk’ while ‘wait’ even shimmers initially ever so gently into orbits more commonly associated with the Beach Boys and the Earlies before unfurling into a fuzzed out electro slice of kooky candy pop. And just when you thought you had completed the journey relatively unscathed and with that had momentarily dropped your guard the achingly gorgeous ‘so long, dust!’ with its ‘bird caught fire’ reprises lassoes whatever resolve you mistakingly thought you’d hung on to.
Without doubt ‘frieze’ is the work of a fractured genius.
www.sheergroup.com
Key tracks -
Bird caught fire
Deep frieze
Special agents
So long, dust!
MARK BARTON
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