A small album that slipped by unnoticed on its release but is really worth seeking out. It's quiet masterpiece of a gothic theatre that will appeal to fans of Divine Comedy's naughtily raised eyebrow, Nick Cave's sleazy debauchery and the Tindersticks miserablism.
All the ten songs on HEATHCLIFFIAN SURLY are sung from the perspective of a wretched old letch, Marmaduke Dando. And when I say old I mean very old. As in nineteenth century.
Marmaduke is apparently borne of genuine pirate ancestry and hails from the southern ports of the Black Sea to which he sings a nostalgic paean on the swooning 'Odessa!'. But now the old rogue has relocated to modern day London which he views with sneering disdain; "The snivelling remains of humanity, scooped up off the floor and served back to itself... If this is civilisation I want no part of it".
Marmaduke croons his misery like a cross between Noel Coward and a camp old Transylvanian Count, recounting past misdemeanours and present miseries with gentlemanly relish. But time has finally caught up with the rotten philander, his modern day predicament bringing the realisation of his past bad behaviour and the squalid depths to which he has now sunk. On the excellent 'All of Me' he laments "You once handed me your heart, I crushed it with a laugh / Treat me not as a gentleman but as the savage that I am".
Elsewhere he sings of his current afflictions; alcoholism "A swig in the morning to combat the yawning... There's more value in decadence than love, wealth or glory" ('The Last Drink') and his need for relief from a constant state of sexual arousal ('Give Me Detumescence').
Mostly though these are the laments of a deluded old crone with grandiose sense of self-worth bemoaning his lack of a place in the modern world. To Marmaduke's eyes he is a pearl cast before swine; "Oh insolent eyes it's no surprise brilliance is not rewarded but buried alive... I'm dead to the world and the world is dead to me".
HEATHCLIFFIAN SURLY is a magnificently melodramatic record and with it's Dickensian wit it's a real maudlin treasure.
ODESSA!
THE LAST DRINK
GIVE ME DETUMESENCE
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