London’s Morton Valence are one of those bands music journos love, not that it’s done their career much good. I’ve bigged them up a few times, myself, starting at least a decade ago, but widespread critical acclaim has not added up to countrywide recognition. They are now up to album eight, still based around core duo Anne Gilpin and ex-Alabama 3 dude Robert “Hacker” Jessett, and their latest album is as consistently pin-sharp as everything else they’ve done. If only more would hear it!
As ever, their default setting is doomed Leonard Cohen-meets-Raymond Carver narratives, deliberately English in content, against a backdrop of woe-sodden country, wonderful broken-hearted duetting to the fore. This time, though, they’ve peppered their sound with different musical flavours, and even – very occasionally – a more upbeat feel, as on the strummed bouncer “Brand New Morning”. “It Isn’t Easy Being an Angel”, for instance, is a witty gypsy-flavoured number positing that life in a clean-living heaven might be a little dull, while “Me and My Old Guitar” is a twinkling mariachi roller.
But just listen to the lyrics of the latter, a song about an imaginary bout of fleeting success: “They say they build you up just to kick you back down/And the dogs were waiting for us as we hit the ground”. Morton Valence are at their best when maudlin and mournful; the twangy David Lynch-ian gloom of “Like a Face That’s Been Starved of a Kiss” (“I’m like a hate-filled city that’s been set ablaze”!); the star-crossed, Billy Liar-ish “A Town Called Home”; even the deliciously steel-guitar-laced “Summertime in London” is bereft with nostalgia for lost moments.
“Bob & Veronica’s Big Move”, at least, gives the hum-drum, hedonistic London couple of their debut album (Bob and Veronica Ride Again) a happy ending, a waltz-time, fiddle-laden settling down by the seaside. Sweet. The closing song on another deliciously forlorn album from one of Britain’s most underrated perennials.
Listen to "Summertime in London" by Morton Valence