“My Ice Queen” immediately makes its case. A mid-to-low tempo chugging rhythm underpins choppy guitar, a contemplative, distant vocal and a general air of disassociation. Brief sections of the song feature – albeit muted – guitar mangling and feedback. The lyrics tell of a “heartbreak machine, coolest girl you’ve ever seen.” Icy? Absolutely.
Then take the similarly restrained “Life Goes on,” so hazy a rumination it seems to have materialised from the mists enveloping Venus.
It isn’t all so crepuscular. “Song For John” – seemingly an elegy for John Lennon – has a gentle bossa nova sway. It’s small-combo, guitar-centred pop at its most lean, most understated. Elsewhere, the airy “Even if” is yet another arresting example of the sometimes buoyant but mostly by-turns closeted and twilight world defined by Play Dusty For Me, 2002’s second solo David Westlake album.
Overall, the ambiance of this deeply engaging, Kilkenny recorded album is akin to that of the most reined-in aspects of The Velvet Underground’s third album. Robert Forster springs to mind as a fellow musical traveller. At the time Play Dusty For Me was recorded, Westlake was listening to Dusty Springfield’s Dusty In Memphis, the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and the Klaus Tennstedt box set of Mahler’s symphonies. Hence the album’s title, a play on Play Misty For Me, and Mahlerphone, the name of the label on which it was (barely) issued .
It was an overdue album. Westlake’s band The Servants played their final show in August 1991. They had issued four singles and, in 1990, the Disinterest album. Confusingly, the solo Westlake mini-album – reissued in 2023 as the core component of the D87 collection – had come out in 1987 on Creation Records, a label the then still-extant Servants were never signed to. The recording of a second Servants album began in 1991, but what was completed only surfaced in 2012. Play Dusty For Me appeared just-over ten years on from the point The Servants ceased to exist. It was the first, belated, evidence that Westlake had not ceased writing and recording.
However, getting to hear Play Dusty For Me was a tricky task in 2002. Not wishing to deal with record labels, Westlake had 500 copies of the album manufactured on CD – effectively these were CDrs (if one can be found, it will fetch anywhere upwards of £60). Available on line, the run sold out immediately. The decision to remain off the beaten track of the music business guaranteed an innate obscurity.
In 2010, London label the Angular Recording Corporation – the home of The Long Blondes and These New Puritans – planned to make the album widely available. It never happened. All that emerged were promo-only CDrs. Next, in the wake of their Servants’ comps Youth Club Disco (2011) and Small Time / Hey Hey We're The Manqués (2013 - an American version of a UK release), the US Label Captured Tracks issued Play Dusty For Me on vinyl in 2015. Again, it was limited to 500 copies, and marketed for Record Store Day. Copies of this edition of the album turn up for around £25. That was it: 500 CDs in 2002, 500 albums in 2015. (pictured left, David Westlake – and friend – as he is today)
Now, Play Dusty For Me has once-again resurfaced. And, perhaps archetypally for this sprite-like album, it is a digital-only release. Once more, mystifyingly so, it remains a ghostly presence.
David Westlake – now Dr. David Westlake, his Ph.D. is in Jacobean satire – himself is more tangible. In 2022, 20 years after the emergence of Play Dusty For Me, his third solo album My Beautiful England was released. Taking his time seems endemic. Consequently, there are gaps to be plugged. Maybe some enterprising label will make the distinctive, manifestly great Play Dusty For Me available as a physical release? Anyone?
- Next week: Tying in with what would have been his 100th birthday, the re-release of John Coltrane’s Ascension I and Ascension II
- More reissue reviews on theartsdesk
- Kieron Tyler’s website
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