♫ Music Showcase: Contre Jour ♫

A bilingual music blog post for a bilingual band!
Un blog musical bilingue pour un groupe bilingue!

Band Name: Contra Jour
Genre:French Coldwave, New Wave
Languages: French, English
Active: 
Origin: France
Page: http://www.contrejourband.com/

Contre Jour are a French band based in Nice. Their previous incarnation was a band called Neptune. They have had several changes in band members since then, and are currently a trio.

Contre Jour est un groupe Français basé sur Nice. Avant, ils étaient connus sous le nom Neptune. Ils ont changé leurs membres depuis lors, et sont désormais un trio.

I don't think that Contre Jour would call themselves a Goth band; to me they are a very modern styling of French Coldwave (you may have noticed that this is a genre that I particularly enjoy). From their promotional photograph, they certainly do not appear to be into Goth fashion. Their fashion choices seem mainstream, but clothes do not define. A lot of their songs are sung in English, but the songs sung in their native French are beautiful and worth listening to as music even if you don't understand French. You're reading this in English, so I presume you can understand that!

Je ne pense pas que Contre Jour s’appelleraient eux-mêmes un groupe Goth; pour moi, ils appartiennent à un style très moderne du Coldwave Français (vous aurez peut-être remarqué que c'est un genre que j'apprécie particulièrement). En jugeant par leur photo de promotion, ils ne semblent pas vraiment porter de mode Gothique. Leurs chois de mode semble assez courant, mais les vêtements ne définissent pas le style. Pas mal de leurs chansons sont en français, mais les chansons chantées en anglais sont belles, et elles aussi dignes d'être écoutées juste en tant que musique même si vous ne comprenez pas l'anglais. Vu que vous lisez cet article en français, je suppose que vous le comprenez!

To me, their music sounds like something between The Cocteau Twins, Covenant and Sisters of Mercy, with synthesisers, the type of percussion that makes me think immediately of the 1980s, high production values and eerie female vocals. Their songs are not necessarily always about darker subject matter, but enough of them are, and their sound is such that I think there will definitely be a section of the readers of this blog who will appreciate them. I think they will appeal to fans of bands like Indochine as well as the more Goth bands. 

Pour moi, leur son évoquerait un mélange entre les Cocteau Twins, Covenant et Sisters of Mercy, du a leur utilisation de synthétiseurs, le genre de percussion (qui me fait penser immédiatement aux années 80), les valeurs de production élevés et les étranges voix féminines. Leurs chansons ne parlent pas nécessairement toujours de sujets sombres, mais un bon nombre d'entre eux le sont, et leur son est tel que je pense qu'il y aura certainement une partie des lecteurs de ce blog qui les apprécieront. Je pense qu'ils vont plaire aux fans de groupes comme Indochine ainsi que les groupes plus Goth. 

I only came across them recently, listening to online radio (I think it was either Cathedral 13) and think they are brilliant. They've got a new album out this january, and unfortunately I cannot pre-order it, but hopefully I will be able to buy a copy after I next get paid. Their new album will be called PASSION/FALL and you can watch a trailer on the band's website. It looks very promising from where I am sitting. 

Je ne l'ai découvert que récemment, en écoutant la radio sur en ligne (je crois que c'était soit Cathédrale 13 ou GothVille Radio) et je trouve qu'ils sont merveilleux. Ils ont un nouvel album en vente ce Janvier, et malheureusement, je ne peux pas le commander en avance, mais j'espère que je serai en mesure d'acheter un exemplaire une fois que je reçois mon prochain salaire. Leur nouvel album sera appelé PASSION / FALL et vous pouvez regarder une bande-annonce sur leur site web. Il semble très prometteur à ce que j’ai vu.

For those decidedly interested in darker things, I think that their music video for the song 'Old Age' is both suitably Gothic in its imagery and dark in its lyric content. 'Diseased' isn't exactly cheerful, but the video of the band running around the French countryside seems a lot chirpier. 

Pour ceux qui sont décidément intéresses par tout ce qui est sombre, je pense que leur vidéo pour la chanson <<Old Age>> est à la fois suffisamment Gothique dans question images, et sombre question paroles. <<Diseased>> n'est pas vraiment la plus gaie des chansons, mais la vidéo qui montre le groupe en train de courir dans campagne française a l’air quand même assez joyeux.

Big thanks to Sarge for correcting my French translations. The next band will be from an English-speaking country, I swear. French is the limit of my modern languages, I promise not to bother you with my truly awful grasp of German (I failed it at school) if I ever showcase a German band. 

♫ Music Showcase: And Also The Trees ♫

Band Name: And Also The Trees
Genre: Post-Punk, Alternative Rock
Language: English
Active: 1979-Present
Origin: England
Page: ::Official Website::

This post has been so much fun to write, partly because as I've been writing it, checking my facts and suchlike, I've had their music playing constantly as a soundtrack.

I adore And Also The Trees. And Also The Trees are a British band, from the first wave of dark Post-Punk 'Goth' rock in the '80s, but not as well known or as well-played as acts such as Bauhaus, Joy Division, early The Cure, etc. They are comprised currently of Simon Huw Jones (vocals), Justin Jones (guitar), both of whom are original band members from 1979, and Steven Burrows (bass) who replaced original bassist Graham Havas, Ian Jenkins (bass, double bass) who joined in 2004, Paul Hill (drums) who replaced original drummer Nick Havas, and Emer Brizzolara who plays keyboards.

They were founded in the Worcestershire village of Inkberrow (which makes me think of "ink barrow"), and came to prominence after they sent off a home-made demo tape to The Cure, who really liked what he heard. And Also The Trees ended up playing in a support slot to the Cure, and a friendship formed between the bands. Their second demo 'From Under The Hill' was co-produced by Robert Smith and The Cure's producer Mike Hedges and their first two single releases ('Shantell' and 'The Secret Sea') along with their debut proper album, the eponymous And Also The Trees, were produced by The Cure's drummer and keyboard-player Lol Tolhurst.

And Also The Trees were heavily inspired by their rural origins, which is evident in not only their choice of name, but in many of their lyrics, and in how they craft sonic landscapes from their songs. I guess this is one of the reasons I enjoy listening to them so much, I come originally from a rural Oxfordshire village, and my own creativity is always returning back to the woods and fields of that first home. Now that I live in the Highlands of Scotland, it is again the landscapes that inspire me. Their 1986 album "Virus Meadow" is described as "an album of rich, pagan melancholy & disturbing laments" on their website and I think that encapsulates exactly what I like about the album.

They do not describe themselves as 'Goth', although they state their Post-Punk origins, but being so poetic, so dark, and considering their early sound, I think that the term aptly describes their early musical output. (I think this would be an apt moment to remember ::this article:: I wrote).

They've had a long career in dark and brooding music, having been founded in 1979 and still being active today. Their music has explored a variety of styles and influences over that time, some of it a very long way away from 'Goth', and unlike some musicians of their era, they are still actively producing new material, with their latest album 'Hunter, Not The Hunted' being available on CD and on vinyl off their website. They have been fairly consistent in writing songs with decidedly poetic lyric content and something unnerving and melancholic in nature. Personally, I am quite happy that they strayed into a variety of styles, because this variety has allowed them to express more than they could have done had they stuck narrowly to what they sounded like in the '80s.

Some of their songs are certainly very Gothic in lyrics (in the literary meaning of the term), writing about morbid and eerie subjects, such as the lyrics of 'Scythe & Spade'. When I first heard this I thought of 17thC poets, and I wasn't far wrong at all - the lyrics being a direct reference to a quote from the James Shirley poem 'Death The Leveller'

"Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crookèd scythe and spade."

Which in the lyrics of the song forms the basis of each verse, although fabulously elaborated on in a style in keeping with the poem, and "with the poor crooked scythe and spade" forms the last line of each verse. Here we have a rock band, albeit a Post-Punk rock band, building a song around a 17th century poem about death - in Shirley's case about how the victorious warrior and those that die in battle, as well as kings, all die eventually, a response to the English Civil War and in A.A.T.T.'s case, about how the rich and powerful die and decay the same as the humble. It is a 20thC memento mori in song form, and even if not entirely original, definitely poetic. I think that rock musicians mining the rich seams of British poetry, especially from that period, is a fabulous thing to be happening. Punk is often associated with being an anti-culture, a rebellion against all institutions including the canons of "high art" and "high culture", and here is a Post-Punk embracing it and using it as creative fodder.

They also covered Cat Steven's 'Lady D'Arbanville' in a way that, if you didn't know the Cat Steven's original, you would think was taken from some centuries old ballad, that Lady D'Arbanville was not some 20thC actress and model, but a long dead-aristocrat lying in state in some chapel of pointed-arches and candles.  I think it comes from both Simon Huw Jones' lamenting voice and the swirling orchestration being translated by my decidedly dramatic imagination. (An aside: I have soft spot for the Gigliola Cinquetti cover of 'Lady D'Arbanville' - how not-Goth is that?).

Their music draws me in; with each song I feel like I've been brought into some scenario set before me - their music isn't always necessarily strictly descriptive or narrative, but when it is I really feel like I am there, for example 'Pale Sun' makes me think of claustrophobic fog over a small rural British town, sometime decades, maybe centuries ago. I can see all the lyric details in my minds eye, when they talk of geese and weathervanes. And it's not just the lyrics and the title, it's the music itself. It is murky, everything sounds slightly muffled, petering out into obscurity at the end like a fading dream or an image receding into fog.

Fashion/aesthetic wise, there's a few rather striking black and white pictures of them in Victorian-esque garb looking brooding in front terribly ornate columns and arches (a youtube commenter said "They look like vampires" and I have to agree), and some far more recent pictures of them wearing black suits, black shirts and black ties. They tend to be associated with eerie black and white landscape photographs, which is rather fitting.

I could write several pages about them, and probably already have (maybe I should copy and paste this lot into word and see how many sheets of A4 I'd have taken up if this was in hard-copy rather than on a blog?) but really, the only way to get to know a band is to listen to the music. My favourite album is The Rag and Bone Man, identifiable by its high contrast picture of a ruined cottage (a ruined building, in black and white, set in an ominous landscape, cloudy sky, right up my street in terms of photography) . Here is a suggested playlist, in which I've tried to have a bit of variety. 


Suggested Playlists
❧ "So This Is Silence" from 'And Also The Trees'
❧ "Midnight Garden" from 'And Also The Trees' 
❧ "Virus Meadow" from 'Virus Meadow'
❧ "Maps In Her Wrists and Arms" from "Virus Meadow"
❧ "Scythe and Spade" from 'Farewell To The Shade'
❧ "Misfortune" from 'Farewell To The Shade' (slightly more upbeat). 
❧ "The Pear Tree" from 'The Pear Tree' (I like the Robert Smith remix version)
❧ "The Way The Land Lies" from 'The Rag and Bone Man'
❧ "Domed" from 'The Rag and Bone Man' 
❧ "The Beautiful Silence" from 'The Rag and Bone Man'

Babybats, ElderGoths and In-between

I used to think a Babybat was a Goth under the age of 15 and an ElderGoth a goth that's also an adult. I didn't realise that there were a significant number of Goths over 30, and I thought that most of the time Goths got forced out of the subculture by the practicalities of work and children. 

I was so naïve!

I was also, like most people mistaken about this sort of thing, a Babybat myself. Yes, I'd been associating with various subcultures including Goth since my mid-teens, but I had not really walked deeply into the Goth subculture. I was socialising with a handful of Goths of a similar age to myself and not really talking to other club patrons as much as I ought. Internet goths got dismissed as people who were only on the internet and not participating in real life (terribly erroneous, I know). Basically, I was centring on a small world of those approximately my age and whom I knew well and inadvertently blinkering myself to the wider picture. 

It was partly because I was having too much fun with my circle of friends to be paying attention, but it was also because I was rather shy about talking to these older goths; after all, they'd seen and done things I only dreamed of. There was this fear that they would look down on me for being young, for not having been there in the '80s (Being alive in the '80s is not the same as actually having been to those gigs, those concerts, those clubs...), for getting things wrong such as not knowing things like that Robert Smith and Sid Vicious had played with the Banshees and that Patricia Morrison joined the Damned in the 1990s; for having wonky, under-practiced makeup and for not having quite the right sense of Goth fashion... Part of me really wanted to talk to these people who had been Goth longer than I'd been alive, and learn, and possibly make new friends, but part of me was too scared of being turned away with mocking words by people I admired. 

Now I am older, slightly wiser, and in time, I will be an ElderGoth (it's not like I am going to leave the subculture, at least not until I leave the world entirely). I've already realised that through writing this blog, some people look to me in that way but - openly - no; I am too young and too inexperienced to call myself that. I am also not a Babybat any more - having been in the subculture too many years and being too old. I have got to the age where random strangers have started telling me it is about time to "grow out of it".  So what am I, in this case of two worlds and the in-between? Well, just a regular Goth! It appears that there are those who think that "Babybat" and "ElderGoth" are the only two forms of Goth, but that is not the case. 

There is nothing wrong with being just a Goth.

It does not mean that you are not still learning, and it does not mean that you haven't got anything to say. 

There was a time when there were no such concepts as Babybats and Eldergoths, when everyone was fairly equal, and didn't always even call themselves Goth (that term, by the way, was applied to the subculture from outside, by the music press) but over 30+ years of the subculture's existence  and a constant fresh intake over those years, these distinctions have been made. The first person I saw using the terms was Jillian Venters, also known as The Lady of The Manners, who runs the online Goth agony-aunt and advice site ::Gothic Charm School::. I don't know if it precedes her, but do think that the popularity of her website has certainly helped spread the terms. 

Plenty of remarks have already been made across the internet on various blogs and forums about how older, more experienced Goths should not shun and mock younger Goths, even younger Goths that are getting it terribly wrong, but educate them politely in the hope that the polite lessons will stick. Plenty of suggestions for Babybats in that vein have also been made, some more factually accurate than others. There is no need for me to repeat these things. 

Time and a dedicated interest in the subculture are the only things that make Babybat metamorphose into a Goth, and as long as they fabricate their chrysalis (or pupa) from good resources, a full Goth butterfly (or moth) should emerge.

People learn throughout their lives - once they have become fairly established  as Goths, they do not suddenly know everything about Goth just because they are no longer Babybats, nor do they suddenly know everything about anything else.  There is always more to learn, there will always be another band to come across, another fashion idea to inspire, another interesting book to read, another factoid to amuse. Even the ElderGoths who have been at this lark for longer than I've lived will still come across new things. It is important to have an open mind, and never be too fixed as to be immovable in the face of new information. 

Goth is a subculture based around musical tastes, aesthetics and a broadly dark mindset, apart from facts such as who sung in what band, what date a book was published, etc. a lot of Goth is about subjective matters and personal tastes and opinions, and those things do not have a fixed right or wrong, more what one likes and dislikes. There is no fixed line, just general consensus. Remember that if you stray out of the vague boundaries of Goth that being Not Goth is not bad, it's just not Goth.