Sad how long it takes to overcome first impressions (or at least some of them) ... when I first brought Beth Gibbons/Rustin Man’s Out of Season home it just flickered by me. What misled me first, to the point of annoyance, was the feeling that she was singing not so much torch songs as an idea of “torch songs” -- especially on moments like “Romance”’s apparent attempt to channel Billie Holiday by brute force, and the feeling that the whole concept had really, really been done better on Pinkie Maclure’s devastating and utterly neglected From Memorial Crossing a couple years ago (and do, please, go buy that one first).
Partially the problem is that they take the dangerous tack of backloading the best songs toward the end of the album, when wankers like me have already made their call and are paying attention to other things by the time the good stuff hits. But it also still seems like a patchwork, the gestures feeling somehow recycled from here or there, not just the tatty fake jazz but even better tracks like “Resolve,” which feels like it’s wandered in from a late sixties folkette record (like, oh, Joni’s Clouds), to “Drake” (which mind you I like, it’s the one that really got me to sit up this afternoon and take notice) ... maybe it’s just my bent hearing but the production here seems a direct tribute to the high points of Curt Boettcher’s late 60s work;1 all billowy faux-latin swinging rhythm with “producer’s touches” dropping in and out of the mix. An appropriately frothy counterpoint to the noirish Badalamentality2 of “Funny Time of Year” (which steamrollers in directly behind it) and “Tom the Model.”
And “Rustin Man” actually does live up to what you’d expect from the personnel, the blasted collision of Portishead and Talk Talk I initially hoped for. So I guess finally I’ve gotten the point ... (“Why Miss CD, without my preconceptions you're ... listenable!”)
