Ah man, don’t you just love it when you receive an album, form a completely understandable yet entirely erroneous idea as to how it will sound from the cover art only to find yourself completely blown away by what you hear?
I mean, given that this is the new album from Arthur Brown, I really should have known better so, in this instance, I have no one but myself to blame. Nevertheless, to look at the cover art for Nature, it’s difficult not to imagine that the album will be an exercise in the sort of dark Americana most recently heard from Benmont Tench.
No, I know. I really should have known better.
An eight-track album developed in collaboration with Dan Smith (co-credited on the cover), producer Isaac McInnis, and drummer Sam Walker, Nature is an endlessly evolving musical exploration that takes in everything from David Bowie to Nick Cave, with Arthur Brown acting as the sort of wild-eyed guide who, once the journey begins, may lead you to safety or may choose to walk you off a cliff. It may not instil confidence but, once you’re along for the ride, you’re surely here for the duration.
Once you open the digipack, the inner booklet reveals a little more about the real journey you’re about to undertake. Where the sleeve finds Arthur resting with a book, the booklet finds him wreathed in flame, beckoning you into the nature that, as Arthur himself explains in the thoughtfully provided liner notes, has inspired his music across the decades. Listen closely, he says, for “everything you hear has been inspired by the landscape into which I was born and the landscape in which I now reside.” A sentiment most recently evinced by Jarboe on her stunning work, Sightings, the intersection where the natural world meets the musical mind is one that illuminates some interesting pathways indeed – and this is surely the case here.
The album opens with the title track. Anyone expecting a bucolic journey through the open countryside is liable to find themselves surprised, for the track proves to be a dark, proto-industrial stomp that mixes an insistent rhythm – the tribal sound of the lyrics – liquid synth, and Bowie-esque guitar. With the lyric tearing into the corporate culture that has slowly eclipsed everything that is good and pure in the world, the track has quite a sting in its tail, and it makes for a truly mesmerising introduction to the nature Arthur inhabits. Oh, but it’s groovy too, in a David Lynch sort of way and, if you don’t find yourself tapping along to Dan’s salacious bassline, even as Arthur sings of industrial deforestation, then there’s a fair argument to be made that you’re clinically dead… at least on the inside.
Having set the scene with the remarkably wide sonic palette of the opening track, Arthur Brown and his merry band of noise makers take us a step further into the wilds with the weird ambient jazz of With a Tear. With Paul Elliot providing a skittering percussive backdrop, Arthur offers a spoken-word vocal introduction before shifting into noir-glam territory for the chorus. No one makes music like this and yet Arthur makes it sound… well, natural, to the point you’ll find yourself listening to the album again and again as you seek to unravel its sonic secrets.
After the explosive ruminations of the first two tracks, The Source edges into rather more ambiguous sonic territory, with only Dan Smith and Isaac McInnis providing the backdrop for Arthur’s emotionally charged poetry. It’s another remarkable sonic shift, with one foot in the industrial-ambient of Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts, the grinding percussion cutting across eerie noise and inchoate backing vocals.
A moment of beauty follows, as Seven pairs spoken word vocals with a watery backing that is one part Nick Cave to two parts David Bowie circa Lodger. Lovely, but with an ever-present undercurrent of mystery, the central message reminds us that the earth’s love is always on show, even as so much of humanity works to destroy its myriad gifts. It’s followed by the brisk electronica of Bursting the Bubble – a track that finds Arthur and his band fully embracing the kooky, synth-infused rock of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, and having a blast in the process.
All of the noise falls away on the bare Water on Stone, which opens on just piano and voice. Even when the track finally expands to include swathes of synth and percussion, it only grows enough to cushion Arthur’s remarkable performance, his voice soaring above it all with a strength and power that is utterly engrossing.
The backdrop shifts again for Open Hearts. At the outset, it nods to the found sounds that dominated the Swans’ Soundtracks for the Blind, before suddenly shifting gears as Arthur once again offers up a vocal that utterly belies his eighty-four years. It is a remarkable performance, delivered with such utter conviction that you can only sit in awe before it. Now, more so than ever in this era of AI, it is remarkable to find yourself confronted with something so raw, so heartfelt, and so authentic, to the extent that (if you let it), experiencing the song can be intensely emotional.
The final track of this remarkable album, Enough, brings it all together, with love providing the universal language of nature and humanity together, Arthur vowing to speak his love aloud over a hypnotic backdrop that lingers long after the album has come to an end. The perfect conclusion to a perfect album, Enough is the sound of an artist who has seen it all and yet, somehow, managed to maintain a glimmer of hope and faith, despite the heartbreak that so often results from a life in the arts.
Over the course of more than sixty years, Arthur Brown has remained a figure haunting the fringes of popular music, steadfastly refusing to compromise his vision or conform to whatever trends the day had to offer. As a result, while his influence looms large over everybody from Alice Cooper and Kiss to Marilyn Manson and The Prodigy, Brown himself has remained aloof, following his muse. The results, while rarely predictable, are always fascinating, and Nature is no exception.
I honestly don’t know what I expected when the album landed on my desk, but it surely wasn’t this. A heartfelt summation of a life’s work in service to an artistic impulse that few would entertain, let alone gift to the world, Nature is a remarkable effort from all involved and it stands as both a truly unique piece of art and a testament to Arthur Brown’s enduring passion for, and belief in, the power of music to soothe the savage breast.
I honestly don’t know what I expected, but I know that my life and my world are both the better for Arthur Brown, and this truly wonderful album, being in it. 10/10
