Chris Braide and Geoff Downes have been making some relatively low-key albums under their Downes Braide Association collaborative moniker for a few years now. Their day jobs as songwriter for modern pop stars and keyboard player with Yes and Asia respectively keep them busy. The music, for want of a better phrase, tends towards progressive pop, as differentiated from art rock. Carefully crafted, often with musical themes running through but also the feel of an overall narrative arc to each album.
Without any political aside, theirs is the tale of an England lost, one founded on youthful memories of happier times thrust against the onrush of middle-age affects protagonists. There are echoes of early novels by Martin Amis and Jonathan Coe, yet these are contemporary musical works, not always melancholy but often quite emotional, and within them the fruits of what you wish someone could pull out, extend, and turn into a close-knit TV drama series.
They’ve slowly added the odd musician to fill out their sound on record, and brief forays into live performance. Most admirably Marc Almond, of Soft Cell fame, who returns briefly on this record, and XTC guitarist Andy Partridge, who only contributes to the songwriting this time round, Dave Bainbridge of Iona taking on that role save for former It Bites guitarist Francis Dunnery playing on a track he co-wrote. That so many songs on Celestial Songs begin on electric guitar increases the listeners’ focus, shifting things from their previous keyboard-led excursions.
Documentary style, a voice foretells what is to come for the aptly titled ‘Look What You Do’, Bainbridge’s guitar is present and introduces a song that refuses to be rushed, offered gently, arousing curiosity concerning the protagonists involved, ego-less keyboards soloing into conclusion. The result rather enigmatic. ‘Clear Light’ follows, jolly to a degree as one is with the cautious hopes of a new love, it’s not dissimilar to Keane (what happened to them?) edging to an anthemic guitar solo in its dying embers.
‘Keep On Moving’ has an added dimensionality to it, possibly from the external additional writing influences of Francis Dunnery, acoustic and electric guitars feeding the song’s slow burn energy. Thematically, it builds on the previous number, while reminiscing about what happened to a certain someone. It has an upbeat groove contrasting with its hold-back-the-tears chorus hook, a lovely synthesiser solo, inventive guitar work, and you could see how the number could be reworked in several different styles, and possibly an evergreen hit single in a better world.
More earnest and down-the-line is ‘Darker Side Of Fame’. While Braide noted that this is “more classic rock than the predecessor Halcyon Hymns” it’s not quite that. ‘Hey Kid’ is another look-back-in-time a pep talk for the little boy one was from the man you become, save when you compare that to the reality of the previous ‘Darker Side Of Fame’ it questions if we hold the hurts in our hearts far longer than we admit. The song is simply Braide’s voice and Downes’ piano, haunting in their simplicity. ‘Will To Power’ bubbles in a 10cc meets Gabriel manner, and this one does rock out in a wider full band spikey-funked sense.
No sooner do they begin to get your blood pumping, than they about face with ‘Heart Shaped Hole’ forlornly in a melancholic bi-polar about-face, the first stirring guitar solo leading the listener away from them too surrendering to despair, followed by another longer more lamenting progressive rock one. Picking up the pace, apparently as wishful lullaby to a daughter is ‘Dear Petra’, then fairy dust adventure fills the opening keyboard-led bars to ‘On The Run’ before a more head-on rock beat ensues that might have you bopping quietly to yourself around the house. Then it’s time for ‘Goodbye To You (Sister Shame)’ as both keyboards and guitar lure you in weaving away, before becoming a more standard piano-based once the song properly take shape if not a latter day Beatles homage with an outgoing guitar solo not unlike Tony Peluso take on The Carpenters ‘Goodbye To Love’ in scope.
‘Beyond The Stars’ invokes Supertramp, orchestral TV themes of yesteryear, Hollywood musical torch ballads of even longer vintage and more besides into a great big melting pot of wish-fulfilments, being at one in the moments, and regrets washed away – How we quite got here I’m not so sure. Around eight minutes a chord whose grandfather sounded the conclusion to The Beatles ‘A Day In The Life’ is pressed down and as you automatically look towards your stack system expecting some explanation the music shifts, a poetic narrative returning towards eventual conclusion at just over ten minutes long. Containing the lines: “Nothing lasts forever, especially in its retelling and it retelling – Let it go,” one wanders to what degree this may conclude such themes for future Downes Braide Association albums.
On past evidence, it takes a good year before an album from this coupling truly sinks in with me. That I tend to prefer it to the gentlemen’s daytime jobs, possibly saying more about me than them.
-
Reviewed by Paul H Birch.
- Celestial Songs is released via Cherry Red Records and is available here.
Track List:
- Look What You Do
- Clear Light
- Keep On Moving
- Darker Side Of Fame
- Hey Kid
- Will To Power
- Heart Shaped Hole
- Dear Petra
- On The Run
- Goodbye To You (Sister Shame)
- Beyond The Stars
