WINTER STALE - NME (15/01/83) by Don Watson
Don Watson Pricks the pimples of Fiat
Lux's post-pubescent angst.
It's head down and foot stamping weather - breath is frosting and Sebastian Barbaro is turning blue. For the last two hours he's been chasing a couple of giant puppets through the streets, dodging the shoppers and bringing a little brightness to the dead-faced, plodding mob - another Wednesday afternoon beneath the plastic snowflakes for a member of a street theatre group.
More importantly for the moment, though, Barbaro is also the founder of Fiat Lux - the band that began after his departure from the innovative Yorkshire Actors theatre group, and was unexpectedly transformed into an operative outfit thanks to a chance meeting with a previous Yorkshire Actors collaborator, Bill Nelson.
Barbaro picked up keyboards player/percussionist
It's head down and foot stamping weather - breath is frosting and Sebastian Barbaro is turning blue. For the last two hours he's been chasing a couple of giant puppets through the streets, dodging the shoppers and bringing a little brightness to the dead-faced, plodding mob - another Wednesday afternoon beneath the plastic snowflakes for a member of a street theatre group.
More importantly for the moment, though, Barbaro is also the founder of Fiat Lux - the band that began after his departure from the innovative Yorkshire Actors theatre group, and was unexpectedly transformed into an operative outfit thanks to a chance meeting with a previous Yorkshire Actors collaborator, Bill Nelson.
Barbaro picked up keyboards player/percussionist
David Crickmore to give a musical
base to his songs.
Nelson donated the use of his studios, and the result was the single 'It Feels Like Winter Again' - a cold shiver of pin-prick electronics released on Nelson's Cocteau label and awarded the supreme accolade of NME Single Of The Week.
More, they claim, by accident than design, the single has landed at a time when there seems to be a new genre of electronic music clambering its way up the charts, with the like of Tears For Fears pushing a vamped-up depresso-pop and opening the way for new contenders like Fiat Lux.
Now with Ian Nelson, Bill's brother and a former member of Red Noise, augmenting the sound on saxophone and a highly successful support slot on the recent Blancmange tour behind them, Fiat Lux are in a favourable climate. The question is whether they are capable of picking up the emotional challenge of Yazoo, or whether they signify the spreading of another pimple rash of post-pubescent angst poetry. Well?
"Well," David begins, "the content of our songs is very emotion-drenched, but so many of the bands that have been out in the past that have had that synthesised background have tended to become very stark - the wailing vocals often seem to be just part of a formula and they don't really convey any emotion."
"Our music has quite a poppy feel to it, but it's also always got an emotional anguished content, which is a tug on the heartstrings almost. We have very little respect for bands like Depeche Mode - that's just throwaway music."
"All our songs are genuine," Sebastian continues, "in that, they come from one sort of genuine feeling or another. I mean, I couldn't write anything that I didn't mean, because the emotion just wouldn't be there."
"Like when I wrote 'Feels Like Winter Again' I was going through what the song's about, which is a girl leaving me for one of my best friends, so I had plenty of emotional stimulus to come up with a line like 'It feels like winter again in my heart'."
Here is where we hit upon Fiat Lux's weak point - another feature they share with Tears For Fears is the tendency to package banalities as profound statements. 'Feels Like Winter Again' might recount a genuine experience but it does so in a manner that lurches well into trite territory. I find it hard to believe that a line like"And now it is all over/I'm looking for a shoulder" could have been written with a straight face.
"Well when I was writing the song." Sebastian argues, "I was feeling so churned up that I just wanted to get the emotion that I was feeling out - but also I was feeling sufficiently pissed off with the situation that I wanted to say these kind of things. I was pissed off and all wound up and didn't really care."
Sadly, Sebastian is no Tracey Thorn - the voyeuristic thrill of 'public diary' songs can be an inspiration when they contain some cutting and original analysis, but the whole "She-left-me-for-another" bar-room lamentation approach taken in 'Winter' is pretty tired. Surely there's a limit to the number of heart-wrenching experiences you have to recount?
"Well, I think success could be a problem in that sense," David admits. "The only reason the songs are as they are now is because of the position we're in. If we were successful we'd be like an author that made his name writing about the working class in Bognor and ended up in the West End, cut off from his inspiration."
"Success isn't something we're hankering after, though," Sebastian adds hastily.
So what are their wild ambitions and crazy demands?
"It's just the ideas of being able to live off something that is an artistic creation. It's all very well singing in your bedroom, but to be able to do it outside and make a living out of it is a nice thought."
If it doesn't come off, it's back to chasing puppets.
Nelson donated the use of his studios, and the result was the single 'It Feels Like Winter Again' - a cold shiver of pin-prick electronics released on Nelson's Cocteau label and awarded the supreme accolade of NME Single Of The Week.
More, they claim, by accident than design, the single has landed at a time when there seems to be a new genre of electronic music clambering its way up the charts, with the like of Tears For Fears pushing a vamped-up depresso-pop and opening the way for new contenders like Fiat Lux.
Now with Ian Nelson, Bill's brother and a former member of Red Noise, augmenting the sound on saxophone and a highly successful support slot on the recent Blancmange tour behind them, Fiat Lux are in a favourable climate. The question is whether they are capable of picking up the emotional challenge of Yazoo, or whether they signify the spreading of another pimple rash of post-pubescent angst poetry. Well?
"Well," David begins, "the content of our songs is very emotion-drenched, but so many of the bands that have been out in the past that have had that synthesised background have tended to become very stark - the wailing vocals often seem to be just part of a formula and they don't really convey any emotion."
"Our music has quite a poppy feel to it, but it's also always got an emotional anguished content, which is a tug on the heartstrings almost. We have very little respect for bands like Depeche Mode - that's just throwaway music."
"All our songs are genuine," Sebastian continues, "in that, they come from one sort of genuine feeling or another. I mean, I couldn't write anything that I didn't mean, because the emotion just wouldn't be there."
"Like when I wrote 'Feels Like Winter Again' I was going through what the song's about, which is a girl leaving me for one of my best friends, so I had plenty of emotional stimulus to come up with a line like 'It feels like winter again in my heart'."
Here is where we hit upon Fiat Lux's weak point - another feature they share with Tears For Fears is the tendency to package banalities as profound statements. 'Feels Like Winter Again' might recount a genuine experience but it does so in a manner that lurches well into trite territory. I find it hard to believe that a line like"And now it is all over/I'm looking for a shoulder" could have been written with a straight face.
"Well when I was writing the song." Sebastian argues, "I was feeling so churned up that I just wanted to get the emotion that I was feeling out - but also I was feeling sufficiently pissed off with the situation that I wanted to say these kind of things. I was pissed off and all wound up and didn't really care."
Sadly, Sebastian is no Tracey Thorn - the voyeuristic thrill of 'public diary' songs can be an inspiration when they contain some cutting and original analysis, but the whole "She-left-me-for-another" bar-room lamentation approach taken in 'Winter' is pretty tired. Surely there's a limit to the number of heart-wrenching experiences you have to recount?
"Well, I think success could be a problem in that sense," David admits. "The only reason the songs are as they are now is because of the position we're in. If we were successful we'd be like an author that made his name writing about the working class in Bognor and ended up in the West End, cut off from his inspiration."
"Success isn't something we're hankering after, though," Sebastian adds hastily.
So what are their wild ambitions and crazy demands?
"It's just the ideas of being able to live off something that is an artistic creation. It's all very well singing in your bedroom, but to be able to do it outside and make a living out of it is a nice thought."
If it doesn't come off, it's back to chasing puppets.