I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that this was all over. Well a couple of months ago it was. I felt like The Daydream Generation and Quixodelic Records had been blown up as big as they could go without bursting, and it was time to allow them to drift off into the digital aether as a failed experiment, or a lot of fun that had turned into too much hard work.

download: It Begins In Beauty

Then from out of nowhere,  CHANSONS DE GESTE’s “It Begins In Beauty” landed in my crowded in-box. My initial reaction was ‘Oh well, if I’m really done, then there’s no harm in downloading this and digging it for fun.’ So download it I did. And dig it I did. Only I kept on digging it, and though new music continued to pour with alarming frequency into my brain through my headphones, from time to time I felt drawn back to this record, like somehow I’d been magnetized to its melodies.

Anyone tuned in to what we’re doing here surely by now knows how great The Loaded Whispers are. Chansons De Geste is the latest Syd Lane of The Loaded Whispers manifestation and instantly you’re thinking that a name change means something – upheaval and change, a new direction, or quite possibly an experimental noise instrumental record to fill a creative gap in time. But actually it is the complete opposite. Chansons sounds to the untrained ear like the culmination of what she and Jer were doing on the four previous Loaded Whispers’ releases. Where the melodies flew before, now they soar. Where once it sounded soulful, now it sounds spiritually incandescent. And before where the distinctive poet voice reached for magical notes, now it brushes the magical notes aside and bursts upwards into incomprehensible stratospheric heights of song.

On the now seemingly final Loaded Whispers record “Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth”, you could sit back and listen to Syd’s voice dancing across the sky, on “It Begins In Beauty” it seems to have somehow vanished out of sight, up above the clouds. In a weird way it’s like a butterfly in reverse – the more developed the songwriting and sound becomes, the more it sounds like Syd, confidently emerging from some cocoon as herself.

Please excuse these clumsy metaphors… it’s the inevitable by-product of the finished record, guided by the mighty muse. The songs themselves, albeit framed in this epic sound (quite remarkable considering this is a home recording project), are extremely personal, autobiographical, and philosophical – as genuine as it gets. You get the feeling that going into a big studio with a full band would kill the fragility and honesty out of tracks like “Not A Poet Be”, “Ontario Place” or “Astride A Grave”. Make no mistake – it is one thing to write a solitary timeless song and then to record it in such a way that it captures it perfectly, but it is another to write a whole record of them. From start to finish these are gut-wrenchingly beautiful words and tunes and I don’t think anyone of us will fully understand just how incredible a record it is until many, many years from now. On “Artists…” I got addicted to listening to “Sick of Writing Sad Songs”. On “It Begins In Beauty” I could get (and have been) addicted to listening to five or six of them, and expect the rest at some point to take centre stage in due course.

Don’t believe me? Well take a listen to “Ontario Place” for yourself:

The gravity of this great little record was enough for me to seriously reconsider walking away from this adventure forever. It wasn’t an immediate revolution and there were other contributing factors, but these psychedelic pop ballads soaked in reverb carrying candid poetry on shoulders of song hooks gnawed away at my conscience over days and weeks until finally all that was left for me to do was say “Ah fuck it. Who am I kidding? People need brilliant life-affirming, comforting and inspiring songs to keep going and here I am sitting on a record like this…”

So bearing in mind that I’d already been sent a life-changing record from across the Irish sea and was struggling to keep my feet on the road of finality, it was something of a killer blow to receive this in my in-box a month later:

download: The Solstice Sessions

A SYD LANE solo album, recorded on the run, the bare bones of  the process behind “It Begins In Beauty’s” songs. Sure, the subject matter of these confessional hymns are sung from the same page as its older, more mature and intricate sister, but “The Solstice Sessions” is like a more playful and less self-conscious younger sibling. It perhaps doesn’t pack the same punch, but from a fan’s perspective it is a wonderful insight into the song-writing bubble, sounding less psych-pop and more folky and just as important.  Credit must go to her partner in crime, Mr Jeremiah James, maybe not such an audible presence on these recordings (though contributions to “Astride A Grave” help really make that song), yet you sense him there every step and note of the way. I’ve got a feeling that without Jer then Syd herself might be content to simply make music for the love of making music, and you and I would be none the wiser. So hats off to him.

If you’ve never heard The Loaded Whispers before then I’d recommend you work chronologically starting with “It Begins In Beauty”, because it truly is a featherweight champion of the world, and save “The Solstice Sessions” for when you’ve had your fill. If you’re already a fan like me, then you might as well close your eyes, or flip a coin and download either first. They both have a place off the beaten track, like leaves of technicolour skin, or trails of poem in the sky. I fucking love pretty much everything that comes out of the Lane/Jones studio, and I’m betting a change of direction that you will too.

Visit Syd Lane at:

http://theloadedwhispers.com and

http://www.myspace.com/chansonsdegeste

CATEGORIES:QUIXODELIC RECORDS, RELEASES, REVIEWS, SYD LANE