TIM BOWNESS
Bunches of guest stars adorn accomplished album.
It was sometimes said of Bowie that half his genius was collaborating with the best muses and musicians. While we’re not comparing Bowness to Bowie – he’s not quite there yet – he’s smartly pulled in a splendid cavalcade of cameos on his sixth solo album; one which, with Steven Wilson mixing, he cites as “a No-Man production”. Certainly it revisits the warm ingenuity of that double act’s dramatic offerings, but so did Bowness’ recent-years trilogy, which culminated in 2017’s blend of filigree and fiction, Lost In The Ghost Light.
This however feels like a reset, a new chapter, and it bursts in with energy as fresh as that exhibited on the lusty opening of 2014’s Abandoned Dancehall Dreams, any fatigue cast asunder. Someone’s flowers are blooming again. Which isn’t to say it’s an album unfamiliar with world-weariness. Bowness’ dyed-in-the-wool musical inclinations and that softly sighing, faintly frowning voice will never be detouring into chants of ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’. Yet there’s a track-by-track unpredictability at play here, with unexpected shadings and a bubbling undercurrent replacing any tendency to tread water. You can feel it from the kickstart one-two of I Go Deeper and The Train That Pulled Away: there’s something in the air on this one. A 30-year career inevitably has peaks and valleys: this confident, diverse and thought-provoking album is unquestionably another peak.
While the voice – both literally and in terms of the record’s directions and caprices – is very much Bowness’, one must also eulogise those guest stars, who seem to have nudged him from his comfort zone. It’s clearly a coup to get both former 10cc man Kevin Godley (vocals) and XTC exile Andy Partridge (guitar) performing on the gently sinister What Lies Here. David Longdon (Big Big Train) joins Dylan Howe on the precisely pretty Borderline, while Colin Edwin and Jim Matheos feature solidly. Arguably the most startling but entirely logical contributor (given both his and Bowness’ penchant for uncompromising emotional shapes) is Peter Hammill, who brings guitar and vocals to the jagged It’s The World, as well as backing vocals on the U2-meets-MGMT echoes of Killing To Survive. The former also sees Wilson layering in synths and programming. Overall the Bowness-Wilson sort-of reunion shores up the album’s coherence and class. And those guest spots fill rather than drain the tank: this motors through its shades of sorrow and serenity with a proud purr.
No wonder everyone wants to smell these roses. Literate heart-aching art rock at its finest, Flowers will hoover up the bouquets.
A RESET, A NEW CHAPTER, BURSTING WITH ENERGY.