The Helicopter Of The Holy Ghost
The amazing story of a car crash, some lost demos and great new music.
Sixteen years after a near-fatal car accident, theaudience’s Billy Reeves stumbled upon a box of demos he had no recollection of creating. With the help of The Bluetones’ Mark Morriss, instrumentalist Chris Anderson, and an eclectic mix of guests including members of Cocteau Twins and Gazpacho, The Helicopter Of The Holy Ghost’s debut, Afters, has emerged. Prog uncovers an unusual tale of a band that might never have existed were it not for a strange twist of fate.
“I thought I could get away with mentioning Canterbury. I think there’s a certain simpatico between that and British music that came along later.” Billy Reeves
“It’s definitely me that wrote it, but I’ve no memory of writing it,” says Billy Reeves about the imagery of Difficult Song on The Helicopter Of The Holy Ghost’s debut album Afters. “It seems bitter and angry. Maybe it’s a breakup song, but I haven’t been in a breakup for a long time. I wish I knew what it was about.”
But far from being another example of the evasiveness some songwriters display when asked about the meaning of their lyrics, he genuinely has no idea. The album has a unique backstory. Reeves was involved in a near-fatal car accident in 2001 and suffered amnesia – two years either side of the accident remain hazy. The police gave some items from the wreckage of his Morris Minor to his brother, who kept the box in his loft until 2017, when Reeves played one of the mislabelled MiniDiscs. He was surprised to find that it contained a number of song demos.
This music has now been arranged and recorded by a core trio of Reeves on guitar and keyboards, multi-instrumentalist Chris Anderson aka Crayola Lectern, and The Bluetones’ vocalist Mark Morriss. They spoke to Prog via a four-way Zoom call.
“Initially we had a few sessions around here,” says Anderson from his home studio. “Billy brought some songs in and we tried to make sense of them and reinvented them on the piano. We recorded quite a bit and did some overdubs. Once Mark’s voice was on it, he owned it and it became alive.”
“I got a SoundCloud link and as soon as I got a minute into the first song I knew that this was something I’d like to get involved with,” says Morriss. “I was thrilled to have been asked. It’s a very different style for me to sing, it’s all in my lower register and I thoroughly enjoyed performing in that way; I was crooning a little bit. And the songs are so beautiful and so soulful it was a challenge for me to do them justice.”
“Chris worked out what guitar parts I’d been trying to do, so he had as much to do with it as the person who wrote it,” says Reeves. Other musicians include Thomas Anderson from Gazpacho on keyboards, Mark Peters from The Engineers on guitar and former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde on “goth bass”, as Reeves puts it. Anderson wrote the brass arrangements – to which he contributes multitracked saxophones – inspired by his love of swing band horn charts. Richard Archer from Hard-Fi was on co-production duties with Reeves.
Despite the number of musicians involved, Afters is spacious and subtly layered, with a melancholic undercurrent that turns dark on End Of Loneliness, a snapshot of desperation behind closed doors.
“It is melancholic but it is very hopeful and there is humour in it,” says Morriss. “There’s beauty and sadness, lightness and prettiness.” Anderson’s two compositions slot in seamlessly: the singles I Will Never Hurt – with its stoic proclamations – and
Slow Down. The latter opens the album with the sound of a car accelerating, which is rather alarming in context, and thereafter advises driving with care.
Back in the 90s, Reeves enjoyed chart success as a member of theaudience with Sophie Ellis-Bextor and describes himself as “coming from post-punk and disco”, but he also claims that Afters is related to the Canterbury scene.
“I love Caravan, and this is my most prized possession, Love To Love You… signed by Pye Hastings,” he says, pointing to the Deram single on display on the wall behind him. “So I thought I could get away with mentioning Canterbury. I think there’s a certain simpatico between that and British music that came along later. And Mark’s voice is very English.”
The connection between Afters and Canterbury is by no means clear cut, but there appears to be a kinship with Robert Wyatt’s melodic shapes and piano style circa Rock Bottom and Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard, particularly on the delicious, perambulating piano-led coda to Tony’s Got A Car.
“When I first heard Rock Bottom that changed everything, probably more so than any other record,” Anderson admits. “What I like about Robert’s piano playing, and his voice as well, is that his choice of actual notes often surprises, as he’s coming from jazz – that’s where his love is.”
And while it would be stretching the point to make too much of a stylistic connection between Afters and Rock Bottom, they both have an atmosphere of a world under threat. And both albums are centred around accidents, although in both cases the majority of the material was written beforehand.
“I didn’t have any training to be a musician,” says Reeves. “But putting brilliant musicians into [this album] is a very interesting thing because they can interpret what I was striving for, and I think a lot of great British music is people trying to strive for something that they can’t quite achieve and it could fall apart at any moment.
“I don’t feel any closer to it now,” he continues. “I think it’s absolutely brilliant, but it still feels like it was written by somebody else.”
Reeves rather wryly describes a recent composition, the instrumental Hanger Lane Gyratory System 4.44am, as “filler”, but it’s an evocative interlude of overlapping lines of guitar and chiming bells. “They’re sampled, but I promise you when we do it live it will be with handbells.”
And this might well happen, as they all hope to continue as a group. “I think with more Mark Morriss songs and more Crayola Lectern songs there could be a another record if this one sells well,” says Reeves.
They then talk awhile about the practicalities and difficulties of getting the musicians together for live shows. “We’re not entirely not thinking of doing anything else,” announces Anderson to much amusement. Or as Caravan well might say: “We’re not entirely not thinking of doing anything else and if we do something, we’ll do it all over you.”
Afters is out now via Kscope. See www.thothg.com for more information.