A ‘talking book’ may not be the smartest attention grabber ever. Air and Italian novelist, Allessandro Baricco certainly didn’t to hit the spot with their book-come- performance art-come-record release, ‘City Reading’ in April – if only because nobody understood it. And whilst the addition of an English translation of the Italian novel from whence it came might have come in handy for some, it surely contradicted the very idea of pure narrative and pure sound that one supposes was its intent. In fact it was like listening to the Cocteau Twins with the tunes taken out. And though this worked marvellously well for the Sugar Cubes – it just didn’t pass muster here.
‘I Trawl The Megahertz’, on the otherhand, works on several levels: it reads well, it sounds well and it travels well – and when you’re out there trawling the megahertz, a smooth passage is what you need, yeah? Too right.
Culled from snippets of radio chat shows and phone-ins Paddy consoled himself with during a lengthy eye operation, ‘I Trawl The Megahertz’ is an unexpected treat for those of you who like soundtracks. A soundtrack to what though? To the shaping fantasies of our weary, blurry lives, that’s what. A living lullaby indeed.
The very first solo outing for Prefab Sprout wing commander, Paddy McAloon, ‘I Trawl The Megahertz’ is as joyfully lush, melodic and lyrical as any of his projects thus far. Opening with the 20 minute spoken epic title track (spoken by an American actress rather than by Paddy himself) the album manages to combine a strangely compelling air of magic with an often unbearable likeness to our own quotidian lifestyles. Oboes, glockenspiels, heaving string-arrangements and some mournful brass provide the dreaminess, and the whirring and unearthly zither style wotsit-phim stirs the surreal. As the dry and monotone voice, impassively announces, ‘Trains are late. Doctors are breaking bad news. But I am living in a lullaby’ we are very much aware of an extraneous world, a waking world and one we have very great difficulty at times in connecting with.
Like some fatally autistic sleepwalker, McAloon navigates a familiar but alien landscape with a countenance of recognition but not of understanding: a reckless automaton with the absorbancy of a poet. This you, this is me. This really is sweet suffering.