“The record feels camp, frothy and mildly ridiculous to me – sort of like a very English version of a Tex Avery cartoon.” Frothy it may be at times, but RATS IN PARADISE‘ is grounded in Emily Breeze‘s noirish tales of a life well lived as a hopeless romantic, dreamer and degenerate, an artist with a rare insight and fascinating depth. Her fearless suite of kick ass songs backed by: Rob Norbury, Andy Sutor, Helen Stanley and George Caveney and producer Stew Jackson help her frame her sketches from the margins and eye for the faintly ridiculousness of it all.
Expertly balancing the prosaic life of a party girl with musing on the cosmos and existentialism. Dispensing her tales of love, fear and dreams, with the kind of knowledge of a sage. Bristol’s Breeze is a rock star of the kind they don’t make anymore.
Opener ‘Romance is Dead’ pulls back the curtain on this glittering adventure and is studded with darkly ironic and knowing lines that dissect modern dating. We are all on the carousel of life, some of us are thrown off in the process. “I heard from a young revolutionary /love songs are just a waste of time” she sings part husky Chrissie Hynde muscularity, part Dylan-style poetic tumble, like ‘love songs are going out of style” before adding a withering nod to herself “well so am I”, a spirallng epic that embodies the absurdity and tenousness of life and love, gloriously.
The snarling ‘Fun’, puts a foot on your neck as our nihilistic heroine mocks her tendency to always put pleasure before business, prowling above a shronky beat and feral guitar growls, sneaking in a pre-chorus ‘your mum’ gag for the ages. Its visceral urgency and mocking addictive sound reminds one of early Birthday Party or Yeah Yeah Yeahs, given an inimitable spin by Breeze and her whip-smart band!
The lushly drawn ‘Dating A Model’ is a delight that marries a gauche glamourous waltz smothered in strings, twinkling keys and shimmering waves of guitar, to a devastating satirical portrait of a idealised partner that she unpicks piece by piece, served with a side of unmistakable Breeze sass and a “supporting cast of jealous lovers and cocaine communists.” Imagine if you will Blackbox Recorder at their most commercial, sashaying across the dance floor with Father John Misty and Debbie Harry, whilst Emily writes righteously wistful poison pen letters dripping with rapier- like observations, about red flags and failed love affairs in the corner, maybe you can visualise this beauty, falling out of infatuation never sounded so good.
“Vulgar as leopard print / cheap as confetti”’ she sings on the slow-burner ‘Forever Money’, shifting seamlessly from spoken word that gives it a down to earth relatibility, swelling into an anthem for doomed dreams of finding pot of money and heading out of here, and faded love affairs referencing everything from Sinatra to cheap corner-shop wine and Only Fools And Horses in the process. “I had also wanted to shoehorn Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses’ immortal line ‘This time next year, we’ll be millionaires’ into a song for a while, so that made it into the chorus,” explains Emily. “I was thinking about FairyTale of New York, with those characters who have that sort of tragic delusional hope that I find so romantic and relatable.“
The second half of the record offers more contemplation, and more elements that shift from knowing spoken word to peaks of melody. Two tracks look to the past to find crumbs of hope for the future, ‘1997′, crafts a tapestry of spindling keys, guitars that splutter like a misfiring car engine and twitching drums, Breeze’s delivery is both affectionate, wry and bittersweet, it vividly calls to mind the rituals and habits of teenagers in the late 90s in ‘1997‘ one can almost smell the cheap cider and alcopops. Capturing that time when music meant everything in your early teenage life, the first time you heard alternative bands, that tattoo you regret, and being a latchkey kid. With echoes of Pulp and Self Esteem, she sketches out all the nostalgia and conflicted angst of being a teenager in the 90s (“nobody knows where the time goes/but me and you know“). It’s an us against the world anthem for Gen X kids who are now that bit older and look back with both fondness and conflicted regret, at once.
‘The Beatnicks’ evokes the spirit of the 60s outsiders to find magic in life amidst the urban sprawl and unfairness of it all, from calm, poetic recital to a glorious chorus that balances bittersweet moments we cling onto, the moments that make it worthwhile, embracing love not matter how cynical you are, yes you too can find happiness, somehow. There’s an illuminating version of Paul Simon‘s ‘Graceland’ that adds a burning majesty to it, fired by shimmering riffs and Breeze’s masterful delivery. While closer ‘We Were Lovers’ redux, Breeze’s voice sits contemplatively and vividly at the eye of a storm, as a multiverse-spanning tale of the cosmic life cycle of a relationship spreads before her she wistfully and regretfully looks back on a relationship heading off a cliff, balancing it against the glistening backdrop and into a fantastic swooning vocal, “dug seperate trenches/and fired pot shots at each other” she offers as her relationship crashes onto the rocks, it’s an epic widescreen ode to a slow motion break up.
Newness in pop music is often prized, sometimes at the detriment of substance. The idea that your first album is your best is often a fallacy. What of the survivors? The eccentrics chipping away at the margins for years with very little financial reward? Whilst many reunions are disappointing, sometimes experience is something to be treasured. In a year when Pulp returned and showed that age is just a number if you want it to be, they put all of that touring, songwriting, failing and trying again into practice and perfecting, producing a late career highlight. Emily Breeze and her band prove that longevity and craft still bear fruit, too, in the fascinating details that can make music magical, that we still cling to or take us out of ourselves when the world around us is going to hell. Most of all, it proves we may be in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
