Here’s your starter for ten: what do Serge Gainsbourg, King Crimson and The Cure have in common?
In the immortal words of Jeremy Paxman, come on – we haven’t got all day.
No?
The answer is that they’re all covered on this EP, which if nothing else shows that Impure Wilhelmina are working from a wide range of influences. The other thing the tracks covered herein all have in common with each other (and Impure Wilhelmina) is that I wasn’t familiar with any of them when I got this to review, so this is very much first impressions of the entire kit ‘n’ caboodle, as it were.
First up is La Javanaise, originally by French pop legend Serge Gainsbourg, then Fallen Angel, originally by King Crimson, and finally Plainsong by The Cure, followed by two original tracks, Nebulae and Ignoramus. Now, I’m often not the biggest fan of covers, because unless a cover offers me something that the original doesn’t (such as Plague God’s cover of Transilvanian Hunger in a recent review), then – to be brutally honest – why would I not just listen to the original?
This is the issue I have with the covers on this EP. There’s nothing wrong with them as such, I just don’t really understand what they’re supposed to be offering me that Serge Gainsbourg, King Crimson, and The Cure don’t. Serge Gainsbourg for example, apart from the famously stellar song-writing skills and the stereotypical French je ne sais quoi, had what I can only describe as That Voice, whereas Impure Wilhemina’s version is …fine. It’s a decent rendition, albeit one where the vocalist is slightly out of his comfort zone in places, but it’s not particularly remarkable, apart from being generically heavier than the original.
This theme continues into Fallen Angel, with vocals that are mostly up to the job, but doesn’t really offer much that King Crimson didn’t provide the first time round. It must be pointed out that King Crimson themselves aren’t really my thing, so covers of their stuff don’t really appeal to me any more than they do. Maybe it’s different if you already like King Crimson and/or Impure Wilhelmina, but as it stands it doesn’t do a huge amount for me. I’m not going to dwell on the The Cure cover, because exactly the same issues apply, so let’s focus on the two original tracks at the end.
First up, it strikes me as a little odd to have more than half of such a short EP be covers, and even more so to then tack your own songs on the end, in the spot that most bands put their covers. Both of these tracks are from the recording of their last album, Antidote, and this is the point at which the sound of Impure Wilhelmina starts to make some sense. It’s a peculiar cocktail of post, sludge and elements of black metal, with some folky/indie flourishes. A mix of clean and (relatively) harsh vocals play out over a fuzzy, staccato melody that’s not unpleasant by any means, but I can’t help but want it to be more…something. Not a “something” in any clearly definable sense, it’s more that this EP feels like it’s trying to go in at least half a dozen different directions at once, and I keep finding myself wishing that they’d commit just a little bit more to one of them, and produce a more coherent sound.
Ignoramus continues in a similar vein to Nebulae. The vocals here are very obviously out of the vocalist’s comfort zone, and combined with the aforementioned sound that doesn’t quite know where it’s going, the overall effect is strangely uninteresting for a track with so much going on. The lyrics don’t help here either: I have to assume that something has been comprehensively lost in translation (Impure Wilhelmina are Swiss), or that it all sounded much better in someone’s mother tongue. Nebulae suffers with the same issue, albeit it to a lesser extent, and both tracks ultimately end up throwing an awful lot of words at you without ever actually saying anything.
All of the above said however, there’s not really a huge amount that’s outright horrible about Dead Decades, it’s just that there isn’t really much to sink your teeth into and really get on board with either. Your mileage may vary significantly if you already know and love the band from their earlier works – they wouldn’t be the first to put out an EP of less than stellar rarities purely for the diehard fans, which I kind of have to presume (hope?) this is – but for the uninitiated encountering them for the first time, there’s very little here to pull anyone in.
(3/10 Ellie)
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