LaRM day 105 (Sandy Denny-Depeche Mode)

The overproduction and rock over folk aspects are pushed still further on Like An Old Fashioned Waltz (1973). Yet again though Sandy's voice and songs put up a good battle. In fact I'm not sure her voice was ever better than on Like An Old Fashioned Waltz, it's imbued with the deepest sadness through its crystalline perfection. The opener 'Solo' is, like the opener to Sandy before it, a hugely overdone heartbreaker which veers dangerously close to power ballad. But as ever, if you listen to the song rather than the grotesque production you can hear how it should have sounded, what a wounded and melancholy and thoroughly beautiful song it is. Likewise the title track which is truly gorgeous and Trevor Lucas' determination to ruin it can't win out. Incidentally by this point it had apparently become clear that the fragile Denny was asked to accept that Lucas not only wanted control of the production and artistic direction of her songs and her records but that he also wanted to have an open marriage, which I suspect was truly the beginning of the end for Sandy. Honestly, he really is quite the villain of the British folk-rock story. Anyway, there are some other lovely songs on Like An Old Fashioned Waltz ('Carnival', 'Dark the Night' and the devastating 'No End'), but the inexplicable presence of a cover of 'Whispering Grass' and Lucas' ghastly production really do mar the album. The reissue has evidence of what this record could have been by including the original piano and voice only versions of 'Like An Old Fashioned Waltz' and 'No End' which are heart-stoppingly beautiful.

Sandy rejoined the reuinted Fairport Convention for an album and tour which seemed to go well enough (and her three songs on the Fairport album, which we'll get two in a couple of months, are some of the best she ever wrote) but the last two straws for Sandy seemed to have been the commercial failure of her next album, Rendezvous (1977), and the discovery that she was pregnant. Rendezvous is truly a curate's egg, opening with a surprisingly effective rocked-up cover of Richard & Linda Thompson's 'I Wish I Was a Fool For You Again' (a song choice which I suspect spoke volumes about the state of Denny and Lucas' relationship at that point), but then follows up with a ghastly rock with sax and anaemic raggae guitar number ('Gold Dust') then, no joke, a cover of 'Candle in the Wind'. It's horrible, absolutely horrible and very little here suits Sandy's unique voice (which itself was suffering from years of heavy smoking and almost unimaginable levels of drinking). It's just all wrong. Decent songs are few and far between ('All Our Days' and especially album closer 'No More Sad Refrains') and the majority of the album is a bloated pop-rock effort that leaves one despairing for an astonishing talent who lost faith in herself and so gave herself over to someone who seemingly didn't understand and couldn't or wouldn't respect her or her work. There's no way of knowing whether she would have given up, carried on making increasingly disappointing records or found herself again and made more astonishing albums. After the birth of her daughter she was drinking more than ever and living what to all intents and purposes seems to have been a deliberately self-destructive lifestyle. Less than a year after giving birth she fell downstairs at her parents home. A couple of weeks later Lucas, possibly understandably, took their daughter and flew to Australia. A couple of weeks after that Sandy fell into a coma and died of a brain haemorrhage sustained in the fall.

Finally for Sandy Denny we have her final performance in 1977, recorded and released as Gold Dust in 1998. It's sad to hear how her voice had been changed by experience and neglect but what is interesting about Gold Dust is that, although it's not exactly a world-shattering performance, the songs that are taken from the last two albums sound much less overblown and absurd than their studio versions and there's a glimpse of how much better those records could certainly have been. But it's all of no consequence, they weren't better and Gold Dust is a slightly disspiriting end to a career. Maybe it's how it was all meant to be though. A tragedy that someone so seemingly full of life but also so full of an unfathomable melancholy should have been gifted with such talent because it could have all ended perhaps no other way.

From the sublime to the faintly ridiculous, it's the Singles (1981-1985) Depeche Mode compilation album released in 1985. Now, I have a lot of time for Depeche Mode but mainly because it's so unlikely that a bunch of spods from Basildon playing keyboards scarcely better than Casio VLTones would have become one of the biggest bands on the planet, churning out slabs of miserabilist screed and trying to commit suicide. It's just so odd, I find it vaguely charming. Anyway, the early Vince Clarke led singles are pretty rubbish ('Dreaming of Me', 'New Life', 'Just Can't Get Enough' - the NME review I think it was for 'Just Can't Get Enough' said it best: "I can - you will") but the early singles after Clarke left are abysmal synth-pop at its weediest, most tuneless and most insipid ('See You', 'Leave In Silence'). It's awful. Things improve a bit and I can't help admit to a sneaky guilty liking for 'Everything Counts', 'Master and Servant' and particularly 'Blasphemous Rumours'. But it is all really pretty daft nonsense at best and total rubbish at worst.