Chris Connelly: The Episodes

Chris Connelly
The Episodes
Durto Jnana

Recognized mostly as one of the architects of 80’s industrial rock, Chris Connelly has spent the past decade quietly reinventing himself as a sage-like, otherworldly jazz-folkie in the latter molds of Tim Buckley and Scott Walker.

The Episodes is Connelly’s latest foray into long-winded, late-night experimentalism, and much like Walker’s much discussed 2006 release The Drift, it’s a record that champions patience while flirting with pretentiousness.

It’s hard to hear many echoes of Connelly’s Wax Trax heyday (Ministry, Revolting Cocks) within these seven sprawling, mostly acoustic, vibraphone-heavy numbers, but there is definitely still an undeniable dark energy that permeates the whole album—it’s just been rerouted from roaring metallic noise into somewhat more sophisticated and organic avenues. Vocally, Connelly remains a devout disciple of David Bowie, but he is coloring a bit more outside the lines this time, delivering his complex Scottish poetry in a voice perfectly suited to the music’s primordial summertime spookiness.

Two tracks on the album, “The Son of Empty Sam” and “The Son of Empty Sequel,” actually revisit a song from Connelly’s criminally underappreciated 1997 album The Ultimate Seaside Companion. Originally a sparse, four-minute tune called “Empty Sam,” the new renditions expand to a combined 20 minutes of acoustic noodling, jungle percussion, manic piano pounding, and even a solid minute of intense crowd whispering.

Thankfully, despite all of the improvisation, conga playing, and implied witchcraft, The Episodes never becomes overly abrasive or unmelodic. The songs are there, and they’re solid. They just require a little more contemplation than, say, “Beers, Steers + Queers.”

(Andrew Clayman)


Published in The Metro Pulse, June 2007