Anton Barbeau - Stranger

by Adrian Janes

published: 20 / 3 / 2023

Label: Gare du Nord
Format: CD

intro

Enjoyably varied blend of pop, rock, psychedelia and Anglophilia from prolific American underground artist Anton Barbeau

In 2023 it will be 50 years since David Bowie retired Ziggy Stardust. Vocally, Anton Barbeau sounds so much like early Seventies Bowie (while sometimes veering more towards his acolyte, Brett Anderson) that it’s tempting to hear this album as his reincarnation. The piano-led ballads ‘Stone of Fire’ and ‘Death and Divorce’ wouldn’t sound out of place on an expanded ‘Hunky Dory’. Despite these characteristics, it would be wrong to dismiss Barbeau as simply derivative. Indeed, many of the qualities of ‘Stranger’ are due to his satisfying blend of influence and imagination: if he is in some ways Ziggy reborn, he is also someone who has remained alert to later music, while ignoring trendiness. This is best heard on the outstanding ‘Dollis Hill Butchers’, where galloping Big beat drums power an unlikely paean. Why a Californian should be so enamoured of a shop in North London isn’t clear; more plausibly, much of the lyric and the song’s aggressive undertow suggest the threat from a gang of ‘Clockwork Orange’ droogs. Blending phased drum breaks and pungent guitar chops, the track serves up a spicy treat. The verses of ‘Sugarcube City’ are founded on a dirty, grinding riff and an insidious vocal, yet effortlessly slip into a supremely catchy chorus: “All I know is everything/Is sweeter when the sugar sings”. Whether or not it’s about an LSD-fixated community, the song seems to depict a place where beneath a gleaming surface all is not well, as it fades out on the barbed perception: “You’re only as beautiful as your mirror”. ‘Cellar Bar’ encapsulates the gigging life of an aspiring star, the ironic contrast of a musician several rungs below Ziggy on the ladder of success who yet sings with all the emotion of one of the latter’s stirring anthems. An upsurge of fiercely fuzzed guitar in the midst of harmony vocals is but one example of the different textures Barbeau neatly knits together across the album; on the rueful rumination ‘Death and Divorce’ that follows, in contrast, sad woodwind complements downbeat piano and drums. Barbeau is known for various collaborations, among them with members of XTC. ‘ICU’ doesn’t actually sound like XTC, but there is kinship in its twisted pop sensibility, with another especially catchy chorus which includes lines like: “ICU reflected in a window/ICU dissected on a table/ICU not there”. The initial mystery behind the title ‘Quick to the Basement’ is soon clarified as an alarm call to friends, having spied a former schoolmate turned religious zealot approaching; female voices cheerfully chirrup : “Quick to the basement/Jesus coming/I’ll be damned”. The underlying unkind mockery is artfully masked by another trademark earworm of a chorus. Given the lyrical and musical invention ‘Stranger’ offers elsewhere, it’s perhaps forgivable that the concluding tracks, ‘Farm Wife’ and ‘Slight Chance’, are fairly conventional piano-based ballads. If the former, for the most part an uncynical love song, ends slightly disturbingly (“You’d like to shave the beard off me/Given the chance of a knife”), the latter has the sound and sentiment of ‘Double Fantasy’ John Lennon at his most uxorious: “I don’t know anything/But I owe you everything”. Which is not to say that some people won’t find it romantic. Even after making around thirty albums starting in the 1990s, Barbeau is not well-known. He seems to prefer the company of other somewhat eccentric artists (Robyn Hitchcock and The Bevis Frond among them). Yet these songs, expertly assembled from contributions by an array of musicians in different countries and sprinkled with some psychedelic stardust (“a microdose approach” in Barbeau’s words) are infused with a strong pop and rock sensibility. If he is at present a cult, this record ought to be enough to convert his following to something more like the scale of a church.

Track Listing:-

1 Stranger
2 Ant Lion
3 Dollis Hill Butchers
4 Stone Of Fire
5 Sugarcube City
6 Cellar Bar
7 Death And Divorce
8 Favourite Items
9 I C U
10 Just Have To Wait There
11 Quick To The Basement
12 Soggy Problems
13 Farm Wife
14 Slight Chance

Band Links:-

http://www.antonbarbeau.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Anton-Barbeau-10967397005/

Play in YouTube:-

Have a Listen:-

profiles

Profile (2007)

American pop anglophile has recently had re-released on Pink Hedgehog Records two of his albums, 1995's 'Waterbugs and Beetles' and last year's 'Drug Free'. Andrew Carver examines both of them

favourite album

In the Village of the Apple Sun (2008)

Anton Barbeau - In the Village of the Apple Sun

Andrew Carver examines eccentric Sacramento-based musician Anton Barbeau's psychedelic and uniquely distinctive 2006 album, 'In the Village of the Apple Sun'