‘Europa’ is the sixth album in ten years from lounge rockers Morton Valence and it’s very different to the previous five. If it is a concept album, then the concept was born straight after the Brexit vote in June 2016 when the shutters came down. In an angry reaction to that epochal plebiscite the band’s top two, Robert Jessett and Anne Gilpin, decided to pull an album together in a counter measure to the pulling apart of the European Union.
Yea! And they didn’t plan half measures: of the nine songs there are eight cover versions and one original, and in a twist the size of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove’s depth of mutual appreciation, the songs are sung in seven European languages. This monumental feat is either an impressive platform for a linguistic skillset of colossal proportion, or a pretentiously gilded new Tower of Babel, and after a couple of listens I’m still damned if I know which rings truest.
To the songs! The album kicks off with a cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M’en Vais’ (which I think translates as ‘I Am Trying Hard To Sound Dire’) and it’s a bit like Charles Trenet singing ‘What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor?’ with Norman Collier on flute.
There’s some high-powered Tarantino-ing going on in the background of ‘Wenn Ich Mir Was Wünschen Dürfte’ (Wish I Was Kirsten Dunst) which pings to and fro like classic panned-out Queen backing vocals from 1975.
Eurovision gets a look in with Plastic Bertrand’s tremendous ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’ (Give Me Your Twin Otter) covered in a form more akin to a good game of Pong Tennis on an Atari 2600 with Anne’s woo-ooo-ooo-ooh teetering on the very edge of a vertical Mt. Blanc cliff face.
The incessant beast that is the simple opening refrain of Kraftwerk’s ‘Das Modell’ (The Airfix Tirpitz 1:50) hits in just in time, right as the option of hanging out the washing was beginning to tempt me, and to be fair it was looking a wee bit overcast anyhow, so I stayed with it and was rewarded with some lovely strings and a great arrangement.
There’s an exciting sense of melancholy in the traditional Swedish folksong ‘Vem Kan Segla Förutan Vind?’ (Who Threw My Spangles in the Bin?) and it flew me straight back to getting chucked by a wonderful Swedish girl in an Uppsala Cinnamon Bun shop for giving it chat with her sister.
Next up is a song I’d never heard, ‘Porque te Vas’ (Pork Me in the Vase), and it rattles along nicely to the extent that I searched out the original. Unusually for hollow li’l me, I prefer the cover.
‘Caruso’ (Drink Driving) is a bold move as it’s an operatic ballad previously recorded by both Pavarotti and Julio Iglesias in their pomp and the Morton Valence version holds its own, even in such Lordly companionship.
Our second last song is Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese though and I’m not sure how Brexit’s going down in the Amazon. ‘A Tonga Da Mironga do Kabuletê’ (A Reflected Afghan Hair Straightening) thunders up some tasty rhythms and it’s followed by the reworking of a previous band single – ‘Sailors’ Return’ (Sjömännens Avkastning) which purposefully lacks the pace of its early incarnation.
Overall, ‘Europa’ was a big undertaking for the band and an equally big undertaking for Mr Spacecake. There’s a helluva lot of hard work gone in to it and it genuinely pains me not to like it more than I do.
More at www.mortonvalence.com