POTBOILER: REVIEWS

A decent heathen by Nick Bollinger

The current Verlaines line-up is the most capable Graeme Downes has had.

Recording as the Verlaines for the first time in a decade, Graeme Downes shows he is still one of this country's most adventurous and accomplished songwriters. Downes's models come from the sophisticated end of popular music. With its swinging melody and crisp, bitter lyric, "All Messed Up" tips its hat to Cole Porter, while the emotional plea of "Don’t Leave" makes the melodic bounds and skin-prickling changes of the best Burt Bacharach.

And there is even an uncharacteristic tinge of funk to "It's Easier to Harden a Broken Heart (Than Mend It)".

Passion and irony co-exist in songs that tackle such tricky material as suicide, religion and rejection. And there is a similarly subtle mastery in the way Downes mixes melodies and lyrics. In "Forgive Thine Enemies (But Don't Forget Their Names)", he marries an anti-doctrinaire rant ("I don't care what you believe in/But then I'm a decent kind of heathen”) to a suitably agitated melody, underscored by a dogged banjo.

Elsewhere you will hear bold flourishes of horns and strings. The symphonic touches aren't new for Downes. He was incorporating orchestral instruments as early as the Verlaines' first album. Back then, the appearance of, say, bassoons amid a rock trio that had barely shaken off its garage roots made for an attractive tension.

But although the current Verlaines line-up (essentially the same one that made Over the Moon in 1996; 2001's Hammers and Anvils was a solo outing) is the most capable Downes has had, the orchestral sections suggest an approach that might have suited more of the record. A bad record can't be made good by throwing money at it, but Potboiler is a very good record that with a little extravagance could have been an extraordinary one.