The unveiling. It comes on pink vinyl, with a pomegranate heart. The back cover is indefinably naughty, blurred like a faded seaside memory that hovers tantalisingly on the edge of consciousness. Shabby, but not too shabby. Too shabby. The front cover contains echoes of the past – long past. Female, defiantly out of step. A banner, a statement. (S)he who controls the present controls the past. I fight the urge to leave the record in its shrink wrap and go listen to Rickie Lee Jones once more. I already know what The New Eves sound like: Velvets-style drone rock, trad folk, anarcho-punk and hippy whimsy are all discernible in the Brighton quartet’s debut album – all played with white-knuckle intensity, as the strapline to The Guardian review glibly puts it. (Two all’s. Sloppy.) Shades of The Wicker Man (only female, obv), Incredible String Band (only female, obv). Patti Smith, when she tore my world apart at the Brighton Centre. Eve Libertine when Crass were at their most resonant. A medieval UT (the band I saw 45 times during the first few years of the 80s). Themselves, always themselves. The New Eves.
The title is austere: THE NEW EVE IS RISING, the lettering states blankly. Is it? Good. About fucking time.
I resist the urge to start flicking through my copy of Visions Dreams & Rumours (Zoë Howe‘s reissued portrait of Stevie Nicks) and move across to the kitchen drawer. Anticipation is key. Once I hear this album, I can not unhear it. The knife edges towards the polyolefin, and I argue with myself more. I want to hear their Shangri-La’s(?) cover again. It’s not on the album. I want to hear ‘Cow Song’ again, but I have already heard ‘Cow Song’ many times. Many, many times: wild and feral and beautiful and funny and containing much wanton mischief. I don’t want to spoil this moment. I want the anticipation to last forever. I want the fucking washing machine to stop turning.
Distracting myself momentarily, I come across a quote online that I never saw before.
Favourite thing someone’s said about your music:
So recently Everett True came to a gig and then wrote the most spectacular review. Here is a quote from it, ‘Some songs are like Gregorian chant echoes, others abrasive textural challenges. Some songs make you want to lift your arms up high, reach for the upper firmament, others… wow. Well, other songs build a cold fury and hold it for hours at a time, a welter of blurred strings and broken promises.’ Also in person he said to Violet that Kurt Cobain would have loved it and she nearly died.
The knife pauses in its journey. My hands, unable to form a grip, not even a claw, let the clothes pegs fall to the ground. All I want from the garden is unpredictability, beauty, sustenance. On one level, The New Eves are only as great as you choose to let them be. (Only?! Ha!) On another, they’re as great as anyone I have heard, certainly this side of… I cannot type easily, my knuckles betraying my agitation. The middle section of ‘Cow Song’ is far more Raincoats than the Velvets, clearly. Lose that blinkered male gaze! Dissonance. Clarity. I walk into another room to try and discover what it is the bass at the start of ‘Highway Man’ reminds me of. Dead Kennedys? French baroque theatre? No one but themselves. Great, great song. Unsettling and settling, simultaneously. They’re not from Cornwall, not physically at least. I don’t even know who’s singing right now.
Menacing, alert. Pagan.
Freedom.
Outsider art. Autonomy.
“The New Eve fucks if she wants to/The New Eve says no if she doesn’t want to/And there is no god to save you/If you fail to listen.” Once again, I find myself bereft of words. My desire for The New Eves’ music is almost physical.
ADDENDA
I haven’t mentioned their instruments, their names, where they are from, how long they’ve been going for, how they formed, how many stars I’d give it out of 10, the titles of the songs… anything at all, really. Does it matter? Listen to the music.