I love this album. I love that it’s a sprawling mess, I love it for its good songs and bad songs, and I love it for the demo-like quality of said songs, but I love 2013’s Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter most because everybody’s Prince Charming couldn’t have made a weirder and more contrarian comeback album. Adam Ant is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter, is Ant’s Exile on Main Street, but unlike the Stones, Ant was a real exile, a forgotten man, a has-been.
Some eighteen years had passed since Ant (aka Stuart Leslie Goddard) released 1995’s Wonderful. During the long hiatus, Ant wrote his autobiography and dabbled. And struggled with mental illness. “The Blueblack Hussar is me coming back to life,” he told one interviewer. “I’m like The Terminator—I was a dead man walking.” Which doesn’t make a lick of sense, but you get what he’s saying. Ant was back amongst the living, and for all its very human flaws, Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter is the proof. The album has more red blood coursing through its veins than just about any album I can think of.
On Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter Ant did exactly what he wanted, fashion and chart success be damned. I don’t hear a big number one hit single amongst its seventeen tracks, and I doubt Ant did either, but apparently he didn’t care. Its one single, “Cool Zombie,” died an awful death, gasping its last at Number 154 on the UK charts before being unceremoniously buried in the Potter’s Field of British pop flops. England’s Prince Charming had apparently decided he’d sooner be the Mad King of Bavaria.
This is not Antmusic. Gone are the Goody Two Shoes persona, the Burundi drums, and catchy pop proclivities. AA began the project with long-time collaborator Marco Pirroni, but they decided to go their separate ways. He then recorded the album on a laptop computer with long-time Morrissey collaborator Boz Boorer. He also co-wrote several songs with 3 Colours Red guitarist Chris McCormack.
On Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter Ant writes shambolic but moving songs about Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McClaren, and rocker Vince Taylor, sings about his mental health problems, gets downright lewd on the subject of young punk chicks, goes supersonic in an assault on the record industry, but that’s just scraping the surface of what is in effect a sometimes baffling, sometimes brilliant train wreck of an album. But let me say this: Ant may sometimes fall flat on his face (see the aimless “Darlin’ Boy,” the Syd Barrett meets T. Rex bizarre “Sausage,” and the goes nowhere and takes its good old time getting there “Valentines”) but this is one of the most nakedly human and willfully perverse albums I’ve ever heard.
Ant opens the album with “Cool Zombie,” a Deep South-flavored groove that finds everybody’s favorite two-legged Formicidae living in Tennessee and singing in a faux hillbilly voice about “Flat top cats and dungarees/54 Pickup, eggs over easy,” Bonnie and Clyde and the Scopes Monkey Trial. It’s a template of sorts for many of the songs on the album; he eschews choruses in favor of plowing straight on through, singing whatever comes into his head. And it works here because the song’s got 54 Pickup get up and go. Follow-up “Stay in the Game” opens with some very fractured PiL guitar and bass, then Ant comes in sounding more like Billy Idol than himself. The song drags a bit, but it works (if barely) on the basis of sheer menace.
“Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter” is an interesting failure, a jumpy percussion-based throwback to Antmusic that has bounce galore but is too ramshackle for its own good. Oddly enough, it works best during the instrumental sections, thanks largely to the sweeping strings, which isn’t to say that Ant’s rap-like approach to the song isn’t entertaining. The driving “Vince Taylor” lacks something, and that something is raw rockabilly power—it’s too slick for its own good, and despite the slickness, it sounds half-finished. And the melody is, alas, pedestrian.
Are you beginning to wonder why I love this album? Especially when neither follow-ups “Valentines” nor “Darlin’ Boy” bring me joy? “Valentines” boasts T-Rex backing vocals but meanders endlessly, while the gormless and formless “Darlin’ Boy” seems to go on forever but is actually less than three minutes long.
The answer is that Ant doesn’t really get down and weird until “Dirty Beast,” a tres catchy number which is part tribute to Marvin Gaye; “Think of Marvin, think of Marvin and weep” he sings over and over, before tossing in the line “What’s going on.” Ant himself is a Dirty Beast, and I can’t say I can put the two together, but it doesn’t matter—what matters is the guitars play a lovely, sweeping and soulful melody, the whole song is supersized, and Ant sings the whole thing in a fetching falsetto.
“Punkyoungirl” is syncopated perverse with a rumbling electric guitar and what sounds to me like a drum machine, and has Ant tossing off lines like:
“Punky young girl needs a Terence Stamp
Perfect at swinging sixties vamp
Punky young girl in it for the craic
Pack all your best times lying on your back.”
Then he gets downright lewd, tossing off such funny filth as “Ooh, Punky young girl your state of mind/Men kneel down, in front of your behind” and my personal favorite, “Lift up your skirt/Let me lick your alphabet.” And it ends with Ant repeating the lines “She said nothing tastes as good as skinny feels/She said nothing tastes as good/She said nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” It’s very T-Rex and very cool, which is more than you can say for the bizarre “Sausage,” on which Ant goes full T. Rex and is quite listenable except for the fact that Ant is always singing “Call me sausage,” which kinda ruins the whole thing for me. But it’s cool, slick, and I’ll take it over whole albums of processed music food.
“Cradle Your Hatred” boasts a lovely melody and a great bass line, and has Ant apologizing from beginning to end while female backing vocalists sing in the background and a voice comes in at regular intervals saying “Stand up.” The song grows in intensity, and the chorus is lacerating:
“You cradle your hatred like a baby
Slave to resentment lately
(Stand up)
God only knows when it’s gonna stop
Whatever I say is okay as long as you come out on top.”
It’s a powerful song, but not as powerful as the hard man guitar storm that is “Hardmentoughblokes.” It’s an up-tempo pile driver from beginning to end and features chainsaw guitars and a remorseless drum machine. Ant reminds me of no one more than Johnny Rotten, what with the affected accent, and he tosses off such wonderful lines as “You got to laugh when they tell you a joke (ha ha ha ha)/Hard men, tick tock/Step away or they’ll beat you up” and
“McQueen, Tim Roth
Vinnie Jones, you can all fuck off
Winstone, Statham
Don’t get in my way, pal.”
It’s a real Clockwork Orange winner, this one.
“Shrink” is a slick, slinky, fuzzed-out and surprisingly melodic number with a chorus that reminds me of Pulp, only louder, much louder. It bursts into metallic overdrive at regular intervals and is an indictment of the British mental health system, which Ant knows something about from first-hand experience. It’s with real venom that he sings the chorus:
“A fist in the skull’s worth two in the bush
You’re feeling lucky right now
Or does your brain need a push?
Is it just me or is it just medication?”
“Vivienne’s Tears” is a shambolic triumph and a tip of the hat to clothing designer Vivienne Westwood, a friend. The guitar line is lovely and reminds me a bit of the opening of “Atlantis,” and Ant sounds both sincere and vulnerable as he recalls the distant past:
“I met Vivienne at the Vortex Club
I was wasted after the show
She had beautiful legs, beautiful eyes
Beautiful thighs.”
Equally lovely are the lines:
“A cup of coffee in Beaufort Street
Don’t know me from Adam
Because Vivienne’s tears flood everywhere
She can make your garden grow
Vivienne’s tears flow everywhere
She can make your garden, garden, garden grow.”
But he saves the best for the end, when he admits, and you can hear the affection (and maybe a hint of hurt) in his voice:
“You shouldn’t be a singer Adam, oh dear me no
You shouldn’t sing at all
Should I have taken your advice?
It wasn’t very nice.”
And he takes the song out with a piece of marketing wisdom, no doubt hers: “Buy at the sound of trumpets, sell when there’s/Blood on the streets.”
He follows it up with a tribute to his former manager Malcolm McLaren, “Who’s a Goofy Bunny,” which he had written decades before but included because McLaren had recently passed away. It’s a demo-quality and shambolic song that just sort of meanders along with lots of vocalists jumping in to the accompaniment of some raw guitar and tinkling percussion, and Ant spends much of his time singing the title over and over. That is when he isn’t singing,
“One word from him is worth ten from me
A student of adversity
He beat indulgence right out of me
That wild eyed child from Tin Pan Alley
Ssshhh…”
The song’s every bit as good-natured and wayward as can be, but it catches you up and won’t let you go. It’s weird—I can’t even say it’s a good song. But I listen to it with pleasure every time I turn it on. Explain that.
The album closes with two versions of “How Can I Say I Miss You” that bookend the anti-music industry “Bullshit.” “How Can I Say I Miss You” is a funky hip-hop-flavored hoedown and totally addictive. Ant’s vocals are buried in the murky mix, but the song just carries you along. Great stuff. “Bullshit” is all sonically buffed guitars and rapid fire drum machines with some cool synths and reminds me of both old Adam Ant and The Clash: “Tired of your shit/Tired of your bullshit” is Ant’s rallying cry, and he goes out singing:
“Here we go
Another revolution
Hippy breadheads
And their geeky solutions.”
“How Can I Say I Miss You (Reprise)” opens with some titanic drums and scratching before morphing into a driving Gary Glitter-school drums and bass stomper of an instrumental, over which a guitar runs roughshod. It’s as propulsive as fuck, and the perfect way to end the album.
On Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter the man whose face was once known the world over emerged from a long exile and instead of making a polished bid for the toppermost of the poppermost released one very odd album that was in effect a fuck you to superstardom. He preferred to get down with his strange self, and I admire him for that. I was fortunate enough to see him in DC during the tour to promote the LP, and he put on a fabulous show.
Vivienne’s tears will make your garden grow, and that’s exactly what this album is, a wild garden, ill-tended for sure but filled with lovely flowers and fantastical creatures. I highly recommend you take your ears for a walk there.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
