Modern English - A Post-Punk Twilight

The artistic path of this band is truly strange: in barely five years and three albums, they ended up embracing wildly different genres, starting out with the gothic punk of their debut, moving through wave sounds with an epic-psychedelic bent, and finishing up in the watered-down drift of a certain new romantic/synth-pop.

Another curious fact is that, despite their name, Modern English ended up going almost unnoticed in their native England, only to break through in America without ever setting foot there, thanks to the single "I Melt With You", which got heavy rotation on radio stations across the Atlantic.

We're in Colchester, Essex, in the fateful year of 1977. The fury of the Sex Pistols is passing through the area, and a young man named Robbie Grey is instantly captivated. No surprise there: the depressed mood of the time did much to fuel the explosion of punk among the youth, and new bands were springing up everywhere. Thus were born the Lepers, the original nucleus of the band, with Robbie Grey on vocals, Gary Mc Dowell on guitar and drummer Richard Brown - though their naive punk slashing added nothing to what the era's landmark groups had already said.

Before long, though, keyboardist Stephen Walker and bassist Michael Conroy joined the original lineup: thus a new band was formed, Modern English, who began performing at the Bridgehouse, the local punk venue, sharing bills and striking up a short-lived rivalry with another band that had just sprung up a few miles away, in Basildon: Depeche Mode.

In 1980, Limp Records, a small Essex label, was willing to give Modern English a chance. Their first 7-inch single was thus pressed, featuring the tracks "Drowning Man/Silent World", but the result was a flat record, with no notable ideas and, on top of that, poorly recorded.

As frustration grew, it became clear that the only move left was an imminent relocation to London - the only city, according to Grey & co., capable of offering a still-unknown band fresh chances for a breakthrough.

They thus moved to the English capital, where a squatter's life awaited them, with nights spent in occupied houses, with Killing Joke and Throbbing Gristle as their "boys next door". But it was precisely in this context that the band's creative phase took a remarkable leap forward.

Walker, the keyboardist, recalls how Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke, in the dead of night, megaphone in hand, would wake everyone up shouting disjointed phrases in a declamatory tone, as if gripped by psychotic delirium.

Ivo Watts Russell, head of 4AD, believes in the potential of Grey and co., and releases two of their 45s, not without a certain morbid charm, respectively "Swans On Glass"/"Incident" (1980) and "Gathering Dust"/"Tranquillity" (1981), incendiary, compulsive tracks in perfect post-punk style, with distorted, reverb-drenched sounds, tribal percussion, and Grey's apocalyptic, delirious voice, which, rather than singing, declaims his own lyrics in a mocking tone.

The tracks are well received by critics, even achieving a fair amount of success on the independent charts. The coordinates are those mapped out by Joy Division, Bauhaus and Killing Joke, but the band also shines with a light of its own, thanks above all to Grey's vocal flair, whose theatrical singing, majestic but never pompous, gives the songs a highly effective pathos.

In 1981 their first full-length effort, Mesh And Lace, sees the light of day: dreamlike and unsettling, fully in line with 4AD productions of the period.

The title track immediately delivers great emotion with its melancholic streak: the keyboard melds with Grey's vocals, following the same notes somewhat like in Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," restrained tones that are nonetheless ready to explode into an intensely dramatic spiral. "Black Houses" plunges us into a whirlwind of guitar distortion, before building with a hypnotic bass line and Grey's apocalyptic, delirious voice: it's a track that in some ways recalls certain moments from Wire, the more "gothic" ones from "154", with the addition of macabre, horror-tinged infiltrations clearly indebted to Bauhaus.

"16 Days" opens with blasts of echo and distortion, pre-recorded voices and a bass that obsessively repeats the same lines, while the guitars have a disturbing effect: we could call it the twin of "Black Houses," especially considering that the studio sessions for the two tracks date back to the same period.

The recurrence of obsessive, hypnotic textures, punctuated by an oppressive rhythm section in pure dark-wave style, is the common thread running through the 15 tracks. But the record is also pervaded by a twilight, decadent spirit, reflected in lyrics steeped in melancholy ("Grief," "The Token Man") and in dreamy vocal harmonies that implode into electric vertigo ("Just A Tought," "Move In Light"). Grey's intense, deep singing lends pathos ("Dance Of Devotion"), but also anguish ("Swans Of Glass") to a layered sound, built on a pile-up of hisses and dissonances. Adding a further touch of class is the magnificent cover art, credited to 23 Envelope, a hallmark of 4AD's all-encompassing artistic project.

Mesh And Lace is a debut that's perhaps still somewhat raw, but rich in extremely intense moments. The use of Grey's voice, combined with the effectiveness of the keyboards, already hints at the direction the band's sound would take in the future.

Despite the critical acclaim, the album fails to achieve equally reassuring sales results. The cult following of Modern English at the underground level, however, continues to grow considerably.

Very close to the sound of Mesh And Lace, released the same year, is Uk Decay's debut, "For Madmen Only": the same tight rhythms and dark melodies, with a singer, Abbo, who seems to declaim in the manner of Robbie Grey.

This is the most favorable moment for Modern English. 4AD pampers them, while their labelmates Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance have yet to develop the unique style that would, in the years to come, lead them to produce the masterpieces we all know.

From the anonymous Bridgehouse, a small venue in their local area, Grey & co. have now moved on to frequenting the Batcave, the historic haunt of London's gothic cult scene.

Modern English are in the midst of a creative whirlwind, and just a year after their debut, they release the splendid After The Snow, the album destined to be regarded as their masterpiece. Thrilled with the excellent work done with Echo And The Bunnymen, they enlist Hugh Jones as producer. He, however, rather than approving of the band's work, shows strong doubts about their potential. Friction is inevitable, but the partnership between the band and the producer goes ahead regardless. Robbie Grey and his bandmates are driven hard by Jones through a grueling stretch in the studio, and in the end the effort pays off with a beautiful record.

Grey drops the mocking, declamatory tone for a more reflective mood, the whole band has matured, the atmospheres turn melancholic while still retaining their decadent streak, the compositions are no longer spartan but rich in arrangement, with the synth finally taking center stage, no longer a mere backdrop but the lead instrument, weaving together with the guitar to shape the fabric of the whole record.

The opener is "Someone's Calling," which retains the tribal accents of the debut before taking on an epic-romantic quality, thanks to keyboards and guitars that sketch out new electro-acoustic horizons. "Life In The Gladhouse" is a truly unusual track, straying from the band's usual stylistic hallmarks and ending up in dance-dub territory thanks to an irresistible chorus and a pounding rhythm. "Face Of Wood" is another gem: here we're close to the best of Sad Lovers And Giants, with that keyboard evoking nostalgia and the electro-acoustic guitars always at the forefront, painting new watercolors with psychedelic brushstrokes. Next comes "Down Chorus," a gorgeous, melancholy-tinged ballad that finds Grey trying his hand at an almost crooner-like vocal delivery: by now we're looking at a mature singer who, having left behind punk's urgency, gives himself over to new standards of refined elegance. "Strange Visions Of Ballons On White Stallions" are the lyrics of Grey's psychedelic trip recounted in "Down Chorus," words that would also inspire the artwork for the album cover.

"I Melt With You" is the single every pop band would love to write: airy atmospheres, a flawless verse and a memorable chorus, a brilliant song for all its simplicity. "Carry Me Down" is another high point of the record: we're in neo-psychedelia territory here, with acoustic guitars and flute painting a ballad that enchants the ears of the most attentive listeners from the very first listen. The title track and "Tablas Turning" are further gems rounding out an album that borders on perfection, magically balanced between gothic sounds, psychedelic ballads and synth-pop shadings.

The unexpected success of the album prompted the band to relocate to the United States, a country that by now had welcomed them as the new darlings of Albion's shores. The band threw itself into a relentless tour: eighty-two shows in a hundred days! The dates were sold-out, and among those attending the concerts were icons of the stature of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan.

The huge success of After The Snow caught everyone off guard, and two years later, in 1984, Ricochet Days (4AD) was released, presenting a band that had turned completely toward synth-pop territory, while still displaying excellent technical skill and considerable care in the arrangements.

On the strength of the previous album's success, Hugh Jones was brought back as producer, but both the critical reception and the poor sales figures show that the balance achieved with After The Snow was, unfortunately, not maintained.

The opening, however, is decent: "Rainbow's End" recalls the more melodic and engaging side of Simple Minds, with even Grey's voice nodding toward Kerr's epic tones. "Machines" is a track in perfect synth-pop style, excellently balanced between a synthetic dance rhythm and programmed backing tracks, mediated by new wave leanings, thanks to a commanding bassline that owes a clear debt to master Peter Hook; we're thus in territory dear to New Order, but the trademark of that band's jagged, original textures had been sold off, leaving only a pale memory of it. Grey's own voice is now sweet and restrained, the apocalyptic tones of their early cries now a distant memory.

With Ricochet Days, the band winks at the dancefloor, and indeed the tour with A Flock Of Seagulls could hardly have failed to pull them toward melodic, synthetic sounds. Gone are the granite guitars, then, replaced not just by synth backing but even violins, violas, cellos and oboe, enriching an instrumental fabric that ends up excessively bombastic.

The eagerness to replicate the success of After The Snow, the album that had cemented their place in the US market, played a nasty trick on the band. The single "Blue Waves" recalls "I Melt With You" with equal elegance, but lacks the powerful impact that their breakthrough single carried in its grooves.

To be clear, this is a dignified record: tracks like the title track, "Spinning Me Round" and "Hands Across The Sea" are classy pieces, their elegance and formal beauty bordering on perfection, but the impact and magic of the previous records, those dark and captivating textures, have by now been lost.

The poor sales were a bitter disappointment for the band: "Despite the effort put into such a beautiful dress," Robbie Grey commented, referring to the production and the obsessive care given to the arrangements, to which the violins and oboe, rather than adding value, had only lent a new baroque guise.

In 1985 Grey was brought in as a vocalist on "It'll End In Tears", the album by the This Mortal Coil project, alongside fellow 4AD labelmates. The track he lent his voice to is "Not Me", featuring Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins and Manuela Rickers of X Mal Deutschland as instrumentalists; thanks to the collaboration with new musicians, the singer seems to recapture the drive and inspiration of the old days, and the track is gorgeous.

The story of the real Modern English ends here; even their best-of, Life In The Gladhouse, limits itself to revisiting these first three albums. What we're about to describe, then, remains nothing more than a sterile appendix to the story of a band that, at least in terms of creativity, has nothing left to add.

The '84 tour promoting Ricochet Days in the United States saw dates in small clubs for a sparse crowd of fans who had remained faithful to their cult. This led to the split with 4AD and a deal with Sire Records, an American label that would put considerable pressure on the band to go back to producing singles with strong commercial potential.

Given these new circumstances, crisis was just around the corner, a creative void took hold, and so Walker and Brown left at the end of the tour.

Grey, now the sole owner of the project, teamed up with new musicians and in 1986 released the album Stop Start on Sire.

"Ink And Paper" and "Border" are solid tracks that recall the Modern English sound, while the rest of the album is made up of saccharine, anonymous songs best consigned to oblivion as soon as possible.

After a reflective four-year hiatus and yet another lineup change, Grey came back swinging with another album, titled Pillow Lips. The record also marked the return of Conroy as well as the arrival of Aaron Davidson, formerly of March Violets, on guitars and keyboards.

Despite the rather anonymous sound – a synth-pop in line with the previous record – the album's sales are excellent, helped in part by the remix of “I Melt With You”, and will settle at around three hundred thousand copies.

In 1996 Everything Is Mad is released, with a new line-up and a new label, Imago, but the quality of the songs remains lacking, the same derivative sound as their recent, unremarkable efforts, with a few tracks, like “Heaven”, that are merely passable.

The thought of conquering the American market is the recurring dream of every British band, but sometimes, as in the case of Modern English, it can turn out to be an unexpected act of artistic suicide.

On the other hand, the live dimension works, and despite the recent lacklustre efforts it brings the band a further taste of glory, at least at the box office. After an exhausting coast-to-coast tour of the U.S.A., lasting around four years, Modern English choose once again to put themselves in the hands of veteran producer Hugh Jones (already the architect of their early sound) to try to relaunch themselves on the market with new material.

Their seventh album Soundtrack is released on 24 May 2010 through the New York independent label Darla Records: its gestation was rather troubled, but the result can be considered appealing, given that the songwriting (entrusted mostly to guitarist Steven Walker, not to be confused with the former keyboardist of the same name who had left the group in 1984 right after Ricochet Days) yields a few tracks of undeniable worth. Standouts include the funereal, six-minute-plus title track that flirts with trip-hop, the semi-acoustic ballad “Fin”, “The Lowdown” and the introspective “Deep Sea Diver”, which attest to a rediscovered inspiration, at least on the tracks that echo their early post-punk days, while the sweeter, more hook-laden numbers rooted in pop-romantic (“Bomb”, “Here Comes The Failure” and the forgettable radio-friendly single “It’s Ok”) once again betray a few inevitable cracks, out of step with current trends.

At this point frontman Robbie Grey revives the original line-up (missing only drummer Richard Brown, whose place had been taken by Jon Solomon) for another series of concerts across the United States, the United Kingdom and Paris, which will wrap up in June 2011. After recording yet another new version of the perennial hit “I Melt With You” for the soundtrack of the film of the same name directed by Mark Pellington, the band disappears from view for a long stretch, before resurfacing in 2014 with the digital release of Rarities And The Unreleased (containing various remixes and a couple of outtakes dating back to the Everything Is Mad era).

In 2016 it's the turn of Take Me To The Trees, their eighth studio album, again distributed online, this time with the decisive support of their most dedicated fans, who respond positively to the crowdfunding campaign set up specifically through the Pledge platform. The nearly five-year silence since the previous record evidently pays off creatively: the project is as convincing as it hasn't been in a long time, thanks to the excellent production and mixing work of Martyn Young, co-founder of Colourbox and M.A.R.R.S and a former labelmate of Modern English on 4AD back at the time of their debut. A century seems to have passed, yet “Flood Of Light”, “Something’s Going On” (which revisits the sinister territory of “16 Days/Gathering Dust”, reinterpreted in the style of This Mortal Coil), the near-title-track “Trees” (whose verse melody quotes Heroes by David Bowie), “Moonbeam” and the moonstruck “Dark Cloud” and “Come Out Of Your Hole” rewind the tape, carrying the listener back into the comfort zone of an '80s aesthetic, with rough, raw darkwave-style sounds built on percussion, heavy guitar riffs and lush arrangements skilfully put together by a squad of session musicians recruited specifically for the occasion (Roy Martin is now on drums). Also worth hearing are “I Feel Small” and the rock-leaning “Sweet Revenge”, confirming a compositional vein that's more than acceptable, even if it's now dispensed sparingly.

Take Me To The Trees is in fact followed by another interminable pause of a full eight years, broken in the summer of 2023 by the single “Long In The Tooth”, which serves as a prelude to the release of 1,2,3,4 (2024), conceived in Suffolk for the most part during lockdown at the home of bassist Mick Conroy, who stated that he drew musical inspiration from David Bowie and Siouxsie And The Banshees. The ten songs on display constantly shift gears with the aim of revitalising every gene of a band that, by its very DNA, has never been afraid to take risks throughout its career, starting with the boisterous lead single which, like the whole tracklist, benefits from an interesting “live” effect due to the drums (handled by Richard Chandler) being added in after the fact.

The anthem “Not My Leader” is a fierce broadside against the political situation in the United States and the United Kingdom, “Plastic” booms over an obsessive keyboard riff lamenting worrying environmental decline, while the synth-rock of “Crazy Lover” lingers on matters of the heart. “Genius”, “Out To Lunch” and Gary McDowell's dissonant guitars on the restless “Exploding” turn the clock back to their debut days, while “I Know Your Soul”, softened by a relaxing baritone, is the track that most caresses new-romantic tones. Also worth appreciating are “Not Fake”, where strong and soft tones alternate with clever dynamism, and the delicate slowcore adagio of the dreamlike “Voices”, which brings down the curtain leaving the listener with a sense of bliss.

Contributions by Giuseppe D’Amato (“Soundtrack”, “Rarities And Unrealised”, “Take Me To The Trees”,”1,2,3,4″)

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