Alex Rex - Andromeda (2020) Hi-Res

It’s sometimes tempting to speculate on the exact terms of the Faustian pact Alex Neilson has signed in order to get so much work of such quality done in such a short time. Aside from his most famous project – the wonderful folk-rock monster that was the Trembling Bells – he has been a member of Lucky Luke, avant-folk supergroup Black Flowers, and drum-and-sax noisemakers Death Shanties amongst many others. Add to this the countless collaborations with everyone from Jandek and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy to Isobel Campbell and Mike Heron, his seemingly never-ending tours with the likes of Alasdair Roberts, his recent work with folk superhero Shirley Collins, his liner notes for various friends and colleagues and his occasional reviews for The Wire, and you start to wonder whether Neilson doesn’t experience time in a different way to everybody else.

In many ways, these apparently frantic working patterns are reflected in the fraught emotional fervour of Neilson’s ever-improving songwriting. But that fervour may have another, much more personal cause. Much of his recent work – including the excellent Otterburn, released less than a year ago – is informed by the death of his brother, and that same energy of sadness and anger finds its way into Andromeda. Handfuls Of Hair, for example, deals with that family tragedy and the end of a relationship, weaving together those two strands of grief to create a kind of tapestry where longing and despair are primary colours. Then there is I Am Happy, which achieves a kind of sublimation through irony, its backing vocals spat out as if by singing gargoyles, its musical backdrop a storm of guitars, crunching and squealing. And Funeral For Alex Rex is delivered like a pagan sermon to a congregation of bemused psychiatrists. Drums clatter like falling earth and death is summoned with an almost gleeful eagerness. It would be easy to call this sort of performance cathartic, but there is something darker and more compelling than catharsis going on here: Neilson is staring into the void and we don’t know if the void will stop staring back.

He rarely deals in subtlety, but when he does it is all the more poignant. Album opener Song Of Self Doubt calls in a favour from Shirley Collins, who recites a disturbing spoken-word fragment over a collage of glassy chimes and field recordings of birdsong. It barely lasts a minute but it is one of Neilson’s most beautiful recorded moments. And Oblivion has a hushed country-rock feel to it but is nonetheless replete with infernal images. Like much of the album it is a brutal self-examination and an examination of the validity of creativity in the face of disillusionment.

While at times Andromeda is a willfully bleak affair and its songs seem to imply that the very act of songwriting is effectively pointless, its own existence eventually contradicts that. There are moments of melodic sweetness that permeate even the darkest or bitterest songs, like Coward’s Song, where the gentle lilt of a waltz pulls the listener in one direction while the lyrics – full of recrimination, doubt and lines from Richard III – go the opposite way. The harder-edged sound of Rottweilers, full of warped electric guitar, and the grind of Alibi Blues with its unsettling repetitions have an irresistible kinetic energy. These songs are more than glimpses into a despairing mind: the hand of the artist is visible, we can hear Neilson alchemising suffering into songs without ever losing the rasping closeness of that suffering.

The piano-led Haunted House is a further example of the growing range of Neilson’s writing. The lyrics are, by his standards, abstract but the melody is somehow familiar, a classic rock ballad dredged up from the depths of a fevered mind. The Uses Of Trauma, while more direct and personal, has a similar feel. At the other end of the scale, musically, is I’m Not Hurting No More, a spiky spoken-word monologue on a bed-of-nails guitar part, like The Fall with feelings.

At some point in the future, it will become possible – necessary, even – to define Alex Neilson’s place among the very best songwriters of this still-young century. Like many of the greats he is instantly recognisable by his distinctive voice, his idiosyncratic turn of phrase, even the melodic choices he makes mid-song. But right now the rawness and immediacy of his work means it would be difficult and unfair to rank it alongside other established albums. Andromeda, like its predecessor, is a difficult, brilliant, rewarding snapshot of human turmoil. It’s final song, Pass The Mask, ends with the paradoxical refrain ‘nothing can heal or destroy you better than time’, and while it’s not for us to speculate on how time will treat Neilson, its seems certain that the stature of this formidable album will continue to grow even as the scars it describes begin to heal.