Doesn't all that listening give you anything?

Area
Fragments Of The Morning

C’est La Mort (original release)/Projekt (reissue)1990

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a Knoxville record store known as Cat's Music, I purchased this album, along with Tiny Lights' Hot Chocolate Massage, as well as some long-forgotten release by The Miss Alans. All three were in the dollar cut out bin. I don't know what attracted me to it. Perhaps it was the odd titles, or the non-descript cover. Whatever it was, Fragments Of The Morning turned out to be the most amazing cut out I had ever purchased.

Prior to this release, Area had put out a couple of other albums on the C'est la Mort label. Fragments would be their final release. Original guitarist Henry Frayne had split the group by this point, leaving only Steve Jones and Lynn Canfield at the helm, with whomever else they asked to help out.

To hear this album is like reading a long piece of surreal poetry. The simple four chord "Puzzle Boy" opens the record. Against an eerie keyboard/electronic drum backing, Canfield's echo-soaked vocals slip the lyrics out slowly, painting vivid pictures from abstract phrases. "Hard words you chase you out/Or else caught in my throat won't go down". Lines like these and others such as "The way the roar of voices rolling down the hall all shut your eyes" set the pace for the entire album.

I remember when I first played this record. I was coming home from a friend's house late at night. The sounds of the music and Lynn's voice seemed at once both unsettling and reassuring. This was an album that begged you to listen. As the songs continued to play, my eyes peered out behind my windshield into the fog. I was almost expecting to see some form of ghost or apparition to be sitting beside me at any moment. Odd, I know, but that's the kind of ideas the songs here invoke.

"Well you tested all the angles of a blue glow/I was pacing, killing hours out in the hall". More pieces of the aural puzzle to put together from "The One Year". Continued in "Express" with its heavy beat-sampled percussion. "Frances winding lucidly across the street/From a quarrel I no longer hold responsible for me/If you are no one, then you must be missed/Your arms are known to those/Where a hand of shame arose to block their voice/Let them sow". What can be said for lines like these other than you have to be there to understand it?

Fragments Of The Morning trips along in its own hallucinogenic visions. Stream of consciousness that would never sell a million copies, yet was released for a few who managed to lay their hands on a copy. "Green Light" in its quasi-Cocteau Twins emotion. "Maggie in a new dress/The light playing with her shiny hair/Not to play by other rules/To see what can be brought out out there/Rescues another flag day/They don't last as long/As long before".

When Henry later formed the band The Moon Seven Times with Canfield, I had the honor of communicating to him through emails on a near daily basis. I asked him how she came up with all the wonderful lyrics. He didn't even know. I don't know if I would have really wanted a real answer, anyway. That would have taken out a lot of the mystique.

And so the album rolls on, from the stark vagueness of "All Souls" to the dense "Dead Feather Years", Fragments Of The Morning is simply an album you must own. And I say that with no hesitation. I want to use the term gothic here, but not as in "goth-rock". It's not that. This music is gothic in idea, but the farthest thing away from say, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and The Banshees, or Sisters Of Mercy. It's very quiet and beautiful. Warm and electric.

The Projekt label has since reissued all of the Area albums. To be honest, I have never heard their other two releases but I can at least vouch for this one, as it would have been a great injustice to have had it go completely out of print. If there was an album that I would recommend to anyone, no matter what they listened to, this would be it. I recall all my other friends went back to that record store and scooped up all the remaining copies. It's simply a very haunting and inspiring album.

Fragments Of The Morning. A moment in time frozen in music. An abstractness that pulls the listener in, rather than push away. Probably the musical equivalent of the theory that millions of universes could be contained on the head of a pin. It's that vast and bottomless. You can listen to it over and over and never reach the end. It's one of those records that you find yourself playing again once the final song has played. Look for it. Once you hear it, I promise you'll be changed in some way. Beautiful and perplexing.

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Girl In A Long Lost Band

Katydids
Katydids

Reprise (1990)

Who remembers the Katydids? Anyone? Am I the sole person on the planet who owns both of their albums and single? Sometimes it feels like it. The Ultimate Band List offers up a photo and one skimpy paragraph as a "history" for the group. I've never known anyone else who owned their albums. So what happened?

Swallowed up by the Bermuda Triangle most likely. Both the self titled debut album and Shangri-La were pop music recordings that unfortunately got lost in the shuffle somewhere. It's a shame. Susie Hug was an extremely gifted vocalist, wrapping her beautiful voice around the Katydids' lyrics and breathing life into them. The rest of the band, composed of Adam Seymour on guitar and organ, Dave Hunter on bass, Shane Young on drums, and Dan James on acoustic guitar made for a tasteful and original group of musicians who had a sound all their own.

Produced by Nick Lowe and released in 1990, just before the giant alternative rock explosion, Katydids was a jaunty excursion into pop rock that quite possibly seemed quaint at the time. It's tough to really categorize this or the followup album. For while there are such influences as the Beatles running about in the Katydids' work, there are so many other things in the mix, such as a country sound, and a definite roots rock mood as well. Perhaps Reprise simply didn't know how to market the band. Perhaps no one really cared.

Kicking off with the chunky "Heavy Weather Traffic", Katydids announces its arrival as something quite new and different. "Feast your eyes on the sky/Then turn around and gaze into mine/Feel the heat/Hotter than anything you've ever felt before in your life/The heavy weather shows a temperature rise/It's too much of everything". Susie's voice is at once filled with a young girl's innocence and a mature woman's assuredness. "We throw ourselves on top/And fight to the end". The quirky lyrics may not have any real point other than abstract whimsy, but it's a great opener.

"Stop Start" is one of the first of many character studies on the album. "He's a foolish boy/Caught up in a daydream/Expecting me to wait around/Scratching at the ground". The object of Hug's somewhat annoyed attention comes across as arrogant. "He says, 'Don't talk to me about logic/'Cause I don't want to know/The funny things in life are free/And I'm all set to go'". Amid a rather country and western jangle, the song bounces along happily to the end where the instruments stop and it's only Hug and the drums working it out. "Stop start/Stop start/In a mood and out again/Stop start, stop start". It works well as a musical backdrop to the indecisiveness that the lyrics portray.

The beautiful "Girl In A Jigsaw Puzzle" is next. A slow, sad ballad about trying to fit in, the song plays effortlessly as Susie's words spill forth. "I'm just a girl in a jigsaw puzzle/Trying hard not to fall apart/But it's not that easy/I'm just a girl in a jigsaw puzzle/And it's hard to finish when there's something missing". Adam Seymour's vibrato drenched guitar lines delicately pull the song to its emotional heights and sad conclusion. "And it's hard to finish when there's something missing/And there is no point at all". Hug sighs the last lines as if she were floating away forever. For a song dealing with a subject that's been played into the ground countless times, "Girl In A Jigsaw Puzzle" is near genius.

The next two songs, "All Above Me" and "What Will The Angels Say" take a stroll through spirituality and religious belief. Yet they do so without being preachy and bogging the songs down. "All Above Me" is especially vivid. A song about salvation and redemption, the chorus blasts through energetically. "Going to the lake with father/Take me down below the water/Show me all my sins are covered/Now it's all above me". And in "What Will The Angels Say", Susie contemplates the afterlife and how we are looked upon from the heavens. "What will the angels say?/What will those angels do?/'Cause there'll come a day when they'll know the truth/They're looking down at me and you/What will those angels say to all us fools?" Again, this is an extremely moving song no matter what your own beliefs may be. As someone who personally doesn't like to have religious beliefs shoved down his throat, I find both of these songs to be very moving.

"Lights Out (Read My Lips)" was the single from the album, and nothing more but a clever and happy ode to kissing. "Read my lips/Do me a favor/You will never know until you read between the lines/Mark my words/Cover the pages/You can have a chapter in the middle of the night". Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss, and other times it's something more. "Lights Out" successfully captures the feelings one gets when they kiss someone and feel awash in electricity. The single CD version contained a couple of extra tracks as well as an acoustic version of the song, which was every bit as excellent as the regular take.

Where the boy in "Stop Start" had Susie a bit agitated before, she's almost furious by the time "Miss Misery" arrives. "If anyone should ever bring you down, she will/And she will, and she will/She's Miss Misery/Never the one to interfere". We've all known someone like that in our lives, so that alone makes the tune instantly relatable. Susie Hug was extremely good at painting pictures of various people that may have just gone by as everyday persons, but in her songs they become as important as any historical figures. Mainly because you believe her when you hear her sing. Hug puts forth so much conviction behind her songs that not for a moment do we believe that she isn't being sincere.

Both "King Of The World" and "Chains Of Devotion" mark the exact opposite of the spiritual ecstasy explored in the first half of the album. In the former, Hug takes her reign over the planet in her fantasies and exacts revenge upon everything. "And if I were king of the world/I would make everything my own/I would make sure everyone heard/See my face where ever they turned". Again, it's easy to relate to when we go through moments of anger and contempt and desire revenge on others at times. Even more knowing is "Chains Of Devotion", a song that dares to pick apart precious relationships and emotions. "The chains of devotion are holding me down/To honor the one to whom I'm aligned/A sense of emotion has turned me around/I've walked out of line too many times".

Susie defies her lover by sticking to her guns and getting carried away by her instincts. "The chains of devotion are anchored and tied/But I feel a wave moving inside/I'll drift in your ocean but you'll have to try/To promise to keep the current alive". Without fear, Hug lays down the law and lets it be known that she won't be around for long if her feelings aren't kept satisfied. A strong song if ever there was one.

"Dr. Rey" is the band's "drug song". Well, not really in the classic sense of it. But perhaps it is. It's not far removed from John Lennon's "Dr. Robert". Maybe that's where the influence came from. The song is eerily familiar. "Some people say/He's nothing more than a crook/All along the way/He's broken every rule in the book/But oh, you can't say no". Not very different from the sentiments of "Dr. Robert" at all, with its "Well, well, well you're feeling fine/Well, well, well he'll make you". Seemingly stripped from both the Beatles' influence, and perhaps to a lesser extent, William Burroughs', "Dr. Rey" is a slithering character that makes for a good final rocker on the album.

Things finally wind down with "Growing Old", a song about, well, growing old! "High tide/Hear the whistle blow/High time/We should all go home/Oh none of us seem to have much fun at all/All because we're growing old". The lyrics are then repeated in Japanese, I believe, as Hug was partially Japanese herself. It's a wistful song, both moving and elegant, sad and conclusive. The end to the first chapter in the Katydids' career.

Unfortunately, there would only be a second, final chapter. Shangri-La must have not sold many copies, either as the band apparently called it quits after that one. It's too bad. Susie Hug is beyond talented, and it would be nice to know whatever became of her and the band. For lovers of intelligent, sharp pop rock, this is a great album. Basically, it's just a great album, period. The lyrics and music are so moving at times it's hard to see why no one liked or heard of or bought this band's music. It's just another one of those sad tales in rock and roll where a diamond in the rough was passed up for something more "familiar".

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