Night songs

One of the most painful occurrences in the otherwise wondrous realm of music is when an act that you absolutely love teases you with a few choice words and measures, this glittering confinement hinting at a greatness that you know will consume you, lead you to other locales and times where both the mundane world around you and your memory, verifiable moments usually banal, and imagined ones always scintillating, mingle in a delicious, heady stew, burning your tongue as you begin to get drunk on that aural elixir -- then disappears.

So, after releasing an introductory three-track single a few years back and assorted songs, some originals, some covers, on various compilations since -- okay, so I was being a bit melodramatic; a little melodrama never hurt anyone, you ironically jaded postmodernist, you -- the team of Black Tape for a Blue Girl mastermind Sam Rosenthal and raven-haired chanteuse Nicki Jaine, under the guise of Revue Noir, has gifted to us a compilation of everything -- well, everything that isn't sitting half-finished on a roll of tape or in a Pro Tools file -- that they've ever recorded, Anthology Archive, for posterity, mom, apple pie, fuzzy little bunnies, though hopefully not the final nail before the coffin is lowered into the cold, hard ground as they move on to other projects.

The album -- compilation sounds so greatest hits only available at big box store! -- starts off with the five songs that have previously graced our ears. The sparse rhythm, sexy and languid, of The Gravediggers, originally recorded for Black Tape's last(?) album, Halo Star, blows the doors off the excellent original for two reasons: the incorporation of a theremin, an instrument that seems to have been created specifically for this song, and Nicki's sultry, Marlene Dietrich-esque vocals. Strangely, there seems to be, beyond a slightly different mix that augments the stray violin progression, an added keyboard line during the penultimate fifth of the song that didn't appear on the single version that, if not exactly off putting, shoves the strings into the background a bit more than I'd like. Either that, or my hearing is shot.

A track that Mademoiselle Jaine pulled off her solo album is next, and not all that sonically different than the original -- though this seems to be a different mix as well, you sneaky bastards, but I ain't selling my original on eBay -- the beautifully wistful Amsterdam, whose tale over a gentle piano line has nothing to do with either of the two things most associated with that European metropolis but something far more universal, that most desired and loathed of emotions. The darkly uptempo A Girl, A Smoke swings chords and lines like 'a year, a night, a get well card/a book of dirty poetry/forgetting me can't be that hard' until a jazzy flurry of piano notes and the lamentation about 'the way that we come back asking for more' ends the performance.

A slow, mellow cover of Bowie's Rock 'n' Roll Suicide is next, stripping away a few layers of classic rock bombast -- not that the original was the thunderous Suffragette City, bien sûr -- and turning it into the signature piece of Aristide Bruant -- if he had been a rock and roller. The clothes may have changed, but the soul is the same. This soul might have once wandered into an old cabaret lost on some unmapped street, now found, its rotting planks being torn out one by one to help expedite a complete modernization, and behind the agèd wall, a dust-encrusted worker finds the sheet music for Sometimes, Sunshine. At times jaunty, depressing, danceable with some Zeppelin-esque, stop/start piano riffs thrown in for good measure, you can't help but want to tap your foot while you sip on your overpriced drink.

As for the unreleased tracks, there is a less fleshed out rehearsal version of A Girl, A Smoke, professional live cuts of the Velvet Underground's All Tomorrow's Parties, the Weill/Brecht standard Alabama Song, and Black Tape's Halo Star. The new/old originals are wonderful, starting with the gently undulating, downbeat I Have No More Answers, the piano punctuated with an ominous organ riff before the black and white keys return to close proceedings on a haunting note.

Strange Little Show and its concoction of melancholy, yet propulsive, trappings provides a memorable apéritif -- a lithe, husky-voiced singer bitter as unsugared absinthe? Whew -- before the album's double-barreled closer, the nearly instrumental Sunshine IV, a happy little bridge (curse you, Bob Ross!) laced with somber, echoing vocal undercurrents weaving sentimental motifs from both the previous track and the album finalé, the monumental She is the Madman. This eerie, disjointed journey has us steal through the singer's head, cries for help voiced through single notes plucked on the guitar writhing in restrained agony within Sam's ethereal, electronic swells that have crawled up from the chthonian abyss, painting this eternal conflict between the illusion of sanity and that cold, dark place we fear to face, refusing to turn around to see the source of its shadow perpetually engulfing our own, a crash of cymbals, thicker chords, before a respite and the slow, quiet acceptance of our descent into the depths of the creative process, into madness.

It would be a crime if we were to not hear anything more from this duo, but if that ends up being the case, they've left behind a document worth remembering and hearing during those evenings awash in spent adrenaline and empty pages, of which there are far too many it seems, where pain and regret, not a joyful smile, are what we see reflected back in the liquid mirror of our glass.