No-Man - Together We're Stranger
(K-Scope)
The power of the press—back in 1990 I picked up my first issue of Melody Maker on a whim. The Cocteau Twins were on the cover and I had to have the issue, and so I did. On its singles review page I encountered for the first time the writing of Chris Roberts, one of the better and more involved reviewers there at the time. One of his choices for single of the week was George Michael's "Praying for Time," the other was No-Man's version of Donovan's "Colours."
No-Man? Weren't they some sort of side project band by that guy from Mission of Burma?
And this is a question I've heard ever since. No-Man have only ever had the fame of that similarly named band/thing all these years, the fame of a subcultural event, something well below the radar, and so confusion reigns. It's a pity too, because I have loved No-Man all these years, all this time—they are for me one of those treasures that grows brighter by the day.
No-Man is a duo—Steven Wilson, who has had marginally more attention with his neo-prog band Porcupine Tree (they're currently on Atlantic's Lava subsidiary, I'm still not sure how that happened!) handles the instruments, Tim Bowness—one of the most delicately powerful singers I've ever heard—sings. They invite guests to perform with them or not as desired, and there are quite a few on this record, including many collaborators from Bowness and Wilson's myriad of other projects, like Michael Bearpark, Ben Castle and Peter Chilvers. Back on their first album Loveblows and Lovecries: A Confession, their fantastic, shimmering future funk single "Sweetheart Raw" was backed up by everyone from the band Japan except for David Sylvian, and the result was stunning then and stunning now.
But that was ten years ago and the band's music has slowly and carefully changed over time from elegant postpunk pop grooves into something else and something else again, even as both musicians themselves make their own particular discoveries and shifts. Their last record from two years back, Returning Jesus, was something in spirit and power close to the evocative and restrained hush of Talk Talk's final years, more direct and less elusive in singing and arrangements perhaps but no less compelling. Together We're Stranger develops even further from there, a counterbalancing of immediate and seemingly simple melodies with drawn out, extended flows of sound, at once entrancing, meditative and full. It might be a bit much to say it's the most Porcupine Tree-like of all of No-Man's albums—one of the distinct and powerful advantages of No-Man is how unique and separate it is from Bowness and Wilson's other work in the end—but the same gliding strength that Wilson brings to his other lead band is evident here. But here it's turned into something that calls to mind Neu!—when they stopped with the beat and just let it all go—refracted through any number of different prisms.
It's in the way "All the Blue Changes" so very, very carefully builds up over its length, quietly tense cymbals, hints of choirs, persistent but calm piano, layers of lush guitar, Bowness's voice first immediate and then suddenly restrained—and then overdubbed, in a way that is so clearly Peter Gabriel 1975 but is still here and now and this band's and not that band's. It's in hearing the acoustic guitar on "Things I Want to Tell You" seems to emerge and submerge back into the overdubbed drones and flows. It's in how the title track comes in a burr of almost white noise and then resolves into a perfectly held float, seemingly unpropulsive but going forward nonetheless.
There's also reflection as well, the extended meditation of "Photographs in Black and White," Roger Eno's harmonium an inspired extra touch as the song moves into a louder but no less carefully paced conclusion, guitars and harpischord and cymbals and more swirling around like an ancient dance. "The Break-Up for Real" concludes the album on the point of a calm comedown, vocals and acoustic guitar set against a lusher backdrop.
There's been too much good music from No-Man now that hasn't been celebrated. Do yourselves a favor and try the good music here.
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