Black Box Recorder [2001] The Worst Of Black Box Recorder

[01] Seasons In The Sun
[02] Watch The Angel Not The Wire
[03] Jackie Sixty
[04] Start As You Mean To Go On
[05] The Facts Of Life Remix
[06] Lord Lucan Is Missing
[07] Wonderful Life
[08] Uptown Top Ranking [Remix]
[09] Brutality
[10] Factory Radio
[11] Soul Boy
[12] Rock 'n' Roll Suicide



amg: Hip hip hooray. Maybe someone up there likes us after all. The Worst of Black Box Recorder is a rare instance where restraint in buying a band's singles has paid off. Compiling all the B-sides from Black Box Recorder's first four singles (two of which were two-parters), a handful of studio extras that were included on the U.S. versions of England Made Me and The Facts of Life — including the stinging "Lord Lucan Is Missing," a take on Rod McKuen's-via-Jacques Brel's "Seasons in the Sun," the Bowie-worthy "Start As You Mean to Go On," and the equally spiky "Brutality" — and also throwing in the band's videos for the A-sides ("The Facts of Life," "Child Psychology," "The Art of Driving," and "England Made Me"), the whole package adds up to an LP that's just as worthy of your hard-earned scratch as the trio's two proper studio albums. Outside of the obvious space/time constraint, it's hard to imagine how most of the songs weren't able to find a way on the original incarnations of England Made Me or The Facts of Life. There isn't a weak moment to be found here, not even on the remixes; both the Chocolate Layers' (Pulp's Steve Mackey and Jarvis Cocker) mix of "The Facts of Life" and BBR's own versioning of "Uptown Top Ranking" don't fail to impress. If that's not enough to rope you in, the disc concludes in perfect fa-fa-fa-fa-fashion with an ultra sultry cover of the Thin White Duke's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide"; if you close your eyes tight enough, you can envision vocalist Sarah Nixey working her magic onstage for the drunken patrons of the Roadhouse, clad in a funny leather hat.
(amg 7/10)

Black Box Recorder [2000] The Facts Of Life

[01] The Art Of Driving
[02] Weekend
[03] The English Motorway System
[04] May Queen
[05] Sex Life
[06] French Rock 'n' Roll
[07] The Facts Of Life
[08] Straight Life
[09] Gift Horse
[10] The Deverell Twins
[11] Goodnight Kiss



amg: Make no mistake: Black Box Recorder are malevolent scoundrels. Their debut album — England Made Me — was a distressing, vacant eye staring over the unspoken horror of everyday England, so one wondered where they could go from there. With The Facts Of Life, they moved that voyeuristic, cynical stare away from suicide and car crashes and focused it on small-town dating and disenchanted sex lives. Strangely enough, the horror feels the same. Songs like the utterly menacing hook of "The Art of Driving" will chill even the most neutral of listeners while the John Barry-influenced "Weekend" strolls along with such desolate grace that it's just subtly elegant. Vocalist Sarah Nixey sings with impassioned distance that serves up the disparagement nicely. Lines such as, "Don't even look at me 'till we're alone," "Careful not to touch, we've drunk enough/Just another weekend falling," or "Read the message on the bottle/Go and drink yourself to death" probably won't become national anthems anytime soon. All the better for it, then. As in BBR's debut, the same barren instrumentation and distanced vocals are still here, but this time around there seems to be a pop sensibility that evokes far more seditious strengths than ever before. This produces a delightfully sinister contradiction. "Straight Life," for instance, has Nixey chiming, "It's a beautiful morning," and only BBR could make such a statement sound truly sardonic. The closing "Goodnight Kiss" is also brimming with beauty, yet — at heart — still a song with pained regret. All this doesn't even begin to get near the marvel that is the title track either. "The Facts of Life" is found nestled in the album's core and it still glares at you like a Stanley Kubrick-directed All Saints production. Simple, gorgeous, chart-friendly, and just plain evil. It is undoubtedly one of the most subversive singles ever written. Indeed, clocking in at just under 40 minutes, The Facts Of Life is a precise, meticulous, deeply disturbing experience. The album is proof that there's still life in pop music. Subversion has rarely sounded this startling.
(amg 9/10)

Black Box Recorder [1998] England Made Me

[01] Girl Singing In The Wreckage
[02] England Made Me
[03] New Baby Boom
[04] It's Only The End Of The World
[05] Ideal Home
[06] Child Psychology
[07] I. C. One Female
[08] Up Town Topranking
[09] Swinging
[10] Kidnapping An Heiress
[11] Hated Sunday
[12] Wonderful Life
[13] Seasons In The Sun
[14] Factory Radio
[15] Lord Lucan Is Missing



amg: With the gentle acoustic-electric guitar mix, metronomic drum beats, and Sarah Nixey's lovely breathy vocals, England Made Me does not seem on the surface to be a sardonic comment on anything, but rather an exquisite, even upbeat, bit of pop. The more one digs, however, the more one unburies. Black Box Recorder are harshly critical of life in England, the bland, dull mundaneness of daily living as well as the stale political world, and their debut album touches on issues ranging from teenage sex and single mothers to repressive family life and wife swapping. Such topics are seemingly impossible to weave into listenable pop music, but the songs that multi-instrumentalists Luke Haines and John Moore write are cleanly stylized in a way that conceals the raw-nerved lives their characters exist in but are also reflective of the internalization of such relentless barrenness. External appearances often belie the reality, the gnawing discomfort in the gut. Whereas you would expect a song called "Girl Singing in the Wreckage" to be malevolent, it is instead sweetly affecting, but also world-weary and reflective, making it sound less cynical than innocently aware of the inconsistency in which it exists. Black Box Recorder seemingly approach their subjects without judgment; the band, though, does not shy away from cynicism. Many of the songs on England Made Me are, at least lyrically, severe, naked reminders of a bloodless existence. The title song is a funereal lament, and songs such as "It's Only the End of the World" and "Hated Sunday" are sad-sack gloomy tunes that are capable of inspiring open weeping in two ways — with their base bleakness and with the beautifully brittle music. Even when Black Box Recorder do inject a bit of pop cheerfulness into the music, it is seemingly done ironically. Each song sounds sparse because it is infused with a spatial quality that suggests beneath it all there is only emptiness, and nothing good comes from emptiness. In "Child Psychology," Nixey repeats the couplet "Life is unfair/Kill yourself or get over it" like a mantra. One gets the feeling that the way Black Box Recorder get over it is through their music, which can make England Made Me a suffocating listen if experienced in more than short spurts.
(amg 7/10)