Chris Connelly Albums (11)
'Forgiveness and Exile'
Release Date 10/14/2008
Tracks 4
Label Durtro
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What The Critics Say
Chris Connelly's Forgiveness and Exile was inspired by -- and benefits -- the work of the Marjorie Kovler Center, an agency in his Chicago neighborhood that provides treatment and aid to survivors of torture who have migrated to the United States. All proceeds are donated. It is the most adventurous offering of his wide-ranging career and is rooted in the nightmare of reality. It was produced by Ben Vida (guitars), Tim Kinsella (guitars, organ), and Connelly. Other players include bassist Josh Abrams, drummer Adam Vida, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, and Nate Kinsella on piano, guitars, and percussion. The album contains two songs. The brief "Arran," named for the Scottish Isle, opens; it is a transcendentally beautiful homage to a near mystical place in Connelly's homeland, which stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the album, comprised of a suite with nine parts. Musically, Forgiveness and Exile hints at Scott Walker's dark visions from Climate of Hunter, the forlorn memory of better days in Van Morrison's Common One, Walt Dickerson's chamber jazz on Impressions of a Patch of Blue, Bill Laswell's arid City of Light travelogue, and even the insistent repetitive trance music on Public Image Limited's Flowers of Romance. A melodic theme floats throughout the work, carried by modal interludes that wind around and through one another as tensions build and release. Connelly's singing voice (throughout) is the first witness here, as almost all of the title suite's nine parts (in three tracks) are tethered spoken word narratives by him or other "witnesses" including Shirley Manson, David Tibet, David Miller, and Tori Higginson. The work reflects deeply on the traumatized refugee: from abuse to flight to arrival as a stranger in a new land; yet it also offers evidence of hope in the journey from post-traumatic stress syndrome to healing, introduced by scraped acoustic guitar strings that give way to a strum in this labyrinthine tune. A slowly developed yet urgent soundscape ushers in Connelly's hunted empathic voice: "Forgiveness and exile/Partially to blame/A need to go to this place/To do it all again/In sorrow, few surprises...even soldiers become exiles..." His protagonist is equal parts Camus' Stranger and Solzhenitsyn's Gulag survivor. He struggles with the music, trying alternately to escape it and wrap himself in it for shelter. An electric guitar cuts in as a drumkit militarily creates drama even as piano evokes the spirit of memory on the misty, war-torn terrain. Connelly's witness seemingly endlessly relates the process of going back, re-experiencing trauma: its sights, smells, sounds, and textures where battlefields and prisons were transformed into the charnel grounds of Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Darfur, Azerbaijan, and the Crimea. All narratives are present in one sprawling testimony, where beauty and horrific violence wrap together in a true dance of Kali and St. Francis taking place on an aural plane that is irresistibly, even obsessively listenable and beautiful. Throughout this meditation on memory, displacement, horror, and redemption, Connelly and his collaborators become a collective "Other," scarred inside and out, who often go unnoticed in our midst. Listeners get the luxury of reflection, but that gives way to anger, sorrow, and somewhere, near the end, a desire to help. Forgiveness and Exile is not so much a political album as a humane one; a memento mori for the dead, and an homage to the survivor. For as much ground as it covers musically and lyrically, it never loses focus and always, thankfully, returns us home, a little deeper and wider than before. In accomplishing so much so poetically, it is Connelly's masterpiece. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Between 1997 and 2004, Chris Connelly made a handful of small recordings -- Ultimate Seaside Companion, Blonde Exodus, Largo (with Bill Rieflin), Private Education -- that stood outside virtually every scene and genre. These were elegant, poetic chamber pieces that captured various states of the human heart, whether in passion, delusion or somewhere in between. This was music that struggled to come together, and was held together musically while it lyrically fell apart, albeit as gracefully as a tragic character in a '60s French film would find his world collapsing around him. Like Scott Walker and Jackie Leven, Connelly didn't even consider what was going on around him. All of his music seemed to tunnel inside and bring out whatever was there, the pearls of wisdom or simply the blood, sand, dark matter to be found in the marrow. This series of albums culminated with 2004's brilliant collection of off-the wire pop songs Night of Your Life. On The Episodes, Connelly moves into a new phase. Working with Ben Vida and Tim Kinsella, Connelly keeps a largely acoustic vibe, but he's tossed the tight structures, languid, decadent textures, and airless spaces aside in favor of wide-open spaces that accent a kind of tribalism and willingness to let the elements themselves have a say in his proceedings. One track, in fact, "Soul Boys/Hard Legends" was field recorded in a dark, cold Wisconsin forest at night. And there's a vibe here that feels free, cast off, if a bit sadder and more paranoid. Connelly's poetic lyrics cannot be denied, but this set's reliance on deep sounding percussion, repetitive melodic -- or more monochromatic -- fixtures such as a guitar strumming a single chord for long periods of time, atmospheric intrusions, and loose adherence to musical time gives the entire proceeding a kind of unhinged feel. While the opening cut possesses more beauty than anything he's ever released, with its brushed acoustic guitars, hand percussions and near samba tempo, Connelly sings: "It's unlikely that you will remember/The text that reflected on you/I'm coming to grips with your mirror lips/I can read all about me on you...Looking glass vacuum conditions/The questions I'm dying to ask/The lips can't accuse/They'll cut open themselves/The face can't agree it's a mask/You're standing behind every doorway/Absorbing the neighbor's distress/The writing's reversed, the story's perverse/The finale's a stain on your dress..." All the while congas, vibes and crash cymbals pick up steam as the guitars are all but drowned out and Connelly's voice barely rises above the din, though he's struggling to, he's right up against it; his anguished words bring out tensions in the music that it tries to transcend. All the percussion serves to move the narrative to its rather disturbing conclusion. This is a love song, but one from the other side of loss and memory. Connelly's trying to climb out of his own lyric tropes but they hypnotize him through the music. They are both stuck in a dance that has no real end. It never really began, either, it articulated itself in the middle of the scandalous truth: it is obsession painted as longing. At over eight minutes, it sets the tone for a remarkable, but truly uncomfortable recording. Five of the seven tunes here are over eight minutes, with the longest ("Henry vs. Miller") clocks in at over eleven. Monotonous (as in hypnotic) guitar chords usher in "Son of Empty Sam," a dark and tense tale about a man so drenched by fear he has to make the claim "I cut down all my friends/To see where I might lie/On simple blades of unlit truth/The truth will bleed you dry." Electric guitars and a big, deep shuffling tom tom pulse the steady, strident bassline as Connelly sings, keeping his voice just on the sane side of total panic. In many ways, this track, nearly ten minutes in length, is reprised near the end of the set in another mammoth drum and vibes workout with loose-stringed guitars in "The Son of the Empty Sequel." Rather than a droning, chaotic acoustic exercise in tension, this is the "party version." It plays as nearly as long, but the movement of the electric band offers a different shade on the lyrics in the sense that one is given the impression that the protagonist has crossed over. The party is in the acceptance of the other side of the sanity divide. The drums slip time, the vibes play through the beat, and the guitars play a swampy shuffle that resembles some kind of drunken rockabilly as Nate Kinsella's piano prattles in an out of tune vamp. "Every Ghost Has an Orchestra" is introduced with multiple layers of strummed 12-string guitars. There is some high pitched sound just under them that feels brittle and uneasy, but then Connelly's words are anything but welcoming; he's speaking from the place of the damned and finds a perverse humor in the acceptance of his place. But he offers his tragic wisdom to another, someone known, who cannot accept his/hers. The words read like Poe, speaking as a ghost to a future one: there is no escape. On The Episodes, Chris Connelly, with help from Vida and the Kinsellas, has reinvented himself once more without betraying his gift for the poetry of loss and oblivion that has been at the heart of his best material. The sound is rawer, it's earthier, it's literally gone. This is a man with a hellhound on his trail, which he looks back at almost tenderly. There is a monotony in this music that will drive some mad, but then, that's the point. It's tribal, but it's a tribe of one, wailing in the desolation and warbling his hard discovered truths into the void of silence, and it's deafening. Like Georges Bataille and Jean Genet, this is a music that comes from the outside and projects even further, even as it comes echoing back to him at twice the volume. This is the spiritual side of the darkness, and it is as romantic and true as anything he has written and recorded before, but it comes from the cave of a Wildman. Lucky for us, that Wildman possesses a language in sound and tongue that speech cannot hold hostage or deny. Welcome to the valley of the hunted. Highly recommended. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Lounge Ax, Bottle, Elsewhere - '94/'01'
Release Date 1/1/2005
Tracks 12
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What The Critics Say
Private Education is nearly Chris Connelly's ultimate do-it-yourself statement. While old friends do pop up to provide engineering help and occasional background vocals, the album is Connelly's baby from head to toe. His acrobatic, high yet growling croon is set against his own plaintive, evenly strummed acoustic guitar. Slow lo-fi beats and distant electronic effects are the only other accompaniment. Though he's been compared again and again to David Bowie and Scott Walker, Connelly has always flown his own flag. His voice might have similar peaks and valleys to those orchestral pop gods, but calling Connelly an imitator in any way would never be right. The Bowie comparison is becoming particularly hard to justify, as Connelly strips his music of glam and industrial pomp more and more with each new album. Where Bowie strives to reclaim past glories by seeking out old and new collaborators, Connelly's muse is internal and unequivocally subtle. He's showcasing the complexities of his voice and its emotional delivery on highlights like the soaring, pained "Harbour Days"; the moody, echoing lounge number "Samaratin"; and the rich mandolin-adorned "About the Beauty of Laura." The album burns so slowly that Connelly's voice can't help but move to the forefront and shine with expressive, impressive artistry. Private Education proves once again that Chris Connelly is a remarkably gifted songwriter, while showcasing his incredible vocal skills and range as well as any album in his career as a solo artist or collaborator. ~ Tim DiGravina, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Blonde Exodus is a huge step forward from Connelly's last solo album, the plodding Ultimate Seaside Companion. Here his sound is more fully realized and less self-consciously artistic -- there are still layers of strings and acoustic guitars, but the mix is leavened by muscular beats, and the derivative nature of his singing (think Nick Cave crossed with David Bowie) is less distracting in the context of these more interesting arrangements. After a bizarre spoken word throwaway ("Generique"), the album gets off to a rousing start with the bruising but pretty "London Fields." "Diamonds Eat Diamonds" is lyrically lumpy, shot through with indigestible lines like "I saw your precious mania diving for pearls/And swan dive like Icarus into the underworld," but "Twilight Shiner," with its chiming guitar and hummable chorus, hits the spot nicely. So far, Connelly has made his best music as a member of the Damage Manual, and some will remember his 1980s work with Ministry with twisted fondness. But this album makes a case for him as a solo artist worth watching. ~ Rick Anderson, All Music Guide
'Night of Your Life'
Release Date 1/1/2001
Tracks 10
Label Underground
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
While it's true that Chris Connelly's contributions to Ministry, the Revolting Cocks, and the Damage Manual have earned him a deserved reputation as a squalid industrial rocker whose love of all things darkly humorous and "tribal" will go down in the history books documenting the era. But in taking his solo recordings as entities unto themselves, one can't help but think he might wish it were otherwise. As early as Whiplash Boychild there were traces of the "other" Chris Connelly: the savvy, vulnerable, and poetically astute singer/songwriter concealed by an image of excess. The softer identity was only given more weight by his late-'90s and early 21st century work with the Bells, Blonde Exodus, and Largo, and was underscored by his starkly sculpted Private Education in 2002. Connelly is often dubbed with the mantle of sounding a lot like early David Bowie -- à la Man Who Sold the World. But the bottom line is that the Thin White Duke should sound as consistently fine as Connelly does! Night of Your Life is an exquisitely crafted collection of off-kilter, elegant, adult pop songs that are presented with grace, elegance, and a wonderfully swaggering nocturnal decadence. Whether Connelly is delving into the androgynous pop of "Too Long in My Mind," with its glimmering guitars strummed into the heart of a mix dotted with single string lines and washes of ambient sound, or popping off with the desperate, edgy, angular slither of "Don't Landslide Away From Me," the effect is the same: a protagonist who seems to be looking out from the end of something, a relationship that is about to crumble or exists only in memory. This elegiac take on love and life and the scenics surrounding them -- Connelly wonderfully captures atmospheric details -- track further on the title track with its gorgeously layered backing male chorus (all voices are his own), as well as on the jagged Baroque new wave of "Stella (Stand Up for Your Man)." The pastoral glissando in "Glass Rose" stands in stark contrast where the shambolic protagonist holds his grief-laden view at a cool distance. In the sprightly whistling jaunt of "Nicola 6," Connelly offers a portrait of a woman who moves "much too fast to wait for high hells to collapse." It's a portrait of a femme fatale who is so wildly out of control, one can only love her for her lack of control. The distorted electric guitars entwined with ringing bells in "Roulettescape" offer an urgent, insistent view of a world-ending vision. But "Respond to Beauty" stands in sharp contrast, with its spacious use of guitars and Connelly's beautiful skewed croon making a stand in the heart of chaos, wishing to "stand for beauty like its name was never changed." And while two more -- quite beautiful -- tracks remain, it is here that Connelly splits the night wide open, etches a line on the concrete, and hopes to draw down the moon to fill the heartbreak, the emptiness left by decadence and illusory pleasure, and replace it with a single moment of possibility, where everything isn't already in ruins. This is why, simply, that recordings like this one mark Connelly apart from his other musical personas and make the listener look more critically and appreciatively at his work as a songwriter. And as fine as Night of Your Life is, it also makes one wonder what heights Connelly might scale aesthetically and poetically if he were able to make his living by pursuing this path exclusively. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'The Ultimate Seaside Companion (Revisited)'
Release Date 10/7/1997
Tracks 16
Label HitIt!
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What The Critics Say
After cleverly combining aggressive rock with nightclub/cabaret stylings on his Shipwreck album, Chris Connelly formed an entirely new group, the Bells, to more thoroughly explore these latter elements. Admittedly, the Bells isn't so much a group as it is a series of collaborators, predominantly Chris Bruce, who plays a multitude of instruments on most of these tracks. William Rieflin performs on some songs, in a similar jack-of-all-trades mode, while Jim O'Rourke plays on two numbers. The Ultimate Seaside Companion finds the post-industrial crooner pursuing a suave, elegant style that steers clear of supper-club banality. The Bowie influence is definitely strong here, but musically the connection is closer to late-'60s Gene Pitney or Scott Walker's more understated early numbers. All percussion is done strictly by programming -- quite a feat given that it really does sound live. Connelly mostly plays acoustic guitar and some harmonica. The songs are generally simple at base, but his lovely vocals and involved lyrics are well served by the careful arrangements his fellow musicians give him. Keyboard-programmed string orchestrations are prominent; Bruce creates some fantastic ones for "My East Is Your West," while "Island Head" relies more on muted horns and Pet Sounds-like keyboard pulses. Connelly himself adds a little of that Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks feeling with some banjo on "Toledo Steel," one of the two collaborations with O'Rourke. Rieflin creates two especially wonderful tunes for Connelly: "Stray" finds him backing the singer solely on piano, while "No More Changing of the Guard" features Connelly singing in a half-whisper over beautiful church organ by Rieflin -- a dramatic and striking combination. Fans of Connelly's more aggressive material will be disappointed here, but those who appreciate his work in general will enjoy yet another fine album from him. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
After trawling some heavy depths on Phenobarb Bambalam, Connelly took a generally sassier and, dare it be said, glammier approach on Shipwreck. Not that the more melancholic side of life wasn't addressed, and quite well at that, but most of the songs have a sharp acoustic/electric guitar kick and at once rough and carefully produced feel to them that steers away from both the subdued and sprawling arrangements prevalent on Phenobarb. "What's Left but Solid Gold?" and the brawling "Drench" are two of the particular highlights, fierce and fine. Combined with the ever-reminiscent sense of Bowie's vocal style that Connelly makes his own, it's almost as if Aladdin Sane decided to reappear in the mid-'90s -- a connection heightened by Connelly's performance of "The Cracked Actor" during the tour for Shipwreck. Further hints like the very Mike Garson-like piano on the semi-country swing of "Spoonfed Celeste" and the breezy "Anyone's Mistake" crop up, as well. All this said, Connelly's not trying at a complete homage -- it's still him and his own particular obsessions, not to mention his often witty lyrical visions of the world. Only guitarist Chris Bruce reappears from the Phenobarb lineup -- William Rieflin again contributes drums and keyboards as he did on Whiplash Boychild, while bassist Mark McNulty and guitarist/programmer William Tucker make up the rest of the band. An interesting tribute crops up via the song "The Early Nighters": while homages in 1994 were more often directed toward Kurt Cobain, Connelly instead specifically salutes River Phoenix with his graceful, mysterious words and light arrangement. It's a nice contrast to the deep, dark mood of "Heartburn," while still evincing sincere regret and loss. With strong tracks like the burning rumble of "Swimming" and the elegantly descending title song to fill it out, Shipwreck finds Connelly in firm creative flow. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Connelly's second album -- recorded with a crack studio lineup consisting of Zechman on bass, PiL vet/Pigface überlord Martyn Atkins on percussion, and Chris Bruce on guitar -- is a dark stunner, and one of the most affecting albums ever recorded. While the connection can be overstated, the album is dedicated to Connelly's fiancée, who killed herself during its recording. Not surprisingly, a shadow of doubt and anguish hangs over much of Phenobarb Bambalam, resulting in some deeply felt work. Not everything is so piercingly sad, though: The opening song, "The Whistle Blower," is actually one of the brightest things he's recorded. Though the album rides a heavy rock groove, Connelly's evocative calls, chants, and whispers lend it an invigorating energy. Bambalam turns down a variety of musical courses: everything from the late-night jazz combo feel of "Too Good to Be True" to the corrosive rage of the lead single, "July." An unexpected touch is a cover of Tom Verlaine's "Souvenir From a Dream," given a brisk arrangement and a fine performance from Connelly. The originals are the keys here, though, and the absolute pinnacle of the album remains his best solo composition yet: "Heartburn," a lengthy blast of powerful, melancholic rock supported by Connelly's central piano motif and his lyrics of doubt, concern, and relentless self-questioning. The second half of the song consists of an extended instrumental coda that serves as a touching return to the central theme. It's a magnificent performance worthy of attention on its own, but the whole album is a winner through and through. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
