One of the upsides of the vinyl revival is reissues of rare underground records. Bill Direen's releases in various guises - Bill Direen & Friends, Bill Direen & The HAT, Builders, Six Impossible Things, Vacuum, an album under his own name which was Flying Nun's first long player - have been prised from under the floorboards. They're all worth your time, none more so than 2008's Chrysanthemum Storm, originally a CD only, which I rate as among his finest works.
Even though Direen is a true one-off, the influences here are most obviously Lou Reed's Transformer (two of these songs aren't far off Perfect Day) and Bowie's Berlin trilogy. But imagine, if you will, mixing those with Roxy Music busking on second-hand electronic equipment, Tom Waits' mongrel blues and the tormented rage of those early Microdisney singles.
The lyrics, too, are a joy, not least if you take pleasure in bleakness and black humour. There's life and death in Try Again In Ten Minutes, which is a dismal rumble through the queues at the maternity ward and the cemetery, and the elliptical "he was unfocused, she was into hocus pocus".
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