Black Box Recorder
I picked up this wonderful box set back in August 2020 and my mind was blown by how wonderful it sounded. When I dropped the needle on the record, my first reaction was literally “WOW!”
Sonically, this is a fantastic release. The vinyl is among the cleanest and clearest sounding in my collection and the mastering is top rate. It blows the sound of my original CDs (and my original vinyl pressing of “England Made Me”) out of the water. As others have said, Sarah’s vocals have never sounded better.
It’s disappointing that there was so little material recorded by this wonderful band. They really had a vibe all of their own. The music is hooky and the lyrics are almost always dry, tongue-in-cheek, and downright subversive (the title of the box set comes from the lyrics to their first single, “Child Psychology”: “Life is unfair / kill yourself or get over it”).
For those of you who have no idea who I’m talking about, Black Box Recorder were musicians Luke Haines (The Servants, The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof), John Moore (Jesus and Mary Chain, John Moore and the Expressway, Art Brut), and Sarah Nixey. Their music is beautifully produced, though minimal. It’s rare to hear a Black Box Recorder song that sounds too busy. The lyrics have a flair for being clever and thought-provoking. The topics are generally slightly off-kilter and never quite go where you think they should. Many songs feature spoken word portions accentuated by sing-along choruses. Sarah’s vocals are often delivered in such a way that it feels like she is singing gently into your ear, with some of the clearest enunciation you will ever hear. Trust me … listen for yourself if you don’t believe me.
The lyrical content of the songs is exaggerated, in the best possible way, by her huge, delicious, posh pronunciation of every syllable that leaves her larynx. It’s practically ASMR (before that was a thing). She sounds like a seductive schoolmistress you’d expect to be talking about your upcoming exams, but instead she’s singing about having a staring contest with a spider she has captured and will probably kill later for fun. The incongruity is part of the charm.
The music tends to be a little slower tempo than I usually go for, but it has a unique charm that has really endeared itself to me.
During the years they were active, they only produced three LPs worth of material, and only the first was ever released on vinyl. All other material was exclusively released on CD, even the singles. Their first album, “England Made Me” (1998), and their second, “The Facts of Life” (2000), created enough of a following that a 2001 compilation was added to this small discography, released through American label Jetset Records and entitled “The Worst of Black Box Recorder,” which pooled together previously released singles, remixes, edits, and B-sides, rounded out with a couple of exclusive previously unreleased tracks for good measure.
In 2003 the band returned with their swan song, “Passionoia,” and then quietly faded out of earshot. They got together with fellow indie band Art Brut for a Christmas single in 2007 (cheekily titled “Christmas Number One”) under the name The Black Arts, taking parts of each band’s name to make a new moniker. They reemerged once more as Black Box Recorder in 2010 with a two-track one-off called “Final Statement” and then … well … that was it. Good title for a last release, as it turns out.
Perhaps the lack of apparent enthusiasm for writing, recording, and touring had something to do with the interpersonal dynamics of the band? Nixey and Moore got married in 2001 and had a daughter together, but by 2006 they had split. Priorities naturally change when a baby is dropped into the mix. Whatever the case: Black Box Recorder was no more.
Maybe life really is unfair.
That doesn’t mean they weren’t worth discovering, and they are still one of my favourite artists of all time.
In total, fewer than 50 recordings make up the entirety of the band’s studio output, and nearly all of it is included in this fantastic box set. It features vinyl editions of the band’s three albums, a live CD recorded in 2003 (entitled “Live is Unfair”), and a CD (“BBRexit”) that brings together many of the various singles, B-sides, and other orphaned tracks not released on the albums themselves, including their 2010 “Final Statement” single.
If I were to make any changes, I would have asked for the two CDs’ worth of material to have been given the same fantastic vinyl treatment. (If I’d wanted CDs I’d have bought the box set on CD, right? … although, funny enough, the live CD is exclusive to the vinyl box set and isn’t included with the CD box set. Funny, that.)
As if all of the above isn’t enough, the box set also includes a poster reproducing the artwork from “Final Statement” and an exclusive live DVD filmed in 2008. I wasn’t terribly impressed with either of the live releases, but truth be told the box set is pretty damn thorough, and it was very cool of the band to include them.
In reality, only a couple of things keep this from being a 10/10 instead of a 9/10, and since both involve album artwork and printed materials, I suppose these are purely aesthetic concerns.
I really wish the artwork on the LP jackets had been made from higher quality source material. With the exception of “England Made Me,” they look very pixelated, as though the cover art was downloaded off the web and enlarged. They actually look like someone just enlarged the CD cover rather than printing it LP-sized from the original, which gives them a vague bootleg-quality feel. My best guess is that the album covers were probably created as CD-size images since the original releases were CD-only. With a bit of sleuthing, surely they could have found the original images and recreated the covers using higher quality graphics. A bit of a shame, really.
I would also have preferred the LP sleeves to more closely replicate the original artwork, including lyrics and inner photos as presented in the original CD releases. Especially “Passionoia”! A gatefold sleeve featuring the full photo of the band chilling in the sun while a dead guy floats naked in the pool would have been awesome. Instead, we only get the front cover photo of Sarah sunbathing by the pool. Yes, there are some mysterious feet in the pool off to the left of the image, but if you haven’t seen the original artwork you’d have no idea what they are and would likely assume it’s some random swimmer. The whole concept of the cover art is lost. Rather than relaxing beside a pool while blithely ignoring the dead man floating naked in it, she just looks like she’s on vacation somewhere. The back cover photo of Luke Haines and John Moore sipping drinks beside the same pool, with the same dead man, is nowhere to be seen. Yes, these pictures can be found in the tiny CD-sized booklet, but it would have been nice to have them reproduced on the LPs, replicating the original presentation of the CD release and keeping the spirit of the original concept intact. The resulting artwork feels a bit cheap and turns an amusingly subversive album cover into something completely banal.
A slightly larger booklet would also have been a classy touch. But as I said, these are all aesthetic complaints. The box set itself is absolutely worth having and is a must for any fan of the band, and for any fan of indie pop that isn’t afraid to experiment with pop, rock, and whatever else takes their fancy on any given day.
What always matters most is the sound, and in this regard the box set is exceptional. Here, they spared no expense. What is also so impressive is that they managed to create a box set featuring all three of the band’s albums despite the fact that each was released on a different label: Chrysalis in 1998, NUDE Records in 2000, and One Little Indian in 2003. I can’t imagine the negotiations that must have taken place behind the scenes to bring everything together in one place.
That said, there are at least five official Black Box Recorder songs not included in this box set, all from the US release of “The Worst of Black Box Recorder” CD, so perhaps negotiations with Jetset Records were unsuccessful. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity, but it is what it is. To be honest, I never thought I’d see the day I’d own all three of these albums on vinyl, and certainly not sounding as good as they do. So I’ll take the win.
These are the songs not included in the box set: “Season in the Sun,” “Lord Lucan is Missing (Studio Version),” “Jackie Sixty,” “Wonderful Life,” and “Factory Radio.” There are also a couple of radio edits not included, but these are literally edited by only a few seconds and not remixed in any way, so really for insane completists only.
Speaking of completists, I bought a used copy of the “England Made Me” 7″ single specifically to get the studio version of B-side “Lord Lucan is Missing,” which is one of the missing tracks and one of my favourites.
#MusicBoxTW
