Sing-Sing - Sing-Sing and I

Genre rock Publisher Reincarnate/Aerial External Links Official Website Reincarnate Music

Imagine: Petula Clark steps down a dark alleyway one night in 1966's London. Finding herself on unfamiliar ground, she turns corner after corner, finally coming out on the other side. Except it's no longer the 1960s; somehow, she has been magically transported to 2006. Sing-Sing and I is the album she would make after spending a month in the present day.

This comes across slowly at first; on the initial listen, it's the Dylan-esque "I looked over your pretty shoulder/And you licked your lips/And you took a sip" lines in "I Do," which are immediately followed by a snatch of harmonica buried in the background, as if to underscore the point. But after a few plays, the 1960s influence becomes undeniable, as the album seems seeped in the tradition of Britain's girl singers of that period; yes, Petula Clark, but also Helen Shapiro, Linda Keye, and Cilla Black. You can't hear "Come, Sing Me A Song's" gorgeous Mungo Jerry-aping antics and orchestral stabs without thinking of miniskirts, Carnaby Street, and the finest wines available to humanity.

The centrepiece, and yes, the masterpiece, of all this is "Mister Kadali," an Eastern-tinged delight that riffs off an advert for a mystic healer. Emma Anderson and Lisa O'Neill sing as if hawking Mister Kadali's services, with tongues planted firmly in cheek ("If you ever feel alone/He will break her legs and bring her home"). Whenever they sing his name, it is always followed by a cheeky Indian flourish; the gurus of the 1960s are exposed; once they were offering love, happiness, and enlightenment; now they're reduced to exploiting the gullible, offering them quick solutions, an easy-fix for their life.

"Modern Girl," "Lover," and "Going Out Tonight" explore the world of sex and work; the jaunty, driving bass of "Lover" opens the album with a curious contradiction. In the verses, it's the woman who is submissive: "You own my mind and my thighs," whereas the chorus is "Lover, you're my mannequin/Lover, you're my mandolin," which turns the tables somewhat. "Modern Girl" is Petula Clark discovering the trap hidden in the promise of capitalism through the device of gentle electropop: "And when we find we have a choice/There's nothing to select/Too much cause and not enough effect." "Going Out Tonight" is the most disquieting of the trio, starting out as a showtune that quickly is subsumed by rough guitar, reflecting the despair and desperation of a night on the town, making sure that your "titties are strapped up to the chin or you might not get in" and drinking so much that they "can't remember the dancefloor and the hours you can't account for," a picture of binge drinking in the 21st century, as an escape from the real world that offers no sanctuary, just oblivion.

Perhaps "The Time Has Come" is Clark looking at what Britain has become in the intervening forty years; a stirring anthem borrowing liberally from the old trade union hymns. "It's time to move and make a sound," they sing to an accordion and a rousing chant, a chant that once filled the mines, docks, and factories of the North, before the Black Hand of Thatcher passed over the land.

Is there hope? No. We're left with the elegiac, somber release of an ending, "A Kind of Love," which sees Petula waking back up in 1966 in a manner reminisicent of Derek Jarman's Jubilee. Clark is haunted by the glimpse of the future she recieved, and what it portends: "I didn't think that we'd come so far to stop so soon," as the liberal revolution of the period meets up with Nixon, three-day weeks, and a time where there is "no such thing as society." The album ends with sparseness; the waves of our past crashing in on her present, washing blue and black.

There's not too much joy in Sing-Sing and I/i>, but even if it had to be partly funded by their fans, Sing-Sing's second album is a wonderful accomplishment. Their new album sees them expand into a darker, deeper direction; it no longer feels like summer. But who wouldn't want to spend the longer nights listening to Emma and Lisa?