The Voice Of Love

JULEE CRUISE: “The Voice Of Love” (A&M)

IMAGINE A sound that is both hauntingly beautiful in its hymn-life purity, yet with a sinister sub-text of dour synths and sparse, nagging percussion. Such is the bizarre world of Julee Cruise. Blessed with the voice of sugar-coated innocence, she sings lyrics from the surreal imagination of David Lynch surrounded by a perfectly crafted but dark wall of sound courtesy of composer Angelo Badalamenti. Kind of like a neurotic Enya in some macabre night club.

None of the tracks on this album can be taken at face value; on ‘Friends for Life’, one of the ‘warmer’ songs, Cruise whispers: ‘We will always strive to be/Friends, friends for life’, but manages to imbue the Elaine Paige type lyrics with a menace more at home with a karaoke-singing Kathy Bates.

The beauty of Cruise’s music simply cannot be overlooked. The title track is so delicate and gentle it is scarcely there at all, as though some chiming spirit tried to steal a glance at this world unnoticed. But the charm and magic of the music is almost always undermined by the orchestrations and effects. On ‘She Would Die For Love’, Cruise’s multi-layered voice(s) trip over themselves to fragment and unsettle the track leaving a decidedly disturbing aftertaste.

‘Up In Flames’, with its wailing sirens circling the mourning soundscapes and lethargic jazz beats, has the ability to make one feel as if William S. Burroughs has called round unexpectedly for tea; ‘You should’ve shot me baby/Shot me with a gun . . .’. Contrast this with the slow anthemic power of ‘Until The End of the World’, which has the same industrial atmospherics but an alarmingly effective delivery, one of those shivers-up-the-spine moments all too frequent on the album.

If the rasping of Kurt Cobain wanting to ‘eat your cancer, when you turn black’ sets your heart all a-flutter, then Cruise is your kinda girl, for hers is a world filled with shadows, each with its potential bogey ready to maim the little-girl-lost persona that Cruise slips in and out of at will. There is little room for the powerless, dependent and weak in this ethereal world, but Cruise’s sweetness and naïveté buys her some time.

A case of one spoon of sugar helps the nasty medicine go down.

• Enda Guinan (Kildare)