John Lawrie & The Welcome Strangers: First Dates And Funerals

- There are quite a few striking characteristics to John Lawrie & The Welcome Strangers, but probably the most grabbing is Lawrie’s voice. Deliciously dark and bassy and in the context of his band’s new EP, First Dates And Funerals, it’s like listening to Andrew Eldritch, Rick Astley and The Boss at the same time.

The Welcome Strangers’ initial offering -and it’s far from their only weird stylistic gambit- is a mix of roaring shoegaze and sugary ‘80’s pop, meeting in the discotheque for a little gothic two-step. Pop has always been an integral element of shoegaze, the sweetness to take the edge off all the intensity and dream pop is, after all, the ethereal little friend of shoegaze’s enormity. Having said that, I can’t think of another shoegaze band that relishes pop so much that it seems sometimes like Wham! turned up in a greatcoat and Doc Martens.

Actually the new EP’s lead single, Sober, is a whole other glory of the ‘80s, answering the question ‘what would it sound like if the E Street Band had a child with The Jesus And Mary Chain?’ Lyrically it’s nostalgic, but not in the same way as Springsteen: First Dates And Funerals is a post-break-up record finding John Lawrie at the point where he thinks he might be alone for the rest of his life.

His very personal narrative arcs through the record and -rumbled out like he’s mumbling it to himself more than for our benefit- its like each of these songs are different styles and shades of black he’s put on for the stages of grieving. Alone captures his plight plaintively with the chorus “But I feel so at home / When I’m alone” in the midst of a synthy new-wave anthem, fed through shoegaze distortion. It’s a bit like being hosed with molten honey.

Cold In Sacramento heads back to Springsteen territory but a bit softer. It’s a favourite as much for its little adornments as anything else: the backing vocal harmonies are heartbreaking and the two-part guitar solo is sick.

Keys is an odd bird, a bluesy ‘50’s crooner in a dirgelike six-eight, where the romance is poisoned with rage and pain: “Would you do me one last favour / When you go and let me be? / Well if you walk on out that door / Would you leave behind your keys?” Musically it’s like that psychopath John Maus got his hands on it, burying everything in sepulchral echoes.

Happiness is equally unusual, a two-minute musical aside where Lawrie tries to reconcile finding himself at the cold and rocky end of things, singing “Happiness is not a timebomb … It’s the steeple that stands when the hurricane ends … Because you’re not lonely / Just alone.”

It’s all a process, I suppose, and the EP’s title track finds him making stumbling moves back into the world of romance via a distinctly heartwarming love song as he murmurs “I can’t help but stare /  At the lights coming off your face” ably backed up by another sick guitar solo.

That might be too soppy a finish, so Lawrie waxes a little wry, declaring “I’m not in love ‘cause I don’t wanna be / Too weary to sweep someone off of their feet / Love’s for the young and by God, I’m twenty three / Oh I’m not in love ‘cause I don’t wanna be” doing his best Tom Waits piano-ballad impression for closer I’m Not In Love.

If you’re going to have an emotional meltdown why not roar and thunder and dress up in your gothic finery? The melancholy of John Lawrie is expansive, rolling over many genres and consuming them in its intensity; First Dates & Funerals often shakes like it was going to fall down. Sadness can be seductive and this record makes it feel dangerously right.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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