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4th February 1995
Cranes first emerged out of Portsmouth in the late Eighties, consisting at that time of brother and sister partnership Jim and Alison Shaw. Both had spent their childhood in what has been described as "pseudo-delinquency" after their parents split up. Alison's chronic insomnia led to her introverted artistic outlook, which overtook her previously mapped out career as a gymnast, while Jim flirted with ideas of joining the army before teaming up with his sister on a variety of musical adventures.
Their early work was influenced by Joy Division and Nick Cave (as Alison recalls,"when I saw The Birthday Party and early Nick Cave gigs I used to pass out, the allover impact of the sound, it was so interminable, the sheer intensity of it all"), and finally led to the recording of the earliest Cranes material, a cassette album entitled Fuse. This was recorded in the band's own "studio" ‹ actually an 8-track located in a squalid basement, where the penniless, starving pair would freeze to death while creating a series of brutally disturbed recordings, and giving birth to the unique Cranes sound. This could best be described as a wall of uncompromising guitar savagery spliced with a powerful sense of melody, with Alison's vocals driving the songs to lands unknown. Looking back at this time, Alison remembers only too well the hellish conditions that they had to work in.
"The windows were very small and there was a constant buzz of a generator and the whole effect made it seem like we were underwater, working in a submarine. We got into a terrible state early on. We had to sell everything and then starve. It was a nasty time. We reacted by going further into the music. We used to wrap our legs in blankets to keep warm, we lived on potatoes for months. The only thing to do was not eat anything at all for days."
Even at this stage, it was Alison's voice that immediately stood out - an eerie, child-like wail that could freeze the blood in a second. On this early recording, though, the vocals are confident and clear, far removed from the ethereal, murmured sounds that would develop later. As she commented, "if you're a human being a voice is a really small thing. But it's all you've got. And if you can make it into the sound of your existence it can be very powerful. Unless you make a sound, no-one will know you're there." Countering criticisms that the vocals were just too deliberately strange, she adds "the child-like thing in my singing is just my stupid squeaky speaking voice!"
The album was successful enough to bring the band to the attention of a local label, and the album Self Non Self soon followed. It was with this unnerving collection of tracks that the band started to be noticed on a national level, resulting in a John Peel session, and a management deal with extreme music press agency PR/OD. Six months later, the band were on their way, making the cover of Melody Maker and signing to Dedicated Records.
Until this time, the band had remained a duo, augmented by a series of guitarists for live work. With a more solid foundation in place, though, it was time to find a settled line-up. Mark Francombe was a former art and film student, while Matt Cope had been a guitar technician for the band. Both were drafted in by the time the Inescapable EP emerged.
The band would release a series of EP's and tour with the Young Gods before their first major label album, Wings Of Joy appeared. A misleading title if ever there was one, the album continued the band's dark descent into a world of despair and torment. Even the band were unsettled by some of the dark visions contained in their work, as Alison comments: "Sometimes when I'm just singing over a track rather than consciously writing a song I can be quite alarmed at what I've just sung."
It was a splendidly angst ridden antidote to the dancefloor indie fever of the time. It was also the end of a musical era for Cranes, who would not reach so far into the abyss again. The band's biggest break came soon afterwards, when they were chosen to support The Cure on their massive world tour. For seven months, the band would regularly play in front of audiences as large as seventy thousand, and when Alison fell ill towards the ends of the tour in France, Cure man Robert Smith showed his admiration for the band by playing her vocal parts on guitar, to be joined by the rest of his band for a set-long jam.
Immediately after finishing the tour, Cranes hit the recording studio, buzzing with ideas from their experience. The resulting album, Forever, was their finest work yet, showing a new found confidence and a more up-beat attitude. The wall of sound that so typified the band remained, as did Alison's ethereal vocal style, but here it was married to a more positive approach. As Alison states, "there's a sense of recovery coming out of something rather than going back into it. It's like waking up after a long time. I think everything we do is optimistic in a way. It's always pushing outwards."
The band were rewarded with their first top thirty single, Jewel, which was also subjected to a mammoth remix by Robert Smith, the end result being a heady mix of Cranes and Cure. Other tracks from the album were remixed by Ivo-Watts Russell and J.G. Thirwell, who created a devastating version of Clear.
The album was followed with more touring, and Cranes mania hit Europe, with fans in Belgium almost causing a riot when the gigs sold out. At another gig in East Europe, the band had their equipment impounded at the border, and fans brought their own equipment from home as replacements. The resulting show was a major triumph, not only in musical terms, but as a public relations exercise!
After a short break, the band were back in the studio early 1994. By this time, Jim had become more and more interested in classical and film soundtrack music, while Alison had been consuming Jean-Paul Satre's The Flies. These disparate interests would come together on a project entitled The Tragedy Of Orestes And Electre, based around Satre's play and featuring Alison singing entirely in French over Jim's soundtrack style neo-classical compositions. This album, which is one of the most incredible pieces of musical art ever created, was originally planned as part of a double album set, with more traditional Cranes material making up the other disc. However, problems with Satre's estate meant that the release has been postponed. It can only be hoped that these difficulties are negotiated away; to lose an album as beautiful and haunting as this would be a tragedy indeed.
The other set of material, however, has been released. Loved capitalises on the new found optimism of Forever, with a series of powerful, thrusting numbers which range from the idiosyncratic Lillies to the driving sound of the first single, Shining Road. In some ways, it seems far removed from the early material, freed of the obsessive nature of those dark days in the basement, but Alison sees it all as natural progression.
"What we're doing is the result of ten years of intensive experience. That is to say, ten years of working, solid recording. That in itself has been an obsession. We're shaped by normal experience and we turn it into sound. Maybe some of our experiences have been a bit more disturbing than other peoples'."
Maybe so. Let's hope, therefore, that the band can continue to exorcise their personal demons musically for some time yet.
Reviewed by David Flint
© 1995
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