Hugh Cornwell & Robert Williams – Nosferatu

Pairing with then-Magic Band drummer Robert Williams, ex-Strangler Hugh Cornwell's first solo effort not unexpectedly sounds like a self-consciously bizarre cross of The Stranglers and Captain Beefheart. Though Cornwell wrote and sang the songs, Nosferatu is as much Williams' showcase as Cornwell's - Williams' rhythmic clattering’s help give the album a quirky sonic flavouring, making the material pretty accessible. Even so, this is dark, challenging, and inaccessible music by almost any other standard. Nosferatu was originally the name of a classic silent vampire film, hence the album's title and artwork. Combining gothic atmospherics and tune craft with the angular discordance of Beefheart is an ambitious move, so whilst this album can be an interesting listen, it's not always enjoyable. Such challenging music too often demands more from the listener than even repeat listens eventually deliver. The problem is not so much the sound, which is after all what's intriguing here, but the songs, which seem too self-consciously quirky and offbeat (in both the weird and rhythmic sense) to fully work. On first listen, the only track that stands out is a fair cover of Cream's "White Room", but that's only because it's the one song on the album that's even remotely commercial and likely included to ensure at least some airplay and sales. Not that there aren't poppy moments - the closing "Puppets" is pure electro/pop, and "Wrong Way Round" is nice'n'sleazy Stranglified pub/rock anchored in choppily angular Beefheartian guitar squiggles. But even the poppier numbers have too many discordant edges to go down smoothly - every time there's something resembling a danceable beat, Williams deliberately throws the rhythm off-kilter, and every time Cornwell delivers a smart hook, it gets too smart for itself and twists in a contrary direction.

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The title track may get its hooks jammed in too quickly, but at least its fast and barely over 90 seconds long, and also has the distinction of being perhaps the first (only?) example of Goth No Wave. "Wired," is even more No Wave-ish, with its honkingly atonal saxes, crosswire rhythms, and abjurance of melody, with Cornwell playing his vocals for odd rhythms rather than melodics. That approach isn't so effective on creepy crawlers like "Losers in a Lost Land" and "Big Bug" which seem to stretch on endlessly at 4+ and 5+ minutes. "Irate Caterpillar" is perhaps the emblematic track, in that if you squint hard enough you might just discern a nice psychedelic pop number inside, although it's so doused in quirkily discordant Beefheart-isms that it would be easy to miss.

So Nosferatu is a frustrating album; after repeated listens I've grown to sort of like it, but I can't in good conscience really recommend it, certainly not to Stranglers fans, as (aside from Cornwell's trademark vocal mannerisms) there's little here resembling that band's more polished and commercial material. There again, perhaps the album parallels some of the weirder tunes on The Stranglers' Black and White - imagine an entire album of tracks like "Do You Wanna?" and "Rise of the Robots" - if that appeals, then Nosferatu would be an indulgence. So it's easy to see why Cornwell felt he had to do the album outside of The Stranglers, as the music is considerably removed from that band's sound. It's an interesting experimental side track to footnote the Stranglers' oeuvre.