Dr. Millar - I Am Vermin
What is the best way to review a 5 CD disc release of (save for one song) entirely new material, totalling forty-two songs all told, each disc a discrete album in itself? Maybe best to enumerate the titles of the individual albums, and explain the concept behind each. We are helped in this endeavour by Seán Millar’s semi-autobiographical essayistic liner notes, which would not be out of place in one of our more respected literary journals. Certainly, if one Goo album review is generally two hundred words, this one merits at least a thousand. Even so, this length will not be sufficient to do justice to the riches contained within. The general title refers to Millar’s ‘tendency to identify with socially rejected things’, and permeates all five elements of the whole. Throughout all that follows, the sturdiness and variety of Millar’s singing voice, and the deftness of his musicianship, should not go unremarked.
Disc 1, Toy Bear in a Coalmine (1985-1988), has the unifying theme of what Dermot Bolger once called in the title of one of his poetry collections, ‘internal exile’. Seán writes, ‘The band that most influenced my songwriting in the years I describe here is the Velvet Underground’, and there is a raw, live feel to the recordings, all done in two takes. Many of the seven cuts, such as opener ‘Least Said Soonest Mended’ are country-inflected, some more so than others – ‘I Couldn’t Bear To Meet You’ is positively gothic. Then there is the dreamy Major 7ths progression of ‘Terrified’. Stand out is the seven minute plus ‘I Decided To Live’, with its lengthy spoken word intro, and gospel-tinged harmonies courtesy of long-time collaborator and chanteuse extraordinaire, Miriam Ingram. Lyrically, it details Millar’s early twenties suicidal ideation because of his white male guilt, but concluding that killing himself would only hurt the ones who loved him.
Next up is London Eats Me (1998-1992), a title which invites reference to Hanif Kureishi’s 1991 film London Kills Me. This is where exile proper begins. Colm Tóibín has written of the venerable Irish tradition of ‘fecking off to England’, embodying the ‘idea in the Irish mind of England not so much as a conqueror and traditional enemy but as a place where people are let alone.’ Sexual experimentation was easier in a metropolis where windows weren’t squinting, and Catholic guilt mixed with claustrophobic familial social situations were not an inhibiting factor to enjoying ‘a haven of freedom and pleasure’. (I myself fecked off to Italy, and had a rare old time.) But things can turn dark. Wherever you go, there you are. ‘There’s a special kind of low self-esteem that you only get from brushes with the music industry’ Seán notes, and his rise and fall therein is delineated here. London eventually transmogrifies into ‘This Stinking Town’. Other highlights include: ‘Tony Gets It’, where the songwriter reverts to one of his favoured scenarios, adultery with other men’s wives (cf. ‘You’re Not Paranoid’ from solo debut The Bitter Lie), this time delivering a sly twist in the dénouement; ‘Twelve Years Later’, a third-person recounting of a final meeting with a former girlfriend and closest friend on whom the years have taken their toll; and the clear Scott Walker homage ‘Rumours Of You’. Most moving is the wry, arpeggiated reflection on a longstanding cross-sex friendship, ‘Sex in the Twentieth Century’: ‘We don’t make love but the love’s still there.’ Quite.
This is followed by the louche and laid back third disc, Two Centimes (1972-1997), which celebrates the European underclass that emerged during this period, of which Millar considers himself a member and defender. Many of the compositions owe a debt to the chanson tradition and to easy blues and trad jazz motifs. ‘The Scene’ is a spoken word apologia for the (self-chosen) lifestyle, in which the fundamental mutual misunderstanding and clash of values the protagonist experiences when confronted with aspirational working or middle class people is delineated: they think he’s failing by not getting with the programme; he thinks they are, because they already have. Closer ‘The Boot’s On The Other Foot Now’ would not sound amiss on a Stephan Grappelli record.
The conceptually complex sci fi of proggy disc #4, The Invisible Revolution, is the most challenging listen in terms of understanding the story and following the narrative. But it ends with the resounding Christmas cracker ‘December Man’, the rumbunctious bells and whistles arrangement and production courtesy of composer and keyboard wiz Daragh O’Toole.
Disc 5, Dirty Dublin, brings everything full circle, with opener ‘Run Run Run Runaway’ ruminating on ‘this town I love to hate’. It also includes the eminently singalong ‘Fucked Up Genes’ and the explanatory title track. The songs are characterised by a mature equanimity. Always Coming Home, indeed.
Whenever an artist or band release a double album, the default question is always ‘Does it justify its length?’ Such speculation, in my opinion, tends to miss the point of the extended form. In good hands, the larger canvas provides songwriters and musicians with an opportunity to stretch out and feel less constrained. The fear is that they will lose the run of themselves, and the result will be bloated and self-indulgent, with a fair proportion of filler. Millar has put out not a double, but a quintuple album(s), which magnifies these risks. But he has astutely avoided the pitfalls, mostly because he has compressed what would be ten years’ worth of work for your average singer/songwriter into one release (at least one component of which he has been working on, on and off, for ten years), and with him one can justifiably invert the old adage which extols the virtues of excess over excellence to ‘never mind the width, feel the quality’. Just give him the Choice Music Award now. Or, failing that, at least a Lifetime Achievement Award.