Call it the birth of pop’s retro future when sixties American actress Tuesday Weld and thirties big band singer Al Bowlly appeared to Stephen Coates in a dream. Coates, aka ‘The Clerkenwell Kid,’ is the one-man driving force behind British indie band The Real Tuesday Weld. Combining neo-cabaret, alternative jazz, swing, and electronica, the band defies genres and creates off-tangent musical oddities.
Loosely defining their music as ‘antique beat,’ the band’s style is highly regarded, and some of their songs have been used in short animation films, TV, and advertising. Coates has also written music for documentaries, independent films, and other commissioned art projects. Extraordinary about the Real Tuesday Weld is their flair for getting inspiration from the old and making you hear their music as something new.
One of their notable albums was 2002’s I, Lucifer. The album was originally written by Coates as an imagined soundtrack to Glen Duncan’s book of the same name. In the book, God offered the Devil a shot at redemption if he could last in a human being’s body without sinning within a certain period of time. Coates’ audio version is probably the loopiest, most hallucinogenic kick you can get. You could easily forget it’s a story/album with all the 1930s big band glamorama in excess because it’s that much fun to listen to.
The album starts with Coates on a pondering monologue, ‘It’s A Dirty Job But Somebody’s Got To Do It,’ them temps up to the infectious and jazzy scat-French-tongue-twister-beat, ‘Bathtime in Clerkenwell.’ In ‘Someday,’ Coates slows down and channels Cole Porter, then becomes satirical in ‘The Ugly and The Beautiful.’ In a monotonous tongue-in-cheek fashion, he croons, ‘Money is the revenge of the ugly to the beautiful.’ I, Lucifer is beautifully crafted, serving to show Coate’s sharp-witted artistry. This album is just a bizarre delight
If I, Lucifer feels too much like a concept album, The Return Of The Clerkenwell Kid (2005) may be more up the indie pop alley. Coates sets up the mood with ‘Waking Up,’ a 30-second blast-from-the past instrumental piece that has vintage radio written all over it.
Coates cooks up a real heart-warmer with this album. Sunny, mellow, and wrapped with old-fashioned piano jazz and electro-pop, The Return is a collection of music you can hold hands to. Best tracks include the trippy yet old-fashioned ‘Anything But Love,’ and the electronically delicate and vocally whispery ‘Turn On The Sun Again.’ ‘Asteroids’ could probably the gem in this collection - its easy and languid feel is just the stuff made from daydreams and dreams, saying ‘We flirt between the stars, tap dance in the dark, spin away into the void.’ If you want a charmer for your ears, this here album is for you.
Perhaps, the most commercially accessible album would be The London Book Of The Dead (2007), with the track ‘Last Words’ featured as the end title song to the movie ‘Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.’ Like the previous albums, The Real Tuesday Weld clearly uses cabaret music to cast that avant-garde sepia-tinted hue to their style. This album is a much more cohesive offering of the band’s musical direction – retro meets electronica meets dance hall meets trip-hop.
What’s so original about this British indie band (apart from being prolific) is their ability to blur past and present into an aural time warp. Their music is undefinable, spilling over to multitudes of genres. Listening to their songs is like stumbling onto your grandpop’s old records. Call it an new-old or old-new discovery, The Real Tuesday Weld is a musical feast.
