If Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves saw Gavin exorcise the ghosts of Kurt Weill and Jacques Brel, the album Adam 'n' Eve, scheduled for March 1992 release, dredges up the battered remains of Gavin's adolescent pop past.
Alongside the entire seventies' glam rock trash aesthetic, Adam 'n' Eve touches on various buried reference points, from Erik Satie to Bacharach & David. The brooding introspection of the debut has been replaced by a panoramic vision where the extremes of sexual obsession and surrealist humour collide - often in the space of one song.
The single, I Want To Live, released in February, trails the latest instalment of'the world according to Gavin Friday', a messed up, dressed up world where Micheal Mac Liammoir rubs shoulders with Cole Porter.
Produced by Hal Willner, Flood, Dave Bascombe
Mixed by: Dave Bascombe. Eden mixed by Flood.
Engineered by: Dave Bascombe, Flood, Ian Bryan, Steven Shelton, Willie Mannion, Jefferey Lippay
Assistant Engineers: Aidan McGovern, Richard Arnold, Chris Laidlaw, Sinéad Hannah, Fiach Cooling, Goetz Botzenhardt
Recorded at:
Bearsville Studios - Bearsville, New York
RPM Studios - New York, New York
STS, Ringsend Road and Windmill Lane Studios - Dublin, Ireland
Townhouse 4 and Swanyard Studios - London, England
Mastered by:
Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk - New York, New York
Maria McKee appears courtesy of Geffen Records
Ally McErlaine appears courtesy of Phonogram Records
Des O'Byrne appears courtesy of Mother Records
All songs: words by Gavin Friday, Music by Friday/Seezer
"Each Man was a summing up of all the things I couldn't say in the Virgin Prunes," reflects Friday. "I got all those love/death/sex things under control, but there's other sides of me. I also have this love for pop."
With his new album, Adam 'n' Eve, Friday sets out to recapture some of the glamor and vision that pop music has lost—a mission that took the singer back to some of his boyhood idols. Adam 'n' Eve is like a weird color Xerox of the last 15 years of what Gavin Friday's been through. It's almost a regret for the paradise lost of pop. It dredges up the battered remains of his adolescent pop past alongside a glam-rock trash aesthetic.
The record touches on various buried reference points—from Erik Satie to Burt Bacharach. The brooding introspection of the debut has been replaced by a panoramic vision where the extremes of sexual obsession and surrealist humor collide—often in the space of one song. "Pop music should be about something romantic, something huge, something tragic and brilliant. A planned accident."
The planned accidents on Adam 'n' Eve turned out to be as brilliant as anyone could wish. Produced by Hal Willner, Flood, and Dave Bascombe, it's a wildly ambitious affair, spanning from the glam savagery of "King of Trash" to the Euro-melancholy of "I Want to Live." Friday's lyrical moods swing from the bawdy Dublinese of "Fun & Experience" ("We give good mouth," grins Friday) to the fatalism of "Falling Off the Edge of the World."
That track—a spectacular duet with American exile Maria McKee (Lone Justice)—is dryly described by Friday as "'I Got You Babe' in Hell." He adds: "I had it in my mind to do a duet with Maria since we worked together on an AIDS benefit. I liked the chalk and cheese element. I thought it would be a challenge."
"We recorded 'Falling Off...' during the Gulf War. When you're in the studio, nothing else exists except yourself and your art—that type of crap. You're cut off and obsessed. Your only connection with reality is TV, so the lyrics are like a remote control on the world. At the time I couldn't believe the unrealness of how everything was being portrayed on CNN."
Gavin's working-class aesthetic (he was raised in Dublin's Northside—the setting for The Commitments) is sworn to fight the consensus of mediocrity that's stifling music in the '90s, especially the era's blatant anti-song ethic. "I'm a big traditionalist, whether it comes from Cole Porter or Kurt Weill. A great bleedin' lyric that says something—that can transcend a political stance."
Still, Friday resolutely refuses to plan his next move. Under Hal Willner's guidance, he's working on a couple of songs for British jazz diva Annie Ross, which may appear on the soundtrack of Robert Altman's next movie.
The songs, he says, "sound like Edith Piaf wrote them." But as for the next Gavin Friday record: "I don't know. I'm just following my own instincts. I've got a feeling it might be a little bit more aggressive, but who knows..."
