Michael Dracula is the weirdly-named concern of one Emily McLaren based in Glasgow, Scotland. The band had apparently been through many permutations over the last couple of years, but eventually McLaren settled on a line-up and headed off to rural France to record In The Red on a shoestring budget. What resulted is a strange and dreamy album that unsettles the listener with it’s bifurcated lyrics and vocal delivery, shifting musical themes such as old honky-tonk, 1920’s wise guy mobster menace, goth and a damaged merry-go-round’s whirl.

Pretty peculiar, huh? Well even moreso when you consider the label the band are signed to. ZE Records is a label that has worked with some of the most influential Post-Punk and No Wave artists of the late 70s and early 80s. ZE disbanded in ‘86 and only just re-opened in ‘02 and Michael Dracula is the first new signing since they re-started. And listening to this album, that isn’t as unlikely as it sounds.

For all of the shifting themes on In The Red, post-punk is the real meat of the music. Time after the time the bass and drums will get into a groove and lock down the song, a guitar will often play around, in and out of the foreground using moronic and aggressive riffs and McLaren‘s vocals will veer off into gothic faerye land. Songs such as “What Can I Do For You?”, “Poppers”, “Two Wrongs”, “Killing Time” and “In The Red” display a musical lexicon of Post-Punk, from Gang Of Four to Siouxsie And The Banshees to Lydia Lunch to Liliput/Kleenex to The Birthday Party.

What’s interesting is that Michael Dracula tie in their own ideas and fancies into this Post-Punk foundation. A thin but distinctive piano accompanies most of the songs and lends that dreamy fantasy feel, by sounding woozy (“Please Don’t Take This The Wrong Way”), giving a reverb-y bass rhythm (“What Can I Do For You?”, “Another Distressed Damsel”), and replicating a carousel (“Poppers”). McLaren’s vocals are an interesting instrument too, she rarely veers from sounding like a moony sunstroke victim, using lots of drawn out vowel sounds, a high pitched register and finishing the end of some lines sounding like a heroin addict’s eyes soaring to the heavens.

One of the most interesting things about the album is the juxtaposition of Emily McLaren’s lyrics and her vocal delivery. She looks at the usual issues for 20 somethings; growing up “So, hey, little boy, when are you gonna be a man?/If you keep crying wolf, one will get you in the end”, (“What Can I Do For You?”), dread/depression, “So don’t look at the post when you’re at your worst/You know it’s no good news/Don’t answer the phone, there’s no money from home/To compensate what’s overdue/You’ve got it coming to you”, (“Please Don’t Take This The Wrong Way”), relationships and infidelity, “You take a little girl who is up for some fun/End in the insane asylum, ha” (“Another Distressed Damsel”), “But I’ll take the fun that I can’t quite remember/Over monotony that I’ll never forget/So let’s do it again”, (“Poppers”) and making the wrong decisions, “Be happy, be poor/Wake up on someone else’s floor/What do you do?/Destroy yourself”. But when paired with her dreamy delivery, these subjects get torn and distorted, maybe even robbed of some essential meaning. It cuts both ways, she creates something invigorating that also ends up leaving you as drained and listless as she sounds.

What gifts this album it’s distinct style also limits how easy it is to listen to. While the lo-fi production and engineering gives a pleasing sense of a soft edged sepia coloured world covered in dust, it also flattens every instrument out so that everything sounds curiously smooth and negating, the guitar doesn’t roar, the vocals don’t soar, the drums don’t pound, the piano doesn’t sparkle and the bass is boring.

Strange and mundane vie and contend on In The Red, what seems simple is complicated and what is complicated is somehow numb. I think I find this album more interesting than enjoyable to listen to, it is seemingly destined to be an interesting but obscure debut album.
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mp3:> Michael Dracula: Please Don’t Take This The Wrong Way

Links
Michael Dracula [myspace] [buy it]