CARDIACS

"Sing To God"

Alphabet Business Concern
ALPHDCD 022
(CD-only double album) or as two separate CDs: 
"Part One" (ALPHCD 022) and "Part Two" (ALPHCD 023)   

Deathly retro-rock conservatism is dropping onto us like a huge dull-grey blanket, joyless and 
drab. We need something to save us from purgatory. And "Sing To God" stands out like a delirious 
yell of hysterical hope. 

Here come Cardiacs, roaring back into action with a new four-piece lineup 
and a double album of raw-nerve songs, still pursuing their ambition to pump out this music through 
thick and thin. And recent years have been notably thin, with their previous record deal shot out 
from under them and their last record - 1991's "Heaven Born And Ever Bright" - ignored and buried 
by record company collapse. But then, Cardiacs have never had it easy. Tim Smith's audacious, 
twisted vision has ensured that his band have always remained an underground cult... and 
whipping-boys for spiteful journalists.   

Mind you, Cardiacs' perversity could scare off any number of journos. They're the granddaddies of 
the pronk phenomenon, consequently being about the only band ever to be compared to Gentle 
Giant and The Sex Pistols in the same breath. And that's only part of it. From arty power-pop (Split 
Enz, XTC) to classical rebels (Wagner, Bartok), from peculiar prog (early Genesis, Hammill, Zappa) to 
tuneful punk (Pixies, Buzzcocks) via plain oddities (music hall, puppet shows), Cardiacs fuse a 
chaotic brew of influences into an ear-popping, contradictory cocktail. They slurp it all up and blast 
it out again, transformed into a raucous brew of intense freaky rock bolstered by beefy saxes and 
great rough swathes of choral harmonies - like a cavalcade of irreverent punk-poppers storming the 
last night of the Proms and nicking the orchestra.   

Cardiacs' mixture of insane complexity, brutal volume, manic inventiveness, constructive irritation 
and scary eccentricity can scare you off or captivate you (frequently both within the space of the 
same moment). But if you can take the abrasive forcefulness, you'll discover that "Sing To God" is a 
stunner. Packed full of innovative and passionate music, wild and eerie ideas, some outstanding 
musicianship and an anarchic lyrical play across tongue-twisters, warped legend, free association, 
dazzling psychological escapades and oddball insight. Don't be fooled by the title, either: Tim 
Smith's wilderness years haven't steered his violently eccentric pop towards Christian rock. "Sing To 
God" might have a loose conceptual thread of religious references, but the focus is more on what 
and how we choose to worship. As ever with Cardiacs, the final focus is on little people and what 
drives them.   

And, as usual, it's a mixture of absurdism and insight. The gods here are idiots, abstractions, 
children's-book heroes, the science of psychology, statues (even, on a couple of occasions, dogs) 
and their worship springs more from blurred hysteria or demented instincts than from reasoned faith. 
So there's fun with the canine evangelism on the Ferris-wheeling singalong of "Dog- Like Sparky"; 
and fright as "Fiery Gun Hand" wraps up America's millennial overlap of religion, violence, death 
and gun-worship into a single shredding apocalyptic guitar charge with a central cluster of frenetic 
cartoon music. Later, the gnarled Gothic crunch of "Dirty Boy" will paint a lurid picture of a horribly 
flawed trash-Messiah and his congregation. Closing the ceremonies, the plaintive Robert Wyatt-ish 
"Foundling" is laden with shabby chapel-hymn atmospherics - wheezy harmonium, school piano 
and stumbling footsteps - and filled with desolate William Faulkner images of baptism, angels, and 
soul-succour. A redemption of sorts.   

If you want a catch-all summary, "Sing To God" is a harvest festival presided over by a pronk 
surrealist. The first half's crammed full of eccentric tunefulness and invention. There are helium 
chorales ("Eden On The Air"), psychedelic battlefield songs ("Fairy Mary Mag") even scissor solos 
("Wireless"). And there's a fistful of songs which in an ideal world would become storming chart-
hits. "Bellyeye", for example, sounds like Punch and Judy linking up with King Crimson and Blur for 
a big opera number, and overloads itself with hooks almost to the point of explosion. Smith's 
squawking punky vocals skitter over the snarling bouncing guitars before getting spiked on a 
massive barbarian choral chorus, then doing mountain-goat leaps back up new verses as the band 
pile on detail, tempo changes and crazy rhythms.   

 They can follow that, too. "Manhoo" sees Cardiacs applying hypercharged pronk jumpleads to the 
moribund legacy of Jeff Lynne's epic pop, complete with gabbling choirs and deliriously complex 
guitar breaks. "Insect Hoofs On Lassie" (an archetypally Cardiacs hybrid of mad-professor waltz, 
sea-shanty, and Frankenstein fantasia) smashes doggie screen idols and genetic engineering 
together and sees what sticks. "A Horse's Tail" is part punk pogo, part orchestral oratorio at triple 
speed; a batch of quickfire melodies zooming around in a Wagnerian dogfight. Absurdly catchy, and 
hysterically enjoyable.   

Having welcomed the congregation in with some happy-clappy hymns, Cardiacs set about doing the 
soul-searching bit for the second half. There might be the heavy-duty brass-bell riffage of "Bell 
Stinks", and a couple of belting sermons in the shape of two more irrepressible, digging-for-
knowledge pronk oratorios ("Bell Clinks" and "Angleworm Angel"), all courtesy of new boy Jon 
Poole. But the overall impression of the second half is one of quiet desperation, with "Dirty Boy" 
and "Foundling" setting the tone. It's carried in the dull ringing and broken, bereft voice of "Billion", 
and in the lopsided chug of "Odd Even" with its drunken-proggie keyboard solo.   

Whereas the first half's surrealism was gleefully drunk on its own energy, that of the second-half 
sways on the edge of fear and dementia via some of Cardiacs' oddest recorded moments. There are 
sinister nightmares about undead birds in the three-legged piano stumble of "Flap Off You Beak", 
and a snippet of haunted Beckett/Dada radio play for "Quiet As A Mouse". "No Gold" - as close to 
relaxation as Cardiacs are ever likely to get - comes as a welcome relief. It sounds like Syd Barrett 
underwater: streaming, childlike, backwards vocals and guitar hums, and a string quartet who sound 
as if they weren't expected to be submerged but are shrugging their shoulders and making the best 
of it. But the heads-down, dark-sun psychedelia of "Nurses Whispering Verses" brings back the 
tensions. Warbling guitars, sirens, snaking melodies and foaming rock riffs which belt along epically 
before winding down into a beautiful, richly ambient clockwork coda, just in time to set the scene for 
"Foundling"'s fragile, vulnerable goodbye.  

 Instinctive and inexplicable (what does God think when people sing this sort of stuff at him?), "Sing 
To God" is a giant cathedral of diversity in a wasteland of conformity. I spent at least a week circling 
it like a cautious vulture, during which time it turned from a fascinating ordeal into indispensable 
earfood. There's enough on here to repay months of listening, and in a genre so often starved of 
new ideas, Cardiacs remain invaluable wild cards. Sing on.   (DANN CHINN)