Eldritch - one of the great alternative baritones

[blackandgold65]

Hello - new round here, nice to meet you etc, so glad to have found this forum, some very interesting stuff and comment....I've been blogging about baritones in alternative music recently and AE is absolutely one of my top ones, so I thought I would share this with you all, no lightning bolts of discovery, just personal thoughts on the man and his voice:


ANDREW ELDRITCH
"Lay me down the long white line. Leave the sirens far behind me.
Paint my name in black and gold. My heart my flame my heart my road"


Whilst I clocked a quintessential early Sisters of Mercy release 'Alice', it was actually somewhat later that I really made a true connection with Eldritch's imposing deep baritone voice. This occurred when a boyfriend of the time played me the song 'Marian' featured on the album 'First And Last and Always'. Like liquid darkness, it poured out of the speakers, an aural narcotic experience. The boyfriend thought that The Sisters should get a real drummer instead of a drum machine. I thought that he had missed the point completely and so the boyfriend eventually went but I kept the album! Perfectly coupled to those tense drum machine rhythms, Eldritch took what Peter Murphy in Bauhaus, Richard Butler in the Psychedelic Furs etc possessed, to a much darker area of the psyche . Influenced certainly by Suicide, nuanced with subterranean menace, his vocalizations and timbre primal, hypnotic, seductive, bombastic - all of these apply to Andrew Eldritch. Technically his range is believed to extend from D2-G4 and he uses those low to mid registers of his voice to great effect.

With Eldritch you never quite know what he's going to do next, he likes to keep you guessing and his singular approach is to be much admired. He can confidently switch from signature reverb-cloaked angst & howl, to bombastic production numbers, dark psychedelia or all out foot-on-the-monitors arena style rock, but within these realms, he is also pretty capable of exposing a fine brittle quality and laid bare approach when he wants to, particularly when the production and song allow. This can be witnessed on the sublime 'Nine While Nine', '1959', 'Bury Me Deep', or if you care for it Vision Thing's 'Something Fast' for example.

Gifted with a blinding ear for a hook - he is a king of drill-a-chorus-into-your-head-like-a broken-record, undeniable presence both recorded and live and a great deal of sharp lyrical prowess, Eldritch delivers his lines with delicious bomb-like intensity and flair. One sees in interviews that Eldritch is measured, articulate and as sharp as his cheekbones - it's all done behind dark glasses of course so you never get to see the actual windows into the soul, however his acute intelligence often translates into his lyrics which suggest a life lived very much through the senses. Here's a few personal favourites, I love the way he sings these - but you will have your own:

Hot metal and methedrine, I hear empire down - Lucretia, My Reflection

Love, is a many splintered thing....Flowers on the razor wire' - Ribbons

I don't know, why you gotta be so undemanding , I want MORE' - More

This place is death with walls....too much contact and no more feeling...acid on the floor so she walk on the ceiling - Body Electric

Rape, murder. It's just a kiss away on their splendidly contorted cover of The Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter. Their version of Hot Chocolate's Emma is rather tidy too.

There are many more instances of course, leaving you in no doubt that Commander Eldritch and The Sisters in their various forms have carved out some superlative English rock in their time. Which brings me to the present, whether we will ever see Andrew Eldritch, who appears to be in some kind of live limbo, commit any more output to a 'proper' recorded format rather than leaving newer material since Vision Thing, which is only ever played live, idling in the YouTube generator or bootlegged to assuage fans thirst, is a subject of some protracted debate. Time will tell and I won't hold my breath, as nobody forces Eldritch into anything as Time Warner found out............

When interviewed in the past, he has been rather self-effacing about his vocal abilities, "I'd been banned from music classes at school since I was ten cos I couldn't sing in key or play anything. I was completely incompetent. Tone deaf. I still am. Even today, if you listen, I've got a way of implying notes rather than singing them. And if it's not in A, I can't sing it anyway. The musicologists among you will notice how many of our songs are in A. It's quite a lot. It is remarkable how much one can make of one's limitations. That's all I've done." (Select Magazine 1992). Yes, well... technically some of that may be so, but I think he uses the theatrics of his voice superbly, he's very adept at using vibrato to weave his phrasing together and this gives an even greater illusion of prepossessing depth. So, who cares about absolute technical perfection when you command it so well, and I don't know, why you got to be so unassuming...

Top tracks: -very, very difficult to choose but will go with Body Electric, Bury Me Deep, We Are The Same Susanne (live), Heartland and a certain tour de force called Temple of Love (1992) featuring THAT riff and the wonderful vocals of Ofra Haza RIP - a powerful combination of two voices indeed.

http://showmethespark.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... ative.html

[Quiff Boy]

good stuff, thanks for sharing

[centurionofprix]

He can do a brilliant poetry reading/shouting to music. And, to me, he sounds even better with age as long as they manage to amplify his rumbling voice enough. The other thing is that, as he put it in some issue of UTR, there is a moral authority to his delivery of the words because they are carefully written and meaningful to him. His refined lyrical sensibility is reflected in his delivery.

I increasingly can't stand his moaning FALAA era vocal style though. He sounds like a cow.

My favourite bits:

Everything on the VT album.
"Are you the teachers of the heart? We teach old hearts to break." from recent live shows
"Forget the many steps to Heaven, it never happened and it ain't so hard..."
The howling in Romeo Down on a good day (like Budapest 2011)

[iesus]

Nice and interesting views in that post.

Just for the history the line in "More" goes as it was presented last year and forth: 'why you gotta be so overdemanding'

[Debaser]

Hello and

Top tracks: -very, very difficult to choose but will go with Body Electric,

You can stay

[mickydazzler]

Gifted with a blinding ear for a hook...

Blinding ear is worthy of the man himself.

[Back in time]

Very nice, thank you.
Eldritch, Cave, Murphy, Curtis most part of my collection
Will try the rest

[mickydazzler]

I increasingly can't stand his moaning FALAA era vocal style though. He sounds like a cow.

Arf! Sense at last.

[radiojamaica]

Nice blog!

[Pista]

Very nice first post.

Welcome blackandgold65

[nowayjose]

I increasingly can't stand his moaning FALAA era vocal style though. He sounds like a cow.

I like the cow... together with the jangly, rattling guitars and the cheap drum machine that voice defined a unique fin de siècle kind of atmosphere, fin de siècle of punk, that is.

Hello blackandgold65, btw.

[abridged]

Hallo there. Any one that starts a song with 'Everybody shouts on I Love Lucy' is ok with me...

[Nikolas Vitus Lagartija]

Not sure that Murphy was a vocal influence on , other than they were both heavily Bowie influenced.
For all the usual smokescreeen about the influence of Suicide, Motorhead etc, early Sisters seems very much like a Surrey educated student's take on JD, with the main difference that Curtis did that weird John Majoresque front of mouth vocalisation whereas did the back of the throat bellow. As Centurion of Prix pointed out this is especially noticeable at the start of FALAA the song, but his vocal shortcomings were also evident on some of the slower songs (end of Gimme Shelter, 1959 etc) where his voice was left more exposed. But at his best, like Marian and Bury Me Deep mentioned above - he was peerless.

[MadameButterfly]

wow, i love the use of words you describe things.

"Lucretia, Ribbons, More, Body Electric" & then you mention, "We Are The Same Susanne (live)" stunning songs that i truly love!

sounding like a cow? i've heard them all but this is really funny. how do you mean like the chewing of a cow? or the moo..ing?
i thought it was called howling!

welcome although the cow part doesn't go down well with me.

[nowayjose]

how do you mean like the chewing of a cow? or the moo..ing?

well...


Kiss the cowpat

Udder the gun

Fence electric

and...

Gimme Shelter!

[MadameButterfly]

[Elystan]

List needs more Jim Morrison.

[Purple Light]

Initially I thought your post was too long so I wasn't gonna read it, then I thought that again. Then again. Then I read it. And.... too long.

But, I liked the bits I read.

[blackandgold65]

Thanks all for your replies and comments. I tried to keep this short but fail, fail, failed.....will try harder in future posts!!!!! javascript:emoticon(':D')

Couple of things: sorry if I have confused some, no I don’t think Eldritch was influenced by Pete Murphy at all (Butler yes maybe) rather the comment that I was making was in the context of my own personal timeline of discovery, he just took things to a new level for me.

I agree with Centurion of Prix's comments, his voice has got better with age, bit like whisky!!! - I should edit that in to the blog somewhere. His voice has changed over the years, gained in character etc - I guess that several factors are responsible - years of live experience especially, give you the confidence and better technique, control, to be able to ‘play’ with the vocals more, the physiological effects of a lifetime of cigarettes do come into it(!!!), changing technology/ production/mic techniques etc. I personally like the production on the vox on both Floodland and VT. On VT the vocals are really quite ’dry’ so you get to hear more natural inflection and vocal texture - very Bowie in places. VT is a great album to drive to - must be played VERY loud, only Queens of the Stone Age Songs for the Deaf comes close for me!!!! On FALAA ( as a whole, and not just the song) I think the production, the way the vocals are eq’d etc is partly the cause of the ‘cow’ effect , also Eldritch maxes out on his atonal dramatics by forcing the larynx down I reckon and of course it is reverbed to the hilt , but against Hussey‘s melodic backdrops it works perfectly!

As far as live goes, it's like playing with the devil and a quiet singer is a sound engineer's nightmare...when you sing that low, you have to sing quietly to get the depth and texture required, you can't force the voice it just sounds horrible, loud but thin, tuning goes out the window, and you only have so much gain available before it all feeds back. Everything else has to come down in volume around you and of course the 2 biggest factors volume-wise in playing in a band are drummers and guitarists. Both massively egotistical positions! Eldritch can control the drums of course, there is no Grohl like physical being setting the level by smashing the hell out of a kit. Guitarists on the other hand, are not so controllable, ha ha - it is a visceral thrill not a shrinking violet position and they will turn up no matter what for performance sake, hence the vocals go back in the mix!! I think he-who-should-be obeyed has chosen to go the quieter route in recent years in order to get the performance he wants but ultimately it is sometimes much more difficult to achieve a balanced live sound - hit & miss. I speak from experience, and I’m sure you also may realise that what sounds good in soundcheck doesn't always transfer to the actual gig, some venues are better than others for this… and festivals are even more on the fly/winging it- the room dynamics change drastically once a venue is full of people and the sound can go to s**t unless the on stage monitoring and FOH sound aren't on the ball, it takes a lot of skill.

A recent non-Sisters case in point - I witnessed Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins last month doing a warm up gig for her Royal Festival Hall gigs - her first live outing for 15 years so nerves played a part for sure but the sound was fairly atrocious....she is similar to Andrew in the fact that she sings quietly albeit at the other end of the vocal spectrum. She had a full band with Damon Reece's drums screened off to deflect the sound away from her. But she was still utterly drowned out by guitar and keyboards, no matter what, the sound guy just didn’t get the vocals cutting up front in the mix, he was getting loads of flak and there were a few hideous feedback moments before he finally and well into the set, took the overall level down and got a handle on the room. Her voice could only really be heard as it should be, in the stripped down numbers. Over & out....

[Being645]

Nice blogging, blackandgold65 ... ... welcome here ... ...

He sounds like a cow.

... ... He does - or did so in the early days. I've sometimes wondered whether he secretly learned his yelling from the cattle.
Don't know whether you've ever heard it, but there is nothing more passionate and compelling than a bull yelling for his heifer ... :eek::eek::eek::eek: ...

[Prescott]

blackandgold65, that was well written and a joy to read. I totally agree that his voice gets better with age, a point I don't hear raised here too often. For instance, the "newer" songs that I enjoy the most, seem to be written with his current voice in mind, I couldn't imagine Crash and Burn, for instance, with FALAA era Eldritch singing. Thank you for sharing this with us.

[mh]

It's odd but I don't really view Eldritch as being so much in the "baritone" class - on many early tracks his voice was actually quite high-pitched, and he could certainly shriek and scream with the best of them; definitely nowhere near the likes of e.g. Nick Cave. The deep-n-doomy "man in a Darth Vader helmet at the bottom of a 20 foot well" sound is definitely part of the later mythology to me.

Musically, much of the earlier stuff was a fairly freakish and highly original mutated dub/funk/metal clash too (just listen to Good Things) so it's fairly odd how things turned out indeed.

[stufarq]

It's odd but I don't really view Eldritch as being so much in the "baritone" class - on many early tracks his voice was actually quite high-pitched, and he could certainly shriek and scream with the best of them; definitely nowhere near the likes of e.g. Nick Cave. The deep-n-doomy "man in a Darth Vader helmet at the bottom of a 20 foot well" sound is definitely part of the later mythology to me.

Having sung in choirs and received some formal musical education I can confirm that Eldritch has always been a baritone although he has sometimes sung at the top of his range or even used falsetto to sound like a woman.

I totally agree that his voice gets better with age, a point I don't hear raised here too often.

You're just begging me to reply with "That's cos no-one can hear his voice these days", aren't you? Well I'm not gonna bite. Oh, hang on...

[Nikolas Vitus Lagartija]

It's odd but I don't really view Eldritch as being so much in the "baritone" class.

Really ? I can't imagine Jimi Somerville singing along with the likes of Bury Me Deep or Afterhours. sound more basso profundo than baritone on these, but as you point out his tenor range on the early work was also fairly impressive, so "baritone" would seem a reasonable compromise.

[Being645]

I totally agree that his voice gets better with age, a point I don't hear raised here too often.

You're just begging me to reply with "That's cos no-one can hear his voice these days", aren't you? Well I'm not gonna bite. Oh, hang on...

Could be better ... though anyway, those who won't listen, will of course never hear ... ...