You may recall the Real Tuesday Weld as the sometimes-solo project of twee-as-feck Britfop Stephen Coates. (The really real Tuesday Weld is an Elvis-dating, Dudley Moore-divorcing pin-up turned Oscar nominee, but anyway that's not her real name.) After loosely basing 2004's excellent I, Lucifer on a Glen Duncan novel, Coates ballasts his latest Prohibition-era cocktail cruise with another loveboatload of conceits-- vague storyline, vaguer alter ego, and the ever-loved love/death dichotomy-- but The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid is ultimately an exercise in déjà vu: the feeling you've been to this electro-lounge before.
Return revisits a baker's dozen of tracks from the Weld's 2001 debut, Where Psyche Meets Cupid, albeit with fresh recordings and a smattering of, ahem, real new material. Also recurring is Coates' self-described "antique beat" style, which in itself mingles the long-ago with the recent: Twenties and '30s music-hall and Tin Pan Alley (via "When I'm Sixty-Four", Village Green-preserving Kinks, or tourmate/fan Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields) with copious sampling and light, pastoral electronics of the Saint Etienne school. Scratchy victrola-like sound effects and sly clarinet-playing enliven resurrected tracks like banjo-picker "Am I in Love?" as well as the newbies, including instrumental opener "Waking Up" and melodramatic ballad "Little White Birds". Pun-picking "Daisies" adds a bossa nova rhythm.
More than just another case of history repeating, Return really makes you think twice. With whirring electronic beats and ever-slinkier clarinet, "L'amour et La Morte" strips Coates' love-and-death theme what the French call ass-naked. "Got a heart like an exit wound," Coates breathily half-sings behind his usual telephone-like filter (a more confident presentation would better suit the ambitious arrangements). The songs trace an apparently romantic relationship from the sprightly, unsuspecting acoustic guitar of "Anything But Love" to the wry "Goodbye Stephen", in which Coates envisions his own demise ("Will my family and friends all turn out to wave/ Dressed in their best fine nice things to say?"). Between, "I Love the Rain" offers porn wah-wah, distant piano lines, didgeridoo-like noises and the admonition to "let's get wet". Newbie "Something Beautiful" goes alpha beta gaga with multi-part vocal harmonies.
Unfortunately, Return misfires more often than its predecessors, omitting the debut's great "Terminally Ambivalent Over You" and never living up to I, Lucifer's inspired scat-dance single "Bathtime in Clerkenwell". Overly precious "Lavender Hill", in particular, suffers by comparison (uh, is that acoustic guitar intro from "Free Falling"?). When his conceits pay off, though, Coates appends a few charming, eclectic revisions to music history and his own. On a song called "Déjà Vu", his whisper takes on Waitsian darkness: "This touch on your skin reminds you of/ What was it again?" The feeling you've been to this electro-lounge before...
