Twenty-eight years after his first recordings on Factory Records, the Durutti Column's Vini Reilly continues to abide by the unfashionable precepts of his old Manchester colleagues. Reilly, a longtime partisan of situationism and British anarchism, still boldly announces his lofty intentions: "To break with whatever supports the foundations of musical formalism." A strange doctrine, considering Reilly's improvisations have come closer to classical orchestration and folk with each successive album. But the credo follows his music: pretentious and arresting, methodical and destructive. With the exception of Joy Division, Reilly's narcotic performances are arguably Factory's greatest contribution to contemporary music. In the last decade, his work has haunted landmark albums by My Bloody Valentine, Galaxie 500, and the Orb. Recently, he received the dubious honor of becoming John Frusciante's favorite guitarist. But his own work has somehow become even more insular and melancholy, particularly on the albums following his mother's death and his (temporary) departure from Factory. His sustained depression is truly a feat for someone who once embodied the cliché of the suicidal dream-pop guitarist in the mid-1980s.
Keep Breathing continues the trend, dissolving the more conventional structures found on the gorgeously sad Someone Else's Party (2003) and the tepid Tempus Fugit (2004). Indeed, the songs that seem the most novel are also the most lackluster: The bongos, handclaps, and self-parodic space guitar of "Nina" sound like Reilly is pandering for a feature in Uncut. (The lyrics cite Bob Marley and reality television.) Lazy samples and flourishes obscure Reilly's mesmeric guitar on "Let Me Tell You Something". Fortunately, much of the remainder finds Reilly on familiar ground: grim intensity, calm virtuosity, ear-puncturing feedback, and a superabundance of delay pedals. Despite (or because of) that uniformity, there's a wide range of emotional registers: vague menace on "Helen", sappy ecstasy on "Lunch", inertia on "Tuesday". The most rewarding moments occur on "Neil", which connects corrugated folk guitar, flamenco and African jazz rhythms, and passing glances at the Delta blues, and the nostalgic "Big Hole", which inflames the fatigued vocals with feral harmonica.
This is a comfortable but hardly earth-shattering album. Durutti devotees will welcome Reilly's reinvigoration, but new fans may miss any sense of abrasion. The feedback is loud but almost always soothing, and that constancy can lead to tedium. For all of Reilly's revolutionary bluster, Breathing is probably as palatable to Deadheads as sulky post-punk kids-- a supremely accessible record with appeal to anyone invested in noise and beauty.
