The Real Tuesday Weld, The London Book Of The Dead (Six Degrees)

seven out of ten stars Some albums are like love manifested; even when you’re alone they make you feel full. Isn’t it why we listen to music after all? To find love in whatever form we most prefer it? To fill up when we feel empty? “Life is good when you’re feeling love / Life is good when you’re filled with blood,” exalts Stephen Coates—who records under the name The Real Tuesday Weld—in an emotional exhale on the opener, “Blood Sugar Love”, to his excellent new album, The London Book Of The Dead.Some albums fill you up, turn your organs and have you rethinking your sore mood. This is, at least for me, one of those albums. It’s as an album whose songs answer an impossible question, shed light on a dark hole and define previously indefinable tastes. Coates’ compilation of sounds and instrumentation offers everything I want from a good album: Unashamed appreciation for the past, emotion that is full of hope and cynicism, arrangements that are complex and engaging, and a sonic consistency that removes coldness from the room, softening it with a warm red hue. “One day in May it suddenly happened; I met myself,” Coates affirms from within a dusty antiquated web of violin, banjo and horns. “I had to go – so I did.” Book Of The Dead seems about life and death, love and loss, finding oneself and letting go. Inside an amalgam of sounds borrowed from ‘40s jazz and swing, Tin Pan Alley, lullabies, bee bop, and European pop, Coates wanders from loving life to hating it, valuing it to wasting it. “I was born and not very much was said about it,” is the line he uses to open the album. The remainder explores the noise that followed. “All we ever need to do / Is to see the world the way dreamers do,” Coates croons on “It’s A Wonderful Li(f)e”, whilst piano melodies, trumpet squeals and trombone puffs lilt overhead like lovebirds. “I’d say never say die / And you’d say: It’s a wonderful life.” At least if you have the right disposition and soundtrack. Conflicted and adrift as most are, Coates survives through beliefe—in both irony and truth. “I believe in monogamy and I believe in lust,” he proclaims self-assuredly on the incredibly catchy “I Believe”, which is driven by tambourine slaps, harmonica and keyboard. “I believe in promiscuity and I believe in trust / I believe I believe in love / And I believe in people who I believe, believe in love.” Like life, Coates opts to mix it up. Sometimes high (swinging), others times low (mourning), sometimes old (strings), other times new (drum machine), Book Of The Dead brings disparate moods and eras together without an ounce of difficulty—and a welcomed sense of humor: “I don’t get my kicks out of you / I don’t feel the way I used to / I know it’s bad / After what we had / But I’m just not the angel you knew,” Coates confides in a breezy apologetic croon on “Kix”, which boasts Django Reinhardt-inspired jazz guitar. “…The booze and pills / The cheapest thrills / They mean more to me than you do.” The best part of life is love. And the best part of love is that it comes in so many forms. And the best part about the best albums (like this one) is that they feel like love – rooted in everything, defined by nothing.