Tweaker - '2am Wake-Up Call' (Gut)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Though bearing the greatest job in the world, rock musicians can be a right old miserable bunch. Put the likes of Will Oldham, Robert Smith and Johnny Marr on a record directed by Chris Vrenna (he of Nine Inch Nails fame, and the one they call Tweaker), who delivers the instruction that they are to take as their lyrical inspiration the topic of things that keep them awake at night, and they're not about to come up with subjects such as what on earth to do with all the fan-mail or where to hang that next cumbersome gold disc. Nope, it's a bleak, black affair all round.
A desolate sound, yes, but one made with the help of some of the most shining talents in the music-business. Whilst Vrenna sits at the controls, shaping the every move of the musical ambience, it's his fine choices of accomplices that provide the sparks of intrigue. Having two of the best-living vocalists, although radically different in style, contributing highlights was a masterstroke, especially when starting with Oldham's uncharacteristically heavy, pulsing opener 'Ruby'; his frail but always pitch-perfect voice, juxtaposed with the calculated coldness of the underlying soundtrack is the real mastery of '2am Wake Up Call', but that's not to say that there aren't more moments of similarly introspective, forlorn beauty.
If you leave Vrenna on his own, he composes bizarre soundscapes saturated with synthesisers, spooky wind noises, distant cymbals and drawn-out, daunting guitar noise. His role as Tweaker seems to be one more of a wise choreographer to the ideas thrown around by his band of not so merry men instead of taking the helm and ruthlessly pushing his way of thinking about this nocturnally obsessed project to the forefront. As such, his few and far between entirely solo compositions such as 'Cauterized' and '2a.m.' come across as curiosities, little respites to the wild experimental collaborations of the rest of the record, as opposed to showcases for the curator's personal talents. They are useful however for dragging the record through slight variations of mood (only slight - it's forebodingly downbeat at each moment); 'Remorseless' is for example essential in keeping the flow between The Cure's Robert Smith (the other world-class supreme vocal talent on show) and his sleazy command of 'Truth Is' and the more sparse, desperate paranoia of David Sylvian's 'Pure Genius'.
Problematically though, the record sometimes seems worryingly stuck between being an intensely personal account of one man's insomnia and an at-times conceited, contrived effort to get some of the rock world's great all-time and emerging talents (The Walkmen's Hamilton Leithauser provides a mid-album highlight in 'It's Still Happening') to share this view of the loneliness of lights-out. The nature of the subject-matter too, as admitted by Vrenna himself, prevents the record from possessing a degree of any-time appeal, for if it's going to truly connect with a listener it'll need to be absorbed completely without the aid of sunlight. There's nothing of the morning to this album.
But it's not the point of a semi-concept record to be everything to everyone all the time. With a topic such as this, it's a triumph that it doesn't once make its follower contemplate slumber in a similar way to the architects of the sound. Rather than prompt yawns, '2.a.m. Wake Up Call' should keep you very much wide-eyed, and somewhat nervously sleepless.
Artists in this article: Tweaker
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