It’s technically impossible to hear Livonia now as it first struck our ears in 1990, when His Name Is Alive became one of the few American artists to have a record released by 4AD. Ten years down, we thought we knew what a 4AD production sounded like, and certainly the drifting, Baltic vocals of Karin Oliver and Angie Carozzo seemed to fit. But there was something more here — something that made 4AD producer and co-founder Ivo Watts-Russell sit up and take notice, pursue a contract on the strength of a handful of over-the-transom cassettes from a relatively unknown twenty-one-year-old; something that made Melody Maker weigh in with a breathless full-page review (“Imagine hearing a beautiful stranger think. It’s how His Name Is Alive sound.”).
Now 4AD is out with How Ghosts Affect Relationships, a crisp remastering of His Name Is Alive’s first three LPs — Livonia (1990), Home Is in Your Head (1991), and Mouth by Mouth (1993) — and, if we can’t quite feel the sonic shock that greeted these tracks originally, the boxed set makes evident that even for 4AD, this was an exceptional sound. Take ‘Fossil’ — fuzzing ribbons of guitar wrap like a blanket of radio static around melodic guitar riffs and muted bass footsteps, a clear vocal with sizzling echoes riding atop it all. Or the stark ‘E Nicholle’, where disturbed electronic sounds give way to a saw-like scraping percussion and Oliver’s near-operatic vocal. Songs switch direction partway through, then switch again just when we get used to their new trajectory.
An exceptional sound, yes. It wasn’t a pure one. Watts-Russell famously took Defever’s tapes and edited them — more than just mixing, he both constructed and deconstructed songs, such that the first two albums were essentially mosaics of Defever’s vision, cut out and reassembled by Watts-Russell.
By Mouth by Mouth, Defever was asserting more control. Labelled as His Name Is Alive, the album nonetheless reportedly drew about half its tracks from another Defever project, The Dirt Eaters. Mouth by Mouth has a more traditional song-oriented shape than the previous albums, but the sound still pushes boundaries, genre, sonic and textural. ‘Where Knock is Open Wide’ cycles around and inwards, the lyrics verging on the surreal (“The tongue is the fish in the mouth”) but voiced by delicately folk female singers. ‘Can’t Go Wrong Without You’ follows with a scream of electronics, whisper-resonant vocals whooshing in, then shifting back towards experimental. On the closing track, ‘The Dirt Eaters’, you can hear an electric guitar solo that oscillates between minimalist repetition and a classic rock guitar riff — Brian Eno morphing into Eric Bell and then back to Brian Eno again.
With the recent upswing in folk and a retro interest in darkwave, the timing seems on target for How Ghosts Affect Relationships; one can envision a new generation of listeners discovering the band. 4AD’s release of high-resolution versions of two disturbing yet compelling videos originally created by the Quay Brothers, for ‘Are We Still Married’ and ‘Can’t Go Wrong Without You’, may be designed to engage that potential new audience. But boxed sets are for the fans, and fans of Defever and co.’s work will find much to appreciate here. Along with the clarity and nuance of the remaster, there are ample goodies to savour.
Boxed sets are often judged by their bonus material, and there are a few of the customary demo tracks here — just enough to get a feel for the profound quantity (and quality) of transformation songs such as ‘Baby Fish Mouth’ went through. But the set also includes a generous serving of true bonuses, like the lovely ‘Harmonic Song’ and the haunting ‘Endless Things’ on Mouth by Mouth, a set of “strings” reinterpretations on Livonia, and the entire original Dirt Eaters EP. All in all, it’s 26 additional tracks, including many standout pieces that might have found their way to albums of their own. On top of the six LPs, the set packs replicas of the original promo posters, a signed print, and a 36-page bio of HNIA’s early years by 4AD biographer Martin Aston, Ivo Watts-Russell and others.
We can’t go back to younger ears, but fortunately, we don’t have to. For one thing, there are plenty of new-to-the-audience tracks here. For another, it turns out that His Name Is Alive’s trademark blend of grunge and gauze, darkness and shimmering light, is just as extraordinary the second time around.
