If anybody familiar with the previous two Alexander Tucker albums, Dorwytch (2011) and Third Mouth (2012) (me, for example) is wondering why it took him six years to come up with Don’t Look Away and finish his projected musical/lyrical trilogy , it probably lies in the fact that he was/is a very busy man. Or maybe he just wanted us to wait a bit…
Still, Tucker has in the meantime worked in Grumbling Fur, his ‘daily duo’ with Daniel O’Sullivan, composed for the Schauspielhaus theatre in Zürich, and as a visual artist, he established “Undimensioned”, an independent publishing imprint. No wonder the cover is a hand-cut collage he made himself.
So if the cover itself looks like an illustration for a sci-fi novel, it is exactly what the music portrays, and at the same time, it doesn’t. Somehow, Tucker attempts to connect the future with the past, using all the aspects of a psychedelic palette. With a twist. You see, Tucker’s music on the album is as if the prime-day Hawkwind decided to go folk psych with another Alexander – ‘Skip’ Spence, of the Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and his solo masterpiece Oar fame along for a ride. ‘Gloops Void (Give It Up)’ (with Nik Void on vocals) tells that part of the story the best.
The other part is that Tucker has made his sound on Don’t Look Away a bit sparser compared to the other two parts of his trilogy, with his expressive vocals and acoustic instruments dominating, while the gentler use of electronics also embellish his oblique lyrics, making all those elements work exactly as he envisioned them.
“It’s another way that you hide away / The honest ray / Disguised as a beam of light from the week before / Visiting again,” (‘Visiting Again’), sings Tucker letting every listener conjure past, present and future images for himself. /“There has always been a relationship between my music and visual practice. Subject matter crosses between each medium depending on where my current obsessions lie. There are a melancholia and sadness about the transitory aspects of our earthly lives, alongside a fascination with the beauty and inexplicable nature of existence.”/, explains Tucker leaving an ample musical and lyrical space to everybody who cares to listen.
And they should, because tracks like ‘Objects’ and ‘A To Z’, as any other on Don’t Look Away present Alexander Tucker as an artist with a musical/lyrical/visual vision that works.
