press release
Steve Hillier (keyboards/programming), Chris Wilkie (guitars), Sarah Blackwood (vocals)
"I am the gum on your shoes, the prostitute who rings your family, I'll take your breath away, You cross my path and you'll pay, and all your friends will laugh. I'm a person with a plan for you, I'm a person who will wreck your confidence. I will be your namesake, I will be your headache, I will be your witsend, I will be your girlfriend."
...Imagine a scene in a dodgy nightclub, a hotel bar in a seaside town where people go to drink and shag. There's a bloke on a business trip and there's a woman he slept with last night. He's being a bastard, he's with his mates and he's ignoring her. She decides she's not going to let him get away with it, damn sure his friends are going to find out what he's done. He is not going to be given a choice - a one night stand may be what he had in mind, but it's definitely not what she had in mind. This is 'I Will Be Your Girlfriend', the opening track of Dubstar's second album, 'Goodbye'.
When Sarah sings there's no self pity - just the core realisations that have lain at the heart of many a Dubstar classic. Relationships are impossibly complex and inevitability precarious. Men are unfathomable. And we're doomed to routinely hurt each other. The pointlessness of battling, the emptiness of the break-up, the slapstick nature of deceit, that moment of mania when you actually think life's great and the destructiveness of self-loathing - these are the feelings running through 'Goodbye'.
Winter songs set in northern towns, walking through snow in the light of clear bright stars, songs about growing up set in small towns where frustration cannot be explained or appeased. With songs about positivity and humour in the face of adversity, about moving on and changing your life, 'Goodbye' sums up those defining moments of out lives. Testaments to past relationships. Generalised regret and psychotic releases of anger delivered from the music hall via the kitchen sink. Brave, honest and personal, the songs on 'Goodbye' hide behind nothing and, like the first appearance of The Smiths or the Pet Shop Boys, Dubstar's lyrics subtly redefine the English pop vocabulary as they go along, making it seem effortless as they do.
Lets not forget that we already have much to be grateful for. Before 'Stars', 'Anywhere' and 'Not So Manic Now' made the Top 20, no-one had thought to marry all the coolest Johnny Marr chords to a galaxy of floor-torching rhythms. And yet, Dubstar's glacial northern soul at once seemed familiar. If Sarah Blackwood's singing implied a seen-it-all-weariness beyond her years, then the seen-too-much melancholia of Steve Hillier and Chris Wilkie's melodies provided the perfect frame. Like all pop visionaries, Dubstar understand that the most uplifting moments are the saddest ones. When the girls in Abba sing the 'having the time of your life' line in 'Dancing Queen', it's the moment you realise that this is as good as things are ever going to get.
Dubstar formed in Gateshead (although now resident between Newcastle, Brighton and Manchester) when Sarah wound up there at college from Halifax and Steve had arrived there to be a dj.
Chris met Steve when the latter was doing his stuff in a Newcastle club and between Chris' penchant for the guitaring of Johnny Marr and James Honeymoon-Scott and Steve's thing for the dub experiments of Weatherall and William Orbit they found common ground in The Durutti Column, Colourbox and the sugared melodies of the Cocteau Twins. And so Dubstar were formed with Sarah taking over vocal responsibilities from Steve when it became clear that she was better at that sort of thing. Sarah, being influenced by the bare emotions of Janis Joplin and Kirsten Hirsch, sings with a detached, elegant desolation that fuses with the epic soundtracks to give a sense of poignancy unmatched in the current pop scene.
"I'm lying to you now that dignity's mine, around me the trails of damage., I can't fight with memories I can't find. I will go and I'll find some way, believe in the pain with a glass in my hand. The walls that surround me, the sickness inside are all that consume me now and I can't find. I will go and I'll find some way, believe in pain with a glass in my hand, the sound of morning rings in my mind. It's easy to blame me most of the time."
This is 'Wearchest', Dubstar's hangover anthem. It's a song about the generalised regret and self doubt the morning after the night before, still drunk and full of remorse for the night gone by without any recollection of the events that took place. And yet despite the cloudy subject matter, this sounds like a classic music hall thigh slapper, musically perhaps 'Goodbye's' most uplifting moment.
"There's no-one else, still living by myself, yes I'm eating well, I still cook for two you know, and the bathroom's clean, the windows let the sun shine in, my complexion's clear, but you're not here. An empty bedroom, a silent phone, wherever I go I'm alone. A stranger's face, a different place, I see you everywhere, it's funny how time does nothing and doesn't seem to care. I'll trace the whole world to find your ghost, who could understand me now you're gone?"
So runs 'Ghost', Dubstar's most sublime moment yet, a song so sad it had to be sung with a microphone in one hand and a box of tissues in the other. Set in Newcastle it tells the story of a woman bereft of a partner who has just left her (or died?). She's trying to cope, still doing the things they did as a couple but alone - inside she is consumed by grief. And therein lies perhaps the central attitude of 'Goodbye' - uncertainty tempered by resolution.
"I haven't sung in years, and shown I've meant it, they'll play the tune and my gestures are empty, but my eyes are open, every word is true, but then it's a big thing at the chemists together, you take my heart and describe it in letters, every checkout girl can see us, everyone knows our names. Take my hand we're leaving now, understand I need you and I've seen the world's impatient, spent so much time hiding, why? I know the future's waiting, spent so much time hiding, why? No more waiting, let's go."
'Goodbye' closes with 'Let's Go', a song that on the surface seems to be about a couple's first attempt at a sexual relationship but on closer inspection makes us wonder if it's about a lovers' leap into suicide or even a paean to some kind of coming out. Like the other songs on 'Goodbye' it's a song that deals with the basics. Because, while other bands are busy throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, Dubstar just want the kitchen sink.
Truly, a taste of honey.