Art Bears

condition (record/cover): NM / EX+

Gatefold sleeve. Poster included. 

When Henry Cow convened at Sunrise Studios in Kirchberg, Switzerland, in January 1978, the plan was to record their next album. By mid-March, working on overdubs at Kaleidophon in London, the plan had shattered. Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and the singer Dagmar Krause (lately of Slapp Happy) split off to pursue the song-form impulse Henry Cow's collective democracy could no longer contain. The recordings became Hopes And Fears: the first Art Bears album, although still half-Cow, with Lindsay Cooper, Tim Hodgkinson and Georgie Born on most tracks.

The album swings between brittle electric-chamber miniatures and theatrical agitprop, Krause delivering each consonant like Lotte Lenya reading Brecht in a bunker. "On Suicide" sets Brecht's text to glassy guitars and Cooper's anguished bassoon. "Pirate Song" is a sea-shanty refracted through Frith's prepared violin. "Riddle" recites Christopher Logue over a strict martial pulse. The closing "Moeris Dancing" lets the new trio breathe through a folk fragment, hinting at the more concentrated songcraft they would refine on the next two records.

Hopes And Fears was issued in May 1978 on Rē Records, the label Cutler founded that same year and which became the central clearinghouse for Rock In Opposition. An original vintage pressing on Rē, Rē 2188: the bridge between Henry Cow's collectivist sprawl and the focused political aphorisms of Winter Songs, still half-collective, half-trio.