Art Bears

condition (record/cover): EX / NM 

Two inserts included.

By the time the trio of Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause returned to Sunrise in late 1978, the Art Bears had crystallised. Where Hopes And Fears still carried Henry Cow's collective fingerprints, Winter Songs is the unmistakable sound of three people locked into a single conceit. Cutler's lyrics draw on the iconography carved into the west front of Amiens Cathedral: fourteen Gothic emblems repurposed as parables about labour, history, force. Frith plays everything except drums, sometimes assembling guitar parts a measure at a time, sometimes letting a violin or harmonium shoulder the song. Krause sings as if the cathedral itself had finally cracked open and spoken.

"The Bath Of Stars" sets the tone in less than two minutes, a brisk fanfare-driven address that gives way to "First Things First", whose galloping rhythms make politics sound like a folk hymn. "Gold", "The Slave", "The Hermit" pile up like miniatures from an illuminated manuscript. "Man And Boy" is the side-two centerpiece, its choral procession of male voices set against Krause's lead, devotional music for the unbelieving. The whole record clocks under forty minutes and contains more incident than most progressive double LPs.

This is the Ralph Records original vintage US pressing (RR 7905), released the same year as the European Rē edition: the Residents' label catching the Art Bears at their most concentrated. A notable anti-folk record of the late twentieth century.