Following the break from legendary guitar band Bluebottle Kiss, Jamie Hutchings released two beautiful but comparatively tranquil albums under his own name and toured around exotic locales from China to Europe in a mostly solo mode. In 2011 he began playing again with a three-piece, which inevitably led to delving into the wealth of classic Bluebottle Kiss material.
This seems to have awoken the more noisy guitar violence favoured by BBK within Hutchings, and it’s a welcome homecoming with his new outfit Infinity Broke. At only eight tracks long it’s something of a mini-album, though with longer songs Monsoon and BBK’s revised Termites pushing the ten-minute mark it’s certainly not short on ideas.
Gallows Queue is an upbeat opener, with jazzy passing chords and elastic bass over a jungle beat, building towards the faithful quavering of his vibrato bar and into a clatter of delay before returning to its original groove as its author yields to “take his leave”. No Mirrors Here has typical Hutchings tension in the verses to a cathartic release of cracks of sunlight in the chorus, and recalls little-known BBK masterpiece Stop That You’re Making Me Nervous.
His voice is full of vulnerability and cracks throughout, and like Neil Young’s it feels as nurturing as a comfy old couch seat. Water at first listen is rather pointless, being 1:59 of the sounds of a drain pipe after the rain, however strangely I find myself not skipping it. Many of the songs have an improvisational feel and Hutchings has lost none of his instinctive control over treating songs like lavish voyages into a very specific world, and isn’t interested in the simple destination of a catchy chorus.
It’s at once staggering and unsurprising, the product of more than 20 years writing challenging and meaningful material with nary a dud note.
BY NICK HILTON
Best Track: No Mirrors Here
If You Like These, You’ll Love This: SONIC YOUTH playing COLTRANE
In A Word: Art
