Graeme Jefferies Messages From the Cakekitchen. My favorite album for most of the 1990s was this. It was released in 1987. This makes some day from this year the 24th anniversary of the release of Messages From the Cakekitchen. Someone somewhere really must have a commemoration to give this album the recognition it deserves. I am much too busy. I am not really. Perhaps the big date has already passed? In the battle between Graeme and his brother I've always sided with Graeme, and mainly it is down to this record which is amazing, more amazing than anything else they ever did. But Peter gets all of the love, the plaudits, the critical esteem. Perhaps it is something to do with Graeme's leather pants, his French drummer, his rockist tendencies. But he's this under appreciated man in the shadow of his brother. Now, I do love Peter Jefferies too, he once took the time to write me a letter extolling the virtues of Snapper in regards to Stereolab. I was devoted to him up until he married Jean Smith and decided being unlistenable was erudite and happening. First track was s sinister bit of post-punkish menace. His creaking, impossibly deep baritone over an organic bed of dissonance. Now to the second track Reason to Keep Swimming, spindlier, sparse, his flying v guitar in very thin layers painted across the track, his voice very dramatic and imparting, his lyrics bleak and bleaker, then the crashing shards of his guitar. All of this on a four track recorder. would it sound the same in a studio? Cakekitchen recorded in a studio. Sometimes it was brilliant; see The Mad Clarinet, Dave the Pimp, etc and sometimes it was not, see The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. It's back to a soft almost whisper, he sounds less brooding, less of a crooner, more the spidery appendaged stranger in the mist. Next track, Prisoner of a Single Passion, amazing, gorgeous, brilliant, this is the track where things go from pretty awesome to godlike. Sung almost blankly by Maxine Fleming, sorry, no idea who she is or was or will be, but the music spined by a basic basic guitar line accentuated by cascading bits of viola and wild guitar dissonance. The sort of thing Alastair Galbraith would make a living off of later in live, even on Cakekitchen records. It's this glacial voice in the middle of a cauldron, undamaged by the external forces, this mad brew of cacophony(I keep using that word, is there a synonym?) and certitude. After the bizarre ache of the musical firestorm she rejoins the mix in an absolutely unaffected manner, it's inhumanly restrained and inhumanly perfect. I only discovered this record because of Ajax mail order catalog. I remember the days when I spent nearly all of my money(I was a poor college student) on records out of the Ajax catalog. This was my muddied phase, I was stepping away from the pristine things like the Smiths and the Stone Roses and discovering the darker underworld of the anti-podes. There were these bands who made unbelievable records in pressings of 50, records pressed on handcut lathes, in their bedrooms on four track recorders and they still produced these amazing documents of the heart and psyche. Nothing That's New has started, layers of guitar, each more expressive than the next, his aching voice, the epitome of desperation and longing. The lyrics? Sometimes Graeme turned a trifle too surreal but always with a historical bent. Ah, the second guitar has arrived, it's an icy blast that soothes, his voice so tender. This may be why I prefer him to his brother, Peter was less apt or was perhaps physically unable to be gentle as a singer. Look at Graeme's contributions to This Kind of Punishment and there was always the meeker involvement of a protagonist such as Hermann Doubt or The Men by the Pool, tender and forgiving, beautiful and organic. Peter sometimes was all too buried in his Teutonic frenzy. Now to Simple Tapestry of Fate, a double tracked vocal, one tender, one darker or perhaps one more asthmatic. A short vocal phrase, then the beguiling coda, joined by a recorder? Piano, ocean sounds, all of the warmth of the world that lay undiscovered by most in New Plymouth. Amazing. Then to If the Moon Dies. It's back to darker forces, to more agile bends and curvatures, it's rudimentary seeming, the entire record is. But at this time I was also becoming obsessed with Moonshake Eva Luna and really if you ask me now what my favorite record of the 90s was the answer is now Eva Luna but the ugliness of the voice versus the beautiful cataclysms expressed in the music on both of these records is a dichotomy that is not explored often enough in music these days. yes, there was a golden age. The gentleness I discussed earlier might be a turn off to most bands today, especially Amerikkan bands that are so desperate to be considered hard. This was one of the traits that so endeared New Zealand music to my heart, the feminine side that was on display to often. It is a brusque existence on a tiny archipelago 1000 miles from anywhere and the isolation, the idea that they were creating this records for an intimate circle of friends and admirers gave them a confidence and self-awareness to make their music the embodiment of their souls. or so I imagined. I saw Graeme play live as a duo as the Cakekitchen and he did not play any of these songs. He needn't there are dozens of brilliant Cakekichen songs to entertain the poor eared college students of planet USA. He had his leather pants, his French drummer, he was fantastically thin and alien. It was beautiful. Now to The Cardhouse two delicately plucked guitars in sympathy with each other, his double tracked vocal, amazing, the ache and poignancy of this track is stark and revealing. Orwell says if you recognize a phrase after you type it then you should delete it. I would need to delete this entire entry then. WHen I really love something I fall into real record reviewer mode. This album means so much to me, I can't convey that effectively. The End of the Affair was on last night and Bendrix discusses his inability to write happiness and goodness and I agree. It is difficult, without seeming fawning, to write about how much love someone or something or anything at all really. I still don't understand the bit in the movie where they reunite and head to Brighton. Does it not reduce the agony of knowing she loves you and yet being unable to possess her. The book handled it much more brilliantly, but then isn't that always the case. Will you read this and decide to renew your subscription to Ajax Mailorder catalog? Does Ajax even still exist? Unknown. Probably not. The Greenkeepers now. The one that I always looked past in the 90s because while it's a delightful number, his voice especially ethereal and lovely, it comes after The Cardhouse and ust before Is the Timing Wrong?. It's a place holder, it's a short repose, it's as marvelous as anything else on this record. I tried to proselytize the Jefferies brothers, in my youth, I was unsuccessful. Do you need a certain sympathy to the spirit in which this music was created to enjoy it? Often I heard back that those I tried to convince were unconvinced by the lack of structure. But that is the magic, the loose threads at the end, the danger of it all unfurling because of its delicacy and intensity. Last track Is the Timing Wrong, the spic, multi-segmented closer, the opening a drifty acoustic lament and then part two an electric dash to somewhere. A drummer. There are not many drummers to be found on this record. Peter played drums. Not on this record. On This Kind of Punishment records. It is still astonishing to me that these records were created in their own echo chamber. They were originally released on Flying Nun in ridiculous issues, we're talking 50 or less. Did Paul McKessar not understand these records? Was Roger Shepherd hostile? Was Roger Shepherd in England? I bet an Alf Danielson record would have been issued in nothing fewer than 1000 but real pop royalty is treated so harshly? There was the darker, seamier side of Flying Nun, the This Kind of Punishments, the Rips, the PLagal Grinds, Axemen that always seemed unloved and undeserving in the eyes of everyone involved. How could someone put this record on the turntable at record company headquarters and now when the track turns from a frenetic dash to a spare acoustic guitar, his tender voice, a wailing viola and not have your heart swell to the size of a beach ball? Are they not human? Would not the most reasoned response to this gorgeous record by 'angeli sunt'? I kid. But this viola, his voice, everything, it's devastating.