Tim Bowness - an introduction to something V.G.

A week ago Tim Bowness played his debut solo gig to introduce/present his debut solo album, ‘My Hotel Year’. It was an incredible performance where the voice was the star, based on songs aspiring to an eternal conversation rather than being like a digital photography: instant, fun and never printed. Yeah, the wiseman mumbles, memory imprints are getting very short in supply…

Alerting all fans of a couple of Davids, Bowie and Sylvian, This Mortal Coil and the quintessential 4AD sound, [Peter] Hammill, [Scott Walker, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Brian Eno, a pair of Marks - Hollis (Talk Talk Talk) and Eitzel (American Music Club), Portishead, Red House Painters and existential introspection set to a delicatessen of 21st century beats - upbeat, downbeat but mainly - heartbeats.

This is where we encounter Tim Bowness, a man with full respect for the above names’ legacy, whose singing and songwriting is a reflection of growing up with, and alongside, those landmark artists and records; a roll-call that should also contain names of Billy McKenzie [The Associates), Jacques Brel, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave… ‘My Hotel Year’ presents a viable argument for Tim Bowness to be added to this valiant list.

Few days before his London show we find Bowness struggling with a list of 200 songs he has to cull down to three tracks for a radio show he would be doing later in the day. “Out of a lifetime’s listening experience,” he sighs.

It has taken Tim Bowness a long time to get a name above the title?

“The main reason being that I’ve devoted so much time to other projects,” he speaks in an educated, calm and chary manner; no regional, i.e. Manchester, dialect here, it has been refreshingly cultivated. “I’ve been making music with No-Man for sixteen, seventeen years and worked on so many other projects… But, over the past couple of years it occurred to me that I wanted to be in the complete artistic control.”

“Everything so far has been collaborative and the time has come for me to imprint myself exactly for the reason I was doing it. When you announce to people it is your project they ask you what you want them to do; the album is actual fulfilment of my dictatorial urges.”

A sense of humour flickers through the otherwise serious conversation…

The name of this man is Tim Bowness

Creative longevity took shape under multiple guises, though most prominently as No-Man, his partnership with multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson [the man behind Porcupine Tree, as well], providing a fertile ground for a song cycle that displays amorous paranoia on ‘Once I Loved You’, haunting minimalism on ‘World Afraid’, the introspective hypnotism on ‘The Me I Knew’, the 76-second atmo-epic that is the title track or the jazzy shuffle that is ‘Making A Mess In A Clean Place’…

“This is a much more solid, emotional, song based album,” Bowness substantially answers at the time when confirmation or denial is the conversational trend. “This album also marks my decision - never do anything I didn’t want to, again. The album title refers to a living in a temporary space [a friend’s place in Manchester for a year, actually], totally re-assessing my emotional set-up and creativity, purging to the turning point. Finally, taking full control of my artistry.”

It reminds us of a York-lass, Nicole Lacy, who was deemed “too talented” to be signed up here but not in the USA!?

“There is always an alternative…” Bowness pauses for a moment. “As much as popular culture is increasingly temporary, churning out increasingly shallow music, there is always an alternative, underground way of offering.”

“When I started out in the 1980s, Britain had only two music programmes, perhaps three if you include Top of the Pops, a chart programme: ‘The Tube’ and ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ had much greater sense of eclecticism, far greater sense of originality than ten 24-hour music channels now. It is fascinating to me that now, when we have much more access to music, we have less choice of artists. It’s astonishing to me that some stunning artists like my label mate Bjork… She is extremely inspirational but it is very difficult to place her work.”

“I’ve always been idealistic,” comes an easy-to-spot confession, “and my cliché saying is ‘You don’t know what you like until you hear it’.”

Spectral infection

The scope of ‘My Hotel Year’ is combination of highly personal narrative song-writing with inventively eclectic arrangements and a stripped-down production approach. Alas, the times have changed beyond redemption and impact of Tim Bowness’s brilliant album can hardly compete with the Frankenstein’d popworld. Not like Billy McKenzie of The Associates, we are reminded of quite a few times during the repeated spins of this beauty.

“Oh yeah,” comes an instant reply, “very much so; in particular when I started singing, he was my main inspiration. The Associates and Japan - their ‘Ghosts’ was the one thing that really started me off - were making chart music that was extraordinarily visionary. Then, Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads… They seem to seemingly come from no-place but every place and offer several possible futures.”

Again and again the conversation returns to literature and obscure [tube-level] writers are mentioned as well as the mythical Kurt Vonnegut. Followed by a discussion on isolation - caused my inability to communicate whether linguistically, emotionally, creatively - and truism of fairytales, such as the theological texts.

Several hours later an Email arrives from Tim Bowness expressing hope he had performed well and a list of songs he chose [still four, instead of the required three]: Tim Hardin - ‘Misty Roses’, Donovan - ‘Lord Of The Reedy River’, Leonard Cohen - ‘Suzanne’ and Scott Walker - ‘Two Weeks Since You Left’.

‘My Hotel Room’, one of the albums of the year containing pop music that, to re-quote, “come from no-place but every place and offer several possible futures.”