When I belatedly heard about this collaboration just a few months ago, I was beside myself in giddy anticipation. Post-punk/dub bassist Jah Wobble, of Public Image Ltd. fame, and Julie Campbell, whose debut as LoneLady was, for me, one of last year’s musical highlights? Yes, please…and I’ll probably want a second helping, if that’s a possibility. Happily, their pairing on Psychic Life delivers, ultimately warranting all the fuss that they’ve been at the centre of for a while now.
Julie Campbell’s album Nerve Up as LoneLady is post-punk influenced in the best ways possible: it is sparse, echoing, rhythmic, and often desolate guitar rock. Campbell’s expressive voice perfectly complements these elements of her sound in its ability to either accentuate the music’s sharp corners or glossily slide over them in disconcerting ways. The guitar sound achieved on Nerve Up also reminds me of Keith Levene’s famous metallic sound heard on PiL’s legendary Metal Box album. Taken as a whole, Nerve Up is an icy, crystal soundscape that manages to rock as well; not at all unlike, in fact, PiL’s best work. Actually, another one of the things that crossed my mind upon listening to her LP was how it could quite possibly benefit from some fleshing out in the bass department. Or perhaps rather, I noticed how the style she’s already working in is a style that has often been a vehicle for interesting, driving bass parts. Enter Jah Wobble and Keith Levene (yup, he appears on Psychic Life too). How appropriate.
According to Wobble, he and Campbell met because of mutual misunderstandings about what the other musician was looking for in a collaborator. After their initial meeting, however, it was clear to Wobble that he had found the “idiosyncratic and quirky” frontperson he didn’t quite realize he was looking for in Campbell, who also (obviously) happened to be a big PiL fan. This meeting prompted Wobble to take another stab at making a post-punk album – in his words, “a grand ambition [of his] for about 20 years.” Wobble and Campbell’s meeting took place in February, and already the two have released an EP and now this full-length.
Psychic Life kicks off with a kind of post-punk/funk/disco hybrid called “Tightrope” that includes the first line “It’s true: I’m not adapting to the machine.” It’s also the first track of three that feature Keith Levene (also known for his work with PiL) on guitar. You can dance to it, definitely, but know that these are the words Campbell is singing while you do that: “the cries and whispers piercing through like an arrow/light and shade/boundaries/edges all remove from me.” These themes of alienation, isolation, and uncertainty continue through the album but are never more upbeat and danceable than here on “Tightrope.” Next up is the title track, and this song in particular sounds like it would fit nicely on Nerve Up. Its beats and Wobble’s bassline work in effective contrast with the reverb on Campbell’s voice and the moody washes of synth that help bring the shadowy lyrics into sharper focus. She sings “I can’t accept the functioning world/These were our spaces ringing with play/Shadow grows like ivy/At night I can hear psychic life” and you can feel the extreme melancholy brought on by time and derelict isolation, whether it occurs in the parks you grew up playing in or the recesses of your mind’s long-neglected urges.
“Phantasms Rise…” is moodier still and contains the signature Levene guitar work that Metal Box has become synonymous with. If it weren’t for Campbell’s vocals, shifting like inky smudges over his abrasive shards of sound, you might demand to know when John Lydon, his crazy eyes, and his atonal rhythmic speaking are going to emerge. I mean, I love Lydon, but this musical dissonance and atmosphere is a perfect fit for Campbell and she for it, helping to move the track beyond simple jarring dissonance to something more beautifully atmospheric instead.
“Rainlust” is a much warmer, full-on funk jam that’s made a bit unusual because it’s one of two songs here on which Campbell primarily speaks, rather than sings, on. As ever, though, the lyrical theme is upheld in words like “Far and remote are the names of the dead/I remake the image broken in sparks/Treason is real, I disconnect/I’m becoming stiller as though carved in stone.” Here, she seems to be trapped; whether this is involuntary or self-inflicted we can’t tell. As well, the question of whether her stillness is physical or psychical goes unanswered. While the music grooves on in warm bass tones with no sign of that icy guitar sound so prevalent elsewhere on this album, here the chill is in Campbell’s spoken delivery and in the lyrical content. “Slavetown Pts. 1 and 2” are musical departures for this already diverse album: here we get a taste of jazz. Strange as these songs might be, I think they belong here, adding another kind of bass playing to Psychic Life’s layers of styles. Okay, the horns might be a bit much, but Campbell is admirably up for the task of singing on this song, switching styles nimbly and successfully.
Psychic Life ends with “Isaura” and a return to the cooler tones heard on “Phantasms Rise…” On “Isaura”, though, electronic-produced sounds are at the forefront of the song instead of Levene’s otherworldly guitar tone. The words, too, reflect the influence of electronics: “I did not run on, but ran inwards through dead-ends and circuitries.” Here she navigates a maze of dead-ends and openings, caught in a never-ending nightmare. It’s a fitting album end: you can picture her staring into an abyss of code. This is an apt metaphor for the expanse of emotions and functions that is the mind: these functions can turn on us, and although ostensibly there’s a way out, the control that the psyche has over life can be debilitating when there’s a short circuit.
[...] Read my review of Psychic Life here. [...]