Evil Graham Lee, longstanding member of The Triffids and key contributor to The KLF’s iconic Chill Out LP, finally ventures out on his own at the age of 72 with a debut long-player of pedal-steel led cosmic ambience for Isle of Jura. Into his seventh decade, Lee has clearly had the time to think about his approach, and nails the overall aesthetic with the title of second track, ‘Seeking Beauty in Sadness’, a minimally rendered, plaintive instrumental that suggests a wizened perspective on the Inevitable Inevitable… Still, if it’s that track that offers the emotional language for the album, it’s the 15 minute title track that opens side B that provides its true centerpiece moment, a kind of Berlin School alloyed Americana reckoning with mortality that lingers just above the clouds, between this world and the next. I’ve no idea how Graham Lee earned his sobriquet (I’m sure that’s an exciting story…), but there’s little present here in the way of evil, just a very human reflection on the fading light thoughts of a man journeying into his Autumn years. In its way, true after-hours music for when the options are gone… Note, also, the typically adept liner notes from one Bill Drummond.
FFO: Old Saw, Pan American, Bobby Lee, BJ Cole
