Black: 'Comedy'
Where Mann and 'Til Tuesday offer faint notes of hope for life after love, the music of Britain's Black recognizes one of the few real pleasures a romantic wreck affords -- an opportunity to wallow in self-pity.
Black is basically a one-man outfit, in the person of Colin Vearncombe, who writes/sings/plays the songs and, of course, wears black clothing on his album jackets and videos. The sort of British pop success story that's becoming more and more common, Vearncombe constructed his synth-and-voice demo tapes in his bedsit apartment; they led to the 1987 A&M LP "Black," memorable for its two haunting European hit singles, "Wonderful Life" and "Sweetest Smile," whose sweetly melancholy melodies hid bitter sentiments. Both ironically titled tunes resurface on Black's follow-up, aptly titled "Comedy" (A&M).
Get it?
"Wonderful Life," about a man alone while the sun shines and everyone else seems happy, has been rerecorded with more sax and moody reverb, and where the original was somewhat mechanical, this one swings soft and sultry. Remixed to '89 sonic standards, "Sweetest Smile" still contains some deliciously bitter postromantic lines, such as "And don't tell me how to make it pay/ I write a new song every day/ I just wish I was made of wood/ I might not feel pain/ Even if I should."
These recycled tracks are the standouts on the new album, too, and if you like them, you'll like the other eight, which feature Black immersed in misery-turned-melody, sinking into lush, homogenous electronic orchestrations. Most of the songs are written in hindsight, as walking-wounded Black muses on a defunct romance he once believed was "The Big One," or tries to take some (admittedly childish) comfort in the idea that "Hey, I Was Right You Were Wrong!"
Ultimately, it's not so much what Black has to say as the way he makes it sound. With a sepulchral sigh in his ripe baritone, he's making a career of playing the suffering bastard, a tonal tactic that's been proven plenty lucrative by such sob-misters as Morrissey and the late Roy Orbison.