Tim Arnold 2023
Super Connected
English master of sophisticated turn of phrase – verbal and melodic – looks at what’s going on around us, with Stephen Fry joining his journey.
“Cliché cliché! A brick wall,” sings Tim Arnold on the stunning “Start With The Sound” at the onset of “Super Connected” to seemingly signal the close of his first decade as a solo artist, assess the state of affairs, reject banalities as a route to cul-de-sac, and locate a strum-splattered stereo paranoia within himself. Diagnosed with autism at the end of a five-year work on this record, the former frontman of JOCASTA might have accepted such a spectrum as a trigger for many a creative mind, but it’s not the raison d’être for the platter’s slight idiosyncrasy which is bound to refute the popular belief that the ’80s, this album’s stylistic springboard, were barren years in terms of sonic experiments within pop idiom. Surely, the British musician’s opinion of the matter should be different – Arnold’s concept opus serving as a commentary on the current craze of social media, technological advances and their influence on humanity – yet Tim’s diatribes come expressed via arresting tunes whose bitterness and sweetness are impeccably balanced.
Still, despite the initial tumult, delving into this platter could be difficult – phrases like “Trauma, trauma! Lost the signal” will leave bruises on the listener’s psyche – if not for Arnold’s tender-to-angry voices, quite a few of them, that soften the blow which Jonathan Noyce’s vintage synthesizers, elevated by Jonathan Hill’s chamber strings, inflict on unsuspecting ears, bringing the age of plastic to life to turn the current existence into an exciting prospect. So there’s no wonder once an a cappella harmonies beginning the title track get stricken with soulful horns and open a jubilant panorama for all to revel in an acoustically tinctured refrain, before the deadpan, though funky, “You Like My Pictures” hints at the gorgeousness to emerge a little further on, on the delicate piano-led ballads-cum-hymns “The Touch Of A Screen” and “Start A Conversation” where Tim’s tremulous vocals caress one’s nerves and soar towards heaven…
…or, rather, towards “A Commercial Break” which features Stephen Fry firing up, via funereal spoken word, an epitaph to music that used to affect people’s esse and simply stopped, as “our aural imagination may have become infertile” – but the streamlined, tense “Everything Entertains” finds Arnold refusing to cancel out his dreams and abandon hope. However, the orchestral grandeur of “Send More Light” sees the singer embrace darkness only to want it ebb away until the familiar Jeeves’ tones give way to the “Je t’aime… moi non plus” moaning and heavy riffs of “The Complete Solution” – this record’s screaming jet, with Tim serving up scorching guitar passages and incendiary rap. And while “Where Am I In All Of This?” wraps the splendid slab of Britpop in a simmering self-doubt, the artist’s own ivories and Noyce’s bass transform the sorrow of “Finally Everybody’s Talking” from an intimate monologue to a seductively grooving trip – the journey winding up in the Eurodisco of “Make Me All Right”: the platter’s triumphant, anthemic finale – and an invitation to join in this piece chorus.
“Don’t you wanna sing ‘la la la la’ along with me?” asks Tim Arnold earlier. So let’s admit that it’s not the matter of desire; it’s the matter of irresistibility his songs exude and of impossibility not to weave our pipes into his melodies.
*****
