Richard Butterworth

Memory is a funny thing. New experience builds up like archaeological layers
and one day you find that the past is way below your feet, out of sight and out of mind. But its still there, waiting to be unearthed. But sometimes music acts like a shovel, digs away the layers, exposes the past and you find yourself back in a time forgotten.

As such, about three bars into Scarlet, All About Eve's opening number, I found myself in my tatty student bedsit. There were obligatory Sisters of Mercy posters covering the cracks in the wall. There was a huge fungus growing in the cupboard under the television which didn't seem happy with its vegetable lot, and wanted to live a more animate, if not downright literate lifestyle. The best the water heater could manage was to turn clear cold water into tepid brown water and my cat was eating more expensive food than I was. There was however the voice of an angel blasting out of the stereo and that was all that seemed to matter. There in the Borderline on Thursday was that same voice of an angel, not quite so blasting, but still angelic and still belonging to Julianne Regan. By the happy, distant, glassy eyed smiles of the grown-up-goths and had-been-hippies that surrounded me I rather suspected that most of the audience were in as different an era as I was.

It was a bit of a gig of contradictions. Neither the audience or the band seemed quite sure whether this was a rock gig where the proscenium line divided them from us, or whether this was a meeting of old mates with a few instruments and singalongs thrown in. `This isn't a meeting in our front room, y'know.' said Julianne when the audience banter got in the way of the tuning up. Two hours later though guitarist Marty Wilson-Piper was leaping off stage to distribute hugs among some strangely reticent male members of the audience. The band were nominally seated a la folk band, but it didn't
take much prompting before Andy Cousin's bass had slipped to his knees and some serious Goth posturing was going on. In the meantime Marty had decided that a chair couldn't contain his solos and needed to launch himself out of it occasionally. Behind these bursts of activity Julianne self consciously fiddled with the pages on her music stand but then bounced happily about when the songs got going.

In-between songs Julianne was at times made nervous by the collection of interested, bemused or devoted faces that stared at her from an audience at very close quarters. She often disappeared to the back of the stage and hid behind her fringe. Only when the laddish banter from Marty and Andy got funny enough did she join in and relax. Once singing though she was in her element, putting great bursts of happy energy into the singing, seeming to grab the words from the air around her. Her voice seemed totally unaltered by time. The music itself was little altered too, apart from the missing
drums. They played many of the old rockier standards simply as they would have done with electric guitars and drums, only on acoustic instruments. Many of the audience helpfully joined in by singing the drum beats `Dum dum dum d-d-d-d-DUM' in the appropriate places.

Most of the set ranged through the first three albums, with only Freeze making an appearance from the last studio album Ultraviolet. There were a couple of new songs, and a smattering of Marty and Julianne solo offerings. All in all it jelled, which was a bit odd. Ultraviolet and Julianne's solo album seemed to be self consciously as far away from the Alice in Wonderlandery of the earlier All About Eve albums as possible. They don't seem to be having to say `this is the new us, we're different' any more and they are all the more coherent. Neither do they care much about being labeled as altpophippygothfolk or however the music press finished up labeling them. `Julianne.' announced Andy `I can't put me beer on me amp 'cos of the bloody lilies you've put there.'

You wonder about the future though; if All About Eve are going to settle down to be a mostly acoustic band, then they could do with rearranging some of the rockier songs to better suit being played acoustically. But if the current set of unplugged gigs are an attempt to get enough money and interest together to return to regular electric gigs then its not such an issue. The acoustic sets present interesting challenges and occasionally they rose to it, doing a really refreshing and new take on Every Angel which Marty layered with a few effects on the acoustic guitar. I think things would improve if a few more songs underwent that sort of treatment, and why not dust off the old drum machine? That said, no-one in the Borderline that night gave a toss about such things, we were all just happy to throw our heads back and wail `Shelter from the raaaaain' again, or compete with one another to request the most obscure b-side.

All About Eve are set to join that twilight world of Internet fame, where the music industry wouldn't be seen dead at their gigs, but the Internet supplies them with a loyal and devoted following, unbothered by the fact that Sounds don't rate them and Melody Maker don't mention them. Whether
they use this freedom to do something really new and creative without the shackles of the industry, or become a cheery self-parodying nostalgia fest seems entirely up to them. Good for them either way I say. Still whatever they do the fans will apply their pressure; `I'm from France and I have come two thousand kilometers to see you' yelled someone near the front and the band looked a bit shocked and embarrassed as if to say `What? We're only arsing about and doing this for a laugh. Please don't take this seriously.' Oh well. If you're going to stand up in public and be as wonderful as All About Eve you have to expect it I suppose.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when they go electric at The Garage. I'll be there. Well, my body will be, my mind will probably spend the evening hacking away at the long forgotten fungus under the long discarded telly. While listening to the voice of an angel of course.