Written by: Dave Cantrell

I’m not sure what to thank Patrick Fitzgerald (AKA Stephen Hero) for most, the inspiring example of undiminished creative vitality he’s provided this elder post-punk scribe these last few years – new Kitchens of Distinction album (Folly) in 2013, two collab albums of timeless, heart-crafted pop arriving within five months of each other here in 2016 (Pop Tarkovsky back in June, and, erm, this one) – the fact he’s chosen as co-conspirators for that pair of recent records principals from two of my most cherished bands of the 90’s (The April Sevens album featured Paul Frederick from Family Cat and now it’s Wonky Alice’s Yves Altana), or just generally for being the guiding light behind some of the finest, most elegiac and scintillating pieces of rock music my ears have ever been witness to. Whichever – and almost certainly it’s a three-way tie – I owe the guy at least a pint and perhaps a solid gold commemorative plaque on the door leading into my music library, a fanciful outcome no doubt but one that’s that much closer to manifesting with this addition of A Cathedral of Hands to what in my mind is a towering legacy of song.

That said, if you’re not familiar with the work of Wonky Alice perhaps give a listen to this, which will provide you with pretty much all you need to know as to why our Mr Hero was keen to partner with Mr Altana. Not exactly idle since the Alice’s demise (see the Chrysalids and Invincible, that latter with Mark Burgess), the guy brings a plangent, rather magnificently subdued sense of craft to the table. As the distribution of duties this time around was, more or less, the inverse of that for Tarkovsky – Patrick writes the words and sings them over under and through Yves’ fluid, robust arrangements – the result is a record that, though dolorous in places (check the resplendently intimate “In Water”), never fails to brim with resilience.

Setting off with a fragile-as-glass yearn that soon, via the lush crash of drums and a chorded electric – oh the drama of the downbeat – erupts into a more full-throated version of same called “Green-Veiled Mirror Ghost,” the ambered grace that can’t help but escape Fitzgerald’s pen is instantly evident, a kind of burning sharp melancholy that aptly summons the images necessary for a narrative that lingers with bracing regret and hoped-for redemption (the title referring to “that mistake from long ago” appearing at a woman’s door in LA). On this album as on the last, that eloquence of emotion, while always a constant – it was, of course, a crucial piece of the KoD formula – soon faces textural challenges outside what might well be considered its comfort zone, forced to fit itself to the diversity of shapes Altana throws at it.

“Infernal,” its tensile strings cut by a bass’s sudden heart-pounding flush of panic like a thriller going straight to the chase, finds the singer in more a reportorial mode though the scene described is Dantean enough to produce a hovering tremble of fear and there is no more emotional emotion than that, now is there? It’s also, as it happens, as alluring a piece of nightmare pop as your likely to encounter. Further on, after “Quartz”‘s delicate density and the poignant “In Water” – elemental, complex – “Blackouts” comes on with a tumbling post-punk propulsion, clanging and driving with a limb-loosening dexterity while the lyrics exhibit a deft extravagance of imagery like popsike gone to the darkside. That this is followed by the regal, forlorned and sparsely lovely “The Last Time I Saw Roger,” suffused with a troubled elegance that wanders clear-eyed and rueful through a litter-strewn past (referencing Lord of the Flies along its way), should be all the evidence needed to demonstrate the agility of purpose this record and the pair that made it display with a fairly fearless aplomb. However, should more be needed, there’s always the oddly affecting “Porcelain (The Last Queen of Vietnam)” that handles the necessary exoticism its title implies with a nimble and natural touch, its mysteriousness casual enough to make it all that more intriguing; or “Shadowlight” with its bustling undercurrent that includes a rhythm section that just might’ve been listening to some Mingus just before the session started; or the languorous dreamscape “Floating” that ends things under conflicted blankets even as it’s bathed in lustrous atmospherics and attended by rapturously brittle instrumentation that, to whatever extent this is possible, aches with hope (the treated guitar in the coda, somewhere between Durutti and Jeff Beck, may well bring you to tears).

At the risk of falling victim to the hoary clichés that too often greet the work of artists of a certain age, it’s nonetheless true that a matured wisdom is evident here in both the assurance with which the varieties of tone are nuanced throughout A Cathedral of Hands and, more plainly, the sheer steadiness of perspective that holds rein across these ten tracks. Approaching senescence may have its drawbacks but, as these two make apparent, the view from up here can sometimes offer a breathtaking clarity.