Pitchfork

How do you feel about clarinets? I like them okay. I don't like it when they squeak, and I'm not the world's #1 Dixieland fan, but sometimes clarinets sound cool. Of course, they don't get much play in rock circles, mostly because you can't hear them over the guitars. Sometimes they pop up in chamber-pop or twee Beatles songs. Clarinets, like their woodwind cousins flute and bassoon, thrive in delicate environments, and in the right hands, lend a tenderness that's out of range of other instruments. I think they get a bad rap because, well, they're not exactly the toughest of instruments, and the little boys who would grow into rock stars aren't lining up to play them in the high school band.

Slapp Happy liked clarinets-- and pianos, too, and cabaret. The English and German trio formed in 1972 in response to minimalist composer Anthony Moore's desire to start a pop band. He'd already issued a couple of experimental albums by then, and met singer Dagmar Krause while in Hamburg, Germany. Krause, who'd begun singing in nightclubs at 14, had a strong background in traditional German music, cabaret and the art-song of composers like Kurt Weill. Her voice, an instantly recognizable alto that often polarizes listeners, didn't seem obviously suited to pop music, but her range of expression (from silly coo with wide vibrato to witchy shriek) was perfect for Moore's eclectic pieces. The third member was Peter Blegvad, erstwhile associate of Germany's Faust and future creator of the cult British comic Leviathan. Blegvad didn't come from a classical background as Moore had, but was rather a skewed pop songwriter who would later find apt partners in Anton Fier and XTC's Andy Partridge.

Desperate Straights, a collaboration with British avant-prog band Henry Cow, was Slapp Happy's third official LP. The band's first record, Sort Of, had been completed with assistance from Faust, while their second, self-titled album (later released as Casablanca Moon), was originally recorded for Polydor but then scrapped and re-recorded when the band signed to Virgin. Those first two Slapp Happy records were soft pop for eccentrics, informed by British Invasion rock, Dylan, and hints of European cafe music. Desperate Straights was a slightly different story. Though "pop" in a basic sense, its songs were more closely related to Weill and classical art-song than contemporary pop. But don't get the wrong idea: Although Henry Cow members Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, John Greaves, and Tim Hodgkinson contribute greatly to the baroque sound of the record, Moore and Blegvad's songwriting steal the show.

"Some Questions About Hats" begins things with a jazz piano chord and Krause's query, "Can one wear uncanny hats?" She poses similarly pressing questions throughout: "Can one weather hats?" "Can one dismiss hats as simple things? Vapid things? Scat, evanescent things?" Moore and Blegvad's music favors the delicate-- soft piano, violin, french horn, Cutler's brushed cymbals, and doubling Krause's vocal with clarinet in a way similar to Weill's arrangements for his Threepenny Opera. Greaves' music for "Bad Alchemy" is delicate, too, though with sharply angled melodic lines and snare-heavy percussive accents from Cutler that lend the piece a martial quality. Krause describes visions of being a hermaphrodite, views her "self unmixed" and wonders if she is "neither one nor quite the other."

Moore provides the instrumental title track, a jazz waltz with blue-nostalgic piano chords and an understated shuffling accompaniment from Cutler. The music sounds as if it's coming from a deserted club at dawn, after the wait staff has left and the bartenders are waiting for the band to get bored and go home. Slapp Happy would have been an interesting bar band; they'd have been kicked out of the rock and blues dives, perhaps been forced to set up a small stage in front of a coffee shop, playing existential cabaret for tips. "Apes in Capes" is another waltz, subbing out the jazz touches for pointed chamber-rock, and Moore's playful, nonsensical wordplay: "Harken child by life beguiled, it's said that some come unsung, Sorry, no song for some, sing-song's ham-strung."

In fact, Slapp Happy excelled at being playful. Blegvad's stop-and-go surf rock tune "Strayed" laments losing touch with reality ("Gone into hiding, can't abide the latest tidings from the tribe"), and features his vocals, sounding like a very happily stoned Lou Reed. The band turns what should be a depressing trainwreck into something charming, greatly assisted by Frith's faux-Hawaiian guitar asides. Likewise, their take on Handel's Messiah comes out like an art-school garage band, a far cry from the bloated classical redux of their proggy contemporaries. In fact, the only time Desperate Straights approaches "bloated" at all is on its instrumental closer, "Caucasian Lullaby", a lengthy, dissonant piece that recalls both Brian Eno's early ambient records and Henry Cow's live improvisations.

Slapp Happy disbanded after this album, with Krause, Cutler and Frith eventually forming the considerably more experimental Art Bears. However, Krause, Blegvad, and Moore reformed the band in the late 90s, updating their sound with drum loops and digitally enhanced production, but unfortunately toning down most of the idiosyncrasies that made records like Desperate Straights so cool. Still, their work in the 70s stands as some of the most unique and interesting "pop" of the era, and anyone into pushing the chamber-pop envelope should search for this album in particular.