The Facts of Life: Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll

Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and sometime singer Luke Haines has made a career out of writing albums that explore a single theme. His rock band, the Auteurs, offered up guitar-driven tales of murder on 1996's After Murder Park while the angular beats of Baader Meinhof's 1997 self-titled album followed the bizarre arch of terrorism. By 1998, Haines had abandoned these two bands and joined up with writer, instrumentalist, and British absinthe dealer John Moore to form Black Box Recorder. The two men took to writing lyrics from the female perspective and found their voice in Sarah Nixey, whose deceptively angelic delivery of cruel lyrics and double entendres is alarming in its calmness.

After taking suburban disenchantment to task on their debut album, 1998's England Made Me, Black Box Recorder turned its atmospheric, laid-back, late night New-York-City-lounge-meets-London-disco sound to the topic of sex. The product, The Facts of Life, merges the themes of driving and sex so seamlessly that it becomes a wonder that anyone could have thought of the two concepts as separate.

The album's opening track "The Art of Driving," begins with a spoken exchange between a male and female character. As Sarah Nixey says, "You've got the hang of steering / now try stepping on the breaks" over computerized drum beats and ambient sound effects, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that no lyric can be taken solely at face value on this album.

"French Rock 'n' Roll" sounds like a lost Pulp track with echoing guitar strums and decidedly laid-back drum beats giving way to glockenspiel and harpsichord moments over guitar feedback. While "The Facts of Life" sounds like a top-40 bubble gum girl group track from a parallel universe, Nixey's voice switches between a speak-sing during the verses into a molasses chorus which includes an astoundingly sexually charged delivery of the seemingly innocent lyric: "walk me home from school / I'll let you hold my hand."

As with some of Luke Haines' other albums, The Facts of Life only comes up short when the premeditated vocal and instrumental craft come across as unemotional and calculated. On "May Queen," the sparse, repetitious arrangement and blunt delivery of disturbing lyrics like, "write my name in blood upon your shirt," would sound unnerving if Nixey and the lazy instrumental work did not sound so bored. Nevertheless, these missteps are few and far between. Overall, Black Box Recorder has crafted another set of provoking and engaging vignettes that should be listened to on a Saturday night in a swanky bar with red velvet couches and royal blue light fixtures.

Black Box Recorder, The Facts of Life, 2001, Jetset