Balloon (band)

Balloon were an early 1990's duo consisting of Ian Bickerton and David Sheppard. Their first and only album, Gravity, was released in 1992. Produced by Michael Brook the record featured contributions from Sarah McLachlan and James Pinker.

British writer, novelist and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell assesses Balloon.... No Morrisseyisms, no flashy references to 'Sweet Jane', just delayed-action classics....

Balloon by Michael Bracewell

There are some records which seem to pause during their first minute, before catching your attention fully and revealing themselves to be more memorable, more rare than you imagined and, ultimately, in a league of their own.

'Sunday Morning' by the Velvet Underground, is one example of such a delayed-action classic (from sweet to earth-shattering in four and-a-half minutes), 'Reel Around the Fountain' by The Smiths, is another-an epic love song of eggshell lightness that grows with each line before hitting you around the head with 'People see no worth in you, but I do...'

And then there's 'The Saw Song' by Balloon. Its mesmeric layers are about to pass you by when you suddenly realise that you're inside them, listening to something truly beautiful. And so you have to listen to it again and again, to try to work out just what it is about the song that makes it so magically compelling

Is it the saw being played in the background, creating sweet loops of sound that are at once tender and neurotic? Or is it the lyrical hook "New Year's Eve parties...", a statement about memory and the audit of one's life that creeps up in the middle of the night? The song takes you up in breathless spirals, and you remember it afterwards like a lost love.

Of course, you might be thinking, I've heard all this before. After all, comparisons to The Smiths and The Velvet Underground are thrown around like cheap confetti in the music press. But what make Balloon really deserving of such superlatives is that they have absolutely no interest in sounding like anyone other than themselves.

Their music contains no Morrisseyisms and no flashy references to 'Sweet Jane', there are no fashionable reference points, in either the tunes or the words, to ease a passage into the heavily populated area of soundalikes. Their music is so new that it sounds timeless already: they are English punk rockers, who can flex their acoustic muscles to greater effect than a pumped sonic barrage; even their quietness underlines their intensity.

But it's more likely that you've never heard of Balloon, and that if you've read this far you're thinking, Oh no, it's another Cowboy Junkies from South London kind of thing. And so I must insist that you read on, because Balloon are worth it.

The group was formed in 1990 by Ian Bickerton and David Sheppard. In 1992 they brought out an LP called Gravity which neither ascended nor descended but floated away, lost in a confusion of heavily polarised opinion. On the one hand, Balloon had Single Of the Week in Melody Maker, with 'Tightrope Walker'. "God I love this group" concluded the reviewer, with admirable honesty. And there was a piece in Hot Press, straplined with the encouraging "Are Balloon air apparents to the British Pop Throne?" –which suggested a phenomenon in the making, despite the unforgivable pun. But then (in a way which is somehow very Balloon in itself) there was a lot of silence and a few hedged bets. The group were accused by Time Out of being too serious (a grave sin in England) and of similar crimes against jocularity by NME. It was all very strange. And Balloon smacked of being out of step with pop fashions. Which is often the start of great pop groups. "I just wanted to write singles", Ian says. "I didn't have any idea of an album as a collection of songs, and I really wasn't interested. With regards to the business of putting out records, I've always been more in tune with Motown or Dexy's Midnight Runners, who were probably the inspiration for starting Balloon. Not that we're going to turn up with a five-piece brass section wearing monk's habits. In fact, I've never really fitted in comfortably into the idea of a 'band' anyway; I'm just not interested in that big fanfare of, here it comes, rock 'n' roll. It was alright for Elvis, but he was Elvis."

Eventually, David Sheppard and Ian Bickerton went their separate ways, and now Ian recruits musicians according to the requirements of each song. In doing this he is wholly true to his roots in suburban punk, working with certain restrictions and often recording in just one take. The reason that this garage ethos works so well for Balloon is that Ian knows exactly what he's after when he sits down to record. And having mastered the craft of the song he can then perform in such a way as to capture its intensity and mood.

"Balloon are a curious group because the simplicity of the recording process is set against – and I don't mean to brag – the sophistication of the song writing. It's been a broken career, very stop-start, but that's just the way I've had to work."

Tracks, such as the breathtaking 'Straight to the One' see Balloon moving into a whole new class. With less languor and more pop intensity, their great pop tunes live in sin with precision songwriting. Singles are not meant to be seminars, and Balloon have not published their reading list.

Gravity

(DEDICATED DEDCD005)

Balloon's first LP, in retrospect, can be seen as a rehearsal for their later maturity. As ..too accomplished and professional to capture the febrile atmosphere of the band. What we got was a record that sounded at odds with itself. The true originality and verve of the music became lost in a pleasant mixture of soul-searching and plangent songs. However, on tracks such as 'Paraffin Flat' and 'Now That The Little Thrill's Gone', Ian's voice squeezes out the lyrics in a way that hinted at burgeoning greatness.

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth168

External links

• Stores carrying Gravity