Music in a Doll by Doll's house

Sometimes an album gets released that seems to exist independently of its context in musical time and space...

...and so it is with Doll by Doll's second release "Gypsy Blood". Released in 1979, it defies categorisation and could have been released at any time since then and still sound fresh and contemporary.

By then, punk had given way to more melodic and synth-driven sounds, and Abba, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, the Floyd and Meat Loaf were selling in bucketloads. It was no surprise, therefore, that Doll by Doll, who'd formed a couple of years previously and hadn't even bothered to clamber on the punk bandwagon, preferring instead to colour their music with psychedelia, were being largely ignored by the music press. This didn't augur well for their renewed assault on the contemporary music scene, as a revamped line up prepared their second album.

Doll's frontman - Jackie Leven - started off as a folk singer in the late 1960s and went on to release a folk rock album called "Control" in 1971, under the alias of John St Field. There was no indication of what he would go on to do with Doll by Doll. However, possessed with a remarkable voice that could turn from mellow baritone to sweet falsetto in the blink of an eye, a keen ear for melody and harmony, and a poetic lyricism, Leven just needed the right framework for his innate eclecticism, which he eventually found with Doll.

"Gypsy Blood" was recorded with Leven and Jo Shaw on vocals and guitar, Robin Spreafico on vocals and bass and Tony Waite on vocals and drums. Augmented by occasional pedal steel guitar from session ace B. J. Cole, fiddle and a choir, the resulting album reveals a dazzling array of influences and allusions, all held together sonically by the glue of Leven's voice and songs and a band who were more than up to the sophistication required by his compositions.

At times, there's an almost clairvoyant nature to the music - "Binary Fiction" could almost be Belew-era King Crimson. Elsewhere, there are backwards guitars, full-blown heavily panned freak outs, phased vocals, a jazzy shuffle that sounds almost Steely Dan'ish, some jangly pop, an occasional nod to the Doors, a smattering of Celtic folk, and a Scott Walker type ballad. 

As for the title track - it could be the best song Van Morrison or Dexy's Midnight Runners never recorded, although it goes places they wouldn't ever dream of going... 

The nondescript cover shot of Leven has an interesting story behind it:

Taken at the end of a photo session around London’s then-decrepit docklands, he [Leven] had caught his foot in a length of old chain and gone over the side, facing a 15 foot drop to hard clay until he managed to grab on to something, hanging perilously for endless minutes before managing to clamber back up. The picture was taken at that moment when he stood, shaken and shattered but safe; perfect for the album.

Unfortunately, Doll by Doll acquired a reputation for being "difficult" to deal with and their intimidatory attitude towards other bands got them sacked from two support slots - first by Devo and then by Hawkwind. 

In the end, it was Doll by Doll against the world - or as Leven put it:

We cast ourselves in a set of images which genuinely closed doors for us, like shut the whole castle up, with us standing around outside pissing against the parapets going ‘Come on, ye bastards!’”

Needless to say, the album didn't bring about any sort of breakthrough and, by 1983, the band ceased to exist. The year after, Leven was the victim of an attack in the street which left him unable to speak or sing for a couple of years. This exacerbated his manic depression and he turned to heroin, which he managed to kick a few years later. After this rocky start to his post-Doll solo career, he went on to record prolifically and cultivate a loyal fanbase who supported him at his now legendary acoustic gigs. All his post-Doll albums are worth hearing. He died in 2011 of cancer.

You get used to hyperbole in the world of rock criticism, but the quote below seems more than reasonable to me: 

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormack acclaimed it ["Gypsy Blood"] as “the lost masterpiece of British rock, by the greatest band you’ve never heard of…this lush classic of near-psychotic beauty has everything you could ever want from a rock album…With the grandeur of Dark Side of the Moon, the strangeness of Forever Changes and the bleak beauty of The Bends, it really is as good as any album ever made.”

A masterpiece? A lush classic? As good as any album ever made? You decide...