Track-by-Track: Vamberator Go Deep on Their Album ‘Age of Loneliness’

The relationship between Jemaur Tayle and Boris Williams is a special one, and it’s one of the defining characteristics of Vamberator’s album Age of Loneliness. This is the latest collaboration between Shelleyan Orphan co-creator Jemaur Tayle and former drummer of The Cure Boris Williams. Although it is their debut album, Tayle and Williams have been longtime mates, going back to the late 1980s. Back around then, Tayle and the late Caroline Crawley were recording the second Shelleyan Orphan record, Century Flower. Around the same time, Williams was recording with The Cure for their legendary album Disintegration. The Cure, particularly frontman Robert Smith, became fans of Shelleyan Orphan, and Smith invited them to join The Cure on the road. The two bands became fast friends, and several of the members went on to collaborate on each other’s work.

Sadly, Shelleyan Orphan singer Caroline Crawley passed in 2016 after a long illness. Now, several years later, Tayle and Williams have joined forces again for Age of Loneliness. Released last month via Unifaun Productions and Maracash Records, this is their first new record together since Shelleyan Orphan’s last album, 2008’s We Have Everything We Need. As the album title suggests, the songs make frequent references to loss and loneliness. The album touches on the passing of loved ones, the isolation of growing older, even the extinction of species. Vamberator has really injected a creative spark within both Tayle and Williams. They are happy to be collaborating again together in a way that feels fresh and exciting.

Today, Tayle joins us for an exclusive and extensive Track-by-Track rundown of Age of Loneliness. He goes deep on the origins and inspirations behind this impressive new record. Read on for his insight, as well as some of our own for context.

1. “I Used to be Lou Reed”

The result of this organic amalgamation is that Vamberator’s influences are not always immediately self-evident, as in the case of album opener and second single, ‘I Used to Be Lou Reed’ prompting some reviewers to remark that the song bore a closer resemblance to Prefab Sprout, Scritti Politti, or Pulp than to Lou Reed or the Velvet Underground. It’s the near-mythical figure of Lou Reed that informs the song’s narrative, while a notional impression of 1970s New York serves as the musical setting for that character’s story.

Jem Tayle: “It was the opposite (of trying to emulate Reed’s sound), and that was intentional. It was about my musical background, which was influenced by the story of Lou Reed. And then, had it started to sound like the Velvet Underground or Lou Reed, I probably would’ve changed it… It became like a landscape. For me, I could hear New York in it. Or, I could hear a sort of New York: my version of New York, and America, and from my funny little English perspective, being born by the seaside in Bournemouth… My first experience, I reckon, of just suddenly being aware of people in America – that’s a funny sort of thing to say – was I think seeing a Barry White video, which wasn’t even a video in those days… It’s like a film, and he’s walking through what I’m guessing is Philadelphia, just looking in shop windows, and walking along the streets. I probably hadn’t seen any Lou Reed footage at that point, because there wasn’t much; he’d never appeared on Top of the Pops… But that was one of my first feelings of another place like that, that I was investing in the music.

“I wanted to just allow itself to be. I tried not to control it. I tried to have the chops to put it into musical form, but I didn’t want to interfere with it too much. So quite often I thought, ‘Oh, you can’t sing ‘I used to be Lou Reed…,’ but yes you can. You can sing it. Because you know what you’re saying. If someone else isn’t gonna get it, ok, but you know what you’re saying, and the reference points. And they’re all reference points from having read a lot about him, listened to him a lot, you know, you end up getting a feel for the person, even though you’re a million miles away from it…

“If I’d gone on about Lou Reed during the period when Shelleyan Orphan was around, it would’ve been the same as the Mary Chain or the same as anyone else, but it really was different for me. My brother got me into all that stuff. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh I’ve discovered the dark Velvet Underground.’ It wasn’t that. It was literally just growing up. All those things were in there, even then. We (Shelleyan Orphan) did ‘Who Loves the Sun’ for a Velvet Underground compilation, and the only reason we did ‘Who Loves the Sun’ is because everybody had already picked all the other songs, and we just thought, ‘Well let’s do one that’s just not typical of the Velvet Underground.’ We could’ve said, ‘Well, let’s do ‘Heroin’ or something like that’ but it wouldn’t have been right…

“The other part to the whole Lou Reed thing for me, and I mean obviously it’s about him and his lyrics and everything, but I quite often like his arrangements. And they vary through the albums… particularly with the ’70s, I always enjoyed that about his albums. And people often criticized them; Berlin was hugely criticized at the time, and people didn’t particularly take up on Coney Island Baby or Rock and Roll Heart. But if you just take those individual albums, and don’t get caught up in the fact that he’s not singing about heroin or white light white heat… I’d pick up on his quirkiness and his humour as well. And there would be darkness in there, of course. That’s who he is. But musically, I loved it if he had some strings or some horns… Very much so, and he was quite clever I think in the way of having the right people to do that stuff.”

The conversation about Lou Reed’s arrangements soon turns to Mick Ronson’s contribution to Transformer, and Ronson’s influence on Jem’s own approach to scoring and arranging.

“I remember thinking in those early years, ‘Why doesn’t Mick Ronson get the real credit for this?’ The piano on ‘Perfect Day’ is sparse and gorgeous, the strings that come in on ‘Walk on the Wild Side,’ and the guitar sounds… The guitar sound on ‘Vicious’ is just fantastic. It’s so cool… I was always a really big fan of his. Not because he was a rock god, it wasn’t that. I just loved the fact that yes, he was a rock god and he could do this stuff, but he was so musical. And I’ve read a lot about him as well, how he used to write it on cigarette packets and you know…”

2. “Tiny Little Finger” & 5. “I Don’t Want to Cut the Grass”

The new Vamberator album’s four singles to date, ‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps,’ ‘I Used to Be Lou Reed,’ ‘Creature in My House,’ and latest offering ‘Imps,’ while all quite distinct, aptly showcase an identifiable ‘Vamberator sound’ or common thread running through much of the Age of Loneliness album. Elsewhere, though, there are occasional outliers like ‘Tiny Little Finger’ or ‘I Don’t Want to Cut the Grass,’ hinting at more surreal or avant-garde influences, with Jem adopting narrative character voices.

“Well, it was deliberate. I didn’t deliberately sit down to write the songs like that, but I deliberately tried not to stop the process… When I was writing the album, different voices would appear, partly I think because I didn’t have Caroline to bounce off, and so if something came up and it felt right, I wouldn’t question it. This happened with ‘Tiny Little Finger’ and ‘I Don’t Want to Cut the Grass,’ where somehow these spoken words became musings from Donkey via Vamberator.”

Speaking of Donkey, the character is arguably the third member of Vamberator: essentially borne of Jem adopting the pantomime costume of an ass’ head. Donkey first appeared on the album cover of Shelleyan Orphan’s final studio offering, We Have Everything We Need and has since become an ever-present mascot or personification of Vamberator.

“Donkey has sort of taken on a life of its own… I don’t own that head. It belongs to a theatre costume place around the road from where I live. And this last two to three months, because I keep borrowing it, they said ‘Well, just keep it, and we’ll let you know when we need it back.’ And they actually need it back now, so I’ve got to take him back. But it’s been great when I’ve got that head on and when I do those things, I really feel quite complete. And it’s a very strange thing because I’d like to be able to walk around with that head on. I can’t even explain fully, but when I see it in (the band’s videos), I feel very complete. I think, ‘Yeah, this is what Vamberator or whatever is about for me.’ Because I can cloak everything within that Donkey’s head. I don’t know how this has happened, but I can. It feels like I can fit everything into it, and do everything I want with it. So, it’s been a really good tool for me. Because I don’t feel comfortable having just my face poking out in photos and doing the sort of band thing. Maybe it’s partly because Caroline’s not around. Because she could take that, you know, she’d look fantastic and she could hold all of that, and I didn’t have to really think about it too much. I’m as vain as anyone else, but it’s not really that. It’s this character, it’s quite strong, and it’s taken on quite a thing for me. It’s just sitting at home in the living room. I see it every day at the moment.”

3. “Sleep the Giant of Sleeps”

Vamberator’s widely praised debut single, ‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps,’ can be traced to the period of transition between the loss of Caroline Crawley and the resultant demise of Shelleyan Orphan, and Jem beginning to work on new music again.

“I had a load of things that were stored away, that were really good ideas I think, they were going to be for me and Caroline. And then my computer completely crashed and I lost everything. I had some little remnants of them floating around; I never got them back, but the remnants were quite strong. And I never ended up using any of those, but I figured at some point they’d be used for Shelleyan Orphan, so then I thought, ‘Well if I can get them back somehow from the shattered hard drive, I could resurrect them.’

“I can get the shape of something done in 20 minutes sometimes, and it’s not because I’m a great musician; I just suddenly lock into that feel of something and I’ll start overdubbing it very quickly to get the feel of it. ‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps’ was like that… I had that string riff for ages and ages, and the piano and I always knew that I’d be using that one day.’”

The ‘Giant of Sleeps’, of course, is death. Jem elaborates on some of the themes explored.

“Chasing trains, chasing dogs, chasing dreams, they always get away. Pushing your way through that froth on a daydream, sharing the gloom with ghouls and procrastinating – it’s all part of the daily merry-go-round. But there is always an unseen presence that comes to the rescue, sometimes in dreams, sometimes in the middle of the night, as you cool yourself in front of that open fridge. It’s relentless though, and here it comes again, but there’s so much to do, but close your eyes and there she is again…”

Vamberator ‘Age of Loneliness’ album artwork

4. “Pilgrim”

Blending traditional Indian elements and 1960s psychedelia, ‘Pilgrim’ is yet another exemplar of the variety of Vamberator’s influences, and another excursion away from some of the album’s more conventional pop/rock song structures. The song contains a spoken word segment in Hindi from Vinita Joshi, backing vocals from Italian labelmate Annie Barbazza, and sitar from one Rebecca Magri; along with hand percussion from Boris, and bass from Charlie Jones.

“‘Pilgrim’ is probably the closest (song on the album) to Shelleyan Orphan, so I thought, ‘No, don’t stop that, because no matter what, you are half of Shelleyan Orphan, and you can’t just deny that.’ So, I thought, ‘No, just let it come out, let it be.’ It’s fine, you know? I tried not to think in a way about what other people are going to think. At the end of the day, I have to be very happy with this, because I might not get an opportunity to make another album, so I wanted it to be something that I could think ‘Yeah, I wanted to say that, I needed to say it, and I needed to say it in that way.’ You know, you can’t deny your past, so…

“And it had a little story in there, and it felt right, and then having Vinita on it, you know, you get lost in your own world, and the further I went in there, the more I felt like I was in an old Bollywood movie. And then there was a girl (Rebecca Magri) who just came in the studio one day, and she said ‘I’m learning sitar,’ and I said ‘Ooh, great, can you put some on?’ and she said ‘Oh, oh, I don’t know,’ so I gave her the track and she went home that night and then came up with some little riffs, and it just added an extra little vibe which was right.

“Vinita did the (spoken) vocal on it, and she got her parents to interpret it into Hindi, which was amazing to hear, but we couldn’t really put the whole thing on because it would’ve just suddenly gone in a completely different direction. But it had a very nice feel about it, because her parents were very respectful when they were doing it, so it was a very nice experience.”

As to the little story alluded to, Jem goes on to say:

“I just get these snapshots sometimes of what it’s like for people, and I can imagine, for the two people involved, it’s a mother and a father, and they’ve been very insulated, and their kid goes off into the world to university, and how then suddenly they know so much more than you do, just by leaving the front door. And then you’re waiting for them to come back, to give you information about the outside world. And I really think that happens; I see it quite a lot, how people feel they’ve lost their children. The children haven’t done anything bad; they’ve just done what they’re supposed to do, go out into the world and experience whatever. But you know, people get left behind.”

6. “Age of Loneliness”

The album’s title track displays the strongest influence of electronica and dance music, while still retaining something of Shelleyan Orphan’s chamber music influences in the form of Luca Etzi’s enchanting oboe, and the Archimia String Quartet. The song swings between an almost ‘new age’ feel in the instrumentals and verses, to a big soulful chorus adorned by the powerful backing vocals of Jo Nye, before concluding with spoken word from Inky Crawley, once again drawing a line from Vamberator to Inky’s late mother. Exemplifying some of the album’s recurring themes of loss and loneliness, the song is inspired by a National Geographic piece, which told the story of Sudan (1973-2018): the last male northern white rhinoceros, who died in Kenya in 2018.

“I love animals and I love nature, and it pisses me off – humanity pisses me off in a really big way. En masse, I just find us fucking dreadful. And the picture was the ranger who has to look after this rhino, just sitting with this dead rhino that he’s brought up and looked after in the wild, and that was sort of like the catalyst for me to start writing about the ‘Age of Men,’ and it being not a positive thing at all. And ‘men’ being humanity, but also males. You know, males are responsible for most of the destruction and most of the negativity on this planet. And it was just getting that out, really.

“And then the chorus is just about ‘Fuck it – I just have to go back to my rattling house, my rattling dog, and my beautiful wife,’ to say, ‘well that’s what you’ve got.’ You know, you cling to the things you’ve got. And especially now, what’s happening in the world now, and it’s beyond what we can imagine I think is coming… It’s so far away from the planet being able to exist in a way that benefits every living thing. We’ve really fucked up. I think the planet will be fine without us, once we have burnt ourselves out… But that’s really what that song’s about.

“But it’s a frustration as well because I know how incredible we are… it’s an absolute frustration that we’re doing all that, but really, we’re so much better than that. As a species, we’ve got the potential to be the most unbelievable organism in the universe. But, for whatever reason, we’ve got this destructive gene, this thing that’s in us, mostly males, to just destroy.”

7. “I Need Contact”

The intimate, minimal lament, ‘I Need Contact,’ is Jem on piano and vocals, subtly underpinned by a soundbed of organ and guitar drones and incidental noise.

“That is about, once again, the whole thing of loneliness, and when your partner dies, and you are the only one left. When someone dies, and you’ve been really close to them, not only do they die, but a huge mass amount of knowledge of you dies with them. A huge chunk that nobody else knows, dies. So, it’s about the loneliness of that situation. You’re one now, there used to be two of you, taking on the world. Now it’s just you, you’re the one. Not only just the one but all this stuff’s been taken away from you.

“And this mostly happens when you’re older, and people tend to neglect older people. They don’t mean to, but they just don’t have a use. They haven’t decided whether they have a use or not, but they just don’t. They don’t have that anymore. There are people in my village where I live, there’s one old lady I make a point of having contact with and having a coffee and stuff. Not out of pity, but just because I know she’s still a completely valid person, who’s got plenty to talk about.  She’s sort of heading toward a bit of dementia at the moment, she keeps forgetting things and she knows that. And you can’t just say ‘Oh no, you’re not, don’t worry about it,’ you have to acknowledge it for her as well.”

As to the music, Jem says:

“It’s the most sparsely arranged song on the album. It was going to be a big orchestration. I was thinking, ‘Right, by the end, I’m going to get this huge string section going in it, and maybe a choir…’ (laughs) and then I thought to myself, ‘No don’t, just leave it,’ because it says more for the song to leave it like that… It needed to be presented sparsely, as the songs all around it were competing with each other to be heard, and so this one played on ‘understatement being the loud reply.’

“It’s not done to a click. I didn’t want it to have the feel of something metronomic. I’m not a great pianist or anything, and that’s quite tricky to do, but I did it in one take, so I was quite grateful for that. You know, to get the feel of the length between the gaps, I wanted it to feel a bit human. It was a challenge, but I did it. I don’t know why but things worked out quite well in the studio, I have to say. It might’ve been Alberto’s (Caligari – studio engineer) influence, I don’t know, but I’d do guitar takes in one take, and think ‘Oh, I don’t usually do that!’ It was a very different experience.”

8. “Zebra Butterfly Swallowtail

Returning to psychedelic pop territory, ‘Zebra Butterfly Swallowtail’ contains not only the album’s most overt references to Caroline Crawley’s absence/presence but also fittingly, equally overt nods to Lou Reed’s ‘Caroline Says Part II’ in the rhyme, meter and melody of the lyrics.

“Some people say

They can feel you around them

So why can’t I?

Maybe soon, it’s just not my turn…”

Jem explains:

“She needed to feature on the album, really. It’s about the thing where people were saying ‘I feel Caroline around me,’ and I wasn’t feeling that, you know, and feeling slightly pissed off, like ‘it should be me really that’s getting some of that’ (laughs). But then me and Boris were sitting around his pool one day in France, and this zebra butterfly landed on my foot. We were both quiet at the time, and then we both looked up at each other and said ‘Oh, that’s Caroline, isn’t it?’ That’s the essence of that song.”

9. “Creature in My House”

The album’s third single, the Halloween glam stomper ‘Creature in My House,’ hearkens back to Jem’s songwriting for Shelleyan Orphan, and again features Inky Crawley, this time singing backing vocals.

“‘Creature in My House’ I’d written completely as a little demo when Caroline was still alive. In fact, I played it to Inky, and she loved it. She was saying, ‘We have to have this out for Halloween one day.’ So, for me to have it coming out at Halloween, and to have her on it, is just the best. Because those things mean something to me then. Inky is really precious in my life, so to think that she was something like about eight or something when she first heard that, and she really liked it…

“And Caroline didn’t like it, which is interesting. And then she did. So it went through a few different phases, but it hasn’t changed much in its essence even from the demo, it’s fairly similar. I added some guitars in the section before the chorus and some little bits, but it’s pretty much stayed the same.’

Both spooky and kooky, ‘Creature in My House’ revisits the quirky feel of debut single, ‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps,’ albeit somewhat more off-kilter: a fusion of English pantomime and early 1970s glam and art-pop influences. Early Bowie/Mick Ronson, Brian Eno/Roxy Music, Robert Fripp, and Marc Bolan all bubble to the surface of the fuzzed-out guitar noodling, jaunty rhythmic pianos, and vamberated vocal vibrato: deftly intertwined around demented nursery-rhyme lyrics. ‘That’s how I learned to read, Dr. Seuss books.’

Boris delivers one of his most Cure-ish drum tracks on the album, with ’80s drum-machine-like precision, while tumbling tom-tom fills recall ‘Six Different Ways’ or ‘Just Like Heaven.’ Jem’s slurping mouth noises form part of the rhythm track, too, adding to those classic Cure points of reference (a-la ‘Lullaby’ or ‘Close to Me’); and an ecstatic brass finale from Joe Bentley (trumpet), Joe Northwood (tenor sax), and Pete Johnson (trombone) drives the point home, as if driving a haunted wardrobe full of finger poppets off a clifftop. The band are joined by Charlie Jones on both electric bass guitar and acoustic double bass, and Inky is joined on backing vocals by Jo Nye.

Musically, ‘Creature in My House’ drew inspiration from Halloween-themed novelty hits like Bobby Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers’ ‘Monster Mash’ and the lesser-known ‘Back Off Boogaloo,’ a minor hit for Ringo Starr, penned by Marc Bolan.

“To me, there’s a Halloween-y, horror kind of pop thing, which is fun, but also kind of serious in its own way at the same time. ‘Creature…’ is kind of about being overwhelmed by yourself, really. You know, the creature is you. And that’s why in the video it’s not just one person. You’ve got the little model, you’ve got me with the ass’s head, you’ve got Boris, you’ve got me… There’s all this amalgamation because we do get like this. And to be honest, the older you get, the more these things start creeping up onto you, which is quite strange because you realize it’s just literally around the corner.”

The video plays out like a children’s ghost story, with the haunted nostalgia of a bygone era in British television, brought to life by the illustrations, puppetry, and stop-motion animation of Louis Netter. This visual style recalls Jem’s childhood love for the work of Oliver Postgate – creator of children’s TV shows including Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog, The Clangers, Pogle’s Wood and so forth.

“Growing up, I loved all of those sorts of kids’ programmes… It’s all in there, stuff that weirdly subconsciously comes up…”

10. “They’re All the Same”

1970s funk, soul and R&B influences resurface in ‘They’re All the Same,’ opening with Clyde Stubblefield’s famous drum break from ‘Funky Drummer’ by James Brown, sampled during hip-hop’s ‘Golden Age’ by everyone from Eric B. & Rakim, RUN-DMC, Public Enemy, N.W.A., Beastie Boys, Ice Cube, and LL Cool J, through to George Michael and Sinead O’Connor. Vamberator’s take on the ubiquitous breakbeat is not sampled, however, but played live in the studio by Boris Williams.

“All I can remember is that when we recorded it, Boris did it, and I loved it, and he kept going ‘no… can we not have that in the beginning?’ And I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ It’s just so great.’

Any misgivings Boris may have had about faux-hip-hop tropes are quickly laid to rest, however, as the remaining instruments enter in a swell of 1970s-inspired horns, strings, and funky guitar riffs.

“The truth is, none of (the songs) are designed that way, they really aren’t. That one when I wrote it was just acoustic guitar and vocals. And then when I was fiddling around with it at home, I had the little guitar riffs here and there, they came next, and then I was thinking about horns and things on it, and just came up with this slow sort of swell of horns at the beginning, and it took off from there. I thought, ‘Yeah… that’s a nice way to start the song.’ And then before I knew it, it was taking on this sort of funky, ’70s-ish vibe, and I just thought, ‘well I’m not going to stop, because it wants to be like this.’ And so that’s how that one came about. I kind of knew by the time it got to the chorus I’d want the horns to be parping away, and Jo (Nye)’s great in it, her vocals are great in that.”

11. “Imps”

The album closes in glorious, jubilant fashion with the suitably climactic ‘Imps,’ which doubles as the newest promo single: a soulful indie pop/rock anthem, laden with riffs and hooks, occupying an uncanny space between late-life T. Rex and The Church’s occasional soaring, rock-driven moments.

“‘Imps’ couldn’t make up its mind where it wanted to be: part pop, part choral, no conventional structure, but full of riffs and unrestrained joy. I kept thinking it needed to be edited to make sense but the more I listened, the more I stopped tweaking and allowed it to run its course… Split off, come with me, choose a place to go. Maybe the wilderness where a beast is free to roam. Leave your monster at home it’ll be ok, surrender and get distracted by the wild things!’

“Won’t you come

Into my garden, love?

Monster’s on his own today, today

Please stay, stay, stay

I won’t surrender if you don’t

I won’t give in if you don’t

I know, I know

It’s gonna be okay

Vamberator

Animal serenader

It’s gonna be okay”