Whatever happened to Cotton Mather?

Whatever happened to Cotton Mather? They exploded into the middle of my final year at university, shattering the stranglehold the sixties held on my music collection and helping me shout my way through my last few weeks. Then they reintroduced themselves to me a couple of years later, displaying a sound which had progressed into something pretty dramatic. By the time I finally got to see them perform live in London (after a 9/11-induced fear of flying and consequent gig postponement), I thought this would be a long and positive relationship between the band and this listener. But it was not to be! The band have dropped out of sight, and if any readers from their home town of Austen, Texas, can help me out (where all known websites have failed) and provide me with news, then don’t delay. Meanwhile, what else to do but look back fondly?

Most Cotton Mather band biographies almost immediately name check Oasis. Of course this one is no exception, but I have mentioned the Manchester band merely to dismiss the commonly made comparisons. It’s said that Cotton Mather were following in Oasis’ footsteps. Well, in that they tried to make albums full of catchy and original melodies, combining light-touch pop with heavy guitar music, singing about love without being excessively romantic, I guess they can be compared to Oasis. But to be frank they were only ever really put alongside them because Noel Gallagher decided to promote Cotton Mather as his beneficiaries. The reality is that Cotton Mather line up alongside Oasis not as followers, but as fellow would-be inheritors of the Beatles’ legacy. And they out-do them.

Led by singer and songwriter Robert Harrison, Cotton Mather have made two great old-fashioned albums. By old-fashioned I don’t refer to the noise they produce, but to what they represent: forty-odd minutes, a dozen songs, two guitars a bass and drums, some superb songs, and bags of controlled emotion. This is how albums were supposed to be - the band use the Beatles’ musical concept and sensibilities while avoiding sounding like them. Interestingly, this is not a band with a culture, a history, in their sound. They don’t seem to represent a part of the world, a defined group of people, or even some vague woolly socio-political statement. It is all about the music. Some of it is sublime; some of it is barely listenable. But so long as the former dominates the latter – and it does – you’re going to enjoy these two albums.

Kontiki, released as the 1990s closed, typifies the lo-fi production values which many bands adopted in the wake of the ‘Britpop’ era of the 1990s. The less musical noises, like feedback and distortion, sound natural and organic, and at their best they complement the songs they feature in – Vegetable Row, Private Ruth. But the more straightforward sounding songs work better – not least because Harrison’s lyrics are difficult enough to fathom out without being disturbed by intrusive noise. Try this:

She picked me out of the millions
Thumbing an OED
Dressed me down to civilian
Cracked the code on the Rosetta Stone
Said the word for alone is "alone"
My before and after

The lyrics must be personal, because these are not everyday sentiments which anyone could have dreamed up. When you read them back to yourself, they gradually begin to make sense, but when you put the record on for the first time, all you know is that Harrison uses clever words to excellent effect. Attempts to grasp their meaning will prove futile.

Amidst all this nonsense (and one dreadful song title – Aurora Bori Alice), you will find two completely stunning ballads, Spin My Wheels and Lily Dreams On. These are the type of song which use Robert Harrison’s high and slightly hysterical vocals to best effect – he sounds vulnerable, and yet at the same time sure of every word he says:

In my parallel field, what's imagined is real
For you I conceal, all that I feel
And girl you spin my wheels

When you hear this, you get the feeling that he really means it – and while this might be an illusion, the subtext is that he accepts it – he doesn’t mind – and so why would he lie to us? With this technique of expressing his feelings, Harrison draws you into his songs.

In fact, it is this mode of expression which most links Kontiki with The Big Picture, its successor (leaving aside the interim Hotel Baltimore, a short album of live recordings which is unsatisfactorily short and half-developed). This album takes the lyrical excesses to even greater extremes (“Substance suffers style / Stanley lost the Nile” anyone?). And it is, I have to say, one of those albums during which I skip between favourite songs, ignoring the same few irritating tracks each time. But I think the album qualifies as ‘great’ despite this, as alongside the reverberating jingly-jangly guitars are some ballads that aren’t just beautiful, or stunning, like those on Kontiki. No, these slow numbers are brave. There is no other word for it. Just what is Monterey Honey, for example, seeking to say? He starts by telling us (using, naturally, a great tune) that he lost this particular love because he let her down, that sort of thing. But by the second verse, his lover is asking him “Aren’t you done yet?” and lighting a cigarette. Can he really think he just let her down in the standard selfish double-crossing angst-ridden singer-songwriter manner? Sounds to me like he was trying. The narrator humiliates himself in the interests of the song.

Ramon Finds Waterfalls is another brazen number, but this time the courage is shown not by the song’s internal narrator, but by Harrison himself. The sheer effrontery of giving us a deliberately bland lighter-waving anthem, with these lyrics

Inside Ramon finds waterfalls
And water falls
From the Tropic of Cancer to the writing on the chiffon walls
From Victoria Cascades to the…

Well…you get the idea. Harrison takes a risk in making this song the album’s emotional centrepiece, with the triumphant melody, the three-part harmonies only hinted at prior to this point, and the mountain-top strutting guitar solo. But it pays off. Such risk is a rare commodity in modern music, and it is worth hanging on to.

Of course another word for all this lyrical and musical grandstanding is ‘pretentious’, and to an extent, that is a fair comment on The Big Picture. Leaving aside the ballads, Kontiki is dominated by shorter and sharper guitar riffs built around no-frills melodies. The Big Picture, on the other hand, while retaining the Cotton Mather tradition of short songs, definitely has bigger intentions for those same riffs. The mood of Kontiki is that of a small world, with characters who fail to look beyond themselves and their small groups – typified by the subject of Homefront Cameo, who pursues futile activities at the expense of taking a more outward view of the world:

She’s made the bed three times today
Each a masterpiece in its own way

By the time of The Big Picture, lead guitarist Whit Williams’ riffs have to sound grander, because the themes they highlight are much more worldly – the album’s first two title characters are The Last of the Mohicans and Marathon Man, and it continues, for the most part, in this vein.

But is this pretentiousness a cause for criticism? Harrison clearly had ambitious goals when he made The Big Picture, but that is what is so fascinating about the album. He had a successful formula ready to use, but chose not to risk boring us by reiterating the same world view. And the decision to match the lyrics with an equally expansive sound must be the right one.
Of course, you will clearly make your own judgement on which side of the brave/pretentious fence Cotton Mather’s music falls. Either way, these albums are challenging and imaginative. With each clever rhyme, with each frenzied vocal climax, and with each Beatley throwback, Cotton Mather’s music takes me back to the time I first heard it, and forward to whatever dream I fancy. Now, where did they get to?