Monolith Cocktail Blog

Album Review: Dominic Valvona

Per W/Pawlowski ‘Outsider/Insider’
(Jezus Factory/Starman Records) 29^th March 2019

Thirteen years after their first collaboration together, two stalwarts of the alternative Belgian music scene once more reunite to produce, what they call, their very own unique White Album curiosity. The intergenerational musical partnership of one-time dEUS guitar-slinger for hire Mauro Pawlowski and maverick legend Kloot Per W proves an experimental – if odd – success in mining both artist’s influences and providence; the results of which, transformed into a playful, often knowing and pastiche, misadventure, are performed with conviction. Behind the often-masked mayhem and classic rock poses lurk serious, sometimes cathartic wise observations.

No stranger to regular readers of this blog, the Hitsville Drunk and solo collaborator in a host of projects that include a Zappa bastardized covers album with The Flat Earth Society and a Dutch language folk record under the Maurits Pauwels appellation, Pawlowski last appeared as a member of the Pawlowski, Trouve & Ward triumvirate, who’s soloist shared collection, Volume 2, showcased various expletory suites from each respective artist involved. For his part, Pawlowski contributed a 80s schlock driller-killer, straight-to-video, soundtrack (complete with made-up advert slots); the highlight of which, and a blast of inspiration for this latest album, was the pyrotechnic explosion, fist-bumping, AM radio rock anthem, ‘Starught’.

His compatriot on this ride, Per W, has a form that stretches right back to the late 60s, most notably as the bassist for The Misters and then as a guitarist for The Employees. A solo career in the early 80s saw the idiosyncratic musician knock out a slew of albums, the majority of which were purposely limited to cassette only releases; his first proper vinyl album, Pearls Before Swine, arriving in the later part of that decade. Various stints in the JJ Burnel produced Polyphonic Size and the Sandie Trash, Strictly Rockers, Chop Chicks and De Lama followed. In more recent years he’s recorded an album of Velvet Underground covers (called Inhale Slowly And Feel) and the DRILL collection of abstract music, composed for an art installation based on rebuilding the composer and inventor Raymond Scott’s Manhattan Research Inc. studio. A mixed resume I’m sure you’ll agree; one that fuels a diverse twenty-one track spanning opus of songs, traverses and instrumental vignettes.

With the deep sagacious and world-weary voice of Per W leading, Outsider/Insider merges the mixed fortunes of both artists; whether it’s the jangly Traveling Wilburys like power rock pastiche ‘KPW On 45’ and its commentary on the cultural overbearance of American culture (“American rock star live in my European food!”) or, the iron fire-escape tapping, industrial funk gyrating, seductive if awkward ‘Room!’, Per W adds just enough off-center lyricism and ambivalence to make even the most obvious-sounding straight-A tune take a turn into weirdville.

There are twilight rodeo love swoons, complete with female muse (‘We Won’t Lose Touch’), pendulous Marillion-meets-Dave Arnold-soundtrack like jabbering allusions to Beatles songs (a cover for all I know of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, or just nicking the title), early Soluwax cowbell synth-rock (‘Waitin’ For The Con Man’), and various probes into the cosmos with the arpeggiator stained-glass synth-y new romantics ‘Human Groin’, space-rock doctors waiting room diorama ‘Say What You Do’, and glistened Tangerine Dream, ‘The Dream Pop Spa’. Visages of new wave pop bastions The Cars connect with Gothic vapours; breakouts of dEUS rock wrangle with Outside era Bowie sinister art-school pretensions; and Eagle-Eye Cherry drowns in post-punk malady on an album of both wizened angst and “que sera sera” relief.

At ease in their own skins, these two mischievous bedfellows have a devil-may-care attitude to making music; free of commercial pressures (to a point) Pawlowski and Per W seem to record whatever the fuck they want, yet do it with total conviction and adroit skill.

Off-white to The Beatles stark magnolia gloss, Outsider/Insider is hardly a classic – dysfunctional or otherwise –, but is an amusing, sometimes absurd, and well-crafted alternative art-rock record of some ambition and style.