Oddly never released in America when the later Lost in the Former West was, Valhalla Avenue upped the considerable ante of Viva Dead Ponies with another rampaging rip through hypocrisy and societal idiocy. Coughlan's inspired vocal mix of smooth croon and exploding street-corner crazy continues from the group's earlier work, as does the musical stew that has the band aiming for lounge music as much as brain-melting feedback. Sister Mary O Gruama's guitar work adds the pile-driving power as needed, but it's the keyboard work from Coughlan and Duke O Malaithe which actually takes the lead, even at the loudest moments. Clever sampling here and there -- sometimes of familiar melodies, others of strange news and movie-source snippets -- helps set the edgy atmosphere. It's not as chaotic as, say, Fear of a Black Planet, but it's still disorienting enough at points. Ralph and Victor Van Vugt again assist Coughlan with production and engineering; if sometimes the ambition of a truly full-bodied nuclear strength assault doesn't always play out, at its best Valhalla still blazes with acid fire. Lead-off single "Evil Man," captures the piss-and-vinegar spirit of the proceedings just so, with sudden tempo changes, curious percussion touches, and odd vocal arrangements further spiking the brew. "1000%" works even more effectively, with a seemingly friendly lead melody swiped from Wham's "Freedom" constantly undercut by gang shouts and other sudden musical cut-ups and treatments. As expected, while the mental-as-anything head-bang crushers have a thrilling momentum, it's the poison-pen ballads, sometimes calm and sometimes just fractured enough, which carry the best impact. "Greyhair" and the sweeping "North Atlantic Wind" balance cutting lyrics and almost nihilistic social criticism with soaring melodies and full-bodied performances, showing that there's a way beyond simple anger to make a point.
The title that the Fatima Mansions originally had in mind for their second album was "Bugs F*cking Bunny," but the alternative rockers ended up going with the more marketable title Viva Dead Ponies. That's the only real compromise that was made with this CD -- both musically and lyrically, Viva Dead Ponies was among the more uncompromising releases of 1991. The Mansions' lyrics don't go out of their way to be accessible, and musically, the band isn't afraid to keep the listener guessing. Some of the songs are quite melodic (especially "The Door-to-Door Inspector," "Broken Radio #1," and "You're a Rose"), but on "Look What I Stole for Us, Darling" and the single "Blues for Ceausescu" (which reflects on the overthrow and execution of Romania's Stalinist dictator Nikolai Ceausescu), The Mansions make it clear that they aren't afraid to be blistering and highly abrasive. With The Mansions, you never know if you're going to get something as hauntingly melodic as "The Door-to-Door Inspector" or something metallic and industrial-influenced like "Look What I Stole for Us, Darling." Viva Dead Ponies isn't easy to absorb on the first listen, but after several listens, it becomes increasingly clear just how much this risk-taking effort has going for it.
Bertie's Brochures, another eight songs, is a mixed bag of stuff that evidently didn't fit elsewhere; its tone is low-key, sad and rueful. R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People" becomes a snide hip-hop diatribe against the British government ("go g-go g-go go fuck yourself"), but the condemnation of career terrorism in "Smiling" is anything but frantic, leaving room for a little grief to breathe amid the bile. The title song is a touching little number about a curiously misguided life. Plus, it's all sandwiched between three simple, strong, straightforward songs about the vagaries of (gasp) romance: Coughlan's own "Behind the Moon," Scott Walker's "Long About Now" and Richard Thompson's "The Great Valerio." While not a representative record, Bertie's Brochures is Fatima Mansions' most broadly appealing work.
The final Mansions album almost snuck out instead of being released, with sessions split between regular producer Ralph Jezzard and ex-Talking Heads studio hound Jerry Harrison. Adding to the band's confused discographical tangle, two Valhalla Avenue cuts were appended to the American issue of the album, which still went next to nowhere in terms of any level of attention. A pity, because while the Mansions essentially hadn't changed much beyond its initial mode of feedback-heavy aggro and perversely calm adult-entertainment numbers, the overall performances on Lost were some of the band's best. Coughlan remains the central figure, writing everything with one notable exception and singing with the expected gusto, while his main collaborator O Gruama adds some scraggly, nervous guitar parts to his usual arsenal of amped-up rage. With most of the regular Mansions crew along for the ride, along with some guest performers here and there, the band set out with murder on its mind and specific targets in its sights. "Popemobile to Paraguay" starts with all the bile that an ex-Catholic Irishman could be expected to bring to bear -- by the time it's all over, American foreign policy idiocies and the leftover impact of the Cold War are but two of the other issues addressed with Coughlan's usual bile. If the album was nothing but lectures there'd be little point, but the music is always the winning edge to the Mansions' brew, whether the spooked-out mood into mayhem of "Walk in the Woods" or the calmer "Walk Yr Way." The one non-Coughlan number might have been an inevitable thing for the Mansions to do -- a cover of Scott Walker's shimmering paranoid classic "Nite Flights," here given just enough extra bite while Coughlan delivers a vocal worthy of his hero.
