As crazy as a box of frogs.
I was somewhat reticent when I read that Tammy Payne (also known as Jukes) once had a job on a cruise liner. Would 'We Might Disappear' turn out to be a compilation of big-band classics and smouldering love songs performed by a Jayne McDonald clone? The very thought made my pale and diseased body shudder and shake (like a rattlesnake) to its very core and forced me to scrabble hysterically for the corkscrew.
Thankfully I was saved - and I don't mean by just the Shiraz. Jukes sounds nothing like Jayne McDonald (even more thankfully she doesn't look remotely like her either which gets her an extra point) and ghastly cover versions of 'Diamonds Are Forever' and 'The Green Green Grass of Home' are not to be found anywhere on this record. Deep breath in...deep breath out...and relax.
Instead, 'We Might Disappear' is an album of folky, soulful electronic pop songs that boast a sharp edge of experimental psychedelia, Spaghetti Western guitars and lyrics that David Mamet would have a hard time deconstructing. So if that doesn't excite you, what does? What about the idea I had last year to install a landmine into a pumpkin at Halloween and wait across the road with a camera until the trick-or-treaters rocked up to the front door? No? Shame...
In conjunction with this merry melange of musical influences, Tammy Payne's principle curiosity is in the deconstruction of the normal and the everyday. On 'Something Important', she loafs around the house watching the telly and reading books even though she feels she should be doing something meaningful. 'Pears And Milk' is about, well, someone eating pears and drinking milk; whilst 'From Over There' beautifully tackles relationship break-ups ("Your eyes don't see where I begin and you end").
Elsewhere on the album, Payne holsters the crowbar, takes the elevator to the seventh-and-a-half floor of her left frontal lobe and goes a bit mental. Closing tracks 'He Runs Like The Wind' and 'I Love The Snow' forced me to recall just how wacky Patti Smith really is, (get thee to a straitjacket) and while 'The Stupid Things' might sound mightily philosophical with a seemingly heady weight of valuable psychological insight wrapped around its neck (much like a contemplative B.A Baracus), I just can't shake the feeling that it's all a load of confused nonsense. But then maybe I'm too thick to get it.
These are mere quibbles though. 'We Might Disappear' needs to be absorbed as an album entire and to single out individually weak tracks somewhat detracts and distracts from the hypnotic allure of the full record.
The aforementioned Ennio Morricone influence is keenly felt on 'Mothersisters', 'Lose A Day' and 'Born In The Sea' to name but a few, yet the twangy guitars remain spectral and diminutive, imbuing a simple and shimmering strength into the mix but never threatening to dictate or dominate.
Instead, the lush electronics, gentle acoustics and muffled drums create an altogether charming, sumptuous and lazy coffee-cream-flavoured four-poster that makes you want to snuggle up tight and order room service for the rest of eternity.
Like Cathy Davey (who one can imagine would love to have written 'Pears And Milk') Payne's material may well be too idiosyncratic for the mainstream. Yet songs like 'Land All At Sea' wouldn't sound out of place on a K.T. Tunstall album (or the Radio 2 playlist), demonstrating that Payne is more than capable of writing material that does appeal to wider audiences.
I for one would regard it as a shame if she did though. 'We Might Disappear' might not be a truly brilliant album, but it is courageous, intelligent, adventurous and provocative.
We need albums like this - and artists like Payne - because we're all gonna need something soothing to listen to when we take that well-earned rest with a cup of tea and Jammy Dodger after massacring all the manufactured Pop Idol midgets with sharpened straws and frozen chickens.
And that time will come...