Loving low-fidelity with The Cleaners From Venus: A review of Under Wartime Conditions

The record cover used for the German LP release (Modell Records)

I first heard of The Cleaners From Venus when I was in 7th grade. I habitually read a Wikipedia article listing songs about or referencing Syd Barrett, as I was at the time in a knee-deep fascination with Pink Floyd and their troubled guitarist. Included on the list was a piece simply titled "A Song For Syd Barrett", having apparently been penned by a man by the name of Martin Newell. I absorbed this information, never bothered to listen to the song, and promptly forgot all about the band. Such is fair, I suppose--thirteen year-old me wouldn't've cared for it, anyway.

I rediscovered The Cleaners on accident, their music having materialized among dozens of other obscure songs by bands no one listens to after I made an attempt at listening to Nothing Painted Blue's 1990 album "A Baby, A Blanket, A Packet of Seeds".

The song in question was a 14 year-old Youtube upload of "Drowning Butterflies", which made me feel so hopeless and distraught that I couldn't stomach sitting through all five minutes of it. But something about the artwork paired with its almost haunted quality grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. So I gave the record a listen.

Everything from the line delivery to the style of instrumentation on the opener, "Summer in a Small Town", reminds me of the Pet Shop Boys. Luckily, the homespunness brought on by the rudimentary recording methods gives the song a drugged-out, dreamlike quality that is fair better then anything the Pet Shop Boys could've dreamed of making. A feeling of skullduggery permeates throughout, and though Newell's writing on this one is a tad verbose, it blends in so well with the sheer noise of the thing to the point it actually seems laconic. The biting criticism paired with the dowdy ineptitude of which the vocals are delivered leaves you with no real solutions to the problem of being "a bluebird in a broken down café".

By the time "Johnny the Moon dog is Dead" rolls around, it is already obvious that this whole album has been verdigrised in the thickest form of malaise that can be bought on the market. The childish fiddling with a Speak & Spell enhances the dissociated atmosphere, and it will make several key appearances later on.

While most likely in reference to the 1980 assassination of John Lennon, "Johnny the Moon dog" can easily be applied to the death of any pop idol. The omnipresent fear of the deaths themselves, the melancholia, resignation, even the temporary lapse in activity and loss of meaning caused by such events.

Cutting away from the topic of rockstars is "Hand of Stone", a cross between "Warm Jets" era Brian Eno and what I imagine a bootleg of Pink Floyd playing at the UFO club would sound like. It is hypnotically repetitious, and the disaffected and mildly cross tone makes it no unlike a shivaree.

"Drowning Butterflies" is shaky and strung-out--the feeling of collapsing into bed after a long, depressing night at the bar. It is rife with dysthymia, the narrator trying to mollify not just himself but the songs subject as well. The act of drowning butterflies is futile, a waste of time in itself just as much as trying to salvage this relationship is. This is dirty, grimy, back-alley music--Newell sings like he's waiting for the world to end. The jangly, vaporous guitar only aids in furthering this atmosphere. A long string of Zs, curling and tangling and separating, buzzing all the while until a total loss of energy is achieved.

Angelic is "Radio Seven", but not the sort of bright and sanctified angels you would expect. Angels that have withered, grown old and world-weary.

A machine telling you the correct spelling of abscess. This is how "Fracas on West Street" greets you. It shoves you into the more punk-prodded side of things with a discordant, jumbled, headache-inducing clangor. A fracas, alright. Hellish is the best way I can describe it. I can imagine this sin't too far off from what hardcore punk shows were like, only without the cigarettes, vomit, and battered-wife violence to cement it into reality.

A squeaky conversation about drugs opens "Lukewarm Love Song", equating love to a drug, but not in the way Roxy Music intended. Love as something nobody truly needs. The lyrics are mostly comprised as simple statements that amount to sweet nothings ("I would not be with you unless I wanted to be", "I would not call you up unless I wanted to",) delivered on automatic. Apart from a mildly jejune guitar part, it's as if a robot devoid of all emotion is singing for you. The tune ends with a lengthy conversation of things that do not appear to be about love at all. Love and romance are just tools used to make ourselves feel less useless between interactions with others.

The commentary on the USSR found in "A Blue Wave" is the weakest part of the album, lyrically, but it is delivered so sanctimoniously and with such conviction that you can't help but groove along.

"A Song For Syd Barrett" continues the long musical tradition of self recognition through the other. Complicated connections that transcend decades. The narrator relates his experiences to that of Barrett's, sympathizing with him and deciding he understands the man. It leaves me to wonder how many other people have wanted to write songs about the same thing but never had the guts to do it.

"The Winter Palace" is like something you'd hear emitting from a child's music box, but with an underlying sense of unease that prevents you from truly enjoying the tune. You stop and stare, wondering just what the hell is going on here. it ends with chatter that could be interpreted as the conversations of the inhabitants within the palace, leaving you to ruminate on whether this chat was intentionally directed/recorded for the album or simply randomly selected to close it out.

If I had to describe "Under Wartime Conditions" in one word, it would be haunting. If Newell's musical output wasn't as expansive as Frank Zappa's, I would assume he was some outsider musician that had disappeared off the face of the Earth in a combination of drugs and untreated mental health issues. Thank God that wasn't how things went down.

Rating 5/5