"Tropical Nightlife" by The Eyes of Isabel
Review
Out tonight from The Eyes of Isabel is their new single "Tropical Nightlife".
Recorded as ever at Woodbine Studio by John Rivers and Eddy Hewitt, the later also adding keyboards, bass guitar & guitar to accompany Tony Ally's vocals, the story this time (and all the band's songs are narrative in character) takes us away from the harsh urban settings of most of their recent work to the supposedly harsh rainforest setting in which the protagonists try to survive post plane crash.
Tony likes to set his songs in contexts of high drama, which must make life a lot easier for their regular collaborator Andy McGeechan to create the video which illustrates it & indeed extends the story beyond the details. Filmed at the West Midlands Safari Park in Kidderminster and in Kenilworth, it stars Tracy Gillen, Rob Miller, Lyndsey Joplin, Toni & eight year old Kosie. Tony himself is in there too but you'll be doing well to spot him considering what he's wearing…..
I'd better make sure I don't fully equate the music with the video as it's the former I ought to focus on first in a music magazine….. In fact the song is quite a benign and easy paced Caribbean lilting groove: perhaps playing against the sense of danger or maybe sitting somewhere between sarcastic & tongue in cheek: though I'm going for much closer to the latter. Thankfully you simply don't have to fear much for the passengers making it out alive: it might not be all daiquiris on the veranda but it's not veering wholly towards the lethal either.
The film too reinforces this with animals either taking very little interest in eating the humans or being a trifle comical (though the final shot perhaps suggests otherwise) and the local inhabitants though outwardly hostile not looking terribly numerous enough to finish them all off: though a young one does appear to have at least tranquillised one of the party…. I suppose there is sufficient ambiguity in there to suggest a range of outcomes, though personally I'd like to think that at least some of them survive…..
