‘Light at the End of the Tunnel' by King of the Alps

Only a week ago, I suggested that "expect the unexpected" was a thread running through the artistry of those of whom I wrote. Few of them epitomise that more than King of the Alps, that restlessly innovative group for whom repetition is anathema.

Known generally for their elusive yet beautiful songs which explore the avenues to the human heart with the degrees of (un)certainty of adulthood, few (if any) releases features the same exact lineup of any of their predecessors & often significantly different instrumentation.

Occasionally though, they plunge even more radically off piste : 2020's "Happy Christmas, All Will Be Fine" being the most radical to date: until today's release of their ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel'  album has offered a serious challenge.

I had not expected a spoken word album in my wildest imaginings: so thank you once again to Paul Ingram & Simon Ward for the element of surprise ("no one expects the Spoken Word Album").

In fact ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel'  is so esoteric even by their standards of diversity and variety that initiator Paul had originally considered it as a side project to released under a different moniker. Thankfully Simon convinced him that weird ideas fall comfortably within the King of the Alps DNA.

The songs themselves are named  "Why?", "Wealth Could End Poverty", "Ununited Humans", "You Can't Grow Bananas in Milton Keynes" "Change the Future" and "We Are All the Same".

I've never reviewed anything quite like this, so had little idea of the technical difficulties involved. The project was delayed by COVID19 but even so, at that point, the search for a collaborative narrator wasn't getting anywhere: presumably the idea was too freaky for any of those approached to contemplate and so it's Paul you'll hear.

What he had not anticipated though was how difficult it was to fit the music to the existing words and so when you play it, please have in mind a lot of hard graft, composing, arranging & rehearsing.

What you hear in fact are six very different tracks with the music clearly written to reflect the words: rather than (for example) the approach of John Cooper Clarke whose musical settings of his poems (much as I really like them) tend to be jazzy mood tracks not particularly related to what he's reciting (though in a few places he almost starts singing).

Drums (Paul's instrument of yore with bands such as The Giraffes) appear more prominently than on most King of the Alps tracks: the significance of which eludes me (which is hardly surprising given the overall context). To be honest, you could strip the words away & be left with some decent instrumentals so much effort has gone into the backing tracks which include a range of sounds including samples.

The words though are the centre of the project & the mixing ensures that though they are supported & complemented by the music (and even emphasised by it), you are not distracted from them. We're talking Big Themes: societal as against the personal which tend to shape Paul's song lyrics.

Racism, xenophobia, inequality, fear, the environment, the role of the media, politicians, property/capitalism, materialism, greed and many more targets appear in his sights on the album, mostly set to ominous forms of accompaniment, yet tying all these together is the theme made most explicit in "Change the Future": he's challenging us all to effect change in our individual lives and to abandon the issues he's previous discussed: by multiple communal actions we can have an impact. At this point, the music becomes lighter & the urge to sing becomes greater as the words are more positive and his manifesto is emphasised by closer "We Are All the Same" (set to the brightest, funky, party-based backing) which emphasises our global communality, our shared interest in overturning the forces of darkness and our combined power to do so.

Taken as a  whole, ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel'  is a very powerful piece of work: outlining the problems for the bulk of the record is offset by offering solutions, or potential ones, in the final tracks & given the album title, Paul has a sense of optimism that it might come off.

 I agree with Simon: this fits nicely into what King of the Alps have always done: musically it's a high quality, highly listenable album. Lyrically, it addresses both matters of the heart and dives straight into the heart of the matter by looking at the bigger issues facing humanity & thus complementing what Paul's written about before.

I'm not even sure it's really a spoken word album at all: I'm inclined to go with it being an example of Sprechgesang of which there are significant numbers of examples in popular music, some by really big names.

If you care about the world in which we live & like thinking deeply, ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel'   could be your cup of tea.