"Crime Scene" by The Eyes of Isabel
Review
The latest Eyes of Isabel single (produced as ever by John Rivers with Eddy Hewitt at Woodbine Street Studio in Leamington) is called "Crime Scene".
As always, your best starting point is the accompanying video courtesy of Andy McGeechan (it's at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw7Awjzm_eQ) as the visuals and the music are presented as a package: in fact of course all Eyes of Isabel songs only exist in this format. You can't really disconnect the track from the film unless you close your eyes (or suffer some form of visual impairment).
Starring band leader Tony Ally as a criminal (it's interesting how often this theme pops up in his work) and Rob Millar as the junior detective/ghost with Lindsay Jopling as the more senior detective, it was shot outside Leicester Prison and in locations in Tile Hill, the Canal Basin & Berkswell.
I particularly liked their last outing, "In a Girl's Paradise" but they've gone darker this time in a song which was first considered in 2021 and later developed with the ghost theme after Tony caught an episode of "Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)": the original story of Little Red Riding Hood killing a wolf seems to have been superseded in the process: though as ever Andy's interpretation may diverge from Tony's original intention (he always seems happy to offer him artistic freedom in this regard) as the lyrics don't actually reference the ghost stuff (the villain murders an officer in the line of his duty and his partner investigates: with a brief hint of police violence at one point). In fact the song is very much about the forensic process we are all so familiar with from television detective procedurals.
That said, the music tells a slightly different story as it's much more aligned with the spooky aspect than its words are: both John & Eddy contribute musically and the result complements the film (possibly the best I've seen in this series, though I did, as I say, also rate the last one) with its use of special effects for the ghost and which has exactly the tone of the best noir television crime serials, very well. Some precisely what the timeline from chicken to egg on this artefact might be is not immediately obvious with Tony, Andy & John/Eddy all clearly contributing: it's more than likely I think that as people pitched in, the concept evolved and adjustments made. At any rate, taken in its completed form, it's a great example of collaboration between a set of people who by now know & can anticipate creative preferences really well.
