Bread & Circuses

Crepuscule's reissue of the sixth Durutti Column studio album leaves the content unchanged but inverts the original title (Circuses and Bread). Whichever way you look at it, it's an ironic title: Vini Reilly's artistically uncompromising, genre-defying work could never be mistaken for the kind of shallow popular entertainment invoked by the Roman poet Juvenal's famous phrase. The preceding Durutti Column album, Without Mercy, was a meditation on John Keats' 1819 romantic poem La Belle Dame sans Merci, comprising two extended suites that spanned classical, rock, jazz, and even funk territories. Here, although Reilly organizes his material in more conventional track formats, many of the same musical elements remain; the results are no less eclectic or adventurous. Reilly's classical influences surface in the contemporary chamber pieces "Hilary," with its trumpet and chiming guitar, and "Pauline," featuring a simple viola melody. Without Mercy's romanticism also finds echoes in the lyrics of the two vocal numbers, "Tomorrow" and the limp, overlong "Black Horses," which lapses into what Reilly himself dismisses as "schoolboy poetry." However, he compensates for that track's musical listlessness with the energized "Dance I" and "Dance II," whose beats and reverbed brass suggest kinship with Arthur Russell. While Reilly's music often reflects his classical training, the work of contemporary composers also resonates here, especially in the repeating minimalist patterns of "Blind Elevator Girl (Osaka)" (which is slightly marred by some jazz fusion tendencies). More explicitly experimental, "Street Fight" balances creation and destruction by offsetting melancholy piano with four minutes of gunfire; although it's an interesting idea, it makes for a rather heavy-handed track. Always critical of his own work, Reilly described this as a "particularly bad album." That's harsh. It might not be as immediate as Without Mercy, its pleasures more diffuse, but this is a solid release pointing forward to 1987's brilliant The Guitar and Other Machines. ~ Wilson Neate|

Durutti's fifth studio album finds the core Reilly/Mitchell/Kellet/Metcalfe lineup of the mid-'80s still in excellent form, steering back from the lengthy excursion of Without Mercy in favor of shorter songs typical of Durutti's other recorded work. While the overall style and mood of the performers had little changed, Reilly in particular remains a master of his art, able to progress and experiment without making a big deal of it, and whose sound remains so unique still that almost any recording of it is worthwhile. Starting with the fine "Pauline," with an excellent viola line from Metcalfe helping to set the tone, Circuses and Bread doesn't radically advance Durutti so much as it codifies it further. One of his most wracked songs ever appears midway through -- "Royal Infirmary," whose combination of piano, trumpet, and gunfire almost seems like a reference to World War I, and which likely influenced similar efforts focusing on that conflict from Piano Magic and possibly even Mark Hollis. Reilly's singing in places is stronger than ever -- while still generally understated and subtle, there's less echo and a clearer, crisper recording quality. In his playing, there's slightly more of a willingness to try more common guitar approaches -- consider the strung-out solo on "Hilary," which while buried in the mix provides a near acid rock counterpoint to the usual crisp shimmer that's more upfront. Metcalfe's lines and string plucks add further fine drama, Mitchell is excellent and varied as always in his percussion approaches, and Kellet comes up with some real winners, like the mournful brass on "Street Fight." Concluding with some lengthy, exploratory tracks, including the minimal progression of "Black Horses" and "Blind Elevator Girl," Circuses and Bread is another Durutti highlight. In a curious footnote, however, it remains the sole Durutti album from the 1980s not reissued in the comprehensive late-'90s remastering/re-releasing program via Factory Once Records. Quite why this is the case remains unclear. ~ Ned Raggett