The Real Tuesday Weld
I, Lucifer
Six Degrees Records

"You fall. You don't rise again. The end." This final line of the spoken-word opening of I, Lucifer is an observation from the title character himself. The album serves as a soundtrack to Glen Duncan's book of the same title, in which Lucifer gets a shot at redemption from God. He is allowed to return to heaven, provided he can make it through a month on earth without sin.

Lucifer's observations of the human condition, even as he falls victim to corporeal pleasures, are sharp, critical and wryly humorous. Steven Coates, the modern-day boulevardier who is the Real Tuesday Weld, captures the character of Lucifer on the album, forgoing narrative and conflict. The result is a curious and often captivating hybrid of club music and '50s-era cabaret, "antique beat," as Coates calls it. His music describes the maddening inconsistency of love, its despair and euphoria, by drawing from many quarters — from dance-hall jazz; the fractured Tin Pan Alley deconstruction routinely in progress in a Tom Waits recording session; the basement night club hosting Serge Gainsbourg; even the turntable of King Kooba. Coates maneuvers deftly through these disparate influences, his lovelorn poet pose grandiose but not overdone. There's plenty here for earthbound romantics, but Coates' achievement is celestial: I, Lucifer eroticizes Lucifer's relationship with God.

Which is a bit facile; what Coates seems to respond to in Duncan's book is the Prince of Darkness' powerlessness in the face of earthly temptations. I, Lucifer re-creates this dilemma in its orchestrations, which are deft enough to express surrender to appetite, and then guilt and dread at one's transgressions, in the seamless space of a few minutes. And if the listener is responding empathically to Coates' creation, then it is our turbulent relationship to the divine that is the story of this album. That's a provocative position for a listener to assume, and a unique experience in today's popular music.

What's striking is that Coates manages this without choruses, bridges, orchestral swells or anything that might suggest momentum. The layering of instruments and vocals is discreet, and the vocal work by Coates and his guests is understated (Coates' delivery is right down the road from the half-sung, half-spoken contribution of Herb Albert to Burt Bacharach's "This Guy's in Love with You"). Thus, Coates' cinematic view of Duncan's story yields the music that unobtrusively accompanies Lucifer's journey.

The potent atmosphere is effective as a soundtrack, but there are moments that beg for crescendo — for example, "The Eternal Seduction of Eve." Coates fronts a hip-hop beat and languorous rhythm section, whispering (presumably as Lucifer) before the verse break: "I'm the figure of the edge of your dreams/ I'm waiting for you to notice me." What comes, instead of the dials being turned up a notch or two, is that a muted trumpet joins in. It's attractive but passive; that's true of the album, and one wonders if Coates is enamored of the tease at the expense of the payoff. Still, if this album is a great soundtrack to a film yet to be shot, mark your calendar for its release. The keyboards in "Eve" are immediately reminiscent of the inimitable Nino Rotas' score for 8 ½ — this song could be the incidental track for one of Fellini's many close-ups of the libidinous Carla (as interpreted by the voluptuous Sandra Milo). It's immediately seductive. It's possible Coates feels the same way; in "Easter Parade," he memorializes his choice of clothes for the title parade, singing, "You said, 'Seems like a still from some 1960s foreign film'/ I said, 'Hope I always feel this way.'"

What the album lacks in narrative and build, however, it more than makes up for in innovation, allure and wit, of which Coates has an endless supply. "Someday (Never)" lifts the melody from Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kerns' "The Way You Look Tonight" so that the Tiger Lilies' Martyn Jacques (playing the part of God) can be outfitted with a woozy accordion and meandering keyboard (see Frank's Wild Years for inspiration) and inform Lucifer that "someday you'll learn to pray/ but there's no way you're coming home." There's more than a passing reference to Sean Connery-era Bond in the brush-played drums, melancholic reeds and velvet vocals of guest singer Pinkie McLure in "One More Chance." The pinnacle of the set is "Bathtime in Clerkenwell," a concoction of impenetrable 1920s jazz scat vocals, a house beat and an array of sound effects that include bubble blowing and the clicking of a film projector. It was an unlikely dance hit in Great Britain, and praised by Fatboy Slim thusly: "This is fucking off-piste radio rental tip top well randy." Unfathomable praise, fitting for the song.

Coates' singular achievement with I, Lucifer is that his creation matches his ambition. The grab bag of sources he draws from to craft his songs coalesce effortlessly, the melodies linger in memory and there's not a song that doesn't deserve to be here. Finally, Coates manages to bottle the desires and appetites of Lucifer in his human form — in the novel, his hedonism is fierce and extends to sweets, sex and cocaine — and articulate them musically, not through the lyrics. I, Lucifer, for all its references to eras of tuxes, cigarette holders and sophistication, is supremely elemental. It's music for your id.

— Christopher Hickman (hickatz at mindspring dot com)