This is the third album by Tom Hickox, and with each release, it’s harder and harder not to mumble the word ‘genius’ at some point. It’s certainly difficult to avoid it whilst talking about The Orchestra Of Stories, and for many reasons.
Hickox worked with the Chineke! Orchestra, Europe’s first majority black and ethnically diverse orchestra, on this record, along with Onyx Brass, and both give it such an expansive sound that it becomes arguably his most accomplished work to date.
It begins with the dramatic horns of ‘The Clairvoyant‘ (apparently inspired by inspired by a news story about a bereaved man conned out of his savings by a bogus psychic), and we are enticed by a stabbing piano motif that briefly recalls ‘A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours‘ from The Smiths‘ final album Strangeways Here We Come, though the rest of the song is perhaps more in line with the epic musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, most notably The Phantom Of The Opera, such is Hickox’s impressive baritone delivery (especially on the ominously delivered line “I’m the one for you“), though the strings here evoke images of the American Old West too.
After that, recent single ‘Chalk Hills‘ is two and a half minutes of whimsical beauty, the like of which Elliot Smith would have been proud, and focuses on a man lost in the canyons of the USA after his car breaks down (“I see you in my shadow, I see you in the clouds / I see you like a miracle in a holy fucking shroud / I look the other way (I look and look in vain) / I see you in a storm of driving horizontal rain“), and then the Oriental sounding ‘Game Show‘, which intersperses the irresistible melody of the chorus with news story vignettes about Donald Trump, his possible ’employment’ with Russia, and the latter country’s often alleged interference with the 2016 EU referendum. This album certainly cuts deep and it’s all the better for it.
That said, the charm of ‘The Shoemaker‘ is a sweet diversion, though it appears to be lamenting – and regretting – his rejection of somebody who offered their assistance in a time of need. ‘Roy And Eve‘ has an equally engaging refrain: “She’s my Kiss, my Mona Lisa / My Madame X, My own Olympia” and conveys what is conceivably the most uplifting moment on The Orchestra Of Stories.
The second half of the record is somewhat more sombre in feeling, with ‘Lament For The Lamentable Elected‘ sounding like if Nick Cave did an orchestral number as the theme tune to a James Bond film, whereas The Waterboys‘ enduring classic ‘The Whole Of The Moon‘ is stripped down for a more solemn version, though still beautiful and no less relatable than the original. In fact, only ‘The Failed Assassination Of Fidel Castro‘, with its jaunty ‘twee pop’ feel and repeated chorus of “You were mainlining my bloodstream, mainlining my bloodstream, mainlining my bloodstream“, resembles anything approaching a ‘sunny’ disposition.
After the affecting ‘Man On The High Road‘ brings to mind the late great Scott Walker, we finish with ‘The Port Quin Fishing Disaster‘, which is quite possibly one of the most downbeat album closers in the history of the long player. And I love that.
Tom Hickox has really surpassed himself with The Orchestra Of Stories. It’s an outstanding record. It’s out now through Family Tree Records.
