Not all is as it seems in pop tour de force Nitewreckage Alley Cat, London “I am a lady, a lady of Soho”, are the first words you hear tonight from Celine Hispiche. Both facts are incontrovertible, even in the gender-bending pop landscape inhabited by Nitewreckage, where nothing is quite as it seems.
Equally clear is that teaming up with Dave Ball “the man behind Marc Almond” (and the other half of Soft Cell) – his words, not mine – was a very smart move indeed.
Hispiche – the name is French, its owner possessed of a sensibility that has “Made in London” stamped all over it – brings a rich and varied CV: playwright, comic, burlesque dancer, to bear in a startling new persona that combines punk with music hall to create a pop tour de force, which despite its many diverse references, sounds quite unlike anything else.
“Take Your Money and Run”, the title track of Nitewreckage’s debut album, explodes with a furious kinetic energy, which is maintained with no loss of acceleration until it reaches its high-velocity conclusion. Recalling the bass-driven production of Sly and Robbie’s early Grace Jones recordings, “Solarcoaster” and “Popabawa”, both of which highlight Hispiche’s ear for a good lyric, continue to plough a rich eighties pop seam.
What was missing in a decade populated almost exclusively by male bandleaders, Phil Oakey, Boy George, Simon le Bon, and indeed Marc Almond, was Hispiche. She is a natural born leader whose on-stage fury is just about held in check by Ball’s economy. “You Want Some More?” she teases, Ian Dury in one of Poly Styrene’s gowns. Prowling behind her on the tiny stage are two functional dancers, in the style of the Human League: Bo and, clad in a tight black cocktail dress and high heels, Jonathan. (I warned you everything was not quite as it seemed.) And yet, after five minutes in the company of Nitewreckage, you expect nothing less.
In Hispiche, Ball has found the perfect mouthpiece for music he describes as “circuit bending” or “trying to make electronic instruments do what they are not meant to do”. He’s largely successful. Electronica has seldom been played with so much spin, and the band, Rik Mulhul (synths and programming) and Terry Neale (percussion) which delivers more than a few googlies is wonderful.
After a while, it is difficult to imagine the instruments on stage sounding any other way. Above a throbbing electronic bass that threatens to crack the floor wide open, Hispiche spits out the words to “Dirty Fingernails” as though she wants them nowhere near her.
It’s edge-of-the-seat stuff and quite glorious. If punk had retained its integrity into the 1980s, it would have sounded like this. It didn’t. So thank God for Nitewreckage, for allowing us to hitch a ride back to the future. Buckle up.
Take Your Money and Run by Nitewreckage is available now on CD and iTunes
