Even on The Associates’ most upbeat numbers (think Party Fears Two and Club Country), there was always a doleful, elegiac subtext in Billy MacKenzie’s contorted yet majestic vocals. But as his suicide in 1997 attested, melancholy wasn’t merely an affectation or posture. Like Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, the pain his vocal performances revealed was disturbingly real.
Beyond The Sun was collated from a cache of demos recorded for Nude prior to his death in January 1997 and came out nine months later after a protracted battle of wills between the record label (who initially wanted to release unheard songs alongside old Associates’ material) and MacKenzie’s estate. What eventually emerged was this 10-track collection with glossy post-production veneers provided by Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde and Pascal Gabriel. The ballads impress most. The title track is sombre but hauntingly uplifting while Nocturne VII possesses an august grandeur. Different again is the noir-esque Give It Time, with shades of Portishead in its jangly guitar tendrils. At The Edge Of The World is similarly moody while the frantically offbeat, Gypsies In A Restaurant, and Sour Jewel, with its mutant Motown backbeat, reflect MacKenzie’s stylistic idiosyncrasies. Twenty years on, Beyond The Sun’s lustre hasn’t dimmed. It remains an eloquent epitaph to a maverick genius.
