Late Transmissions Starring Eve Quatermain – The Heart Wants What it Wants

Hughes’ work post-Dalek included playing with OMD and releasing three albums on CBS in a collaboration with singer Thomas Lang. He transitioned into a highly successful long-term career scoring TV & film (including “Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels” and US No.1 movie “The Bachelor.”) Skills upon which he has drawn for this act’s technicolor filmic sound.

But the undoubted star of this album is the incredible vocal talent of sensational discovery Eve Quartermain, late of London & New York, before finding herself back home in Liverpool. This torch-singing femme fatale combines angry power with cracked vulnerability and a noirish teasing fatalism – hers is the pounding heart of the album.

For fans of John Barry/ Scott Walker/ Dusty Springfield/ Orchestral 60s pop/ Portishead/ Massive Attack

THE TRACKS:

If ‘Avenging Angel’ is the prologue to the album’s loose narrative, then the track that follows, ‘The Heart Wants What It Wants’ feels like that moment where the screen stretches out to full cinemascope (video is HERE). Next comes ‘Lightning Never Strikes Twice’, the track they first teased for this project last year (with the video available to view HERE), shifting the rhythm into distinctly trip-hop territory.

A downpour of rain and traffic roar signals the start of “I Ruin Everything”, In which our protagonist is taking stock of her repeatedly calamitous situation. Side 1 concludes with “A Little Drop Of Poison”, a noirish tale of revenge with a touch of black humour.

Side 2 kicks off with the darkly playful tale, ‘I’m Done With London’. A good-time girl’s grim life story summed up in three verses, Sung with such bombastic aplomb by Eve it should be the opening track of a West End musical. It’s followed by ‘He’s An Unexploded Bomb’, a gritty account of escape from domestic violence, which sets the tragic tone for the final act to follow.

Eve’s fate continues downward as we visit the starker, more avant garde ‘At The Starlight Lounge.’ Our singer finds the demands of sex and money soon destroy her naive hopes and dreams. Her singing ignored except for lewd voyeurs, she’s forced to admit the other ‘girls make ten times what I make just for tits and shaking their ass.’

‘The Kiss That Kills’ – a lush brooding track exploring the eternal romantic clashes between genders, heralds the conclusion of this noir drama, culminating with the doomed extravagance of ‘What Went Wrong?’

‘She Finds Love Wherever She Can’ feels like an epilogue. Its baroque poignance tells of a lady alone in a high-rise with only her cat for company, memories of her past stirring nostalgic desire for the thrills of youth – an ageing woman desperate for a more glamorous, more romantic life.

Across these eleven tracks Late Transmissions have created a crossover album redolent of exquisite music from distant eras while still hitting hard with today’s issues. They’ve rediscovered that which is timeless in great pop music.