A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Kill Laura - Cinnamon Brow (11 October 1992)

Buy this at Discogs

I had a question mark against this track when I first heard it and it probably owes its place more to the fact that it’s going onto a blog rather than an actual mixtape. I say that because a lot of the things which make Cinnamon Brow so appealing to me are the traits it shares with other, better tracks that are already on here.

With its strummed guitar, a bassline which rises and falls like a skateboarder navigating dips and rises in a road and watery waves of sound that pass over the listener like shades of consciousness, I found myself drawn towards Cinnamon Brow due to its resemblance to the fantastic Astronaut Blues by Whipping Boy.  Whereas that sounded like it was being beamed back to Earth from deep in the recesses of Outer Space, Cinnamon Brow comes across as its Earthbound brother.  Desperately scanning the skies while standing in the rain washed streets of the Warrington borough that the track is named after.  In those moments where vocalist Jane Weaver’s singing rises above a whisper, the desperation to escape is palpable.  The masterstroke is setting the band’s performance against the cocktail chatter mentioned by Peel as he cued the record up (the video did not come from his 11/10/92 BFBS show). The noise could either be the sheeplike residents of Cinnamon Brow going about their business, chatting incessantly and not noticing the wonder of the universe around them.  It could be the sound of Purgatory, the interference caused by ghosts and restlesss spirits with their endless conversation and declarations of penitence.  Do they make Cinnamon Brow a starting point for an ascent to Heaven or a stopping off point on the way to Hell?  Perhaps we’re there already and the chatter is every sapping office meeting or post last orders pub conversation all gathered up and going on outside Kill Laura’s bubble of concentration.  If they allow it to penetrate, their own thoughts and impulses for escape will become overwhelmed.   The fadeout shows both sounds battling for supremacy and no winner decided.
The material is so sketchy and yet the interpretations are limitless.  To pull that off is quite an achievement.  I’ve heard plenty of better tracks on John Peel shows as I’ve trawled through 1992 and yet this one will stay with me like a fragrance in the air, long after some of the other, more immediate thrills slip my mind.

Video courtesy of John Peel.