Waxing Nostalgic: The Bolshoi, “Books on the Bonfire”

By Jeffery X Martin

There was always an undercurrent of darkness beneath the neon veneer of the Eighties. We just weren’t sure how to label it. We had Gothic music, we had dark alternative, we had the beginnings of darkwave, but those left a pretty wide berth. We had to listen to music without necessarily putting a label on it.

I wish we did that more often, now.

We like to compartmentalize things, though, we humans, and that’s where British band The Bolshoi comes along to make things difficult. They absolutely lean towards the Gothic camp, with their heavy reverb and Echoplex effects turned up to eleven, but they don’t have the grand post-apocalyptic scope the genre is known for. Singer Travis Tanner can affect some stentorian tones, but he doesn’t sound like he just stumbled down from the Carpathians.

The Bolshoi’s first full length release, Friends (or Fiends, depending on what kind of mood you’re in), is a grim piece of work, but that shouldn’t stop you from mope-dancing to it.

Leadoff single “A Way,” with its earworm guitar hook and story of a life gone from bad to reprehensible is a sobering tune, made more enjoyable for the depths of depravity it sinks to. “Sunday Morning” rails against organized religion with creepiness and directness. Using a slightly out of tune keyboard, that sounds just like the old pianos that seem to sit off in the corner of every church basement, Tanner mournfully proclaims, “I don’t wanna do it anymore.”

The standout track on Friends is “Books on the Bonfire,” an exhilarating whirlpool of a song, that combines the feel of a haunted circus with lyrics that target the Religious Right and their proclivity towards publicly censoring things they privately believe to be all right. The imagery is evocative (“You can beat my brains, just don’t kiss me again”) and the self-loathing is heavy (“I’m a truculent bigot/I revel in scum”). It’s the opposite of happy, but catchy as SARS.

The rest of the album is more than fine, providing unique lyrical perspectives and music with just the right amount of dissonance. Listening to Friends provides a snapshot of a band ecstatic about being depressed. The album exercises a tremendous amount of control. It could have swung wildly, from style to style and mood to mood, but instead opts for giving The Bolshoi an unmistakable sound. Don’t confuse that with being easily labeled, though.

It’s okay to just be a band, without an accompanying label, and The Bolshoi was one of the best ones of the Eighties.

Listen to “Books on the Bonfire” and other songs from this series on our Waxing Nostalgic playlist, exclusively on Spotify! From the Sixties to the Nineties, hear some of the best, worst, and weirdest music out there!