In order to fully appreciate this album (and you really do owe it to yourself), I would advise to start with Sloppy Jane's roots. Nothing especially taxing or time-consuming. A couple of concert videos would suffice. Something like Sloppy Jane contorting on the stage, with the lower part of her face covered in green paint, with her band engaging in various forms of insanity and whimsy. It is not so much experimental as juvenile and grating, and yet, in the midst of all that crankiness, lies a talent. It is embryonic and it comes in snippets and broken chords, but it is there. You lose the patience but face it: you can't look away. Now you are ready to listen to Madison.
And all of a sudden Sloppy Jane is the real deal. Because this album is so hauntingly, inescapably beautiful that you have to wonder why she had it all suppressed for so many years. Why it took a cave in West Virginia to show the world the extent of her adventurous songwriting. It is, roughly speaking, a transition from The Birthday Party to Boatman's Call.
The album was, indeed, recorded in a cave - with a full orchestra and a piano and the kind of intimate ambience that makes Madison such an unforgettable experience. Following the intriguing cacophony of "Overture", we plunge into the piano-based ballads, "Party Anthem" and "Jesus And Your Living Room Floor". It is a striking, uncompromising start, and the quality never really falters. Not everything works, and a certain dissonance sticks out like a sore thumb (also, I find the closing ballad a little feeble), but my quibbles are just that: quibbles. "Lullaby Formica" is an eerily pretty tune with evocative imagery. The title song mixes laughter, noise, music hall, gorgeous piano lines, effective singing and ends up evoking Kate Bush. The memorable "Wilt" is the most direct song here, and it rises to a beautiful anthemic climax. Still, "The Constable" is the best. The song just grows and swirls and floats and erupts and subsides. Could be my song of the year.
There is a rougher edge underneath it all, a certain sinister element to the proceedings, something slightly blasphemous and unsettling, but that is what great art does: it disturbs your senses, it makes you uncomfortable. What matters most, though, is that the music is excellent, and if all it took was for Sloppy Jane to turn into Sweet Jane, then so be it.
