Skunk Anansie were a force of nature. The best-named band of the 1990s could tap into politically-inclined anger with all the feral fury of a thousand Rage Against The Machines, Skin's open-mouthed holler pinning you to the wall with exfoliating force. Yet she could also sing quite beautifully. Remember the gorgeous singles ‘Charity’ and ‘Brazen (Weep)?’ When the volume came down, Skin revealed that not only could she sing, but she could sing like a diva.
And now she bears this out to wondrous effect. Skunk Anansie no more, Skin has become a solo artist, and ‘Fleshwounds’ is a debut album of love songs that don't so much celebrate the emotion as mourn its passing. Recorded in two bursts - first in 2001, in Belgium, with producer David Kosten, and then a year later with Coldplay collaborator Ken Nelson - she wrote the record with her long-time writing partner Len Arran, other than ‘Lost Without You’ which was co-penned by Robbie Williams’ former musical partner, Guy Chambers. Musicians include Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie's guitarist), Cass (Skunk Anansie's bassist), and Ben Christophers on piano, while the trumpet on ‘You've Made Your Bed’ comes courtesy, believe it or not, of film director Mike Figgis. He blows a fine horn.
‘Fleshwounds’ is a truly great record that shows off a whole new depth to Skin. Its dissection of human relationships has a scalpel-like precision that renders it raw, open, quietly brutal and exquisitely sung. It is by far the best thing she has ever done.
"At the beginning of this project, my brief was to write songs, fairly traditional songs, made up of beautiful melodies and dark, searching lyrics," Skin says. "I suppose my biggest talent is lyric writing, and I really wanted to showcase that on this record. The songs of Skunk Anansie were very much about the world. This album is completely about me. It taps into an entirely new energy, and is very different to anything I have ever done before."
Skunk Anansie formed in London in 1994, at the very height of Britpop mania. They fitted into the indie-rock scene the way fat legs would into too-small shorts. Filed alongside Suede and Blur, they in fact had more in common with Asian Dub Foundation and Motörhead. Skin was everything your traditional pallid frontman wasn't. For starters, she was female. She was also bald, black and searingly intelligent. Magazine editors swooned: here, at last, was a pop star who could articulate, who could hold her own corner, who could do more than shake maracas.
Their first single, ‘Selling Jesus’, was pure musical armageddon, a temper tantrum of a song that set out their stall emphatically. Over the next six years, they would push themselves harder than The Spice Girls. "We worked harder than any pop band. We did endless promotion, played gigs almost every night, and we toured solidly. It was our decision, and it was the right one, because we knew that to get to the level we wanted, we had to do it that way. It was worth it, but it was also incredibly tiring."
They released three splenetic albums ‘Paranoid & Sunburnt’, ‘Stoosh’, and ‘Post Orgasmic Chill’ - each critically lauded and commercially successful, selling over 4 million copies across Europe. "I spent the whole of my twenties travelling the world with three great people, and I had an amazing time,” she remembers. But the work rate took its toll, ate them up and spat them out. By 2001, they'd exhausted themselves irrevocably.
"There was no one thing that contributed to the split," Skin says. "I suppose it was like a marriage. The chemistry had gone. I'd stopped enjoying myself and, unfortunately, it was no longer fun."
So Skin left, and did something she had hardly ever done throughout the previous seven years - she took some time off, got her head together, and gradually returned to songwriting and told herself, "There's no turning back. I'm starting again now, and I'm striving to create work of the very highest quality.
It's been a very difficult record to make," she admits. "The whole album is about the mental illness we call love, all its many facets and grey areas. In order to be happy in life, we put ourselves through some crazy predicaments, and I wanted to document all that. Every song revolves around three very particular relationships in my life. It's definitely a break-up album, and it helped me get a lot of things off my chest. I feel so much better now," she smiles, teeth blazing, "and I'm confident that it's my best work yet."
Her philosophy, she says, is to hold nothing back, and she hasn't. ‘Fleshwounds’ is a disarmingly honest piece of work. In its song titles alone: ‘Trashed’ (first single), ‘Lost Without You’, ‘The Trouble With Me’, Skin paints a picture that suggests she doesn't do happy very well. Maybe she doesn't. "My friends do tell me I'm very troubled," she says with an ironic smile. But its introspection makes it a wholly gripping affair. It's a dark record, yes, her voice laced with anguish, but these are beautifully sour love songs with all the love carved out of them. ‘Listen To Yourself’, with its throbbing bass and lyrics about "wet sheets", is as terrifying as a malaria fever, ‘Faithfulness’ is stark and arresting, and in the closing ‘Til Morning’, Skin sounds as fragile as bone china, as delicate as a tear.
‘Fleshwounds’ is the most heart-stopping collection of songs you'll hear all year.
Source: http://www.esounds.co.za/artists/s/skin/biog_skin.asp
