Back to Eberhard Schoener with the long-lost Complicated Ladies (1982)

From the all girls orchestra we move on, or grow up, to complicated ladies.

It's quite astonishing that something so good should be so lost, and I've said that so many times before already.

First of all, we all know the artist and I was stunned earlier by the quality of Time Square and it's concept-like apparent dedication to some unknown woman.  I could say the same about this album, which is sung by Israeli artist Esther Ofarim. On the discogs page for this record, which is here, some wonderful random German reviewer made a kind of metaphorical homage to the whole without ever making specific comments about the genre or the substance of the music, quite unscientifically poetically:

[to manus-von-alles], I agree with your comment or review from 2010/12/12. I'll try it my words. The LP "Complicated Ladies" is a "strange brew". A blue cover, blue lyrics, melancholic songs wonderfully interpreted by Esther Ofarim, and electronically accompanied (or dominated ?) by Eberhard Schoener. But, it is not a blues record [obviously!! -editor], because Esther is not like Etta James or Beth Hart and Schoener is more an academic electronic painter ("Klangmaler" or "Klangtupfer") than a deep-rooted blues musician. The spotting of sounds in the song "Ballerina" is an example for this. What's my impression after comparing three songs (Call the circus, Du, Radio On) of the LP with their counterparts published in YouTube ? The LP-versions are in the direction of electronic sound-studio experiments whereas the YouTube versions are more smooth, intimate and easier to digest. Reading Schoener's german notes on the inner sleeve you get to know that the production of the LP took 18 months. That's a long time "bang". Furthermore, in his notes Schoener gives some hints about the production process. In the beginning he had the famous voice and some mysterious nontraditional lyrics. Esther should be the interpreter. But melodies were missing. Schoener could fill this gap with experimental electronic "paintings". The result is a very idealistic interpretation of modern song material embedded in electronic patterns of sounds.

The actual information content is probably nil, but as an impressionistic review for, let's say, the old Rolling Stone Magazine, the really old Rolling Stone Magazine, I guess it works, because it sounds like so many useless reviews I read in my childhood that wound up disappointing me bitterly when I later found the music had nothing to do with what was so energetically said, as if the reviewer was more enamoured with their own words than the actual reviewed music (cf. the old mutantsounds blog).  I think I can sum it up better by saying it's art rock, like let's say Roxy Music or Kate Bush is generally considered art rock, but with European chamber music or classical music and electronic influences, plus here and there touches of jazz, but not much.  There are also, on the other hand, very radio-friendly commercial songs which as usual I call throwaway even though the record companies considered those the complete opposite, the radio gems (e.g., Radio On).  We can't really call this progressive because the odd chord changes, the dissonances, the interesting arrangements, the weird sounds and bizarre melodies, all those usual appurtenances are missing.

Consider first of all the ST song, which is so beautifully written and features some really marvellous lyrics, presumably originally a poem set to music (credited to this writer):





The gorgeous acoustic piano accompaniment is by Schoener, obviously, and note those ingenious chords he uses to transition after the verse and chorus.

A track called Einmal Nur features that same lovely piano with some very atmospheric synthesizer and electric guitar decorations in keeping with the art rock genre:





Again, there is no complicated songwriting here, but the result is quite interesting and goes far beyond the usual radio staple.