1974 - DOLL BY DOLL - Revenge Of Memory (2006)

DOLL BY DOLL
''REVENGE OF MEMORY''
LIVE
MAR 2006
39:01
COOKING VINIL RECORDS

1/Chances
Jackie Leven /6:06
2/Butcher Boy
Traditional /7:40
3/Janice
Jackie Leven /4:49
4/Sleeping Partners
Jackie Leven /6:54
5/More Than Human
Jackie Leven /6:05
6/The Palace of Love
Jackie Leven /7:27

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1973 - DOLL BY DOLL - Grand Passion (1982)

DOLL BY DOLL
''GRAND PASSION''
1982
43:53

1/Strong Hands
Jackie Leven /3:20
2/Under My Thumb
Mick Jagger / Keith Richards /2:30
3/Dancing Shoes
Jackie Leven /3:30
4/Cool Skies
Jackie Leven /3:48
5/Eternal
Jackie Leven /3:20
6/Lonely Kind of Snow
Jackie Leven /3:52
7/Natural
Jackie Leven /4:00
8/Grand Passion
Jackie Leven /3:43
9/City of Light
Jackie Leven /4:59
10/Dawn of the Rain Girls
Jackie Leven /3:13
11/Boxers Hit Harder When Women Are Around
Jackie Leven /3:47
12/So Long Kid
Jackie Leven /3:51

Graham Broad /Drums
Mel Collins /Saxophone
Tim Cross /Keyboards
John Field /Flute, Percussion
David Gilmour /Guitar
Jackie Leven /Guitar, Leader, Producer, Vocals
Tom Newman /Producer
Tom Norden /Bass
Maggie Riley /Vocals (Background)
Helen Turner /Keyboards, Vocals

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1972 - DOLL BY DOLL (1980)

DOLL BY DOLL
''DOLL BY DOLL''
1981
38:40

1/Figure It Out
Doll by Doll /3:33
2/Caritas
Doll by Doll /4:23
3/Soon New Life
Doll by Doll /3:31
4/Main Traveled Roads
Jackie Leven /4:00
5/Those in Peril
Doll by Doll /3:14
6/The Perfect Romance
Jackie Leven /3:18
7/Fantastic Sensation
Doll by Doll /2:41
8/I Never Saw the Movie
Doll by Doll /4:23
9/Up
Doll by Doll /4:13
10/A Bright Green Field
Doll by Doll /5:24

Rod Beddall /Accordion
Pete Gibson /Harmonica
Jackie Leven /Guitar, Producer, Vocals
David McIntosh /Drums, Marimba, Percussion, Vocals
Shellee Morris /Percussion
Susie O'List /Vocals
Jo Shaw /Guitar, Keyboards, Mandolin, Piano, Vocals
Tony Waite /Bass, Vocals
Geoff Westley /Piano

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1971 - DOLL BY DOLL - Gypsy Blood (1979)

DOLL BY DOLL
''GYPSY BLOOD''
1979
39:11

1/Teenage Lightning
Jackie Leven /2:40
2/Gypsy Blood
Jackie Leven /2:48
3/Stripshow
Jackie Leven /4:05
4/The Human Face
Antonin Artaud / Doll by Doll /5:04
5/Hey Sweetheart
Jackie Leven /4:52
6/Binary Fiction /3:29
7/Hell Games
Jackie Leven /3:57
8/Forbidden Worlds
Jackie Leven /4:09
9/Highland Rain
Jackie Leven /5:00
10/Endgame /2:02
11/When a Man Dies
Anna Akhmatova / Jackie Leven /1:05

B.J. Cole /Guitar, Guitar (Steel)
Jackie Leven /Guitar, Vocals
David McIntosh /Drums, Percussion, Vocals
Graham Preskett /Keyboards, Violin
Jo Shaw /Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals
Tony Waite /Bass, Vocals

REVIEW
by Thom Jurek The promise evidenced by Doll by Doll's Remember -- released earlier in 1979 -- is fully realized in Gypsy Blood. Fronted by vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist Jackie Leven, with new bassist Tony Waite (also the album's producer), Gypsy Blood is a big-sounding record; some of its tracks were deeply influenced by the production styles of both Phil Spector and Jack Nitszche. Musically, the soundboard is the same: big drums (David McIntosh) and guitars (Leven and Jo Shaw) up front with Leven's astonishing wide-ranging voice soaring over the entire proceedings. The songs, however, are shorter, and full of theatrical dynamics and near pathological passion. "Teenage Lightning" kicks off with the sound of snares and muddy tom-toms followed by silvery guitars riffs. Leven and Shaw sing in tandem with a purely harmonized classic '60s pop intro on the verses, when Leven explodes in the last couple of lines to push the entire band into some orgiastic pool of rock bliss (think Love crossed with Scott Walker) christened with a choir of female backing vocalists. The themes are pure rock romance: speed, cars, girls, attitude, and danger infect the track. The title cut follows; it's pure old-school (à la Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, and doo wop) rock & roll introduced by a jazzy Fender Rhodes line that could have been played by Georgie Fame at Ronnie Scott's. The "oooos" that commence barely prepare the listener for Leven's raw angry confessionalism: "I'll tell you this John boy, I'm not so green/I was married before I was 16 and/Rings on the finger of speed/I feel out of reach." The bridge is full of Rumi-esque poetry (or perhaps it's by Hâfez ranting about God and love) with crashing prog guitars knotting up the middle.
The track flows out into quiet briefly before you can catch your breath, only to be followed by one of the greatest rock ballads ever written, "Stripshow." With its surrealistic imagery of desolation and loneliness contrasted with the desire for new love asserting itself in the waste of midnight isolation, romance and the need for contact slide into the heart and take possession, as the song's protagonist sings to an absent yet achingly desired beloved. Layered fingerpicked electric and acoustic guitars carry the verse with power chords screaming in the bridge, as Leven's falsetto and baritone underscore his lines with authority (think Tim Buckley and Walker in the same throat), promise, and desperate hope: "When the stripshow was over/And the management had turned out the lights/Silent people had walked back into the night/I thought of you/Still living alone/I know they say that love is blind/But if your heart was touching mine/I'll give you something that you can't ignore/I'll give you something you've been searching for...." Sad men in leather, steel combs, switchblades, and the poetry of tragic French poet and madman Antonin Artaud weave themselves into faux doo wop as a love song asserts itself equally in "The Human Face." Leven brings in a gospel chorus to further confound the melody while extending it into sweet yet wailing instrumentation and choral voices on the line "And I know why Jesus wept" -- and the entire tune cracks open as a post-pop anthem. Celtic folk asserts itself gently (there is a sweetly singing fiddle in the background) with squalling open guitar chords and a drum thud, as the individual calls out from the field of self-destruction to be redeemed by love and love only. The side is carried out by the subtly haunting and gorgeous roots pop lullaby "Hey Sweetheart."
Lest you think you're in for sweetly crooned love songs alternated by the crunch of post-punk rhythmic and six-string excess throughout, side two screams out of the gate with the cracked guitar funk of "Binary Fiction" (written by Shaw). It's like a different band except for Leven's wildly vacillating vocals. "Hell Games" moves back only slightly to the rootsy glam punk and doo wop lyrics of side one. Its lyrics are pure busted-up fragmentation and dissolution. The melodic simplicity of "Forbidden Worlds" (a new kind of Scottish doo wop melding with '70s pop) quickly gives way to a riotous, raucous sonic whirlwind where drums vie with distorted guitars for dominance. But in Leven's voice, love is at the center of all chaos. "Highland Rain"'s traditional folk melody winds its way into a collapsing rockist sensibility. It's as if punk never happened, but rage has been given a different musical name. The apparent sweetness of the melody belies the orgy of violence at the center of the tune's lyric; restraint goes out the window and is given weight via Shaw's guitar solo and the ensuing dramatic twin-guitar rant all the way to the winds of hell. The beauty never disappears entirely, and Leven brings it back to the surface of the Earth with a weary return to the melody, scarred, bloodied, near death but somehow still standing to testify. This would be enough for most bands, but for Doll by Doll, there is yet another dimension: Shaw's "Endgame" is a brief acoustic ballad about insanity, unhealthy romantic obsession, and the death of feeling that foreshadows "When a Man Dies," a musical setting to the Anna Akhmatova poem. It whispers Gypsy Blood into a haunted, death-obsessed, and fractured silence, leaving the listener astonished, confounded, and completely hooked. Gypsy Blood was the great unsung classic of 1979 and is timeless in its tarnished yet insistent beauty and imagination.

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1970 - DOLL BY DOLL - Remember (1979)

DOLL BY DOLL
''REMEMBER''
1979
41:42

1/Butcher Boy
Jackie Leven/7:16
2/Chances
Jackie Leven/6:04
3/Sleeping Partners
Jackie Leven/7:01
4/More Than Human
Jackie Leven/5:46
5/Lose Myself
Joe Shaw/3:30
6/Janice
Jackie Leven/5:02
7/The Palace of Love
Jackie Leven/7:03

Jackie Leven /Guitar, Vocals
David McIntosh /Drums, Vocals
Jo Shaw /Fender Stratocaster, Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals
Robin Spreafico /Bass

BIOGRAPHY
by Thom Jurek
Doll by Doll were embroiled in contract nightmares throughout 1980, so the follow-up to their classic Gypsy Blood wasn't started until the beginning of 1981, and released on Magnet in the U.K. The band's personnel remained together throughout the ordeal, which had been exacerbated by some truly negative press for Gypsy Blood along with the band's utterly unhinged live shows being deemed too "rockist," to coin Pete Wylie's term. The self-titled album featured ten new cuts, and in many ways presented a new variation on their sound that revealed a new sense of aesthetic security. The mood here is laid-back, given one or two tracks, and focuses on Jackie Leven's strength as a writer of ballads. The knotty adventurousness of the previous two records -- where three or four melodic sources wove their way into a single tune, and where the presence of the guitar and drum attack stood in sharp contrast to the sweetness and authority of Leven's voice -- had given way to a more consistent lyric sensibility, one that stood completely outside the realms of post-punk and the new synthetically driven pop of the era. In fact, by 1981, Doll by Doll had become a conventional -- if utterly excellent -- rock band that could play mean pop tunes, but it was now Leven's band rather than a collective musical force, and the lack of chaos took away a bit from the group's presence. There are moments here, like the overdriven raucous sexual post-funk of "Caritas" and the majestic pathos-saturated suicide death wish rock of "The Perfect Romance," where the fiery passion from the band's previous records asserts itself. Mostly, however, this is the sound of a band falling apart, though Doll by Doll do so in a kind of beautifully optimistic and romantic way, as on tracks like "Soon New Life," where the handclapping roots rock sounds like Dion and Tim Buckley singing on a street corner, and the Springsteen-esque shuffle that becomes "Figure It Out" after a truly glorious intro.
Keyboards color a lot of the sound on Doll by Doll; guitars here are pinched, although ever present. Their sound is more atmospheric, less sonically present and forceful. There are some absolutely sublime moments here, however. The gorgeous single "Main Traveled Roads" unabashedly showcases Doll by Doll's Celtic roots more than anything they'd ever recorded. Over its four minutes, the track journeys as a folk song into sophisti-pop territory with Leven's falsetto finding its way into tight nooks and crannies and opening the lyrics to the broad light of morning. It becomes a rather conventional rock song with a Celtic melody as Leven begins to pull his poetic images out of shadows and bring them to the front of the stage to meet his vocal, and the band's gloriously ever-accelerating dynamic takes possession of the tune and paints its melancholy portrait with bright textures and sonics, until Leven carries the tune out with an acoustic guitar quoting from Japanese author Yukio Mishima: "Eternal is the warrior/Who finds beauty in his wounds." (Van Morrison would give his eyetooth to have written this baby.) The acoustically driven midtempo rocker "Those in Peril" is an oddity -- though a beautiful one -- that would have been more at home on one of Leven's solo albums from the 1990s. Travel, distance, and the journey to who knows where populate Leven's songs like lost travelers who continue to move simply to stay one step ahead of both their pasts and presents, only looking to the horizon as a tabula rasa for their desires. "I Never Saw the Movie" is compelling for its failure to realize its potential, and becomes a fascinating exercise in disintegration. It's still startlingly original, but aesthetically caught between two poles of unknown origin. It sounds, ultimately, like the balladeer and the rocker against the bandmembers, who follow, puzzled as to where Leven's heading. Jo Shaw's force as a guitarist and a backing vocalist is lost here, where it should have helped him bear the weight of the tune's lyrical excess. The album was also released in America -- the one and only Doll by Doll platter ever to land on a U.S. label. But it was just stuck in the bins and was quickly cut out. This was the band's true swan song, since Grand Passion was basically Leven's first solo record.

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