Monica's Last Prayer

Monica's Last Prayer

history

Monica’s Last Prayer began life in the early 1990s, as a side project for Paul Broome (guitarist with Goth band Earth Calling Angela). Several four-track demos were produced in the 90s which sold in moderate numbers, but were received with some acclaim. In 1996 Mick Mercer called Paul “a modern-day weeping equivalent to Nick Drake” in his book The Hex Files.

After working on several other projects in the early years of this century, Paul returned to Monica’s Last Prayer in 2004 – rearranging and re-recording some of the old four-track songs. The result was the album ‘Another Time’, released in January 2005 by Humane Music – a catalog of MLP’s history, and a gentle nudge toward the future.

The album received glowing reviews:

"...this lovely record, made available for a scandalously low £6 at Humane, is easily representative of the general quality of all Broome-related music, and you are at the start of some enchanting excavations. What comes next will be fascinating."

“…the future is looking very exciting… Paul’s voice is really strong… More of the same please! Recommend that you buy this and support a great independent artist!"

The next album, ‘Transparent’, (also released by Humane Music) was somewhat of a departure from the reverb-soaked reverie of that gone before, but in hindsight was a purely natural progression. It has its feet in similar edgy territory to the likes of late-era Depeche Mode and The Cure, but at the same time has a gentle poignancy that is uniquely Monica’s Last Prayer. “I wanted to write an album that reflected exactly how I feel about life, and the world we live it in. So it definitely has those dark moments of reflection – how can we live in the world we are living in right now and not have those moments? - but overall it’s an album full of hope and ambition”, says Paul. “What can I say? I’m a romantic tempered with streaks of reality”.

In 2007 Paul embarked on an ambitious project to write and record a new song every month, with the final twelve tracks going together to create the new Monica's Last Prayer album 'Prayerbook'.

The songs were reworked and re-mastered in June 2008, and the CD is now available from Dark Current Recordings.

Ancient History... The Origins of MLP (1993 to 1999)

Monica's Last Prayer is comprised of Paul Broome, and Paul Broome only (with the very occasional help of some of his friends). This is his MLP story...

The Phase One Motto: "The First Take Is The Final Take".

It all began back in the dying days of 1993. I was at University in Coventry. I had been a member of Earth Calling Angela for several months, had changed my name to Porl (you had to be there then, really... I also acquired the nickname Pebbles around this time - though fwumpbungle came much later), and impulses that I had never entertained before were jumping in my head (namely the impulse to start writing music). I was given a Tascam Porta-07 4-track as a Christmas present. I plugged in my battered old Squier Stratocaster, and started to record the noise... My driving desire was to produce music that was emotional, darkly moving, encompassing and primarily music that would sound good at night. (You see, I wasn't sleeping so well).

THE DARK CURRENT (Summer 1994)

The Dark Current was the first produce of my five year love affair with the 4-track. It was a reverb swathed experiment, with soaring guitars (at least that's how I imagined them!) and with multi-tracked vocals way down in the mix.

I wasn't sure how, and I wasn't sure why, but it worked. I liked it, and most of the people I played it to liked it. To be honest, it was an accident. A combination of sticking everything through the reverb channel on my Yamaha effects box while bouncing tracks down.

The final track list for the tape was: 'The Dark Current (dark mix)', 'Six Angels (farewell)', 'Ivory', and 'As A Dead Man Falling'. Two additional tracks ('Out Of The Light (excerpt)' and 'Ivory (bright version)') were tacked onto the end to round things out.

'Out Of The Light' was originally written to form part of the soundtrack for an independent 16mm vampire movie of the same name (being written and directed by friends), which unfortunately never got beyond the planning stages.

BY NIGHT (Winter 1994)

Following swift on the heels of The Dark Current and continuing the reverb-swathed theme, By Night was the ultimate incarnation of MLP "nachtmusik". It was also at this time that I discovered just how good the tambourine sound on my drum machine sounded when passed through that reverb channel - hence it's everywhere on these recordings!

This tape also featured what was probably the first attempt at more 'conventional songwriting' - 'Dionysus Arms' (which is also, to date, the only Monica's Last Prayer Christmas song).

More copies of this were circulated than The Dark Current - probably 40 as opposed to 20!

By Night track list: 'Mnemosyne', 'Psyche', 'Temperance', 'Dionysus Arms', 'Silver', 'Torn', 'Star Shine Sense'. The new version of 'Silver' which appears on the 'Another Time' CD is a completely different musical composition to the original - I just found that the lyrics fit the new music perfectly, so I swiped them. Recycling at its most basic!

And speaking of recycling, the closing instrumental track on By Night, 'Star Shine Sense', is actually the opening instrumental track, 'Mnemosyne', played backwards with a little bit of extra dressing added!

This six months having been somewhat productive, I had a few other tracks hanging around, so I decided to use the other side of the tape (hereafter referred to as "Side B") aswell. On this I placed so-called Abandoned and Unfulfilled Works. Namely: 'Angel Rain', 'A Theme For Pan', 'Obsession (fantasy mix)', 'Euphorion II' and 'For Her (raw mix)'.

Both 'A Theme For Pan' and 'For Her' were improvised instrumentals; 'Obsession' was an ill-advised acoustic folk attempt (one of the lines in the chorus went something like "Come dance with me beneath the moon...". I'll say no more); and 'Euphorion II' was an early attempt at a more industrial sound. But it was 'Angel Rain' (with it's crazy guitar chorus, and 'The Hunger' samples) that got most attention... especially in the ECA ranks!

DISTANT COMFORTS (Summer 1995)

It was at this point in both my life and music that I began to feel some confidence. The previous year had brought some heavy shit (as well as a lot of travel, which broadened my horizons somewhat). 1995 was the year I really begin to shovel it out. And this collection of songs helped with that.

The whole collection is thematic (another first!) it's about reflection, rose-tinted spectacles, the danger of living in past glories and the need to look forward not back.

I'm still really proud of this one, and considering that for all of these tapes my equipment list was thus: guitar (Squier Stratocaster), Bass (a black one), half-rack multi effects box (Yamaha FX550), drum machine (Boss Dr. Rhythm II), 4 track (Tascam Porta07), and microphone (Shure SM58) - the sound is still remarkably clear (even if a little out of tune). Ah, life without sequencers... both liberating and (now) scarey!

Distant Comforts also featured my first collaboration with new Earth Calling Angela buddy Ridley McIntyre (a partnership that would ultimately coagulate in the Burningdolls project), the pounding instrumental 'The Weir'. (I was living in Mountsorrel, Leicestershire at this point, having finished at University, and started my first job. The house I was renting with a colleague was situated by the canal (and next door to a pub - ahem), and by night you could clearly hear the weir pounding away (once the jukebox in the pub had stopped pounding away)...).

This was also the time when I began to get good feedback from critics and outsiders in general. Writing in his 'Goth Bible' The Hex Files (published in 1996 by Batsford), Mick Mercer had the following to say about Distant Comforts:

"...this third tape...is definitely worth getting, because it has a rarified atmosphere to what is gently lowing Goth-Wave influenced music. A sense of wistful detachment pervades the whole enterprise, which is skillfully realised and the playing matches the fine quality of the singing... I'd call it a modern-day weeping equivalent to Nick Drake, except Drake was far more of a depressing case."

The track list was: 'Comfort In Memories', '15th St NW', 'Imagination', 'The Weir', '(Writing On) Strangers', and 'Distant Comforts'.

UNDERGROUND (late 1996)

There are several reasons why there was such a long gap between the release of Distant Comforts and Underground. It wasn't that the praise from Mr. Mercer had gone to my head; although I was slightly worried about producing an inferior collection. Early 1996 was an excessively busy time for Earth Calling Angela, we had several gigs and in the Spring of that year we spent a week in the studio recording what was supposed to be our debut album for Alice In... Records, 'Reverence In Kind' (however due to an incompetent sound engineer the master tapes were unusable and the album was never released).

Also on June the 8th 1996 while out celebrating my birthday, our house in Coventry (I moved back there that year) was broken into and my 4-track was stolen... It took a while to get a replacement from the insurers.

Anyway in many ways Underground is my favourite MLP tape. It has more of a sense of humour than the others (albeit a bleak one), and the ideas just seem more 'developed'. Although the fetishistic overtones of some of the lyrics (particularly in 'Sighs & Blows') may be a little misguided in hindsight. (What a wonderful thing hindsight is).

The track list ran thus: 'Since First We Met', 'Underground', 'Swallow Me Whole', 'Sighs and Blows', '(In Conclusion)' and an unlisted cover of Adam Ant's 'Whip In My Valise'.

(And speaking of covers, there's also a not too bad MLP cover of 'Northern Sky' floating around somewhere... surprisingly, recorded before Mick Mercer's mention of Drake).

More favourable reviews greeted this tape, with much respected fanzine 'Naked Truth' running the following review in their seventh issue:

"... 'Underground' has five tracks of melancholic delights which remind me of the really sad songs on The Cure's 'Wish' album, and in certain places like Danse Society and musically like This Mortal Coil. Porl describes himself as a 'forlorn arch-angel' (Paul: an off the cusp remark I made in an interview elsewhere in the same issue of the fanzine - taken a little more seriously than I intended. I also called Miles a 'sexy lesser denizen of Hell' in the same interview... which just proves that I was reading too much Byron back then!), and indeed he is with a gorgeous atmospheric voice. This is music to relax to, to listen to in a dark room when you are feeling sad, an imperative way to cheer yourself up!... I find it very hard to pick favourite tracks from this demo, I like them all for different reasons 'Since First We Met' is sad and pretty; 'Underground' and 'Swallow Me Whole' have really good meaningful lyrics; 'Sighs & Blows' has excellent vocals and guitars, and 'In Conclusion' is a suiting instrumental end to an excellent demo."

BOUND & BEDRIDDEN (1997-98)

This is a strange one really, it doesn't seem to sit with the other tapes, and yet it does. It's full of different styles all fighting to be heard, and is a real indication of the new directions I wanted to head in - lots of them, and all at the same time. Some of the tracks were originally written to be a part of the Burningdolls project I was working on with Ridley, but never got around to using.

Industrial sounds are much more prevalent (in 'Landschaft IV' and 'P.S' in particular) - hinting at the material that would eventually surface as part of the Pyrrhic State Faction project. 'Perception' is a cover of a song by my old friend John McDonagh (also reinterpreted by The Machine in the Garden in the early 90s), 'Never Say Goodbye' is a more conventional MLP song, while 'Snake Pass' hints at the kind of direction I would take with Fluid Power Society. The first track 'Monica's Last Prayer' is a long (9m15s) through-composed instrumental, which was recorded as a kind of summation of the previous 4 years. I think it still works as such.

Track list: 'Monica's Last Prayer', 'Perception (used version)', 'Never Say Goodbye', 'Landschaft IV (Jesus In Me, Jesus In You)', 'Snake Pass', and 'P.S.'.

'P.S.' (aka: 'Paradigmatic Skeuomorph') features lyrics from Dave Hodder, which you would have to ask him to explain! (Although I do remember the gist of it).

Backing vocals on 'Perception' were improvised in one take by Ali.

I originally intended these tracks to be demos for the first album 'proper'. But that never came off (I probably shelved the idea after all the studio problems with ECA).

In fact (although I had no idea at the time) these were to prove the final new MLP tracks to be released for seven years.

In 1999 I started to work on the Fluid Power Society project with Giles Hearn and Natasha Blanco-Dominguez, and the Monica project was no longer a concern....

Actually, I probably did have some idea that I would be moving away from MLP at least for a while. As on the B-Side of the B&B recordings I compiled a brief MLP history.

This comprised of tracks from all the other tapes, and a new instrumental entitled 'Strange Girl' (which was originally called 'Shannon', I can't remember why I renamed it now - possibly something to do with embarrassment, or trying to protect the innocent).

And that was that, at least until well into the next decade...

All in all I learnt a lot, I agonised a lot, I exorcised a lot, and I wrote a hell of a lot. In fact, I wrote and recorded dozens of songs that I've never even played to anybody else. There are cassettes full of material, still waiting to be sifted through. When I get around to it, and if there's anything good enough - then maybe I'll stick some of that on here as well. Anyway, whatever the future holds: Phase 1 is over; Phase 2 is now well underway.

The Phase Two Motto: "God Bless Infinite Undo".

I'd like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to the following individuals, who all (in one way or another) made a contribution to 'the early days' (93-98) of Monica's Last Prayer (even if they didn't realise it at the time):

Miles Fender, Ridley McIntyre, John McDonagh, Shawnee Sequeira, Antony Weir, Cat, Roger Fracé, Rob Lee, Mick Mercer, Ali, Dave Hodder, Ian Mann, Kev Cooke, Stu Evans, Paul Cardno, Greg Anderson, James White, Nick DeWolfe, Pat Hastings, The Family Broome, roughly a dozen or so other 'interested parties', and Heather (who popped up briefly in the middle of all this, only to return with a vengeance at exactly the right time! xox).