*300 copies limited edition* Following 'The Sympathy Portal' LP, released earlier this year, 'The Neon Weeps Tonight' was similarly recorded during lockdown and released as a very limited CDr in early 2022 before its being mooted for this slightly edited reissue. This time comprising six compositions, it begins proceedings with Edward in a typically reflective mood that sometimes feels barbed as much as steeped in a yearning for times lost as melodic yet sombre keys assume a haunted quality before sidestepping into something more dramatic. It’s a grand entrance to an album that sways gracefully between what could perfectly soundtrack Lon Chaney’s timeless grand entrance as Masque of the Red Death in 1925’s 'Phantom of the Opera' or, conversely, a mission to the furthest reaches of space by a probe now straying off course.
As with most of the work Edward creates, swathes of melancholia are offset by his love of chasing comparatively more kosmische trails, machine-like rhythms, the odd burst of tempered noise and detours into, well, just about anything to prevent his craft from becoming staid. What’s striking is just how easily he can turn from the spacey and mantric electronics of, say, ‘Martian Sandstorm’ into the diffuse setting of its second part, ‘The Empath’. Everything sounds organic and almost as though he could tease so many disparate ideas into shape without breaking into much of a sweat. The very definition of a sonic alchemist, everything on this album points to an artist capable of conjuring gold from ingredients that in lesser hands would be akin to the very opposite.
Along the way, there are Residents-type circus sideshow jigs, folk-ish slants suggestive of a glade with faint traces of a bygone ritual having taken place there, what seem like foggy location recording snatches and, overtly, the presence of the strangest of strange times this was all recorded in. Along with Edward’s distinctive narrative, The Neon Weeps Tonight once again encapsulates everything he does so well. Moody yet prone to a dash of playfulness, every song adds up to something wholly stirring that not only commands attention but proves him to be one of the most inventive songwriters of the last few decades.
