If you dig sexy, last tango, electro-pop, this is right up your rainy, misty, cobbled alley.
Silverman are an English duo, Anna Dennis and Martin Williams. Their promo material places them in the lineage of Cocteau Twins and Portished, but Silverman are no clone. Anna Dennis's vocals are breathy and insinuating as she prowls through the treacherous twists and reversals of her love-gone-wrong songs. Drums, trumpet, viola and acoustic and electric guitars add color and texture to the arrangements, but the real strength of Speed of Life Part 2 is its tightly focused sequence of seven painful and articulate songs about the breakdown of first love.
At 35 minutes, Speed of Life Part 2 is poignantly brief and displays an emotional control and economy that many more established artists could learn from. Perhaps to persuade us that CDs are really worth $18.99, a bone-headed, "all you can listen to" marketing approach has seized the industry. Sixty-minute, 24-song epics are now standard issue -- the CD equivalent of a vinyl-era double album. Silverman are more Nouvelle Cuisine. Instead of grossing us out with quantity, they leave us hungry for more.
Each song on this mini concept album explores a separate dark corner of a disintegrating love affair. The songs move from the abrupt death of an affair on "ctrl alt del", through denial and anger to acceptance on the closing, "nothing I do, nothing I say". The overall mood is dark, but none of the songs are whine-fests. Almost every track on Speed of Life Part 2 could be an alternative hit.
The album opens melodramatically with Martin Williams singing over a sparse trumpet and guitar, "You took our love into the basement, You put a bullet through its head". As the beat kicks in, Anna Dennis takes over: "Oh my life has seen a lot of change, I had a life before you, Now I must learn to live again, Oh my love has felt a lot of pain, I never loved before you, Will I ever love again"? The song closes on the couple's voices repeating in unison, "Show me a future one day at a time, it's only momentum that keeps me alive", establishing the theme of lovers trying to let go and regain their independence.
The six songs that follow trace the faltering aftermath: the backward looks, jealousies, obsessions, rages, resentments and mood-swings that precede recovery and/or re-addiction. On "secret baby", the female narrator describes parts of herself that "will never be", and repeats her desire to be, "(everybody wants to be) your secret baby". The song explores the unspoken, unfulfilled desires that background every relationship.
In "don't leave this world without me", Anna hints at the fulfillment of those desires as she lays a trail of sexual imagery: "baby tiger, eat me alive, tell me how I taste, do I taste alright?" over a sensuous groove. It could be a memory, a desire, a betrayal or a fantasy and it ends abruptly like a broken connection to be replaced by "eleven eleven", a drifting, gloomy ballad that swerves suddenly into a harsh outburst of rage, "fuck you, fuck me, fuck every fucking body". Anna Dennis rocks!
The CD closes with a trio of beautiful songs. "can I have my heart back please" is a hit waiting to happen: Uglyman dudes -- take note. "be beautiful" -- yeah. Silverman know how to write songs. "nothing I do, nothing I say" -- precisely. I've had this in my player for a week. It's an addictive, sexy, haunting record.
— 6 August 2002
