Typewriter is effectively a pseudonym for London-based musician Mark Bandola. Bandola gained a modicum of success in the ‘80s with the Lucy Show, touring with R.E.M. and the Cocteau Twins, playing pretty straightforward jingle-jangle guitar pop. He seems to have drifted from project to project since, including guitar work for Ausgang. Skeleton Key is very much his baby however, and a funny looking one it is too.

There are 31 tracks on the album, many of which are 30-second sonic snippets. Bandola bounces from genre to genre with startling speed, adding more and more balls to his bizarre juggling act. There is no fusion between songs; they simply come to an abrupt end and the new one starts. It is eclecticism gone mad and it’s a mind-bend. In a bad way.

There is no theme or sense of evolution; the music simply darts from one thing to another in random fashion. Within a minute you are whisked from faint solo strumming to the high intensity grind of “Tyrants Destroyed”. Drum machines and electronic gizmos are used to full effect as Bandola deviates between Krautrock and psychedelia. Occasionally, as on the simple acoustica of “Charente Shortwave” or the slide guitar intro to “Lemmings Night Out”, I was engaged. But mostly I was frustrated and bored.

Whether it be the Xmas xylophone of “It’s Everything” or the wildlife backing noise of “Swaying Symphony II”, the overall effect felt a bit tacky and self-consciously experimental. Snatches of promising progressions were left undeveloped and the uninspired was cloaked in a torrent of electronica. But nothing was quite as terrible as the spoken word wankery of “Three Lesbians and a Baby”; I cannot even begin to describe the twee awfulness of it.

This conspicuous attempt at anarchy cannot disguise the fact that there are evidently “songs” trying to escape Skeleton Key‘s clumsy framework. “When Our Lost Lamb Returns”, “Damned for Sure”, and “Lemmings Night Out” are basically lightweight ‘80s rock songs, but amidst the electronica and ambience, they just sound … not retro, but dated.

A sprawling concept like this demands diamonds in the dust. The White Album was arguably the birth of this kind of hit-and-miss eclecticism, but for every “Honey Pie” and “Piggies” there was a “Blackbird” and “Happiness is a Warm Gun”. Skeleton Key‘s highlights are elusive and under-nourished. It feels like an artist bereft of inspiration, skimming between surface-ideas rather than trying to develop them.

There is an undeniable lack of direction, and this made all the more glaring by the fact that Bandola is obviously talented in the studio and a gifted guitarist. Indeed, much of the music is played with panache, although the vocals are weak and often submerged or distorted to camouflage their lack of charm.

It’s kind of tough being so harsh on a project which has obviously been lovingly assembled by someone committed to their music and there is much to be lauded in having sufficient courage of your convictions to release something yourself. Yet this cannot obscure the fact that this album defies recommendation; there is such a feeling of indulgence to Skeleton Key that I cannot fathom as to what the point of it was in the first place.