Virgin Prunes

The Virgin Prunes, fronted by Gavin Friday (real name Fionan Hanvey), were formed in Dublin (Ireland) not as a musical group but as a theatrical collective. Music, which was initially abstract and violent, inspired by expressionist “scream” aesthetics and pagan Celtic performances, soon became the dominant element of their shows. Their early singles, Twenty Tens/ Revenge/ The Children Are Crying (Baby, 1981) and Moments and Mine/ In The Grey Light (Rough Trade, 1981), document those horror soundtracks, splintered around Friday’s wild vocal improvisations. While retaining their characteristic barbaric edge, that catastrophic music became somewhat more restrained, moving closer to folk and rock on A New Form Of Beauty (Rough Trade, 1982 - Mute, 2004), a multimedia project (three records in different formats, cassette, video, book, and performance). Influenced more by the Gothic than by industrial music (the two major strands of post-Sex Pistols underground), the Virgin Prunes specialized in dark and grotesque sarabandes, in morbid and macabre hallucinations of extreme psychological tension (Come To Daddy, Sad World, Beast), while still remaining unconsciously tied to the tradition of the bucolic bard (Sandpaper Lullaby, Sleep Fantasy, Slow Children). Their music is technically sparse, but of extreme inner force. Friday’s wild vocal acrobatics were both its voice and its subconscious.

The double 10" Heresie (Invitation Au Suicide, 1982 - Mute, 2004), rightly dedicated to the theme of madness, contains two suites, one recorded in the studio and one live. While the latter is simply a possessed ritual, a wild Walpurgis gallop existing for its own sake, the former is structured in seven movements that well represent their folk-psychedelic aesthetic.
The chaotic saraband of the second, longest movement is a pretext for staging the demonic gathering of Friday and company over a constant beat and assorted background noises—one of their preferred techniques—which degenerates further in the sixth movement, when Friday’s “psychedelic” vocal flourishes are left free to float into nothingness. The third movement recalls the acid folk of the Holy Modal Rounders, and the following one, along the same lines, contrasts Friday’s drunken singing with the mumbling of the piano. The finale, driven by a neurotic drumbeat, cut through by electronic drafts and distorted by a mechanically strummed guitar, is a crescendo of terror culminating in a coda of spasmodic screams. Across the suite, the Virgin Prunes demonstrate an astonishing ability to construct sinister, end-of-the-world atmospheres and then make them explode.
The era of experimentation was however coming to an end. Pagan Lovesong (Rough Trade, 1982), sung almost drooling over one of their grotesque rhythms and one of their Middle Eastern-inspired arrangements, even brought the Virgin Prunes into the disco circuit.

The avant-garde was definitively abandoned with If I Die I Die (Rough Trade, 1982 - Mute, 2004), a relatively well-arranged album and, above all, structured as real songs. The tracks are melodramatic mini-suites revealing historical debts to Genesis and King Crimson. Friday’s grandiose performances sound like a punk version of Peter Gabriel’s theatrical singing. The legacy of A New Form Of Beauty survives only in the nightmarish atmospheres of pure panic and existential coldness.
The gloomy medieval-ritual march of Ulakanakulot sets the tone for the album, with the tortured singing of its deranged bard over a mantra-like chorus. Sweethome Under White Clouds continues in the same vein, with a shrill muezzin-like chant over an obsessive Hare Krishna rhythm and the romantic lament of a jazz clarinet. The psychotic peak of the pantomime is Caucasian Walk, a burlesque Cossack dance turned into an obsessive witch’s sabbath. The ritual is completed by two concessions to disco: the Japanese ballet of Baby Turns Blue, functioning as a comic interlude in the tragedy, and the driving mystery play of Walls Of Jericho, which instead intensifies the atmosphere. The musical backdrop is faint but evocative, carefully constructed in rhythm while sparse in guitar interventions. Rite after rite, the Virgin Prunes transform from druids into jesters.
After parodying Bryan Ferry in the emphatic ballad Ballad Of The Man, Friday’s personal tour de force, already infused with Brechtian overtones, culminates in the labyrinth of guitar dissonance of Bau-dachong, worthy of Pere Ubu (the track containing the lyric that gives the album its title).

From that period also comes King Of Junk, a grotesque dance for pipe, witchy ululations, and Dadaist electronics that fuses folk, vaudeville, and theatre of the absurd, leaning toward the avant-rock of Pere Ubu.

After the masterpiece, however, the decline was rapid. The Moon Looked Down And Laughed (Touch And Go, 1986) contains only Love Lasts Forever, a driving guitar distortion warped by tape and strings that marks a return to anthropological song. Friday thus brings the project back to the cabaret from which it started, and at that point leaves the band.

Gavin Friday then started his solo career.