Hello, I’m Andy Orrick, putting the unorthodox in your inbox.

To today’s question…

Can art wear too much heart on its sleeve?

I love quiet, considered art that creeps up on you then hangs around like the morning mist on a January day. A portrait by Horst P Horst. “Spiegel im Spiegel” by Arvo Pärt. “Ida” by Paweł Pawlikowski. Graceful emotional power.

But I also love art that slaps you across the face and demands your opinion immediately. The stuff that comes into the world through chaotic, splenetic, emotional spasm, like “giving birth to a dancing star”, to borrow Nietzsche’s line. Art that is wild, unboundaried, one step away from confusion, destruction or bad taste. Art that wears almost too much heart on its sleeve.

This work tends to polarise the critics.

To some it’s unwatchable, unreadable, or unlistenable, but to others it’s life changing. It is not transmission from intellect-to-intellect, but from gut to gut.

Marc & the Mambas is pure gut to gut.

At least it was to the teenage me.

I was a thoughtful misfit teenager growing up in the footie-land of ‘70s and ‘80s Derby. Constantly writing, drawing, customising clothes, making album covers for mate’s bands, whilst surrounded by the emotionally repressive mono-culture of lads lads lads, permed mullets and casual racism. I craved worlds I could escape into which offered belonging. Worlds that, against the greyness of ‘70s and 80s Thatcherite Britain, brought emotional technicolour and a different poetry to the beautiful game.

Enter Marc & the Mambas.

“On the side, I’m doing a sort of off-beat lowlife sleazo disco thing with various friends,” said Marc Almond back in 1981 at the height of his Soft Cell “Tainted Love” and “Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret” fame.

Those various friends included piano supremo, Anni Hogan, post-punk artist Foetus, Matt Johnson of The The, various luminary musicians from the Guildhall, briefly Nick Cave in the Mamba’s spin-off incarnation , The Immaculate Consumptive (which lasted three days) and Robert Smith of The Cure lending (very) occasional song-writing skills.

The Mambas made two albums, both produced by Flood, barely out of short pants. The first was “Untitled”, in 1982, which Almond later referred to as, "the deluded ramblings of self-indulgence fuelled by too much acid". This picked up where Soft Cell left off, exploring sleazo disco and heartbreak, masochism and shame, loss and transcendence, but broadening the palette to include songs by Jacques Brel, Scott Walker, Syd Barrett and Lou Reed.

“Torment & Toreros”, recorded in 1983, was the Mamba’s second album and a different horned beast. It combined flamenco and electro, opera and jazz, musicals and new wave, the emotional kitchen sink and the contents of the cupboard beneath it. Alongside original material, the album included covers of songs by Jacques Brel (again), Georges Bizet and Joaquin Prieto. “Torment & Toreros” takes us into a world of queerness, Federico García Lorca, Carmen, Tom of Finland, toreadors, Soho hook-ups, masturbation, fear, fantasy, love and loss.

It showed me that masculinity came in forms other than Kevin Keegan. It held my hand and asked me to walk with my head held high.

ANOHNI, who made the re-staging of the 1983 album the centrepiece of her 2012 Meltdown Festival at London’s Southbank, said of “Torment & Toreros”, “...there was one record that changed my life forever and more than any other piece of art, determined the artist that I would become and the values that I would pursue. It not only educated me aesthetically, but in its power of example, it extolled the value of tremendous courage, the meaning of artistic sacrifice, and it affirmed that our feelings mattered even in an environment that might not give two shits. In a hostile environment it laid out the blueprint for me of how to emerge as a queen, at once heavily armoured and yet utterly, transcendentally vulnerable. 

“Torment & Toreros” wears an almost unbearable amount of heart on its sleeve, but in its courageous nakedness, offers both map and compass.

So, can art wear too much heart on its sleeve?

Sometimes too much heart is confronting and threatening. It claws at the tissue thin walls people build around their own vulnerability, the ultimate no-go.

Sometimes too much heart is, well, too much. It presents as overblown, impenetrable and self-indulgent, as Almond later reflected about “Untitled”. But I would hazard that he would rather have made the record than not , as it was a stepping stone to something else, “Torment & Toreros”.

Sometimes too much heart is the only thing on offer. It is beyond your control to do anything other. There’s no time for endless tweaking and crafting. You tune into source, let it all splurge out, then get it out there. And hope.

We will all have our own opinions here. I’m sure some of you will listen to Marc & the Mambas and think it’s not for you. And that’s okay.

But imagine a world without art like this.

Art that is vulnerable and through its vulnerability offers solace.

Art that is flawed and through its flaws offers hope.

Art that reaches for the transcendent and takes some of us there.

The world without art like this, is a world made in Canva.

Belong unconventionally,

Andy x

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HERE is a playlist to provide you gentle entry into Marc & the Mambas

HERE is a Quietus article about those involved in “Torment & Toreros”

HERE is Marc and the Mambas performing the single, “Black Heart” on Scottish TV. (“The Hair. The Hair”, to quote Colonel Kurtz.)

HERE is the Wikipedia entry (probably slightly wrong) for “Untitled”

HERE is the Wikipedia entry (probably slightly wronger) for “Torment & Toreros”.

TRIGGER WARNING: Marc & the Mambas explore themes upsetting for some readers and listeners, not least abusive relationships, sexual violence, prostitution and suicide. Go carefully friends.

I'm a creative, culture and strategy partner (usually a mix of all three) to artists, creatives, directors, founders, investors, therapists, academics, scientists, you name it. If you think I can help you, say hello…

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