A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.
My record collection
[328] Damon & Naomi - Playback Singers (CD)
Playback Singers was Damon & Naomi’s third album, released on Sub Pop in the US and Rykodisc in Europe. This is a rarity in the series (possibly unique) in being a studio album by one of the main acts that only appears once. That is because sadly, Playback Singers has never had a vinyl release (and I never got sent, or bought, a promo - although there is one on Discogs atm…).
Playback Singers was the first album Damon and Naomi recorded without Kramer at the helm, it was recorded in their home studio - they had initially been uncertain about the feasibility of that:
...when [Masaki] Batoh from Ghost first visited us, he stepped in the living room, clapped his hands to hear the echo and said, 'I want to record here!' At the time we thought it was a charming but unrealistic idea...
Damon Krukowski (subpop.com, 1998)
Everything on Playback Singers was played and recorded by Damon and/or Naomi in their living room “for an audience consisting solely of their cat (and even she mysteriously disappeared during the recording of the drum tracks)”.
The album has a new recording of In The Sun that had first appeared on their first post-Galaxie release Pierre Etoile although this time Naomi sings. It also has a cover of Ghost’s Awake in a Muddle and Tom Rapp’s Translucent Carriages the first encounters we have with acts that would play a significant part in Damon & Naomi’s progression,
The album’s title Playback Singers is a reference to the artists who perform the soundtrack in Indian cinema - they are never seen on the screen, having the actors lip-synch to the songs - but, unlike in western cinema, they are always credited which means that they are as much stars and household names as the on-screen talent.
On the promo website for the album Damon & Naomi wrote about listening to Indian music while making the album:
As our new album title might indicate, we have been listening to a lot of Indian movie music lately, especially from the 1950s and 60s -- there is a multi-volume history from EMI called "Play Back: the 50 Melodious Years," with enough melody for at least the entire century. Among the women singers perhaps we love Asha Bhosle best, and among the men Mahendra Kapoor. He is very suave. They sing duets on many tracks, including our most favorite soundtrack (with music by Ravi), "Gumrah." We asked a Hindi speaker what this title means, and he said, "Sadness." No wonder!
Sub Pop / Damon & Naomi website 1998
Here’s Mahendra Kapoor and Asha Bhosle singing while Sunil Dutt and Mala Sinha are on screen:
I have grown up watching Indian cinema, my mum was Anglo-Indian and raised in Calcutta/Kolkata until she moved to the UK when she was 20… although I must admit to only gaining an appreciation of it in my later adulthood.
Despite the many years of exposure I have barely scratched the surface of Indian cinema, but here’s one of my fave songs/performances, this is from the cracking 1956 crime thriller C.I.D. - it features actor Johnny Walker lip-synching to Mohammed Rafi and Kumkum lip-synching to Geeta Dutt
I’m not sure there is a great deal of Indian classical music influence on Playback Singers… except perhaps Naomi’s use of the Sruti box and Harmonium - I think when they played the 12 Bar in March 1997 Naomi brought her Sruti box, she then started bringing the Harmonium until that got replaced by the Nord keyboard.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/116
- Artist: Damon & Naomi
- Title: Playback Singers
- Format: CD
- Buy ‘Playback Singers’ on Bandcamp