Vamberator - Age of Loneliness
Age of Loneliness, the vibrant, eclectic debut album from Vamberator, is out now on blue Vinyl LP, gold Compact Disc, or as a limited edition LP / CD bundle (until the end of February 2025) from Maracash Records. Age of Loneliness is also available as a digital download from Bandcamp, and streaming from Spotify and all major digital music platforms.
Age of Loneliness (Unifaun Productions / Maracash Records, January 2025) is the debut album from the magical funky hybrid that is Vamberator: the first new collaboration between surviving Shelleyan Orphan members, Jemaur Tayle and Boris Williams (The Cure), since the untimely passing of their longtime bandmate, Caroline Crawley in 2016. In July 2024, Jem Tayle described for the press his and Boris’s transition from Shelleyan Orphan to Vamberator:
“After Caroline’s passing, I had been offered the chance to make a solo album. I had been writing on and off without a focus, and not having someone to bounce off was new to me. Boris is family, and we have played together with Shelleyan Orphan live and in the studio on and off for years, so it felt very natural for us to work on this together. I am extremely fortunate to have a drummer of his calibre pounding out the rhythms on this album.”
Boris and Jem’s close relationship goes back to when Jemaur Tayle and Caroline Crawley were recording the second Shelleyan Orphan album, Century Flower (1989), for legendary indie label Rough Trade, with producer David M. Allen. At the same time, Boris Williams was recording with The Cure for their landmark album, Disintegration, also with Dave Allen as producer. The Cure became fans of Shelleyan Orphan, whom Robert Smith invited to join The Cure on tour. The two bands became firm friends on the ensuing Prayer Tour, with the final show ending with Shelleyan Orphan joining The Cure onstage for the extended improvised finale, ‘Forever’.
Both Boris and The Cure’s guitarist Pearl (née Porl) Thompson went on to play on Shelleyan Orphan’s third album, Humroot (1992), before Shelleyan Orphan effectively folded as a viable band, along with the Rough Trade label. In turn, Boris left The Cure in 1994, and with Caroline formed a new band, Babacar: also featuring Pearl Thompson, and Shelleyan Orphan bassist Roberto Soave. They were soon joined in the project by Jem Tayle and, following Thompson’s departure, Rob Steen, releasing the album Babacar in 1998. Jem, Caroline, and Boris remained close friends and family ever since, reuniting as Shelleyan Orphan for their final album, We Have Everything We Need (2008). Sadly, however, following a long illness, Caroline Crawley passed away in 2016. Days later, while on tour in Helsinki, The Cure dedicated ‘Last Dance’ to Caroline.
Age of Loneliness by Vamberator
The new Vamberator album’s highly anticipated physical release today (Friday 31 January) was preceded on Thursday with the premiere of the latest promo-single, ‘Imps’: a glorious, soulful, and unabashedly joyous indie pop-rock anthem, laden with riffs and hooks. The homespun DIY video, meanwhile, features Jem and Boris playing in their respective homes, between Bath, UK and the south of France.
‘Imps’ is the fourth promo single lifted from the Age of Loneliness album, following the widely acclaimed debut single, ‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps’; the 1970s New York soul and R&B-inspired ‘I Used to Be Lou Reed’; and the kooky-meets-spooky Halloween glam stomp of ‘Creature in My House’.
“…‘Imps’, and certainly ‘Age of Loneliness’ carries the weight and history culminated by and from both artists while lending a bit of their individual influences and talents to each track. But, there is something more at the core here. This is a fun track and video… a band having fun showing off their new song and showing how original it actually is. Radio friendly yet heavy on the ears, the hook is a monster and that monster loves to give hugs... amid memorable melody, ‘Imps’ feels like a lifetime in the span of a few minutes...”
– Ryan Martin, Jammerzine (USA)
“…‘Imps’ is the perfect taster for those who might want to get their hands on some physical proof that Vamberator actually exist. With a distinctly Britpop feel to it, complete with “yeah, yeah, yeah”s, it really belongs more on a breezy summers day rather than in a damp January...”
– Alan Rider, Outsideleft.com (UK)
Since the earliest Shelleyan Orphan recordings, c.1984, Jem Tayle has been known for his innovative, sophisticated arrangements. Vamberator continues that tradition, while taking things in untold new stylistic directions with Age of Loneliness. Jem and Boris are joined on the album by a raft of performers and instrumentalists, with Jem in the central role of songwriter, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist, performing lead vocals, guitars, bass, banjo, piano, synths and anything else the songs might call for. The songs are driven along and tethered together by Boris Williams’ highly musical, varied, and elegantly understated drums and percussion.
Bass duties on the album are shared by Jem Tayle, fellow Shelleyan Orphan collaborator Charlie Jones (also of Goldfrapp and The Cult, and previously Robert Plant / Page & Plant, Siouxsie Sioux, and Pearl Thompson’s Quietly Torn, among others), and Unifaun Productions label head, Max Marchini. The album takes full advantage of Tayle’s lavish string and horn arrangements, performed by Italy’s Archimia String Quartet, and by Joe Northwood (tenor sax), Joe Bentley (trumpet), and Pete Johnson and Angelo Conti (each on trombone); while oboe from Luca Etzi, and sitar from Rebecca Magri also make strong appearances. Songs are augmented by the rich, soulful backing vocals of Jo Nye, and the dulcet tones of Unifaun labelmate Annie Barbazza. Spoken word is delivered by both Ola Kot and Rocket Girl label founder Vinita Joshi; while both spoken and sung vocals feature from Jem and Boris’s goddaughter, Inky Crawley – daughter of Caroline.
Although only one song from the new Vamberator album is expressly written about Caroline Crawley (‘Zebra Butterfly Swallowtail’), both her presence and her absence are felt in equal measure across Age of Loneliness, which, as the title suggests, makes frequent reference to loss and loneliness. These themes manifest differently from song-to-song – from the passing of loved ones, to the isolation of growing older, or even the extinction of entire species. Loss of one’s own self-confidence and sense of identity have also been grappled with in the creation of the album, as Vamberator draws Jem out from the long shadow cast by his former Shelleyan Orphan co-creator.
At the same time, however, the title belies an album that is in fact filled with ebullient magic and wonder, and unrestrained joyful expression; just as it is also filled with monsters, beasts, creatures, donkeys, rhinos, rattling dogs, imps, wild things, vamberators, and animal serenaders. Far from the pastoral ‘chamber pop’ that Shelleyan Orphan became best known for, Vamberator more than lives up to its self-styled “magical funky hybrid” status. The project’s influences range from the smooth funk, soul, and R&B of Barry White or Marvin Gaye; to the art pop and glam rock of Lou Reed, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, or Roxy Music; to perhaps more expected points of reference for older Shelleyan Orphan fans, like Nick Drake, John Cale, or Tim Buckley. Elsewhere, threads are pulled from psychedelia, surrealism, pantomime, disco, hip-hop, indie pop, alternative rock, electronic dance, and Britpop… all rewoven into Vamberator’s own magical flying carpet.
“Being predictable is not an accusation one could level at Vamberator: Age of Loneliness is ambitious, and bold. Sometimes it goes over the top, but it’s forgivable, because instead of playing it safe, as musicians of their experience often do, Tayle and Williams have tested their limits here, and they’ve emerged victorious.”
– Christopher Nosnibor, Aural Aggravation (UK)
“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard an album so willing to follow its’ own peripatetic muse with no regard for maintaining equilibrium and unity... Tayle claimed that this time out he was going to let the individual songs lead him by the nose to wherever they needed to go. And this factor makes “Age Of Loneliness” a startling and delightful project from an artist whom we all thought we knew and had placed in a very specific little box. Only to have him rip the box to shreds as he escaped into the swirling night air with gales of laughter… Tayle has woven a tapestry of sound here that exalts human spirit and eschews deadening techniques like quantization and inhuman grids of sound. This was an album that instead, at this late stage of the game, dared to rebel against the straitjackets of conformity and “good taste.” Reveling instead in the messy and biological world we humans are always trying to deny.”
– Jim Donato, Post-Punk Monk (USA)
The diverse stylistic range showcased by the album stems partly from the songs being conceived individually at different times, rather than as part of one unifying album theme; and partly from Jem’s conscious effort not to stem the creative flow or direction of the songs as they began taking shape.
“I’ve really tried to let the songs do their own thing, in a strange way. I think I treated them very much like individual pieces. I didn’t think, ‘oh, this has got to fit with the album.’ I did, once I had them all together, I thought ‘God, do they fit?’, but I just thought, ‘no, they need to finish, they need to have their own journey without an interruption…”
The sheer breadth of Vamberator’s eclecticism is something Jem admits he probably couldn’t have explored to the same extent within Shelleyan Orphan.
“Working within Shelleyan Orphan had its confines, because you’re working with another person. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means that there are things that you might do that you had to hold back on, because you’ve both got to compromise and agree on things. And one of the things for me is that my whole musical life I’ve always been very eclectic… So, when I’m writing, there might be something like Barry White in there… It’s the same with Nick Drake. Whether it’s Marc Bolan or Marvin Gaye or anyone else, these are artists that become so ingrained… They’re individual things that attach to you, and as you get older, they end up becoming barnacles, and they’re just stuck to you and they’ll never go away... You’re not sitting there thinking, ‘right, now I’m gonna write a Barry White song… I’m gonna do a Barry White arrangement or a Marc Bolan guitar lick…’ It’s just an amalgamation; all that stuff is just coming out in your writing. And so, for this album, I didn’t want to put a hold on any of that. I just wanted to see what would happen if I just expressed that stuff on a musical level, without trying to sound like anything, but just letting it happen.”
In his latest interview for Record Collector Magazine’s February 2025 issue, Jem also spoke of Vamberator’s future.
“I’ve still got a lot of musical stuff left inside of me… It doesn’t have to be an old bloke of 63. I don’t feel that age, but I know that I am that age. There’s plenty of juice running through me so I want to use it.”
Age of Loneliness, the debut album from Vamberator, is out now on Vinyl LP, Compact Disc, or a limited LP / CD bundle (until 28 February) from Maracash Records; digital download from Bandcamp; and streaming from Spotify and all major digital music platforms.