Sunday Synthpop Brunch: Dubstar

Over the course of five years and three albums, the British synthpop trio Dubstar had managed to accrue a decent (though uneven) measure of success with their beguiling swirl of lush pop styled music and sassy, occasionally jarring romantic lyrical concerns.

Formed in Newcastle in 1992 by ex-DJ Steve Hillier and guitarist Chris Wilkie, and later completed by their discovery of strikingly glamorous singer Sarah Blackwood, Dubstar spent a couple of years recording demos and knocking on doors before finally gaining the attention and backing of Food Records in early 1994.

In an inspired bit of casting, Food immediately paired their newly-signed trio up with super-producer Stephen Hague, whose impressive resume in the genre (OMD, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, New Order, later-era Siouxsie & The Banshees) appeared a suitable fit to the detailed, catchy tunes that synth programmer/songwriter Hillier had been cranking out since the band's formation. Going by the initial results of the collaboration, 1995' s Disgraceful, it turns out that Hague and Dubstar made for a perfect combination. Packed with shimmering, richly-produced pop goodness, Disgraceful became a sleeper smash: while it only grazed the lower end of the Top 30 on the U.K. albums chart, it launched a squad of singles up the Top 40 list over a period of months and eventually achieved gold sales status.

The first single from Disgraceful was also the most immediately-striking track on the album: the sublime ballad "Stars," which highlights Blackwood's sweetly angelic, layered vocals against a sumptuous, yearning background of string patches and processed breaks. An underrated classic of the form, "Stars" did manage to chart twice, once at #40 during it's initial release in the summer of 1995 and then again at #15 the following spring following the band's commercial breakthrough with "Not So Manic Now" (a cover song originally done by an obscure fellow techno-pop act called Brick Supply) and the slick, almost absurdly-catchy world pop of "Anywhere."

In the vein of such outwardly sunny/inwardly glum popsters as The Smiths and The Beautiful South, there was often an undercurrent of weary, admonishing cynicism in Dubstar's lyrics that was often masked by Blackwood's beautiful singing and the luscious production. A fine example of this approach is on the lazy reverie "Just A Girl She Said":

It's alright I'm just a girl she said,
Talk down to me and take me to bed,
I don't feel,
I don't think,
And I don't really matter at all ...
I'm a person who speaks,
I'm a person who thinks,
But you hope I'll forget as you ply me with drinks,
And you cannot buy me and you cannot use me,
But I know that you'll want to try

Pretty lacerating sentiments for what on the surface is such a pretty song, eh?

A remix-appended reissue of Disgraceful filled the product gap in mid 1996 (and gave the band another Top 30 hit with "Elevator Song") while Dubstar recorded what would become their sophomore effort: 1997's Goodbye.

Prefaced by the uptempo "No More Talk" (which itself kicked off with a sample of Yes' "Owner Of A Lonely Heart," of all things), Goodbye was to be a two-pronged success story: capitalizing on the success of Disgraceful on the homefront while also launching the band in America. To achieve this end, two versions of the album were released, the U.K. version an all-original effort and the American release a splicing of new material with singles released from Disgraceful with a couple of remixes for good measure.

Sadly, Goodbye failed to make any kind of waves in the States, but a bigger surprise was it's underperformance in the U.K.. While the new album was in many ways the equal of its predecessor with a more orchestral pop feel to the new songs (see the strangely-carnivalesque, midtempo confection "Wearchest" and the heartbreaking, atmospheric ballad "Ghost") and yielded three Top 40 singles, there was no breakaway hit to carry the band to that "next level" and and the album wound up with a disappointingly brief appearance at #18 on the U.K. albums chart before vanishing in a near-instant.

Spring of 2000 saw the release of Dubstar's last significant hit single, "I" (that is if you call a one-week flash onto the singles chart at #37 "significant") followed by the release of their third album best-of collection for Christmas 2004 has been the only release from the trio since.

According to the FAQ on the band's official website, Hillier moved onto writing and production roles (occasionally with help from Wilkie) with artists such as Mark Owen, Keane and Bebel Gilberto. Blackwood, however, soon found herself another high profile electro-pop gig, which we'll talk about in greater detail next week...