A Winter's Tale

All good things come to those who wait...

Once upon a time, there was a band named All About Eve.

I vividly remember my first exposure to them, courtesy of ITV’s much-loved (at least by me) music show The Chart Show. I watched it religiously, every Saturday morning. The format was gloriously simple: a succession of promo videos for newly released singles would be played, alongside the week’s best-sellers, with snippets of textual information about the songs and the originating bands appearing on-screen whilst the videos played. It can’t have cost ITV all that much, beyond PRS fees, and paying someone to come up with the blurb and someone else to edit it all together, so I was really sad when it finally bit the dust in the late 90s. During its decade-long existence, I had graduated from newborn music fan to obsessive 20-something; directly or indirectly the show had introduced me to a myriad of acts that might otherwise have taken me a lot longer to discover.

So it was with ‘The Eves’, as their dedicated fans always referred to them. On the weekend in question, I was watching with my usual mix of curiosity, disdain and delight when a song I hadn’t heard before came on: it was In The Clouds, from the band’s self-titled debut album. Billowing sheets (because “in the clouds”, see?) framed a suitably gothic-looking band, complete with a female singer with an incredibly striking voice. Since a childhood obsession with Kate Bush (and others, including the mightily-voiced Elkie Brooks and early HippyDave pin-up, Curved Air’s Sonja Kristina), I had always been a sucker for a powerful female vocalist. The memorable chorus, glued into my brain after just one listen, sealed the deal. After lunch, I was straight off to the local record store (Complete Discery, may it rest in peace) to snap up a copy of In The Clouds. Once at the shop, I discovered it was available in a few different formats, featuring different B-sides. Naturally, I picked them all up… and an obsession was born.

All About Eve were the first band I ever went to see play live (November 9th, 1987, at Nottingham’s infamous Rock City). I think it’s fair to say that my first live experience was a significant baptism, and the more time passed, the more gigs I could be found at. I saw the band more and more regularly, my fandom - no, my obsession, I’ll be perfectly frank here - growing with every show, with every new release. Along the way, All About Eve were probably my greatest teachers when it came to what it meant to be a fan of a band that, although successful, wasn’t so successful that it seemed somehow remote, untouchable. The Eves faithful celebrated the band’s successes as though they were our own, and we felt the disappointments equally as keenly.

So it was in 1990 when it became common knowledge that beloved guitarist Tim Bricheno had left the band, in apparently acrimonious circumstances. Like many other fans, I was bereft; I couldn’t conceive of the band without Tim’s muscular but nimble playing, and like many others I had nothing but admiration for his incredibly musical and memorable soloing. He was All About Eve’s Dave Gilmour, for lack of a better comparison. For a short time, I really did feel like it was all over, after only two fabulous records. However, Tim’s replacement, Marty Willson-Piper of The Church, proved more than up to the task - and if Marty’s style could hardly have been more different to Tim’s, he brought his own brand of magic to the band, who promptly served up two more incredible records. Tim’s departure and Marty’s arrival taught me not to be too quick to judge when it came to line-up changes, something that has eased the pain and provided some reassurance when other much loved bands have changed members over the years.

Sadly, as the saying goes, everything has to come to an end. In 1993, it seemed that it really was all over. The Eves had moved to MCA for their fourth album, the brilliant but misunderstood Ultraviolet, and when sales proved disappointing, the writing was on the wall (as it proved to be for MCA itself a little later). When it became clear that the band really had called it a day, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I entered a period of mourning; for quite some time I couldn’t even listen to the band’s records, because it just made me too sad. I had loved the Eves more passionately than all but a handful of other acts; I had grown up with them, literally and figuratively, and the loss of this band I had loved so very much, albeit for ultimately a fairly brief period, just a few years, truly was painful. This is, alas, what it means to be a fan sometimes. When the music touches you deeply enough, you invest a lot of yourself in what the band means to you, and it’s not just the music that matters, it’s the people, too. I was entirely too shy and introverted to ever say more than a few words to the Eves - I remember mumbling “hi” to vocalist Julianne, bassist Andy and Marty a few times in the later years; but they mattered, and continue to matter, to me in a way that is very difficult to describe.

Years passed, and the love that I had poured into all things Eve-related was spread around to favourites new and old. And then, in late 1999… news that All About Eve had re-formed to support old friends The Mission. I was disappointed to find I couldn’t actually get to the handful of shows the band had booked - only to be thrown for a complete loop when it transpired that the band had elected to tour in their own right, as an acoustic trio (sadly drummer Mark Price wasn’t to be involved). I went along to the first acoustic show at the Warwick Arts Centre with friends, trying not to build my hopes too high… but my heart was singing. I spent much of the next two hours crying helplessly in a delirium of delight and trying not to let my friends see just how emotionally compromised I was.

The band continued to tour their acoustic show, introducing more and more old favourites into the set, and I continued to attend, clocking up a ridiculous amount of shows, before finally deciding I could stand it no longer. I wanted to talk about the band, both to the converted and to new listeners; I wanted to shout about The Eves from the rooftops. So I recruited some new friends I’d made at the shows, nervously approached the band for their blessing… and a new fanzine, Ink & Second Sight (named for a lyric from early Eves favourite Calling Your Name) was born.

The next four years were a blur of highlights; having become involved with the band on this level meant a greater chance to indulge my passion for their music, but also enabled me to meet a huge number of appreciative and similarly besotted fans. Electric gigs arrived. Marty left, only for a gracious and excellent chap named Toni Haimi to join. My friends and I interviewed everyone, collected anecdotes and stories from them, and photographed them doing all sorts of endearingly daft stuff. New material started appearing in the set list. It was starting to feel like momentum was gathering again…

And then, once again, it was over. No need to analyse the reasons why; anyone involved in a group enterprise knows how difficult it can be to keep everyone on the same page, and what we laughingly call the music business had only become far more factionalised and cut-throat in the interim. Once again, I was bereft; and yet, somehow, this time it hurt less. I could still listen to their music, without the same degree of sadness that had left me incapable of doing so before. The band had taught me (again) the value of that old truism, it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

This was in 2005. Fast forward 18 years (I mean, really), and, unexpectedly, a new record is about to appear. No, not an All About Eve record - although, by all accounts, they had thought of using that name, however briefly. No; vocalist Julianne and her old bandmate, guitarist Tim Bricheno, had started writing together again. And although it may have taken some time, the songwriting partnership that had resulted in some of All About Eve’s finest songs - Martha’s Harbour, Scarlet, and numerous others, slowly began to show new green shoots of growth.

Having started to collaborate again after getting back in touch in order to get some of the band’s old material re-issued, Julianne and Tim found the joy in writing together once again. Lovely new songs named Keepsakes and Raindrops appeared on the ‘Best Of’ album, Keepsakes, and even after the re-issues appeared, the pair found it difficult to stop. Occasional songs would appear on YouTube, with long pauses in-between. I, and many other fans besides, watched patiently and hoped for more.

Finally, it seems, our patience is to be rewarded. Julianne and Tim - now placing themselves under the moniker Regan & Bricheno - have a full-length album almost ready to deliver. What delights - and surprises - it may contain is almost beyond imagining; time does strange and unexpected things to people (all of us included), so what new twists their forthcoming album might put on a long-established and much-loved songwriting partnership is tantalizingly difficult to predict.

However, and here is the nub of this fantastically long entry, the duo have elected to whet our appetites still further by releasing a seasonal single. I have resisted the urge to say ‘festive’ single here as frankly that word conjures a particular kind of vision to mind, and if you’re of a like mind to myself, it’s not a word to bandy around lightly. No; in the best All About Eve tradition, what Julianne and Tim have delivered is entirely appropriate to the season, but you won’t find a John Lewis Christmas here. This is something for the soul.

Their double A-side single, The Snows They Melt The Soonest and In The Bleak Midwinter, showcases two traditional songs in new clothing - or is it old clothing? Both songs are given a thoroughly modern and yet strangely timeless reading, the old packaging of traditional arrangements stripped away to reveal these songs in their most naked essence, illuminated by Tim’s spectral guitar and Julianne’s typically and effortlessly emotive vocals.

The words, and the performances, are imbued with that special kind of longing that this time of year draws out of us. As the trees shed their leaves, the waning sun’s last rays pick out shadows on the houses and draw light away across the fields, it’s easy to get drawn into quite profound feelings about the passage of time, especially loss. As the leaves shrivel and fall, so we are reminded of what we have lost also, and that we too are mortal and fragile things. These songs carry that same weight; their very fragility making them unexpectedly powerful. I was in absolute bits the first time I heard their take on In The Bleak Midwinter; a mix of the familiarity both of Julianne’s fabulously expressive voice and Tim’s guitar - which has returned, ghost-like, to haunt the darkening hours of the year with that same longing, that same heart-piercing quality of quiet sadness that it always possessed - and the elegant, wonderful beauty of the arrangement, mirroring the eerie stillness of winter days where the snow lies silent and undisturbed on the icy ground, and the stars wheel across the skies… The meditative reading of The Snows They Melt The Soonest holds the same quiet power, drawing every nuance of that sobering lyric out to swallow you whole, a surprisingly powerful memento mori of sorts. The darkness of these songs holds sadness and comfort in equal measure.

In short, what Julianne and Tim have delivered here is something very special indeed. You too can experience their power this week, as the single is released on the duo’s Bandcamp page this Friday, 1st December. If you’re an Eves devotee of old, then run - don’t walk - over to Bandcamp and treat yourself. If you’re not familiar with the Eves and want to hear something that made this jaded old hippy weep tears of desperate joy into his cup of tea, then you really should go and give these songs a listen.

You can find Regan & Bricheno’s Bandcamp page here: https://reganbricheno.bandcamp.com/

All good things come to those who wait, indeed. I really can’t wait for the album. In the meantime, this is an unexpected but enormously welcome Christmas present. Thanks, guys x