Even his staunchest fans would admit that Dave Graney is something of a queer bird. With his penchant for archaic fashions and mannerisms, he seems quixotically at odds with the modern world. Despite this, his artistic persona also neatly encapsulates some of the key strategies of postmodernism, such as a playful artifice and ironic distance from his own creativity. Graney holds the real world at arm’s length, yet he is fascinated with current and historical pop culture.

His recorded work reflects this magpie approach in a way that can render it confusing to casual listeners, who find it hard to distinguish between the actor and the real person beneath the dandyish swagger. The way Graney has positioned himself as an anachronistic enigma has come at the expense of commercial success – even within the sphere of so-called “alternative” music. This is a shame, as Graney has produced a formidable body of work over the last three decades, his career punctuated by many highpoints from all his different incarnations.

From the thundering onslaught of The Moodists’ album Thirsty’s Calling (1984), to the widescreen epic of Night Of The Wolverine (1993), to last year’s critically feted Knock Yourself Out, it’s clear that Graney’s power as a writer has remained consistent over the years. This is by no means an easy feat. One only needs to look at Graney’s celebrated peer Nick Cave, whose increasingly hapless and desperate fumblings for relevance have sent his credibility plummeting in recent years. In contrast, the last decade has seen Graney’s muse in overdrive, releasing a steady stream of strong material. The formation of his own record label, Cockaigne, surely precipitated this artistic renaissance, allowing Graney the freedom to do as he pleases, regardless of commercial considerations.

Holed up in his suburban recording studio with his longtime partner and musical foil Clare Moore and a host of regular musical collaborators, Graney created the dark and moody masterpieces Heroic Blues (2001) and The Brother Who Lived (2003) in the early years of this decade. Both albums were perfectly crafted collections, so it comes as a bit of a surprise at first that he’d want to revisit them on Supermodified. The album contains four songs from Heroic Blues and a whopping 10 from Brother. In addition there are four previously unreleased tracks from the same era.

It’s a risk for any artist to re-interpret their own back catalogue, since most fans are inclined to view the original versions as definitive. On the other hand, by shifting the focus away from the content of the songs, Graney and Moore have been able to explore the subtleties of their arrangements more effectively. For years, the pair have been fascinated with creating something they dubbed the “smooth and sexy” sound – basically a mélange of different easy listing styles, such as smooth cocktail lounge funk, ’70s West Coast rock and adult contemporary pop sheen. What previously seemed like a playful subversion of degraded musical styles – those generally shunned by rock purists – has been warped into a muscular and super-charged 18 tracks that work seamlessly as a whole.

Remixing and re-recording vocals and instrumental backings means that songs like ‘All Our Friends Were Stars’ and ‘Midnight To Dawn’ bear very little resemblance to their original restrained settings. Structurally, many numbers are extended with instrumental passages or repeated refrains. In each case, it’s not merely the kind of remix a clever engineer might do, but a complete re-arrangement of a song’s constituent parts to imbue it with a whole new mood.

Ultimately, it is unlikely that Supermodified will be regarded as more than a footnote to the albums it draws upon, but as a stop-gap before Graney’s next batch of musical missives it’s more satisfying by far than that old stand-by: the live album.

by René Schaefer