By Eleni P. Austin
“I wanna crawl through your tunnel, I wanna get good and lost, I’ll pay you with my soul, if that”s what it costs, your perfume is my poison, I don’t know what else this is, I need to get another dose of the drug your kiss is.” That’s Steve Barton baring his soul and exhibiting some vulnerability on the title-track from his latest opus. In 2021, Steve released one of my very favorite records, Love + Destruction. Now, he’s returned with a new long-player, Time Hard Won.
Steve has been making music since childhood. A precocious kid, the Los Angeles native was fronting his first band, The Present Tense, before puberty hit. A couple years later, they actually recorded some demos for Curb Records. But when one bandmate’s dad refused to sign a record contract, the music remained unreleased. Rather quickly, The Present Tense was in the past.
Undeterred, he wound up playing the John Lennon part in a Beatles tribute group. They played everything from high schools and amusement parks, even touring Japan. Steve and Dave Scheff (Ringo) quickly bonded over shared musical obsessions and decided they would start their own band. Settling on the moniker Translator, they cycled through a few bass players before recruiting Dave’s Santa Cruz pal, Larry Decker. They lasted about six months as a Punky three-piece before poaching singer-songwriter/guitarist Robert Darlington from another local band. With the final puzzle piece in place, Translator’s signature sound quickly coalesced.
The L.A. club scene was thriving in the late ‘70s and Translator played all over town. But they really didn’t find their footing until they relocated to the Bay Area. Connecting with producer David Kahane, they recorded a demo that immediately received airplay on KUSF Radio. That brought them to the attention of Howie Klein. Howie not only hosted a show on KUSF, he also started his own label, 415 Records (pronounced “four-one-five,” the name referenced San Francisco’s area code, as well as a local law enforcement code for disturbing the peace).
Translator inked a deal with 415, who also snapped up other local sensations like Romeo Void, The Nuns, Pearl Harbour And The Explosions, The Offs and Wire Train. The band got down to business with producer David Kahane, and the result was their 1982 debut, Heartbeats And Triggers. Fortuitously, 415 had recently signed a distribution deal with Columbia Records, boosting the label’s profile exponentially.
The album’s first single, “Everywhere That I’m Not” immediately went into heavy rotation on up-and-coming New Wave (New Music/Alternative whatever) radio stations like KROQ in L.A. and 91.X in San Diego. They also received airplay on the burgeoning cable music station, MTV. The guitar-driven rocker certainly made an impression, especially sandwiched between Synth-Pop songs by English bands like Flock Of Seagulls, Soft Cell and Human League. It boasted an indelible hook, along with jangly guitars that echoed the Beatles and Byrds, but what sealed the deal was Steve’s idiosyncratic vocal delivery.
Translator went on to record three more albums, David Kahane produced 1983’s “No Time Like Now.” On both their self-titled 1985 effort and 1986’s Evening Of The Harvest, production chores were handled by Ed Stasium (Ramones, Talking Heads, The Dickies). Thanks to constant touring, the band cultivated a passionate following, but mainstream success remained elusive. The guys amicably called it quits in the late ‘80s.
At the tail end of the 20th century, Steve jump-started a solo career with his debut, The Boy Who Rode His Bike Around The World. In between solo efforts like Charm Offensive, Projector and Tall Tales And Alibis, he formed the band Oblivion Click, and still found the time to collaborate with Dave Scheff on New Blue World.
Translator managed to reunite periodically, most notably at the 2006 edition of South By Southwest (SXSW), as well as a sold-out show at Slim’s in San Francisco. A fifth record, Big Green Lawn arrived in 2012. Three years later, the band, along with Omnivore Recordings, assembled Sometimes People Forget, a collection of demos recorded between 1979 and 1985. Last year saw the release of Translator Live! The Farm, 12 July 1986. Now Steve is back with Time Hard Won.
The opening three tracks deftly display the breadth of Steve’s musical dexterity. “Off The Ground,” is anchored by stealthy upright bass notes, slippery guitar and ticklish percussion. Steve’s sepulchral vocals are perfectly suited to noirish lyrics that find him coming undone following a fractured romance: “Thoughts of madness linger with the good things, you wore a coat the color of the sky, you said if we try hard enough we’ll grow wings, and finally find a way to really fly, off the ground, if you don’t want me I won’t come around.” The tension rachets on the bridge as the instrumentation suddenly spontaneously combusts. As the dust clears, an rawboned guitar solo coils through the wreckage before powering down on a dime. Hoodoo keys and hints of Surf guitar usher this sonic smorgasbord to a close.
If Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground and the Talking Heads could ever conceive a musical lovechild, it might sound something like “She’s Your Ocean Now.” An insistent kick-drum beat is wed to tensile bass lines and strummy acoustic guitar riffs. Steve’s snarly vocal delivery is matched by lyrics that offer veiled praise for a beguiling femme fatale: “Feel the touch of her shadow like a map you can trust, it leads to her echo, to her mirror of dust/She’s guessing your secrets, she’s wearing your crown, she’s your ocean now and you just wanna drown.” Spiky electric guitar darts through the mix, revving and retreating, and tangling up blue on the break.
The action slows on “Everything Lasts Forever.” A majestic piano intro folds into bleating guitars, brittle bass and knockabout beat. Moody and melancholy lyrics drill down on the on the unrelenting ache that accompanies letting go: “I really thought there’d come a day these thoughts of you would fade away and dissipate into the mist, but time can only turn and twist, to reach your name, touch your flame, everything lasts forever.” On the break, guitars crackle with authority, unleashing a thin, wild, mercurial chord cluster that underlines the lyrical angst.
The best tracks here recall nervy, New Wave/Post Punk jangle that characterized Translator’s songs. “Any Anywhere” is powered by angular guitars, sinewy bass and a twitchy beat. Guitars hopscotch across a stripped-down melody as lyrics recognize a kindred spirit: “The sun falls on humanity, warms those ancient bones, walk the streets like zombies, scared of being alone, when I look in your eyes, the world’s not half as cruel, together we can fall and fly and try to rise and rise and rise.” The anthemic chorus doubles down on the sentiment: “I’d recognize you anywhere, I’d recognize you any, anywhere.” The tempo accelerates on the break, as bramble-thick riffs brush up against a staccato beat.
Conversely, “Ours And Ours Alone” wraps around the listener like a frayed denim jacket. Warm acoustic arpeggios cocoon Steve’s avuncular croon. The opening couplet should resonate for music obsessives: “Sit down by me on the beat-up couch, listen to the records that are blasting out, we knew every line through the end of the fade, we knew we were alive cause we felt so afraid.” Thready bass and a martial cadence kicks in, as lyrics spiral down a rabbit-hole of regret and recrimination: “People seem to measure every treasure like some painting, so afraid someone will take it all away, some things will be confessed, in the flood-in the harvest, in the place where I fall with you today.” Steve rips a surprisingly AOR-ish guitar solo on the break (light up your bic!), that is equal parts plaintive and willowy. As the track winds down, an epiphany of sorts emerges: “But our love is strong as bone, and it’s ours, and ours alone.”
Finally, on “Love Is Soul,” flick-o-the-wrist guitar licks collide with vroom-y power chords, concise bass lines and a stuttery beat. Steve’s vocals are imbued with a feral ferocity as cryptic lyrics search the subconscious for some emotional rescue: “In a trespass of dreams, with your face of broken stars the sights that wanna be seen, the nights that waltz in between, Oh-love is soul.” On the break, guitars toggle between lean and economical riffs and Psychedelic flights of fancy. The calibrated chaos crescendos with a strafing salvo of notes before winnowing down for the final verse and then launching into a cantilevered car-horn volley reminiscent of European air raid sirens.
Other interesting tracks include the ambitious “Top Of The Charts,” the tender “After Everywhere” and the mordant “Tie Me To The Tracks.” The record closes with the aforementioned title-track. Stately piano washes over quicksilver guitars, nimble bass lines and a barely-there beat. Passionate lyrics like “your love is like a diamond, it’s no fool’s gold at all, if you pull me to your universe, in you’re gravity I’ll fall” reveal a measure of vulnerability, allowing for this revelation to emerge: “One door slams shut, another lets you in, we whisper hallelujahs for every unforgivable sin.” It’s an intriguing finish to a quixotic record.
Steve co-produced the album with longtime compadre, Dave Scheff, who also handled drums and percussion. Steve played everything else, guitars, keys and bass.
Steve Barton never disappoints. Time Hard Won is by turns, wry, fractious, reflective, dissonant and tender. If your record collection includes Tom Waits, The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, The Band, Lou Reed and The Plimsouls, this album deserves a place in that stack.
