Still Sad After All These Years

Visceral reactions and valentines to pop found off the beaten path:

By the time London singer-songwriter Bob Wratten’s music was released on a U.S. record label last spring, his was a very practiced melancholy. Thankfully, for the songs his mood yielded, the gloom was not off the rose.

“Broken by Whispers” (Sub Pop), the third album by his group, Trembling Blue Stars, represented another of his stark studies in loss and longing, mostly directed at bandmate Annemari Davies, a former flame who not only fuels his songwriting fires but whose ethereal vocals pose an eerie contextual juxtaposition to her suitor’s confessionals.

What beauty this intrepid sadness allows. Wratten’s melodies are so simple they had to have been written before (hadn’t they?). His plaintive vocals blend into spare arrangements of strummed and jangling guitars, restrained electronics, loping bass and the skimpiest of percussion. When, in “She Just Couldn’t Stay,” Wratten asks, “Were we destined for a broken heart each?” he is a man with his heart on one sleeve and a ballad up the other.

Fans attracted to this brand (New Order, Joy Division) of pop would do well to trace Wratten’s lineage. TBS’ previous releases on the British Shinkansen label, “Her Handwriting” (1996) and “Lips That Taste of Tears” (1998), poignantly foreshadow “Whispers.” His mid-’90s project, Northern Picture Library, dabbled in ambient pop.

But the music that most demands another listen is the work Wratten did with his first band, the Field Mice, whose three-year existence (1988-91) was marked by incredible productivity.

“Where’d You Learn to Kiss That Way?” (1998, Shinkansen) collects 36 Field Mice songs, from sequencer-and-drum-machine ditties to loopy dance tunes to full-on rockers. Despite such gems as “Sensitive” and “September’s Not So Far Away,” the Field Mice never enjoyed more than modest indie success in Europe. The band broke up in 1991, ending its final live performance, appropriately, with the wan “The End of the Affair.”

Trembling Blue Stars, however, show no signs the end is near. With lineup changes including the addition of Beth Arzy (formerly of the Southland band Aberdeen), they plan a new release in 2001.

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Under the Radar is an occasional feature that touches on pop acts, music and minutiae that elude the spotlight. Kevin Bronson can be reached at kevin.bronson@latimes.com.