JW Farquhar — The Formal Female

‘The Formal Female’ is the work of a man alone with his bitterness after being spurned by a woman he’s spent all his money on.

JW Farquhar’s autobiographical sleeve notes inform us that at the time of recording in 1972 he “…had recently extracted [himself] from a 10 year marriage and the words from this experience fit the music”. These words tell a stereotypical story of demands for new cars and new dresses, of a female who asks for money, time and “everything”. Supposedly wanton requests are often highlighted throughout the first half of the album and, at its most bizarre, are metaphorically summed up when JW Farquhar enacts both sides of a conversation between a “Mr Q” and “the answer man” about ‘The Want Machine’ (“It wants… whatever you got… but most of all, what you have to get!”).

To exorcise himself of his conjugal demons, JW Farquhar sealed up his apartment, installed a home recording device and set about invoking this “rock opera”. All four of JW Farquhar’s tracks on his Teac recorder were fully armed – one with a drum machine and the other three with guitars – rhythm, lead and bass. Each instrument plays its respective part relentlessly across each song in this acidic tragedy, peppered with the occasional trill from live drums, sparse vocals and sad harmonica. The combination jams together to bring about a lean folk rock style with a dash of psychedelia (mainly thanks to the lead guitar’s constant noodling). The overall effect is that of a musician practicing at home, slavishly extending each embryonic riff over more bars than is perhaps needed as they lose themselves in solipsistic accompaniment. Unsurprisingly, the most affecting song is the shortest (at a mere six minutes) where the limitations of 4-track recording are more nimbly handled as the song’s palette is reduced to just vocals and an acoustic guitar. Here, JW puts on his best Dylan vocal style and switches from berating his wife to his “little girl” for “drinking gin” and “making sin”, finally asking in anger “is this how you pay us back?”

In re-releasing these recordings Shadoks Music has preserved a DIY effort of outsider music, and hopefully cheered up the afflicted Mr Farquhar at the same time.