KEN FOREMAN is twisted around a steel mikestand, one glistening bead of sweat trickling slowly down his cheek.
'Lorelei' drenches a crammed Manchester University hall in remorse, as Foreman wrenches at its tormented lyric.
People seem uncomfortable with its intimacy.
'Lorelei' is Thrashing Doves at their most devastating and intimidating, a beautifully barren moment among the tracks of the Doves' second album, 'Trouble In The Home'.
In the spring of '87 Thrashing Doves released a startling debut album, 'Bedrock Vice'.
Maggie Thatcher voted for the band's most successful single, 'Beautiful Imbalance', on Saturday Superstore, while 'Jesus On The Payroll' (a lilting LP track) was adopted last summer as an unlikely Balearic Beat anthem.
These have been Thrashing Doves' ironic public accolades. But 'Bedrock Vice' was denied even a fraction of the critical acclaim it really deserved. Very late on a bitter evening in Manchester, the Doves sink deep into low chairs inside a deserted hotel bar. Ken, keyboard player Brian Foreman, guitarist Ian Button and percussion/piano player Kevin Sargent mull over their second album.
Trouble In The Home was actually obstructed by rent boys." begins Ken. "We wanted to work with Chris Thomas (producer). "Chris was producing Elton John's album when Elton got caught up in all the rent boy scandal. That really fucked him up, and put his record way behind schedule. "We waited, but Chris finally told us that he wouldn't have time to produce our album." Brian: "Eventually, we decided that we had enough confidence to co-produce our songs with Gavin (Triffids) Mackillop."
TROUBLE IN The Home' is versatile, dark humoured and eccentric. Thrashing Doves continue to fuse poisonous lyrics and sweet melodies with a flagrant disrespect for commercial compromise. escaping the obvious traps of both arena rock and translucent pop.
'Trouble In The Home' is perhaps even less immediately accessible than 'Bedrock Vice'.
"I hope that's true," muses Ken. "I don't want people to get everything on the first listen. I like records that creep up on you."
"We don't want our songs to be big, screaming statements," says Ian. "If you shout at people, they don't listen."
The album's web of contrasts also includes the meshing of hard, with unusually twee sounds: illustrated by their divine, but perverse. new single 'Angel Visit'.
"I like an element of quirkiness," says Ken. "It can be really effective. Look at the way Prince manipulates and distorts sound."
Meanwhile, the Foreman brothers obsessive penchant for nasty women still streams through almost every lyric.
"Maybe I am obsessed," concedes Ken. "Perhaps it's something from my upbringing. Some mother problem. . I dunno.
"Someone once asked me, Why are all your songs about sex, women and drugs? But what else is there to write about?
"These days, because of AIDS, everybody is expected to be pure and upright. It's very fashionable for people to view drug addiction, for example, as weakness. We like to look for the strength and the quality within that weakness."
"There's a line in one of the new songs, "Another Deadly Sunset", that goes, 'It's always so good to see you. Whatever shape you're in', really positive and uplifting."
There is an odd optimism within Thrashing Doves' sense of tragedy. 'Reprobates Hymn' (the first single from 'Trouble') is another obtrusive example.
"'Reprobates Hymn' is about someone's sense of loss," explains Brian. "We saw this TV show about this guy on death row in Atlanta. He claimed he was innocent, and he'd been appealing for years. The authorities that accused him of a murder he says he didn't commit told him that he was a reprobate and that he'd been abandoned by God. But he wasn't afraid to die, his attitude was, I'm innocent and on Judgement Day, I will be saved."
Where will Thrashing Doves be on Judgement Day?
"Stuck on the hard shoulder, half way up the M6," quips Kevin "With the driver saying. I'm not going any further till you say we're heavy metal!"