Don’t Wag Your Fingers at Them and Turn to Walk Away

So that Beautiful South song got me listening to the Housemartins again. (Ah, how Peter G and I loved London 0 Hull 4 when it came out! Where have you gone, Peter G?)

I’d forgotten how immediately ear-friendly they are – the high-energy bop-bop melodies, the chirping vocals, the always-welcome soul hues. To use a no-doubt-tired comparison, they’re like delicious sugarpacked candy: instantly exhilharating on first exposure, drawing a cry of more, more up out of your gut. After too much of them, though, your gut might get logy and your eyes might get glassy.

Still, I’ve been especially digging “Get Up Off Our Knees,” from, yes, London 0 Hull 4. For one thing it’s piano-based, with no guitar to speak of, which opens up a whole new refreshing set of textures, and gives the listener some room to breathe.

And singer Paul Heaton really makes his phrasing work for him in this one. Each verse starts off with two lines that are relatively languid in pace, but the last two lines of each verse crowd together all the syllables, allowing Heaton to deliver this one-two-three punch at the outset, which, well, packs a punch.

I also enjoy how he throws in some added low-budget dynamics by singing the third verse, um, softer. Maybe it’s a cheap trick, but it works.

• The Housemartins, “Get Up Off Our Knees” (buy here)

Weirdly, when the band put together their career-sum-up comp Now That’s What I Call Quite Good back in the late ’80s, “Get Up Off Our Knees” didn’t even make the cut.

Good Gosh A’mighty Now

Another pair of songs. Joy & pain, none of the former without the latter, enjoy it while you can because death waits, etc. And in the meantime, few things are as reliably pleasurable as an undulating bassline that keyboards & guitar & horns all circle around and rub up against as the spirit moves them.

• Swamp Dogg, “If I Die Tomorrow (I’ve Lived Tonight)” (buy here)
• Staple Singers, “Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-Na-Boom-Boom)” (buy here)

Let Me Show You to the Door

Two luscious songs that tell the same funny story, one as a soliloquy and the other as a two-hander. Briana Corrigan’s vocals in the Beautiful South song practically shove Dave Hemingway’s aside in more ways than one, which is of course fitting. And Jill Birt’s singing in the Triffids song comes off flattened, low-affect, which is of course fitting too.

• The Triffids, “Goodbye Little Boy” (buy here)
• The Beautiful South, “A Little Time” (buy here)

Young Folks

Found this in an old half-filled notebook. According to my notes the scene is Velvet on Queen East, on a Saturday night in April 2005. And for the record, I believe it was Jep who pointed out that it looked like the young folks were singing to the TV.

He stands in the almost-spotlight, both hands cupping the microphone, hunched forward with his knees bent so that he appears to be serenading the TV monitor, though he’s only concentrating on the words as they moult onscreen in time to the music. He’s doing Prince, “Purple Rain,” after a night full of mainstream metal – Zeppelin & Aerosmith & GnR – and he’s struggling with it a little bit, you can tell he’s never sung this one before. He’s young (23 years old, as he tells us out on the sidewalk later – he says his family moved to Canada 10 years ago after somebody started killing people in his neighbourhood in LA and his parents got freaked out & stayed freaked out even after the serial killer was caught & tried, so they fled to London, ON, where his father was from, and now he’s a young man living in Toronto and he says he likes it & doesn’t want to leave) and he’s got the hipster look down cold: ironic Twisted Sister T-shirt, low-riding frayed blue jeans, wispy asymmetrical hair that looks like its tufts have been carefully set in place, sideburns stretching down his face. But he’s charming, too, there’s a soft light of warmth & compassion around him. His name is Colin. As he sings the last note on each line he breaks into a broad smile, and maybe it’s just nerves or maybe he’s mugging for his friends, but it looks more like an unconscious reflex, a symptom of innocent delight in his own youth & skill & health, the same smile an amateur ballplayer might show after reaching first on a clear hit up the middle. Colin’s friend does the same thing, she has the same kind of smile when she’s up there herself, singing in her Jesus Rocks T-shirt and blue jeans, a fleshy bulge of belly visible between them. “This is for Jesus, because He rocks,” she says into the mic during the first notes of Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion.” “And fuck Eminem for sampling this, and fuck Puff Daddy for sampling Led Zeppelin.” She’s heavy and Colin is skinny and they’re only friends – he seems linked to another girl who watches cool & regal, taking the efforts of the entertainers as her due – but they share a guileless pleasure in each other and the world and their bodies.

Love Will Shine and Be Our Moon Above

• Fontella Bass, “Leave It in the Hands of Love” (buy here)

Her voice is big & commanding but also confident enough not to stand too far out in front of the band. She’s nestled back there in the mix, amid the horns, flanked by the bongos & the tambourine, so all of them come at you together & before you know it you’re in the middle of it yourself, you don’t know which side of you the bass is coming from. Not that it’s frantic (the guitar solo rises slow like smoke). Just cozy tight.