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January 2014
January 22, 2014
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January 19, 2014
There are no such things as coincidences.
Watching ‘About Time’ six days after my father died was probably not the best idea I ever had. But as we have agreed in the past: time travel and ghosts, what more do you need? Well, I suppose the ghosts bit doesn’t really come into it, though there is an argument to be made that the table tennis games in the movie are in fact essentially with a time traveling ghost. Or not. I hope I have not just ruined the movie for you.
One of the side effects of loss is that you become acutely aware of just how much it permeates so many books, songs and films. Love, loss and distance: the key ingredients of great Pop. Did Stephin Merritt say that first? Did I steal it from him? It has become one of those ideas and phrases that has come to feel so deeply personal I suspect it makes no difference who said it first. Nothing is new after all.
One of the highlights of ‘About Time’ for me was hearing Paul Buchanan’s magical ‘Mid Air’ again. That sounds faintly ridiculous when the record was released less than two years ago, yet such is the pace of things in these times that two years feels like a lifetime. I admit I enjoy the record more now, however. Perhaps May was the wrong time for such a beautifully bleak record. In the depth of January, suffused by my own tendrils of loss it makes much more sense.
By coincidence in the same week I noticed in my brothers’ old Hi-Fi magazine that a deluxe double CD reissue of The Blue Nile’s ‘A Walk Across The Rooftops’ had snuck out, also in 2012. It features the wonderful ‘I Love This Life’ single which I had never heard before and which Stephen also coincidentally mentioned to me when I saw him in Glasgow. And I say ‘coincidentally’ but really there are no coincidences are there? We construct these connections through our choices, conscious and sub-conscious. The world is really not that large or disconnected.
I recall that it was a big deal when ‘A Walk Across The Rooftops’ came out in that it was the first release on the label set up by fabled turntable manufacturer LINN. There were stories, were there not, that the album had been recorded as a means of testing those turntables in expensive Hi-Fi stores. Whether those stories were ever true I do not know and have no real interest in knowing now. What I do recall is that I probably listened to ‘Tinseltown In The Rain’ as much in 1984 as I did ‘Abandon Ship’ and that is some statement.
I was never very concerned with the notion of Hi-Fi though. Some people get very excited by it and will go to great lengths to talk about the sonic intricacies of equipment. I do not mind this one bit for everyone has their passion and their need to explain it in words. Needless to say I do not understand those words, but then who understands mine? In 1984 I would have played my 12” of ‘Tinseltown’ on an old Pioneer turntable hooked up to a cheap Rotel all-in-one system. Looking back I dread to think what it sounded like, but then I did not care in the slightest. All that mattered were the moments. They are all that matter still. Real and imagined.
Last week I downloaded ‘A Walk Across the Rooftops’ to my phone and listened to it again on a rare calm west coast of Scotland morning. It sounded glorious, as I always remember it doing. There was comfort in the crisp, spacious sound. Buchanan’s voice faintly tremulous and strained. Arran visible again in the distance with its mountains snow tipped and glinting. Lady Isle sitting low in the water like a newly surfaced submarine. Ailsa Craig in the other direction, just the same as it was when Keats visited. When we drove to the snowy Head of Afton with my mum she said she always loved to see the river flowing because it never stops, it just keeps going. I think I feel the same about islands and mountains.
Of course I neglected The Blue Nile after ‘A Walk Across The Rooftops’. By the time ‘Hats’ was released I was so wholeheartedly and delightedly in thrall to the whole cacophonous no-fi sound of the independent underground with its muffle-de-flumpess of flexi-discs and scratchy, tinny 7” singles that the very notion of a smoothly produced and highly polished sound was heresy itself. Nonsense of course, but when you are young and foolish* it is often the nonsense that matters the most.
Listened to now it has to be said that ‘Hats’ does sound wonderful and I am oddly thankful to my younger self for refusing to let myself in on this fact until now. The magic of unintentional deferred reward taken to extremes, perhaps. Whatever, I listen to ‘The Downtown Lights’ today and lose myself in numerous reveries of Glasgow, the only sizeable city I could see myself living in now; the only place in Scotland that could even possibly tempt me back. But then I think of Devon and I come back to my senses.
I know there are other Blue Nile records to be explored and I look forward to retrospectively discovering their delights at some point in the months ahead. A deluxe double disc reissue of ‘Peace At Last’ is due to hit the shelves at that start of March and I admit the thought of that thrills me as much as the new Be My Weapon** album due later that same month.
So time travel, cinema and Hi-Fi magazines: see where they can lead. What delightful connections have you forged yourselves recently?
*The delicious irony here is that when my ‘Young and Foolish’ collection of scribbly writings about Pop music was published in 1996 it was that line in The Blue Niles’ ‘Heatwave’ that I always thought of in connection with the title. It still is.
**In case you did not know, Be My Weapon is the new vehicle for David Freel, formerly of the always excellent and criminally underrated Swell. A new album is due on the Mollusc label at the end of March.
Like It Used To Be
who could be so brave to throw this winning hand away? Those words are a download link for the whole mix. Grab it before it self destructs.
A Sobering Thought (Just When One Was Needed) - The Lucksmiths (From 'First Frost
Come On, Come On - Cheap Trick (from 'In Color
Wander - the aquadolls (from 'Stoked On You' LP. Bandcamp)
Hot Dad Calendar - Cayetana (from 'Hot Dad Calendar' single. Bandcamp)
Five Weetbix And Toast - Bird Nest Roys (from 'Me Want Me Get Me Need Me Have Me Love' collection. YouTube)
What A Day - The Death Of Pop (from 'Two Thousand And Thirteen' LP. Bandcamp)
I Love This Life - The Blue Nile (available on the 'A Walk Across The Rooftops' double CD reissue. YouTube)
Clouds aside - School (Bandcamp)
You can't make me make up my mind - The Sun Days (Bandcamp)
Considering a Move to Sweden - Finnmark! (from 'We're Not Köping' EP. Bandcamp)
Kiwi - Just Handshakes (from 'Kiwi' 7" single. Bandcamp)
Husband House - Sneaky Feelings (available on 'Positively George Street
Take Her to the Pictures - Dinosaur Sanctuary (from 'A Public Toilet Told Me Nothing Gets Better' LP. Bandcamp)
Proto - Dios Mio (Bandcamp)
Like it Used To Be - The Hang Ups (from 'The Hang Ups' LP. Bandcamp)
Keep Your Feelings Locked Up - danmariska (from 'Bummer Songs' LP. Bandcamp)
Suffer and see - the girl with the replaceable head (from 'Cul-De-Sac' LP. Bandcamp)
Celtic (Who Wants To Live By Love Alone) - Hurrah! (available on 'The Sound Of Philadelphia
No Excalibur - Tele Novella (Bandcamp)
Pazzida - Watercolours (from 'Portals' LP. Bandcamp)
with beauty I walk