And that’s the way the song starts, leaving a man-god hanging as an insistent but quiet guitar chisels rythmically in the background. All the more potent for the Scottish accent blunting the edges of the singer’s troubled voice.
“Is just a Spanish boy’s name”
And that’s the bit when the chisel breaks off a large bit of stone, and the artist looks to see if his/her aim was true, or whether it’s back to the starting block. It’s all good, and work on the song can continue - it’s the moment when there’s no turning back, this simple stone is changed and will end up as either art or rubble.
And that’s the point of this song - it’s momentum. Everything is relatively simple (including the opening declaration, which isn’t going to win any prizes for deductive logic, but will surely woo anyone with an drop of rock n’ roll in their veins), but each step takes you closer to the whole, to the point when the song ends and you think ‘yes’ as you reach for the rewind button (or should that be icon, these days).
There are, of course, different ways to approach any work of art, and there’ll be the snide souls who sniff archly at the big sound, at the celtic-ness of it all, spitting out names like Big Country, Simple Minds, and U2 as if they were universally accepted bywords for kitsch. Fuck’em. Take the better elements of those big sounding bands, and mix them with more credible (and usually American) sources like Iron and Wine or Bonnie Prince Billy, and you’ll start getting the picture.
Though it’s officially springtime, celebrating the sunshine I find myself paradoxically listeing to Paddy Casey’s Ancient Sorrow (rather than the more appropriate Sunnyside of the Street by the Pogues) - a song that, with a brave production that highlights the voices of Casey and the real foundation given by the soulful singing of Terry Sutton. It’s a song that manages to be profound because of the production and performance, rather than because of its banal lyrics.
What’s this got to do with Paul Brady? Well, that ancient sorrow tapped into by Casey and Sutton lives and breathes in Brady’s unmistakable voice. Listen to him sing his pre-Celtic Tiger immigrant songs - in particular Nothing but the same old story, or the majestic (and, once again, banal) Homes of Donegal - and you have a voice that conveys history and all the reasons we choose to sing the blues.
And, though it’s long since been snatched by the supermarket/dinner party moozak brigade thanks to its simple melody, his 1985 hit The Island is one of his finest moments (before you get all hot and bothered, that’s not to dismiss Hard Station, or his work with Andy Irvine).
A songwriter dismissed by many of his contemporaries for the twin sins of a) remaining silent during the Hunger Strikes protests, and b) selling songs for big bucks to stars like Tina Turner and Bonnie Raitt - sins from a small Island where Independence is sanctified but independent spirits are, more often than not, scorned.
The Island was a two-fingered risposte delivered in a honed, radio-friendly ballad that packs as political a punch as anything ever done by any of his more vocally flag-bearing peers (not looking at anyone in particular, Mr Moore). And it all rests on his voice, and that ancient sorrow we’re talking about. But, in this case it’s not just production and performance, with a set of lyrics that - taut as a tripwire - are anything but banal
Well I guess us plain folks dont see all the story
and I suppose this peace and love is just copping out
and I know that young boys dying in the ditches
is just what being free is all about
And all sung in a time when rebel songs were sung like hymns, but the notion of singing ‘we’ll make love to the sound of the Ocean’ outraged the theo-fascists.
This waltzing photograph of a song is hard to resist. Listening to it you’re brought in front of a scene pregnant with possibilities, and left to your own devices to make sense of it.
The setting is ‘a rooftop in Brooklyn, at one in the morning’. Everything is seen through this frame or filter. Brooklyn is one of those magical locations that has a weight to it that, for example, Swindon will never have. It’s not Manhattan and it is New York.
It’s one in the morning - perfectly legitimate, given that it’s the city that never sleeps, but it also gives the suggestion of the illicit, that this meeting may not be one to have in the light of day.
And what’s taking place at one in the morning? It’s up to you to paint the picture, as we’re never told. The subject to whom PJ is singing ’said something, really important’ - but we never find out who it is, or what was said. Ambiguity reigns.
Slouched hidden beside a fire-exit, Antony Hegarty looked neither courageous or a star, clutching his notebook and looking nervous as he waited for his driver to arrive. This was back in 2005, backstage at a festival in Italywhere Antony and the Johnsons were due to headline that night. He averted his gaze from all passers by - particularly those, like me, with press passes dangling. On this chance observation one word springs to mind to sum up this extraordinary singer - shy.
Shy, though, is the last word you’d use to describe this song - given that it confidently stakes out its territory using just Hegarty’s voice to start with. It’s a good minute before any other presence is allowed into this spacious sound, and even then it’s just a hint of feedback and menace from a suspense-laden guitar.
This is a real headturner. It’s got Hegarty’s lilting and lovely voice, but rather than those elegant and beautiful tunes that made up his Mercury Prize winning I am a bird now this is blues all the way.
There are plenty of taboos that have been broken and flaunted in rock - no-one would blink an eye if you sing fuck, shit, or bastard, but when someone sings
‘that pig took everything I had
that pig made me feel so bad
shake that pig out of the bush
now let’s give that pig a push’
You know you’re about to enter some dark, and shameful arena where the flesh battles with the spirit and the outcome is far from certain.
Accompanied by a vigilant bass, drums and a saxaphone, the song builds up around Hegarty’s voice. It’s a song you could imagine Tom Waits rasping through with abandon, but he’d never be able to match the effect that Hegarty’s quavering voice conjures up. It’s a voice that suggests fragility and innocence, and yet at the same time is rock solid.
Amongst the many half-baked explanations for Dublin band Something Happens’ inexplicable lack of global success, back in 1990, with the superb Stuck Together With God’s Glue is one that focusses entirely on lead singer Tom Dunne’s paisley shirt collection.
There may be some truth to it (take a look at the video below), but it’s an unfortunate theory, because the paisley shirts actually revealed a deeper truth. Something Happens were one of the bands that, in the ’90s, ushered in the ’60s’ most important conquests to Ireland - Sex and Pop.
The sexual revolution had passed the Republic by back in the ’60s, thanks to a Catholic-minded legislature that made sure that foreign filth like the pill remained foreign. It was only in 1979 that a bill was introduced allowing chemists to sell contraceptives, and even then only on the presentation of a doctor’s prescription certifying that the said items were for bona fide family planning purposes (not, God and Government forbid. for the purpose of pleasure!). A new bill, hotly contested by the hot and bothered, was introduced in 1985 allowing for the sale of condoms, by chemists, to adults.
In 1990’s economically depressed Dublin condoms were, as they say, a bit thin on the ground. And it’s against that background that the Happens’ second album came out - a potent mix of pop tunes marked by Ray Harman’s ‘electric’ guitar playing and Tom Dunne’s way with words. And while the album will be chiefly remembered for the hits ‘Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello,Hello (petrol)‘ - listed by the NME that year in their top fifty singles - and ‘Parachute‘ - a light hearted love song floating on a wing and a creaky metaphor, the song that keeps me coming back is The Devil in Miss Jones - the song that most aptly sums up this album driven by lust and catholic guilt.
The Happens were the first band to make me realise that having guitars on a track didn’t have to make it ‘heavy’, in fact - as with most of their songs - the opening chords here are giddily light. When the keyboards and lead guitar kick in seconds later it’s like an explosion of colour (back to the paisley shirts then) and the mood is good. You’d be hard put to realise that the song’s title is taken from / shared with a ’70s porn film, as opposed to the 1941 Oscar nominated The Devil and Miss Jones (directed by Sam Wood). But it is, and there’s the rub.
“From the guy at the back with love
to the girl up there
to the devil in miss Jones
even if I only stare”
The greatest things about this song (in no order of preference):
1) It has a melody so brilliant that they didn’t bother to have a sung chorus
2) The lyrics -always under-rated, perhaps because the band were always so tongue in cheek - are stunning. They managed to mix melancholy and frustration with a mischievous glint in the eye. Genius.
3) The song builds up to a rocking frenzy that Onan would be proud of - the song takes on the subject matter, and runs with it
4) Related to the above - this is the sound of tight band pushing and over-reaching. The rhythm section of Alan Byrne and Eamonn Ryan up the ante of the song perfectly to its logical conclusion.
Perhaps the best song on what is certainly one of the most under-rated albums ever.
(couldn’t find a video for it, unfortunately - so here’s the video for Hellox5 Petrol instead)
