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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)

In Daniel Orozco’s brilliant short story Orientation, there’s a moment when - during an introduction to an office environment - the narrative slips into the startling:

“Anika Bloom sits in that cubicle. Last year, while reviewing quarterly reports in a meeting with Barry Hacker, Anika Bloom’s left palm began to bleed. She fell into a trance, stared into her hand,

and told Barry Hacker when and how his wife would die. We laughed it off. She was, after all, a new employee. But Barry Hacker’s wife is dead.”

I’ve kept the Killers at arms length until now, not entirely unimpressed by their wholesome keyboard flavoured rock, and annoyed at myself for endlessly humming the trite but mercilessly catchy ‘I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier’. Listening to When You Were Young, though, my ears picked up at the end of the first verse, as things went strange and the best line in recent pop history came out:

“He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman”

That line is the pop equivalent of Orozco’s story, flowing out of the song naturally but completely
out of place at the same time, for all the world like a threshold - inviting you into a skewed and
interesting world. On hearing it I was captured, as effectively as when in countless films a van
screeches up with its side door already sliding open to devour the caught-off guard protagonist to be bundled off to an uncertain fate (most shockingly used recently in Brian De Palma’s redacted - if
you’ve got the stomach for it).

All of which is to say that I’m hooked, despite the modest beginings of the song where
the rhythm section pounds along, grounded in a simple, determined, heart-quickening rutting beat, for all the world as if they were not the world’s quietest (in terms of behaviour) pop band but AC/DC kicking off a Friday night bar-room brawl. The warm fuzzy guitars and keyboards take off some of the edge, but only some, keeping it the right side of salvation.

If they’re tight, singer Brandon Flowers is loose, loose, so loose on this song - leaving
grand-canyon sized gaps for listeners to read between the lines in a tale that’s certainly about
temptation, may well be about sex (of a number of kinds) and profanity, and is coloured in with the
big broad American brushstrokes of devils and redemption, highways and hurricanes.

Like Orozco’s story, you feel like you’ve been given information, that you’re following the plot, but when you stop for a minute, it’s all too apparent that nothing is clear and the waters are muddied. Who, for example is the song being sung to? To the simplest of questions - is it adressed to a man or a woman? - there is no discernible answer (of course, if you watch Mtv you’ll be supplied with ready-made answers - but they’re imposed upon the song, rather than being integral).

It’s booming and anthemic, but in the best tradition of ‘big’ music it provides no answers, just a brilliant tune, great lines and ambiguities that are stadium-sized.