“Jesus”

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. 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYeFOWV1084