nixsight

The first time I heard a song by The Dears, it was accompanied by a charming, poignant, violent and cartoony video, and a tremendous amount of drama and authentic-feeling performance, which perfectly showcased the heartfelt vocal storytelling, and it pulled me into their perfect example of one of my favourite musical tropes – the dual-vocal male/female dialogue song, probably most famously represented by The Fairytale of New York, but with notable entries from Iggy Pop/Debbie Harry (I think), the girl from Lush and Jarvis Cocker, her out of Catatonia and the bloke from Space, PJ Harvey and Thom Yorke (or Nick Cave) and… well, there are loads. I already told you that I loved that sort of song…

And near as I could tell, that was how the band delivered nearly all of their songs… pretty female vocal/heartfelt male vocal… point/counterpoint… lovely.

So of course, as is always the case when you get your hopes up, when I eventually got hold of their two albums, “Gang Of Losers” and “No Cities Left”, I just couldn’t get into them. I didn’t get it… all the elements were there, but I just couldn’t find my way into the music. The one track that I knew, “22 – The Death Of All The Romance” still sounded as good, but I knew it too well by then, and so found it impossible to relate it to the rest of the album. This happens to me more and more often with albums these days, and I don’t think it’s just because albums aren’t as good or accessible as they used to be. I reckon it’s something to do with the haphazard way that I consume music these days… in the old vinyl days of hiding out in my bedroom, and more importantly, of not really being able to afford or have access to much music, every album I got a copy of was a treasured item, and would be played over and over until each lyric was learnt and each note stuck in my head. Even later on, when I got my first job and cds became more affordable, listening to new albums was a treat, and something to be pored over.

Now, though, even though money is tight, owning music is more about acquisition in the hope of grabbing moments to listen and hopefully get back some of that fleeting promise one saw on a late night, at some website or other, than about truly taking time to savour anything. So now, when I get a new album, it goes in the ipod shuffle, and hopefully the band has a distinct enough sound that when their songs come around in the playlist, I recognise individual styles, and get to know them that way.

The Dears albums just weren’t making an impact on me, though… like I said, all the parts were there, and for some reason I persisted, leaving the songs in the playlist as other artists fell away, and not really knowing why… and then I realised that one song kept sticking in my head above all the others, and shaping the mood and flavour of my imagination for whole chunks of each day. I have no idea why, but I had found my key to unlocking the potential of the albums that I must have realised was there for me all along.

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The Dears – You & I Are A Gang Of Losers

Once that song stuck in my head, all of the other songs made perfect sense.

This is in no way the first time I’ve needed a rosetta stone to decode an album or tv show or other media outlet before I could really understand it… The one I remember most clearly is my repeated attempts to enjoy the Gorillaz second album “Demon Days”, beyond all reasonable efforts on my part, right up until I got a really good listen to “Fire Coming Out Of A Monkey’s Head”.