44. The Smiths – What Difference Does It Make? (Rough Trade)

9 weeks at number one from w/e 28th January 1984

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, despite their enviable string of hits, have not been given much respect in the UK. Besides belonging to the cohort of groups with bloody silly names which sound gimmicky rather than mysterious, they were fronted by ex-copper Dee; he may have been the first policeman on the scene of the car crash which killed Eddie Cochran, but other than that didn’t really ooze rock and roll. In every single one of his video performances online, he gives the impression of being the steady pop professional, delivering the songs of others with gentle, almost suppressed stage flourishes (he even cracks a whip in “Legend of Xanadu” like he’s trying to flick the residue of some treacle off his hand.)

The songwriters behind the group, Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard, were a different matter. Both were gay men who had worked with Joe Meek and penned songs which occasionally nudged and winked towards homosexual society for anyone paying enough attention. The Honeycombs 1964 flop single “Eyes” is a painful, agonised track about finding love in secret, shadowy places away from society’s gaze, combined with disordered pinging guitars and almost proto-post-punk pattering drum patterns. Meek adored it, the public begged to differ. Then, in 1968, they foisted the ominously titled “Last Night In Soho” on to DDBMT.

In typical fashion, “Last Night In Soho” isn’t explicit, but over a keening, grumbling cello, dramatic church organ flourishes and almost hysterical orchestrations, Dave Dee protests that he thought “I’d find strength to make me go straight”, “I’m just not worthy of you”, and “I’ve never told you of some things I’ve done I’m so ashamed of”. These, however, are coupled with the notion that something else happened in Soho that night which was criminal but not sexual; references are also made to a mysterious “little job” some lads in Soho have offered to Dave Dee, which he should take if he doesn’t want “aggravation” – but anyone waiting for the song’s conclusion to tell them exactly what the protagonist has done would be wasting their time. It is locked up tight as a mystery, a riddle wrapped in a lot of hand-wringing drama, though even in 1968 you have to wonder how anyone could have concluded that perhaps he held up a Post Office. The camp hysteria gives the game away by itself.

I’ve no idea if Morrissey was thinking about “Last Night In Soho” when he penned the lyrics for “What Difference Does It Make”. I somehow doubt it, but given his eclectic tastes in sixties pop, it’s possible. Whatever the facts, it falls back on the same narrative devices, teasing and riddling the listener, just less hysterically. It addresses an unknown other and begins on the line “All men have secrets and here is mine/ so let it be known” before failing to actually reveal the issue to the listener, only telling us the person the song is directed at, whom Morrissey would “leap in front of a flying bullet” for (why was he always so obsessed with sacrifice?) is now disgusted by his revelations. This is seen to be foolish - “Your prejudice won’t keep you warm tonight”, he warns. This feels, shall we say, similar, but there’s a different tone here. There is no begging for forgiveness, no shame; whatever will be will be.

Once again though, some plausible deniability creeps in and the idea is aired that Morrissey’s crime might actually be an arrestable offence by 1984’s standards – “I stole and lied and why?/ Because you asked me to!” The idea that this is just about something darkly illegal is also hinted at by the record’s sleeve, showing actor Terence Stamp cheerily holding up a chloroform patch; the still in question is from the film “The Collector”, in which Stamp’s character stalks and kidnaps an attractive female art student. There’s an alternative lyrical reading here which is altogether nastier than someone simply coming out of the closet, by the standards of any age.

43. Cocteau Twins - Sunburst and Snowblind (EP) (4AD)

One week at number one on w/e 21st January 1984

I currently live in a terraced house next door to some students, a situation which causes endless eye-rolling and sighs when I mention it to any locals. These are usually followed by comments along the lines of “What did you ever do to deserve that, eh?” and commiserations for my sleep deprivation and the inevitable vermin crawling through the walls.

In reality, I’ve been through three sets of student neighbours now and at worst, they’ve all been no more noisy than a family with small children. Only occasionally do sounds of loud music or conversation seep out of open windows in late Spring and early summer, and on one of these warm days in 2023, I was decluttering the front garden when I heard a familiar drone drifting my way. It was The Cocteau Twins, leaking gently into the June air outside, making Liz Fraser one of the first singers I heard when I started university in 1993 (as mentioned in the This Mortal Coil entry) and one of the earliest things I heard when I first bought a house next door to some students thirty whole years later.

There’s a neat linearity and consistency to this which suggests that the Cocteau Twins have some timeless boho/student quality about them, and while we shouldn’t trust anecdotal evidence – I honestly don’t believe most student digs in 2025 are humming to the sound of their work – it’s not unreasonable to suggest that they’ve largely resisted the winds of change. There are any number of acclaimed indie groups this decade whose sound could be, consciously or otherwise, described as having a debt to their ideas. By saying this, it’s not as if I’m offering a fresh viewpoint either; a quick look at the comments section of just about any of their YouTube videos will surface a ton of comments along the lines of “These guys invented dreampop/ shoegaze!” for anyone who couldn’t tell that just by using their ears and checking the copyright date.

So it was with this in mind that I cued this EP up, ready to give it a close listen and dissect it in a frothing way, hailing Fraser, Guthrie and Raymonde as prophets who understood the likely direction of alternative music far beyond the early edges of the eighties, when something strange happened. I realised that, in the context of the years running up to it, the individual components making up their sound aren’t as radical as you’d think. For the last six months now, as I’ve ploughed through weeks of indie chart listings, numerous groups have surfaced with hazy, out-of-focus guitar lines droning against deep Joy Division inspired bass lines. Within that early eighties lineage, the sounds on “Sunburst and Snowblind” are neither alien nor entirely fresh, just oddly aligned.

You can hear it in the low throbbing bass, the guitars obscured by aerosol mist, in Liz Fraser’s proud and emotive but vague psychedelic pronouncements; this is really just post-punk with a twist at this stage. For all the surprisingly familiarity, though, they share with The Smiths a technique and ability which combine to create something which sounds more confident and less fumbling than most of the work which preceded it, and in the process something much more strange and distinct.

Fraser’s commanding presence – she’s often written about as if she’s a frail waif warbling mystical spells, but these vocals are bold and precise – feels key here, but Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde were also prime contributors. Little was made of it at the time, but Simon is the son of the arranger Ivor Raymonde whose credits are splashed across numerous sixties singles from artists as varied as The Walker Brothers, Dusty Springfield, The Stylistics, Ken Dodd, and then rather more messy, scuzzy acts such as The Flies and Los Bravos, and the largely forgotten, melodramatic likes of Paul Slade.

Having a parent who played a key backroom role in music probably gave Simon Raymonde the confidence to pursue a living on his own artistic terms, but it’s hard to hear much of father Ivor’s influence in The Cocteau Twins work. His work usually consisted of either pin-point precise orchestrations or rough sixties rave ups (try on Los Bravos “Going Nowhere” for size) while, if anything, The Cocteau Twins specialised in what could be described as abstract smudginess – manipulating the studio to create imprecise waterlogged sounds the likes of Dusty Springfield would have rejected. If Ivor was the man wandering around the recording studio polishing everything until it shone, Simon’s (and Guthrie’s) default mode seemed to be pride in their vagueness, stomping pastel crayons over their canvas rather than creating airbrushed prettiness.