49. New Order - Thieves Like Us (Factory)

 

One week at number one on w/e 12th May 1984

“And it’s called love… and it’s so uncool/ it’s called love/ and somehow it’s become unmentionable”

It's not unfair or cruel to point out that Bernard Sumner has never been an amazing lyricist. He’s written a pearly line or two on occasion, but I’ve always suspected that it was more by luck than judgement – most New Order songs succeed in connecting with listeners despite, not because of, their lyrics.

“Thieves Like Us” is an interesting case in that fans have bothered themselves online for years zooming into the somewhat vague lines I’ve quoted above. Why, in Bernard’s eyes, has love become “unmentionable”? This is a huge statement to make for a man who has told us elsewhere in the song that “Love is the cure for every evil”. Inevitably, some have interpreted this to mean that Sumner is talking about bigotry around homosexuality specifically here, particularly if you tie it neatly to the line “It belongs to everyone but us”. I like the idea of this, but the opening lines bear no relation at all and it’s always left me feeling unsatisfied, as if it’s a concept that people would like to be true rather than central to the song.

If we’re meant to find a statement in this song at all – and that’s a big debate in itself – I have to wonder if it’s actually, subconsciously or otherwise, about music, popular culture and post-punk cynicism and where we found ourselves in 1984 as the AIDS virus began to make itself known. Love songs and balladry have long been the staple of pop and rock music of all genres and hues, but for the entire time I've been keeping this blog, there’s been a surprising lack of them. Here in the undergrowth, we’ve been digging up tracks which are furious about war and the government, irritated by corruption and occasionally tickled by lust. Pick through every number one and you might find a couple of straightforward songs about love, but they’re usually from moments where an indie label was lucky enough to have a pop group on its roster bringing in the money (Depeche Mode, Yazoo) rather than The Birthday Party, The Red Guitars or Tom Robinson penning a song for a lover.

Even in the mainstream, something odd was creeping about in the creative waters, in that even the ballads were becoming ill-at-ease with themselves. “Every Breath You Take” is an obvious example from 1983, although Sting knew exactly what he was doing, pushing the obsession angle as hard as he could. There appeared to be no such playfulness about the single which was number one in the national charts when “Thieves Like Us” entered. “Hello” by Lionel Richie is a sickly, wispy, yet deadly little record, like being smothered with a chloroform pad by John Denver. Lyrically, Lionel is left crying for his life on top of lines like “You’re all I’ve ever wanted!” and “Are you somewhere feeling lonely or is someone loving you?” (you really need to do some research before getting in this deep over a stranger, old chap). 

Elsewhere in the charts throughout its reign, there were love songs, but all seemed to deal with a fracturing of romance (“Against All Odds” and “I Want To Break Free” being two serious contenders at this point). Much has been said about the music of the early to mid eighties cowering under nuclear paranoia, but I have to wonder if the overwrought nature of a lot of our love songs at that point also points towards something rather unhealthy.

If you want to believe that “Thieves Like Us” acts as New Order’s defence of straightforward love songs and is effectively their “Silly Love Songs” – and I’m not forcing you to – it does make more sense. The track is New Order celebrating romance without being dishonest or reaching for the darkest corner of the bedroom to sit cross-legged and weep. It’s not very poetic, but Sumner does a good job of selling it, stretching his vocals surprisingly effectively when required, seemingly having decided that detachment isn’t the answer here; after all, what he’s singing about is “uncool”, so he’s free to let go.

Elsewhere, the group are a powerhouse. Arthur Baker may have co-written this, but they forsake the electronic jitters and splutters of “Confusion” for something where live instrumentation and synths sit side by side comfortably. Hooky’s basslines slide and crash, guitars distort, and the keyboards manage to sound somehow chilly yet also celestial; it's love expressed from all angles, the dramatic, the angelic, the blissful and the darkly confusing. I’m a firm believer that most pop and rock songs don’t need to be more than four minutes long, and that often groups are just hammering ideas for the sake of ensuring their hooks are fully absorbed by radio listeners; “Thieves” doesn’t waste a second of its time, though, filling every part with drama and intrigue, occasionally recoiling to shadowy and moodier areas. It ends with a bogus “record slowing down” effect which miraculously manages to sound effective rather than gimmicky.

48. Cocteau Twins - Pearly Dewdrops Drops (4AD)

One week at number one on w/e 5th May 1984

When I recently scanned back though old press coverage of Cocteau Twins, I realised that my perception of their critical acclaim was shot full of holes. My memory suggested they were universally gushed over by rock journalists for their innovation and their enigmatic, mysterious songs; an airbrushed and simplistic version of the truth, as it turns out, probably gleaned from the more appreciative NME and Melody Maker coverage of my later teenage years.

While they were generally acclaimed, the early-to-mid eighties landscape in music journalism was a lot more confused and inconsistent than that, featuring writers who had cut their teeth during the “punk rock wars”. Most disapproved of anything which might seem even remotely like a retrograde step back into stoned hippy “atmospheres” or spangly psychedelia. “How dare we sit around burning joss sticks and smoking dope while THATCHER is in power?” seemed to be the central crux to many of these arguments, to which the answer (always, whether the individual is Thatcher, Reagan, Blair, Trump or even Hitler) should be: well, why not, at least occasionally? Should we stop eating ice cream and tending beautiful flowerbeds in our parks and gardens while we’re at it? Are those also distractions put in place by The Man to quell the possible revolution? Is it an act of treachery to appreciate beautiful things when we can get them?

There were also others who felt that the group were miscast; a flimsy New Age noise slyly rebadged as something more revolutionary than that. Across the water, the US critic Robert Christgau was typically brashly dismissive on this front - “Harold Budd records in their studio,” he exclaimed in outrage as his opening “need I say more?” salvo, before eventually underlining the key point: “These faeries are in the aura business. So what are they doing on the alternative rock charts? Ever hear the one about being so open-minded that when you lay down to sleep your brains fall out?”

I strongly suspect, whether any journalist would admit it or otherwise, one other point of frustration about the Cocteaus is the fact that unless you want to be insultingly glib about their output and yell “Hippies!” before spitting at the floor, they’re actually a tough band to write about too. The lyrics are frequently flooded by the arrangements and feel incomprehensible, and when some coherence does seep through, it doesn’t appear to have any tangible meaning to possibly anyone except the group. This allowed listeners to weave their own narratives and ideas around their work, but doubtless snookered writers searching for something to hook a review on to.

Nor does the sound really fit the traditional language of eighties music journalism. It’s a consistently soupy, waterlogged arrangement and production which lacks the technically dazzling flash and scream of progressive rock, while also lacking the sharp whip-crack rebellion of punk or rock and roll. Anyone trying to interview the group was also often left with nothing much to go on; they weren’t big on explaining themselves.

“Pearly Dewdrops’ Drops” was actually their commercial peak on 45, reaching number 29 in the national singles charts, but didn’t offer any sops to either radio playlist programmers or the press to get there. They refused to appear on Top of the Pops and remained determinedly themselves, meaning the lyrics – of which numerous interpretations are available – are repetitive slices of twee bucolic imagery. There are several noble attempts to pull the delicate silk strands together into something meaningful online, but none (even one from an alleged insider who seems to claim that PDD is a coded poison pen letter to 4AD boss Ivo Watts-Russell) convinces me that what they’re doing here is even average lyricism, least of all complex poetry. What it means feels as if it shouldn’t matter to us, whether it’s comprehensible to the group or not.

Instead, Liz Fraser’s voice, filled with high pitched hiccups, breathlessly rushed and repetitive lines, and lingering hollering, is just another element in the mix. Intertwining with it, surprisingly jangly guitar lines emerge as well as that thundering post-punk bassline, but Fraser is the most flexible and impressive element – working overtime, jabbering, stretching her vocals and howling, the restless magician who both stops the track from seeming too hypnotic and delirious (imagine it without her singing to get what I mean) and also makes it feel somehow exotic.

47. Sandie Shaw - Hand In Glove (Rough Trade)

 

One week at number one on w/e 28th April 1984

Arthur Crabtree: Hey. I say, is that that bird?

Billy Fisher: What bird?

Arthur Crabtree: There. Getting a lift in that lorry. That bird that wanted you to go to France with her.

Billy Fisher: Do you mean Liz?

Arthur Crabtree: Yes, where's she been this time, then?

Billy Fisher: I don't know. She goes where she feels like. She's crazy. She just enjoys herself.

Billy Liar.

There’s an idealistic, euphoric vision of the sixties I carry around with me in my head (having never lived through it myself) which clashes with the lived reality of others – my parents, for example. My Dad once told me that for him the sixties didn’t result in any real change. He still had the same job and the same lifestyle, and his only minor brush with the era’s glamour was when a friendly post-fame Peter Sarstedt mistakenly walked into the wrong South London boozer. Carnaby Street styles and fame tended not to reach Peckham. They disintegrated on impact with the South Circular Road.

Then there’s the vision I have of the famous people who littered the era, some of which is probably highly accurate (I’ve devoured enough Beatles biographies to at least have a fair idea of what went on) some driven by fantasy. Sandie Shaw, for example. She was fascinating to me because she was from Dagenham, a mere few miles from where I grew up, and my best friend’s mother was mates with her as a child, a fact she always revealed very cautiously and defensively. Of all the famous female British singers in the sixties, Sandie seemed the most local and the most relatable, but also the most flexible and shapeshifting. Who was she? Seemingly, whatever I wanted her to be.

In early promotional photographs, she looks as if she’s won the football pools and is posing for a Littlewoods advertising campaign. She’s pretty and breezy, all delighted smiles, light eyes and freckles. This fits the narrative. She was a Ford factory worker at the Dagenham plant who won second prize in a local talent contest, earning her a slot at a charity event in London where she was spotted by Adam Faith. He put in a word for her with his manager, and as such, Shaw is an early example of the “working class girl unexpectedly lands showbiz opportunity” sixties fairytale. There would be more of those (and then eventually, as the decades drifted forward, less again).

Earning numerous massive hits, including two number ones, her image moved gracefully forward with the sixties. Almost in sympathy with her aspirations (or her manager’s) to be a pan-European star, she recorded hit singles in French, German, Spanish and Italian, and slowly the image changed to that of a glamorous professional, a Saturday teatime ratings puller, a cosmopolitan singer who could be either playful, insouciant or sophisticated when the song or occasion demanded it.

Perhaps inevitably, her continental appeal led to her representing Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1967, resulting in a song she never liked (“Puppet On A String”) being voted as the public’s choice for her to perform. She won, but blamed the subsequent steady decline of her career on the kitsch, tacky image the tune and event gave her (though she was quite happy to sell anniversary souvenir whisky glasses of the victory not long ago, one of which I bought and still happily drink from). “Puppet” is an oompah heavy, knees-up piece of simple pub-friendly, tankards aloft pop dropped into an era of colour and experimentation, closer to The Scaffold than "Strawberry Fields Forever". It worked perfectly in the context of Eurovision and was extremely popular with the British public, who gave her a third number one, but in terms of fashion and the onward movement of popular culture in the late sixties, it couldn’t have seemed more dated; a bubbly bit of Parnes-era pop parachuted into the wrong end of the decade.

Whether it directly caused the decline of her career is a point I’d probably contest. The last few singles leading up to “Puppet” were comparatively weak sellers (the one prior to it, “I Don’t Need Anything”, only just charted at number 50) and I’d actually argue the Eurovision win relaunched her in the UK for a brief period as showbiz royalty, our Queen of Light Entertainment. Despite the temporary lift it gave her, though, it sat awkwardly with who she truly wanted to be, which was pushing the boundaries of pop along with many of her fellow stars.

An album was released in 1969, “Reviewing The Situation”, where she attempted to reposition herself as a progressive artist and correct the public’s view. It’s damn good, and could have been her “Surf’s Up”, but sold naff-all. From that point forward, she would score no further hit singles, living out her showbiz life through occasional appearances on light entertainment shows, performing old standards and even music hall ditties with a slight glimmer of reluctance in her eyes. She attempted to retrain as an actress – something you can easily imagine her succeeding at – but her husband Jeff Banks’ bankruptcy forced her back towards familiar territory to keep the household finances afloat.

The eighties started to be gentler to her. Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh of Human League/ Heaven 17 produced her version of “Anyone Who Had A Heart” in 1982 which failed to chart, but brought her back into the public eye as a credible artist. A none-more-eighties electro-Buddhist single “Wish I Was” followed, and in the background, long-term fans Morrissey and Marr were desperate to earn her attention and get her to cover one of their songs.

There was reluctance on Shaw’s part initially, who seemed untrusting of the group’s slightly unusual angle on the world. This was exacerbated by the tabloid outrage caused by the song “Suffer Little Children” about the Moors Murderers, which nearly caused her to completely withdraw from any associations with them. Eventually, however, she was talked around to the idea of recording with them, and this cover of The Smiths underperforming debut single “Hand In Glove” is the end result.

The first thing that strikes you is how effortlessly Shaw has shapeshifted yet again. The Smiths lyrics weren’t typical of the eighties or any era before them, but she adapts, instantly understanding what to do with her vocals and how to both gel with the strange angles around her and also project her own personality on to them. She barks defiantly, almost in block capitals, “The good life is out there somewhere!” She copies Morrissey’s hollers and howls, but with confidence rather than despair – they seem to suggest “This is who I am” as opposed to “Oh God, so this is who I am”.

46. Depeche Mode - People Are People (Mute)

 

Two weeks at number one from w/e 14th April 1984

Depeche Mode’s first single of 1984 begins with what sounds like an explosion in a crockery cupboard, followed by five swings into a digital punchbag, before looping back again. It feels loud, up-to-the-minute - those samples as brutal as anything Art of Noise were doing that year – then thuds its last, entering into a glistening electronic harp effect, before Gahan sings the big reveal:

“People are People so why should it be/ you and I should get along so aw-fully?”

Oh. You immediately get the impression Martin Gore thought he had created a grand slogan here, one which could proudly open the song, but it’s an unfortunate example of him falling back into his naive teenage ways (despite no longer being a teen). On “See You” he pronounced that “I think that you’ll find people are basically the same”, and “People Are People” returns to this point. Are we not, he seems to ask, fundamentally driven by the same desires, the same emotions, the same need to commune in pleasancy?

As the song unfolds it at least expands on this point a bit more gracefully. If “We’re different colours/ and we’re different creeds/ and different people have different needs” sounds a little bit too close to David Brent for comfort, the sneer of “I’m relying on your common decency/ So far it hasn’t surfaced/ but I’m sure it exists/ it just take a while to travel/ from your head to your fists” is at least a smart putdown, albeit one which probably would cut no ice with the person shouting aggressively in a pub car park.

The song’s strengths lie away from its well-meaning but wide-eyed lyrics. “People Are People” sees Depeche progressing from the gentile industrialisms of “Construction Time Again”, where at certain moments it felt as if they were tinkling on metallic surfaces gracefully, into something harder, more aggressive. The compressed thwacks and crashes are both akin to the harder edges of the emerging industrial scene and strangely dancefloor friendly, and the arrangement packs everything it can into it; vocal breakdowns, Art of Noise styled bass vocal samples, despairing symphonic synth lines and crashing orchestral stabs.

It is, in short, as subtle as a brick in the face but complicated all the same, which is one reason the lyrics can sometimes be ignored or dismissed. If you’re going to place them within the context of an arrangement which is essentially one melodic exclamation mark after another, you can just about get away with viewing society through a panicked, simplistic and over-dramatic lens. Taken by itself, it’s an enjoyable cacophony, an overloaded piece of pop whose only real attempts at subtlety are Martin Gore singing “I can’t understand what makes a man hate another man” like a wounded child in a playground. Even that, it has to be said, isn’t exactly understated. 

Walter Mitty's Little White Lies - Brave New England (Hip Records)

One of my biggest reasons for abandoning my old blog "Left and to the Back" was the fact that focusing on genuine obscurities - singles which hadn't been made available online before in any form - was becoming a tougher and tougher mission. We live in an age where even if Spotify hasn't hoovered up the goodies, some brat on YouTube will inevitably have uploaded something for everyone's pleasure, and even if they've failed, Cherry Red are there in the sidelines waiting for something surprising for their next "150 New Wave Obscurities" box set.

I honestly didn't expect to begin this blog, focusing on indie chart entries which almost all received some airplay and press coverage, and unearth anything which might have been worthy of a place on the old site. There it was in the 1981 Indie Charts, though - "Brave New England", which despite eventually peaking at number 17 and even being reissued by RCA later that year, had left no audio trace behind online.

As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is a fool that repeateth his folly, and inevitably I ended up buying a second hand copy of this purely to satisfy my curiosity about who the group were and what it sounded like, and also to upload it online for the benefit of you good people.

It looks as if Walter Mitty's Little White Lies - henceforth known as WMLWL - were a Liverpool based act with Gary McGuinness on guitar and vocals, Jon Rupert Holt on keyboards, Colin Walker on guitar, Paul Williams on bass, Colin Ventre on drums and Gerry Garland on saxophone. 

"Brave New England" is very much the kind of New Wave single which feels as if it has some "pub rock heritage" about it, being closer in style and feel to Tom Robinson than XTC or Talking Heads. There are no hard angles or unexpected discords; instead, the group deliver a fluent pop/rock song whose cult level sales combined with radio appeal must have made the band catnip to RCA, who swept in to reissue it later on in 1981.

Copies of the RCA single seem even more scarce than the original on the tiny Hip Records, though, and the group weren't given any other chances to record for a major (or indeed any other) label. This is what we've been left with, and while it's not clear to me what promotion it received to manage a mid-placed indie chart position - I can find no signs that the music press reviewed it first time out or John Peel played it, for example - enough people cared to get it there.