The Jub-Jub Bird

Another literary title that this time pertains a lot more obviously to the song than in the case of "Nae Hair On't". Lewis Carroll's Jub-Jub Bird is 'a desperate bird' that 'lives in perpetual passion' and desperation and passion neatly sums up the themes of its namesake song.

From the muffled roar that opens to the juddering bassline that shakes through the louder passages and the chaotic mid-section where the Jabberwocky makes its most obvious appearance, its about as forceful a song as they've ever recorded. Even when offering a breather from this in its quieter sections, there's a looming dread and the lyrics constantly allude to a similar feverish intensity, passion always couched in terms of madness and loss of control - 'whenever I hear your name, a mist comes down over my eyes' and 'I'm lost in the scent of your skin'. The song is at its best when hinging on the tension of internal struggle, becuase there's something about the madness around that isn't unconvincing, but is a bit uninvolving.

It's perhaps an unfair comparison but it doesn't help that in the same year Mansun were referencing Jabberwocky too and doing way more fucked up and fascinating things to their rock in the process, albeit without such emotional centre. Still, if not entirely lovable, "The Jub-Jub Bird" is certainly worthwhile and a nice fit to the second half of Last Chance Saloon.

mp3: The Jub-Jub Bird (live)

Sleazy Bed Track

After not really experiencing this whole jetlag thing at all on the way out to the US or straight after returning, in the past two days I've woken up at 1pm and 6am respectively . Something isn't right there. It's with such thoughts of tiredness in mind, lets turn to one of The Bluetones' more underappreciated singles, "Sleazy Bed Track".

'I know it's getting late,
But if you'd like to talk a little more,
Well that's alright with me.
I'm feeling kind of tired,
But it ain't exactly beating down my door,
Now just why could this be?'

Deliciously hazy and intimate, the verses rest on slippery blues guitar and Eds' suitably weary, late night drumming, backed with an organ hum distant enough that it's easy to miss where the spooky edge that it adds is coming from. 'Kind of tired' definitely feels like an understatement, but the 'just why could this be?', why it isn't being felt, is answered soon enough. It's revealed to be a contradictory mixture of (1) concern for the wellbeing of the person being addressed and (2) abject horniness. Shattered late nights for a freeing of inhibitions more potent than alcohol, exhaustion making now seem like the most crucial time to seize the moment because in no time at all it will be tomorrow and everything will have changed? Works for me. There's something almost dreamlike about the burst of energy that carries us into the bizarrely triumphant sounding chorus, one final hit of hormones and adrenaline masking the unlikeliness of the pleas therein.

'All you gotta do is baby kick off your shoes and lay down,
Climb up here with me and lets forget about sleep and lay down...'

The title of the song might well be an ironic acknowledgement that Mark couldn't play sleazy effectively if he tried, but it definitely works in its favour, lending his seduction an unlikely innocence that keeps his concern in the verses more believeable as genuine than manipulative. Maybe not enough to wish him success (it's still just a touch too creepy in places for that) but certainly to not begrudge him the attempt.

Sidenote: to prove that noticable likeness to other songs isn't always such a dealbreaker, just check out the uncanny similarity between the opening here and that of Crowded House's "Fall At Your Feet".

mp3: Sleazy Bed Track (Evening Session Version)

U.T.A.

"U.T.A." is a song that never really made much of an impact on me as part of Return To The Last Chance Saloon, an album that I've always found a bit of mess as a whole and on which it is dwarfed by the flashes of brilliance that surround ("Solomon Bites The Worm", later "sleazy Bed Track" and "If...").

On its own, though, it stands up pretty well as one of the most quietly successful experiments of the album. Mark Morriss' heavily treated voice is a result of the second album tendency to throw everything in the studio at the songs and see what sticks, but it works much better than most. Stretched desperately thin, it's a forlorn whine whose paranoia is all the more suffocating as a result, similar to in Radiohead's "Climbing Up The Walls" although without achieving quite the same levels of supreme creepiness. Newly heavy, fuzzy guitars are put to much better use than elsewhere on the album, creeping up to cover the song and smother its melody just as our narrator is smothered by America; whatever the T in "U.T.A." stands for, it's not a positive. To top things off, a siren blares and leads us to a suitably disspiriting conclusion. It acts as a neat counterpoint to the worship of certain aspects of North America throughout Last Chance Saloon, although similarly suffers just a hint of being more intellectual exercise than genuine feeling.

Down At The Reservoir

It struck me, seeing "Down At The Reservoir" live for the rest time a few months ago, that it's by some distance the most Britpop thing that The Bluetones have ever recorded. That needs some clarifying, obviously, since Britpop can mean many things to people, from Mansun to Pulp to Elastica to Starsailor (if you're American, anyway). I mean the particular type of jovial, brash guitar pop that captured a moment and then was gone, all but completely ceasing to exist by the time this decade rolled around. It's "Country House", it's "Alright", or at least it's "Staying Out For The Summer". Needless to say, it's relentlessly bouncy.

The rich, layered guitar jangle of their debut is replaced with a hard, naggingly simple riff over which all the world (from, er, 'washed out bum' to 'gay bourgeois') is invited to come hang out in amazingly guileless fashion. If Mark Morriss has noticed the irony when he sings "You need your medicine to help the sugar down", he's definitely not showing it. The middle 8 is syrupy enough to make your teeth hurt. And there's a definite thrill to be had from the carefree innocence of it all.

Thing is, that trick only works when you're winning. In the middle of their set, it came off excellently because people were on their side, besides enjoying themselves way too much to mind that the song means nothing whatsoever. By the time that Return To The Last Chance Saloon was released in 1998, though, Britpop of this sort was well on its way out, replaced by Embrace and The Verve and "Song 2". The Bluetones had never really had anything as dumb or celebratory as this before, and now they did but most definitely weren't winning. So it was never even worth putting out as a single. In which context (or even knowing about it in retrospect) it seems just a little sad, a song that only makes proper sense as a communal singalong but would barely even make that status. Whenever I see the band dismissed out of hand in print, this song is how I tend to picture the critic as seeing them and while I wouldn't mind future setlist appearances, it's not a song I seek out on record.



That's a while since a really positive entry now, huh? Onto some really good stuff for the next two days, though...