Slight Return

At this point, it had to be really.
For those who don't already know, "Slight Return" was The Bluetones' biggest hit. Only Babylon Zoo kept it off the number one spot back in 1996, and it played a large part in Expecting to Fly briefly interrupting a very long Oasis run at number one in the album charts. It also still gets regular-ish airings on alternative leaning radio station, in common with precisely none of their other songs.

What with never having heard of The Bluetones before 2000, I didn't know any of this at the time, so I'm missing out on a big wave of nostalgia and as a result at a certain remove from this song as it's widely treated. There are certainly other singles of theirs that would cheer me up more with (hypothetical) radio plays as a result, but there's no way I'm going to begrudge "Slight Return" its status.

In some ways it's actually not the most obvious hit. The chorus is catchy, but no more so than "Bluetonic" and "Cut Some Rug", whose tunes are a lot more forceful and instant. Lyrically it is relatable but remarkably low key - never has an anthem been so careful and qualified from the title on downwards. 'I'm coming home'... '(but just for a short while)'. In the long run it's actually the thoughtful realism behind its gentle reassurance that makes it work, a friendly hand on the shoulder that recognises that there are problems but takes them down in size. That takes a good few listens to sink in though.

What makes all the difference immediately is that none of those other songs featured the sunniest, jangliest guitar tone ever, or made use of it so fantastically. From the single bright, expectant opening chord that hangs in space for just long enough onwards, it provides all the hook you need and more. They know it, too. That's made clearest is how they brilliantly end the thing - there's no drawn out repetition of the song's lyrical refrain to finish, but instead a return to riffing on its guitar patterns, turning at last into a completely unqualified celebration.

Finally, it's probably sensible to mention that other band whose ghost occasionally looms over us at this point, as the only song that comes close to sounding like this, and just possibly an influence, is The Stone Roses' "Waterfall" (The La's or Delays being close but a juncture further away in style). Now, Ian Brown's voice got to be the butt of way more jokes than it deserved, especially coming from people who would laud the Gallaghers, but for all its other strengths it's fair to say that he could never have done justice to a "Slight Return" however good a backing he was given.

Video: "Slight Return"

Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?

A mischievous title for the band's debut single proper, a number 31 hit in 1995 which wasn't included on debut Expecting To Fly, possibly seen as too throwaway to fit. It's throwaway in the best possible sense, though, a burst of instant, sunshiney pop that comes rushing out the blocks, never lets up in energy ends perfectly in under three minutes, job done. Along the way we get even more great backing vocals than usual, an incredibly confident call and response chorus and a singalong 'ba ba ba ba' or twenty.

For such an early and deceptively simple appearing song there are a lot of clever touches within, too. The way that its rattling guitar riff pinballs back and forth between speakers behind the second verse is addictively unusual, and the verses especially deal in splashes of colour and mood at the expense of narrative in a way that's engagingly at odds with its agressively direct tune. It's not quite the complete article, and I'm not sure that I'd take this version of the band over the more emotional and complex one that emerged afterwards, but the pop thrill of "Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?" is certainly a great thing to find in the depths of a discography.

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)

Castle Rock

First of all to explain the tags I've given this, I would consider "Castle Rock" as a B-side but it was also technically a double A-side with "Cut Some Rug", the third single from Expecting To Fly, probably explaining its fetching sandcastle cover. Although, pleasing The Enemy, it's not literally a song about a castle. Duh.

Working out the reason behind its naming is tricky as with many early songs (A beer? A Stephen King newsletter? Lord Of The Flies?) so I think I'll go for the castle standing in for Mark's emotional defenses. The first verse's 'you're rushing through my head, you're seeping through my skin' certainly has an air of being under siege, and he's already said that he's got a place to hide. What and who he's defenfing himself from is a little mysterious even before a 'she' is added to the main 'you' but he's got betrayal nagging at his mind, both his own (the play on words pun 'lying in your arms/lying to your face' put to great use) and that of whoever has 'turned and walked away'. The scratchy, hesitantly stop-start guitar/drum riff that opens the song and underpins the rest of it is like an itch that won't go away, just like his unwanted feelings for whichever of the sort-of-implied two girls it is. Maybe both. It's also the first step along the way to the harder sound of their second album, a lot more so than later stopgap single "Marblehead Johnson". For now, they still kept the ultra-sweet harmonies and emphasis on looser, flowing song structure that was later to fall away somewhat too, though.

"Castle Rock" is really intriguing both in complicating their sound and complicating the narrative compared to Expecting To Fly's songs (I remember reading someone saying that every single one was about being dumped, and thinking ever since that they had quite a point - we'll get back to that one later) but a little too slight and unclear to be one of their very best. Still, the fact that songs as good as or better than this were very common as B-sides at the time says a lot about the

mp3: Castle Rock and Castle Rock (Peel Session Version)

My Neighbour's House

Last week, my iTunes library went past the 10,000 songs mark. I don't think I've even listened to a sadly significant proportion of those, let alone know them, but still, my mental library contains a lot of songs too. It's hardly surprising then that new songs can sometimes sound strikingly familiar because they have something in common with one of them. Just a hazard of listening to lots of music, really. But it still occasionally ruins songs, and "My Neighbour's House" is one.

You see, the riff in "My Neighbour's House", the big fuzzy one that blazes through it and rarely lets up, is basically the same one as in Oasis' "Rock 'n' Roll Star". Turn on "My Neighbour's House" and the first words that come into my head aren't 'My neighbour's house is burning down and I wish that I could care', they're 'I live my life in the city, and there's no easy way owwwwwt'. Followed, of course, by the unforgettable 'soon-shyiiiine'. The problem is magnified by the fact that the riff it resembles is a really well known song, by one of their supposed peers, and that they play it in very much the same turned-up-to-11 style. No other Bluetones song would sound as much like Oasis anyway. I'd like to think that the resemblence wasn't deliberate, but it all points to an uncharacteristic laziness.

A shame because in some ways "My Neighbour's House" has a lot more to recommend it than most of their other songs from last year's self-titled album. It's full of energy, has a really effective breakdown where the riff doesn't interfere, and has some of Mark's most idiosyncratic and intriguing lyrics, with him wishing for 'some fellow feeling' that he just can't find and fearing harsh (divine?) judgement as a result. But all that pales next to the Oasis factor and choosing this as comeback single at a time when mainly dismissed as Britpop throwbacks was sort of willfully stupid. The first full Bluetones single ever to miss the top 40, incidentally.

YouTube: 1-minute sample of My Neighbour's House. Enough to see my point, hopefully.

Liquid Lips

'If this album had been made by The Strokes or another of the current Flavour of the Month bands, the critics would be raving about it.'
BBC Shropshire

Luxembourg, the first album released after The Bluetones' departure from major label land, gets compared to The Strokes a lot. I've done so myself. Often it's in somewhat misguided lines like the one above, which make for very nice wishful thinking but are probably not true.

"Liquid Lips" as as close as they come. Weirdly, the one Strokes song that it most closely resembles is "Juicebox", released two years later. Give or take a note, the exact same bassline snakes through it and similarly completely dominates the song. The staccato guitar is tightly wound around it, and even when allowed a solo Adam Devlin just adds some fuzz to the same progression. They don't pull off quite such a full sound as "Juicebox", but the kinetic effect is very similar. The WHOMP, WHOMP of drums in the intro go one better, even.

But then there's Mark Morriss. He's one of my favourite singers, right up there with Guy Garvey and some other people without alliterative names. He's great. I don't tend to think about him as much, normally, because the main reason is that he's endlessly, incredibly easy to listen to. Which doesn't sound much until I try to think of anyone else that has the same ability to never get in the way, never even slightly grate and twist the emotions with the tinyest of changes, and there is no one. Anyway, the point that I was going to get to is that this doesn't apply to "Liquid Lips". I notice him, every time, because he doesn't fit. It's an angry song, the calling out of a 'backstabber, money grabber' who has somehow fooled everyone else. Its lyrics are a little ropey but could potentially have worked as the rantings of someone too angry to think of anything better and just starting to throw whatever comes into his head ('Liquid lips baby you would stink on ice'?). They don't though, because he fusses over every word, overemphasising a lot and seeming to double guess what will work best rather than being as effortlessly natural as normal. He even sounds a little thin and reedy for the first time ever and also gives the exact opposite of Julian Casablancas' phoned in drawl, funnily enough.
I know that it contradicts my last entry to some extent, but this is evidence that trying to change sound away from your strengths isn't always the best move.

Despite those misgivings, "Liquid Lips" is still a much more enjoyable attempt at owning a new, harder sound than the actual A-side of the 'double A-side' that trailed Luxembourg. We'll get onto that at some point in future, though.


(No entry tomorrow I'm afraid as I'm off to Muse at Wembley. Working, rather than watching.)

No. 11 / Bluetonic

When I am sad and weary,
When I think hope is gone,
When I walk along High Holborn,
I think of you with nothing on
Celia, Celia, Adrian Mitchell

This is where it all begins, for them. "No. 11", so called because it was the 11th song that the band had written, was the lead track on indie label Fierce Panda's third EP Return To Splendour. Other tracks on that one were by such household names as Thurman, The Nubiles and Alvin Purple, but it's worth noting that its predecessor included debuts by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Ash, and Supergrass.

"No 11" sets out the band's stall very effectively. A simple but richly reverberating guitar riff cycles twice before another, better one is overlaid, then a third. Eds Chesters drums almost as much to fill in the little gaps left in this intricate web as for rhythymic purposes. The bass does... something in there somewhere. Mark Morriss' voice is basically fully formed already, a sweet, high, enfolding thing that scuppers any chances of a place as the new Stone Roses that they were claimed to be.

And come the chorus, they set it all out. 'There's no heart you can't melt with a certain little smile/No challenge should be faced without a little charm and a lot of style'. Perhaps the latter should be swapped around, because charm has almost always been a bit more them than style, but that's The Bluetones right there. Taking on allcomers, politely. If you're being snarky, 'Only a fool won't take the chance to stay the same' fits too. It's so perfect a statement of purpose that it's no surprise that they went on to all but name it after themselves.

"Bluetonic" is thus the eventual album and hit single version of the same song. It's meatier, of course, with every little guitar sound crisply projected in widescreen and the chorus now marked with a big 'sing along here, folks' signpost. It loses a little something in transition. Scott Morriss' backing vocals are already being relegated back in the mix and imitating his brother's poised tone, rather than being slurred in from another room. That line, the Adrian Mitchell-sourced one that was of course the one Mark was asked to finish on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, is delivered with a knowing wink rather than thrown away as if it wasn't anything. The biggest difference shows up right at the end though: The closing 'yeah, ye-ah yeah YEA-eh' of "No. 11" is full of palpable hunger, the sound of a band raring to take on the world and with a drive beyond the polite exterior. The yeahs are still there in it's successor, but the excitement isn't quite.

Youtube: Bluetonic video, don't they look young?
mp3: No. 11

Keep The Home Fires Burning

'There's a silver lining
Through the dark cloud shining
Turn the dark cloud inside out'
"Keep The Home Fires Burning", Novello/Ford, 1914

This is where it all begins, for me. A winter evening watching Top Of The Pops on a slightly battered old television (screen scratched, a little too quiet because if you turned the volume up you had to turn it off and on again to the turn it back down), heart bursting at the enormity of feeling that the little song at number 13 suddenly brought.

In these days where everything I listen to comes with more information and knowledge than ever, with all accompanying expectations and presumptions, it's weird to think how free of context I once heard this song. I hadn't heard of the wartime song from which it takes its title. I barely knew anything of Britpop and certainly didn't know of The Bluetones' links to it (I thought that they were Canadian initially, for reasons which now escape me), nor of the NME's allegations of racism that centred around this single and may well have helped finish off their mainstream career. We'll return to those second two later, as they don't really have much bearing on the song itself.

The other "Keep The Home Fires Burning" certainly does though, even if I didn't get it then. In fact looking it up again and thinking about it for this entry has brought that home even more. I was all set to write that the shared title and references are there for black humour only as the Bluetones song has nothing to do with 'gallant son[s] of Britain' or the war. But then, there it is in the third line. 'My home is a warzone'. It's in fact an inversion of the whole original song, turning the silver lining inside out to find a black cloud. It never gets too explicit about what it is that Mark Morriss is running away from, beyond that line and the chorus of 'Home fires burn/scorching a hole through me'. Neither does the sprightly music ever really push home a sense of violence or conflict but the massive sense of betrayal in finding that reliable, safe home is nothing of the sort squeezes through very clearly nonetheless.

And even if, like me then, you miss all of the ironic contrasts in the lyrics then the beautifully arranged nostalgic brass (Hovis! Coronation Street!) of the intro and outro manages to convey exactly the same thing. A neat trick.

Since I've never suffered anything like the implied home situation it wasn't relating to that that made the song grab me so hard back then. I think, beyond the economic phrases weilded so effectively as to make for their best lyrics ever, and music now so ingrained that I find it almost impossible to even think about it to write, it was the sense of putting a brave face on everything that got to me the most. I'd been spending days at a time listening to Travis (The Man Who, obv) turning almost nothing into grand displays of emotion, and despite superficial musical similarities this was in many ways the opposite. It still does something to me now.

YouTube: Keep The Home Fires Burning video, not the most serious of affairs.
mp3: Keep The Home Fires Burning (US version), minus the brass and plus a country tinge.