"I want to look twenty but I can't deliver"
Actually, I can but not today. The weather and my having a day off followed by a late shift tonight has left me abashedly unkempt. Thanks to my friend Sid I have become a Chameleons fan, albeit 20 years after the fact, and I sit here in my peejays listening to their 1986 album Strange Times for the fourth time in less than 24 hours. It carries such a familiar ache it seems it could have been in my collection all this time. It brings to mind many of my teenage favourites without sounding overtly like any of them (except maybe Mark Burgess' Bowie-Julian Cope voice). Sometimes it's as if Robin Guthrie had left Cocteau Twins and joined a rock band, bringing with him that wintry chiming guitar and synth, like a sunrise over Antarctica. It also makes me want to drag out Killing Joke's Brighter Than a Thousand Suns which I think is from the same year.
A peculiar sound and some muted shrieking at the beginning of "I'll Remember" has prompted some unsuccessful Googling to see if Diamanda had graced this song. Maybe it's just because I mentioned her recently but that sound is very much her--like the skittering laughter of spiders if, you know, spiders could laugh. That sound would have been perfect for Shelob in The Two Towers. Coincidently, I've spent this month mostly listening to the electro-gospel of Erasure--and as 'vinegar & Kool-Aid' as it might seem, DG's vocals add a chilling forlornness that is perfect on two tracks of the eponymous album. I'm looking forward to the release of Nightbird on the 25th. You should be too.