The mood this record sets is basically “mid 60s LA”. They sound like they could have been third on the bill at the Whisky a Go Go when The Doors were headlining.
In fact it was released in 2012. The backing is all on one brilliant note for over a minute from the start: it never gets much more complex than that, but in truth the moment passes the first time Lindsey Troy plays a proper chord. Drummer Julie Edwards knows the score and keeps it brutally simple throughout.
The duo have generated possibly my favourite sentence ever to appear in a band bio on Wikipedia: “Edwards met Troy at a crochet class.” I really hope that’s not a fake entry.
Back in the day we always seemed to be watching things from Eurovision and hearing this stirring intro music, the theme tune for Eurovision broadcasts. Nowadays most of us go a year at a time without hearing it, till the Eurovision Song Contest comes around. As a result it stirs strange emotions in one’s soul.
Would you rather go back to Wogan’s tediously bitter, cynical voice over, or stick with Norton’s tediously flippant foolishness? (I swear he gets into costume and character as Fr Noel Furlong, his vastly irritating Father Ted character, for the show. But at least Fr Noel is meant to be annoying.)
Would you rather see a bunch of slightly bemused old women, a stunning transsexual, or a girl in a very-low cut dress pretending to be a milkmaid and making no pretence whatsoever at taking part in the musical performance?
Much that was strange had cropped up in Eurovision over the years. It felt like if you put every contestant down the years into a computer and asked it to spit out the average it would produce a winner that was a soppy ballad earnestly sung by a man with a luxuriant beard in an extravagant evening gown. And lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened last year. You can read more about the Austrian man who performs as bearded drag artiste Conchita Wurst on the great blog Clothes In Books today - http://bit.ly/1JJXpBI - and find out why you should never share a microphone with him and how CiB has had a hand in his career.
In the pantheon of weird winners, Wurst has probably now trumped even the masked Finnish heavy metal band Lordi. But both their songs were mundane at best, whereas this barnstormer by the official 3rd Most Unusual Winner, Diva by the transsexual Israeli Dana International, would probably have won no matter who sang it. I bet you didn’t remember that the UK were only narrowly beaten into 2nd that year. (It was in Brighton in 1998 because in 1997 the UK had won with Love Shine A Light. Sung by an American. I’m just saying.)
It’s a good job Will Butler’s day job is being in Arcade Fire. If not, everyone would be skitting him for how much he sounds like them, on a lot of the tracks on his fine solo album Policy. Hard not to, when his voice is so similar to that of his big brother Win, the band’s lead singer. Most of the best ones sound like the mothership, but not all.
I like the restless tension in the chord sequence on this lovely ballad.
