“Amused and confused by life’s little ironies,
he swallows his bottle of distilled…
…damnation!”
— from Perfect, by The The
One of my favourite albums from the ’80s turns 30 this year: Soul Mining, the debut album by The The, released in September 1983. It’s got a lot of range — from the proto-Nine-Inch-Nails-ish synth-and-drums-heavy track GIANT, to the Smiths-y The Sinking Feeling, the dark and danceable album version of Perfect (the one with more minor chords and a bigger beat), the cheerful-or-mopey This is the Day with its gorgeous lead lines that show how well the accordion can work in pop music…
…and the heart and soul of the album: Uncertain Smile, which concludes with a piano solo that could stand very well as its own piece:
“A broken soul
stares from a pair of watering eyes,
uncertain emotions force an
uncertain smile”
— from Uncertain Smile, by The The
Here’s a high-quality recording of Soul Mining that someone’s posted on YouTube. Listen and enjoy!
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about Burns Night, here’s another poem from Robert Burns…
It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for another “picdump!” Here are 136 memes, pictures, and cartoons floating around…
Here’s the main course for dinner tonight... ...and that’s because it’s January 25th today, making…
My friends in my old home town, Toronto, won’t find Tampa’s current temperatures cold, but…
Clearly, I missed out by not watching the director’s cut of Jerry Maguire! But seriously —…