Yes, those Dexys Midnight Runners, and don't pretend you didn't love their big 1982 hit "Come On Eileen." Just in case you were on another planet when this single hit the airwaves, here's my previous post on that beloved hit.
Dexys Midnight Runners generally get clocked as a one-hit band. But just listen to this track, the first single released from Dexys 1982 album Too-Rye-Ay (and the album's first track). What's sad is that I've never heard it before, and it's actually every bit as catchy and delightful as "Come On Eileen."
Everyone's having fun here, the scrappy vibe propels it forward (those spiky fiddles playing like a soul band's horn section), and there's a riff I can't get out of my head.
We could be listening to the Dubliners and the Chieftans singing the auld tunes on St. Patrick's Day or we could be having a rare bit o' fun with Kevin Rowland (aka Dexy). I know which side of the soda bread I'm slathering my Kerrygold butter on.
Okay, this song has been obsessively occupying my cerebral cortex for at least a week now. Maybe writing a blog post is the only way to exorcise it. Trouble is -- and this, dear readers, is at least two-thirds of why I so rarely post these days -- I've already written about this song. Back in 2007, in fact. Because the songs I love keep coming back to me, and this is one I really love.
Way early in my blogging days, back when iTunes still was a Wild West of user-posted playlists (like Spotify was just a few years ago), you could actually discover new artists from other music fans. Somehow I landed on someone's playlist of great girl singers, or something like that, which is where I first found this song. I instantly fell in love with Jill Sobule's music. I'm way down that road now; I've bought all her albums, seen her several times in concert, subscribed to her Patreon account. So writing about this song is more than deja vu all over again. It's a tribute to how satisfying it is when you see how right your first impressions were.
Jill Sobule is like this great girlfriend you can sit up late with,
drinking margaritas and eating Doritos and getting
slaphappy. Her songs are so perky, her voice so kittenish, you don't
realize at first how snarky her lyrics are; then suddenly you're in on the joke and you love it -- like in this brilliant song from her Pink Pearl album (2000).
The
joke here is not that the girl singing the song is suicidally depressed
-- although she is -- it's that her obtuse boyfriend hasn't got a clue.
"Can't you see that I am dying inside?", she starts singing, in that
sweet-and-innocent voice, even before the listless acoustic guitar and
bored-sounding drums lurch in -- "Can't you hear my muffled cry?" On the
second verse, a lazy slide guitar joins in as she wearily elaborates:
"Don't you know my life's a quiet hell? / I'm a black hole, I'm an empty
shell / Does it occur to you that I might need help?/ You're the guy
who doesn't get it."
Okay, that's the premise; we've all
known/dated/married men like this. But then, Jill being Jill, she pushes the
scenario into Luis Bunuel territory: "Say I'm in the tub with a razor blade / You'd walk in
and ask me "How was your day?" / Then you'd lather up and start to
shave / As I bleed on the new tile floor..." The NEW tile floor; that's
the detail that grabs me -- trust a woman to notice, even as she's
slitting her wrists, that the blood's going to ruin her nice new floor.
She could say anything and he'd never notice. In the next verse, she compares him to Nazi collaborators; in the second bridge she hauls out one
more melodramatic scenario: "Say the
car exhaust engulfs my brain/ The Nembutol is racing through my veins /
You come in and ask "Are you okay?"/ As I close my eyes forever." Pause and -- wait for it! But, erm...
A plunking piano ambles in, as if it's not even worth the
effort to get the notes right. Jill tries the chorus one last time, asking
wryly, "What's going on inside those vacant eyes?" And of course she has
no answer -- none of us do. None of us ever do. But sometimes, the only
thing that keeps you sane is knowing that at least your girlfriends
know just what you're talking about.
