Luke Haines has always prided himself on being heroically out-of-kilter with the musical Zeitgeist (at the height of Britpop his former charges the Auteurs released a single with the daytime radio-friendly title 'Unsolved Child Murder') so his new concept album about the 70's makes a perverse kind of sense.An early standout track - indeed one of my songs of the year - is 'Leeds United', a work of minor genius which uses Don Revie's all-conquering but controversial team as a microcosm for the singer's ambivalent emotions towards the decade.
Football and pop music have traditionally made for uneasy bedfellows, and for every 'World In Motion' there's at least a dozen musical abominations of the calibre of 'The Anfield Rap' or (gulp) 'World At Your Feet'. The reason 'Leeds United' works is less to do with any dewey-eyed nostalgia for the "beautiful game" and more for its visceral evocation of 70's life, referencing Peter Sutcliffe ("the devil came to Yorkshire in the silver Jubilee"), teddy boy discos and Jimmy Saville. Caustic, insidious, drenched in melodrama, it's the sort of record you wish that Morrissey was still making.
Ten other great football-referencing songs:
1. The Boy Done Good - Billy Bragg
2. Strachan - The Hitchers
3. Sparky's Dream - Teenage Fanclub
4. The First Big Weekend - Arab Strap
5. Munich Air Disaster 1958 - Morrissey
6. Theme From Sparta FC - The Fall
7. England 2 Colombia 0 - Kirsty MacColl
8. All I Want For Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit - Half Man, Half Biscuit
9. I Don't Want to Play Football - Belle and Sebastian
10. (Oh, go on then) World in Motion - New Order
Listen to Leeds United >>
2 comments:
Eenie meany - Jim Noir
Strachan is a great tune. Forgotten all about it: 'What is that you're watching - It's a programme about art'....
B-Side good also - She broke my heart, so I ate her liver....hmmm maybe not in the current scaremongering climate.
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