Classic post-punk single

Part two of the 2008 piece by Nick Halliwell of The Granite Shore, Occultation Recordings and now the latest line-up of The Distractions.  This covers the singles on Factory and Island, and what everyone thought was the group's final EP.

Steve Perrin, Mike Finney, Mike Kellie, Nick Halliwell, Arash Torabi.

Written in granite: Looking For A Ghost

After the EP, which was rough and ready, with very short songs, they released one of the all-time classic post-punk singles and, in a pre-post-modern kind of way it was a classic pop record released on Factory Records, of all labels. Not produced by Martin Hannett either, so it sounded unlike anything else Factory had done up to that point and yet seemed to fit perfectly, because what it did have was class. The song, Time Goes By So Slow, was a piece of 24-carat genius, with an intricate arrangement and a performance that sounded as though it was so breathless it might collapse at any moment until they reached the amazing middle section, with that wonderful jazzy chord at the end of each little sequence.

For the first time on this single it becomes obvious that Mike Finney has one of the great pop voices, with a wonderfully broken edge, a catch in his throat that brought a lump to mine. Unfortunately, as I say, he looked like a chubby bespectacled bank clerk although for me this enhanced rather than diminished his stature, it was purely that I rather suspected that he might perhaps never get his due and unfortunately I was all too right. As a fellow wearer of glasses he was one of my heroes and to this day he remains one of my favourite vocalists. Unfortunately he came along just as we were entering the 1980s, a decade when most people agree that the way you looked could be of some slight importance.

After Time Goes By So Slow the band signed to Island and released a new version of It Doesn't Bother Me from the EP as a single (on white vinyl!), and very wonderful it was too. Then they came as close as they were ever going to with Boys Cry. It was so nearly a big hit; it picked up plenty of airplay, it started to sell but stalled just short of being a proper hit. That was followed by the album and one more single on Island, a retooled version of album track Something For The Weekend, a fine enough track but not the greatest choice of single. After that the band were dropped by their label, releasing just one more EP, well up to standard, called And Then There's... on Rough Trade before folding.

(c) Nick Halliwell, The Granite Shore.