Here's the middle part of Martin Crookall's original piece on 'Nobody's Perfect', while we wait for the (more competitively-priced) 'Parabolically Yours' set to be be re-born.
Stop grumbling at the back! You've waited 35 years for it to be be reissued... what's a few more months? Anyway, Martin's piece below deals with Side One.
...it’s “Nobody’s Perfect” that I’m concerned with now, the only album recorded by
the original line-up. It’s very hard to get hold of, having never been released
on CD (nor are there any plans that it should ever be), and copies of the LP
being rare, and consequently expensive.
Nor is it a major album, a lost cultural (or even cult) masterpiece, though
I’ve always contended that its sound, marrying the energy and melody of the
Buzzcocks to a softer, more keyboard oriented sound, makes “Nobody’s Perfect”
the missing link between the Buzzcocks and the Human League of “Dare”. But it’s
still an album worth listening to, and there are at least three solid
masterpieces, all from the Finney/Perrin team, that deserve to be known widely.
The album begins with jittery guitar, skittering into your hearing, before a
solid riff, having its roots in the band’s punk origins, leads the band on a
busy hustle. “Waiting for Lorraine”
is a love song, but it’s a peculiarly Mancunian love song, with its feet set
firmly upon the ground. Finney’s waiting for Lorraine: she’s his girlfriend,
he’s sat by the phone because she’s supposed to be calling him back, but he’s
not hearing from her. The longer he doesn’t hear from her, the more he starts
to doubt her. He doesn’t want her to love him forever, just to stop her telling
lies. Perrin rips in with a fast guitar solo and Finney shoots back, washing
his hands of untrustworthy, heartbreaker Lorraine, until he’s now waiting for
her to go drop dead.
It’s a love song of disillusion, set to a fast, melodic sound, guitar based,
with little snippets of voices behind Finney’s upfront tones, yet it’s only his
side of things. The twist is that we have absolutely no idea whether Lorraine
is a cheater or if it’s Finney’s anger at being stood up (even if it’s only a
non-returned call after a phone argument) that’s creating this image.
As I said, Mancunian.
It’s followed by “Something for the
Weekend”, an equally up-tempo, energetic song, driven by sharp organ riffs
and an underlying pounded piano. Musically, it wears it’s rock’n’roll roots
pretty close to the surface, especially in Perrin’s trebly solo, but the
busyness doesn’t disguise a certain thinness in the song. The chorus repeats
insistently, as Finney pleads for something to stop the pain, ease the strain,
numb his brain, make it real again (so, nothing to do with drugs then). It’s
all to do with his mysteriously unexpressed behaviour, that makes him an
outcast.
The song also features a technique that the Distractions increasingly used over
what little was left of their career, that is that guitars and keyboards would
drop out, leaving only drum and bass to support Finney’s voice. It works here,
because the percussion keeps the rhythm of the song, but elsewhere it tends to
render the song choppy, disrupting its integrity.
Track three is the album’s biggest mistake. It’s a full-sounding, swirl of
guitar and organ cover of Eden Kane’s 1964 hit, “Boyscry” (though Kane sold it as two words). This was the only
single to be pulled off the album (“Something
for the Weekend” was re-recorded as a single) and though the sound was
representative of the band in this album, the archaic nature of the song and
the lack of confidence shown in the Distractions’ own music was a colossal own
goal.
It slides into “Sick and Tired”, an
uninspired retread of “Waiting for
Lorraine”, heavily featuring synthesizers over a niggling rhythm that
breaks out into a brief but vicious chorused title line. Once again, Finney’s
waiting for someone who’s not showed, though this time he’s out in the rain,
smoking a cigarette and trying to look cool. A vicious solo from Perrin
overtakes the end of the song, but there’s a lack of conviction to the song, or
perhaps the production doesn’t entirely believe in the rawer sound of the
band’s origins.
It doesn’t matter because we now approach the first of the album’s three
undoubtedly classic moments. “Leave you
to Dream” is an airy confection, a pure pop moment, its lightness promised
in its exuberant intro an confirmed in its first line, as Finney cut in, effortlessly,
his voice floating over a beautifully smooth keyboard riff that frolics and
gambols.
It’s again a love song, a hopeless and unrequited love. Finney’s found his
girl, and she’s truly lovely. She’s asleep and dreaming: he holds back from
waking her because he fears (knows?) that she’s too good for him, yet he dreams
that in her dreams she dreams of him.
And yet… Though he’s stoical about it at first, accepting of his non-place in
her affections, aware that his only recourse is to get pissed, but whilst he
watches her and longs for her regard, he wishes for her the things she dreams
of, and the hope remains in there that, in that unknown land behind her closed
eyes, that maybe there is a place for him, by her side.
It’s a stunningly lovely, oddly hopeful song that should have been far better
known.
It’s followed by “Louise”, a
sharp-edged little song with another Mancunian take on the problems of love.
Finney’s singing to his mate, who’s pissed off at the Louise of the title, who
used to be his girlfriend, but they’ve broken up now. She’s with Finney now,
and if this guy should blame anyone, it should be Finney, not the girl he never
properly made his feelings known to, and whose name he’s been trying to blacken
(you can just hear the sound of the unspoken words ‘slag’, ‘bitch’ and
‘whore’).
Finney’s stepped out of his own head now. Where, in “Waiting for Lorraine”, he could only see and blame the girl, now
he’s looking at just such a guy, and telling him off.
“Paracetamol Paralysis”, which closes
side one, is very much The Distractions in full-out punk mode, riffing
ferociously, with hard-edged guitars and pumping drums, in the middle of a
night out. Finney’s been down the disco since quarter to nine, getting into the
groove, and he’s taken this handful of pills someone’s slipped him. Heaven
knows what he thought they were but they were actually paracetamol, and
everything’s bloody strange.
It’s an intense, nervy, but almost comical track – I mean, bloody paracetamol!
– that is a draining experience. The brief pause whilst we turn over the record
is quite welcome.
[to be continued]
